#and I can imagine an alternate version that’s longer (series?) and much more complex which would be even better

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread  

Lucha of the Night Forest

YA fantasy about a girl struggling to survive with her sister in a land overtaken by a forgetting drug, who makes a deal with a forest god to escape

spooky fungi magic, forest, sisters, lesbian MC

[fictionalcharactermbti]

Harley Quinn: INFJ, an unusual typing

In light of my recent typing of the new animated series of Harley Quinn, I thought I would repost my typing profile of Harley Quinn within DC. 

FOR HER IN-DEPTH TYPING PORTRAIT CLICK HERE

I understand that INFJ is not a usual typing of Harley Quinn and is not something I did lightly. An obvious choice would be something like ESFP. She seems impulsive and incredibly reactive to sensate experiences. I do see this. But Harley Quinn is more than what she projects. 

The animated series really explores how she was formed by her relationship with Joker and forced into certain boxes of his imagining. We see her take control of her own narrative and sense of self. How do we combine all the different versions of Harley Quinn? How do we, in one type, have the seemingly outgoing persona of beating in heads with the Harley who would much rather stay at home with a select few like Poison Ivy, or the Harley Quinn, the psychologist?

If she were a healthy mbti type, ESFP or something similar would make sense. But we must acknowledge, no matter what type we give Harley, the functions will be a bit out of wack. The inferior function will be prominent and misused. Hence, as you can see in the portrait linked, I tend to lean towards a type like INFJ. One in which we are approaching the character through the inferior function being overused. A type that combines her complex inner narrative most exposed in her comic series. INFJ fits a Harley Quinn who is no longer depicted as a villain, but an anti-hero. 

None of this is to say that an ESFP or types like it cannot be complex or have their own rich inner world. I do hate that only intuitives seem to be described this way. 

So although this may seem like an odd type, one that doesn’t fit into our neat 16 boxes, it is one that I stand by. Obviously, no one has to agree, but I thought I would refresh followers on my thought process. I will never see another different Harley Quinn typing and say that person is wrong. She is a very complex character who has been rewritten over and over again, exploring all different facets. I enjoy reading alternative typings and getting more insight and perspectives of this character. 

For my blog though, I very much enjoy unusual typings as many people in my life are types that can surprise people. We, like a good complex character, don’t all fit into the MBTI stereotypes. I enjoy when my typings reflect that. 

[btsandvmin]

Shipping vs Believing

I felt like talking about this, because in general a lot of people I come across seem to think that they are the same thing. And maybe the purpose of the word is changing, but the original use of “shipping” was actually to show you liked something, changed something into being or wanted something to be romantic or sexual between characters or people. Basically it’s about liking something that might not be romantic or sexual yet, or something that never has been or never will be romantic/sexual or in the case of making fanart or fanfiction sometimes expanding on something that is romantic/sexual with fiction because you want more than what you get.

95z is love. We know this. But, what kind of love is up for interpretation.

Shipping was originally mostly about fiction, but as it has become a more widespread expression it now also applies to relationships between real people.

And again, maybe times and overuse of the word “ship” has started to change the meaning of it, but to me shipping will not be liking a bond platonically and it will not be believing something is real. When someone says “I ship Vmin platonically” they are basically missing the whole point of the word if you ask me, as it’s used to differentiate between liking a friendship or platonic bond and wanting or liking a possible romantic or sexual connection.

However, what bothers me the most is when people don’t realize that shipping isn’t real. Shipping is liking to interpret interactions or other things in a non platonic way. It can even be hoping or speculating about characters or people being together. Basically “wishing for my ship to become canon” aka. turn real.

But if you already believe a ship is real, that is no longer shipping. At least not to me, because that was never the meaning of that word.

I have been a shipper for a long time, before ao3 and tumblr when I read and wrote fanfictions on livejournal or discussed pairings in random threads or blogs. And since the beginning you used shipping to show you liked a certain dynamic in a non platonic way. Same with ship names, which has also become so mainstream to use now that it’s lost it’s original purpose. Ship names like Vmin or RoMione (Ron x Hermione) etc. were to show it was liking two or more people together in a romantic or sexual way. If it’s in fiction it can also be to explore or expand on a canon pairing because you want more material.

In fact ship names and the word shipping had the point of separating reality from fantasy so you knew if someone said Vmin in stead of Jimin and Taehyung you meant it as a romantic or sexual thing and not just them together. Now people use ship names because its easier, and sadly that makes it a bit confusing with what people mean when they say “I love Vmin”.

I have shipped a lot of ships, both fictional and real people. And I know that most shippers behave and act the same when they reach a certain popularity and get support from each other. They help each other get convinced that their ship is real or will become canon.  They also start to downgrade or downplay interactions between rival ships and sometimes goes as far as trying to dehumanize or delegitimize shippers of other ships. For example saying “most of their shippers are young/don’t know how it’s like to be in a relationship/don’t understand their personalities” etc. and essentially simply try to show why their camp knows best and why others just don’t see the truth. “I never used to ship but XXX just felt different” is another common one to justify why it’s not just shipping, the vibe is simply different. But, that is still just your own feeling and interpretation, and many others feel the same about other ships. 

Lumping all shippers together as the same and generalizing also creates a us vs. them kind of mindset. Then with time and size of the community and more “evidence” the echo chamber effect makes everyone harden their belief in combination with confirmation bias until you have a whole community convinced they have the only real truth and everyone else simply doesn’t understand.

It’s honestly the same psychology you can find in religion and even in people who believe in conspiracy theories like that the earth is flat. Same type of behavior even though the subjects and situations can vary. I have studied warfare and war psychology at university and it’s a bit scary how ship wars are so similar to actual wars when it comes to the reasoning and psychology behind it. Because in the end it’s the same type of mindset and how the brain works to convince us something is the way we want it to be, for various reasons, while making the other side the enemy in a way.

I have seen shipwars in basically every fandom I have been in that has gotten big enough and that has “rivals”, like with One Direction or One Piece or The Hunger Games for example. Or even in ones I wasn’t in like the “team Jacob vs team Edward” in Twilight. There is a good reason for why I am very careful to say or try to convince someone a ship is real, when we don’t know. The only way to avoid ship wars is to stay open minded and not get defensive or aggressive, which will only further a generalization of your whole shipping community. “Vmin shippers are crazy/delulu/toxic/aggressive” etc. are situations I want to avoid, but that I know is likely to happen simply as the Vmin fandom grows in size.

We have similar moments that we got years ago that no one reacted to much, but with the growth of the community has become “proof”. People get more and more convinced as they get more and more things that confirm what they already want to believe. At the same time they also more and more ignore things that goes against their own beliefs and become less prone to accept alternative realities to the one they have created.

People believe in very different ships, and people are equally convinced they are the ones who are right. Which speaks for itself as it’s not possible for everyone to be right. But it is also possible for everyone to be wrong. When this involves real people it also becomes much more complex and difficult to analyze. Because things aren’t happening all planned out as in a story. Not everything is a hint for a ship being real, and it’s very difficult to try and understand a person or a relationship from afar when every person and relationship works very differently and there could be many different forces and reasons behind what we see. Especially when we don’t get to see everything and when there are good reasons to now show everything openly, as in the case of a possible LGBT+ couple.

In short I think people should realize that liking a dynamic, shipping something and believing in something are three different things.

For me I ship Vmin 100%, I love reading fics and putting possible romantic or sexual twists on their relationship for fun. I know this is fiction, and simply something I enjoy on a personal level based on my preference. I know I like many similar ships as well. I ship a lot of things in general, for different reasons. I can’t ship them with anyone else. 

When it comes to liking real Jimin and Taehyung and their relationship I do that as well, I know the border between my shipping fantasies and what they say and do. This is why I say that I will love Vmin no matter their bond, because I don’t need the ship to become real for me to love Jimin and Taehyung’s bond. It’s still a beautiful relationship even if it is 100% platonic. But, as a shipper I still dream and fantasize and enjoy them as more than friends. But if they are together with someone else for real, I can accept that. I don’t own Jimin and Tae and I don’t get a say in how they live their lives just because I like something else than what they want.

And when it comes to supporting and believing a relationship is real, that’s when in my opinion and shipper stops being a shipper. The exception for me here is if the relationship actually becomes or proves to be real and you keep enjoying it through built fantasies to explore a real couple or a canon pairing. But generally, shipping equals imagining something, while believing is obviously beyond that.

Believing a ship to be real or to become canon can be very toxic, both in regards to creating friction between different shippers who believes and KNOWS they are right, which makes people who think differently wrong and in a way “the enemy” or a threat. Investing so deeply into a relationship can be very dangerous emotionally as well. For example, how people burned their books after a series is over when their ship didn’t end up together. This is a light version, as there are much worse things people have done for their ship or when things haven’t gone the way they thought. And that’s in fiction where it’s usually easier and more straightforward. If you feel bad watching another ship interact or dislike another member for getting in between your ship, then it shows you are involved to the point of feeling threatened by another dynamic. In a way it’s a second hand jealousy. Imagine that feeling if your ship isn’t real, or if a rival ship is real. It might lead you to even hate the people you used to love, or feel betrayed, even though it was originally just a fantasy in your head that you got too invested in.

I obviously write analysis, which definitely goes beyond just shipping, but that’s why it’s extra important for me to try and remember that it’s all just speculation. I do think Vmin act weird and have things worth discussing, and I think it’s interesting, so I write analysis. Having a discussion is not a bad thing, as long as it remains a discussion in which where you can accept being wrong and change your mind. Vmin is weird, and I think there might be something there, but I also know it can be me reading them incorrectly.

Everything except what we hear or see directly from the boys is speculation.

I might sound like a hypocrite as a analysis writer, but I have been in a lot of fandoms and have fallen in this trap myself before (not with a real ship, but the feeling is similar for fictional ships as well). I know how important it is to stay grounded and how easy it is to be swept away by plausible narratives or “proof” for a ship. But all ships have it, and all shippers act the same after getting popular enough or having enough weird moments to piece together. Vmin are getting to this point, and when I write about this it’s simply to be aware and try to avoid this trap.

It’s ok to believe a relationship is romantic or sexual (though I personally recommend not crossing the line into being convinced), and it can bring a lot of joy, but just know that there is always a possibility that you are wrong. Because when people ship basically everything they can see, and we don’t even see everything, it’s simply impossible for every “believer” to be correct.

That’s why I will keep speaking about speculation and not proof. Me being certain about Vmin being real or talking about their interactions with confidence like I know exactly what they mean won’t help anyone, not myself and not you who read what I say.

I know this might sound a bit much, and that I might come off as a know it all or even a hypocrite. But honestly, if you only read and reblog one of my posts I hope it might be this one. Because I truly think it’s important to be aware of what we and other people in this fandom are doing.

I hope you all enjoyed reading this rant... And I hope you might understand me a little bit better because of it. Thank you! <3

[atlasenduring]

Hero Society is fucked and needs to be destroyed, the essay. Part one: Mutant Discrimination.

Ayy lmao y’all thought I was fucking kidding but I was not. Long post warning !

I’ll start off with a disclaimer: My personal political stance is very much socialist, and as such I am anti-capitalist and this theory will reflect those political views, so if you my dear reader don’t want to hear me harping on about it, please do hop off this ride now, and spare me any commentaries of the “you are a child-eating commie” sort. Discussing how I might be wrong in my analysis is fine and dandy, I just don’t want to have to lecture anyone about how the Cold War red scared fucked my country, and several others, real good.

That out of the way, are you ready? ARE YOU FUCKING READY?

1. X-Men First Class (2011) is a BNHA prequel, fuck you, fight me.

You can quote me on this if you want. We are all well aware that Horikoshi is heavily influenced by Western superhero comics, and it’s only sensible to thing that he has, in fact, consumed the one comic/film series prominently featuring people born with incredible powers that go to a school to learn how to be superheroes. There’s no 1 for 1 comparison to be made between any one character in either product, but -- it’s not out there to imagine how the BNHA society would have reacted when “mutants” first appeared following the Sparkling Baby.

1.1. Consider the Hotta brothers, please.

In Vigilantes, there are the characters of the Hotta brothers and Kirihito Kamachi (Kamayan). Kamayan was a victim of human experimentation in the wake of the epidemic of Trigger usage and “instant villains”, which made his Quirk evolve to turn him fully into a giant praying mantis.

When Aizawa and Tsukauchi go to speak to him after he’s released from prison, he talks at length about how he can no longer enter his own house, and most places are unsuitable for a person with a non-conforming body such as his to inhabit. The solution presented by Tsukauchi, applying for special housing with the government, doesn’t work. 

Applying real-life concepts to this, and my own experience seeing my mother work with government-issued housing: in my country, it is usually reserved to people under a certain income threshold, and people who live irregularly in occupied plots of land that are subjected to less than ideal living conditions ( slums, or favelas ). Those housing complexes are normally built on the outskirts of cities, because it is cheaper and easier. You don’t have to buy out land from rich people to build houses where the poor can easily access the city centres or workplaces, and it’s seen as if just by giving them a house somewhere, the problem is solved.

It isn’t.

fucking preach it Kamayan

Society is not ready to provide from people with non-conforming body types, even if it has been a thing it has had to work with for at least 100 years ( considering All for One might’ve been one of the first Quirk users, and the general age he seems to have ). Why is that?

1.2. Discrimination and survival through Quirk marriage

In X-Men First Class, if you remember it, one of the biggest plot points presented throughout the movie is the conflict between Charles Xavier and Mystique, centered in the fact that he could pass as a non-mutant, whereas she could not. Later on, it becomes the point of contact between herself and Beast, which ultimately makes him go through a process similar to Kamayan where his already beastly features get expanded and are now much more pronounced.

I believe this is a reflection to how mutant-type Quirks were, and still are, seen by society in BNHA.

Imagine: you and your partner are going to have a baby together. Both of you are regular, quirkless people -- or even live in a place where Quirks have not been developed at all yet. You buy that “What to Expect when you’re Expecting”, makes a shitty joke like “hopefully a baby, but a velociraptor would be cool”. Y’all go to the doctor, an ultrasound is made, and the doctor goes: congratulations, it is a velociraptor.

Or an orca, or an spotted seal, or a frog. Either way, it’s humanoid but not 100% human. What’s the reaction here? 

What are the dangers of a quirkless woman giving birth to a proto-Orcinos Quirk user, if we can assume the baby would be about similar to an orca in shape and structure? Births are already a very delicate procedure, even if not as dangerous anymore, but in a society where this is not yet usual, I can only imagine the kind of discrimination those children would have suffered.

Discriminated against, perhaps for the complications those first women had at birth, probably for their appearance, what do you do?

Who’s going to want to marry an orca person?

Subjected to that, and later on to the government housings provided in those remote places, grouped together, mutant people would really group together -- Quirk marriages, in this case, would serve a purpose greater than merely creating a more powerful version of both parents’ Quirks, it would serve as a way to measure how physically compatible two people with similar mutations are to each other.

Consider Tsuyu’s parents.

Is it a coincidence that both her parents seem to have a frog-related mutation Quirk? I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure there is an actual term for that kind of thing in real life ( marginalized people sticking together not for any baseline attraction or preference, but because the alternative would be subjecting yourself to constant rejection ), but I don’t have my social studies books with me right now and I’m already so far into this that I start breaking them out I might as well write a whole ‘nother thing and submit this as my master’s thesis.

Tune in next time for: 

There is no ethical Quirk usage under capitalism -- All for One, much like an even shittier version of Jeff Bezos, sees the opportunity and profits madly off of it with no regards for anything -- Destro is Marx, Redestro is Stalin and I have no idea who Lenin and Trotsky are in this metaphor but Shigaraki is probably the horse in Animal Farm or something

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Maxie & Archie

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Generation VI of Pokemon had many flaws, and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire are arguably inferior to Emerald in many regards, but one thing is for sure: the remakes took two of the worst, most idiotic villains in the entire franchise and made them into interesting, likable characters. The original Maxie and Archie had the most needlessly nonsensical plans imaginable, resorting to ludicrous acts of eco-terrorism for ridiculously stupid goals; in the remakes, their reasoning is expanded upon and instead of merely being the poor man’s Team Rocket, Archie and Maxie and their respective teams became respectable and engaging antagonists.

Motivation/Goals: In the original games, well, let’s just say that these two had some of the stupidest plans imaginable. Archie wanted to flood the world with water so that people and Pokemon could live together, and Maxie wanted to expand the landmasses for a similar reason. The thing is, there plans make absolutely zero sense, particularly the part with the meteor and the volcano. It makes even less sense for Archie, but with Maxie it’s just dumb as all hell. How do you expect to expand the landmass by erupting a volcano in the middle of the continent, ding-dong?! But again, Archie isn’t much better, because he’s clearly not thinking through the ramifications of flooding the planet and expanding the seas. These two are morons no matter what way you slice it.

Thankfully, the remakes polish their motivations and refine them, while still keeping them as eco-terrorists so you don’t feel too bad about thwarting them. Archie wants to return the world to nature, acting as a force of vengeance against the people who have encroached on Pokemon habitats and polluted the sea; meanwhile, Maxie wants to expand the landmasses to further humanity’s progress at the expense of Pokemon, with him viewing peaceful coexistence as foolish and something that holds humanity back. These are pretty complex and interesting arguments that they put forth, but again, this is a children’s RPG series, so they’re eco-terrorists you gotta defeat before they destroy the world. At the very least, the remakes do show that as misguided as the two are, they’re still pretty noble and more well-intentioned than other villains in the franchise.

Personality: It’s not even worth going over the originals, because they’re pretty flat, bland characters who are just there to be the boss you fight to progress the story. There are some elements that got recycled into the remakes, such as their remorse over their terrorist actions as well as their genuine love for their Pokemon (as evidenced by the fact that both use Crobat), but that’s about it.

In the remakes, both are very distinct and fun characters. Archie is now a friendly foe, a buff and handsome pirate who is quite chummy with the player despite their opposition to him. It’s absolutely clear that he loves Pokemon, and apparently as children he and Shelly were even pals with Jirachi! He’s also pretty damn smart, seeing as he easily outmaneuvers Maxie at every turn in Alpha Sapphire. Maxie, while still courteous, is rather aloof and stoic, rarely showing emotion until he’s beaten in battle.While he doesn’t have quite as much going on as Archie, he still marks a nice contrast to the boisterous pirate by being a calm, collected scientist.

Final Fate: In the originals, both regret their actions upon seeing the destruction that Kyogre and Groudon unleash upon the Hoenn region, and return the orbs to Mt. Pyre to make amends. In the remakes it’s about the same, though they hand the orb to the player and will even join your side in battles in the Battle Maison after the Delta Episode comes to a close.

Best Scene: Obviously any battle with them, particularly the climactic battles in Emerald and the remakes. The original designs in general had pretty awesome showdowns during Gen VII’s Rainbow Rocket plotline as well.

Best Quote: These quotes, which handily sum up what they’re about:

"The land... It is the stage upon which humanity stands. The land exists so we humans might continue onward and upward, stepping into the future... For us to continue growing and evolving, humans require a grand stage upon which to stand. A land upon which we can stride forward... A land we can explore...develop...exploit... This is the basis for the growth of all human endeavor. That is why we, Team Magma, must increase the landmass of the world! Believe that this will lead to a future of eternal happiness for humanity... And consequently for all life!"

"The sea is an irreplaceable treasure for every living thing on this planet. But with our selfish extravagance, humanity dirties the great ocean, destroying this source of all life... Day by day, we're all destroying our most precious resource! If we humans suffer from our actions, well, maybe we'll end up getting what we deserve. But what about the Pokémon in our world? The Pokémon that no longer have a place to live because we stole and soiled their seas? The Pokémon that won't have a place to raise their young and watch them grow? We are creating a world in which innocent Pokémon suffer as a result of our actions... And that is something that I can't forgive! That's why I came to a decision, see? The foolish actions of my fellow humans, the seas we have blighted, nature itself... I will return everything to its unspoiled beginnings!"

I’m sure you can guess who said what.

Final Thoughts & Score: Archie and Maxie are relatively simple antagonists, but I think they played their roles well enough. As bad as their original versions were, they served as a nice step up from the more lowkey plots of Team Rocket and helped raise the stakes for the series, introducing teams that wanted to harness the powers of legendary Pokemon to destroy or reshape the world to their liking. And hey, even if the originals are pretty lame, at the very least in one alternate timeline their visions come true and they get to join up with Team Rainbow Rocket right before their deaths.

The versions from the remakes are easily the superior ones though, because not only do they fix the numerous idiotic flaws that the originals had in their plans, but they expand and add more flavor to the original characters while still maintaining the elements that worked about them in the first place. Archie is definitely the more impressive one; I find him to be a much more interesting and intriguing personality, especially because of his relationship with his cohorts and his mysterious childhood friendship with Jirachi. Remake Archie earns a nice 8/10 because of this.

Maxie, while a character I definitely find less fun than Archie, is still an incredibly solid antagonist and leagues better than his original iteration, so I think a 7/10 is warranted in his case. At any rate, both are better than the original white bread morons who antagonized the players of the Gen III games, who pretty handily earn a 4/10 each. They’re by no means the bottom of the barrel, but they’re idiotic schemes are so poorly planned that they make Captain Planet’s villains look like Mensa in comparison. Frankly their showing in the Rainbow Rocket plot is the only thing that keeps them from a 3, and even that’s a bit suspect because it isn’t the exact same Archie and Maxie of the Gen III games, just versions of those villains who succeeded.

Regardless, it’s hard to deny these two managed to get one of the most impressive glow-ups of the franchise after years of being overshadowed by the next generation’s villain.

[the-desolated-quill]

Watchmen - Movie blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. if you haven’t seen this movie yet, you may want to before reading this review)

A movie adaptation of Watchmen had been in development in some form or another since the graphic novel was first published back in 1987. Over the course of its two decade development cycle, being passed from filmmaker to filmmaker who each had their own vision of what a Watchmen movie should be, fans objected to the idea of a movie adaptation, describing Watchmen as ‘unfilmmable.’ Alan Moore himself condemned the effort to adapt his work, saying that Watchmen does things that can only be done in a comic book. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and in 2009, Watchmen finally came to the big screen, directed by Zack Snyder.

I confess it took me a lot longer to write this review than I intended and that’s largely because I wasn’t sure how best to approach it. Snyder clearly has a lot of love and respect for the source material and tried his best to honour it as best he could. Snyder himself even said that he considers the film to be an advert for the book, hoping to get newcomers interested in the material. So how should I be looking at this film? As an adaptation or as an artistic tribute? More to the point, which of the three versions of the film should I be reviewing? The original theatrical cut, the director’s cut or the ultimate cut? Which best reflects Snyder’s artistic vision?

After much pondering, I decided to go with the director’s cut. The theatrical release was clearly done to make studio execs happy by keeping the runtime under three hours, but it comes at the cost of major plot points and character moments being chucked away. The ultimate cut however comes in at a whopping four hours and is arguably the most accurate to the source material as it also contains the animated Tales Of The Black Freighter scenes. However these scenes break the narrative flow of the film and were clearly not intended to be part of the final product, being inserted only to appease the fans. The director’s cut feels most like Snyder’s vision, clocking in at three and half hours and following the graphic novel fairly closely whilst leaving room for artistic licence.

Now as some of you may know, while I’m not exactly what you would call a fan of Zack Snyder’s work, I do have something of a begrudging respect for him due to his willingness to take creative risks and attempt to tell more complex, thought provoking narratives that don’t necessarily adhere to the blockbuster formula. Films like Watchmen and Batman Vs Superman prove to me that the man clearly has a lot of good ideas and a drive to really make an audience think about what they’re watching and question certain things about the characters. The problem is that he never seems to know how best to convey those ideas on screen. In my review of Batman Vs Superman, I likened him to a fire hose. Extremely powerful, but unless you’ve got someone holding onto the thing with both hands and pointing it in the right direction, it’s just going to go all over the place. I admire Snyder’s dedication and thought process, but I think the fact that his most successful film, Man Of Steel, also happens to be the one he had the least creative influence on speaks volumes. When he’s got someone to work with and bounce ideas off of, he can be a creative force to be reckoned with. Left to his own devices however, and his films tend to go off the rails very quickly.

Watchmen is very much Snyder’s passion project. You can tell a lot of care and effort went into this. The accuracy of the costumes, staging and set designs speak for themselves. However there is an underlying problem with Snyder trying to painstakingly recreate the graphic novel on film. While I don’t agree with the purists who say that Watchmen is ‘unfilmmable’, I do agree with Alan Moore’s statement that there are certain aspects of the graphic novel that can only work in a graphic novel. A key example of this is its structure. Watchmen has the luxury of telling its non-linear narrative over twelve issues in creative and unorthodox ways. A structure that’s incredibly hard to translate into any other medium. A twelve episode TV mini-series might come close, but a movie, even a three hour movie, is going to struggle due to the sheer density of the material and the unconventional structure. Whereas the structure of the graphic novel allowed Alan Moore to dedicate whole chapters to the origin stories of Doctor Manhattan and Rorschach and filling in the gaps of this alternate history, the structure of a movie doesn’t really allow for that. And yet Snyder tries really hard to follow the structure of the book even though it simply doesn’t work on film, which results in the movie coming to a screeching halt as the numerous flashbacks and origin stories disrupt the flow of the narrative, causing it to stop and start constantly at random intervals, like someone kangarooing in a rundown car.

Just as Watchmen the graphic novel played around with the common tropes and framing devices of comics, Watchmen the movie needed to play around with the common tropes and framing devices of comic book movies. To Snyder’s credit, there are moments where he does do that. The most notable being the first five minutes where we see the entire history of the world of Watchmen during the opening credits while ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’ is played in the background. This is legitimately good. It depicts the rise and fall of the superhero in a way only a movie can. I wish Snyder did more stuff like this rather than restricting himself to just recreating panels from the graphic novel.

Which is not to say I think the film is bad. On the contrary, I think it’s pretty damn good. There’s a lot of things to like about this movie. The biggest, shiniest gold star has to go to Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. While the movie itself was divisive at the time, Haley’s portrayal of Rorschach was universally praised as he did an excellent job bringing this extreme right wing bigot to life. He has become to Rorschach what Ryan Reynolds is to Deadpool or what Mark Hamill is to the Joker. He is the character (rather tragically. LOL). To the point where it’s actually scary how similar Haley looks to Walter Kovacs from the graphic novel. The resemblance is uncanny.

Another standout performance is Jeffery Dean Morgan as the Comedian. Just as depraved and unsavoury as the comic version, but Morgan is also able to inject some real charm and pathos into the character. You believe that Sally Jupiter would have consensual sex with him despite everything he did to her before. But his best scene I think was his scene with Moloch (played by Matt Frewer) where the Comedian expresses regret for all the terrible things he did. It’s a genuinely emotional and impactful scene and Morgan manages to wring some sympathy out of the audience even though the character doesn’t really deserve it. But that’s what makes Rorschach and the Comedian such great characters. Yes they’re both depraved individuals, but they’re also fully realised and three dimensional. They feel like real people, which is what makes their actions and morals all the more shocking.

Then there’s Doctor Manhattan, who in my opinion stands as a unique technical achievement in film. The number of departments that had to work together to bring him to life is staggering. Visual effects, a body double, lighting, sound, it’s a truly impressive collaborative effort, all tied together by Billy Crudup’s exceptional performance. He arguably had the hardest job out of the whole cast. How do you portray an all powerful, emotionless, quantum entity without him coming across as a robot? Crudup manages this by portraying Manhattan as being less emotionless and more emotionally numb, which makes his rare displays of emotion, such as his shock and anger during the TV interview, stand out all the more. It’s a great depiction that I don’t think is given the credit it so richly deserves.

Which leads into something else about the movie, which will no doubt be extremely controversial, but I’m going to say it anyway. I much prefer the ending in the film to the ending in the book.

Hear me out.

In my review of the final issue of Watchmen, I said I didn’t like the squid because of its utter randomness. The plot of the movie however works so much better both from a narrative and thematic perspective. Ozymandias framing Doctor Manhattan makes a hell of a lot more sense than the squid. For one thing, it doesn’t dump a massive amount of new info on us all at once. It’s merely an extension of previously known facts. We know Ozymandias framed Manhattan for giving people cancer to get him off world. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine the world could also buy that Manhattan would retaliate after being ostracised. We also see Adrian and Manhattan working together to create perpetual energy generators, which turn out to be bombs. It marries up perfectly with the history of Watchmen as well as providing an explanation for why there’s an intrinsic field generator in Adrian’s Antarctic base. It also provides a better explanation for why Manhattan leaves Earth at the end despite gaining a newfound respect for humanity. But what I love most of all is how it links to Watchmen’s central themes. 

Thanks to the existence of Doctor Manhattan, America has become the most powerful nation in the world to the point where its disrupted the global balance of power. This has led to the escalation of the Cold War with Russia as well as other countries like Vietnam being at the mercy of the United States. It also allowed Nixon to stay in office long after his two terms had expired. The reason the squid from the book is so unsatisfying as a conclusion is because you don’t buy that anyone would be willing to help America after the New York attack. In fact it would be more likely that Russia and other countries might take advantage of America’s vulnerability. Manhattan’s global attack however not only gives the whole world motivation to work together, it also puts America in a position where they have no choice but to ask for help because it was they that effectively created this mess in the first place. So seeing President Nixon pleading for a global alliance feels incredibly satisfying because we’re seeing a corrupt individual hoist by his own petard and trying to save his own skin, even if it comes at the cost of his power. America is now like a wounded animal, and while world peace is ultimately achieved, the US is now a shadow of its former self. It fits in so perfectly with the overall story of Watchmen, frankly I’m amazed Alan Moore didn’t come up with this himself.

It’s not perfect however. Since the whole genetic engineering stuff no longer exists, it makes the existence of Adrian’s pet lynx Bubastis rather perplexing. Also the whole tachyons screwing with Doctor Manhattan’s omniscience thing still doesn’t make a pixel of sense. But the biggest flaw is in Adrian Veidt’s characterisation. For one thing, Matthew Goode’s performance isn’t remotely subtle. He practically screams ‘bad guy’ the moment he appears on screen. He has none of the charm or charisma that the source material’s Ozymandias had. But it’s worse than that because Snyder seems to be going out of his way to uncomplicate and de-politicise the story and characters. There’s no mention of Adrian’s liberalism or his disdain for Nixon and right wing politics. The film never explores his obsession with displaying his own power and superiority over right wing superheroes like Rorschach and the Comedian. He’s just the generic bad guy. And I do mean bad guy. Whereas the graphic novel left everything up to the reader to decide who was morally in the right, the film takes a very firm stance on who the audience should be siding with. Don’t believe me? Just look at how Rorschach’s death is presented to us.

It’s very clear while watching the film that Zack Snyder is a big Rorschach fan. He gets the most screen time and there’s a lot of effort dedicated to his portrayal and depiction. And that’s fine. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. As I’ve mentioned before in previous blogs, Rorschach is my favourite character too. However it’s important not to lose sight of who the character is and what he’s supposed to represent, otherwise you run the risk of romanticising him, which is exactly what the film ends up doing. Rorschach’s death in the graphic novel wasn’t some heroic sacrifice. It was a realisation that he has no place in the world that Ozymandias has created, as well as revealing the hypocrisy of the character. In the extra material provided in The Abyss Gazes Also, we learn that, as a child, Walter supported President Truman’s use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and yet, in his adult life, he opposes Adrian’s plan. Why? What’s the difference? Well the people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t American. They were Japanese. The enemy. In Rorschach’s mind, they deserved to die, whereas the people in New York didn’t. It signifies the flawed nature of Rorschach’s black and white view of the world as well as displaying the racist double standards of the character. Without the context of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Rorschach’s death becomes skewed. This is what ends up happening in the movie. Rorschach removes his mask and makes a bold declaration to Doctor Manhattan, the music swells as he is disintegrated, defiant to the last, and his best friend Nite Owl screams in anguish and despair.

In fact the film takes it one step further by having Nite Owl punch Adrian repeatedly in the face and accuse him of deforming humanity, which completely contradicts the point of Dan Dreiberg as a character. He’s no longer the pathetic centrist who requires a superhero identity to feel any sort of power or validation. He’s now the everyman representing the views of the audience, which just feels utterly wrong.

This links in with arguably the film’s biggest problem of all. The way it portrays superheroes in general. The use of slow motion, cinematography and fight choreography frames the superheroes and vigilantes of Watchmen as being powerful, impressive individuals, when really the exact opposite should be conveyed. The costumes give the characters a feeling of power, but that power is an illusion. Nite Owl is really an impotent failure. Rorschach is an angry bigot lashing out at the world. The Comedian is a depraved old man who has let his morals fall by the way side so he can indulge in his own perverse fantasies. They’re not people to be idealised. They’re to be at pitied at best and reviled at worst. So seeing them jump through windows and beating up several thugs single handed through various forms of martial arts ultimately confuses the message, as does the use of gratuitous gore and violence. Are we supposed to be shocked by these individuals or in awe? 

Costumes too have a similar problem. Nite Owl and Ozymandias’ costumes have been updated so they look more imposing, which kind of defeats the purpose of them. The point is they look silly to us, the outside observers, but they make the characters feel powerful. That juxtaposition is lost in the film. And then there’s the Silk Spectre. In the graphic novel, both Sally and Laurie represent the changing attitudes of women in comics and in society. Both Silk Spectres are sexually objectified, but whereas Sally accepts it as part of the reality of being a woman, Laurie resists it, seeing it as demeaning. The only reason she wore her revealing costume in A Brother To Dragons was because she knew that Dan found it sexually attractive and she wanted to indulge his power fantasy. None of this is touched upon in the film, other than one passing mention of the Silk Spectre porn magazine near the beginning of the film. There’s not even any mention of how impractical her costume is, like the graphic novel does. Yes the film changes her look drastically, but it’s still just as impractical and could have been used to make a point on how women are perceived in comic book films, but it never seems to hinder her in anyway. It’s never even brought up, which is ridiculous. Zack Snyder’s reinterpretation of Silk Spectre is clearly meant to inject some form of girl power into the proceedings, as she’s presented as being just as impressive and kick-ass as the others, when the whole point of her character was to expose the misogyny of the comics industry at the time and how they cater to the male gaze. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the graphic novel did it perfectly, but it did it a hell of a lot better than this.

Die hard fans have described the film over the years as shallow and ‘style over substance.’ I don’t think that’s entirely fair. It’s clear that Zack Snyder has a huge respect for the graphic novel and wanted to do it justice. Overall the film has a lot of good ideas and is generally well made. However, as much as Snyder seems to love Watchmen, it does seem like he only has a surface level understanding of it, hence why the attention and effort seems to be going into the visuals and the faithfulness to Alan Moore’s attention to detail rather than the Watchmen’s story and themes. While the film at times makes some good points about power, corruption and morality, it doesn’t go nearly as far as the source material does and seems to shy away from really getting into the meat of any particular topic. Part of that I suspect is to do with marketability, not wanting to alienate casual viewers, but I think a lot of it is to do with it simply being in the wrong medium. I personally don’t think you can really do a story as complex and intricate as Watchmen’s justice in a Hollywood film. In my opinion, this really should have been a TV mini-series or something.

So on the whole, while I appreciate Snyder’s attempt at bringing the story of Watchmen to life and can see that he has the best intentions in mind, I don’t think this film holds a candle to the original source material. 

[mobius-prime]

199. Sonic the Hedgehog #131

Deep breaths, guys. I know what the cover page says. I know. We'll get to that. Just hang in there. I think you might like what I have in store.

Home (Part 2 of 4): The Gathering

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Ron Lim Colors: Jason Jensen

So not much actually happens in this installment of Home other than the various characters talking to each other about and preparing for the upcoming battle. Since Sonic has been gone, a new Freedom Fighter Special has been constructed that can cut travel time dramatically around the globe. A journey that in the Tornado or on foot (in Sonic's case) would have taken up to two hours can be completed in a mere half hour now, thanks to Rotor's engineering prowess. And thus, Sonic and Tails head out to Old Megaopolis to stop Eggman's twin nukes from launching, along with an… interesting backup team, to say the least.

Man, remember Fiona? It's been ages since we've seen her! It appears that while Sonic was in space, she joined up with the crew in Knothole and has been helping them fight Eggman. That's definitely a better life for her than to be running with the likes of Nic the Weasel, eh? Meanwhile, Knuckles, Julie-Su, Amy Rose, and the other two (active) members of the Chaotix head to Fort Acorn, where General D'Coolette is giving a speech to the soldiers under his command. We've never even heard of this fort before, but according to the general it's been here for ten years, keeping a forward watch on Robotropolis, and this watch has been maintained even after Robotropolis' destruction in case of just such a situation as the current one. With their reinforcements from Knothole, the crew at the fort prepare to defend the city against a massive swatbot assault to lower the forcefield keeping the radiation in check. Back in Knothole, extra measures are being taken to make absolutely sure that even if the worst happens, the citizenry will be safe.

Station Square, for their part, has sent a squad of GUN commandos to help in the battle at Old Megaopolis. The commander of the military is baffled by this decision, wanting to send in their full fighting force, but the president instead opts to trust his allies from Knothole - though just for insurance, he's sent one of his own operatives along for the ride…

Now that's what I like to see! It's about time Rouge got herself some proper screentime. As all this is going on, Eggman waits aboard a docked battleship in the harbor of Old Megaopolis with his assistant M, and orders A.D.A.M. to begin the missile countdown. However, almost immediately, the sound of a biplane puts them on high alert, and Eggman is shocked to see Sonic and Tails bearing down on his location, not having expected them to be able to get here nearly so fast. See, Eggman, this is why you resist the siren call of your ego and keep your damn plans to yourself. All you did was give your enemies ample warning to prepare to foil your evil plot, you idiot!

Mobius 25 Years Later: Prologue

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Jensen

Okay, guys. This is it. We've reached the most Penders thing of all time. This is something that has been hinted at here and there from all the way back in the Sonic In Your Face special to now, and we're finally seeing the culmination of all of that buildup. All the intricate worldbuilding, all the complex character arcs, all the intrigue and political spider webs and back to back wars and everything that the world of Mobius has been through up until now - there's so much to explore, so many directions it could have gone. We're about to see what this world might look like twenty-five years into the future, and with so much rich history to draw from, what might you imagine this story might look like? What genre might it fall into? Well wonder no longer!

It's a drama. It's a teen drama.

There's a reason that Mobius 25 Years Later is widely considered to be one of the worst parts of the comic. The tone of it is just so far off anything else we've experienced so far that it clashes horribly with what we've come to expect. It's not some masterful subversion of expectations or something - in a lot of ways I consider it to be a genuine insult to the rest of the preboot's material up to this point. It's painfully and immediately clear that this is a story Penders has wanted to tell for a while, but, not being able to fit his "middle-aged adults adulting everywhere and being so adult-like while ignoring the feelings and difficulties that ordinary teenagers face" plot anywhere into the rest of the comic, he's opted to just fire the world a couple decades into the future, pair all the major characters off into weird and oftentimes arbitrary heterosexual marriages, give everyone 2.5 children and a titanium picket fence, and then throw in some allusions to the old "war against Doc 'Botnik" here and there lest we forget, entirely understandably at this point, that we're reading a Sonic the Hedgehog comic here. This thing goes on for nineteen whole issues, taking up each subsequent issue's backup story, and ultimately has no real impact on the actual story involving the characters we already know and love. However, this is technically canon, or at least a version of canon (as when you play with alternate realities and multiple timelines, futures are bound to get mixed up here and there), so we're gonna be covering it - all of it. I wouldn't be tempted to skip it anyway, as by delving into each chapter in this trainwreck, we can actually explore why this whole thing fails so hard, and why it's therefore so loathed in the fandom. Plus, I do recognize that some people actually do enjoy this arc for various reasons (one of my close friends does, and has a whole AU of her own relating to it in fact), so I do plan to at least try to be fair in my review - but I really can't hide that I find this whole affair boring as hell, often downright offensive, and ultimately completely out of place. With all that in mind, let's dive in!

We begin with a full page of exposition delivered to us via high school lecture, because everyone knows the best way to establish your worldbuilding is by infodumping it directly into your audience's eyeballs. Apparently, over the last twenty years, Angel Island has been heavily developed into its own independent republic, with a new city, Portal, acting as the center of trade between the island and the mainland below. We're once again introduced to Lara-Su, who, instead of being the badass time-traveling young adult whom we followed before, is now an ordinary teenager taking ordinary high school classes among a bunch of ordinary high school echidnas.

One of the biggest failings of this story is that Penders writes every teenage character how he thinks teenagers act, from his point of view as a middle-aged adult. This becomes abundantly clear the longer you read, as every teenager is a hormone-fueled, authority-defying, entitled, whiny, fickle child who just doesn't understand how the real world works, while every adult is a wise, experienced, and highly logical individual who always knows more than their younger fellows and refuses to pay attention to the whims of mere children. Like, I'm not even exaggerating here - I'm going to be pointing out every instance of this kind of behavior over the entire rest of this arc, and you can't stop me, so nyah nyah. Penders shows so little respect for the mere concept of teenagers, which is a terrible attitude to have not just in general, but especially if you're one of the head writers for an entire series about teenagers saving the goddamn world! Anyway, case in point: the teacher, instead of admonishing Rutan for being a bully, merely snaps at Lara-Su for not acting enough like a "young lady" and tells her to stay after class. Ugh.

Later that day, Rotor arrives on Angel Island as a liaison for the royal ruling couple, Queen Sally and King Sonic, because yes, Sonic literally becomes king in this timeline. He catches a ride from Harry - hey, good to see our favorite dingo still doing well for himself at least - and meets with Espio, who is now apparently Knuckles' secretary or something. At least, that's all I can assume from this weird-ass conversation.

As a matter of fact, yes, Sonic and Sally are bringing their two children, Sonia and Manik, to the family dinner! How very mid-70s domestic family unit of them! Espio informs Knuckles of this over a television screen as the latter broods around in some kind of high-tech facility. Unlike what we've seen of Espio, the years have dramatically changed Knuckles' appearance - his right eye is missing, replaced with a mechanical one, and he sports the cowboy hat that Hawking gave him in the past (you know, the one we never saw again after he received it). While I actually quite like the idea of a main character in the comic losing something as important as an eye, I feel like there's a huge missed opportunity here - instead of just thrusting us into an alternate future where everything is fine but one character is inexplicably missing an eye, how about actually showing us the story of how that eye was lost? Show us a Knuckles who's learning to cope with the loss of an important body part, and having to adjust to his mechanical prosthetic! Go into his feelings about the subject, as someone who has so long been opposed to a faction that thrives on mechanical prosthetics, instead of just skipping over what has the potential to be the most interesting part of this story! Ugh, sorry, there's just nothing that gets to me more than a missed opportunity like this. Knuckles and Espio exchange some tortured small-talk about their kids for a little while, with the only interesting part of the conversation being their discussion of Rotor's arrival and how he's likely here to see someone named Cobar, with whom he apparently has a history. More on that later. Knuckles excuses himself from the conversation, as he has to be home in time for his daughter's "Unveiling" tonight, and as the call ends we zoom out to see that apparently nowadays, the Master Emerald is hooked up to all sorts of technology in this facility, presumably maintaining everything automatically. However, this story isn't done throwing weird curveballs at us yet - it's time to see what our former villains are up to in this future!

There is so much to unpack here. Dimitri, feared overlord of the Dark Legion, is now an amiable cyborg-head-in-a-bubble. Lien-Da, the treacherous second-in-command who regularly spoke of betraying Dimitri and taking the Legion in her own darker direction, is now apparently a single mom who's embraced the domestic life, taking care of her rowdy teenage son while, predictably, complaining about the behavior of kids these days. And weirdest of all, apparently everyone is just fine with these literal former terrorists living in their midst and doing ordinary mom and grandpa things, with Lien-Da even apparently amenable to the idea of trying to make up with Julie-Su because "they're family," despite her history of, you know, erasing Julie-Su's memory multiple times and killing her biological parents as revenge for her birth. I mean, is this what Penders thinks adulthood is? Is he even entirely sane? Does he know the definition of terrorism?

Any-goddamn-way, Knuckles arrives home to his eerily sterile-looking steel-plated mansion that looks more like the lobby of a pharmaceutical laboratory than a place where people live, and greets his loving housewife Julie-Su, who's gained a cute giant ponytail but lost absolutely everything else that made her unique, including her own cybernetic parts and just her personality in general. She informs Knuckles that Lara-Su has locked herself in the bathroom and is having herself a mighty tantrum, refusing to come out to get ready for her Unveiling ceremony, which is apparently the equivalent of a Quinceañera for echidna girls. Knuckles, instead of doing something reasonable like asking her why she's upset, starts aggressively demanding that she come out of her room this instant, while Lara-Su repeatedly yells about how she doesn't wanna. Ugh, teenagers, amiright?

Seriously, I just can't get over how little respect Penders has for teenagers in his writing. Like, yes, I acknowledge that teenagers aren't always the most logical of beings, but they're also not goddamn three-year-olds either. They're old enough to articulate their desires and express their unique opinions, and often do so in very mature ways, especially if they're raised well and treated with the same respect you'd afford any adult. I should know, I was one myself. I would have assumed Penders was one as well at some point, but perhaps he just popped into the world one day as a fully-formed 43-year-old, full of disdain for those younger than himself. It would certainly explain everything we're seeing here.

Anyway, it turns out that the reason Lara-Su is upset is because Knuckles refuses to train her to be a Guardian, and so she whines and yells about it from behind the door like a petulant child as Knuckles continually refuses to actually give her a solid reason why he won't let her be one. When Julie-Su basically forces him to calm the hell down and explain himself, he reluctantly explains that since all the duties of a Guardian have by now been taken over by other functions of their society, he feels there's no longer any need for one, himself included. This is apparently enough to make Lara-Su immediately happy enough to burst out of the bathroom and grab her father's arm, suddenly totally excited to go to her Unveiling as long as Knuckles promises her the first dance. Ah, the fickle mind of a silly, silly teenager!

Kill me.

[tinycartridge]

Alternate Jake Hunter helped me learn why I like Regular Jake Hunter ⊟

I have been blessed by a peculiar stroke of luck: both of my last two plane trips have been accompanied by the release of a Jake Hunter game. In my opinion, Jake Hunter is perfect for the airborne environment: as a visual novel/text adventure, it’s well-suited to playing while distracted by drink service or while keeping an eye out for a clear bathroom path; the music is nice but sound is not necessary, so it’s easy to play in the loud airplane without missing anything. Most importantly, Jake Hunter games are very slow-paced and methodical, which lends it a sort of meditative feel, a nice balm after 2-3 hours of airport anxiety.

On my latest trip, I brought with me Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus - The Awakening of Golden Jazz, a game whose title I was fortunate not to have to explain to any neighbors. It’s a weird one in more than name, presenting a reboot/alternate take on the detective character in a new style and a new setting. Explaining the differences is complicated, but I’ll bottom-line it by saying it’s an entirely unnecessary reboot that still makes for an enjoyable detective game.

The character we know of as “Jake Hunter” is basically not a character at all. With his old-fashioned suit, giant hair, and omnipresent smoking habit, he’s a super-stylized model for the concept of “hard-boiled detective.” He’s a sketch of a person who exists to “pound the pavement” and “chase down leads.” He lives in A City and he interacts with friends who are, similarly, shorthand. That is, in fact, one of the best things about the series -- the crimes can be as complex and weird as the designers want, and the characters themselves are just tools for telling those stories.

Daedalus, however, recasts Jake as a young man, to show us how he learned to become a detective. Then it flashes back even further to a childhood summer camp, then back. No longer is he just “Jake Hunter” from the city of “Aspicio,” as the localized series has previously referred to him. He is Saburo Jinguji, a Japanese kid in New York City. He is in town solving the mysterious murder of his grandfather, an ace detective who helped Saburo learn how to investigate.

Giving us this much background on a character who only exists to represent the concept of Detective is a mistake at worst, and a different kind of game at best. Thinking too much about Jake/Saburo can get in the way of the process of methodically searching crime scenes and talking to witnesses repeatedly. Many other visual novels are character studies, and that’s their whole deal. I don’t actually want to care about Jake Hunter, and this game asks me to for a long time.

The setting is more firmly established as well, as New York City in the 1980s. I actually like the way they’ve done this, using real 360-degree photographs that you can spin around in. There’s a lot of emergent fun to be had here, in imagining developer Neilo staging apartments and offices for this game, and in finding anachronistically modern cars in the streets. 

I think publisher Arc System Works agreed that this doesn’t work as a reboot, hence the use of the character’s Japanese name and the “Alternate Jake Hunter” title (which is confusing, given the use of the character’s Japanese name). I don’t know if it was always intended to just be an alternate universe type of deal, but Arc System Works tries to have it both ways here, by rebooting the series in a way that can easily be disavowed as Detective Elseworlds.

For the most part, though, Daedalus provides the kind of experience I come to Jake Hunter games for: extremely methodical crime solving. Jake/Saburo solves cases not because of any flash of insight, but because he goes everywhere and talks to everyone. Even with the addition of some showy nonsense (like a “tree of knowledge” that grows branches of illegible facts of each case as you learn them), the slow pace is soothing, just on the right side of being boring. It makes detective work seem like a leisurely pursuit, one that in real life would trigger my social anxiety much more than my fear of being shot. 

I didn’t even realize that was the core of what I liked about Jake Hunter games until this one, which swapped everything else out but left this single element. I guess that’s the real value of this “alternate” version. If I hated Daedalus, it would be more likely I was in it for the atmosphere. But I like Daedalus, I like its very different presentation, even if I miss the old uncomplicated Jake and his beautiful, impossible hair.

SUPPORT TINY CARTRIDGE Join Club Tiny!

[daresplaining]

“Purple” Part 3: Several Matt Murdocks Walk into a Bar...

    As much as I dislike the ramifications of the Purple Children’s decision to “solve” Matt’s secret identity dilemma by making everyone forget it, the “Purple” arc that establishes this plot point is quite good. The progression of Matt’s feelings about having a public identity from where Waid left him to the present makes logical sense, and his struggles to figure out how to deal with his escalating problems in this new status quo make for an emotional read. The mind wipe was not his idea, and he has mixed feelings about it, which I appreciate.

    However, for the sake of this run overview, I wanted to highlight #19 in particular, which is a stand-out issue that works just as well as a one-shot as it does an integrated part of the run, and which showcases a vital and-- I think-- perfectly in-character element of Matt’s personality. 

    For this story we are back in Matt’s head, though the landscape of the place looks significantly different than it did in issue #8, thanks to the intrusion of the Purple Man. While Matt’s blindness has always given him a degree of protection against Purple Man’s specific brand of mind-control, in this story arc he has found a way to amp up the potency and reach of his powers by using his children. This issue follows what happens to Matt while under the Purple Man’s sway, and switches back-and-forth between the real world and Matt’s mind-controlled subconscious, which here takes the form of a rather unusual bar.       

    This issue is pencilled and inked by guest artist Marc Laming, who is one of my favorite artists to work on Soule’s run. His work is beautifully detailed and expressive, and he and colorists Matt Milla and Miroslav Mrva do a great job of depicting the many Daredevils (and a few of their significant others) from throughout the comic’s history who populate the bar. For anyone not up on their DD continuity, here’s a breakdown: 

    With one of his greatest nemeses now finally under his full control, the Purple Man is eager to have some revenge. But instead of inflicting his own flavor of  pain on Matt, he decides to take a more insidious approach: he asks Matt to name the worst thing he (Matt) could possibly imagine himself doing. Something repulsive, that would break him were he to actually carry it out. This becomes a topic of debate for the Matts in the bar, each of whom has their own answer.

“Man Without Fear” Matt: “You lose control. You put your hands on the people who can’t defend themselves. You let the darkness out. You hear the bones splintering. You smell the blood, the coppery, swampy blood. You know the exact moment their hearts stop.”

Public Identity Matt: “Easy there, friend. We’re all just trying to have a good time here. How about you get back over there and I’ll buy you a drink?”

“Man Without Fear” Matt: “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”

Public Identity Matt: “Oh, you know.”

    (Please note Public Identity Matt, Foggy, and Kirsten’s facial expressions in the first panel. They crack me up.)

    It’s not only fun, on a geeky level, to see all these different versions of the Daredevil identity fight interact with each other, but it’s also a great way of exploring the huge range of character development Matt has experienced-- which is something I’ve always loved about him. Matt’s mindset and approach to superheroing, and the tone of the stories, encompasses such a huge range that all of the Matts in the bar have slightly different personalities based on where he was, mentally, at the time. And it’s logical that all of these different perspectives and conflicting ideologies are still present in the back of his mind. Matt has always been a complex character, and this issue gifts us a visual representation of that. 

    Black Suit Matt’s presence here is worth pointing out, because he is the result of some messy continuity that has never been resolved. He’s from the Man Without Fear mini-series, which is Frank Miller and John Romita Jr.’s alternate universe re-imagining of Matt’s origin story. It’s much more brutal and violent than Stan Lee’s version, and features a shuffling of the timeline that resulted in Jack dying while Matt was still in high school. Despite the fact that it was not written as a retcon, writers on the main DD series were quick to integrate elements of MWF into 616 Matt’s backstory. But it wasn’t a complete reboot; Matt’s yellow costume is still considered his first by most writers (it’s even in this issue!), Jack still died while Matt was in college (...or law school), and so Black Suit Man Without Fear Matt exists in a strange limbo, not quite canon but still somehow part of the 616 universe. 

    But for the sake of this issue, it’s best to just not think about it too hard. Here, he represents the most violent side of Matt’s psyche, which inspires his first response to the Purple Man’s question: which is seemingly to kill Kirsten. 

Kirsten: “Matt! What are you... What are you doing? Why are you with the Purple Man?”

Purple Man: “Be patient, Kirsten the Girlfriend! You don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

Matt: “You know... no. This feels a little small. I mean, I’ve lost girlfriends before. This would be terrible, sure, but... been there, done that. I can do better. Or worse, actually.”

    ...PHEW. Fortunately, Matt talks himself out of it. 

    If the issue were longer, we might have heard all of the Daredevils’ ideas, but sadly we only get a few more. 

Yellow Suit Matt: “You’re making this too complicated. Keep it simple. Get back to your roots.”

Armored Matt: “Wrong, idiot! You’re not thinking big enough, Murdock. The worst thing needs to be... extreme.”

    Again, part of the entertainment value of this issue is seeing the different Daredevils react to each other, and Soule makes a point of pairing the chipper DDs with the, shall we say, less psychologically healthy ones. And it’s worth noting that the two solid answers to the Purple Man’s question that Matt comes up with are both put forth by his darker identities; as mentioned, Man Without Fear Matt is emotionally raw by design, and while the armored suit period in the 90s wasn’t actually, relatively speaking, that depressing, it was a reinvention of Daredevil that Matt intended to be violent and frightening. And it makes sense that these darker DDs would have an easier time dredging up worst case scenarios. Frankly, it’s surprising that Volume 2 Matt-- arguably the darkest DD of all-- didn’t jump into the conversation (but maybe he was too distracted by hanging out with Milla (see above), and who can blame him?). 

    It’s also clever that the whole discussion is mediated by the one Matt who isn’t a superhero: Matt the Lawyer (who isn’t blind, which is a little weird). While the Daredevils represent all of the bombastic chaos of Matt’s impulses and emotions, Lawyer Matt sorts through their answers from a slightly removed vantage point and tries to apply logic to them. He is the clever, analytical part of Matt’s mind, and I love that he essentially serves as the main character for this issue. 

    Armored Matt (actually, his civilian identity was Jack Batlin, if we want to be really precise about this) makes the requisite “extreme!” 90s comics joke-- which made me laugh out loud the first time I read this issue-- and that leads Lawyer Matt to figure out his final answer. He requests that the Purple Man create worldwide chaos using his newly enhanced powers. And from what Matt and the reader can tell, he does. And then Matt explains what he has in mind.  

Purple Man: “...Now what?”

Lawyer Matt: “Nothing.”

Purple Man: “Wait... what? Nothing?”

Lawyer Matt: “Yes. This is the worst thing. The entire world goes to hell, I know about it, I have the power to help, and I do... nothing.”

Purple Man: “WHAT?”

    Arguments can be made about whether this is the actual worst thing Matt can imagine himself doing. That’s kind of the point of the issue, and I’m sure the answer changes daily for Matt. But it fits, and brings him-- as Yellow Suit DD advises-- “back to [his] roots”. The Daredevil identity serves many purposes for Matt, but one of its main functions is as a tool of empowerment. Its initial purpose was to give him a way to avenge his father’s death without breaking his promise to not become a fighter. After growing up unable to defend himself from bullies, unable to use his training (once he acquired it) out in the open, and ultimately unable to protect the person who meant most to him, he put on a mask and gave himself an alias, and thereby empowered himself to break free of that cycle of helplessness. Losing that power is certainly one of his greatest fears, and so the idea of choosing to render himself useless would be horrifying to him. 

    This is also a theme of Soule’s run in particular. This arc deals with the deterioration of the wonderful life he built for himself, Kirsten, and Foggy in San Francisco-- a destruction that is partly his fault, and which he is powerless to stop. It leads to the Purple Children’s decision to make the world forget Daredevil’s secret identity-- a decision in what Matt had no say. In the arc before this, Matt nearly commits suicide because he was unable to stop Muse from blinding Sam. And of course, the final arc of the run-- “The Death of Daredevil”-- is all about powerlessness; Matt achieves a huge victory over the Kingpin, then realizes it was just a dream. But the lesson inherent in Soule’s run is that whether or not he wins, Matt will never choose to not fight. 

    This moment of clarity and self-awareness, and the realization that his worst nightmare is actually coming true and he needs to stop it, allows Matt to break free of the mind control. He kicks the Purple Man’s butt and saves the Purple Children, who repay him by “solving” his secret identity issues (Hey, at least they meant well. I love the Purple Children...) But regardless of the unfortunate outcome, this is a great battle of wills between Matt and one of his most dangerous enemies, and is definitely one of my favorite single issues of the run.  

[avengerstvshow]

Changes/Bonus Material

I decided to make a few changes and add some bonus material.

1. Throughout Season 1, the Hulk material builds as teasers and stingers.  I used a lot of deleted scenes to help to build suspense for the Hulk’s eventual reveal, using the perspective of those around Bruce without ever showing Bruce himself, to avoid dealing with the casting change.  My favorite addition was the stinger to S1E1, where we see Bruce in the arctic and his suicide attempt, along with brief glimpses of the pain and longing that have driven him there.  I also LOVE the deleted/extended scenes with General Ross; they’re beautifully written.  I think these scenes were deleted for fear of slowing the film down too much, but to me, allowing the characters to wax poetical about their world-views is so compelling that I just had to include them.

2. In S1E3, I cut the entire third act of Iron Man.  This was a very radical change, but I made it for a good reason.  Most origin stories pit the hero against a darker version of himself.  While this was very clear with Iron Monger in Iron Man 1, this trope was basically repeated with Whiplash in Iron Man 2.  Although the plot of Iron Man 2 was very crowded and did not give Whiplash his due, given how intertwined the plot lines were, and how the struggle to outsmart Whiplash is so instrumental in driving Tony to delve into his father’s past, I felt that it was more important to set him up as his first major villain.  My hope is that the confrontation with the terrorists will suffice as Iron Man’s first victory, given the series format.

3. In S1E5-6, I added a few deleted scenes.  After the Thor prologue as the teaser, I chose to begin the episode with the deleted scene of Thor & Loki talking before his coronation; I felt that it was important to establish the adult versions of these characters as brothers before the plot continued.  I also added the extended conversation between Loki & Frigga at Odin’s bedside, as well as Loki’s coronation.  The original ordering of the dialogue really seemed to flow much more smoothly, and to end it with the actual coronation moment gave Loki a bit more of a bridge from scheming brother to power-hungry tyrant.  The brief conflict in Tom Hiddleston’s performance is breathtaking.

4. In S1E7-9, I added a few Cap deleted scenes.  The first is his extended introduction to the present day.  While this scene was unfinished, and the final product isn’t perfect, I felt that the extended dialogue between Cap and Nick Fury was important, as this scene now takes place later in the series.  I also added the extended Cap sequences dealing with the present day, including much of his interactions with the waitress/saving her in the Battle of New York.  While these scenes slowed the pacing in the film, I personally felt that we could use the character development for Cap here; his struggle to adjust to modern life, while expounded upon in Winter Soldier, needed more time to really sit with the viewer, as this was the season finale.  I also loved how the waitress provided an everyman perspective and connection for the Avengers as a whole, with her “thank you” line at the end becoming a great payoff.

5. In S2E1-3, I used the brilliant “TDW: Hard Forged Edition” fan edit as my base for the Thor arc.  This edit includes masterfully integrated deleted scenes that really flesh out the characters and soften some of the edges around the writing.  A few of my favorite moments are Thor and Frigga’s brief interaction in the first act, and Thor and Jane’s interaction before her arrest in Episode 2.

However, I did add one moment myself.  This fan edit moved the prologue from the beginning of the film to Odin’s discussion of the dark elves with Thor and Jane in the library (Episode 1).  To drive home the theme of this season (dealing with demons), I reinserted an unused moment from the prologue.  After Thor reminds Odin that he was told that the Aether was destroyed, we see a quick flashback from Odin where his father says to bury it where no one will ever find it.  It’s really this decision from Thor’s grandfather that allows the Aether to reemerge during the Convergence in the first place, so I felt that it was important to clarify that moment as the original sin; Thor is now dealing with the consequences of that decision.

6. In S2E2, I added some Iron Man 3 deleted scenes involving EJ, the kid who bullies Harley.  I’m still going back and forth on this one.  I decided to include this scene for two reasons.  First, it directly compares Harley with Tony, facing their personal bullies.  Second, at the end of the extended sequence, Harley literally saves Tony’s life, giving more weight to their relationship and actual reason for Harley to say “I saved your life.”

7. In S2E3, I added in part of the alternate ending for Thor: The Dark World, found on the Infinity Saga Box Set bonus disc.  Originally, this ending included  scene with Odin on Earth and Thor taking his place as King of Asgard.  However, to keep with continuity, I selected the middle part of this scene: when Jane breaks up with Thor.  I added this conversation in for a couple of reasons.  First, the dialogue is quite good, given the journey they’ve been on in this film, and since we never got any kind of heart to heart between the couple in the theatrical cut, I felt it was needed to give their relationship arc some closure.  Second, I felt that it was important to set up Jane’s reasons for eventually actually breaking up with Thor, as it’s kind of shrugged off in Ragnarok.  Following this scene, I continued with the theatrical ending of Thor giving up the throne.  Even though it contradicts the conversation between Thor and Jane, in my head canon, Thor sees Jane’s reasons and at first, he agrees to go to Asgard.  However, when he is in front of his father, he realizes that being king isn’t who he is anymore.  He doesn’t know where his future will lead, but he chooses Jane in that moment.  To me, it seemed natural, and it adds layers to Thor’s journey at this point in the series.  The episode is then capped off with his implied return to Earth.

Also in this episode, I added the deleted scene where Maya Hansen sends the AIM data to Tony and is killed via the Extremis plant.  To be honest, I felt this scene should have been in the movie.  It gave more weight to Maya’s character arc and provided an ironic death; the very thing she worked so hard on took her life.

8. In S2E4-5, I used Bobson Dugnutt’s “WS: Defrosted Edition” as my base, adding in many of the deleted scenes from CA: Winter Soldier.  To me, these scenes fleshed out important moments for these characters that better set them up for the future.

9. In S2E6-7, I used several fan edits as sources in order to add in several deleted scenes from the film to slow down the frantic pacing and to better set up future plot points.  This includes Thor’s vision in the cave, to which I also made a subtle change to briefly include Thanos himself; this marks Thanos’ only appearance in Season 2 after the brief stinger in Season 1, and I felt it was important to establish him as a looming threat.  The power stone is also deleted from this moment, as it has not yet been introduced in the series.  I also added some moments for Bruce Banner’s vision before he goes on his rampage to tie him back to his origins in Season 1, and I cut most of Black Widow’s relationship moments with him, especially “the sun’s getting real low” stuff.  My goal was to make their relationship much more subtle and to distinguish it from Bruce’s relationship with Betty.

However, I did decide to include their interaction in the bedroom at Hawkeye’s farm.  I decided this scene was merited; in my head canon, Black Widow is shaken by her vision, so she reaches out to this other member of the team she’s slowly been connecting with in a moment of weakness/loneliness/desire.  I also really struggled because of the controversy around Black Widow’s “monster” line.  I eventually came to the conclusion that she’s referring to herself as a monster not because she can no longer have kids, but because she’s been mutilated so she can be a better killer.  To her, that’s monstrous.  While I do think the scene could have made that clearer, I really appreciated the sentiment she’s conveying here, so I chose to leave it in.  

One final change I made with BW/Hulk: I re-edited the BW rescue scene so there’s no longer a kiss/push to make Bruce transform into the Hulk.  I wanted to give Bruce as much control over his changing as possible so it was easier to track is growth since his origins and set his rage transformation from Scarlet Witch’s vision apart.  In the theatrical cut, it’s implied that BW broke trust with Bruce because she needed Hulk.  Now, Hulk decides to leave in the end because he can no longer trust Bruce; Bruce views Hulk as a monster and wants him out.  Hulk doesn’t trust Black Widow to accept him either, as she hates the monster within herself, so she’s just like Bruce.  In my head canon, when Hulk reaches out to touch Black Widow’s face on the screen, that’s Bruce, but then Hulk claims control, shuts off the screen, and sets out into space.

10. In S3E3, I added a brief deleted scene where Janet Van Dyne explains to Hank that the Quantum Realm was more complex than they imagined.  I added this because I have a feeling the Quantum Realm will continue to play a larger role in future MCU plans, so I wanted to set up its importance a bit better.

11. In S3E8, I added the alternate ending for Doctor Strange, also found on the Infinity Saga Box Set bonus disc.  Thanks to fan editor Bobson Dugnutt for his splendid reasoning in going with this ending.  Since this film is centered around Doctor Strange, it made perfect sense to me that the final scene should come full circle, playing on Doctor Strange’s love of music and his playful relationship with Wong.  To me, this is a much more character-centric ending.  I moved the the theatrical ending to S3E10 as a stinger scene to emphasize the importance of the time stone.

12. In S4E1-2, I restructured Captain Marvel just a bit so that the audience discovers more about Carol’s identity with her.  I moved most of her scenes pre-Earth to a brief flashback sequence.  I also added a deleted scene where Yon-Rogg talks to the Supreme Intelligence in his own image.  I felt that this was crucial to really SHOW, not TELL, how the Supreme Intelligence appears to the Kree.  It also really adds some much-needed depth to Yon-Rogg.

13. In S4E3-6, I pruned some of the jokes/gags in both Guardians 2 and Thor: Ragnarok, just to space out the laugh moments and allow the scenes to breathe a bit more.  I also had to edit around the “sun’s getting real low” gag, since I cut it in Season 2.

14. In S4E7, I chose to introduce the episode in the teaser with the Guardians’ perspective, when they first come upon the Asgardian shipwreck.  This was mainly because we have been following the Guardians more consistently than Thor since last seasons’ finale.

15. Finally, in S4E10, I chose to include a small portion of Black Widow’s alternate death scene, specifically, a small piece of dialogue at the beginning of their conversation.  Fact: this scene is one of many Endgame Deleted scenes that are exclusive to Disney Plus, so I had to use a number of methods to obtain HD footage.  Unfortunately, the audio isn’t amazing, but it’s the best I could get.  The reason I chose to use this opening bit of dialogue was because I felt it established very quickly the logic of Black Widow’s thinking.  I felt like the conversation would flow more naturally from intellectual reason to their love for each other.  

The reason I chose to stick with her theatrical death is because the creators chose to make that change, and I agree that maximum emotional impact is driving from character rather than plot.  I feel like even though the scene has its problems, it’s the closest we have to this beautifully tragic scene that Black Widow deserved.

[themoneybuff-blog]

How to make better (and quicker) decisions

Last week, I wrote about how I've embraced mindful shopping. I'm teaching myself to be more deliberate about the things I own and buy. My goal is to buy less and, more importantly, to own less. As part of this, I don't want to waste time shopping. I'm trying to train myself to make better decisions more quickly. This is tough for me to do. By nature, I want to evaluate every alternative, to find the best option in every circumstance. Left to my own devices, I can spend two hours trying to decide which chainsaw is the best chainsaw at the best price. There's nothing wrong with this, of course. Comparison shopping is a good thing. But there's a fine line. Some comparison can help you avoid purchasing poor products. Too much, on the other hand, becomes a tax on your time and your brainwidth. I want to find a balance. I no longer feel the need to make a perfect decision. (Is there such a thing?) I'm becoming comfortable with the idea of accepting decisions that are good enough. In short, I'm trying to incorporate lessons I've learned from The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz so that I can take some of the suck out of shopping. The Paradox of Choice For those unfamiliar, Barry Schwartz is a psychology professor from Swarthmore College. His 2004 book The Paradox of Choice argues that while life without choice is almost unbearable, having too many choices carries burdens of its own. I believe that many modern Americans are feeling less and less satisfied even as their freedom of choice expands, Schwartz writes. Having too many choices produces psychological distress. [embedded content] This certainly rings true from my own experience. And not just with money decisions. One of the joys of financial independence is the ability to choose how to spend your time. Indeed, this is a unique luxury. However, it's also a burden. When you have an infinite number of options available, how do you make decisions about what to do with your time? (My answer, as you can probably guess, is to be clear about your purpose, and to make decisions aligned with that purpose.) Schwartz argues that faced with so many options and decisions, we would be better off if we: Embraced certain voluntary constraints on our choices (instead of rebelling against limits).Opting for good enough instead of always seeking the best.Lowering our expectations.Made our decisions non-reversible.Paid less attention to other people. A majority of people want more control over the details of their lives, he writes, but a majority of people also want to simplify their lives. Schwartz calls this the paradox of choice. Greater choices creates greater complexity. That's what we think we want. In reality, most folks crave simplicity and simplicity requires fewer choices. So, how can we confront this paradox? Is it possible to have the best of both worlds? How do we go about wrestling with the ever-increasing array of choices while simultaneously seeking simplicity. That's precisely what I've been trying to answer for myself lately. At the end of The Paradox of Choice, Schwartz shares eleven steps that he believes can help mitigate (or eliminate) the distress caused by so much choice. Let's look at four that I've found effective in my own life. Learn to Love Constraints To manage the problem of excessive choice, Schwartz writes, we must decide which choices in our life matter and focus our time and energy there. Establish personal rules of thumb and follow them. Artificially limit your number of choices. You might, for instance, have a rule that you'll only visit two stores when shopping for clothing. Here's a real-life example of limiting your number of choices. For the past six months, I've been in the market for a new vehicle. There are hundreds to choose form, and if I were to let myself look at the entire universe of new cars, I'd never make a decision. Instead, I've created my own pocket universe of cars to choose from: compact and sub-compact vehicles that are available in electric or hybrid versions. Another great way to exercise contraint is to ignore all of the options that are available, especially for products you purchase regularly. Do you need to examine every cheese at the grocery store? Every can of soup? Every loaf of bread? Of course not. You have favorites. You have defaults. Whenever possible, stick with what you know especially if what you know already makes you happy. Satisfice More and Maximize Less According to Schwartz, maximizers are those who only accept the best. Every time they make a choice, they want to make the best choice possible. And even after they do make a choice, they worry there might have been a better option. Satisficers, on the other hand, have learned that contrary to conventional wisdom, good enough often is. They're willing to settle for something other than the best. A satisficer still has expectations and standards, but once he's found something that meets those standards, the search is over. My cousin Duane is a maximizer. He agonizes over buying decisions even ordering food in a restaurant. Duane knows it doesn't make much sense to deliberate over a menu decision, but he can't help it. He can't stop himself. What if I choose something wrong? he says, mocking himself. That's why I like buffets. With a buffet, he has an out if he doesn't like what he chooses. He can go choose something else. I used to be like this too. Now, though, I take a different approach when dining out. I skim the menu until I find something I like, then I look no further. That first item I find is what I order. What's the point of trying to pick the perfect meal? Will it make me any happier? Probably not. I'm satisfied choosing the first thing that looks good. I took this approach when buying my chainsaw last week. It worked great! I've invested in the EGO Power+ series of battery-powered tools. I checked to see if they produce an electric chainsaw. They do, and it's highly rated. I ordered it without looking at any other options. Regret Less After you've made a choice, move on. Don't linger over other possibilities. Don't second-guess yourself. If you buy stock in Dell instead of Apple, don't continue to track Apple's price. Stick with what you have. More to the point, don't compare your choices with other possibilities. Our evaluation of our choices is profoundly affected by what we compare them with, Schwartz writes, including comparisons with alternatives that exist only in our imaginations. He argues that we can vastly improve our subjective experience by striving to be grateful for what's good about our choices rather than being disappointed by what's bad about them. It's also important to remember that most choices are complex. There's rarely an option that's clearly superior to all others in every single way. Each choice has its advantages and its disadvantages. When faced with especially tough decisions, consider using the Jeff Bezos regret minimization framework. [embedded content] Manage Expectations How we feel about our decisions is strongly influenced by our expectations of the results. You might, for example, build up in your mind that a long-awaited Hawaiian vacation is going to be amazing then it's not. It's fine, but it's not nearly what you'd hoped. The problem here isn't Hawaii or the ocean or the hotel. The problem is the expectations you created for the experience. High expectations are the enemy of happiness. Similarly, it's important to remember hedonic adaptation will occur. Even if your new Tesla is thrilling during the first week of ownership, that thrill won't last. You'll gradually become accustomed to your new normal. Before long, that Tesla will seem mundane. Schwartz argues that one of the best ways to control expectations and to anticipate hedonic adaptation is to be a satisficer rather than a maximizer. Don't look for (or expect to find) the perfect thing. It doesn't exist. If your aim is only satisfaction, your decisions are less likely to fall short of expectations. Another way to manage expectations is to stop comparing yourself to others. Doing so is nearly always destructive to your sense of well-being. Don't do it. Stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. Focus on what makes you happy, Schwartz writes, and what gives meaning to your life. Thinking in Bets Last year, I read and reviewed Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke's book about making smarter decisions when you don't have all the facts. (Here's my review.) Duke says that we should stop thinking in terms of right and wrong. Few things are ever 0% or 100% likely to occur. Few people are ever 0% or 100% right about what they know or believe. Instead, we should think in bets. According to Duke, all decisions are bets on the future. An unwanted result doesn't mean we made a poor choice. It just means the bet didn't pay off this one time. If you get a head injury in a motorcycle crash, that doesn't mean wearing a helmet was a bad decision. It was a good decision, but this one result was poor. Job and relocation decisions are bets, she writes. Sales negotiations and contracts are bets. Buying a house is a bet. Ordering the chicken instead of the steak is a bet. Everything is a bet. In the year since I read her book, I've thought of this concept often. Another way for me to make better (and quicker) decisions is to embrace the idea that I'm betting on outcomes. When I buy something, I'm betting whether or not I'll like it because it meets my needs. Taken together, all of these ideas those from Duke and those from Schwartz are helping me spend less time deliberating over decisions and more time enjoying life.

Author: J.D. Roth In 2006, J.D. founded Get Rich Slowly to document his quest to get out of debt. Over time, he learned how to save and how to invest. Today, he's managed to reach early retirement! He wants to help you master your money and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you reach your goals. https://www.getrichslowly.org/how-to-make-better-decisions/

[thelonelyrdr-blog]

Thoughts on the Heroes of Olympus series (Part 3)

(The ending is somewhat spoiled in this one, so if that bugs you, read with caution.)                      Apparently, yesterday was Percy Jackson's birthday. So he's a Leo. Makes sense, I thought, and set to integrating this piece of trivia with my mental image of Percy, but then I realized that I already knew it from the following exchange in The Blood of Olympus: "Like the zodiac sign?" Percy asked. "I'm a Leo." "No, stupid," Leo said, "I'm a Leo. You're a Percy." The bad puns in this series are so real, guys. Anyway, given that it was Percy's birthday, it would've been neat if I could've posted this review yesterday, but alas, I just didn't have the energy after work. But hey, my lateness won't stop me from tagging this post with #happybirthdaypercy in a shameless attempt to increase my readership. Happy Birthday, Percy! I know you won't mind my using your birthday as a marketing tool.   The Blood of Olympus  Reyna and Nico are by far my favorite parts of this book, both separately and as a pair, but especially as a pair. Both are characters with deeply traumatic pasts who feel a respect and kinship for one another that eventually evolve into familial affection. Hazel may be Nico’s sister in name, but Reyna seems closer to filling Bianca’s role as big sister to Nico: whereas, historically, Nico has had to protect and guide Hazel, Reyna is someone who will not only do the same for him, but who will also worry for him. She has the magical ability to literally empathize with his need, as a boy who has lost a mother and an older sister, to feel cared for and considered, and is therefore uniquely qualified to respond to it. Nico’s bonds with both Reyna and Hazel, though, are beautiful.  As for Reyna herself, as much as I love all of the female characters in both this series and the original, in my estimation, she's the best, simply by virtue of being the most complex. Riordan's skill with developing characters through their internal struggles shines in Reyna's chapters. Let's not kid ourselves like the other characters do: she killed her father, even if it was in self-defense and even if he'd degenerated into a mania, giving her what is certainly the darkest backstory of any character in this series and probably of any character in any middle-grade series ever. I'm surprised that the publisher didn't insist on cutting the murder, though Riordan does gloss over its moral ambiguity somewhat. Nico's pretty terrifying in that one scene, too, and in his case, Reyna and Coach Hedge fully acknowledge the immorality of his actions. You all know the scene I'm referring to, or will if and when you read this book. Can I get some Dark!PercyxDark!Nico fanfics in addition to the Dark!Percy ones I already tried to commission in my previous blog post? (Oh, and if you're wondering about my thoughts on Reyna's sexuality, as I know many have imagined her as gay or bisexual, I personally ship her with herself regardless of her sexual preferences. To be clear, I have nothing against either interpretation of her character, but I got a little disenchanted with every character being or wanting to be in a serious romantic relationship as the series progressed. There are single teenagers, you know. I was one of them.) Before I conclude my discussion of Nico and Reyna, though, I have to mention the scene where Nico finally confesses to Percy that he once had a crush on him. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one cheering for him and wishing that I could be that cool while simultaneously laughing at Percy’s confusion and Annabeth’s amusement. And oh man, that high five between Annabeth and Nico. Perfect.  But it's time that I commented on Leo’s happy ending, in which he fulfills his role in the prophecy by dying (but not really) and keeping his oath to Calypso to free her from Ogygia.  Their whole relationship is comprised of moments of subtle tenderness, but the line in the last chapter that struck me most was:  “Leo Valdez,” she said. Nothing else - just his name, as if it were something magical.  I fangirled when I read that line, and the entire last chapter, for two reasons. The first is that, no matter how I try to deny the tendency in myself, I’m a hopeless romantic (yes, I’m a hopeless romantic who doesn’t read straight romance and who wants to see more single characters in middle-grade and YA novels. Everyone has their contradictions) who was invested in this couple from the start. However, the second reason pertains to Leo’s character. He’s the “seventh” wheel of the group, who’s spent the whole series doubting his own merits and developing crushes on girls who either take no interest in him or take no interest in him and seem interested in one of his friends instead. To be fair, one of these girls is a villain anyway, but her rejection still validates Leo’s insecurities. Even Calypso herself has a history with another of the Seven (Percy) and initially reacts to Leo's arrival on Ogygia as though it were a cruel joke of the gods'. The fact that the other characters largely disregard Leo - even I've ignored him until now, ironically, despite how hilarious I found his dialogue and narration - is what makes Riordan’s positioning him as the hero of the series so emotionally and narratively satisfying. He forms a plan to defeat Gaea without even consulting the others (might it be said that his inherited tendency to work independently and in isolation, which he and dad Hephaestus both perceive as a flaw, is what enables him to save the world?); he breaks Calypso's curse without leaning on the gods or on Percy's bargain with them. He goes from being the most overlooked of the Seven to someone whose very name inspires awe (and you can't tell me that Calypso's awe results solely from romantic feeling - I'm sure that, when she utters that line, she's also thinking of how Leo is the first and only person to manage to free her, to even remember her after leaving Ogygia). His is an underdog story done right. Overall As I hope you've gathered from my individual comments on each book, there's a lot to appreciate in this series: it's by turns light and funny and dark and morally ambiguous; it's smart and subtly overturns stereotypes and prejudices; and, perhaps most importantly, it's full of likable, relatable characters who feel distinct and real. It's self-aware too: as in the original series, Riordan raises the question - here, most notably in Arachne's version of her myth - of whether the gods are truly good or merely better than the alternatives of Gaea and the Titans; whether theirs is the side the demi-gods would willingly choose or merely the one they happen to be on because of their parentage. It's not often in children's adventure stories that the heroes consider that the villains may have a valid moral point, and beyond that, one that invalidates theirs. Even the last two Harry Potter books don't go as far with humanizing and demonizing Voldemort and Dumbledore, respectively. Unfortunately, the narrative does not adequately answer this question or many of the others that it raises. Take, as another example, Percy's "fatal flaw," loyalty, which I noted in Part 1 of my review never seems to result in negative consequences for either the Seven or the quest, despite being talked up by both gods and monsters throughout the series. Were the repeated warnings about it supposed to be foreshadowing Percy's decision to fall into Tartatus with Annabeth? If so, that makes no sense, as at least one demi-god was needed on each side of the Doors of Death, anyway, and Percy and Annabeth were obviously more successful as a team than either would've been alone. Or, as is more likely, was Percy's "fatal flaw" part of a larger plot thread that was dropped due to time and space constraints? But if that's the case, then why couldn't the first two books in the series have been condensed into one, or the series extended to include six or seven books? Surprisingly, considering how tightly plotted the original series was, the plot in this series fizzles to near nonexistence by the end of The Blood of Olympus, the tension building inconsistently as the climax approaches. Compared to the final battle in The Last Olympian, which engrossed me even more than the Battle of Hogwarts did (fellow Harry Potter fans, you don't have to call me a traitor; I assure you, I already feel like one), the stakes in the battle against Gaea and her army seemed the equivalent height of those in a fight involving elementary school children wielding sticks. Riordan's failure to deliver in this respect was especially glaring considering that he'd promised readers not one major battle in The Blood of Olympus, but two. Instead we get a one-on-one fight between Reyna and Orion that feels more internally than externally resonant and forestalls Major Battle #1, the Roman attack on the Greeks, before it even begins; a fight with the earthborn during which no one but Jason is really needed, as he's shown to be tremendously overpowered; and a fight between Leo and Gaea, which should've been Major Battle #2 but which is over within a page or two. The characters reiterate throughout the series how powerful Gaea is and how much more substantial of a threat she is than the Titans, but even the lowest monster in Tartarus was scarier and took longer to defeat. Hell, the Minotaur in The Lightning Thief would've been a worthier opponent for our heroes. The only explanation I can think of for the disappointing finish to this series is, again, that Riordan must have run out of time or space to give readers a proper final battle (though he hinted at two, I would've settled for one). Or possibly steam.   Still, although the series as a whole has a rushed and sloppy quality to it, I would still highly recommend it, both for the reasons listed above and for its resemblance to fanfiction. Yes, sadly, only in fanfiction would I expect to read a continuation of Percy Jackson's story with as many minority as white demi-god protagonists, whose cultures, used respectfully by Riordan, inform rather than define their identities; a gay character who is revealed to be in love with the protagonist of the first series; and an emphasis on female empowerment and the glorification of the feminine. There’s even a character -  arguably the most physically attractive of the Seven, might I add - who discovers that he needs glasses! I was shocked, albeit pleasantly so, to find a published series containing all of these elements, and I'm not even gay or a minority. If you pick up these books for the representation alone, you won't regret it.     But that won’t be necessary: there are a multitude of other fun reasons. 

[carolinescontentment]

REIKI ENERGY HEALING FOR SKEPTICS: What is Reiki and how does it work? + how to feel your aura

REIKI ENERGY HEALING FOR SKEPTICS: What is Reiki and how does it work? + how to feel your aura

Today I’d like to talk about Reiki, which is a type of energy healing that, like yoga, meditation, and acupuncture, is an effective, and widely-accepted, if little-known alternative therapy.  A 2014 Washington Post article reported:

More than 60 U.S. hospitals have adopted Reiki as part of patient services, according to a UCLA study, and Reiki education is offered at 800 hospitals.

The Healing Touch Professional Association estimates that more than 30,000 nurses in U.S. hospitals use touch practices every year. Pecora said hospitals now seek out Reiki masters and do workshops to train nurses and medical staff.

Source

Medical doctors and spiritual/alternative healers alike have taken to the practice, which is what invited my initial curiosity in the subject.

I’m sure that like me, a lot of you have some healthy skepticism about energy healing and other alternative therapies, so I’ve tried to cite only impartial sources to help explain it. I ask only that you keep an open mind and allow yourself to remain open to new ideas and experiences. After we’ve built this framework I’ll draw on my personal experience to discuss what it feels like, and how you can begin to physically feel your own energetic field right now without any special help or tools.

So let’s jump right into it: what is Reiki and how does it work?

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine:

Reiki is a very specific form of energy healing, in which hands are placed just off the body or lightly touching the body, as in “laying on of hands.” Reiki can also be done “long-distance,” as a form of prayer. According to many versions of its origin, Dr Mikao Usui, a Japanese seeker of spiritual truths, brought the Reiki method of healing into human awareness in 1922 after a deep spiritual experience. He is said to have begun teaching others after a serious earthquake hit Japan and he felt urged to spread his knowledge. In a Reiki session, the practitioner is seeking to transmit Universal Life Energy to the client. The intention is to create deep relaxation, to help speed healing, reduce pain, and decrease other symptoms you may be experiencing.

Source

This then begs the question: What is energy healing?

Energy healing focuses on healing the body’s subtle energy field to remove energetic blocks. If you’re not familiar with this energetic field, at the end of this video I’ll guide you through a very quick exercise that will allow you to physically feel your own field.

In an energy healing session, the healer clears energetic blocks in the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies to stimulate the body’s natural innate healing abilities. This allows you to heal and feel better much faster than you would on your own without any help.

So how does Reiki work?

As I already mentioned, Reiki practitioners channel Universal Life Energy to the recipient (or themself) to promote healing. What Universal Life Energy is exactly is hard to quite say. It’s the energy that’s in all living things; it’s the essence of all things; it’s something that connects all of us. Some people say it’s God, or love, or the Source of all things. I’m not exactly sure, and I don’t claim to have all the answers, all I know is that for our purposes all we need to know is that it works.

When a Reiki practitioner performs a healing, it is not their own energy that they’re giving away; they’re merely acting as a conduit or channel for the universal energy to flow through. When they channel universal energy to the recipient, the energy goes where it’s needed in the recipient’s energetic field to clear blockages. It’s theorized that the reason Reiki works is because it utilizes the principle of physics known as entrainment. Entrainment is defined as process whereby two interacting oscillating systems, which have different periods when they function independently, assume a common period. This basically means that if you place two bodies moving at different speeds next two each other, they’ll eventually lock into synch. Entrainment exists for the purpose of conserving energy; it takes less energy to move in harmony with a force than against it. This explains the phenomenon of why pendulum clocks and metronomes, when placed next to each other, will eventually self-synchronize their ticks. You can watch this principle in action here.

Reiki healing entrains the energetic body toward a more balanced, high vibrational state. This also means that Reiki cannot cause harm to the body or be misused; it has no negative, chaotic, or otherwise destructive properties that could cause the body to be entrained into a state of pain or disharmony. It’s (fortunately) not some Harry Potter type magic that can be used any way you wish.

It’s interesting how important the principle of mode locking or entrainment is for many biological systems, including the proper operation of pacemakers. It’s for this reason that it’s taught you should never give Reiki to someone with a pacemaker. The only other limitation on Reiki healing I’m aware of is not applying healing to a broken bone before it’s properly set because Reiki speeds healing and can cause complications.

A small body of clinical research is starting to emerge on Reiki with very promising results.

In 2010, Yale University researchers published a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, in which the found that patients who received 20-minute Reiki treatment within 3 days after a heart attack head better moods and better heart rate variability than those who did not receive the therapy; heart rate variability is a measure of evaluating post-heart attack outcome. Source

Similarly, a 2012 study published in the medical journal Cancer found that fatigued breast cancer survivors who received four weeks of energy healing therapies showed “highly clinically significant” reductions in fatigue. And yes, the energy therapy sample group outperformed the placebo group that received a mock healing.Source

In my day-to-day personal practice I use Reiki to destress; lessen headaches and other pains; clear my chakras and aura; and disrupt and disperse of nagging, anxious thoughts. There’s nothing quite like beating myself up over some anxious thought for hours, spend 5-10 minutes giving myself a Reiki session, and suddenly the thought melts away and stops disrupting my mental state. It has worked to make me feel calm and functional every single time, without fail, and has honestly felt nothing short of miraculous.

One very common ailment that I’ve worked on healing, particularly in others, is stress. We already know that stress literally makes us sick; and can lead to headaches, acne, chronic pain, fatigue, digestive problems, etc. After a Reiki session someone who’s very stressed will find themselves way more relaxed, if they hold tension in their shoulders they may find pain relief, may have normal appetite again, etc.

What’s a session actually like?

During a session the practitioner places on, or a few inches above, the recipient’s (or their own) body. (Or, in the case of distance healing, a representation of the recipient’s body such as a doll or a photograph.) Mentally, the practitioner is doing little more than thinking/imaging their intent of “turning on” Reiki energy and letting it flow through them for the recipient’s greatest and highest good. No deep concentration is required, and the healing continues until their hands are removed or it is no longer needed. The practitioner may go through a methodical series of hand positions or intuitively decide where to place their hands. However, no matter where they place their hands, Reiki will go where it needs to if there’s a “problem” area. So if hands are laid on your shoulders but you’re having knee pain, Reiki will travel from the shoulders down to the knees. For this reason, some practitioners may not move their hands at all during a session. The energy itself feels different for different people. It may feel like heat, pressure or density, an electrical current, vibrations, or like pushing together the same pole of two magnets. Some people feel nothing at all, as I did during my first couple weeks of Reiki training before I became more aware of and sensitive to the energy.

The session itself is a very relaxing experience. In some cases, as blockages are released you may feel like emotions or memories or visions pop up. I once had a traumatic memory come up during session, but when it emerged I was able to think of the event from a new perspective that allowed me to not blame myself for it happening and thus release the negative impact it was having on me. However, by and large Reiki sessions feel very soothing and balancing.

So now, as promised, I want to guide you through a popular exercise on how you can physically feel your own energetic field or aura. As you can imagine, this field is very complex and this technique will probably not allow you to perceive all of its subtleties, but if you haven’t felt it before it’s quite an incredible experience. It’s also something I’ve noticed a lot of Reiki healers will do immediately before a session to kind of “jump-start” their healing hands.

1. Take a few slow, deep breaths to settle into the moment.

2. Gently, vigorously rub your hands together for about 30 seconds.

3. Hold your hands at about shoulder width, palms facing each other, and bring your awareness to any sensations you feel (heat? tingling?), and slowly bring them together into prayer position. By the time your hands are within a couple inches of each other you should feel a distinctive pressure/force/density between them. This is your energetic field.

4. You can practice manipulating this field through simple imaginative imagery. For example, happens when you picture a large white ball of light between your hands? Can you now feel the density when your hands are farther apart? How far apart can you place your hands and feel any kind of sensation between them? How do your visualizations/intent change it? What do you sense if you place your hands on or near other parts of your body?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief introduction to Reiki. If you haven’t tried a session, I’d highly recommend checking it out because it is a very soothing, fascinating experience to have, and it’s a wonderful practice to add to your self-care toolbox.

Stay soft and be well.

[andrewdburton]

How to make better (and quicker) decisions

Last week, I wrote about how I've embraced mindful shopping. I'm teaching myself to be more deliberate about the things I own and buy. My goal is to buy less and, more importantly, to own less.

As part of this, I don't want to waste time shopping. I'm trying to train myself to make better decisions more quickly. This is tough for me to do.

By nature, I want to evaluate every alternative, to find the best option in every circumstance. Left to my own devices, I can spend two hours trying to decide which chainsaw is the best chainsaw at the best price.

There's nothing wrong with this, of course. Comparison shopping is a good thing. But there's a fine line. Some comparison can help you avoid purchasing poor products. Too much, on the other hand, becomes a tax on your time and your brainwidth.

I want to find a balance. I no longer feel the need to make a perfect decision. (Is there such a thing?) I'm becoming comfortable with the idea of accepting decisions that are “good enough”.

In short, I'm trying to incorporate lessons I've learned from The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz so that I can take some of the suck out of shopping.

The Paradox of Choice

For those unfamiliar, Barry Schwartz is a psychology professor from Swarthmore College. His 2004 book The Paradox of Choice argues that while life without choice is almost unbearable, having too many choices carries burdens of its own.

“I believe that many modern Americans are feeling less and less satisfied even as their freedom of choice expands,” Schwartz writes. “Having too many choices produces psychological distress.”

This certainly rings true from my own experience. And not just with money decisions.

One of the joys of financial independence is the ability to choose how to spend your time. Indeed, this is a unique luxury. However, it's also a burden. When you have an infinite number of options available, how do you make decisions about what to do with your time? (My answer, as you can probably guess, is to be clear about your purpose, and to make decisions aligned with that purpose.)

Schwartz argues that faced with so many options and decisions, we would be better off if we:

Embraced certain voluntary constraints on our choices (instead of rebelling against limits).

Opting for “good enough” instead of always seeking the best.

Lowering our expectations.

Made our decisions non-reversible.

Paid less attention to other people.

“A majority of people want more control over the details of their lives,” he writes, “but a majority of people also want to simplify their lives.” Schwartz calls this the paradox of choice. Greater choices creates greater complexity. That's what we think we want. In reality, most folks crave simplicity — and simplicity requires fewer choices.

So, how can we confront this paradox? Is it possible to have the best of both worlds? How do we go about wrestling with the ever-increasing array of choices while simultaneously seeking simplicity.

That's precisely what I've been trying to answer for myself lately.

At the end of The Paradox of Choice, Schwartz shares eleven steps that he believes can help mitigate (or eliminate) the distress caused by so much choice. Let's look at four that I've found effective in my own life.

Learn to Love Constraints

“To manage the problem of excessive choice,” Schwartz writes, “we must decide which choices in our life matter and focus our time and energy there.” Establish personal rules of thumb and follow them. Artificially limit your number of choices. You might, for instance, have a rule that you'll only visit two stores when shopping for clothing.

Here's a real-life example of limiting your number of choices.

For the past six months, I've been in the market for a new vehicle. There are hundreds to choose form, and if I were to let myself look at the entire universe of new cars, I'd never make a decision. Instead, I've created my own “pocket universe” of cars to choose from: compact and sub-compact vehicles that are available in electric or hybrid versions.

Another great way to exercise contraint is to ignore all of the options that are available, especially for products you purchase regularly. Do you need to examine every cheese at the grocery store? Every can of soup? Every loaf of bread? Of course not. You have favorites. You have defaults.

Whenever possible, stick with what you know — especially if what you know already makes you happy.

Satisfice More and Mazimize Less

According to Schwartz, maximizers are those who only accept the best. Every time they make a choice, they want to make the best choice possible. And even after they do make a choice, they worry there might have been a better option.

Satisficers, on the other hand, have learned that contrary to conventional wisdom, good enough often is. They're willing to settle for something other than the best. A satisficer still has expectations and standards, but once he's found something that meets those standards, the search is over.

My cousin Duane is a maximizer. He agonizes over buying decisions — even ordering food in a restaurant.

Duane knows it doesn't make much sense to deliberate over a menu decision, but he can't help it. He can't stop himself. “What if I choose something wrong?” he says, mocking himself. “That's why I like buffets.” With a buffet, he has an “out” if he doesn't like what he chooses. He can go choose something else.

I used to be like this too. Now, though, I take a different approach when dining out. I skim the menu until I find something I like, then I look no further. That first item I find is what I order. What's the point of trying to pick the perfect meal? Will it make me any happier? Probably not. I'm satisfied choosing the first thing that looks good.

I took this approach when buying my chainsaw last week. It worked great! I've invested in the EGO Power+ series of battery-powered tools. I checked to see if they produce an electric chainsaw. They do, and it's highly rated. I ordered it without looking at any other options.

Regret Less

After you've made a choice, move on. Don't linger over other possibilities. Don't second-guess yourself. If you buy stock in Dell instead of Apple, don't continue to track Apple's price. Stick with what you have.

More to the point, don't compare your choices with other possibilities. “Our evaluation of our choices is profoundly affected by what we compare them with,” Schwartz writes, “including comparisons with alternatives that exist only in our imaginations.”

He argues that we can vastly improve our subjective experience by striving to be grateful for what's good about our choices rather than being disappointed by what's bad about them.

It's also important to remember that most choices are complex. There's rarely an option that's clearly superior to all others in every single way. Each choice has its advantages and its disadvantages.

When faced with especially tough decisions, consider using the Jeff Bezos “regret minimization framework“.

Manage Expectations

How we feel about our decisions is strongly influenced by our expectations of the results. You might, for example, build up in your mind that a long-awaited Hawaiian vacation is going to be amazing — then it's not. It's fine, but it's not nearly what you'd hoped.

The problem here isn't Hawaii or the ocean or the hotel. The problem is the expectations you created for the experience. High expectations are the enemy of happiness.

Similarly, it's important to remember hedonic adaptation will occur. Even if your new Tesla is thrilling during the first week of ownership, that thrill won't last. You'll gradually become accustomed to your new normal. Before long, that Tesla will seem mundane.

Schwartz argues that one of the best ways to control expectations and to anticipate hedonic adaptation is to be a satisficer rather than a maximizer. Don't look for (or expect to find) the “perfect thing”. It doesn't exist. If your aim is only satisfaction, your decisions are less likely to fall short of expectations.

Another way to manage expectations is to stop comparing yourself to others. Doing so is nearly always destructive to your sense of well-being. Don't do it. Stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. “Focus on what makes you happy,” Schwartz writes, “and what gives meaning to your life.”

Thinking in Bets

Last year, I read and reviewed Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke's book about making smarter decisions when you don't have all the facts. (Here's my review.) Duke says that we should stop thinking in terms of right and wrong. Few things are ever 0% or 100% likely to occur. Few people are ever 0% or 100% right about what they know or believe. Instead, we should think in bets.

According to Duke, all decisions are bets on the future. An unwanted result doesn't mean we made a poor choice. It just means the bet didn't pay off this one time. If you get a head injury in a motorcycle crash, that doesn't mean wearing a helmet was a bad decision. It was a good decision, but this one result was poor.

“Job and relocation decisions are bets,” she writes. “Sales negotiations and contracts are bets. Buying a house is a bet. Ordering the chicken instead of the steak is a bet. Everything is a bet.”

In the year since I read her book, I've thought of this concept often. Another way for me to make better (and quicker) decisions is to embrace the idea that I'm betting on outcomes. When I buy something, I'm betting whether or not I'll like it because it meets my needs.

Taken together, all of these ideas — those from Duke and those from Schwartz — are helping me spend less time deliberating over decisions and more time enjoying life.

The post How to make better (and quicker) decisions appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/how-to-make-better-decisions/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[hardcollectionblaze-love-blog]

A Personal Narrative Sean Carroll_1



A Personal Narrative

I was very pleased to learn that I’m among this year’s recipients of a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Fellowships are mid-career awards, meant “to further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color, or creed.” This year 173 Fellowships were awarded, chosen from 3,100 applications. About half of the winners are in the creative arts, and the majority of those remaining are in the humanities and social sciences, leaving eighteen slots for natural scientists. Only two physicists were chosen, so it’s up to Philip Phillips and me to uphold the honor of our discipline.

The Guggenheim application includes a “Career Narrative” as well as a separate research proposal. I don’t like to share my research proposals around, mostly because I’m a theoretical physicist and what I actually end up doing rarely bears much resemblance to what I had previously planned to do. But I thought I could post my career narrative, if only on the chance that it might be useful to future fellowship applicants (or young students embarking on their own research careers). Be warned that it’s more personal than most things I write on the blog here, not to mention that it’s beastly long. Also, keep in mind that the purpose of the document was to convince people to give me money — as such, it falls pretty heavily on the side of grandiosity and self-justification. Be assured that in real life I remain meek and humble.

Sean M. Carroll: Career Narrative

Reading over applications for graduate school in theoretical physics, one cannot help but be struck by a certain common theme: everyone wants to discover the fundamental laws of nature, quantize gravity, and find a unified theory of everything. That was certainly what interested me, ever since I first became enamored with physics when I was about ten years old. It’s an ambitious goal, worthy of pursuing, and I’ve been fortunate enough to contribute to the quest in my own small way over the course of my research career, especially in gravitational physics and cosmology.

But when a goal is this far-reaching, it’s important to keep in mind different routes to the ultimate end. In recent years I have become increasingly convinced that there is important progress to be made by focusing on emergence: how the deepest levels of reality are connected to the many higher levels of behavior we observe. How do spacetime and classical reality arise from an underlying quantum description? What is complexity, and how does it evolve over time, and how is that evolution driven by the increase of entropy? What do we mean when we talk about “causes” and “purposes” if the underlying laws are perfectly reversible? What role does information play in the structure of reality? All of these questions are thoroughly interdisciplinary in nature, and can be addressed with a wide variety of different techniques. I strongly believe that the time is right for groundbreaking work in this area, and a Guggenheim fellowship would help me develop the relevant expertise and start stimulating new collaborations.

University, Villanova and Harvard: 1984-1993

There is no question I am a physicist. The topics that first sparked my interest in science – the Big Bang, black holes, elementary particles – are the ones that I think about today, and they lie squarely within the purview of physics. So it is somewhat curious that I have no degrees in physics. For a variety of reasons (including questionable guidance), both my undergraduate degree from Villanova and my Ph.D. from Harvard are in astronomy and astrophysics. I would like to say that this was a clever choice based on a desire for interdisciplinary engagement, but it was more of an accident of history (and a seeming insistence on doing things the hard way). Villanova offered me a full-tuition academic scholarship (rare at the time), and I financed my graduate education through fellowships from NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Nevertheless, my education was extremely rewarding. As an undergraduate at a very small but research-oriented department, I got a start in doing real science at an early age, taking photometric data on variable stars and building models based on their light curves [Carroll, Guinan, McCook and Donahue, 1991]. In graduate school I was surrounded by incredible resources in the Cambridge area, and made an effort to take advantage of them. My advisor, George Field, was a well-established theoretical astrophysicist, specializing in magnetohydrodynamics and the interstellar medium. He wasn’t an expert in the area that I wanted to study, the particle physics/cosmology connection, but he was curious about it. So we essentially learned things together, writing papers on alternatives to general relativity, the origin of intergalactic magnetic fields, and inflationary cosmology, including one of the first studies of a non-Lorentz-invariant modification of electromagnetism [Carroll, Field, and Jackiw 1990]. George also encouraged me to work with others, and I collaborated with fellow graduate students on topics in mathematical physics and topological defects, as well as with Edward Farhi and Alan Guth from MIT on closed timelike curves (what people on the street call “time machines”) in general relativity [Carroll, Farhi, and Guth 1992].

Setting a pattern that would continue to be followed down the line, I didn’t limit my studies to physics alone. In particular, my time at Villanova ignited an interest in philosophy that remains strong to this day. I received a B.A. degree in “General Honors” as well as my B.S. in Astronomy and Astrophysics, and also picked up a philosophy minor. At Harvard, I sat in on courses with John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Barbara Johnson. While science was my first love and remains my primary passion, the philosophical desire to dig deep and ask fundamental questions continues to resonate strongly with me, and I’m convinced that familiarity with modern philosophy of science can be invaluable to physicists trying to tackle questions at the foundations of the discipline.

Postdoctoral, MIT and ITP: 1993-1999

For my first postdoctoral fellowship, in 1993 I moved just a bit down the road, from Harvard to MIT; three years later I would fly across the country to the prestigious Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara. At both places I continued to do research in a somewhat scattershot fashion, working on a potpourri of topics in gravitation and field theory, usually in collaboration with other physicists my age rather than with the senior professors. I had great fun, writing papers on supergravity (the supersymmetric version of general relativity), topological defects, perturbations of the cosmic microwave background radiation, two-dimensional quantum gravity, interacting dark matter, and tests of the large-scale isotropy of the universe.

Although I was slow to catch on, the academic ground was shifting beneath me. The late 80’s and early 90’s, when I was a graduate student, were a sluggish time in particle physics and cosmology. There were few new experimental results; the string theory revolution, which generated so much excitement in the early 80’s, had not lived up to its initial promise; and astronomers continued to grapple with the difficulties in measuring properties of the universe with any precision. In such an environment, my disjointed research style was enough to get by. But as I was graduating with my Ph.D., things were changing. In 1992, results from the COBE satellite showed us for the first time the tiny temperature variations in the cosmic background radiation, representing primordial density fluctuations that gradually grew into galaxies and large-scale structure. In 1994-95, a series of theoretical breakthroughs launched the second superstring revolution. Suddenly, it was no longer good enough just to be considered smart and do random interesting things. Theoretical cosmologists dived into work on the microwave background, or at least models of inflation that made predictions for it; field theorists and string theorists were concentrating on dualities, D-branes, and the other shiny new toys that the latest revolution had brought them. In 1993 I was a hot property on the postdoctoral job market, with multiple offers from the very best places; by 1996 those offers had largely dried up, and I was very fortunate to be offered a position at a place as good as ITP.

Of course, nobody actually told me this in so many words, and it took me a while to figure it out. It’s a valuable lesson that I still take to heart – it’s not good enough to do work on things you think are interesting, you have to make real contributions that others recognize as interesting, as well. I don’t see this as merely a cynical strategy for academic career success. As enjoyable and stimulating as it may be to bounce from topic to topic, the chances of make a true and lasting contribution are larger for people who focus on an area with sufficient intensity to master it in all of its nuance.

What I needed was a topic that I personally found fascinating enough to investigate in real detail, and which the rest of the community recognized as being of central importance. Happily, the universe obligingly provided just the thing. In 1998, two teams of astronomers, one led by Saul Perlmutter and the other by Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess, announced an amazing result: our universe is not only expanding, it’s accelerating. Although in retrospect there were clues that this might have been the case, it took most of the community by complete surprise, and certainly stands as the most important discovery that has happened during my own career. Perlmutter, Schmidt, and Riess shared the Nobel Prize in 2011.

Like many other physicists, my imagination was immediately captured by the question of why the universe is accelerating. Through no planning of my own, I was perfectly placed to dive into the problem. Schmidt and Riess had both been fellow graduate students of mine while I was at Harvard (Brian was my officemate), and I had consulted with Perlmutter’s group early on in their investigations, so I was very familiar with the observations of Type Ia supernovae on which the discovery was based. The most obvious explanation for universal acceleration is that empty space itself carries a fixed energy density, what Einstein had labeled the “cosmological constant”; I happened to be a co-author, with Bill Press and Ed Turner, on a 1992 review article on the subject that had become a standard reference in the field [Carroll, Press, and Turner 1992], and which hundreds of scientists were now hurriedly re-reading. In 1997 Greg Anderson and I had proposed a model in which dark-matter particles would interact with an ambient field, growing in mass as the universe expands [Anderson and Carroll 1997]; this kind of model natural leads to cosmic acceleration, and was an early idea for what is now known as “dark energy” (as well as for the more intriguing possibility that there may be a variety of interactions within a rich “dark sector”).

With that serendipitous preparation, I was able to throw myself into the questions of dark energy and the acceleration of the universe. After the discovery was announced, models were quickly proposed in which the dark energy was a dynamically-evolving field, rather than a constant energy density. I realized that most such models were subject to severe experimental constraints, because they would lead to new long-range forces and cause particle-physics parameters to slowly vary with time. I wrote a paper [Carroll 1998] pointing out these features, as well as suggesting symmetries that could help avoid them. I also collaborated with the Schmidt/Riess group on a pioneering paper [Garnavich et al. 1998] that placed limits on the rate at which the density of dark energy could change as the universe expands. With this expertise and these papers, I was suddenly a hot property on the job market once again; in 1999 I accepted a junior-faculty position at the University of Chicago.

University of Chicago: 1999-2006

While I was a postdoc, for the most part my intellectual energies were devoted completely to research. As a new faculty member, I had the responsibility and opportunity to expand my reach in a variety of ways. I had always loved teaching, and took to it with gusto, pioneering new courses (undergraduate general relativity, graduate cosmology), and winning a “Spherical Cow” teaching award from the physics graduate students. I developed my lecture notes for a graduate course in general relativity into a textbook, Spacetime and Geometry, which is now used widely in universities around the world. I helped organize a major international conference (Cosmo-02), served on a number of national committees (including the roadmap team for NASA’s Beyond Einstein program), and was a founding member and leader of the theory group at Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. I was successful at bringing in money, including fellowships from the Sloan and Packard Foundations. I made connections with professors in other departments, and started to work with Project Exploration, an outreach nonprofit led by Gabrielle Lyon and Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno. With Classics professor Shadi Bartsch, I taught an undergraduate humanities course on the history of atheism. I became involved in the local theatre community, helping advise companies that were performing plays with scientific themes (Arcadia, Proof, Humble Boy). And in 2004 I took up blogging at my site Preposterous Universe, a fun and stimulating pastime that I continue to this day.

Research, of course, was still central, and I continued to concentrate on the challenge posed by the accelerating universe, especially in a series of papers with Mark Trodden (then at Syracuse, now at U. Penn.) and other collaborators. Among the more speculative ideas that had been proposed was “phantom energy,” a form of dark energy whose density actually increases as the universe expands. In one paper [Carroll, Hoffman, and Trodden 2003] we showed that such theories tended to be catastrophically unstable, and in another [Carroll, De Felice, and Trodden 2004] we showed that more complex models could nevertheless trick observers into concluding that the dark energy was phantom-like.

Our most influential work proposed a simple idea: that there isn’t any dark energy at all, but rather that general relativity breaks down on cosmological scales, where new dynamics can kick in [Carroll, Duvvuri, Trodden, and Turner 2004]. This became an extremely popular scenario within the theoretical cosmology community, launching a great deal of work devoted to investigating these “f(R) theories.” (The name refers to the fact that the dynamical equations are based on an arbitrary function of R, a quantity that measures the curvature of spacetime.) This work included papers by our group looking at long-term cosmological evolution in such models [Carroll et al. 2004], and studying the formation of structure in theories designed to be compatible with observational constraints on modified gravity [Carroll, Sawicki, Silvestri, and Trodden 2006].

Being of restless temperament, I couldn’t confine myself to only thinking about dark energy and modified gravity. I published on a number of topics at the interface of cosmology, field theory, and gravitation: observational constraints on alternative cosmologies, large extra dimensions of spacetime, supersymmetric topological defects, violations of fundamental symmetries, the origin of the matter/antimatter asymmetry, the connection between cosmology and the arrow of time. I found the last of these especially intriguing. To physicists, all of the manifold ways in which the past is different from the future (we age toward the future, we can remember the past, we can make choices toward the future) ultimately come back to the celebrated Second Law of Thermodynamics: in closed systems, entropy tends to increase over time. Back in the 19th century, Ludwig Boltzmann and others explained why entropy increases toward the future; what remains as a problem is why the entropy was ever so low in the past. That’s a question for cosmology, and presents a significant challenge to current models of the early universe. With graduate student Jennifer Chen, I proposed a novel scenario in which the Big Bang is not the beginning of the universe, but simply one event among many; in the larger multiverse, entropy increases without bound both toward the distant future and also in the very distant past [Carroll and Chen 2004, 2005]. Our picture was speculative, to say the least, but it serves as a paradigmatic example of attempts to find a purely dynamical basis for the Second Law, and continues to attract attention from both physicists and philosophers.

In May, 2005, I was informed that I had been denied tenure. This came as a complete shock, in part because I had been given no warning that any trouble was brewing. I will never know precisely what was said at the relevant faculty meetings, and the explanations I received from different colleagues were notable mostly for the lack of any consistent narrative. But one thing that came through clearly was that my interest in doing things other than research had counted substantially against me. I was told that I came across as “more interested in writing textbooks,” and that perhaps I would be happier at a university that placed a “greater emphasis on pedagogy.”

An experience like that cannot help but inspire some self-examination, and I thought hard about what my next steps should be. I recognized that, if I wanted to continue in academia, my best chance of being considered successful would be to focus my energies as intently as possible in a single area of research, and cut down non-research activities to a minimum.

After a great deal of contemplation, I decided that such a strategy was exactly what I didn’t want to do. I would remain true to my own intellectual passions, and let the chips fall where they may.

Caltech and Beyond: 2006-

After the Chicago decision I was again very fortunate, when the physics department at Caltech quickly offered me a position as a research faculty member. It was a great opportunity, offering both a topflight research environment and an extraordinary amount of personal freedom. I took the job with two goals in mind: to expand my outreach and non-academic efforts even further, and to do innovative interdisciplinary research that would represent a true and lasting contribution.

To be brutally honest, since I arrived here in 2006 I have been much more successful at the former than at the latter (although I feel this is beginning to change). I’ve written two popular-level books: From Eternity to Here, on cosmology and the arrow of time, and The Particle at the End of the Universe, on the search for the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. Both were well-received, with Particle winning the Winton Prize from the Royal Society, the world’s most prestigious award for popular science books. I have produced two lecture courses for The Teaching Company, given countless public talks, and appeared on numerous TV programs, up to and including The Colbert Report. Living in Los Angeles, I’ve had the pleasure of serving as a science consultant on various films and TV shows, working with people such as Ron Howard, Kenneth Branagh, and Ridley Scott. My talk from TEDxCaltech, “Distant time and the hint of a multiverse,” recently passed a million total views. I helped organize a major interdisciplinary conference on the nature of time, as well as a much smaller workshop on philosophical naturalism that attracted some of the best people in the field (such as Steven Weinberg, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins). I was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and won the Gemant Award from the American Institute of Physics.

More substantively, I’ve developed my longstanding interest in philosophy in productive directions. https://www.the-essays.com/case-study of the physics questions that I find most interesting, such as the arrow of time or the measurement problem in quantum mechanics, are ones where philosophers have made a significant impact, and I have begun interacting and collaborating with several of the best in the business. In recent years the subject called “philosophy of cosmology” has become a new and exciting field, and I’ve had the pleasure of being at the center of many activities in the area; a conference next month has set aside a discussion session to examine the implications of the approach to the arrow of time that Jennifer Chen and I put forward a decade ago. My first major work in philosophy of science, a paper with graduate student Charles Sebens on how to derive the Born Rule in the many-worlds approach to quantum mechanics, was recently accepted into one of the leading journals in the field [Sebens and Carroll 2014]. I’ve also published invited articles on the implications of modern cosmology for religion, and participated in a number of popular debates on naturalism vs. theism.

At the same time, my research efforts have been productive but somewhat meandering. As usual, I have worked on a variety of interesting topics, including the use of effective field theory to understand the growth of large-scale structure, the dynamics of Lorentz-violating “aether” fields, how new forces can interact with dark matter, black hole entropy, novel approaches to dark-matter abundance, cosmological implications of a decaying Higgs field, and the role of rare fluctuations in the long-term evolution of universe. Some of my work over these years includes papers of which I am quite proud; these include investigations of dynamical compactification of dimensions of space [Carroll, Johnson, and Randall 2009], possible preferred directions in the universe [Ackerman, Carroll, and Wise 2007; Erickcek, Kamionkowski, and Carroll 2008a, b], the prospect of a force similar to electromagnetism interacting with dark matter [Ackerman et al. 2008], and quantitative investigations of fine- tuning of cosmological evolution [Carroll and Tam 2010; Remmen and Carroll 2013, 2014; Carroll 2014]. Almost none of this work has been on my previous specialty, dark energy and the accelerating universe. After having put a great amount of effort into thinking about this (undoubtedly important) problem, I have become pessimistic about the prospect for an imminent theoretical breakthrough, at least until we have a better understanding of the basic principles of quantum gravity. This helps explain the disjointed nature of my research over the past few years, but has also driven home to me the need to find a new direction and tackle it with determination.

Very recently I’ve found such a focus, and in some sense I have finally started to do the research I was born to do. It has resulted from a confluence of my interests in cosmology, quantum mechanics, and philosophy, along with a curiosity about complexity theory that I have long nurtured but never really acted upon. This is the turn toward “emergence” that I mentioned at the beginning of this narrative, and elaborate on in my research plan. I go into greater detail there, but the basic point is that we need to construct a more reliable framework in which to connect the very foundations of physics – quantum mechanics, field theory, spacetime – to a multitude of higher-level phenomena, from statistical mechanics to organized structures. A substantial amount of work has already been put into such issues, but a number of very basic questions remain unanswered.

This represents an evolution of my research focus rather than a sudden break with my earlier work; many topics in cosmology and quantum gravity are intimately tied to issues of emergence, and I’ve already begun investigating some of these questions in different ways. One prominent theme is the emergence of the classical world out of an underlying quantum description. My papers with Sebens on the many-worlds approach are complementary to a recent paper I wrote with two graduate students on the nature of quantum fluctuations [Boddy, Carroll, and Pollack 2014]. There, we argued that configurations don’t actually “fluctuate into existence” in stationary quantum states, since there is no process of decoherence; this has important implications for cosmology in both the early and late universe. In another paper [Aaronson, Carroll, and Ouellette 2014], my collaborators and I investigated the relationship between entropy (which always increases in closed systems) and complexity (which first increases, then decreases as the system approaches equilibrium). Since the very notion of complexity does not have a universally-agreed-upon definition, any progress we can make in understanding its basic features is potentially very important.

I am optimistic that this new research direction will continue to expand and flourish, and that there is a substantial possibility of making important breakthroughs in the field. (My papers on the Born Rule and quantum fluctuations have already attracted considerable attention from influential physicists and philosophers – they don’t always agree with our unconventional conclusions, but I choose to believe that it’s just a matter of time.) I am diving into these new waters headfirst, including taking online courses (complexity theory from Santa Fe, programming and computer science from MIT) that will help me add skills that weren’t part of my education as a cosmologist. A Guggenheim Fellowship will be invaluable in aiding me in this effort.

My ten-year-old self was right: there is nothing more exciting than trying to figure out how nature works at a deep level. Having hit upon a promising new way of doing it, I can’t wait to see where it goes.

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Classic farce and touching drama

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Classic farce and touching drama

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Juliet, Naked. (photo credit: Courtesy)

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With Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke and Chris O’Dowd.

Hebrew title: Juliet, Ha’girsa ha’iroma.

105 minutes. In English In this era of comic superhero movies, it may seem as if intelligent romantic comedies are a thing of the past, but just when most discriminating moviegoers have all but despaired of seeing anything truly enjoyable on the big screen, along comes the charming, very funny and moving Juliet, Naked.

As soon as I heard about this film, I had high hopes for it, and it doesn’t disappoint. Juliet, Naked is based on a novel by Nick Hornby, whose brilliant books are page turners but always have something deeper woven into the story. Not coincidentally, several of them have been adapted into fine films, notably High Fidelity and About a Boy.

The movie, which combines classic farce and touching drama, tells the story of Annie, gracefully played by Rose Byrne, who is the reserved director of a museum in a seaside British town and the dutiful girlfriend of Duncan (the phenomenal Chris O’Dowd, who was in Bridesmaids and The Sapphires). Duncan is one of those annoying hipster know-it-alls – a type that is all around us but that is rarely represented in fiction – who places an inordinately high value on being aware of every nuance of pop culture and an inordinately low value on being a mensch. Annie is ambivalent about their decision not to have children, but Duncan is just fine.

What keeps him busy is his obsession with Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke), a 90s-era American singer/songwriter who made what Duncan and other aficionados he chats with on his blog consider the greatest album of all time – and then disappeared without a trace.

Duncan gets a hold of a stripped-down version of Crowe’s masterpiece and through a complex set of circumstances that are not all that implausible in the digital age, Annie makes contact with Tucker himself. He turns out to be a broke guy with a gut, who has children all over the world with different mothers and is finally trying to be a good father to his youngest, Jackson (Azhy Robertson). Ethan Hawke is the perfect actor to embody Crowe’s sly charisma. This rock star’s pretty-boy looks may have gone to seed, but he’s still oddly attractive.

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The bond that develops between Annie and her lover’s idol is strange and compelling. We all know people like these characters, and their authenticity makes this infinitely more satisfying than a typical rom-com, where a perfect male appears the second the heroine has a fight with her boyfriend. All three of the main characters are flawed and alternately infuriating and winning. The famous rocker aspect enhances the movie’s main theme, which is about people not being quite who you think they are, and the perils of encountering anyone you idolize.

The three lead actors are extraordinarily good, and O’Dowd in particular is able to take a character who sounds like the worst kind of narcissistic jerk and to show how his intensity can be attractive.

Juliet, Naked was directed by Jesse Peretz, who made the very funny film Our Idiot Brother several years ago, and whose name is familiar to anyone who reads the credits on television shows. He has directed many episodes of the best shows, including Girls, Orange is the New Black, and, most recently, the quirky Netflix original series, GLOW. Like Our Idiot Brother, Juliet, Naked was co-written by his sister, Evgenia Peretz (the other writers on the project were Tamara Jenkins, who made The Savages a few years ago, and Jim Taylor, who won an Oscar for Sideways). These writers have skillfully adapted this offbeat novel and preserved its spirit, while making a few changes necessary to compress the story into the movie’s 105-minute running time.

The film is so much fun that I actually wished it were longer – something I don’t think I’ve ever said before, since I tend to think most movies are too long – because it was just so great to spend time with these characters.

A few sections of the movie feel a bit rushed, especially when Annie and Tucker’s relationship is blossoming and when Annie finally starts changing her life.

But in the end, the movie works, and its sophistication and heart shine through.

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