#i need to reverse engineer myself. go back to a previous version

[ellalalala]

Zandik, Sohreh and the Rishboland Tigers

Hello! Last night I began to think about Dottore just before falling asleep and now I'm back to write about something that's been bugging me for ages. This shouldn't be too long, but knowing myself I'll take it way too far so...!

Anyhow, every Dottore enjoyer knows of the Zandik's Legacy notes, and I'm sure everyone has their own theory on what happened between him, Sohreh and the investigation team he was with on Devantaka Mountain (if I remember correctly). Most people argue that he killed Sohreh just for the sake of it and lied about her being attacked by a pack of Rishboland Tigers, but I'd like to argue otherwise - she was attacked by the tigers first, and Zandik put Sohreh out of her misery as an act of mercy.

First and foremost, it's important to mention that Zandik and Sohreh, despite not having much in common (different Darshans, differences in their personalities etc) seemed to get along decently well. As written in Sohreh's Note,

"...Zandik and I discussed the traits of local plants and animals. We also exchanged views on their evolution models. We had a great time and decided to go on a picnic tonight..."

Despite their differences, Zandik made the effort to have a conversation with her and for him to agree to a picnic (hey, he could have offered first, you never know) means only that he was genuinely interested in Sohreh; if you have read my previous analysis about Dottore, then you might remember what I said about him and his loneliness and longing for companionship. If not, I will explain briefly: Zandik was rejected by his peers in the Akademiya. A monster, a madman, they deemed him, and it's easy to guess that he was very, very lonely. People were prejudiced against him, but here comes Sohreh - a Dastur who not only ignores the rumors about him, but is kind enough to talk to him, to want to see him more often. That must have been incredibly foreign to Zandik, who up until then had only known rejection and solitude.

With that said, why would he kill a girl?

Before I continue, I would like to note that we do not yet have a definitive timeline of these events. I am merely speculating based on what I know, so keep that in mind! I could very well be wrong when Dottore is released as a playable character and his Character Stories tell the true version of these events... anywho.

From reading the Ragged Attendance Record, we can understand that Zandik stubbornly acted by himself without caring to ask for permission:

"...Trainee Dastur Zandik has acted without authorization for the third time... It brings unpredictable risks to the investigation team... Punishment is advised..."

We know that Zandik meant to keep his research into these Ruin Machines secret; after all, investigating anything related to the fallen nation of Dahri was considered taboo back then.

The record continues,

"...Dastur Sohreh of Amurta has been critically injured under the attack of Rishboland Tigers. In need of first aid..."

Just what happened? It's unclear how she got injured. Can we assume that these records were written hours apart, perhaps? If so, assuming that Zandik had nothing to do with her injuries, how would he react to Sohreh getting hurt?

Moving on to the Sumeru Investigation Team's Note - this was very likely written after the Ragged Attendance Record, considering what we learn in it. It says:

"...Thank goodness, Zandik reacted quickly. Otherwise, the whole team would be in serious trouble...

...The terrifying killing machine has stopped. Zandik insisted on bringing it back to the Akademiya to be disassembled and reverse-engineered. That was absolutely ridiculous! Sage Sharnama reprimanded him and removed him from the author list.

...We buried Dastur Sohreh and sent the wounded back. Looks like this field research has come to an end..."

If we go over it line after line, we learn the following:

Zandik likely deactivated the Ruin Machine that attacked the Investigation Team. He must have gathered enough knowledge at that time to know how to deal with them himself; he also exposed that secret knowledge to the rest of the group, which only helped in strengthening the prejudice people had against him. Considering he acted so quickly, it must have been an instinct for him to solve the problem by himself/save the others.

The fact that he insisted on bringing the machine back could have played a role in the very reason why he got expelled from the Akademiya. This entire event could also be why studying mechanical life forms is now banned in Spantamad, which I believe to have been Zandik's Darshan.

Sohreh was already dead at that point, or she died shortly after the Ruin Machine attacked the group. Funny that they just buried her in the wilderness and left...

This begs one question: when would one even have the time to kill Sohreh? She was first attacked by a pack of Rishboland Tigers. Then, a Ruin Machine accidentally got activated, which Zandik quickly stopped, and there were even more people wounded - likely due to the aforementioned machine (oh, and if so, this might imply that Zandik hesitated to act). Of course, it could have been anyone else that choked Sohreh to death. It could be that someone just put the blame on Zandik because he was so hated. But if we are to assume that he and Sohreh shared some sort of bond, then perhaps he did it himself.

Indeed, for she was already terribly wounded. This is what the Dissection Records say about Sohreh:

"...The deceased...Dastur Sohreh... Multiple trauma wounds... Lacerations... contusions on internal organs... hemorrhage... ...But the fatal injury is the wound on the throat... fractured hyoid bone... Mechanical asphyxia... unable to ascertain the cause of death..."

So all makes sense - I don't even need to spell it out. What I should say is another thing; ignoring the messy timeline and half-assed guess I made about the chaotic events that took place that day, I should return to Sohreh and Zandik.

Zandik - rather, Dottore - is not an actor. He does not pretend to be someone he is not, and Escher doesn't count because that was for a mission. Aside from being a bit polite with Nahida, Dottore never, not once, pretended to be nicer than he really was nor shaped his identity a certain way to make it easier to digest for others. Think of webttore - an openly short-tempered and brash man with a complete disregard for how others perceive him. That's Dottore, and by extension, Zandik. Sohreh wrote that he was rigid - would that not be a trait one would hide if they wanted to put up a front? Moreover, Zandik would have no reason to fake being nice with Sohreh. There was nothing she could realistically give him that he actually wanted - nothing if not acceptance and friendship. Knowing Dottore and his buried want for companionship, Zandik must have been entranced by Sohreh's kindness and curiosity. That must have been rare for him to receive, having already been chased out of his hometown and openly rejected and shunned in the Akademiya.

Say they went on that picnic and found more things to bond over - would it not make sense that he would be the one to show her mercy? Sure, strangling someone is not painless; he could have lacked other options. Perhaps she asked him to do it, or he felt as if he had to - she was bleeding out and helpless in the wilderness, without access to medical aid. Zandik could have thought that she wouldn't make it and took pity on her. Or... well, who knows.

I don't know. With such little information, it's difficult to make out a clear picture of what could have gone down. What I do know is that killing her just for the sake of it makes little to no sense. Dottore is resourceful and only does things that benefit him and his research. How would killing a Dastur of a Darshan that he did not belong to help him in any way? People already despised him and he wouldn't so openly risk getting expelled and losing any means of conducting research. It just doesn't feel right to me, y'know?

Anyway, that's yet another convoluted Dottore theory from me. Remember: I myself am not very confident in it. I had only my own audacity and 4 tiny notes to write this, so! Anything could have happened with Sohreh - this is just my take on it. It's the one I prefer, anyway. I'll humanize anyone looool

Thanks for reading!

[kuiperblog]

Reviewing four small Knizia card games

I love Reiner Knizia’s small, simple board game designs that are “easy to learn, hard to master.”  And I love the fact that many of the games he’s designed have Japanese editions which are made by companies that 1) care more about component quality than their western counterparts, and 2) are made for customers in tiny Tokyo apartments, where shelf space is at a premium.

They’re the perfect games to stuff into a backpack (or suitcase) and bring out to share with people who “enjoy playing games, but aren’t into the board game hobby.”  They’re something for the people who don’t want to play a 1+ hour long euro engine builder, but would like to be treated to something of a higher class than Uno or Monopoly.

Thus it came to be that when visiting my family for Christmas this (er, last) year, I took four Reiner Knizia card games with me. They were such a big hit that the family won’t let me take them back with me. (Okay, actually, leaving the games behind was my suggestion after they expressed interest in acquiring copies for themselves; given the economics of importing items from Japan, it makes more sense for me to just order replacement copies of the games for myself the next time I place an order from Amazon JP, which is something I now do fairly often since learning that they will let you pay in USD with a US credit card and ship directly to the US.)  The following list is assorted roughly in descending order of how much I liked them:

High Society (3-5 players, 15-30 minutes)

This was immediately my favorite, and a poll of the family revealed it to be a unanimous favorite (excluding the non-vote from my sister, who refused to pick a favorite). It also happens to be the one game in the pile that wasn’t a Japanese import. (There is a Japanese version; I just like the art from the 2018 US version published by Osprey better.)

I love this game. It’s an incredibly mean game consisting entirely of auctions to win cards that are worth points (and “reverse auctions” where you bid money to not receive the cards that are worth negative points), with the stipulation that whoever has the least money at the end of the game loses.

Furthermore, you are bidding with fixed denominations of money: you have a single card of each denomination of $1, $2, $4, $6, $8, $10, $12, $15, $20, or $25 (Actually, the “currency” in the game is francs, and you’re bidding thousands of francs, but denoting them with a dollar sign is easier.)  Critically, you can only increase your bid by adding a card to your previous bid; the auction house does not make change. What you very quickly realize is that lower denominations are a precious commodity: you’d much rather spend a single $10 card than a $4 + a $6.  If you spend all of your “low” cards early, you quickly lose the ability to incrementally increase bids.

This is an auction game that is mean, where you frequently use your money to bully other people at the table into paying more for cards that you had no intention of buying (but that they desperately need), or by baiting them into bidding wars that bait out their low cards, removing their ability to strategically bid later in the game. There are all sort of subtle asymmetries that crop up in ways that affect the bidding in interesting ways: for example, one of the negative cards (which triggers a reverse auction where you bid not to take it) causes you to lose one of your point cards. If you’re sitting across the table from someone whose only card is a 9 or a 10, they’ll be desperate to avoid that card, whereas you might be more willing to take it if you’re just going to be losing a 2-point card. That gives you leverage. Ditto for situations when you’re in the final turns of the game, sitting across from someone who has a handful of money but with a point total that is nowhere near winning -- or the reverse, when you’ve got a handful of money, and are staring at someone who is at risk of being sent to the poorhouse and has precious little money to spend when a negative point card comes up.

It’s incredibly simple and takes about 2 minutes to teach the rules, but it’s highly interactive, and extremely cutthroat. It’s the opposite of what you get from most modern “euro” board games (which are often made to feel like “multiplayer solitaire”), and everything you want from a Knizia game.

Kariba (2-4 players, 15 minutes)

(The above photo is of the Japanese version of the game, which has slightly different art from the latest US release; as you can surmise, there’s no language component.)

Kariba game with simple rules and simple artwork/theming that you could play with a child, but as with most Knizia games, it hides a certain amount of depth behind its simple decision-making. (It also has an optional “expert” mode, where you draft cards from a market rather than drawing blindly off the top of the deck, which is highly recommended once everyone at the table understands how to play.)

The rules are simple: all the animals want to visit the watering hole, and so every turn you play a card from your hand in one of the eight slots around the board. Animals are allowed to bring friends of the same species: you may play multiples of a matching card. And when three (or more) animals of the same species are present at the watering hole, they chase away the next-smallest animal: three rhinos (7) will chase away any number of leopards (6), allowing the player who played the rhino(s) to add the leopards to their scoring pile.  And if there are no leopards presents, the rhinos will instead scare away the ostriches (5), and if that slot is also empty they’ll chase away the giraffes (4)... The elephants (8) of course are big enough to chase anyone away.

The mice (1) are too small to chase away any of the other animals -- except for the fact that, as everyone knows, elephants are afraid of mice, so a group of mice can chase away any number of elephants -- but only elephants.

The game often begins in a sort of “cold war,” with everyone playing conservatively, trying to sculpt their hand without adding too much scoring materiel to the board, until more and more points have been deployed, and finally someone is forced to act -- which creates a bigger stack for someone else to either grow, or to take for themselves. It gives the game a wonderful sense of tempo: there’s a slow build-up, followed by a series of high-scoring turns where you try to cash in as much as possible while hoping that you won’t be the first player at the board to “fizzle out.”  And if you do fizzle out, then you get to play “defense,” creating small stacks to create buffers and “play defense” and limit the scoring opportunities for other players.

Circus Flohcati (2-5 players, 15-20 minutes)

Rethemed in Japan as  なつのたからもの (Treasures of Summer), featuring the many beautiful cards shown above which depict the various joys of summer, including fireworks, eating watermelon, visiting the beach, and so on.  (The English versions of Circus Flohcati are themed around a flea circus, and the various versions range from annoyingly cartoonish, to the debatably offputting illustrations of the 2016 English 2nd edition where all the members of the flea circus have human bodies and insect heads, like something out of a Cronenberg movie.)  Also, the Japanese cards have much better quality/texture.

Circus Flohcati is a game that is much more fun in practice than I would have expected from reading the rulebook before my first playthrough.  Technically speaking, there’s not much in the way of interaction, which is often how you get games with a “multiplayer solitaire” feel, where people feel at liberty to get up from the table and get a drink (or otherwise not pay attention to the game) when it’s not their turn. However, in practice, that rarely happens in Flohcati.  Part of it comes from the fact that you need to pay attention to what cards other people are picking up -- at the end of the game, you only score the highest card for each suit, and seeing someone else pick up a white 6 might clue you in as to how likely they might be willing to pass on a white 5.  There’s also 9 cards in the 89 card deck that allow for direct interaction, allowing you to do things like force another player to give you a card of their choosing or at random, so if you see someone take a card that you wanted, you should (and will) remember that fact for later.  (This is the only form of direct player interaction.)  Players also can get points for completing sets, so you want to be aware of what other people are taking.  (If you see someone else going after all the 3′s, maybe you don’t want to veer into their lane and compete with them for 3′s. Or maybe, if you’re seated to their right, you do want to compete with them and deny them the last one that they need to complete their set.)

But, more fundamentally, everyone pays attention during each other player’s turn because each turn feels exciting, because it’s a press-your-luck game: you can pick a face-up card from the table, but if you don’t like what you can see, you can flip over a new card -- with the stipulation that if you flip over a new card that matches a suit that’s already on the board, you “bust” and forfeit your turn.  There are 10 suits, so flipping over a new card when there’s 2 suits visible gives you a ~20% chance of busting (fairly safe), but the danger quickly increases...each card flip feels tense, and it’s fun to watch as other people at the table get greedy and either get rewarded or punished for their greed.

When reading the rulebook for the first time, the level of decision-making in this game didn’t strike me as something that would be all that interesting, but when playing, it strikes a good balance: the decisions are simple, but they’re fast and often quickly lead to other decisions as you ratchet up the risk and tension. As Knizia titles go, it’s not the deepest game, but every turn (including your opponents’) feels exciting and engaging.

Trendy (2-5 players, 20 minutes)

If you want to get your hands on a copy of this game, the 2021 Japanese version might actually be the easiest to find, as the only other versions are the original 2000 German release, and the 2004 version which was released in English.

The rules are simple: on your turn, you play out a numbered card face up. Once the table has collectively assembled a “complete set,” everyone who played cards as part of that set gets to score them, and all other cards that don’t match the trend get discarded. (A “complete set” requires a number of cards equal to the face value of the cards: three 3′s is a complete set, as is four 4′s, five 5′s, six 6′s, or seven 7′s.) Each card scores equal to its face value, so making higher numbers trend is harder, but more rewarding if you can pull it off.  Mixing things up are a few cards that count as two cards, and a few “out” cards that will discard all cards of a specific number from play.

Out of all of the games, it’s the one I feel the least compelled to go back and replay, as it lends itself to somewhat repetitive play patterns. And yet, as game designer, I kind of love this game for achieving what few games do, and that is perfectly communicating its theme through its gameplay.

In Trendy, you are often left in a quandary like this one: the table has just been cleared, and the player to your right has just played a 7. You also have a 7 -- so maybe you want to hop on that trend so that when the 7′s score, you won’t be left out. On the other hand, the person who played the first 7 probably has multiple 7′s in hand. If you play your own 7, you’ll be scoring 7 points for yourself, but you might be helping that opponent score 14 or even 21 points! Better to go under them with a low card like a 3 or a 4 -- you’ll score fewer points, but you’ll punish the player who played a 7.

So you play the 3. And then you watch in horror as the next two players also play 7′s, followed by the original player, playing a fourth 7. Now, 7′s are very close to trending -- will you stubbornly try to undercut them with a 3 and try to make 3′s trend first?  Or will you accept the inevitable, hop on the bandwagon, and add your 7 to the pile so you can at least walk away with 7 points (knowing that your opponents will probably be walking away with more)? But what if the table doesn’t collectively have seven 7′s -- what if your opponents don’t have that final 7, and by hopping on the trend, you’re actually helping them score cards that might have otherwise been dead in their hand?

That, in a nutshell, is Trendy -- like the name (and artwork/theme suggests), it is a game about watching as trends catch on, and being left in the tension of getting peer pressured into hopping on a trend out of fear of getting left behind, versus the decision to break from the crowd and try to start a new trend that catches on faster. And, of course, with each person who hops on the bandwagon, the trend only grows stronger and harder to buck. You don’t want to be left out, but the later you join a trend, the less cred you get for being part of the “in” group. The person who starts the trend often collects bigger rewards than all of the followers, so it’s better to be the king of the 3′s than the fourth person to jump on the 6 train. And because higher numbers are worth more points, the more unlikely a trend is, the more you get rewarded for starting it. The gameplay is such a perfect encapsulation of the game’s theme that I’m kind of left in awe.

And yet, there’s only so many times you can watch those stories play out before you start to get a “been there, done that” feel. Having played over a dozen hands of this game, I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent playing Trendy, and I’m happy to recommend of for the reasons above, but I’m not sure it’s a game that I’m sad to see leave my collection. (On the other hand, my sister loves this game and will probably be introducing many more people to it.) It’s a great game to introduce to new people who can play it for 15-60 minutes, then get to say goodbye to the game before they have a chance to grow tired of it -- and in a way, isn’t that exactly what you want out of a “gateway” game?

[darkpoisonouslove]

Sparks of Life Opera Edition

I am still not over Singing a New Tune so I am going to recap for you the experience of writing that fic because there were many interesting moments over the course of those three days. Lemme start from the beginning.

- So I’m writing a fic that mostly focuses on sexual stuff but it is also mainly happening in an opera so my first order of business is to figure out what that opera is. Both the building itself and the show they’ll be watching. Because that is of utmost importance.

- I have already mentioned that SoL is located in New York so I looked up New York operas. I do not vibe with research most of the time but I vibe even less with having to come up with names for any kind of thing so research was definitely the choice here.

- I somehow get results about operas that are in the other end of the USA. That was not great. I get to the Metropolitan Opera House at last (which I might have known existed if I cared about opera in any way, shape or form) which is great! I am so close to starting the fic! Just need to figure out what opera they’re watching. Because I need that for reasons.

- I end up downloading a PDF with the seatings inside the Met Opera so that I can figure out where the hell they will be seating. But I leave that for later. I look through the actual plays that they’re having while absolutely failing with the navigation of their site. I find a show that catches my eye. It’s called The Magic Flute. I have zero idea what it’s about so I read the Wikipedia summary just to be aware. It mentions that a character has a moment when he’s singing about his search for a wife and I think “Perfect! Foreshadowing!” (since this is set pretty early on in Griffin and Valtor’s relationship).

- I decide to look up the opera and see if I can find a part of it on youtube to figure out how it will sound. I am pretty sold on it already because of the summary I read and also because it implies there is magic as a subject in it which would call back to canon. Still, I look it up. I find a full version of it on the internet with English subtitles... It is 2 hours and 35 minutes:

- “Wow, okay... that’s a bit much. But hey, it has got subtitles in English. Maybe I’d actually watch that... once I’m done with the fic. I’m just gonna listen to a little bit while I finish my research, though, so I can have an idea of what it sounds like.”

- Now it’s time to open the engagement fic - Enough to Be Yours - because I don’t remember what year they got engaged in and I need that to reverse engineer the year in which this fic is taking place so that I can make sure that The Magic Flute was being performed back then. I don’t have an year stated in the engagement fic, though. I have a date - 9th October which is Friday and that means the year is 2015. Great! So I need to figure out if they were performing The Magic Flute back in 2010. Great.

- That takes a shit ton of time and nerves as it turns out. I spent over 4 hours just researching the logistics for this fic and a lot of that was unnecessary but I’m getting ahead of myself.

- I cannot find out whether they were performing the Magic Flute in 2010. I get results of it being broadcast in English (for the first time, I believe) in 2012 but that is way too late for this fic to be happening. Also, they are speaking of a broadcast which just doesn’t work for me. So I am having a hard time over here.

- I find a list of the new titles in 2011 but nothing mentions The Magic Flute as far as I can see.

- I am now considering switching to another opera. I see an opera that is based on events from The Song of the Nibelungs (I cannot be assed to go back and check what the actual title was). That catches my eye because I have read a book that was titled The Ring of the Nibelungs, I believe, and I kinda remember stuff from it... which is what makes me hesitate because that was a big tragedy.

- Meanwhile, I have stumbled upon a trailer for The Magic Flute:

MY GOD IS THAT BEAUTIFUL! THOSE PROPS ARE FUCKING GORGEOUS! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN THAT YOU GET TO GO AND SEE THAT LIVE? THAT IS NUTS! (Also, when I mentioned paper birds (I think they are) in the fic, I meant the ones shown in 0:13, not the big one in the beginning but HOLY SHIT, DID YOU SEE THAT THING????? HOW IS THAT REAL?!?!?!?! IT IS SO FUCKING AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN’T. I AM DYING. THIS IS JUST TOO BEAUTIFUL.)

- I somehow happen upon an old archive of the opera (idk how I did that but I bookmarked it in case I’ll need it again) that has information about plays going back as far as the year 1900. This is nuts! I am in too deep but I can’t pull myself away. I’ve gotten this far, I will see it through.

- I search for keyword “flute” and I get results. Some of them are pretty old but I finally find what I need. Performances of the Magic Flute in 2010! Bingo!

-  ...Oh, wait, they’re all around Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Hmm... when will it be okay for them to go? I mean, Valtor has been established to have zero free time around that time of the year and I can’t see them going on the 24th or the 31st... Oh, those are matinees. Definitely no! I need them to go in the evening. And some of these are broadcasts which doesn’t work for me either.

- I looked up earlier years as well. I considered another opera again. I decided to switch up the timeline a little. It makes sense if it’s in 2009. I think they had spring performances of The Magic Flute then. Or was it 2008? Anyway, I finally settle on an early April date in 2009 (I think). Now that that’s settled, let’s go back to the seats.

- First I need to figure out what floor (let’s say) of the opera they’re on. I was thinking of the last one first (family circle) but the boxes (I figure those seats will be safest for their activities) look like this:

which isn’t vibing with me because they would be in the front row and it seems more visible. So I relocate to the previous floor (balcony) that looks like this:

That works a little better although there’s the danger of having more people in their box. But they’re sitting in box 14, seats 5 (Griffin) and 6 (Valtor) (where the arrow is pointing) and there’s only one man in seat 4 in front of them. So that is the best I can do.

- Wow, all that’s finally figured out. I decide to do all the rest of the research up front in order to be able to just write after that and not stop for another 4 hours. More on those other things later BUT I get to the part where I need to pick a vibrator and... well, I done fucked up.

- First thing that comes up for a remote controlled vibrator is Lush, of course. And I am immediately sold because it has a sound activated setting which Valtor will definitely love to utilize while in the opera.

BUT

Lush 2 (which is the first one to have the sound activated setting, I believe) came out in 2018. Even if we accept that Lush also has it, that came out in 2015. My fic is set in 2009. Searching for 2009 vibrators literally went no where so in the end I decided that the SoL verse is actually set in a parallel universe where time is a little warped so the Lush 2 is out in 2009. Plus, that way there isn’t going to be a pandemic in future installments. Overall, that works. Except that I needn’t have been so thorough with my opera research beforehand. Oh, well. It’s finally time to start writing.

- How do you write? How do you start a fic? One word in front of the other? Oh, okay, never mind. Lipstick is a girl’s best friend. Let’s start from there. And a kiss that leads to the discussion of lipstick... Damn, I forgot to spend one more hour on researching what kind of lipstick Griffin would have worn. Shame! You don’t get that detail now. I believe I didn’t even mention a shade.

- Oh, wait. Need for his breath to taste like something. Hmm, let’s see. Tonic water? Yeah, that sounds about right. Never mind that he should have probably drunk it right before getting out of the car to kiss her if it was still lingering on his breath. I mean, that’s not impossible. Just improbable.

- He’s also wearing cologne, right? Gotta research that too. How else would I get this:

and zero idea what it actually smells like despite the description. Also, did not check if that was a thing in 2009 but the story now exists in a vacuum so who cares.

- Apparently, Griffin doesn’t own any golden bracelets even though she does have a golden necklace? Or she could have a golden bracelet, just not one she likes for the current situation? Anyway, I wanted to mention Ediltrude as well because the twins always go together and that was the best I came up with. (That said, I didn’t need to put the mentions of them one sentence apart.)

- My god, I used a semicolon! That feels illegal. I sure hope I used that bitch correctly.

- Okay, I absolutely love all the banter and just flow in the car. Idk how I did that since it’s such a constricted space but I am really proud of it. However, the logistics were sometimes hard to logic my way through. I mean, Valtor doesn’t get to look at her a lot and I had to employ a red traffic light to give him the chance to do so.

- I hit a wall about three paragraphs later. Things started going in a weird direction. I was considering even deleting the last two lines but then I managed to get back on track thanks to having figured out how they met and I decided to write a little bit about that without spoiling it (that will be a fic of its own some day). Suffice it to say it was a meet-very-ugly. But it bailed me out. Also, they got over it so it’s all good.

- And now... that paragraph. You know which one I’m talking about. It stands out with the locations I’ve given. That paragraph required 30 minutes of looking at Google Earth to figure it out and I still nearly got it wrong. At that point it occurred to me that they’ll need a place to park. I mean, idk how parking is in NYC but it’s probably not the way it is in Bulgaria especially on small neighborhood streets where it’s just... park wherever (even in front of a garage if you’re brazen enough and don’t fear having your tires slashed). So first, I was going to have them coming down Tenth Avenue and passing by the backside of the Opera which is not ideal for me because I needed Griffin to figure out they’re going to the opera so that they can have the following dialogue. But there is the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts right next door so I figure Griffin will recognize the area if it’s next to a library. And I have them almost at the garage but... that’s not looking right. This garage is on 65th Street and mine is on 62nd... I have been looking at the wrong garage for the past hour. Now that I have caught that mistake, things get easier. They just drive right past the facade of the opera, take a right turn and then enter the garage. Easy peasy. For whoever’s actually paying attention to the map.

- They’re in the garage now and I have to write another kiss. Shoot! I do not vibe with writing kisses. Writing sex scenes is much easier. But I’ll try my best because this is a little bit necessary if we’re dealing with an insertion of a vibrator in a public bathroom one minute from now. (Again, logistics!) I actually went back to add in a little discomfort during the kiss (but not too much because they’re consumed with each other anyway and probably missed something) just to make it more realistic. They can’t be comfortable in the car. Also, you have got to love how I never even thought of what make the car is. But I did stop to research the tinting of the car windows.

- Now this is extremely funny but I would have had zero idea that there are different laws about how tinted your car windows can be in the USA if I hadn’t read a very extensive critique of Fifty Shades (whichever part it was that had that info). So I look up the VLT for New York and it says 70%. Great! Then it won’t be that visible through the windows what they’re doing inside. Oh, wait! VLT means Visible Light Transmission aka 70% of the light should be passing through the window. Aka it is only tinted on 30%. This much:

That’s practically nothing. You can see everything through it. Welp, then someone’s gonna see, I guess.

- Can’t believe I didn’t stop to look up clutches either. (Lmao, I was calling it a purse instead of a clutch at first even though I definitely meant a clutch. And then I remembered that clutch existed as a word. Who would’ve thought?) It’s baffling trying to figure out why my brain was prioritizing some details over others and I just genuinely have no idea what was going on.

- Griffin is blushing a lot in this. Can you tell I have no idea how else to convey Valtor giving her feelings through body language?

- I first envisioned the box being opened by the hair pin by turning it like a key. Only later did I realize that that wouldn’t be possible because the pin has two parts (whatever they’re called) and that would make turning it impossible unless all of the base fits into one hole in the lid of the box. So I had to adapt my vision to using the extensions at the ends of the hair pin like a hook that pulls the lid up once it’s clicked free. I have zero idea how that would be done but I’m sure it can be done. So yeah, anyway, the pin looks like this but with attachments at the ends to open the box:

- I might have gone a little overboard with Griffin’s reaction to having the vibrator inside her. I might have made her a bit too embarrassed but I still think that she simply wouldn’t appreciate someone knowing about what she considers a private experience (despite the very public setting).

- And I am being overly specific again with the seats but I worked for that information so you’re getting it against your will!

- Speaking of, that man in their box was pretty ignored throughout the fic. But then again Griffin wasn’t overflowing with lucidity. She is sure to have missed... A Lot, actually.

- My apologies (once again) to @her-majesty-wears-jeans​ for not letting Griffin punch Valtor in the face for the terrible pun he was about to make but I thought that that would ruin the mood so I had to skip it.

- I might have imagined things a little differently but then consent factored in and I had to change things up so that Griffin is clearly on board with everything. I hope it came through that way at least. She is on board even if she is very, very frustrated. She would never throw the bet just because it’s difficult for her. Though, I’m taking note for future fics of maybe being a little bit more explicit about the enjoyment of all parties involved. I just couldn’t really think of a way to convey it better back then and I am coming up with several ideas now and I will try to keep them in mind for future fics.

- I keep going back and forth on just how far into their relationship this is. Sometimes it feels like it’s not enough time for them to get this familiar with each other and sometimes it feels like too much for them to still be skirting their feelings for each other like that. Will update when I make up my mind about how long exactly it has been.

- In retrospect, probably should have picked up an opera that people would be less likely to bring their children to (as brought to my attention by @her-majesty-wears-jeans​). I apologize for this. Did not consider it at all.

- A wild tangent about Griffin’s sexual experiences before Valtor popped up (for the second time now). This is giving me thoughts and I am not even sure if I’ll manage to get them all out in the bachelorette party fic. Oh, no, I am getting ideas again.

- God, I had to mention those paper birds because I adore them. Also, needed to do a time skip somehow (sure hope they don’t show up at the very end or the very beginning).

- So there are some things about the whole thing with the suit jacket that if you squint, you’ll miss the very far-fetched and convoluted ways in which I could make them make sense but again, it isn’t impossible to make them operate according to logic so good enough.

- And now for the dress:

I thought it would be reasonable for Griffin to own something like that. It doesn’t look overly expensive or dramatic.

- I swear that most of the 2% angst was an accident. Griffin was supposed to say the “You paid how much for tickets exactly just so you could fool around?” line but the following few paragraphs sprang on me out of nowhere. That was where I left it off the first day I was working on it and I wasn’t sure how to continue it. Then the angst happened.

- I do not believe the retaliation part was planned but would it really be a Griffin x Valtor story if something like that hadn’t happened? XD

- “reverberated”, “multitudinous” and “unobtainable” are probably not words that Griffin’s muddled mind would go to in that precise moment but everything else I came up with for them just did not sound right.

- I completely forgot the word for neckline and was so mad at myself for that but, luckily, I managed to remember it before posting the fic. I believe the original read “he slipped a finger under the fabric of her dress, running it over the top of her breast” which is not incorrect but just not precise enough for my liking.

- Sure hope the shortened version of the opera did not cut out the ending musical sequence. But that seems unlikely.

- The idea was running overly long in my head by having them going back to the penthouse so that I could have the scene where he picked her up so I decided to move things around and have him carry her bridal style on their way from the opera to the car. It’s not like she didn’t earn it.

- Pretty sure I had planned something a little different for the last several lines of dialogue but I couldn’t remember what so we get this. Which isn’t a disadvantage. I mean, Griffin is already thinking of marrying him. XD (That’s probably a bit of a stretch at the current status of their relationship but then again, she was thinking of a wedding, not necessarily of their wedding even though I’m clearly a little romance gargoyle that meant exactly that.)

- Originally, Valtor was supposed to floor the brakes while they were out in the NYC traffic but then I decided that doing it while still in the garage with only one car behind them and both vehicles driving at a very slow speed was a lot safer so I switched to that. It also saved me writing more words which was appreciated. I thought this fic would be a bit shorter.

- I was at a loss for how many orgasms Griffin should want from him but then the commitment line happened and that was all avoided.

[odanurr87]

Recreating a puzzle: A look at Voltron’s Seasons 3 through 7

A few days ago I happened to watch a video recommended to me by YT titled, “How Voltron Became a Tragedy | Part 1: Production.” This video essay, referencing other sources, expounded upon the show’s multiple production issues, but in particular how and why the roles of Shiro and Keith changed as the series progressed. At the end of Season 2, it is pretty much accepted by everyone that Shiro had either died or vanished, leading Keith to reluctantly take up the mantle of Paladin of the Black Lion at the beginning of Season 3, something that had been (weakly, to my mind) set up in the previous season. That was exactly the story the executive producers, Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos, had originally envisioned: Shiro’s death fighting Zarkon during Season 2′s finale would be the catalyst that would push Keith into the leadership position in Season 3.

For better or worse, Shiro had apparently been well received by audiences, so much so that Dreamworks’ executives were banking on him to sell toys (see here). There was only one problem, Shiro was already dead and Season 3 was probably well into production, if not finished already. There was only one thing to be done, Season 3 would’ve to be edited to bring everyone’s favourite space dad back to life. After watching The Sin Squad’s video, I decided to rewatch some of the seasons, starting with Season 3, but looking at them with a more critical eye, and bearing in mind that Shiro would have to be inserted into a season that hadn’t originally accounted for him. I watched up to and including Seasons 6 and 7 to see if I could make sense of... other issues. I wanted to see for myself what the author of the video essay was arguing. In the end, I think I managed to piece together what the original Season 3 was meant to look like and then some.

NOTE: The following is pure speculation on my part. It’s nothing more than a fun mental exercice that I decided to engage on, but I think it’s probably on the right track. I’ll let you, the reader, decide.

Buying time: The new Season 3 of Voltron

It should come as no surprise that with the mandate to resurrect Shiro in a season that no longer featured him and was probably wrapped up or close to, the creators would need to buy some time to effect the necessary changes to the existing episode line-up. I believe this explains why Season 3 went on to have only 7 episodes, as opposed to the standard 13 of previous seasons, as they just didn’t have enough time to work on all 13 episodes. Season 3 was released on August 4th, 2017, while Season 4 was released on October 13th, 2017. While I’m not arguing the creators used these three months to work specifically on Season 4 (I wouldn’t know, but I’m guessing they probably had it wrapped up sometime before), it is probably indicative of the delay caused by the rewrites. This new Season 3, comprised of only 7 episodes, would feature at least one completely new episode designed to re-introduce Shiro, Episode 305 “The Journey.” Furthermore, Episode 306 “Tailing a Comet” would be edited to incorporate Shiro, but the editing would be constrained by preventing Shiro from joining the team on the mission via the Black Lion not recognizing him as her Paladin. After this, we’re only left with one more episode in the new Season 3, and that’s “The Legend Begins,” a story that conveniently focuses on the old Paladins of Voltron and so requires minimum tampering. I cannot say for certain “The Legend Begins” was a new episode, but I’m leaning towards the notion that it was crafted to serve as the new Season 3 finale, as we would only have been through half the season at that point and the previous seasons didn’t have a mid-season finale. But this could only serve as a temporary solution, as Shiro couldn’t possibly be benched for the entire season or else there would’ve been little point in bringing him back. If Shiro had to come back no matter what, then Keith would have to go.

Welcome to the future, Keith.

In Episode 401 “Code of Honor,” we see Keith is now working with the Blade of Marmora on what are supposed to be temporary assignments as he’s still acknowledged by the team as the pilot of the Black Lion. Meanwhile, the rest of Team Voltron are on parade duty, trying to build a coalition to stand against the Galra Empire. This episode always rubbed me the wrong way as it created a friction between Keith and the rest of the team that wasn’t there a few episodes ago. His joining the Blades came out of nowhere and Shiro’s harsh attitude towards Keith (“This isn’t a request, Keith. That’s an order.”) was very much unlike him. While I don’t dismiss the possibility out of hand that some version of this episode may have existed in some form, I agree with others who’ve suggested “Code of Honor” was probably a new episode that was never part of the original Season 3 line-up. Keith had to go and Episode 401 was created to explain away his absence. Out of the remaining 5 episodes of Season 4, the next 2 have minimal Shiro presence, and Episode 404 “The Voltron Show!” adds nothing to the overarching storyline, but it has some nice meta references to executive meddling as The Sin Squad’s video astutely points out. After these, we’re left with the two-parter, “Begin the Blitz” and “A New Defender,” and it’s curious to note Keith only returns in an active role in the latter (he had previously appeared in “Begin the Blitz” standing next to Kolivan on a view screen, but didn’t even talk). However, I can’t help but realize Keith’s actions in the Season 4 finale are largely irrelevant and replaceable, what makes sense as Keith was originally slated to lead Voltron in this strike against the Galra. 

Another thing I noticed was that it is Lance who goes into a motivational speech telling Allura how she is “the one who brought everyone together” and how she is “the heart of Voltron,” giving her the confidence she needed to connect with Voltron on a deeper level. I can’t help but think that, with Shiro there, he would’ve been the natural candidate for that kind of talk as that is what leaders are supposed to do, and what Shiro has been known to do in the past. On the other hand, if it wasn’t Shiro but Keith who’s supposed to be there, then the idea of Lance giving the speech makes more sense, as he was also the one who talked Keith into accepting the Black Lion’s decision and taking up the mantle of leadership.

There is another possible take on this scene that I can’t dismiss altogether and that’s been nagging at me ever since I finished piecing this together. It’s possible Keith was originally slated to talk Allura into connecting with Voltron and not Lance, proving he had grown into his leadership role. With Keith gone, there would’ve been no problem reworking the scene to fit Shiro. However, I wonder whether romance had a part to play in this matter. It’s possible the scene was reworked to have Lance talk to Allura instead in order to set up a potential relationship in the future or perhaps to account for one that had already been set up. This might also explain that bizarre scene in Episode 503 where Lance unlocks King Alfor’s bayard... never to be seen again until Season 8. You can see the dangers of trying to reverse-engineer what exactly went on behind the scenes with limited data.

Who was originally supposed to give this speech? Maybe we’ll never know.

The episode ends with Lotor making an eleventh hour appearance to save Voltron (stealing Keith’s thunder). In the end, I think it wouldn’t be too far from the truth to surmise the following from Seasons 3 and 4:

Episodes 301 to 304 were part of the original Season 3 storyline where Keith would slowly grow into his role as leader of Team Voltron while also serving to introduce a new foe, Prince Lotor (who coincidentally has a Voltron-like team of his own and is also half-Galra).

Episode 305 was not part of the original Season 3 storyline, and was crafted as a response to executive pressure to bring back Shiro.

Episode 306 was reworked to feature Shiro but retained the core of an original Season 3 episode.

Episode 307 was probably a new addition to serve as season finale.

Episode 401 was a new episode meant to explain Keith’s absence from the team.

Episodes 402 and 403 were part of the original Season 3 storyline, edited somewhat to change Keith into Shiro.

Episode 404 was definitely a new addition and I posit that it was probably created to comply with a mandatory 13 episode order for each season (I’ll explain why shortly).

Episodes 405 and 406 were part of the original Season 3 storyline, reworked to turn Keith into Shiro, while also giving the new Keith something to do.

If we can agree on the above, then another issue presents itself. If 4 out of the 13 episodes of the original Season 3 are new, then what happened to the original 4? Have they been lost to us forever on the cutting room floor? It would seem like a waste of effort and time that I doubt the creators could afford. I did ponder this for a while and thought it was a futile exercice at first... until I finally asked the right question. What was the real ending of the original Season 3? If new episodes could be created and old ones reworked, there was no reason to believe some couldn’t be reshuffled, so why should we assume that "A New Defender” was always a season finale? And if it wasn’t, well, what was the original ending?

Season 5 and the “lost” Season 3 episodes

I feel this is a natural extension of what The Sin Squad’s video argued so don’t give me too much credit. It was pretty obvious, really. Where else could the original Season 3 finale go but forward into Season 5? On a hunch, because I didn’t recall the exact details of the episode, I checked the 4th episode of Season 5, “Kral Zera.” I skimmed all the way to the end to see if the episode had the makings of a season finale and was rewarded by this...

Fuck me if this isn’t just about a perfect way to end a season that makes you giddy with anticipation.

This was a very good sign, but I had to make sure so I skimmed through the first three episodes of Season 5 as well as a couple after Episode 504. The result was better than I could’ve hoped for. Not only do we see a Shiro that is an asshole to Lance in Episode 503, but we also see him side with Lotor against the rest of Team Voltron, not to mention he had the balls to lend him the black bayard during his fight with Zarkon and also goes against the team’s decision and backs Lotor anyway in his bid for the throne. This is not Shiro, this is not Kuron, this has Keith written all over the place. Only Keith would act so recklessly and impulsively, perhaps conflicted by a kinship with Lotor due to their shared Galra heritage, coupled with his usual desire to settle things quickly and often on his own. Also, if you pay close attention, Shiro stops being an asshole and acting out of character after these first four episodes of Season 5! Last but not least, the focus of the story after Episode 504 shifts to Allura's relationship with Lotor and their work to unlock the secrets of Altean magic, not to mention Keith takes on a more active role than the one he had had up to this point.

And thus we now have a clearer picture of what the original Season 3 was supposed to be about. It was the story of Keith and Lotor, the parallels and differences between two people with shared Galra heritage who had been groomed to become leaders. It was the story of Keith trying to fill the hole left by Shiro as the leader of Voltron and succeeding and failing in equal measure. It was the story of Lotor trying to leave his father’s shadow and ascend to the throne of the Galra Empire the only way he knew how, the Galra way. It was a story that would see new alliances forged to overthrow the old regime and have Keith make a decision that would have lasting repercussions for Voltron and the universe at large. It would’ve been as tight a season as its predecessors had been and this is what I think the season might have looked like at one point:

Episode 301: Changing of the Guard

Episode 302: Red Paladin

Episode 303: The Hunted

Episode 304: Hole in the Sky

Episode 305: Reunion (currently Episode 402)

Episode 306: Tailing a Comet

Episode 307: Black Site (currently Episode 403)

Episode 308: Begin the Blitz (currently Episode 405)

Episode 309: A New Defender (currently Episode 406)

Episode 310: The Prisoner (currently Episode 501)

Episode 311: Blood Duel (currently Episode 502)

Episode 312: Postmortem (currently Episode 503)

Episode 313: Kral Zera (currently Episode 504)

Feel free to rewatch these episodes and draw your own conclusions.

Beyond Season 5: The many returns of Shiro

Having arrived at this point, after more or less successfully restoring Keith from the Shiro/Kuron clone and reconstructing the original structure of Season 3, one feels almost compelled to find more evidence of similar tampering, and therein lies the danger of pushing a theory too far. I watched Seasons 5 and 6, paying close attention to Shiro and Keith to see if either could be replaced, but I’m afraid I didn’t see anything to make me suspect the episodes had been edited in a similar fashion. I am led to believe that the season restructuring that went on behind the scenes bought the creators enough time so that the remaining episodes of Seasons 5 and 6 were built from the ground up to accommodate the change in narrative, namely having Shiro as the leader of Team Voltron while Keith was doing his own thing with the Blades. This is not to say however, that Season 6 wasn’t tampered in any way, shape, or form, but if so, it was done to accommodate other issues in the ongoing narrative of the show.

Introducing Kosmo, the cosmic wolf.

Of particular interest is Kosmo’s impromptu appearance in Episode 602 “Razor’s Edge,” a sort of cosmic wolf that has the unusual ability to teleport and whose design bears a curious resemblance to Shiro, as has been previously noted by @ptw30 here. If memory serves, Kosmo only ever uses this teleport ability during his introduction in Season 6, an ability that would serve a more prominent role in the first half of Season 7. @ptw30 argues that Kosmo is, or was supposed to be at some point, the real Shirogane, who perhaps decided to contact Keith after his failure to warn Lance. On the other hand, there’s another post, which I recently shared, that provides a different spin on the above theory, titled “The Wolf, the Atlas and the Bayard” by @janestrider. @janestrider suggests the wolf was merely added to Season 7, replacing what would’ve originally been Shiro’s role. According to this theory, Shiro would’ve returned as the Black Paladin and would’ve gained teleportation powers for all his troubles.

Initially, I was inclined to side with the theory of the wolf replacing Shiro, but after dwelling on it for a while now, I find myself agreeing with @ptw30′s take on things. Remember, Lauren and Joaquim had originally wanted Keith to lead Team Voltron after Shiro’s “death,” and I they fought hard behind the scenes to make this happen ever since they got the mandate to “bring Shiro back.” Evidently, they eventually got their way as Keith returns in Season 6 to lead Voltron against Lotor, and I doubt Lauren and Joaquim wanted a return to the status quo of Seasons 1 and 2, with Shiro in the chair of Black and Keith in the chair of Red (more on this later). This was their chance to get back on track with their original vision, but that meant wrapping up the Kuron storyline and putting fake Shiro on ice. How did they manage to convince the Dreamworks’ execs to “bend the knee” and bench Shiro? By assuring executives they were already working on his return, and this is where I believe the cosmic wolf comes into play. Be forewarned, from here onwards, I am speculating beyond the realm of what would probably be considered safe. This is just my interpretation and it might be utterly wrong or on the right track but may still not account for everything. Are you up for that? Read on.

To Shiro or not to Shiro, that is the question.

The most egregious culprit that has us all theorizing about tampering in Season 7, is Shiro’s presence, or lack thereof. Let’s be honest, for the first half of Season 7, and save for the flashback-heavy first episode, Shiro has such a minimal impact on the events around him that he might as well have been added to the scenes as an afterthought... or at someone’s request. Let’s look at some of the evidence:

In Episode 703 “The Way Forward,” when Keith takes off to help Acxa it is Lance he turns to to lead the Paladins safely, not Shiro who’s supposedly there and is the most experienced of the bunch when it comes to escaping from the Galra. Shiro just stands there and follows the others. It’s also been observed that Shiro’s helmet is not on the table with the other Paladins’ helmets.

Episode 704′s “The Feud!” is yet another “interlude” episode that doesn’t even feature Shiro. 

In Episode 705 “The Ruins,” Shiro doesn’t jump in the hole carved by Allura as the Paladins rush to aid Keith.

In Episode 706 “The Journey Within,” he has one intervention before events eventually sideline him and the story focuses entirely on the bond between Keith, Lance, Hunk, Pidge, and Allura. I think the writers were probably trying to make up for lost time trying to build Keith into the leader he was originally supposed to be (this is echoed later in the season in episodes like “Know Your Enemy,” where he has a rather heart-warming conversation with Hunk).

It is only starting with Episode 709 “Know Your Enemy,” that Shiro’s presence starts to get acknowledged more. I personally think this makes sense for one simple reason: Shiro was not supposed to be there, not conscious anyway. Let’s go back to Season 6 for a bit. After Keith’s duel with the Shiro clone, he places him in a stasis pod, and he’s brought back by Allura in “Defender of All Universes” when she withdraws his consciousness from the Black Lion and places it on the Shiro clone’s body. Shiro’s back everybody! Except he doesn’t appear in the final shot of the season, and he’s immediately back into the stasis pod in the next episode because the clone body is apparently rejecting Shiro’s consciouness. No, this sounds like a rewrite to me. Why would you wake up Shiro in one episode, only to send him to sleep in the next? It doesn’t make sense. 

Here’s what I think happened. Lauren and Joaquim introduced Kosmo in Season 6 to pave the way for the real Shiro’s return, probably sometime during Season 7 or after. They apparently made a big deal of not wanting to spoil the wolf’s name and even Keith says in Episode 705, “I figure when he’s ready, he’ll tell me his name.” I figure Kosmo would’ve merged with the Shiro clone’s body somehow, maybe by transforming into his missing arm, kind of similar to what happens in Episode 710 with Earth’s bionic arm and the Altean power source. Maybe the clone regained consciousness and went berserk and Kosmo merged with the clone to bring back Shiro. I don’t know, and I think the writers probably hadn’t nailed the details down either when someone realized Shiro would be absent for a good chunk of Season 7 and, for whatever reason, he needed to have more screentime. Maybe someone thought it was a downer to have Season 6 end with a comatose Shiro and weren’t entirely sold on the cosmic wolf idea. Déjà vu? This presented a problem because several Season 7 episodes were probably well into production and could not be reshot without incurring in signifcant expense and time. The solution? Have Shiro return ahead of time... again. I can only imagine Lauren and Joaquim’s frustration. Their plans had been derailed once by exec interference, and they were about to be derailed again.

Shiro returns... again.

It was too late to remove the wolf, as he had too much screentime and that would imply a lot of work. There was little point in removing him anyway as he would only become Shiro in some potential version of the show that now would never come to pass. The problem wasn’t the wolf, the problem was Shiro, or his lack thereof. I’m not entirely certain to what extent Season 6 was reworked, but I’m inclined to believe the ending to “Defender of All Universes” was altered to have Shiro return earlier by having Allura perform the consciousness transfer. There, the gang was all back together now and you had a happy ending to Season 6. What would the original Season 6 ending would’ve been? I’m not sure, but lately I have been musing if some episodes from Season 7 could not have been part of the original Season 6 ending. In particular, it’s possible that, after defeating Lotor, the Paladins would’ve been captured by his lieutenants (Episode 702), only to be saved by Acxa who would inform them three years had passed (Episode 703). With the lions depleted, Shiro in stasis, and having gotten a taste of how the universe had changed (for the worse) in Voltron’s absence, it would’ve provided a nice cliffhanger ending for the season, if perhaps a tad depressing. Of course, it’s equally possible that these episodes were always meant to be in Season 7 and I’m woefully wrong.

This was only the beginning, as Shiro would’ve to be added into several of Season 7′s episodes. You could get away with the idea of the clone rejecting his consciousness for an episode (and even then they included lots of flashbacks of his relationship with Keith, not to mention that silly and tone-deaf Yalmor adventure), maybe waste some time with passenger arrangements, and throw in something like “The Feud!” to make the gaps less noticeable. I honestly don’t know the extent to which Season 7 was reworked to hide Shiro’s absence. I don’t think “The Last Stand” two-parter was specifically created to account for this, as I believe that’s a story Lauren and Joaquim probably wanted to tell to set up their Macross dreams. I also believe we can affirm, with a relative degree of certainty, that there’s a before and after marked by “The Last Stand” two-parter. Before this interlude, Shiro has minimal impact in the story, but he definitely has a more prominent role after. And here’s where I want to quote something Lauren and Joaquim said in an interview with Hypable published on August 10th, 2018:

You also had Shiro step into a hugely pivotal role as Captain of the Atlas. Was this a path that you’d always envisaged for him, or was it something that developed as the show progressed?

LM: A little bit of both. There was definitely a version of this show where Shiro was not around at this point.

JDS: There was also a version where Shiro was going to be back to piloting the Black Lion.

LM: Yeah, it’s been through every possible version of the story. Ultimately, when we finally got to where we knew we were going to be able to move forward with Keith as the Black Lion pilot, and still have Shiro in the show, we wanted to pay as much respect to Shiro as we could because he was such an important character. And in a weird way we kind of keep the team together a little bit. Shiro moves on to this other ship, and he has a whole new crew, but he’s fighting alongside his team, these Paladins that he’s basically taught how to be Paladins. And so I think it was just rewarding for us on a happy, warm, fuzzy feeling level. Where he’s there, and he’s got kind of the most bitchin’ ship of all of them.

JDS: You know, that was our big pitch internally, when the executives were saying, “well, how is this going to play out?” They were asking us questions, and we got to have this big meeting where we said, guys, Shiro is going to be Captain of the Atlas. They were like, “okaaaay,” still thinking that it was very much just the Atlas battleship. And we were like, “and the Atlas does something really cool.” They were all in at that point.

And this is where I agree with @janestrider that there was a version of Shiro going back to being the Black Paladin, it’s just that I disagree with where and when it would’ve taken place. I believe Lauren is correct in saying there was a version of the show where Shiro wasn’t around, and that version was the “Kosmo is Shiro” storyline that seeped into some of the earlier Season 7 episodes. I believe Joaquim is also correct in saying there was a version of Shiro going back to piloting the Black Lion, and that version was being considered as a potential alternative while Lauren and Joaquim were trying to convince execs to keep Keith around as the leader, and would probably have taken place after the Paladins arrive on Earth. I also don’t entirely dismiss the possibility that some of the latter Season 7 episodes had to be reworked in the way suggested by @janestrider, replacing Allura with Shiro at the head of the Atlas battleship. This would explain things like why Shiro needed to have that Altean crystal in his arm (so he could interact with the ship in the same way Allura did with the Castle of Lions), or why the Blue Lion (painted Red afterwards) didn’t immediately beckon Lance’s call (in fact, Keith drops a curious line in Episode 710, saying “And Red saved my life numerous times” when the Paladins discuss the idea of calling their lions).

Conclusion

Having arrived at this point, allow me to put an end to my speculatory ramblings, or else I’ll start seeing edits everywhere, if I’m not already. What is the bottom line? I think Shiro’s voice actor, Josh Keaton, put it best, “Shiro’s great at everything but dying,” and that caused problems for Lauren and Joaquim not just once, but twice. As a result of all the behind-the-scenes work to accommodate Shiro, the end product we got was considerably less tight than Seasons 1 and 2 had been, and the battle to rescue Keith from the clutches of corporate meddling left several casualties in the character development department. It’s possible that this had repercussions in Season 8, but I have yet to analyze it with a critical eye. At the end of the day, and like I said at the beginning, this is just a fun mental exercice I decided to indulge in, spurred on by The Sin Squad’s video. Maybe this is what happened, maybe not. Perhaps time will tell, but in the meantime, why not watch a fun video about Shiro bragging about his invincibility? He’s definitely earned it.

[codylabs]

CodyLabs Guide To...

Specifically, I will be analyzing Time Travel in Gravity Falls. Yes it’s a kid’s show and I’m an adult man, but I hecking got myself INTO this, alright? This is IMPORTANT TO ME.

(This also serves as an appendix for my fanfiction, The Forest of Daggers. So if you’ve been linked here from that, good for you. You’re in the right place.)

Anyway.

So.

If you’re ready for some weird science, press the ‘Keep reading’ button and hang onto your butt.

Whenever I watch a time-travel movie, I want to know and understand what’s happening. That is, I want to understand the rules that the movie assigns to this fictional phenomenon. What power or technology allows it? Can you travel to the past? Can you meet yourself? Can you change the past (i.e., is the time travel stable or unstable)? How far can you change the past? Are you yourself affected by changes the past incurs? Does changing the past ‘replace’ the old reality, split the universe into two realities, or warp the reality that is? Do you have free will while in the past? What kind of paradoxes (if any) are likely to pop up, and what the heck does a paradox even do anyway?

Every movie, book, or piece of media seems to have different rules.

Back to the Future (perhaps the most well-known version) uses a freaky-looking car as a means to ‘time-drive’ to the past. It does allow changes to the past (that is, it is unstable). Changes to the past do affect the time traveler himself (when he accidentally prevents his parents from hooking up, he himself begins to disappear.) He does retain free will. And this movie clearly threatens an unstable time paradox: changing the past would kill the time traveler or else remove his means of ever changing the past in the first place, thus generating an inconsistent loop of causality that just doesn’t add up, no matter how hard you think about it.

In Groundhog Day (a classic comedy that uses the same exact rules as one of my all-time favorite movies, Edge of Tomorrow) the main character ‘time-resets’ back to the previous morning via his own mysterious innate power. However, his entire body isn’t transported back in time, but only his brain, skills, and memories. He replaces himself, and then has complete freedom to change the past however he can. Although he has complete free will, his memories and everything he brought with him remain unaffected by his changes, thereby never resulting in a messy paradox. The old reality from before the changes is assumed to disappear without a physical trace.

Terminator goes a whole different route. In Terminator, one cannot change the past at all (doesn’t stop the murderous Austrian robots from trying, but hey, to each his own.) In terminator, time travel is accomplished via a big, ominous time portal, which ‘time-teleports’ folks back without equipment or clothes. Once in the past, the time traveler’s actions inevitably result in the future happening the way it already did. A killer robot tries to kill the mother of the leader of the human resistance, and fails. A human resistance member goes back and makes him fail, along the way getting the mother pregnant with said leader of the human resistance… And to further complicate things, the time-traveling killer robot is reverse-engineered by human scientists, and accidentally used to create the robots that started the whole mess in the first place. This is a clear-as-mud example of a stable time paradox: wherein time travel occurs, and the reason it occurs is because it did. (Sure, if it didn’t occur then it wouldn’t occur, but instead it did so it would, which makes a better movie, so ha, so there.)

Yeah.

All that being said, what rules does Gravity Falls follow?

Well, let’s start with the basics.

Time travel is accomplished by using small, tape-measure-shaped devices to ‘time-teleport’ one or more passengers at once (along with their equipment and clothes, thanks a lot for making that distinction necessary, Terminator…) to any time in history. In order to be time-teleported, passengers must be either touching the device, or in direct physical contact with another passenger who is.

Since time machines have been stolen in the show from time to time, and the time-authorities have to physically chase down the time-criminals to retrieve them, we can assume that they are totally independent devices that run under their own power and control. It is never specified in the show how long it takes them to run out of fuel, or if they even require fuel at all.

Now, as for the actual rules of how time travel behaves, the particulars are never really laid out very precisely. But if you happen to be writing a hard sci-fi fanfic (the unfortunate and uncomfortable predicament in which I find myself), you need to interpret Alex Hirsch’s unspoken rules properly, and need to make your writing fit with his. (Note: In this analysis, I’m going to be ignoring the book “Dipper, Mabel, and the Curse of the Time Pirates’ Treasure”, firstly because I haven’t read it, secondly because it isn’t canon, and thirdly because its many alternate endings don’t fit with the natural stability of time that we see in the show.)

So let’s look at the evidence from the show’s 2 episodes where time-travel is prominently featured.

Diagram of Blendin’s Game:

Blendin’s Game is very clear-cut, so I’ll start there. In that episode, the time-travel behaves in a highly stable way. Changes they make to the past are already a part of history. (For example, when Dipper and Mabel go to fix Soos’ b-day, they accidentally leave a screwdriver in Young-Soos’ yard. Young-Soos found the screwdriver and returned it, resulting in him getting the job at the Mystery Shack, which is already how things were. Indeed, his job even indirectly resulted in Dipper and Mabel time traveling to fix his b-day.) The alternative (where he never gets his job) never happens. And, since the Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Officers either ignore this causality loop or fail to detect it, we can assume that such stable paradoxes aren’t considered much of an issue.

Diagram of a hypothetical Time-Wish use:

In order to significantly and neatly change history in an unstable way, an enormous power source such as a Precious Time Wish is required. (The key word ‘Precious’ here implies that significant unstable change is NOT normal. It is, in fact, worth Globnaring to access.)

Also, since Dipper and Mabel went 10 years into the past when they themselves were only 12, we can assume that they existed concurrently with their past toddler selves who were likely in the nursery in Piedmont. As would make sense.

As an aside, we also see Blendin freezing local time to talk with Soos and give him the Time Wish. So time machines must therefore have an optional feature to freeze time (except for the time travelers themselves and certain persons of their choosing.)

That’s all clear enough, eh?

Diagram of Time Traveler’s Pig:

However, ‘The Time Traveler’s Pig’ confounds things a bit. In that one, Dipper and Mabel loop through a day back to “high noon!” several times.

This marks the one and only time we ever directly saw an unstable version of time travel in the show. Dipper tries to loop back around to undo creaming Wendy in the eye, and ends up causing her to get creamed again. As Dipper stated in such impressively large words: “The forces of time naturally conspire to prevent any new outcomes.” So, even though we see multiple ever-so-slightly-different realities arise and fall over the course of the day, only one reality, one that is extremely close to the original, is all that remains after all is said and done.

This means, in a way, that Mabel and Waddles were DESTINED for each other. Unfortunately, this also means that Dipper will need to devote more to this relationship than just a baseball. Poor guy. Nothing worth having comes easy.

Anyway.

‘The Time Traveler’s Pig’ also features one extremely weird detail: when time traveling through the day, Dipper and Mabel never seem to encounter their past selves. (Plus their clothes and bodies never seem to carry changes back in time, nor get older or dirtier. Even Mabel was instantly restored to her former beauty after a month of standing out in the sun headbutting a chunk of solid plastic.) Therefore, it can be assumed that only their brains and memories (and the time machine itself) do any real time-travel. Their minds take the place of their original bodies at the start of the day.

However, the whole brains-only rule doesn’t fit with the rest of the show, or even the rest of the episode. When they start traveling beyond the day, they visit prehistoric times where they wouldn’t have been born yet, the distant future where they would have been long dead, and even appear briefly at previous points in the Summer, while past versions of themselves lurked nearby.

So that’s weird. Part of the episode (the part where they’re only traveling on the scale of hours/days) seems to follow one set of rules, and another part (where they’re traveling on the scale of weeks or more) seems to follow some different rules…

There doesn’t seem to be a clear answer here. Therefore, I will make something up to make it make sense. Namely, I will make up a ‘GroundHog Day switch’ (or GHD switch). When the switch is ON, the time machine will scan the target time for instances of the user’s body. If the time interval is very short (less than a week) and if the user’s past version is nearby, it will attempt to save fuel by locking onto a past version and transporting only the time traveler’s mind, soul, and self. If the time increment is more than a week, or if it cannot find a viable past self for replacement, or if the switch is OFF, then it will transport the whole body.

Over the course of TTP, Dipper and Mabel left the GHD switch ON, which allowed them to repeat the day without countless past versions getting underfoot. Whenever traveling beyond their local week, the Time machine defaulted to non-GHD travel. In Blendin’s Game, however, they probably left it off.

BUT THAT’S JUST A THEORY. A CODYLABS THEORY. THAYNKS FOR WACHIN.

Anyway.

In conclusion to all that nonsense above, here is my personal list of rules for time travel in Gravity Falls, that pretty much encompasses all we’ve seen.

These are the rules that I have been/will be writing from, and that I invite you to use as well.

Small, handheld time machines can be used to quickly and easily transport multiple people at once, along with equipment. The time machines can travel to most, if not all, points in history. Past, present, and future indiscriminately.

Time machines are capable of freezing local time, at least temporarily. Somehow, this freezing does not harm the freezer or the frozen. (Logically if time were frozen, everything would be perfectly cold, infinitely dark, and the air would be hard as rock, but that’s no fun so we ignore that.)

Time machines can be set to either replace the user’s past self in the target time, or not. If the past version targeted for replacement is more than a week distant, the replacement will not work. The function can be toggled on and off depending on need. (This is just a theory of mine, but I’ll roll with it because it makes enough sense. Plus a story I’m writing kind of depends on it. :P)

Time travel always defaults toward stability. From a practical standpoint, this means that any action undertaken in the past is most likely already a part of history. However, if significant effort is undertaken to deviate from set history, (especially replacing a past version of yourself), unstable change is somewhat possible. Which leads to my most important point:

The wrinkles of instability are usually ironed out by ‘the natural forces of time’. These natural forces take the form of poignant, improbable events: anything from a ball improbably striking an eyeball, to gusts of wind improbably blowing a ball off-course to strike an eyeball, to a girl improbably losing her delicate sanity in order to elicit pity from her brother and convince him to throw a ball in such a way that it could have the chance to strike an eyeball.

Stable time paradox loops form randomly and with some frequency, for no apparent reason besides general weirdness. Any closed, time-like curve, from Soos’ screwdriver loop to the dropped calculator loop, may form and become a ‘canonical’ part of established, stable history. These stable loops are not particularly significant, even if their causality is pretty weird.

Time travelers always maintain their own personal memories of observed events. This includes memories of any realities they have experienced, even those unstable realities which have since been altered or replaced. (This is important, because it allows for linear character arcs amid a nonlinear story.)

Oh yeah, and unstable change is possible and easy using the mighty power of the Time Wishes… And you get Time Wishes by fighting to the death for them. So have fun with that.

[itslikethatfrenchthing]

HOW TO BE MORE PRODUCTIVE EVEN WHEN YOU HAVE ZERO MOTIVATION

  iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Overcast | Spotify | TuneIn | Castbox

Today’s talking point:

In this episode I'm going to be sharing exactly how to be more productive and get things done. Even when you have zero motivation.

We're going to talk all about time blocking, productivity tools and how to prioritise. It's going to be a good one.

The Truth About Procrastination

Are you a procrastinator?

I'm really curious because most of the online business owners I meet are procrastinators. Most people will hold up their hands and say, yep, that's me.

I procrastinate and maybe it's just one of those human things. But it made me realise that there are times when we want to know how to be more productive so badly and we have all these plans: we have our goals mapped out on our whiteboard and our calendar is blocked out for the week, but we have zero motivation. Why? Why does that happen? 

If you're anything like me, you can probably identify with feeling completely overwhelmed.

Do you ever have those moments where you feel like there is so much to do and there just aren't enough hours in the day to do all the things? I get that.

When I first started my business, I really struggled a lot with setting meaningful goals and sticking to a productive schedule. I used to get so overwhelmed that I just gave up and turned on the TV or watch YouTube videos just so I wouldn't have to face the struggle.

Thankfully, I am so much better and the person I want to be now, who is the CEO of her own life and business doesn't procrastinate and knows what to do to get the work done, even if I don't feel as motivated as usual. 

Sometimes even just a few minutes of procrastination can turn into hours wasted by checking social media, email and anything else you can find.

Then by the end of the day, you feel not only like you haven't achieved anything but you're way more tired than when you originally started out.

HOW TO START YOUR DAY PRODUCTIVELY

We're going to talk first about your mornings specifically. This is what you can do in that morning time to help you increase your motivation for the day ahead and learn how to be more productive.

#1 | Get Up & Get Ready

Your mornings impact your energy for the rest of the day. The first point of action that always makes me feel so much better, is to get showered and dressed properly. I know a lot of you work in PJs and yoga pants - and that’s fine. But if you find yourself lacking in motivation try getting ready in your CEO mindset.

I just feel like I know how to be more productive by showering, putting on makeup, and putting work clothes on (which for me usually consists of smart jeans or trousers, a top and a jacket or a shirt dress). So it's not that fancy, but it helps me feel so much more prepared and motivated to take on the day.

When you're planning your next outfit, pick out something you haven't worn in a while or even something you save for best and just see how your mood changes. 

#2 | Skip The Snooze

I know, I know you've heard this a gazillion times, but what I want to draw your attention to here is your smartphone. Oh yes, we are going there. 

So I've recently started a new morning routine and I’ve come to realise that your morning routine starts with your evening routine.

I used to catch myself in the morning looking at my phone all the time, looking at my phone while I was waiting for the kettle to boil, scrolling on Instagram while I was brushing my teeth, it was so bad.

So I've actually started putting my phone to bed in my office an hour before I go to sleep with the alarm set; so when my alarm goes off in the morning on my phone, I hear it in the bedroom and then I have to get out of bed and go into my office to turn the alarm off. Then, I leave my phone where it is while I do the first steps of my morning routine. 

I know you might think it’s mad, but it's made such a difference. You don’t have to go to the extreme, just set boundaries even if you keep it on your bedside table. Don't wake up with it. Don't let it define how you start your day. 

#3 | Get Moving

This one is super fun and easy because you have to do it in order to start your day. Unless your job is to lay in bed all day, which I'm pretty sure it's not.

Even just getting yourself out of bed every day is a movement. So that is a mission accomplished.

But the more movement you incorporate, the better you will feel. Even just taking a walk to get a cup of coffee is great, but movement to me represents anything you do to get all parts of your body moving. I really do encourage you to move your body and take care of it.

Let it know first thing in the morning that you respect it for all the wonderful relaxation. It just allows you to have and gently welcome it to the awake state that it needs to get you going. Movement should be a key part of your morning routine. 

Movement can take the form of anything:

Doing an intentional morning skin routine

Making a cup of tea or coffee

Preparing a healthy breakfast

Stretching or meditation

Exercise

Just pick an option that works for you, and start from there. The most important thing is to choose the movement method that is right for you. 

PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS

If the motivation truly isn't there at all, these tools will make it so much better for you to actually get the work done that you need to, even though you don't feel like it. These are the productivity tools I love to help me learn how to be more productive.

#1 | Time Blocking

Now, if you've been listening to the podcast, or keeping up with the blog, for any length of time, you know this has to be first. 

I'm only going to give you a brief outline here, but don't worry because I've got a full episode on calendar blocking coming up in just a couple of weeks.

A lot of people get confused between calendar blocking and time blocking… it's called loads of different things: they're exactly the same thing. This method can be as simple or as in depth as you want it to be. 

The top thing constantly on my mind is the time & being present in the day. So these are the most important pieces of information to be able to make the most of the current moment. Because I'm very aware of these two things, I'm better able to make the most of them.

The best way to do that is to reverse engineer the things you want to do and the time you have to do them. I define calendar blocking as scheduling chunks of time on your schedule for designated appointments, tasks, etc. 

So at the most basic level, calendar blocking is putting everything you need or want to do in a space of time on your schedule.

Now of course you can keep adding things to a to do list, but those tasks can add up to infinity and you do not have infinity when it comes to your time. What you want happen means more realistically understanding when you have the time to do it and then scheduling it in so you can actually make it happen.

The goal of calendar blocking is not just scheduling the time to do things. That's not just what it's about. It's about maintaining complete focus for those appointments once they pop up on your calendar and treating your tasks as appointments. 

#2 | Tech Tools

I fell in love with Asana the first time I used it and I'm still in love with it now.

I have a lot of tasks that are repeated, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, or some other interval. So for instance, every Monday I always update a spreadsheet of my metrics for the previous week. Asana allows you to replicate the tasks with the new due date. When I mark it complete it also works on all my devices. I have a MacBook and an iPhone, so I need something that works on both platforms. 

It is easy to get up and running and really, really quickly I was able to dig in and start using it straight away. The best thing is that it's FREE. There is a premium version that offers more features, but I haven't found the need for any of them yet. The free version does everything I need it to do. 

#3 | Productivity Methods

Setting Your Priorities

Part of my daily routine is choosing my top priorities for the next day and it makes all the difference. It really gives my day so much focus and clarity. This is part of the Ivy league Productivity Method that I use (& will have a YouTube video on in a couple weeks). 

The Scrum Method

This is actually what I use when I was creating and launching this podcast over a year ago and I mentioned it in episode three as well, way back in the day. 

The way it works: think of it as a project to project. So let's say the project you want to get done this week is to get your website done. What you can do on Sunday is map out all the things that need to be done in order to have your website completed. You're going to map all of that out and create a backlog. 

I like to use a whiteboard set up for this. So, on your whiteboard you can draw three columns down. 

The first column is a backlog: write down all the different tasks on each sticky note and put them down the column

The middle column is “doing” 

The final column is “done”

It's really, really simple. Throughout the week when you're getting stuff done, taking one task at a time and visualising each step. Whatever that task is, move it to doing, do the work, get it done, move it over one by one. And honestly your focus will be incredible. 

Pomodoro Technique

This technique means that basically whatever you're working on is super focused. You shut down Facebook, turn off any distractions and you say, “okay, right now I'm working on editing the sidebar of my blog. That's what I'm going to do for the next 25 minutes straight.” 

After 25 minutes, you get a break for five minutes where you don't do any work. You'll feel like you want to keep working, but you have to force yourself to get up, go for a walk, stretch, grab a drink, don't think about work for five minutes straight. Then you come back and then you're going to do it all over again for another 25 minutes and then a five minute break, up to one hour. A full Pomodoro would be two hours of work, which is four sessions. 

FINAL TIPS

Take Regular Breaks

That's what's great about the Pomodoro technique because it encourages you to take regular breaks.

Having frequent breaks is so important when it comes to knowing how to be more productive. Your brain runs on the fuel of glucose and just like your car, if it runs out of fuel, it's going to break down. So not only is it important to keep it top top, but you also need to give it time to recharge.

Instead of struggling for two hours and achieving very little, why not rest and get twice as much done in the next hour. I know what I'd prefer. 

Schedule Days Off

You also want to make sure you're scheduling one big break into your week as well. Rather than waiting until burnout forces you to take time off because you just can't function any longer. Think about planning ahead and scheduling more days off in the future. 

Taking a day off when you don't actually need a day off might feel a little selfish. You might even feel guilty, but if you plan it in advance, you can use it to your advantage and unexpected day off because you're ill or burnt-out is a much bigger problem. 

Remember, happiness equals high levels of productivity.

Let’s chat in the comments - what’s your favourite productivity habit and which ones that I mentioned in this episode are you going to implement first?

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[reactingtosomething]

Reacting to The Good Place: “Dance Dance Resolution”

Eleanor’s Moral Continuity

The Setup: Find our reaction to the season 2 premiere of The Good Place here.

SPOILERS for episode 203 below!

KRIS: 

Well, that escalated quickly. (Said the guy who’s never seen Anchorman.) In The Good Place’s Chapter 16 — written by noted pun enthusiast Megan Amram (also on Tumblr) and directed by executive producer Drew Goddard (a Lost alum and excellent writer in his own right, who ran the first half of the first season of Daredevil and wrote the screen adaptation of The Martian) — Adam’s prediction about an alliance proves largely correct, Liz’s and my theory that Eleanor was actually retaining her ethical/spiritual growth proves (sadly) incorrect, and Eleanor and Chidi are confirmed as soulmates, even if Michael didn’t know it. PLUS: the returns of lava demon Todd, the Medium Place, and — thank you, universe — Janet’s reset button!

“Is that possible, Janet? Can you just chill out a little?”

“Dance Dance Resolution” goes Groundhog Day (I haven’t seen that, either, but I have seen the terrific Edge of Tomorrow) with an accelerated/abbreviated chronicling of Michael’s hundreds of attempts to engineer a perpetual torture machine that Eleanor won’t far-too-quickly outsmart. He hits rock bottom when the epically stupid Jason solves it first (“Yeah, this one hurts”). Eventually, when all the other demons go on strike and Vicky (f.k.a. Real Eleanor) brings him a list of their demands, Michael finds himself reduced to seeking advice from a man who died because he locked himself in a safe and thought he could still breathe because he brought a snorkel.

Meanwhile, in what might actually be the episode’s B-story (how did the rest of you read it?), Eleanor and Chidi overhear the truth from some of the striking demons on a smoke break, and flee to the Medium Place, where Mindy St. Claire is really tired of Eleanor and Janet showing up on her doorstep with various combinations of the other doomed souls. We get good gags out of Mindy being the only one who remembers any of the 14 previous visits, and hear a few of Eleanor and Co.’s failed plans to outmaneuver Michael. But this episode’s emotional power comes from Mindy’s revelation that Eleanor and Chidi have not only slept together several times, but once even confessed their love to each other. (“It’s like anti-porn.”) Shaken, Eleanor — who has just been really mean to Chidi, even for her — rallies the team for the 700-somethingth time (we see some versions where Michael gives up after just a few seconds) and delivers an ultimatum to Michael… but thanks to that aforementioned advice from Jason, he’s (still) one step ahead of them. He wants to team up. This seems to mean that Tiya Sircar’s Vicky has just become our season villain, which is a pretty glorious reversal of the dynamic she originally had with “Fake Eleanor.”

Surprising no one, I’m now even more invested in learning more about Janet, who is clearly so essential to the operation of afterlife neighborhoods that even through 801 resets Michael could never fully control her. (Does this mean that in “Tahani Al-Jamil,” Janet’s wild personality swings were also to some degree unintentional? I’d love that. They weren’t essential to making Chidi despair over the awfulness of his book and pushing him out of his comfort zone.)

Anyone have hopes, fears, favorite moments (I think I can guess one of Liz’s), or a lead on some coke for poor Mindy St. Claire? As a former fledgling Nietzsche scholar, I’m pretty happy that William Jackson Harper delivers what I’m convinced is only the third or fourth time an American TV show has correctly pronounced “Nietzsche.”

Click through for sports analogies from Adam, a philosophy digression from Kris, and a quality Twitter recommendation from Miri:

MIRI:

Well I’m officially done trying to predict The Good Place. (This is a lie, and I’m not even sorry. Feel free to mock me for how wrong I am in future.) We knew they would twist us again soon, but not this big this quickly. Damn, Schur & co. Just damn.

I have questions about Janet’s level of self-awareness. Or I guess accumulation/memory of previous resets? Her conversation with Michael as he’s about to reset her suggests she knows somewhat what has happened in the past. That may be due to him explaining it to her over the course of that attempt, but I’m not sure. Does Janet have the capacity to retain change even if she loses memories? Clearly Eleanor and co can, but Janet is not human. But is she a being? Does she have the ability to grow? (Sidebar: Perpetually in love with D’Arcy Carden’s performance. That sequence of falls!)

I genuinely love The Good Place’s relationship to absurdity. When you run 800+ scenarios, you’re going to get to some weird places and a two second farm reality joke is exactly what I never knew I needed from a tv show. They have a damn clam chowder fountain, which is insane but they play it as if it isn’t and that is what works so beautifully. Everything they’re doing is bonkers, but if enough people do the same bonkers thing with a straight face, it’s very hard to question it. That’s what worked in the demons’ favor in the first season, and I think what will work in Eleanor, Michael, etc.’s favor this time around. (I told you I was lying about the no predictions thing.)

Jumping back to the chowder fountain for a moment: Manhattan clam chowder would be more demonic to have around than New England clam chowder in general, but a (proper) dairy based chowder is more horrifying to have in a public fountain, so I believe they made the right call on that.

A few smaller thoughts to wrap up:

JUST realized that Mike Schur and Michael the demon have the same name and I don’t know what that says about Schur or about what Shur thinks of himself. It’s a good name in general, though.

I’m quite excited to see more from Vicky. She’s a really volatile mixture of blind enthusiasm and legitimate shrewdness, plus Sircar is just a joy to watch. 

How high is the demon to bad person ratio, y’all? Is it really this skewed or is this a gross misallocation of resources?

Highly recommend this delightful twitter

ADAM: 

A slight disclaimer: I have been a little busy with the move and without internet living like some early 90s sap. I'm currently at my local Starbucks writing this (Spectrum hooks everything up later today). Now back to the show.

It's hard God Damn work being this right all the time! I mean I figured that the team up storyline would happen later, but well played Mike Schur for just getting to the point (more on that in a minute). I watched the episode at a Holiday Inn Express in Kingman, AZ and I'm pretty sure Kris could hear me patting myself on the back from his apartment in Hollywood. It is a good feeling when you just nail a plot development or future storyline. I mean some could liken my figuring out the plot twist to Jason figuring out that everyone is was in the bad place. Okay, enough of the gloating time for more serious talks because I've got great news for everyone, especially Mindy St. Claire, I didn't forget the cocaine!

I will say that even though I called the team up angle, I did not expect it to happen at the end of episode two. The Michael storyline of nothing working and being blackmailed by fake Eleanor (or whatever you want to call her) did have a mid-season or end of the season storyline to it. After letting everything settle in now, however, it makes sense that Schur would pull something like this-this early on. If you look back to the end of season 6, and all of season 7, of Parks and Recreation he takes massive time jumps. Leslie had triplets and we never saw them except for short moments. He essentially did the same thing with “Dance Dance Resolution.” He showed that we can keep doing the same thing over and over again (ala case of the week) seeing how everyone figures it out. In a recent podcast interview he did with Andy Greenwald, he explained how he likes to dig himself a hole and figure a way out. This episode shows that he's crazy like a fox and like "The Good/Bad Place" anything is possible to happen. I like the fact that with this Groundhog Day kind of episode that Schur and Co. are saying that no matter the different variables that the outcome is the same. Ergo, even though these might be bad people they can still learn and grow to be good. Which then leads to the question of: What really makes a bad/good person? Kris, since you are the philosopher I look to you to answer that question. I will say that with the team up now happening that Eleanor and Co. will grow attached to Michael and vice versa (a bit of a stretch).  

Disclaimer: This portion is going to be heavy with sports analogies.

Eleanor, Chidi, and Janet have some very funny moments in this episode showing that they are getting more freedom to handle more of the comedy on their own (I touched on this last episode). The episode, however, truly belonged to Michael. “Dance Dance Resolution” felt like Ted Danson was playing iso ball. We never really truly got to see him shine, except only during last season's finale. This was his moment and he did not disappoint. He was essentially LeBron barreling down the lane where no one is going to stop him. His ability to set others up (his interactions with Janet and then Jason in particular) so they get their moment is great. How he can work in the scene is great and his comedic timing is on point that it just seems so effortless. I am curious to know how much direction is given to Ted Danson or if it's just give him the ball and get the hell out of his way.

I would say to Kris and Liz that you are both correct that Eleanor keeps her ethical and spiritual growth. The reason is that even though yes she does lose her memory every time there is a reset, if you look at every reset she still does the same thing. She seeks out Chidi for spiritual/ethical growth. While she may not remember what happens she always tries to do the responsible or ethical thing. The question may be that instead of wondering what Janet retains with every reset, we might want to start asking what Eleanor and Co. retain with every reset. The characters’ memories are wiped, but how much are they truly retaining? Even when Eleanor and Chidi visit Mindy St. Claire for the 50th or whatever time, she explains to Eleanor that that is the first time Eleanor has told Chidi that she loves him. Even though they have had sex dozens of times before she never said told Chidi that she loved him. That would mean that even though their memories keep being erased their connection continues to grow stronger. This is going to be a storyline that Eleanor and Chidi are going to continue to grapple with throughout the show because with them trying to fool everyone Eleanor and/or Chidi is going to get jealous (or try to make the other jealous) while they are with their "soulmates." I mean let's be real it will be Eleanor trying to make Chidi jealous by hooking up with her "soulmate" and Chidi trying to get back at her, but failing in a miserable yet funny way. I really hope they stay away from a Will They Won't They sexual tension between Chidi and Eleanor.

Finally, I would have to disagree with the notion of Janet knowing and or retaining information. I think that Janet is just an actual computer trying to understand how the world works. I think that with every reboot I would compare it to a hard reset if someone formatted their computer. In the season one finale Michael says they stole a good Janet and reprogrammed her. She may have a backup drive that Michael does not even know about, which then, said backup drive will eventually be used against him by Shawn to retire Michael. I would also like to see Tahani get some more run. She hasn't had as much space to play as the rest of the co-stars. She has mainly just been involved in the B, sometimes C plot or the occasional runner.

KRIS: 

Since now two of you have asked, my leanings as a former-almost-philosopher are Aristotelian, which is to say that A) I’m generally more interested in character traits — virtues and vices — than in hard universal rules or in what you could call the “moral math” of utilitarianism/consequentialism; and B) I tend to think one’s character is shaped by one’s actions (as Chidi has explained to Eleanor), and that therefore one’s moral sense can be — indeed, must be — trained. As my existentialism professor Iain Thomson once phrased this view, “Aretē is a technē. Virtue is a skill.” (The Greek root of the word “technology” is “technē,” which can translate roughly to “skill,” but also to “science,” or even to “art” in the sense that (an) art is a practice. Which is why the website name Ars Technica is a little strange.)

Virtue ethics, then, may be the main ethic of The Good Place as a show. It’s worth nothing, though, that in “Dance Dance Resolution,” Chidi for the first time identifies himself as a specialist not in virtue ethics but in deontology, i.e., ethics based on rules and duties. (This explains his interest in contractualism and Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other, and also why he was so excited to have meals with Immanuel Kant.)

Appropriate response to a Kant superfan I’M KIDDING (mostly)

I’m not yet totally sold on Adam’s read of what I’m going to call Eleanor’s moral continuity, but I like it. (I literally applauded alone in my studio apartment when Adam’s prediction came true.) This brings me to my biggest… I don’t know if “concern” is the right word? But like I said last week, I’ll miss watching Eleanor grapple with her past dirtbaggery, which wasn’t just hilarious but often moving, and often a mirror. Think of when Eleanor’s boyfriend wanted to boycott that coffee shop. Dirtbag-Eleanor decided that because perfectly aligning all of one’s actions with one’s principles is impossible, we shouldn’t bother trying. As a specific scenario, this is something we all struggle with. And in general, the theme of “How Do I Be(come) a Good Person?” is creepy-targeted-Facebook-ads-level Pandering to Kris.

Vox’s Caroline Framke observed that this season reminds her of how Community changed a lot in its second season, shifting from a show “about college” to something supremely strange and toweringly ambitious, all for the better. I definitely don’t object to The Good Place undergoing a similar change, as seems to be the case not only in this episode’s structural ambition but in the increased focus on Danson/Michael. But while I do love Danson (who is everything Adam says he is), maybe because this is actually the first thing I’ve seen him in, I’m less invested in TGP as a Danson Delivery Mechanism than I was in its being — by circumstance if not by design — a show about women and people of color trying to find (or make) their place in the universe.

More importantly, the increased Michael focus is also what signals that TGP is no longer primarily about being a good person — though the team-up suggests it may still be about building a good community. And that’s a Schurian theme I love, partly because it’s an antidote to the distinctly American ethos of radical individualism: Americans like to believe in superheroes, in the Great Man theory of history, in “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” as the answer to everything, in the power of a single person to change the world through sheer will. But that’s not how the world works. It takes a village. This is indeed the point of Aristotle’s ethics, and of Aristotle’s Ethics, by which I mean the book Nicomachean Ethics, whose last chapter all but explicitly sets up his Politics, a work about how we organize communities to serve the ends of human happiness. An old classmate thought it was insane that political theory students read the Politics without necessarily reading the Ethics, and something like the reverse is also true: the goals established in the Ethics cannot be achieved without politics.

In The Good Place, Eleanor can’t become better if the world around her doesn’t provide conditions that make striving for goodness feasible. A key idea in philosophical ethics is that “ought implies can.” If a moral framework is going to make sense as a human project, and as something that can be enforced, following it has to actually be possible. In life this is what discouraged Eleanor from even trying to be conscientious about how she spent her money, and in afterlife it’s what Chidi agonizes over when Mindy reveals they’ve all been here before: “We are experiencing karma, but we can't learn from our mistakes, because our memories keep getting erased. It’s an epistemological nightmare!”

(For a much cleaner, sharper take on where this may all be going in a larger thematic sense, read Todd VanDerWerff on how he sees The Good Place as a self-conscious repudiation of Parks and Recreation’s optimism.)

ADAM: 

I think TGP is still about being a good person though. While yes there is a team up there still is the suggestion about what characters, mainly Eleanor, will do to figure out how they are good. Everything Schur has created deals with the optimism within not just people, but a community as a whole. This optimism is then brought forth by a conduit (Leslie Knope in Parks and Rec, Terry Jeffords in Brooklyn Nine-Nine) that shows everyone around them that they can either make a difference or can learn to be less selfish. 

Do you think that because Eleanor might retain some sort of "Goodness" that she then tries to make the neighborhood good? Do you think the Eleanor does retain some of the goodness that she has learned from all the resets (hence my theory on her telling Chidi that she loves him for the first time) that she, in fact, will help both Michael and the rest of the neighborhood become good? I don't see TGP as a repudiation to Parks and Rec's optimism, I see it as the optimism shining through the chaos within. Not to belabor the point, but even after all the 800+ resets Eleanor always seeks Chidi out to learn ethics/morality, as she feels guilty that she is not supposed to be in the "Good Place." She never deviates or goes down a different path. Couldn't you say that even in the chaos as a whole Eleanor and Co. still show resolve and that good can still shine through all through the chaos?

KRIS:

I'd like Lemon and/or Miri to take a crack at these questions, and I'll maybe come back to Eleanor when I close this out tomorrow morning, but I'll venture briefly that there's a distinction between the optimism of Parks -- Change for the better is inevitable, we're on the winning side of history -- and the specific, America-in-2017 brand of hope (or maybe that's not even the right word, but something hope-adjacent) that can be read into TGP, in which you try to change things for the better without assuming that you're going to succeed. In the case of Eleanor and Co., it's not like it can get any worse; there's nowhere to go but up, and thus nothing to lose by fighting even an unwinnable battle, but there is a toll on the conscience for giving up.

MIRI:

Point of clarification (because it matters to the questions Adam brought up, not just because I'm a pedantic ass)—I'm pretty sure this was not the time Eleanor said she loved Chidi. Mindy was showing her tape of another time. They overheard the striking demons only a few days into this reset, so they barely know each other this time. Which is why Eleanor was horrified to learn of the love—she doesn't feel that way about Chidi. Yet. And I think that goes to an important point—Eleanor's progress is not a straight line. She's evolved as a person overall, but she's still somewhat who she used to be and has her old memories. The circumstances of each reboot affect how she reacts somewhat. And that's realistic—no path to self improvement is simple or linear. She's going to have backslides and incremental progress. (Also I'd argue that she goes to Janet for help staying under the radar for her own safety and Janet brings her to Chidi. Eleanor doesn't go directly to him out of love or guilt. BUT she does find her way to him and is willing to learn from him over and over and over, which is what matters to me.)

I think that Eleanor's character has improved and that she retains some of that, but that the job is far from done—and that is the most important part. Each time she must choose to do better (not for the best reason to start, but still) and then work at it. Being good in a vacuum is easy and not particularly worthy of commendation. Eleanor is still on her climb out of dirtbaggery, she's just a bit farther along than in the first season.

Also: IT DID NOT OCCUR TO ME until Kris pointed it out that literally none of the non-demon protagonists are white dudes. That's amazing. I have come to expect Fremulon shows to actually look like the world (women, people of color, many things are garbage but not ALL things, etc). But damn, that is worth taking a moment to appreciate.

Also also, I would like to [again] direct you all to the twitter @nocontexttgp because it is a damn delight on my twitter feed and we all deserve that.

KRIS:

I wonder how much we should consider the question of Eleanor's moral continuity in the light of the sitcom "law" that your characters can't really change. Mike Schur and his collaborators (Dan Goor on B99, Greg Daniels on Parks) have pushed this law to its limits, but have they ever really broken it? Jake Peralta has grown up enough to be a worthy partner to Amy Santiago, but he's still definitely recognizably the Peralta of the pilot. Even the increasingly Woke Peralta is seen in season 1, when he punches out guest star Stacy Keach's old school detective for being homophobic. Leslie Knope started out kind of as a hapless Michael Scott clone, but she was never as outright awful a human being, and Poehler's sunniness lent itself to a different direction, so that Leslie became a hypercompetent moral authority, but she also retained her Too Much-ness and her blind love for and faith in her friends.

From the beginning Schur has been clear that The Good Place is intended as a heavily serialized show, so Miri's observation that Eleanor and Chidi seem to flee to the Medium Place relatively early into version 802 gets at a big question I have that this week's inevitable twist will probably prove I'm overthinking BUT STILL: Are we supposed to assume that Eleanor v802 has had roughly the same amount of moral maturation as version 1, that she’s had roughly similar experiences to what we saw last year? It seems like we have to say no, right? And if that's the case, this is on one level a pretty interesting commentary about network sitcoms: in a way it really doesn’t matter what happens to these people week-to-week, as it really didn't matter exactly who Joey was dating or exactly what Monica was yelling about on any given episode of Friends. But more specifically to the serialization of The Good Place, who/what exactly are we rooting for, if not for the Eleanor whose trials we followed last season? This reminds me, weirdly, of one of the big problems of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, in which the lead character was a repeatedly reset blank slate and we spent far too long knowing much more about her world than she did. (Echo actually figured out the truth by the end of the original pilot, but Fox wanted more weekly sexploitation, and forced the show into a procedural rut which eventually saw Eliza Dushku in bondage gear for like 30 seconds, apparently just for the hell of it.)

If Adam is right, then Eleanor's situation is something like "10 steps forward, 9 steps back" in every reset, and maybe last season did "matter" in-universe. But if Adam is wrong, then I guess what we're rooting for has to be in Eleanor's nature rather in her nurture -- maybe her fierce insistence on setting her own course, driven home as a fundamental drive with last season's revelation that Eleanor emancipated herself from her parents as a teenager -- and/or the very notion of moral perfectibility itself. Not perfection, but the potential for it. That is, we're rooting for Eleanor not because she becomes better but because deep down she wants to. I could live with that.

This isn’t relevant to my point, I just really wanted to include it

Lastly: I mentioned last week that I’m a little down on twist-driven storytelling as a concept or approach, but part of the reason it works so well here is that by going to the team-up so early — despite, as Adam said, having the feel of mid-season significance — the show is telling us it’s not “really” about the twist. Whereas something like Westworld builds really slowly and deliberately to a revelation that’s supposed to be earth-shattering, here the twist seems to be a means to a character-driven end, rather than the end in itself.

We’ll try to keep this up all season!

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[junker-town]

Why ‘Madden NFL 20’ is even better than last year’s version

After a period of stagnation, ‘Madden’ continues to improve in ways that make it worth your time.

Last year, I recommended the latest iteration of the Madden NFL franchise, calling it the first one in a long time that I could recommend as a complete $60 package. After spending time with Madden NFL 20, which releases for all major platforms on Aug. 2, I can again say that EA is getting pretty good at making tangible improvements that go beyond a simple roster update.

That said, Madden NFL 20 is not without its flaws. There’s a growing disconnect between fans of the more realistic, almost sanitized Madden of today, and fans who prefer the minigame-packed, looser-feeling Madden of yesteryear.

EA has tried to bridge that gap in recent games with the introduction of “arcade” style play vs. “simulation”, which aims to create a faster-paced game with more big plays. It’s a noticeable difference, and now EA has added development traits like Superstar X Factors and Zone Abilities, which elevate the highest-rated players beyond mere mortals.

From the new Face of the Franchise story mode to the graphic upgrades, I’ll run you through all you need to know about Madden NFL 20.

Gameplay

The biggest difference that will affect every mode is the sweeping changes made to Madden’s ratings. EA drew criticism in the past for big-name players being too easy to replace with lower-rated backups, and tackled that this year by creating a much bigger disparity in the ratings.

The result is that more players are rated in the 60s (out of 99), while many starters don’t even break 80. It can look alarming to longtime Madden players, especially fans of teams who aren’t particularly good, like me (hello, 49ers). Still, players in the mid-to-high 70s don’t feel worse than they did in previous games, though the AI does feel worse in that regard.

As far as the on-the-field action, I love it. With the ball in your hands, everything is smooth. Stick moves feel better than ever, and I’ve noticed many new unique animations in tackles and catches, along with more signature celebrations for star players like Patrick Mahomes (the cover athlete).

On the defensive side of the ball, the on-screen prompts for jumping the snap and rushing the passer have been tweaked. EA changed some of the terminology to make it clearer what types of pass-rush moves you’re using and are appropriate for the situation.

I play on “simulation,” which for some people is too slow, and I get that. Sometimes you just want to sling the ball around, and the “arcade” setting helps with that. More tackles get broken. More balls get intercepted. Stick moves play a huge factor. Throwing motions seem to be faster. Simulation is more methodical, and that leads to fewer bigger plays.

In either setting, I think this year’s game feels great to play. Breaking tackles has never felt better.

Superstar X Factor/Zone Abilities

Here is the big one. Players can now be defined as Superstar or Superstar X Factor. The latter is the highest level of development for a player that includes one game-changing X Factor trait, in addition to multiple lesser Zone Abilities. Players with Superstar development can still earn new Zone Abilities, but not X Factor abilities.

The X Factors require meeting specific criteria to activate, be it completing consecutive passes or defending two passes on one drive. There are many of them in the game, and they’re built into the other modes, including Face of the Franchise and the classic Franchise mode.

The lesser abilities are similar to traits that have been in the game previously, but there are quite a few new ones. Clutch is one example. Before, it was more of a nebulous trait that was harder to define. But now we know exactly what it does and how it’s activated: It kicks in halfway through the fourth quarter in close games and prevents players who are “in the zone” from being knocked out of the zone for the remainder of regulation.

Ben Roethlisberger has Pro Reads X Factor, which highlights the first open receiver. He also has five abilities that make sense if you’re familiar with his style of play. The same is true for several other well-known players. EA did a good breakdown of the many abilities and X Factors earlier.

So how does it affect the game?

I spent a good amount of time trying to determine exactly how the X Factors and abilities can impact a game.

In arcade mode, I noticed X Factor players doing better than the others, but how much of that was simply because they’re rated higher than the rest of the guys on the field?

To test this, I chose Adam Thielen, wide receiver for the Vikings, who comes with the X Factor and abilities listed in the image above. I am targeting Slot-O-Matic, which increases the receiver’s ability to make faster cuts and have better hands on short routes when lined up in the slot.

I then created a new player with the same ratings at Thielen, but without the Superstar X Factor development trait or any extra abilities. I dubbed my creation Tdam Ahielen.

I went into an arcade exhibition game, and ran the same three slot routes (slant, a shallow out with a double move, and a deep cross with a double move) multiple times with each player, and it did feel like Thielen’s cuts were sharper. I can’t say whether or not he caught the ball better, because both receivers caught the passes thrown their way. But his cuts were tighter, especially when reversing direction.

I did the same for Aaron Donald. It seemed — though it’s hard to know for sure — that Donald was beating his man with more regularity than my copycat player with matching stats on both modes.

The Run Pass Option

There are specific playbook additions, like the Philly Special, but there is also an emphasis on the run-pass option in Madden NFL 20. There are more ways than ever to trick a defense, with several new option plays and well-made tutorials explaining how they work and how to identify the defense’s read on the play.

A speedier gameday experience

When you get a game like Madden, the expectation is that you’ll play it off and on until next year’s version comes out. That means the little things that are interesting at first — the stadium presentation, new intros and setups for their “broadcasts,” celebrations, and the like — become repetitive and annoying.

I haven’t spent much time waiting around in Madden NFL 20, and games seem to be moving more quickly. It’s now easier to skip pregame, halftime, and postgame shenanigans.

The biggest difference is when you run the no-huddle offense. Instead of having to watch your players get back into formation, the screen quickly fades out then back in with your team lined up.

Game modes

QB1: Face of the Franchise

The big new mode is Face of the Franchise. It replaces the Longshot story mode from the previous two games. You begin by creating and naming your quarterback, who then joins one of 10 college football teams in the game that EA got the license to.

Then your coach tells you that the top quarterback recruit in the nation just joined the same school. Time jumps forward four years to the College Football Playoff semifinal. Your team is playing and that top recruit is injured. You’re the next man up.

You are joined by star wide receiver Isaiah Streets, whose brother passed away from cancer. He uses that as his motivation, and it’s a theme throughout the story mode.

Early in the story, you meet a little girl named Emily, with the same disease Streets’ brother had, and she asks you to throw four touchdowns in the national championship game. She also asks you what color mane you’d want on your unicorn — pink or purple. I went with pink, but apparently the right answer was neither.

You then play in the semifinal and, presuming you lead the team to a win, the national championship. Your coach gives you a limited playbook, which includes nothing under center (or perhaps that was a function of me picking LSU, I’m not sure).

You are given dialogue choices early on that are usually somewhere between confident and being grateful for the opportunity. My quarterback, named Butts Carlton (because I am a child), was fairly confident and for good reason: I led my team to a national championship and then proceeded to kick ass at the NFL Scouting Combine.

The NFL Combine is where it gets funny (and real)

Where the mode got entertaining is the combine interview process, which was almost too realistic. The first to interview me was someone with the Giants, who basically big-timed me. Then I met with a rep from the Dolphins, who asked to see my cell phone. I gave it to him, and then he berated me for giving my cell phone to a stranger. Fair enough.

Washington’s interviewer was intense. He asked me a hypothetical: if I were on a bus in Alaska driving high speed downhill, would I be in the front or back of the bus? I answered “front,” and he went off on a tirade, asking me if I checked the tire pressure and inspected the engine myself before I got on board. My character was, understandably, confused. The interviewer then implied that such a question is unanswerable, and my character didn’t know how to handle that, either.

I also acquired an agent, who came up to me at the combine and pretty much told me that he’s my agent now. It was entertaining for a bit, but his shtick, as far as I can tell, is that he’s not a very good agent.

The mode is more familiar after the draft

I was eventually drafted by the Miami Dolphins near the end of the first round.

On my way to the team facility, my character encountered an Uber driver who wanted to talk to me about how he played JUCO ball and how the Dolphins really need to fix their offense. I laughed — he was funnier than my agent — and my character shut the door on him when he started to get too enthusiastic about the conversation.

Once you are drafted, you are taken to what is essentially franchise mode, with some added depth. There are engagements to manage and relations to build, including more dialogue choices, texts from reporters and your head coach, and the ultimate goal of building a legacy. After your first year, you get one of four endings depending on how you performed throughout the mode. You can continue after that through the modified franchise mode.

So is Face of the Franchise good?

I found it to be entertaining enough, and much better than Longshot, which was full of cliches and offensive stereotypes (though there are still plenty of cliches in this mode). It’s a mostly fun playthrough with good performances from the voice-actors and effective cutscenes. You shouldn’t buy the game just for this mode, but it’s worth playing.

Ultimate Team

Cards on the table (pun not intended but kept), I’ve never been a fan of Ultimate Team, even though it’s a hugely popular mode.

If you’re unfamiliar, in Ultimate Team, you open card packs and build your roster out of a deck. The cards have limited uses and can be sold/scrapped for currency to buy more packs or increase the abilities of another card. You play football with that lineup, earning more points and currencies. As with all games with microtransaction-based elements, there are several currencies, all of which are used to buy card packs. You get some of them from completing challenges, selling cards, or paying outright for them.

I received a ton of card packs as a result of having a press copy and Origin Access Premier, so I opened 25+ packs (about six of which were 49ers packs). I came out with a team that looks pretty good, but if I didn’t have all those extra packs, I imagine it would look fairly dire. You can see my offense and defense lineups above and below.

The mode seems similar to past games, and it feels like EA is trying to get you to earn currency rather than simply purchase card packs. But of course, the option to purchase is still there, and the fact will always remain that those with deeper pockets can have an advantage in building a more complete team.

There are new “Ultimate Challenges” that replace “Solos,” and they can be played with friends to complete. More rewards are given out for milestones within challenges, unlike previous games where you got nothing if you didn’t complete a (sometimes long) challenge.

EA has also brought over player archetypes from the Franchise mode, allowing you to lightly modify the type of player they are, within the same position group. By changing a linebacker’s archetype from speed rusher to run stopper, the rating adjusts accordingly. There’s enough here to keep the mode fresh.

Franchise

Not much has changed with Franchise.

As you progress through a season, you have all the usual options: building your roster, doing a fantasy draft, playing as an owner and setting concessions prices, importing draft classes, relocating your team, and drafting rookies. With the new development traits and X Factors that you can pick and customize as you acquire and level up players, you have a small added layer of management that helps keep it fresh.

The week-to-week progression is still very much that Franchise mode, and there isn’t a lot else to say about it. I have enjoyed recent Franchise modes, and I enjoy this one.

Online play and exhibition

When you first load up Madden NFL 20, you’re greeted with the 2019 Pro Bowl, which is to help showcase many of the Superstar X Factor traits. It’s a good introduction, and I recommend playing through it rather than quitting out, as some tend to do when they don’t feel like playing the guided tutorial.

There is also Skills Trainer, with effective tutorials of the game’s various systems for both sides of the ball and special teams. It comes with commentary from Jonathan Coachman, and it does a decent job of explaining the many, many mechanics of Madden.

Online play is a major part of Madden and the experience remains relatively unchanged. I played a few online matches against folks who had access to the game pre-release, and I had no connection issues — though as always, your mileage may vary. Last year’s game had some lag problems at launch, and only time will tell if the servers take a beating on launch day again.

Presentation

The presentation of the game is pretty familiar. It’s the same tile-based menus, a couple dozen well-made player likenesses, beautiful renderings of stadiums, a solid soundtrack, official touches from the NFL Network, and good commentary provided by Charles David and Brandon Gaudin.

I am not a lover of commentary, because I play so much that it wears thin, but EA has at least put in the effort. The people who splice audio together for video game commentary are wizards, and it’s never sounded more natural. That said, you’ll hear repeated anecdotes and more cliches than during actual football broadcast.

User interface and graphics

While I think football games lag behind other sports — probably due to larger roster sizes — when it comes to the sharpness of player models, Madden continues to improve its look every year. The animations are more fluid, and the menus are sharp with new font treatments that feel inspired by NFL Films. The PC version, which is the one I played, looks amazing in-game, running at 4K.

What a handsome pass.

There are the usual caveats. Sometimes the menus can be a bit slow to navigate. The newest presentation of the depth chart is particularly awful, though there is a button for automatically optimizing it. Thankfully, the classic way of organizing the depth chart is also available — it’s just not the default.

The menus in general are concise, helpful, and mostly unchanged from last year, save for the colors and fonts. The on-screen tips and prompts when you’re playing — whether it be an explanation of the run-pass option or notifying you of your timing when trying to jump the snap — are all effective.

Player likenesses

It would be cost-prohibitive for EA to model over 1,000 individual players for the game, but it’s jarring when a famous player doesn’t look like himself. It can also be a bummer when several players on the same team have the same player model. Many players choose not to get scanned, but it’s disappointing that EA hasn’t added enough customization options to at least approximate on a more consistent basis.

I’ve picked 3-4 players from each team, and you can see their likenesses in the gallery below. Some are accurate. Some are default models. Some look like somebody tried and gave up.

Performance

For this review, I used the PC version of Madden NFL 20, running on ultra settings, at 4K with HDR (screenshots from this article do not contain the HDR effect). In my experience, it ran great. I’m running a pretty beefy rig that handled the game at a constant 60fps with no noticeable drops, with the lone exception being when the game shifts to certain broadcast-oriented angles, such as the helicopter view of the stadium. For some reason, the frame rate dips bad at that part, same as it did with Madden NFL 19.

Overall, it runs well, load times are speedy off of my SSD, and I experienced no crashes in my time with the game.

I miss when Madden crammed in as much extra nonsense as possible (please come back to us, Rushing Attack). The lack of those fun minigames has made every Madden worse off since EA took them out.

But I do find that the arcade setting, along with the extra abilities and X Factors, combine for a looser experience that fans of the early-aughts releases will appreciate.

Every year we talk about what’s changed and what hasn’t, but lost is the fact that Madden is a complex game. EA put in work to make so many moving parts — everything you’d need to make a realistic football game — feel unique and useful to the player.

There are a lot of mechanics working underneath the surface to make each position feel different to play, and it’s my opinion that those continue to evolve in ways that move the franchise forward.

In true Madden spirit, I’ll once again assign the game an overall rating and give it a slight bump from Madden NFL 19.

Madden NFL 20 Rating: 96 OVR

[itsybitsylemonsqueezy]

Okay, here it is, my thoughts on Gotham 3x19. Or more accurately termed, my complaints. I want to warn you right now, it’s just a shitmess of complaining, so if that’s not what you want to read, then PLEASE don’t, you’re under no obligation to do so. But I really needed to say these things for my own peace of mind, so here it is:

You remember how 3x18 ended right? 

Here's my question: why didn't they go with that? Why did they have to redo it? Why did they COMPLETELY retcon tone? Why?

Because, I think we can all agree, what we had at the end of 3x18 does NOT match 3x19. So let’s start with that. And I have some theories about why it changed so dramatically, but first let me clarify what changed: the lighting, the framing, the music, the entire TONE of their confrontation is in a new genre. We VERY OBVIOUSLY change perspective and I’m not sure why, I’m not sure WHOSE perspective we had the first time or whose we have now, I'm not sure we’re MEANT to associate the change with any particular perspective, save that a change WAS made. The only things that didn’t change were the lines themselves and the blocking. Everything else was completely new.

And, in my opinion, 3x19 lost all of the tension that made 3x18 what it was. And perhaps that WAS because we were seeing it again, but the changes also very deliberately took the tension out, they deliberately softened the scene. And, in my opinion, that was a mistake. Because I think their confrontation deserved and warranted the tension we had at the end of 3x18. I think the narrative was built for that, was deliberately developed for an exciting climax and, more even than that, I think that end shot is one of the few perfect scenes in all of film. And I think they, the creators (writers, producers, directors, etc), not Robin and Cory I need to stress, butchered it for reasons I will get to later. And I’m upset about it.

Because their choice, from the get-go, to mute their confrontation changed the entire tenor and dynamic of this episode. And, again, I think it was changed for the worse. But even if we hadn’t seen that bit in 3x18, even if we walked into 3x19 without this pre-existing expectation, I still think 3x19 falls short.

Because isn’t it ODD Ed spends no time freaking out?

Ed accepts Oswald is alive and slips RIGHT BACK into a functioning relationship, or establishing a new one with new rules at minimum, like he's slipping on a fucking glove. And I DO have some justification for that but it's FUCKING WEAK and the thing is, the EPISODE doesn't support it. The episode does NONE of the emotional, intellectual work it was SUPPOSED to. The only reason I can come up with justification is I'm a fucking fan who spends all my time in Ed's brain working out how he thinks. The episode gives JACK SHIT about why Ed reacts this way and I'm FUCKING FURIOUS.

(Spoilers, this is the less edited part where I‘m just really mad about everything and swear a lot.)

So, in all fairness to the writers, you CAN justify Ed’s reaction by saying Ed straight up refuses to react/can't react. You CAN justify it by saying his game-playing is a coping mechanism (which it has been established to be, re: 3x15) so instead of having an emotional reaction to Oswald right there, Ed rejects it and instead defaults to an established schema in which he CAN cope and Oswald, for whatever reason, goes with it. So, to be as even-handed with my criticism as I can be, I can reverse engineer this to a point where it's plausible. But again I had to do that, the episode DOES NOT do that for you.

And, personally, I'm not sure it's really justified in Ed's PATENTLY SHITTY coping mechanisms that he'd be able to save himself this quickly. He’s never been able to cope effectively before, and we might chalk this up to progress, but... it seems unlikely to me personally. And, again, the episode does not justify this assumption, it provides no evidence that Ed is coping at all because we never see him react in the first place, and the previous episodes SURE AS SHIT don’t make the argument that Ed has developed a single dependable coping mechanism. So this progress would be fairly out of the blue. In 3x15, we see very clearly why Ed is playing a game, we understand it, we get a deep inside look at what he’s doing and why. And, sure, they didn’t have time to do that this episode and, sure, the title of the show is Gotham, not Nygmobblepot, all of that is true. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I will attempt to justify why the writers did what they did later, but first I need to explain why I'm upset with it.

So let’s recall, shall we, what Ed’s psychology was like leading UP TO this confrontation. Because it seems VERY CLEAR to me that the writers totally fucking forgot OR deliberately rewrote Ed on the fly and I’m not sure which is worse.

3x14: Ed murders Oswald, or, more importantly, he thinks he does, he believes it, with heartfelt conviction. It’s Kind Of A Big Deal.

3x15: Ed copes with having murdered Oswald, culminating in saying goodbye and embracing his new identity as The Riddler. Also Kind Of A Big Deal

3x16: We take a much needed break from Ed shenanigans. He, apparently, moves out of Oswald’s mansion at long last and begins work on an evil hideout of his own.

3x17: Ed takes his first stab at independent villainhood. His single goal is to find out who the Court of Owls are which... is neither really a success nor a failure. He DOES end up with the Court, but not through his own machinations and neither does he really get any information about them and in the end has to escape from them. I’m calling this a net failure.

3x18: He gets less than 24 hours to stew about his stymied ambition and first setback as a new villain before WHOOPS, OSWALD’S BACK, I GUESS INDEPENDENCE IS CANCELLED.

And, let me remind us, ED HIMSELF says his new identity is formed DIRECTLY OUT OF OSWALD’S DEATH. AND OSWALD. IS ALIVE.

And Ed. is. fine???

Forgive me if I feel this doesn’t fucking line up at all.

Forgive me if I think the BLIND FURY coming from Ed at the end of 3x18 was APPROPRIATE AND JUSTIFIED. Forgive me if THAT’S the version I wanted to see and I don’t understand AT ALL why they went with this completely unjustified, no-stakes, softened mess.

And when you think about it, all lined up like that, the retcon in 3x19 falls apart. You just have to wonder what the fuck they thought they were doing. Because it makes no fucking sense.

So, I'm sorry, I'm SORRY, but... THAT is my problem. THAT. Right there. The fact that they gave NO credit or justification to Ed's emotions. And I am BESIDE myself about it.

And it ruined the entire goddamn episode for me. Because you can't have... jesus fucking christ *headdesk* Nothing we just saw would have been happening if they gave a SECOND'S emotional honesty to Ed, but they didn't. And it's really upsetting because I LOVE the shenanigans of 3x19, I WANT to enjoy them, I just wish I could... :/ they just... they, the creators, fucked up for me, they fucked this up and I can't :ccc You lost emotional veracity and that's EVERYTHING to me. I'd rather have a boring shitty episode that was HONEST than this :ccc Because this BREAKS continuity for me :ccc breaks suspension of disbelief.

But I do have a feeling i know why it changed, why they went with this version. The unfortunate thing is they wrote and SHOT a goddamn perfect scene. But the suspense, the expectation, was so high, they got scared and they backed down. Instead of deciding to push the thematic tensions of darkness and angst, they rewrote it to something light that they could get away with, so they COULD write off this HEAVY, heavy scene as what we saw. Because the show IS for teens and it IS called Gotham, not Nygmobblepot, and I want to admit that. I want to admit that the creators have a different perspective and different priorities than I do and maybe it’s not fair to hold them to this. Maybe I am just being harsh, and bitter, and salty. And it’s true, I don’t run this show, they have to run it, and I believe they’re making the best decisions they can. I don’t want to sound like I hate them even though I disagree strongly with what they’ve done. They’ve got bigger things to worry about than this and... you know, maybe I shouldn’t hold it against them. That’s fair.

But at the same time... what they did was a retcon. What they did was not justified by the build up and it was a betrayal to Ed’s characterization. And, no matter how anyone else feels about that, it hurt me personally. And I’m entitled to that hurt. No one else has to agree or appreciate or even listen to me, but I get to feel how I feel. Just to clarify, this is my feeling, it’s not something anyone else has to agree with or listen to, you have every right to believe I’m full of it.

So I understand they might have had VERY justified reasons for this tonal shift and not dedicating the emotional time and energy they SHOULD have to this. I really want to give them credit and admit that my priorities are not theirs. And yet, at the same time, they had ALREADY dedicated two major episodes, back to back, EXCLUSIVELY to Ed’s emotional development about this. So why stop here, why not bring it home? It seems unfair to me and either stupid or cowardly. At the very best, that's realizing they set themselves up for failure and HASTILY backtracking and having to foil everyone's expectations. At worst, it was shitty showrunning where no one was paying attention. But that’s me being harsh.

Now, after having said ALLLL of that, they can still recover in 3x20. Again, I don’t want to sound like I’ve completely lost faith in the show. It is STILL possible that the writers planned this all along, even if I don’t like the way they’re doing this. (I think it’s a lot more likely they panicked last minute, but that’s neither here nor there.) So, here’s one theory about how 3x20 might go:

The only way (that I could find, you may find a different justification yourself) to justify Ed not losing his goddamn shit about Oswald being alive would be if he somehow doubted/wanted Oswald to be alive. Now, the evidence DOES NOT credit this, as it makes his whole goodbye speech moot (ANOTHER reason I am VERY PISSED OFF, but that is secondary from my theory.)

Let us assume that Ed harbored some kind of hope that Oswald was alive OR, alternatively, feared he really COULDN'T do this on his own. Either way, that means, when Ed sees Oswald, he experiences relief, thus justifying the entire episode. Now... this doesn't 100% fix it as the episode STILL fails to do any emotional credit by them. (Side note, which I might detail later, a LOT of really profound, heavy shit is said and it COMPLETELY SLIDES BY WITHOUT REACTION. Like, the shit IS said but NO ONE DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT AND FUCKING FUCK ALL OF YOU WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK). BUT, it at least allows Ed to be happy to see Oswald again and it justifies his trust and eager willingness to work with Oswald again.

And, here's the thing, I am FAIRLY sure this theory WILL be supported in 3x20. If I'm right, Ed will suddenly become Very Stable. He'll suddenly be making sense and functioning again. This is because of that RATHER IMPORTANT THING HE SAID, "I'm the Riddler and I became him when I killed you" MEANING he killed part of himself in killing Oswald MEANING he's whole again now that Oswald's back MEANING he's reforming around Oswald and will suddenly be Very Stable. Now, again, that line SHOULD have been WAY MORE IMPORTANT at the time, but... the creators did what they did and we have to live with it and do the emotional work ourselves if we are so inclined.

Now... on the one hand, that I can accept. It was always a possibility that Ed WOULD never be able to function independently and would just have to stay latched to Oswald forever. But... what i wanted, and what Ed DESERVES, is the chance to make that decision for himself. Ed has not truly experienced independence yet, he has not had the chance to fail OR succeed at striking out on his own, so he DOESN'T ACTUALLY KNOW. Which prevents him from self-actualizing. Instead of letting him figure it out and making a conscious choice, thus enabling his character development, no, we gave him back a crutch and refused to let him develop. Which means, eventually, we'll have to do ALL OF THIS AGAIN the next time Ed craves independence. And like... fine, if he eventually decides he can't function without Oswald FINE, I accept that, but LET him decide! Just... PLEASE, GOD. Let him make a SINGLE CONSCIOUS DECISION. PLEASE.

And finally, in total fairness, it is a... remote possibility, but still a possibility, that Ed will recognize he feels better now that Oswald's back, but given it's Ed, Master of Repression, WHAT'S THE LIKELIHOOD OF THAT? Still... in fairness, I will admit that it’s an option, however unlikely.

Now I’m just... really sad. I’m really sorry to complain this much, especially about an ostensibly really nice episode that featured some great things. The premise just... didn’t feel justified to me and it bothered me. So... there, I'm done now, I truly hope I have not affected anyone negatively.

[fardell24b]

The Engineer and the Time Lady - Investigation v1.0

7. Investigation

Alpha heard a noise. She turned and saw Nina enter the Bridge. She saw that she had rested and smiled. “You are ready for duty?”

“Yes. What happened on that ship shouldn't have happened.”

“It would probably be a while before I'll let you go on another away mission.”

“I was thinking about that,” Nina said as she sat her console. “It would depend on the kind of mission.”

“It would,” Alpha said.

“I was considering travelling forwards to this planet's information age and copying historical data from the worldwide network.”

Alpha was intreagued, but cautious. “So, you'll go forwards, and steal a data storage device with the data on it?”

Nina interuppted. “I'll take a tricorder and use that to copy the data.”

“That would be better,” Alpha conceded.

“I can do it today,” Nina sated.

“Sure,” Alpha was pleased that Nina seemed to have recovered from the previous day's experience, but she was still concerned that she was letting her exuberance get away with her. “But not right away.”

Nina examined more of the data collected by the Baffin crew, specifically that on the version of Tanarexa IV in the first alternate universe they visited. Her conclusion was inconclusive. Whatever, or whoever, was responsible for the displacements on that planet probably wasn't going to help her and the holocrew return the ship to it's home universe. 'But maybe we could try?' It wouldn't be the first time a Time Lord tried to turn a powerful being to their side.

1200 hours. Alpha turned to Nina. “If you want to go on that forward journey, you can.”

“I shall.”

In the shuttlebay, Nina grabbed several tricorders and PADDs. “Are you sure you'll need all those?” Alpha asked.

“The contents of the network may be greater than the storage capacity,” Nina answered.

“That's unlikely, the PADDs have a storage capacity of four gigaquads each. Same with the tricorders.”

“I'll find a use for them.”

“You probably won't be gone that long.”

“Probably not.”

“You might need this,” Alpha said, holding out a phaser by the emitter end.

“No. I don't think I would get into that kind of trouble,” Nina said with a shake of her head.

“Away Mission Personnel shall not go into an unknown area unprepared for the possibility of combat.”

“Is that a regulation?” Nina asked.

“Yes,” Alpha answered.

Nina sighed and took the phaser. “I'll be back as soon as possible.”

Soon, the TARDIS dematerialised, and Alpha left the shuttlebay.

Nina looked over the Console Room as the TARDIS travelled forwards in time. It was still in it's default design. She hadn't changed anything since she had fled Gallifrey. She considered that it was time to make changes. 'Starfleet certainly knows how to design a ship interior that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing,' she thought. She turned back to the console and accessed the Architectural Configuration System. 'Now, the scanner has the Baffin's interior on file.' She then set the ACS to style set the Console Room Theme to Starfleet.

That done, she left the Console Room to find the wardrobe. She suspected that just wearing the Starfleet uniform would draw unwanted attention.

After finding a simple Time Lord robe that matched the colour of the uniform, Nina entered one of the auxiliary console rooms and quickly re-assigned control of the TARDIS to that room. The ship was about to land.

As soon as the ship had landed and she had used the scanner, Nina found that she had indeed landed in the planet's information age. So, she interfaced one of the Tricorders with the Scanner and set it to send the information to one of the PADDs. “OK, copy the information from the planet's network to the PADD,” she said as she set the scanner. The tricorder than began to receive the data from the scanner and transmiting it to the PADD. 'Good!' she thought.

She emerged from the ship to see that she had landed next to a large library, and that the ship had disguised itself as a motor home (with the Baffin's regristry number, translated into the local number system, on the licence plates, and in Circular Gallifreyan on the sides). She also noticed the Starfleet pennants on the roof. 'Great! Is the Chameleon Circuit glitching?' She didn't want to worry about that. Instead, she decided to go into the library.

The library was what she expected. A well organised space, with many people interacting and looking up information, like any library she had seen. She also saw that there were librarian jobs available. 'Not sure how long I'll be staying, even if I could be back at the Baffin within a minute of depature.' She decided to stay at least a day or two. 'And I can work at this library for a day. She took a place at one of the desks and used the PADD to interface with the TARDIS, instructing her ship to create an identity for her.

Half an hour later, she came to the desk and handed over her application.

Name: Nina Lumbra

Age: 27

…

“Nina Lumbra? Sounds foreign,” the librarian said.

“My father was from the North,” Nina responded.

“I see.”

“Everything checks out, you can start tomorrow.”

“That's good.”

The librarian handed Nina a card. “Welcome to the Rladibud Library.”

Alpha waited for Nina to return. Thus she spent another day to herself listening to Klingon Opera and occasionally checking on the marooned ship via the probe.

“Commander's log, Day 1024, Crewman Nina still hasn't returned for over a day... Otherwise the Baffin is still ship shape”.

Alpha finished the log and called up the data on the stranded ship Nina had visited two days before.

She noticed something. She called up the data from two days before. She could see that the wave action against the ship had further compromised it's structural integrity. “Computer, estimate time until structural collapse.”

“Estimated time until structural collapse any time from six to ten days.”

“Right.” She thought for a while. There had to be away she could rescue that crew without violating the Prime Directive. She couldn't go, the 29th Century technology behind the mobile emitter hadn't yet been reverse engineered. But using probes to repair the ship would almost certainly cause a violation. And simply beaming them off definitely would be a violation. That seemed to lead to one solution. A Synthetic. The schematics for Synthetics, including the positronic brains, were in the Baffin's databases.

Alpha entered Engineering with a PADD showing instructions. “Computer, activate Emergency Engineering Holograms Beta and Gamma.”

“Affirmative.”

“Please state the nature of the Engineering Emergency,” Beta and Gamma said in unision. They then looked at each other in surprise before turning back to Alpha.

Alpha handed Beta the PADD. “Build a Synthetic that can go on away missions, so we can rescue the crew of a sailing ship without violating the Prime Directive?” he asked, once he had read it. He handed the PADD to Gamma.

“Yes,” Alpha answered.

“But, what will you be doing?” Gamma asked, her curiosity showing in her voice.

“I'll be in one of the holodecks, running repair simulations,” Alpha answered.

Both Beta and Gamma nodded, before turning to one of the consoles.

Alpha approached Holodeck 1. “Computer, load scan data of the crashed ship to Holodeck 1.”

“Affirmative.”

Ten seconds later, the computer reported. “Program complete.”

Alpha entered the holodeck onto the virtual ship's deck...

The next day, Nina was ready to start work at the library. She first looked at the progress of the download. “25%” she said. That meant she'd still be there in a few days hence. 'That's not a problem,' she thought. She had been on similar worlds before for extended periods of time. Before setting out she had the TARDIS bring up the local news. She saw that noting particularly notable was occurring, although two medium sized nations were at war over terrorism. She also noted that the island where Baffin had crashed was disputed between the two.

'Interesting,' she thought.

Nina entered the library and saw that one of the other librarians was clearly worried about something as she looked intently through the returned items. “Morning,” she said.

The other librarian turned with a start. “Oh, you gave me a shock,” she said. “You're the new assistant librarian, right?”

“Yes. I'm Nina.”

“I'm Aialah,” the worried librarian said.

“So, what are you looking for?”

“A rare book was loaned out. It is very overdue.”

“Oh,” Nina responded. “Wouldn't something like that not be loaned out?”

“Ordinarily,” Aialah said with anxiety. “But it was the Mayor's son!”

“I see,” Nina said. 'What have I got myself into?”

“Can you help me find it?”

“Of course.”

A short while later, the returns had been flung aside (mainly by Aialah), but the book hadn't been found. “Most likely, he still has it,” Nina stated as Aialah collapsed into a chair with annoyance.

“I'm in big trouble! If they find out that I loaned out a book that I shouldn't have loaned out, I'll be fired!”

“They don't have to find out,” Nina said in a reassuring tone.

“What's that?”

“I'll help you avoid that outcome.”

“But, you might get fired too.”

“We'll find it.”

“I shouldn't have told you.”

“Nonsense, I can help you. If it's not here, the Mayor's son would still have it, right?”

“That's the most likely option,” Aialah said, more nervous than before. “I guess I can call him during lunch.”

The morning went well (other than young children being noisy, as their mother's tried to read to them). However, something else was going on. There was a report of some sort of hostage situation in the city near the library. 'Is that something I'm going to be involved in?' Nina thought. She dismissed the possibility. She may have got involved with many things at other places after leaving Gallifrey, but wouldn't mean it would happen this time.

Aialah saw Nina enter the break room, and give her a supportive look. It was time to call him. She picked up her phone and quickly selected him from her contacts list. “Aialah! Why are you calling now?”

'He's annoyed!' Aialah thought. She felt the determination building inside her. “You know why I'm calling!”

“I forgot. It's at home somewhere.”

“It needs to be returned!” Aialah retorted.

“Calm down. I haven't lost it,” Lanran responded.

“But you know, I could lose my job, right?” Aialah said.

“I know that!”

“So, I would like it to be returned today.”

“Calm down.”

There was something off about his tone. She couldn't put her finger on it, but she knew something was wrong. “I am calm,” she responded.

“You're not. I will return it when I'm ready to return it.”

That was it! Didn't he see that it would be difficult for her to find another job? “I am calm. And it needs to be returned today,”she said in the tone of voice she reserved for unruly children.

“Look, you can wait, for me, OK.”

Some things connected in Aialah's mind. She then hung up.

Nina saw Aialah begin to tear up as she ended the call. It obviously didn't end well. “I take it, he's not returning it?” she asked, after a few moments.

“No,” Aialah sobbed as she left the break room.

Day 1025. Crewman Nina still hasn't returned. I'm getting more concerned about her. Or maybe the TARDIS isn't as reliable is it should be out of it's home universe. I'm still running the simulations on repairing that ship. The scans show it will break up within two days. It is good that Beta and Gamma have almost completed the Emergency Away Mission Synthetic. He should be able to work on site this afternoon. End log.

Having recorded the log, Alpha left the bridge again, heading back to the Holodeck. She had run many repair scenarios. The probability of success was at 90%. The chance of failure was still too high for her. She hoped the Synth would be as adaptable as she and the other holograms were. Then there was the fact that ship was still exposed to the elements. The sensors were detecting a cold front moving in. A storm decreased the probability of success to 56%. The repair had to be done before one arrived.

She entered Holodeck 1. “Computer, update Alpha Ship Rescue Program with latest sensor data and re-run.”

“Affirmative. You may enter when ready.”

She entered the simulation. As usual she entered into the hold of the ship, where the rents in the hull were growing larger.

She turned to the simulation of the repair materials and tools. It was time to start. “Computer, select speed setting: x20.”

“Affirmative.”

That was the speed at which she could go and still be functioning effectively. She could go faster, but it seemed that was the limit of her efficacy. (Of course, she suspected that Zeta could probably go faster, but she was sure he wouldn't do the simulations as effectively as she would). After the first few attempts she decided not to risk possible overstressing of her algorithms.

An hour later, she had ran another five simulations. The first didn't have a storm. The other four had storms of increasing intensity. The first three had a successful repair, but the other two had the ship break up, with the final simulation leading to the loss of the synth. 'I'm sure there may not be time to build another one,' she thought as she drifted beneath the sea after the ship had broken up in that final simulation. Even with Delta helping Beta and Gamma, it wouldn't really go any faster. The fifth simulation ended, leaving Alpha on the bare hologrid.

“Computer, show weather systems.”

“Affirmative.”

The holosystems then showed a simulation of the region of the planet from orbit. Alpha could see that a storm system associated with that cold front was already over the Baffin and heading towards the stuck ship.

'Another simulation, then I'll check in on Beta and Gamma' she thought. “Computer, restart simulation, decrease storm intensity.”

“Affirmative.”

Beta and Gamma had almost completed the Emergency Away Mission Synthetic. All that was really left was the most difficult part; assembling and installing the positronic brain.

“Ready?” Gamma asked, as she opened the drawer containing the positronic brain components. There were enough there for several Synthetics.

Beta wasn't sure why a ship like the Baffin would have such components stored aboard when it had a full compliment of Emergency Holograms. “Yes,” he answered as Gamma selected a portion of a positronic brainstem. She then placed it in it's place on the rear half of the Synth's skull.

The work proceded well, with hardly any 'hiccups'. Even so, there were 'touch and go' moments. The components were sometimes tricky to fit together. As Gamma placed the cerebellum on the rest of the components Beta found himself admiring the way she worked. He shook his head. That was hardly professional! He looked again at the work, but there was still a distraction in his attention subroutines. There was something, interesting, in the way she moved the nanobonder tool over cerebellum.

He shook his head again. He probably needed to run a diagnostic on his matrix.

“Are you OK?” Gamma was looking at him with concern. He realised that he had missed several sentences she had said.

“I'm fine,” he said, not entirely sure. Gamma still looked at him with concern, but she did repeat the instructions.

The difficulties did recurr as they continued putting the positronic brain together, but he didn't miss what she said again.

Alpha entered Engineering and saw that Beta and Gamma were working closely on the positronic brain. “How does it go?” she asked.

“We're almost done, despite some... difficulties,” Gamma said.

There was an undertone in Gamma's words Alpha wasn't sure of. What were those difficulties? She hoped they wouldn't impair the function of the Synthetic. “Difficulties?” she asked.

“Nothing that counldn't be overcome,” Beta answered.

“Good to hear,” Alpha said. She noticed that the two others were looking at each other in a way that suggested more was going on. 'Whatever that is, it isn't my business. It's unlikely to impair the function of the ship.”

Ten minutes later, the synthetic was complete. “Programming is loaded into the positronic brain,” Beta reported.

“Turn him on,” Alpha ordered.

Gamma pressed the button. “Please state the nature of the Away Mission Emergency,” the Synthetic said.

Nina re-entered the TARDIS. She had spent most of the afternoon ruminating on Aialah and her situation. She had left work early after the confrontation with her partner at lunch. She had asked one of the other librarians about her, but she was told it was none of her business (although she did see that librarian was worried). Was Aialah in an unhealthy relationship? The more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed.

Even so she didn't want to think about it over night, so she decided to distract herself with the Baffin's logs, which she had copied to one of the PADDs. But first she checked the progress of the download. It was at 40.2%. The TARDIS was also indicating that she was picking up unsual patterns within the data. “Unusual how?” she asked. It seemed the TARDIS had picked up on something but wasn't certain what it was. “Something else to be concerned about,” she groused as she picked up the PADD containing the logs.

She then re-accessed the logs made at the beginning of the ship's journey.

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 361: Planet’s Edge (1992)

Note that the game’s title screen does not technically exclude the possibility of returning from this point.

          Planet’s Edge

United States

New World Computing (developer and publisher)

Released 1991 for DOS, 1993 for FM Towns and PC-98

Date Started: 5 March 2020             Because it took me so long to get Planet’s Edge up and running, I had time to do more background research first–the kind of thing that I usually save for the “Summary and Rating” entry. I learned from Wikipedia that the game grew out of a desire to merge the boardgame Star Fleet Battles with an RPG. I learned from an RPG Codex interview that the developers wanted to put “Might and Magic in space.” Nowhere did the authors report a direct influence from any other game, so it was a surprise when I fired it up and found myself looking at . . . Starflight. It has the same type of base where you enter different buildings to accomplish similar tasks, the same type of ship with commands arranged by “station,” the same approach to galactic exploration, the same variety of weird alien races to meet, and the same take on combat. Sure, it does some things differently, but the core of the game was clearly cribbed from Starflight. Was it so hard for the developers just to admit “we wanted our own version of Starflight“?      There is some confusion about a couple of elements in the header. First, the title. My policy is that a game’s “official” title is the best two out of three on the manual cover, box cover, and in-game title screen. If all three conflict, I go with the in-game title screen. In the case of Planet’s Edge, the box includes a subtitle (The Point of No Return) that both the manual and in-game screen lack. Second, a while back, commenter shankao made a case for the game being released in 1992 instead of the official copyright date (and MobyGames date) of 1991. His argument is based on the fact that no reviews appeared for the game until comparatively late in 1992. I didn’t find any conclusive evidence, but I decided to accept shankao’s argument and move the game to 1992.                  

Judging by the animate intro, the backstory is “some guy escapes a cruiser by shooting a guard and stealing a ship.”

               Planet’s Edge is set in 2045. Humanity has colonized the Moon and has seeded Earth’s orbit with various space stations, satellites, and other craft. The denizens of these orbiting habitats become humanity’s only survivors when the rest of the planet is sucked into a “space-time warp.” The warp is the result of an electro-magnetic burst fired from an extraterrestrial craft, although it is unknown whether it was accidental or deliberate (a Chinese space station had disobeyed U.N. orders and fired missiles at the craft just before the event). Either way, Earth’s gravitational influence somehow remains, keeping the Moon and satellites in orbit.              

The Luna Base commander gives orders.

             Commander Mason Polk of Luna Base takes charge of humanity’s remnant. Without Earth’s resources, the base will run out of food and life support within a few years, so time is crucial. From the crashed alien spaceship, scientists recover the device that caused the disaster. They call it the “Centauri Device” and identify eight parts that they need to reconstruct it and possibly reverse its effects: a N.I.C.T.U. (but no K.L.A.A.T.U. or B.A.R.A.D.A.), an Algocam, a K-Beam, a Harmonic Resonator, a Mass Converter, a Gravitic Compressor, Krupp Shields, and Algiebian Crystals. How they came up with these names is left a bit vague. A ship dubbed the Ulysses is commissioned to scour the galaxy for these items and otherwise try to find out why the extraterrestrial ship visited and destroyed Earth. It’s a little unclear how we suddenly have the ability to travel outside our solar system, or given that we have said ability, why there’s a time limit on survival at Luna Base.            

I wonder if K-beams glitter in the dark.

          Gameplay begins at Luna Base, where the player can visit the shipyards (build and modify ships), the warehouse (offload cargo), the crew quarters (view and clone crewmembers), the research lab (check on progress with the Centauri Device), and the launchpad (head out into the universe). The items that you can build for your ship or characters depend on the resources that you bring back from other places–resources such as organics, heavy metals, alien isotopes, and rare elements.            

Luna Base and its various buildings.

          The crew consists of four fixed characters. The pilot is William Robert Dean from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Osai Lin Tsakafuchi from Tokyo is the ship’s physician and chief scientist. Engineering duties are handled by Nelson T. Ngatadatu of Babaishanda, New Gwelo (a fictional place, but “Gwelo” is a place name in Zimbabwe). The combat specialist (both ground and flight) is Katya A. Mershova from Muntenia, Romania. Each character occupies one of the ship’s four stations, some doing double duty if anyone dies. Each character has fixed attributes in body, intelligence, agility, and luck, as well as fixed skills like “Leadership,” “Light Weapons,” “First Aid,” and “Computers.” I don’t know whether these attributes or skills are capable of developing, but I don’t see any sign that they are.               

Attributes for my engineer.

          Each character has a personal inventory, drawn from the supplies on Luna Base or found in the galaxy. The first thing I did was give them all flak jackets and weapons.

I found the ship modification process confusing enough that I decided to save it for later and just blasted off in the default ship. Once in space, commands are organized among four “consoles”: navigation, weapons, engineering, and science. For instance, to communicate with another ship, you select the “Weapons” console (counterintuitively) and then “Communicate.” To heal crewmembers, you select “Science” and then “Heal Crew.” There are far less than 26 commands, so I don’t understand why each couldn’t have its own key. However, Planet’s Edge does a little better than previous games using this structure by at least allowing you to hit single keys on the submenus rather than arrowing through them. Also, a few very common commands like Navigation | Starmap and Navigation | Enter Orbit can be called from the main view with individual keys, without having to go into the stations first.            

I couldn’t make heads or tails of this screen.

            Moving around is a combination of elements seen in Starflight and Star Control II. As you fly away from a planet, the map’s scale changes to show a larger area. As you enter a star system, it changes to show a smaller area. When you’ve locked onto a planet, you O)rbit it, at which point you can S)can it for information or B)eam down if it’s appropriate. (There’s no landing craft, just a transporter.) Making things a little difficult is that the planets continually whiz around their stars, unrealistically fast, so it’s tough to identify which ones you’ve already approached.           

Note how the navigator turns and looks at me while waiting for my order.

        I guess the player is kind of an invisible “fifth” crewmember. I base this on the fact that, according to his mission directives, he’s expressly forbidden to beam down with the rest of the crew. Also, when you’re activating the consoles in the ship, each of the crewmembers turns and looks at you, as if you’re sitting in a central chair. Despite this, you don’t get to name yourself or anything.

A map accompanying the game shows Earth’s solar system (“Sol”) at the center of a galaxy occupying coordinates from -64 to 64 on two axes. Sol is the point of convergence of eight “sectors” which grow outwards from the center like irregular pie wedges: Alnasl, Ankaq, Zaurak, Alhena, Algieba, Caroli, Izar, and Kornephoros. (Most of these are actual stars). There are a handful of systems at the fringes of the map that occupy no sector. It’s not really clear at the outset of the game whether the sector designations are geographic or political. Either way, note that the names of the missing parts suggest that we’ll find one part per sector.

I had a few false starts as I got used to navigation. Alpha Centauri is so close that it’s easy to blow past it on your way out of the solar system. I got killed three times in a row by hostile aliens who either attacked immediately or demanded cargo I didn’t have. I haven’t even begun to figure out ship combat. Since you can’t save in space, I kept restarting on Luna Base and having to try again.             

Meanwhile, my crew is saying, “Oh my god! It’s an alien!”

            On the fourth try, I took things more slowly and explored the solar system before leaving it, although it appears you cannot land on any of its planets (which makes sense).        

Mars can be scanned but not visited.

         I then carefully made my way to Centauri. The first planet, Centauri Prime, was too inhospitable to land. The second wasn’t a planet but an “alien outpost.” When I scanned it for information, the computer called it the “Omegan Outpost” and said that it was a “contact point for observers who were assisting with the failed Centauri Drive experiment.” I guess we know all these things because of data recovered from the crashed alien ship.             

Orbiting Centauri Prime. It’s a nice looking planet, but we can’t do anything there. I was hoping we’d meet Londo.

         The four expendable crewmembers beamed down and were immediately attacked by robots firing laser guns. Combat in the game is turn-based and like nothing that New World has developed before. It is perhaps most like Ultima VI, occurring within the main exploration window and using a targeting cursor to attack particular enemies. In fact, once combat was over, I found that regular exploration was also a lot like Ultima VI. As the leader moves, the other characters kind of organize themselves around him or her. You can switch between lead characters with the number keys (although there’s no “solo mode”) and do other common things like L)ook, T)alk to NPCs, and do a variety of things with inventory items. You can’t manipulate the environment to the same extent as Ultima VI, and (annoyingly) you can’t move on the diagonal, but nonetheless, by including this level of ground exploration and combat, New World has definitely gone a step beyond Starflight and Star Control II, even if the rest of the game seems similar.           

Combat with robots in the outpost.

               A door led from the surface of the planet to the interior of the “welcome station,” where a friendly message invited us to browse various newscasts. As we moved from room to room, we faced several more combats, and I had to use medpacks (which we found strewn around the area) several times. We also found some better armor than we were wearing (kevlar) and some extra weapons.            

A character inventory.

          We ran into an android who somewhat explained the situation: the station had been attacked by unknown aggressors who stole “various tactical data about the sectors.” Another android offered that the disappearance of Earth was “a tragic accident” and he encouraged us to continue our quest to find the various pieces of the Centauri Device. He specifically recommended going to Algieba Sector since “there’s a part that is named after one of that sector’s stars, after all.”              

But . . . Earth scientists named that part! They don’t know where it really comes from!

             Beneath a plaque labeled “Sector Izar,” we saw an image of a spacecraft that looks a lot like the extraterrestrial ship that visited Earth. A recorded message was saying that “something is malfunctioning with the drive” and “the experiment may have been sabotaged.” The overwhelming suggestion is that Earth’s disappearance was an accident, but we still don’t know what the aliens were trying to accomplish.

There were a couple of alien newscasts to watch. One suggested some kind of war developing in Sector Caroli. Another reported on a “white hole”–a kind of space volcano–forming in Sector Zaurak. Unforutnately, they were just text; they didn’t show anything, so we couldn’t see what type of alien they were talking about.      I was happy to find that you can save while on “away missions” and that you can turn off the relentless soundtrack with ALT-M. The rest of the sound effects are okay, except that when you view inventory, there’s an annoying and unnecessary “ding” as you move from one inventory item to another. Scrolling through a lot of them sounds like you’re demanding a bride and groom to kiss. On the positive side, every item seems to have a unique description, which I always think is cool.             

I confess I don’t understand this, though. Wouldn’t the adjustment have to be on every cartridge?

         In the final room we explored, an android gave us a key that would unlock the various “android heads” strewn around the base. There were eight heads, each offering information on one or more of the galaxy’s eight sectors. Some of them were explicit about the technology and military level of these sectors, I guess suggesting a rough order of exploration. From lowest to highest, these are:                

Sector Algieba, where the Algiebian Empire has a low level of technology. This is the second explicit suggestion to go there first.

Sector Zaurak, ruled by the “Rana Collective,” which controls the resources and means of production and thus has kept development at a minimum.

Sector Kornephoros, settled by refugees fleeing oppressive governments in Sectors Izar and Ankaq. Their technology is mostly good, but inconsistent because it is based on scavenging.

Sector Caroli. The android says that at the end of something called the Grand Survey, Sector Caroli was reserved for “recreation and housing for lower tech societies.” There, I’ll find Oortizam Labs and the Life Gallery. The only native species is the Eldarin.

Sector Alhena has no government. Two races called the Evian and the Scroe are in a war for its resources, while a race called the Dhoven tries to negotiate. It is a mix of mid- and high-tech ships and weapons.

Sector Ankaq, ruled by a planet called Shadowside, has a high level of technology.

           The android head’s rundown on Ankaq.

         Sector Izar is where Centauri and the station itself are located. The android warns against penetrating further into the sector because the OMEGA (unsure whether this is the race or the name of an organization) is capable of easily destroying everyone but the Ominar.

Sector Alnasl, ruled by the Ominar. Lately, they have been reporting bouts of insanity and mass violence, and other races are advised to keep away. “These developments,” the head noted, “may well be connected to the disaster of the Sol Experiment.”

             If this really is an exploration order, it’s too bad that the developers included it instead of encouraging the more open-exploration approach of both Starflight and Star Control II, not to mention previous New World games. Thus, I decided to defy it by heading direclty for Alnasl, one of the farthest stars in Sector Alnasl. I made it there with no problem, but when I arrived, a scaled alien told me that I was in violation of some “space conducts mandate” and refused to allow me to contact the single space station orbiting the star. I never figured out how this resolved because I had to take a break to reconcile my bank statement with Quicken, and Quicken decided it needed to update and took over my screen with its request for administrative rights, and whatever I did to make my DOSBox sessions survive such screen changes was undone when I restored the default configuration to play Planet’s Edge. (In its default configuration, DOSBox always crashes for me any time anything causes a major screen change, including unplugging or plugging in an extra monitor, opening or clsoing the laptop, and getting a demand for administrative privileges.) Thus, when I reloaded, I was back on the Centauri outpost. I guess this is a good place to end for now.         

If I’m “irrelevant,” why don’t you let me land?

          So far, it’s a decent game that evokes the best of Starflight and Star Control II, although I suspect the alien interactions are going to be less interesting and I worry that the blatantly suggeted exploration order will be essentially required. I also think it’s too bad that New World, which has a lot of experience in more traditional RPGs, didn’t bring more of their mechanics to character development and space combat. But it’s early. We’ll see how it goes.

*****

Time so far: 3 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-361-planets-edge-1992/

[topicprinter]

Link to blog version with pretty chartsCandy Japan 2017 Year in ReviewHello /r/entrepreneurs, Bemmu here.I run a site called Candy Japan, which ships boxes of Japanese surprise candies to subscribers around the world, twice a month.Five years ago I started writing these annual review posts after being inspired by patio11's year in review posts. They are a great way to reflect on each year, and inspire me to improve. In this one I'll start off with some background for those who haven't been following the previous ones and then proceed to the numbers for this year.My backgroundAs a computer science student in Finland I had a lot of side projects, with some of them generating some income as well. Learning Japanese has also always been a major life goal for me. My minor subject was Japanese, and as part of my studies I spent 2 years as an exchange student in Tokyo. I was still eager to continue to improve, and wanted to live in Japan again.After graduating and having saved up some money, in 2011 I decided to make it happen and moved to Japan with my wife. She is from Japan, and I first met her when she was an exchange student at my university. We settled in Tokushima, which is a smallish city (by Japanese standards) in Shikoku island. The reason for picking Tokushima was the company she entered after graduating.Even though I had no job waiting for me in Tokushima, I could follow along as some online projects I had started in Finland were still generating revenue. Pretty soon however they started to dry up, so I had to come up with something new.Starting Candy JapanStarting to look for a new project, I recalled bouncing around some ideas with a friend while we had been on a holiday together. I had mentioned to him this website I had heard of called BirchBox, a service that sends people makeup samples on a monthly basis. I thought it was an interesting model – a subscription not for software, but for surprises.Is there anything we could send like that? Maybe introduce items from around Asia.Since we were both busy with other projects at the time, we didn't end up doing any of the ideas we had bounced around. But now that I found myself in Japan with free time to start something new, I decided to try it.With my wife's work locking her here in Tokushima, I didn't want to start traveling around the world to hunt for items, so I decided to find something I could just send from Japan instead. Anything would be fine at first, I could always expand later (never did though). What would be easy to try to send? I saw a lot of unique candies here, and looking into it I discovered that they were also trending on YouTube. So candy it was.While I was an exchange student I had a side income from selling comic books (by using the university post office no less) from Japan to Finland, so I emailed those past customers to see if they would be interested in subscribing to candy. Two people agreed, so I started sending stuff to them.Next I put up a simple website. At first it was just a landing page, but over time as it grew, I wrote a bunch of code to automate things (no readymade solution existed back then). I submitted the website to the link sharing site Hacker News, where some bloggers spotted it and posted about it. Other bloggers saw those posts and reblogged it. This in turn caused the site to rank #1 in Google for the head term "Japanese candy", sending even more visitors to the site.Story up to 2016The Hacker News post, blog mentions and Google rankings combined to mean that by the end of 2011 a total of 300 people had become subscribers. It turned out to be a stable number that lasted all the way to 2014. It wasn't just that people were subscribing for that long, but also new subscriptions were roughly matching the number of cancellations to keep the subscriber count stable.Then in 2014 something wonderful happened: the subscriber count roughly tripled. I didn't do anything clever to make that happen, rather I got lifted by a wave as the whole concept of Japanese candy started to trend. If you take a look at Google Trends for the search phrase, you can see overall interest increasing.As you can see the number of searches slowly builds, but from 2014 to 2015 it rapidly doubles, making it about three times as much as it had been in the early days. This was directly reflected in our subscriber count.By no means was this still a big business, but Candy Japan alone could now cover our living expenses, and I started to get hopeful that it could get bigger still.Next year in 2015 it seemed that my hopes were coming true; the subscriber count crossed 1200. Or so I thought. What seemed to be the best year ever turned out to be miserable: I discovered that I had been hit by credit card fraud. All those new subscribers beyond the first 800 were actually fakes who had subscribed with stolen credit card numbers.I had already sent them the items, but now had to return all the money and on top of that pay a bunch of fees. Add insult to injury a lot of shipping addresses turned out to be fake as well, so I had hundreds of boxes returned to my address. Our mailbox was constantly swamped and our apartment was littered with returned boxes I had to manually examine to see if they were from legit subscribers or fakes.While this fraud issue was going on, I was also in the process of moving my tax residency to Japan. It was a stressful year spent dealing with fraud and taxes. I even got a phone call from a US police officer after someone had complained to them about an unknown charge on their card, because their number had been stolen and someone used it to place a candy order.I survived, but discovered I don't handle stress quite as well as I thought I would. I was panicky and high-anxiety a lot of the time. I'd rather forget that year, but it did teach me a valuable lesson:Fraud is something that affects any business that accepts credit cards, even charities. Even if everything seems to be OK, make a habit of reading through new orders as they come in. Pay attention to email addresses, shipping addresses and bursts of failed payments. You can spot suspicious behavior if you do this.I thought I didn't have a problem, until thousands of dollars started getting reversed. While I did know that a small percentage of all ecommerce is fraud, I always understood that as fraud being interlaced with legit orders. 100 real payments, 1 fake payment, 100 real payments, 1 fake payment. But that's not how it played out. Rather it was 10000 real payments over years lulling you into believing that everything is fine, then suddenly getting hit by hundreds of fake payments in a matter of days.If 2015 was a high-anxiety year, 2016 was rather quiet by comparison. Subscriber numbers did continue to slide, as competition was getting tough while also the overall interest in Japanese candy was waning. I ran some marketing experiments, but was unable to find any good channels. Japanese yen becoming increasingly expensive, forcing me to increase prices and leading to even less sales.2017This year was a bloodbath. From the start of 2017 to the end, subscribers declined by 40%, going from 636 to 385 members.Here's the subscriber chart including 2017.Sales statsSales net of refunds: $141,220Expenses: $102,846 (candy, shipping, boxes, ads)Profit: $38,374Wage per hour (assuming ~2 hours per day): ~$50Site statsVisits: 138kUnique visitors: 114kPage views: 241kTraffic sources of note: Search engines (30%), Social media (22%), Paid ads (13%)What went wrong?In 2016 I had five popular posts (1 2 3 4 5), while in 2017 I only managed two (1 2). The posts tend to send a lot of high-quality traffic, so the impact was bigger than you might expect. I haven't figured out how to invent posts from thin air when I simply have nothing new to share. This year I simply didn't have as much to blog about.Organic search traffic declined from 68,383 clicks in 2016 to 41,358 clicks in 2017. I think the reason for this is twofold. First, competition is getting tougher, meaning there is fierce competition for head search terms. I have been pushed off the first page completely for some.Secondly overall searches for Japanese candy declined by 33% according to Google Trends, while on YouTube searches more than halved. There was a point when a lot of YouTubers were doing a video showing their reactions to eating strange Japanese candy, but now that is ancient history.Changes in USDJPY exchange rates made me decide to increase USD prices. Naturally a higher price leads to less conversions.Another major hit was that all the packages we were sending to Germany started bouncing back. After this continued for several shipments, I decided just not to ship to Germany any more. This meant losing 10% of subscribers and needing to send a lot of refunds for packages that never arrived.Things I triedTried paid YouTube ads, and while I did get some subscribers, in the end they were just too expensive to keep running. Tweaking the ads was very time consuming and expensive (but fun). I learned a lot though and gave a presentation about it at a Hacker News meetup in Osaka. I managed to decrease their cost, but not enough to break even.Tried putting all of our old newsletters on the site. Had to reformat them by hand from ill-defined HTML newsletters to MarkDown. Attempts at automating with BeautifulSoup failed, as there was no coherent layout. I submitted them to webmaster tools, but this resulted in… silence. Less than one organic search click per day (chart).Improved site response time by serving the landing page from a static file served by Google CDN instead of from Python. This may increase conversions slightly and could improve SEO, but there is still a lot of work to do to make the site faster.Tried to branch out by asked my customers if they would like to subscribe to Gashapon capsule toys, but the result was near-silence. I have a bimonthly newsletter with a great open rate, I wonder what other ideas I could throw at them?Tried redesigning the site to be more colorful and not so gloomy, but am not sure if it helped or hurt. I don't have enough data anymore to say for sure, as you need hundreds of conversions to say anything meaningful.Tried to learn how to take better product photos for putting on the site to match what my competitors are doing, but was unable to take decent shots by myself. In the end hired a photographer to do it (result).The pictures look good, and will probably boost conversions a bit. Again I can't be sure of the impact due to lack of data. Who knows, maybe visitors might feel that seeing the products ruins the surprise or something.ConclusionI wish I could report having discovered some kind of a breakthrough marketing trick to reverse the decline, but sadly no.For the time being Candy Japan is still popular enough to keep running, and since I have most things automated I see no reason to shut it down. If the trends of declining popularity of Japanese candy and increasing competition continue, 2018 will be another down year.I will start spending more time trying new projects again. Hopefully nothing involving physical products this time!Thanks for reading, and do subscribe if you'd like to try some candy for yourself. You can use the code ENTREPRENEUR to get 10% off.

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Social Media Lessons from a Silicon Valley Veteran

LinkedIn is one of the biggest social media networks in the world—experiencing a 1,000 percent growth rate in just over 10 years and boasting over 530 million users.

At the helm of this powerful social network’s marketing department is chief marketing officer (CMO) Shannon Brayton. Brayton has over two decades of experience working for some of Silicon Valley’s most disruptive tech companies, including Yahoo!, eBay, and now LinkedIn.

In this episode of the Hootcast podcast, our CEO Ryan Holmes chats with Brayton about lessons learned from her time in the tech industry, along with social media tips for business professionals.

In this episode you’ll learn:

Brayton’s leadership tips from years of industry experience

What you should and shouldn’t do on LinkedIn

How to be authentic on social media

Press play to hear the show in its entirety, or if you don’t have a set of earbuds handy, read the transcription of our conversation below.

Q&A with LinkedIn’s CMO Shannon Brayton

You’ve been working for a long time in Silicon Valley and spent most of your career in PR and comms. In 2015 you took the role as the CMO of LinkedIn, previously working as their communications executive. What has it been like moving from communications into marketing?

It has been fun and challenging. The fun part is really the fact that I’ve learned more in the last two years than I have in the previous 10. It’s been the most condensed version of marketing that you could ever imagine and I have absolutely loved that, even when it’s been really hard.

And I say challenging because I had essentially done just corporate communications for 20 years, so I had a bit of a bias against marketing because as your listeners probably know, comms and marketing bump into each other quite often and for me to get rid of those biases and then learn more about the team. It was definitely challenging but highly interesting, and at the end of it, and it’s been two and a half years, it’s been incredibly rewarding at the same time.

It’s a really interesting era that we live in when you think about the breadth of an executive role. You need to have all of these arrows in your quiver and right now we’re seeing a lot of different perspectives being demanded by leaders. How are you helping CEO Jeff navigate the communication needs that he has?

Part of the reason Jeff wanted me to take the role was because he was one of the first CEOs that I’m aware of that really saw that convergence of comms and marketing, and decided to put it under one leader at the company. Comms was creating a lot of content that was essentially bumping into the same type of content that the marketing team was creating.

I think Jeff realized early on that those narratives and the way that you tell your company story and your brand, it’s essentially the same thing, and we’ve actually gotten quite a bit of synergy by having it all roll up to one leader. And it is true how many arrows in the quiver, as you said, you have to have. My current team is 500 people and I have everything from pricing, everything in-between, and then social impact.

I think that’s one of the hard things about being a marketer these days is you really need to understand a little bit about a hundred different things.

I absolutely see that. You mentioned Jeff briefly and I think he’s been known as a very authentic leader. You recently wrote a really interesting article about how you won’t hire someone until you’ve had lunch with them, are there any tips you can share with people on how you can have authentic interactions on LinkedIn?

One piece of advice that Jeff will give to CEOs that ask him about how to approach social is to make sure that no one on your staff is responsible for writing your stuff, and that’s sometimes hard for CEOs to hear because they think, “Oh my gosh, how am I possibly going to find the time to do this.” Jeff does all of his own social media himself. I think you can really sniff it out when CEOs or executives in general aren’t being authentic or are having somebody write their stuff for them.

And so that’s my number one tip is to do it yourself. It’s amazing what it can do for both recruiting and retention of your own employees.

What are some best practices on how people can remain professional and authentic on social? Any personal strategies that have really helped you in your career?

On the professional side, you need to think about the guardrails between Facebook and Instagram versus LinkedIn. We really do encourage people to make sure that the content they’re posting remains professional on LinkedIn. So, things that are political in nature or pictures of your baby don’t belong unless you’ve got a way to dovetail it back to your professional life.

I see a lot of people who will make that mistake and post something that’s highly personal and not as professional and people will respond in the comments and say things like, “This is not Facebook” or, “This doesn’t belong here.” And so I really encourage people to think about their social media life in two very distinct ways. LinkedIn is the place where you talk about work and your profession and your industry, and Facebook is the place you talk about your kids and your Halloween decorating.

It’s really important that you kind of draw that invisible guardrail in your mind when you go to join social media because people expect a certain thing on LinkedIn and they expect a certain thing on Facebook.

I recently did, as you know, a LinkedIn social leadership course, and I always give my six tips on social leadership and comms for leaders. And picking your channel is always one of the top things that I tell people. I absolutely agree that baby pictures aren’t really the right thing for the LinkedIn channel unless you tie that back to a great business comms piece around what having children taught you about being a better leader or something like that.

I’ve seen moms post pictures of their kids upon returning from maternity leave and talk about what their maternity leave was like and what it was like returning to a job. I think that’s inherently appropriate on something like LinkedIn. But just sharing a picture of your cute baby in their Halloween outfit is not something we encourage because people don’t expect to see those types of things on LinkedIn.

And as the online world has become more political and you’re seeing more and more unfortunate chatter on places like Facebook and Twitter, I think we sort of disproportionately benefited because people think of LinkedIn more like a respite from political discourse.

In an article of yours you talked about reverse mentoring as being essential in your onboarding from PR to marketing at LinkedIn. I love the concept of reverse mentoring. Can you explain to our listeners what reverse mentoring is and how it helped you better understand LinkedIn and excel in your role?

I had done comms for 20 years and one day we announced that I’m going to take the CMO job on an interim basis. About 50 different decisions came to me within the next two days and I had zero idea what anyone was talking about. I also didn’t know any of the names of the people in the marketing world.

So essentially, I picked up around 12 different topics that I was the most clueless on, and that list could have gone on even longer by the way, Ryan. But we picked the top 12 and we found the people in the organization who could tell me a story about their topic.

So topics like demand gen, search engine marketing, content marketing, etc. and we picked cross-functional people to come in tell me what they work on, how I could get smarter about it, and what was working with it and what was not.

It was so incredibly helpful, one because it expanded my knowledge in a very short amount of time. We kept it to one-hour sessions and so incredibly helpful to have people share what’s on their minds. And then I got to know a lot more people, and not just the people that were going to report to me. So it broadened my knowledge of the team in a really material way.

I love the concept of reverse mentoring and I think that that’s such a testament to the power of it, to be able to get you ramped up to be the CMO of one of the most popular and well-known social and business brands.

I have a lot of leaders that ask me about how they can get onto social media and do better on social media and do better in comms, and my recommendation to them is always to go and find the super stars in their organization that understand social really well.

The domain expertise is there and you just need to tap into it, and for some leaders it’s a little humbling and it puts them out of their comfort zone. Did anything stand out to you from those reverse mentoring sessions?

So you hit the nail on the head in terms of it being a humbling experience. You do have to bring a level of humility to it because I’ve told a few peers about it and they all looked at me agog that I would actually invite more junior people to come in and explain something to me that I had a bunch of ostensibly dumb questions about. And so there is a humility piece that really kicks in, but it really went miles for me because I think people appreciated that I was willing to admit what I didn’t know.

I also did a product marketing manager reverse mentoring session, so I brought PMMs from a variety of different groups and when I walked into the room I introduced myself and noticed that a few of them were introducing themselves to each other. So these were people inside the same company, inside the same organization in similar roles and had never met each other.

So it was really fun for me to connect those dots and what’s come out of that is that we now do a regular PMM roundtable where they all get together on a regular basis. We’re now building curriculum that’s very specific for them, and had I not done that in a cross-functional way I wouldn’t have realized that they didn’t know each other and realized the need. And so a lot of ancillary benefits came out of the reverse mentoring in addition to trying to get me a little bit smarter about each of those areas.

I really liked what you said about asking the dumb question as a leader. When you’re in a big roundtable meeting and the big boss is there and somebody says some buzzword acronym, it’s really intimidating to put up your hand and say, ‘Hey, I don’t understand what this acronym means, can we explain that.’

So I always try to ask the dumb question as the leader to set the table that it’s okay to ask the dumb questions. I’ll often do it for the benefit of everybody so we’re all on the same page.

I totally agree, and I think putting yourself out there to ask the dumb question, like you said, it opens the room up to more questions and for people to feel more comfortable with the unknown.

I think one of the other reverse mentoring things that’s been really interesting is trying to stay up to speed on technology. So I did a reverse mentoring session related to Snapchat because, you know, I’m a little bit out of Snapchat’s demographic and I wanted to know more about it, both from a marketing platform standpoint and when my eight-year-old ends up on it I’ll know what she’s doing.

So I’ve been trying to stay up to speed on the new cool technologies through reverse mentoring too, and that allows me to ask a whole bunch of dumb questions which is really fun because it’ll make me eventually a better executive, marketer and parent longer term.

Well Shannon, it’s been really great having you. I’m wrapping up right now and I want to ask you the question of the day: what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received in your career?

And it really was the worst piece of advice because bringing your whole self to work allows people around you to do the same. ou want to be the same person you are at home that you are at the office to the extent that it’s appropriate and professional.

My kids are part of me, and so it is something that I feel really comfortable talking about at work and it allows other people with kids to have conversations with me about it too. So worst piece of advice, don’t talk about your kids at work and best advice was bring your whole self to work because you’re going to be a much happier more authentic leader.

I think whoever gave you the bring your whole self was very wise in their advice. So thank you so much for sharing that with us today, Shannon, it’s been wonderful having you on.

Listen to the Full Episode

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[bizmediaweb]

Social Media Lessons from a Silicon Valley Veteran

LinkedIn is one of the biggest social media networks in the world��experiencing a 1,000 percent growth rate in just over 10 years and boasting over 530 million users.

At the helm of this powerful social network’s marketing department is chief marketing officer (CMO) Shannon Brayton. Brayton has over two decades of experience working for some of Silicon Valley’s most disruptive tech companies, including Yahoo!, eBay, and now LinkedIn.

In this episode of the Hootcast podcast, our CEO Ryan Holmes chats with Brayton about lessons learned from her time in the tech industry, along with social media tips for business professionals.

In this episode you’ll learn:

Brayton’s leadership tips from years of industry experience

What you should and shouldn’t do on LinkedIn

How to be authentic on social media

Press play to hear the show in its entirety, or if you don’t have a set of earbuds handy, read the transcription of our conversation below.

Q&A with LinkedIn’s CMO Shannon Brayton

You’ve been working for a long time in Silicon Valley and spent most of your career in PR and comms. In 2015 you took the role as the CMO of LinkedIn, previously working as their communications executive. What has it been like moving from communications into marketing?

It has been fun and challenging. The fun part is really the fact that I’ve learned more in the last two years than I have in the previous 10. It’s been the most condensed version of marketing that you could ever imagine and I have absolutely loved that, even when it’s been really hard.

And I say challenging because I had essentially done just corporate communications for 20 years, so I had a bit of a bias against marketing because as your listeners probably know, comms and marketing bump into each other quite often and for me to get rid of those biases and then learn more about the team. It was definitely challenging but highly interesting, and at the end of it, and it’s been two and a half years, it’s been incredibly rewarding at the same time.

It’s a really interesting era that we live in when you think about the breadth of an executive role. You need to have all of these arrows in your quiver and right now we’re seeing a lot of different perspectives being demanded by leaders. How are you helping CEO Jeff navigate the communication needs that he has?

Part of the reason Jeff wanted me to take the role was because he was one of the first CEOs that I’m aware of that really saw that convergence of comms and marketing, and decided to put it under one leader at the company. Comms was creating a lot of content that was essentially bumping into the same type of content that the marketing team was creating.

I think Jeff realized early on that those narratives and the way that you tell your company story and your brand, it’s essentially the same thing, and we’ve actually gotten quite a bit of synergy by having it all roll up to one leader. And it is true how many arrows in the quiver, as you said, you have to have. My current team is 500 people and I have everything from pricing, everything in-between, and then social impact.

I think that’s one of the hard things about being a marketer these days is you really need to understand a little bit about a hundred different things.

I absolutely see that. You mentioned Jeff briefly and I think he’s been known as a very authentic leader. You recently wrote a really interesting article about how you won’t hire someone until you’ve had lunch with them, are there any tips you can share with people on how you can have authentic interactions on LinkedIn?

One piece of advice that Jeff will give to CEOs that ask him about how to approach social is to make sure that no one on your staff is responsible for writing your stuff, and that’s sometimes hard for CEOs to hear because they think, “Oh my gosh, how am I possibly going to find the time to do this.” Jeff does all of his own social media himself. I think you can really sniff it out when CEOs or executives in general aren’t being authentic or are having somebody write their stuff for them.

And so that’s my number one tip is to do it yourself. It’s amazing what it can do for both recruiting and retention of your own employees.

What are some best practices on how people can remain professional and authentic on social? Any personal strategies that have really helped you in your career?

On the professional side, you need to think about the guardrails between Facebook and Instagram versus LinkedIn. We really do encourage people to make sure that the content they’re posting remains professional on LinkedIn. So, things that are political in nature or pictures of your baby don’t belong unless you’ve got a way to dovetail it back to your professional life.

I see a lot of people who will make that mistake and post something that’s highly personal and not as professional and people will respond in the comments and say things like, “This is not Facebook” or, “This doesn’t belong here.” And so I really encourage people to think about their social media life in two very distinct ways. LinkedIn is the place where you talk about work and your profession and your industry, and Facebook is the place you talk about your kids and your Halloween decorating.

It’s really important that you kind of draw that invisible guardrail in your mind when you go to join social media because people expect a certain thing on LinkedIn and they expect a certain thing on Facebook.

I recently did, as you know, a LinkedIn social leadership course, and I always give my six tips on social leadership and comms for leaders. And picking your channel is always one of the top things that I tell people. I absolutely agree that baby pictures aren’t really the right thing for the LinkedIn channel unless you tie that back to a great business comms piece around what having children taught you about being a better leader or something like that.

I’ve seen moms post pictures of their kids upon returning from maternity leave and talk about what their maternity leave was like and what it was like returning to a job. I think that’s inherently appropriate on something like LinkedIn. But just sharing a picture of your cute baby in their Halloween outfit is not something we encourage because people don’t expect to see those types of things on LinkedIn.

And as the online world has become more political and you’re seeing more and more unfortunate chatter on places like Facebook and Twitter, I think we sort of disproportionately benefited because people think of LinkedIn more like a respite from political discourse.

In an article of yours you talked about reverse mentoring as being essential in your onboarding from PR to marketing at LinkedIn. I love the concept of reverse mentoring. Can you explain to our listeners what reverse mentoring is and how it helped you better understand LinkedIn and excel in your role?

I had done comms for 20 years and one day we announced that I’m going to take the CMO job on an interim basis. About 50 different decisions came to me within the next two days and I had zero idea what anyone was talking about. I also didn’t know any of the names of the people in the marketing world.

So essentially, I picked up around 12 different topics that I was the most clueless on, and that list could have gone on even longer by the way, Ryan. But we picked the top 12 and we found the people in the organization who could tell me a story about their topic.

So topics like demand gen, search engine marketing, content marketing, etc. and we picked cross-functional people to come in tell me what they work on, how I could get smarter about it, and what was working with it and what was not.

It was so incredibly helpful, one because it expanded my knowledge in a very short amount of time. We kept it to one-hour sessions and so incredibly helpful to have people share what’s on their minds. And then I got to know a lot more people, and not just the people that were going to report to me. So it broadened my knowledge of the team in a really material way.

I love the concept of reverse mentoring and I think that that’s such a testament to the power of it, to be able to get you ramped up to be the CMO of one of the most popular and well-known social and business brands.

I have a lot of leaders that ask me about how they can get onto social media and do better on social media and do better in comms, and my recommendation to them is always to go and find the super stars in their organization that understand social really well.

The domain expertise is there and you just need to tap into it, and for some leaders it’s a little humbling and it puts them out of their comfort zone. Did anything stand out to you from those reverse mentoring sessions?

So you hit the nail on the head in terms of it being a humbling experience. You do have to bring a level of humility to it because I’ve told a few peers about it and they all looked at me agog that I would actually invite more junior people to come in and explain something to me that I had a bunch of ostensibly dumb questions about. And so there is a humility piece that really kicks in, but it really went miles for me because I think people appreciated that I was willing to admit what I didn’t know.

I also did a product marketing manager reverse mentoring session, so I brought PMMs from a variety of different groups and when I walked into the room I introduced myself and noticed that a few of them were introducing themselves to each other. So these were people inside the same company, inside the same organization in similar roles and had never met each other.

So it was really fun for me to connect those dots and what’s come out of that is that we now do a regular PMM roundtable where they all get together on a regular basis. We’re now building curriculum that’s very specific for them, and had I not done that in a cross-functional way I wouldn’t have realized that they didn’t know each other and realized the need. And so a lot of ancillary benefits came out of the reverse mentoring in addition to trying to get me a little bit smarter about each of those areas.

I really liked what you said about asking the dumb question as a leader. When you’re in a big roundtable meeting and the big boss is there and somebody says some buzzword acronym, it’s really intimidating to put up your hand and say, ‘Hey, I don’t understand what this acronym means, can we explain that.’

So I always try to ask the dumb question as the leader to set the table that it’s okay to ask the dumb questions. I’ll often do it for the benefit of everybody so we’re all on the same page.

I totally agree, and I think putting yourself out there to ask the dumb question, like you said, it opens the room up to more questions and for people to feel more comfortable with the unknown.

I think one of the other reverse mentoring things that’s been really interesting is trying to stay up to speed on technology. So I did a reverse mentoring session related to Snapchat because, you know, I’m a little bit out of Snapchat’s demographic and I wanted to know more about it, both from a marketing platform standpoint and when my eight-year-old ends up on it I’ll know what she’s doing.

So I’ve been trying to stay up to speed on the new cool technologies through reverse mentoring too, and that allows me to ask a whole bunch of dumb questions which is really fun because it’ll make me eventually a better executive, marketer and parent longer term.

Well Shannon, it’s been really great having you. I’m wrapping up right now and I want to ask you the question of the day: what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received in your career?

And it really was the worst piece of advice because bringing your whole self to work allows people around you to do the same. ou want to be the same person you are at home that you are at the office to the extent that it’s appropriate and professional.

My kids are part of me, and so it is something that I feel really comfortable talking about at work and it allows other people with kids to have conversations with me about it too. So worst piece of advice, don’t talk about your kids at work and best advice was bring your whole self to work because you’re going to be a much happier more authentic leader.

I think whoever gave you the bring your whole self was very wise in their advice. So thank you so much for sharing that with us today, Shannon, it’s been wonderful having you on.

Listen to the Full Episode

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[fardell24b]

The Engineer and the Time Lady - Investigation v0.7

7. Investigation

Alpha heard a noise. She turned and saw Nina enter the Bridge. She saw that she had rested and smiled. “You are ready for duty?”

“Yes. What happened on that ship shouldn't have happened.”

“It would probably be a while before I'll let you go on another away mission.”

“I was thinking about that,” Nina said as she sat her console. “It would depend on the kind of mission.”

“It would,” Alpha said.

“I was considering travelling forwards to this planet's information age and copying historical data from the worldwide network.”

Alpha was intreagued, but cautious. “So, you'll go forwards, and steal a data storage device with the data on it?”

Nina interuppted. “I'll take a tricorder and use that to copy the data.”

“That would be better,” Alpha conceded.

“I can do it today,” Nina sated.

“Sure,” Alpha was pleased that Nina seemed to have recovered from the previous day's experience, but she was still concerned that she was letting her exuberance get away with her. “But not right away.”

Nina examined more of the data collected by the Baffin crew, specifically that on the version of Tanarexa IV in the first alternate universe they visited. Her conclusion was inconclusive. Whatever, or whoever, was responsible for the displacements on that planet probably wasn't going to help her and the holocrew return the ship to it's home universe. 'But maybe we could try?' It wouldn't be the first time a Time Lord tried to turn a powerful being to their side.

1200 hours. Alpha turned to Nina. “If you want to go on that forward journey, you can.”

“I shall.”

In the shuttlebay, Nina grabbed several tricorders and PADDs. “Are you sure you'll need all those?” Alpha asked.

“The contents of the network may be greater than the storage capacity,” Nina answered.

“That's unlikely, the PADDs have a storage capacity of four gigaquads each. Same with the tricorders.”

“I'll find a use for them.”

“You probably won't be gone that long.”

“Probably not.”

“You might need this,” Alpha said, holding out a phaser by the emitter end.

“No. I don't think I would get into that kind of trouble,” Nina said with a shake of her head.

“Away Mission Personnel shall not go into an unknown area unprepared for the possibility of combat.”

“Is that a regulation?” Nina asked.

“Yes,” Alpha answered.

Nina sighed and took the phaser. “I'll be back as soon as possible.”

Soon, the TARDIS dematerialised, and Alpha left the shuttlebay.

Nina looked over the Console Room as the TARDIS travelled forwards in time. It was still in it's default design. She hadn't changed anything since she had fled Gallifrey. She considered that it was time to make changes. 'Starfleet certainly knows how to design a ship interior that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing,' she thought. She turned back to the console and accessed the Architectural Configuration System. 'Now, the scanner has the Baffin's interior on file.' She then set the ACS to style set the Console Room Theme to Starfleet.

That done, she left the Console Room to find the wardrobe. She suspected that just wearing the Starfleet uniform would draw unwanted attention.

After finding a simple Time Lord robe that matched the colour of the uniform, Nina entered one of the auxiliary console rooms and quickly re-assigned control of the TARDIS to that room. The ship was about to land.

As soon as the ship had landed and she had used the scanner, Nina found that she had indeed landed in the planet's information age. So, she interfaced one of the Tricorders with the Scanner and set it to send the information to one of the PADDs. “OK, copy the information from the planet's network to the PADD,” she said as she set the scanner. The tricorder than began to receive the data from the scanner and transmiting it to the PADD. 'Good!' she thought.

She emerged from the ship to see that she had landed next to a large library, and that the ship had disguised itself as a motor home (with the Baffin's regristry number, translated into the local number system, on the licence plates, and in Circular Gallifreyan on the sides). She also noticed the Starfleet pennants on the roof. 'Great! Is the Chameleon Circuit glitching?' She didn't want to worry about that. Instead, she decided to go into the library.

The library was what she expected. A well organised space, with many people interacting and looking up information, like any library she had seen. She also saw that there were librarian jobs available. 'Not sure how long I'll be staying, even if I could be back at the Baffin within a minute of depature.' She decided to stay at least a day or two. 'And I can work at this library for a day. She took a place at one of the desks and used the PADD to interface with the TARDIS, instructing her ship to create an identity for her.

Half an hour later, she came to the desk and handed over her application.

Name: Nina Lumbra

Age: 27

…

“Nina Lumbra? Sounds foreign,” the librarian said.

“My father was from the North,” Nina responded.

“I see.”

“Everything checks out, you can start tomorrow.”

“That's good.”

The librarian handed Nina a card. “Welcome to the Rladibud Library.”

Alpha waited for Nina to return. Thus she spent another day to herself listening to Klingon Opera and occasionally checking on the marooned ship via the probe.

“Commander's log, Day 1024, Crewman Nina still hasn't returned for over a day... Otherwise the Baffin is still ship shape”.

Alpha finished the log and called up the data on the stranded ship Nina had visited two days before.

She noticed something. She called up the data from two days before. She could see that the wave action against the ship had further compromised it's structural integrity. “Computer, estimate time until structural collapse.”

“Estimated time until structural collapse any time from six to ten days.”

“Right.” She thought for a while. There had to be away she could rescue that crew without violating the Prime Directive. She couldn't go, the 29th Century technology behind the mobile emitter hadn't yet been reverse engineered. But using probes to repair the ship would almost certainly cause a violation. And simply beaming them off definitely would be a violation. That seemed to lead to one solution. A Synthetic. The schematics for Synthetics, including the positronic brains, were in the Baffin's databases.

Alpha entered Engineering with a PADD showing instructions. “Computer, activate Emergency Engineering Holograms Beta and Gamma.”

“Affirmative.”

“Please state the nature of the Engineering Emergency,” Beta and Gamma said in unision. They then looked at each other in surprise before turning back to Alpha.

Alpha handed Beta the PADD. “Build a Synthetic that can go on away missions, so we can rescue the crew of a sailing ship without violating the Prime Directive?” he asked, once he had read it. He handed the PADD to Gamma.

“Yes,” Alpha answered.

“But, what will you be doing?” Gamma asked, her curiosity showing in her voice.

“I'll be in one of the holodecks, running repair simulations,” Alpha answered.

Both Beta and Gamma nodded, before turning to one of the consoles.

Alpha approached Holodeck 1. “Computer, load scan data of the crashed ship to Holodeck 1.”

“Affirmative.”

Ten seconds later, the computer reported. “Program complete.”

Alpha entered the holodeck onto the virtual ship's deck...

The next day, Nina was ready to start work at the library. She first looked at the progress of the download. “25%” she said. That meant she'd still be there in a few days hence. 'That's not a problem,' she thought. She had been on similar worlds before for extended periods of time. Before setting out she had the TARDIS bring up the local news. She saw that noting particularly notable was occurring, although two medium sized nations were at war over terrorism. She also noted that the island where Baffin had crashed was disputed between the two.

'Interesting,' she thought.

Nina entered the library and saw that one of the other librarians was clearly worried about something as she looked intently through the returned items. “Morning,” she said.

The other librarian turned with a start. “Oh, you gave me a shock,” she said. “You're the new assistant librarian, right?”

“Yes. I'm Nina.”

“I'm Aialah,” the worried librarian said.

“So, what are you looking for?”

“A rare book was loaned out. It is very overdue.”

“Oh,” Nina responded. “Wouldn't something like that not be loaned out?”

“Ordinarily,” Aialah said with anxiety. “But it was the Mayor's son!”

“I see,” Nina said. 'What have I got myself into?”

“Can you help me find it?”

“Of course.”

A short while later, the returns had been flung aside (mainly by Aialah), but the book hadn't been found. “Most likely, he still has it,” Nina stated as Aialah collapsed into a chair with annoyance.

“I'm in big trouble! If they find out that I loaned out a book that I shouldn't have loaned out, I'll be fired!”

“They don't have to find out,” Nina said in a reassuring tone.

“What's that?”

“I'll help you avoid that outcome.”

“But, you might get fired too.”

“We'll find it.”

“I shouldn't have told you.”

“Nonsense, I can help you. If it's not here, the Mayor's son would still have it, right?”

“That's the most likely option,” Aialah said, more nervous than before. “I guess I can call him during lunch.”

The morning went well (other than young children being noisy, as their mother's tried to read to them). However, something else was going on. There was a report of some sort of hostage situation in the city near the library. 'Is that something I'm going to be involved in?' Nina thought. She dismissed the possibility. She may have got involved with many things at other places after leaving Gallifrey, but wouldn't mean it would happen this time.

Aialah saw Nina enter the break room, and give her a supportive look. It was time to call him. She picked up her phone and quickly selected him from her contacts list. “Aialah! Why are you calling now?”

'He's annoyed!' Aialah thought. She felt the determination building inside her. “You know why I'm calling!”

“I forgot. It's at home somewhere.”

“It needs to be returned!” Aialah retorted.

“Calm down. I haven't lost it,” Lanran responded.

“But you know, I could lose my job, right?” Aialah said.

“I know that!”

“So, I would like it to be returned today.”

“Calm down.”

There was something off about his tone. She couldn't put her finger on it, but she knew something was wrong. “I am calm,” she responded.

“You're not. I will return it when I'm ready to return it.”

That was it! Didn't he see that it would be difficult for her to find another job? “I am calm. And it needs to be returned today,”she said in the tone of voice she reserved for unruly children.

“Look, you can wait, for me, OK.”

Some things connected in Aialah's mind. She then hung up.

Nina saw Aialah begin to tear up as she ended the call. It obviously didn't end well. “I take it, he's not returning it?” she asked, after a few moments.

“No,” Aialah sobbed as she left the break room.

Day 1025. Crewman Nina still hasn't returned. I'm getting more concerned about her. Or maybe the TARDIS isn't as reliable is it should be out of it's home universe. I'm still running the simulations on repairing that ship. The scans show it will break up within two days. It is good that Beta and Gamma have almost completed the Emergency Away Mission Synthetic. He should be able to work on site this afternoon. End log.

Having recorded the log, Alpha left the bridge again, heading back to the Holodeck. She had run many repair scenarios. The probability of success was at 90%. The chance of failure was still too high for her. She hoped the Synth would be as adaptable as she and the other holograms were. Then there was the fact that ship was still exposed to the elements. The sensors were detecting a cold front moving in. A storm decreased the probability of success to 56%. The repair had to be done before one arrived.

She entered Holodeck 1. “Computer, update Alpha Ship Rescue Program with latest sensor data and re-run.”

“Affirmative. You may enter when ready.”

She entered the simulation. As usual she entered into the hold of the ship, where the rents in the hull were growing larger.

She turned to the simulation of the repair materials and tools. It was time to start. “Computer, select speed setting: x20.”

“Affirmative.”

That was the speed at which she could go and still be functioning effectively. She could go faster, but it seemed that was the limit of her efficacy. (Of course, she suspected that Zeta could probably go faster, but she was sure he wouldn't do the simulations as effectively as she would). After the first few attempts she decided not to risk possible overstressing of her algorithms.

An hour later, she had ran another five simulations. The first didn't have a storm. The other four had storms of increasing intensity. The first three had a successful repair, but the other two had the ship break up, with the final simulation leading to the loss of the synth. 'I'm sure there may not be time to build another one,' she thought as she drifted beneath the sea after the ship had broken up in that final simulation. Even with Delta helping Beta and Gamma, it wouldn't really go any faster. The fifth simulation ended, leaving Alpha on the bare hologrid.

“Computer, show weather systems.”

“Affirmative.”

The holosystems then showed a simulation of the region of the planet from orbit. Alpha could see that a storm system associated with that cold front was already over the Baffin and heading towards the stuck ship.

'Another simulation, then I'll check in on Beta and Gamma' she thought. “Computer, restart simulation, decrease storm intensity.”

“Affirmative.”

Beta and Gamma had almost completed the Emergency Away Mission Synthetic. All that was really left was the most difficult part; assembling and installing the positronic brain.

“Ready?” Gamma asked, as she opened the drawer containing the positronic brain components. There were enough there for several Synthetics.

Beta wasn't sure why a ship like the Baffin would have such components stored aboard when it had a full compliment of Emergency Holograms. “Yes,” he answered as Gamma selected a portion of a positronic brainstem. She then placed it in it's place on the rear half of the Synth's skull.

The work proceded well, with hardly any 'hiccups'. Even so, there were 'touch and go' moments. The components were sometimes tricky to fit together. As Gamma placed the cerebellum on the rest of the components Beta found himself admiring the way she worked. He shook his head. That was hardly professional! He looked again at the work, but there was still a distraction in his attention subroutines. There was something, interesting, in the way she moved the nanobonder tool over cerebellum.

He shook his head again. He probably needed to run a diagnostic on his matrix.

“Are you OK?” Gamma was looking at him with concern. He realised that he had missed several sentences she had said.

“I'm fine,” he said, not entirely sure. Gamma still looked at him with concern, but she did repeat the instructions.

The difficulties did recurr as they continued putting the positronic brain together, but he didn't miss what she said again.

Alpha entered Engineering and saw that Beta and Gamma were working closely on the positronic brain. “How does it go?” she asked.

“We're almost done, despite some... difficulties,” Gamma said.

There was an undertone in Gamma's words Alpha wasn't sure of. What were those difficulties? She hoped they wouldn't impair the function of the Synthetic. “Difficulties?” she asked.

“Nothing that counldn't be overcome,” Beta answered.

“Good to hear,” Alpha said. She noticed that the two others were looking at each other in a way that suggested more was going on. 'Whatever that is, it isn't my business. It's unlikely to impair the function of the ship.”

Ten minutes later, the synthetic was complete. “Programming is loaded into the positronic brain,” Beta reported.

“Turn him on,” Alpha ordered.

Gamma pressed the button. “Please state the nature of the Away Mission Emergency,” the Synthetic said.

[fardell24b]

The Engineer and the Time Lady - Investigation v0.6

7. Investigation

Alpha heard a noise. She turned and saw Nina enter the Bridge. She saw that she had rested and smiled. “You are ready for duty?”

“Yes. What happened on that ship shouldn't have happened.”

“It would probably be a while before I'll let you go on another away mission.”

“I was thinking about that,” Nina said as she sat her console. “It would depend on the kind of mission.”

“It would,” Alpha said.

“I was considering travelling forwards to this planet's information age and copying historical data from the worldwide network.”

Alpha was intreagued, but cautious. “So, you'll go forwards, and steal a data storage device with the data on it?”

Nina interuppted. “I'll take a tricorder and use that to copy the data.”

“That would be better,” Alpha conceded.

“I can do it today,” Nina sated.

“Sure,” Alpha was pleased that Nina seemed to have recovered from the previous day's experience, but she was still concerned that she was letting her exuberance get away with her. “But not right away.”

Nina examined more of the data collected by the Baffin crew, specifically that on the version of Tanarexa IV in the first alternate universe they visited. Her conclusion was inconclusive. Whatever, or whoever, was responsible for the displacements on that planet probably wasn't going to help her and the holocrew return the ship to it's home universe. 'But maybe we could try?' It wouldn't be the first time a Time Lord tried to turn a powerful being to their side.

1200 hours. Alpha turned to Nina. “If you want to go on that forward journey, you can.”

“I shall.”

In the shuttlebay, Nina grabbed several tricorders and PADDs. “Are you sure you'll need all those?” Alpha asked.

“The contents of the network may be greater than the storage capacity,” Nina answered.

“That's unlikely, the PADDs have a storage capacity of four gigaquads each. Same with the tricorders.”

“I'll find a use for them.”

“You probably won't be gone that long.”

“Probably not.”

“You might need this,” Alpha said, holding out a phaser by the emitter end.

“No. I don't think I would get into that kind of trouble,” Nina said with a shake of her head.

“Away Mission Personnel shall not go into an unknown area unprepared for the possibility of combat.”

“Is that a regulation?” Nina asked.

“Yes,” Alpha answered.

Nina sighed and took the phaser. “I'll be back as soon as possible.”

Soon, the TARDIS dematerialised, and Alpha left the shuttlebay.

Nina looked over the Console Room as the TARDIS travelled forwards in time. It was still in it's default design. She hadn't changed anything since she had fled Gallifrey. She considered that it was time to make changes. 'Starfleet certainly knows how to design a ship interior that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing,' she thought. She turned back to the console and accessed the Architectural Configuration System. 'Now, the scanner has the Baffin's interior on file.' She then set the ACS to style set the Console Room Theme to Starfleet.

That done, she left the Console Room to find the wardrobe. She suspected that just wearing the Starfleet uniform would draw unwanted attention.

After finding a simple Time Lord robe that matched the colour of the uniform, Nina entered one of the auxiliary console rooms and quickly re-assigned control of the TARDIS to that room. The ship was about to land.

As soon as the ship had landed and she had used the scanner, Nina found that she had indeed landed in the planet's information age. So, she interfaced one of the Tricorders with the Scanner and set it to send the information to one of the PADDs. “OK, copy the information from the planet's network to the PADD,” she said as she set the scanner. The tricorder than began to receive the data from the scanner and transmiting it to the PADD. 'Good!' she thought.

She emerged from the ship to see that she had landed next to a large library, and that the ship had disguised itself as a motor home (with the Baffin's regristry number, translated into the local number system, on the licence plates, and in Circular Gallifreyan on the sides). She also noticed the Starfleet pennants on the roof. 'Great! Is the Chameleon Circuit glitching?' She didn't want to worry about that. Instead, she decided to go into the library.

The library was what she expected. A well organised space, with many people interacting and looking up information, like any library she had seen. She also saw that there were librarian jobs available. 'Not sure how long I'll be staying, even if I could be back at the Baffin within a minute of depature.' She decided to stay at least a day or two. 'And I can work at this library for a day. She took a place at one of the desks and used the PADD to interface with the TARDIS, instructing her ship to create an identity for her.

Half an hour later, she came to the desk and handed over her application.

Name: Nina Lumbra

Age: 27

…

“Nina Lumbra? Sounds foreign,” the librarian said.

“My father was from the North,” Nina responded.

“I see.”

“Everything checks out, you can start tomorrow.”

“That's good.”

The librarian handed Nina a card. “Welcome to the Rladibud Library.”

Alpha waited for Nina to return. Thus she spent another day to herself listening to Klingon Opera and occasionally checking on the marooned ship via the probe.

“Commander's log, Day 1024, Crewman Nina still hasn't returned for over a day... Otherwise the Baffin is still ship shape”.

Alpha finished the log and called up the data on the stranded ship Nina had visited two days before.

She noticed something. She called up the data from two days before. She could see that the wave action against the ship had further compromised it's structural integrity. “Computer, estimate time until structural collapse.”

“Estimated time until structural collapse any time from six to ten days.”

“Right.” She thought for a while. There had to be away she could rescue that crew without violating the Prime Directive. She couldn't go, the 29th Century technology behind the mobile emitter hadn't yet been reverse engineered. But using probes to repair the ship would almost certainly cause a violation. And simply beaming them off definitely would be a violation. That seemed to lead to one solution. A Synthetic. The schematics for Synthetics, including the positronic brains, were in the Baffin's databases.

Alpha entered Engineering with a PADD showing instructions. “Computer, activate Emergency Engineering Holograms Beta and Gamma.”

“Affirmative.”

“Please state the nature of the Engineering Emergency,” Beta and Gamma said in unision. They then looked at each other in surprise before turning back to Alpha.

Alpha handed Beta the PADD. “Build a Synthetic that can go on away missions, so we can rescue the crew of a sailing ship without violating the Prime Directive?” he asked, once he had read it. He handed the PADD to Gamma.

“Yes,” Alpha answered.

“But, what will you be doing?” Gamma asked, her curiosity showing in her voice.

“I'll be in one of the holodecks, running repair simulations,” Alpha answered.

Both Beta and Gamma nodded, before turning to one of the consoles.

Alpha approached Holodeck 1. “Computer, load scan data of the crashed ship to Holodeck 1.”

“Affirmative.”

Ten seconds later, the computer reported. “Program complete.”

Alpha entered the holodeck onto the virtual ship's deck...

The next day, Nina was ready to start work at the library. She first looked at the progress of the download. “25%” she said. That meant she'd still be there in a few days hence. 'That's not a problem,' she thought. She had been on similar worlds before for extended periods of time. Before setting out she had the TARDIS bring up the local news. She saw that noting particularly notable was occurring, although two medium sized nations were at war over terrorism. She also noted that the island where Baffin had crashed was disputed between the two.

'Interesting,' she thought.

Nina entered the library and saw that one of the other librarians was clearly worried about something as she looked intently through the returned items. “Morning,” she said.

The other librarian turned with a start. “Oh, you gave me a shock,” she said. “You're the new assistant librarian, right?”

“Yes. I'm Nina.”

“I'm Aialah,” the worried librarian said.

“So, what are you looking for?”

“A rare book was loaned out. It is very overdue.”

“Oh,” Nina responded. “Wouldn't something like that not be loaned out?”

“Ordinarily,” Aialah said with anxiety. “But it was the Mayor's son!”

“I see,” Nina said. 'What have I got myself into?”

“Can you help me find it?”

“Of course.”

A short while later, the returns had been flung aside (mainly by Aialah), but the book hadn't been found. “Most likely, he still has it,” Nina stated as Aialah collapsed into a chair with annoyance.

“I'm in big trouble! If they find out that I loaned out a book that I shouldn't have loaned out, I'll be fired!”

“They don't have to find out,” Nina said in a reassuring tone.

“What's that?”

“I'll help you avoid that outcome.”

“But, you might get fired too.”

“We'll find it.”

“I shouldn't have told you.”

“Nonsense, I can help you. If it's not here, the Mayor's son would still have it, right?”

“That's the most likely option,” Aialah said, more nervous than before. “I guess I can call him during lunch.”

The morning went well (other than young children being noisy, as their mother's tried to read to them). However, something else was going on. There was a report of some sort of hostage situation in the city near the library. 'Is that something I'm going to be involved in?' Nina thought. She dismissed the possibility. She may have got involved with many things at other places after leaving Gallifrey, but wouldn't mean it would happen this time.

Aialah saw Nina enter the break room, and give her a supportive look. It was time to call him. She picked up her phone and quickly selected him from her contacts list. “Aialah! Why are you calling now?”

'He's annoyed!' Aialah thought. She felt the determination building inside her. “You know why I'm calling!”

“I forgot. It's at home somewhere.”

“It needs to be returned!” Aialah retorted.

“Calm down. I haven't lost it,” Lanran responded.

“But you know, I could lose my job, right?” Aialah said.

“I know that!”

“So, I would like it to be returned today.”

“Calm down.”

There was something off about his tone. She couldn't put her finger on it, but she knew something was wrong. “I am calm,” she responded.

“You're not. I will return it when I'm ready to return it.”

That was it! Didn't he see that it would be difficult for her to find another job? “I am calm. And it needs to be returned today,”she said in the tone of voice she reserved for unruly children.

“Look, you can wait, for me, OK.”

Some things connected in Aialah's mind. She then hung up.

Nina saw Aialah begin to tear up as she ended the call. It obviously didn't end well. “I take it, he's not returning it?” she asked, after a few moments.

“No,” Aialah sobbed as she left the break room.

Day 1025. Crewman Nina still hasn't returned. I'm getting more concerned about her. Or maybe the TARDIS isn't as reliable is it should be out of it's home universe. I'm still running the simulations on repairing that ship. The scans show it will break up within two days. It is good that Beta and Gamma have almost completed the Emergency Away Mission Synthetic. He should be able to work on site this afternoon. End log.

Having recorded the log, Alpha left the bridge again, heading back to the Holodeck. She had run many repair scenarios. The probability of success was at 90%. The chance of failure was still too high for her. She hoped the Synth would be as adaptable as she and the other holograms were. Then there was the fact that ship was still exposed to the elements. The sensors were detecting a cold front moving in. A storm decreased the probability of success to 56%. The repair had to be done before one arrived.

She entered Holodeck 1. “Computer, update Alpha Ship Rescue Program with latest sensor data and re-run.”

“Affirmative. You may enter when ready.”

She entered the simulation. As usual she entered into the hold of the ship, where the rents in the hull were growing larger.

She turned to the simulation of the repair materials and tools. It was time to start. “Computer, select speed setting: x20.”

“Affirmative.”

That was the speed at which she could go and still be functioning effectively. She could go faster, but it seemed that was the limit of her efficacy. (Of course, she suspected that Zeta could probably go faster, but she was sure he wouldn't do the simulations as effectively as she would). After the first few attempts she decided not to risk possible overstressing of her algorithms.

An hour later, she had ran another five simulations. The first didn't have a storm. The other four had storms of increasing intensity. The first three had a successful repair, but the other two had the ship break up, with the final simulation leading to the loss of the synth. 'I'm sure there may not be time to build another one,' she thought as she drifted beneath the sea after the ship had broken up in that final simulation. Even with Delta helping Beta and Gamma, it wouldn't really go any faster. The fifth simulation ended, leaving Alpha on the bare hologrid.

“Computer, show weather systems.”

“Affirmative.”

The holosystems then showed a simulation of the region of the planet from orbit. Alpha could see that a storm system associated with that cold front was already over the Baffin and heading towards the stuck ship.

'Another simulation, then I'll check in on Beta and Gamma' she thought. “Computer, restart simulation, decrease storm intensity.”

“Affirmative.”

Beta and Gamma had almost completed the Emergency Away Mission Synthetic. All that was really left was the most difficult part; assembling and installing the positronic brain.

“Ready?” Gamma asked, as she opened the drawer containing the positronic brain components. There were enough there for several Synthetics.

Beta wasn't sure why a ship like the Baffin would have such components stored aboard when it had a full compliment of Emergency Holograms. “Yes,” he answered as Gamma selected a portion of a positronic brainstem. She then placed it in it's place on the rear half of the Synth's skull.

The work proceded well, with hardly any 'hiccups'.