The Prisoner: It's Your Funeral

I recently purchased--at the unspoken behest of the geek hivemind--the classic BBC series The Prisoner. I'm watching it offshore to pass the time and sharing spoiler-free responses/reviews with the internet without provcation, cause, or request because that's what the internet is for. Enjoy.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 27

Every Tuesday I post excerpts from best selling at not selling super blog, Playing Favorites. 

They can’t. The Midnighter keeps threatening his advisors with death if they don’t quit pissing him off. Jack Hawksmoor as the de facto president keeps going out to kick dissidents in the face personally and taking time outs to bang The Engineer, not really reviewing or signing any of the paperwork that just needs to be done when you’re The President of The United States. The Doctor just starts running his own religion (not to himself specifically; he’s more of a Jesus figure). I think Shen actually does do some responsible public relations work, but you figure that a poorly-run superhero oligarchy needs more spin than a busty Asian with wings can drum up. I don’t quite remember what Apollo is doing. Probably running interference with his daughter. I didn’t read much after that (because, honestly it wasn’t that great a run and it was rapidly sliding downhill), but while there isn’t much of an illustrated point in comics (if Superman were forced to become president, he’d probably do a great job. If only because of the three magic words, “Vice President Batman.” Regardless, the outcome would be whatever the plot needed.)

But by the time you got into it, you really didn’t like The Authority. They were just jerks and after a few runs where they did discuss their politics (cheering when a temporarily copy of Jenny Sparks uses a dream engine to destroy all weapons on Earth [and no I’m not taking the time to discuss everything that’s wrong with that idea]), they took over the United States and started getting really quiet about specific policies (other than, say freedom of religion and making things better for gays). Is it because specifics would have made it seem less like they were aggressive, ADD sufferers who were obviously unfit for government, because actually enacting those policies when they’d obviously overstepped their bounds wouldn’t be much of an endorsement, or because someone felt they’d challenged the loyalty of their readership enough by just pushing the story this far outside of the norm (which just shouldn’t ever be an issue with “The Authority,” but who knows).

What I’m saying is that making heroes stand up for anything more nuanced than “me good, you bad,” or “me good, you bad,” crafted in the mold of something on par with “Watchmen” in terms of complexity and depth (though not specifically in the morally ambiguity of “Watchmen”)  is a dangerous business.

I’m not saying that these things aren’t heroic because they aren’t done, as if concepts of super-heroism are shaped by market forces, but concepts of super-heroism are shaped by market forces. They aren’t solely shaped or even strongly shaped, but having the mainstream media of superheroics dominated by characters of myopic morality in the position of righteous avenger simply to appeal generally to kids who are alleged to be too young for complex situations and storytelling and adults who are too sensitive about their own views to read about the existence of an alternative or simply too stupid for complex situations and storytelling. By having cultural icons of not any ordinary heroism, but super-heroism crafted to appeal to a generic mold of reactionism, willful ignorance, and violence must have a reflection on the culture in which they are facets.

Of course that’s backwards; superheroes aren’t anything more than action movie protagonists in a serialized format because that is what the culture wants to see. If anything, the constraints and necessities of the serialized formats demand they actually transcend the reactionary, willfully ignorant, and lethally violent action stars which were spawned by the same cultural thirsts which birthed them. I don’t know if it’s World War Two or some other simplistic first-world egotism that compels the perpetuation of the heroic figure hitting a scheming, underhanded (often ugly) foe for trying to unapologetically destroy all life/free will.

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Blog in Exactly 1000 Words: Remembering...that thing

I'm still in Texas, but I should be back tonight some time. See you then. Well, just crunching the numbers, I probably won't, but y'know.

Weekend Music: "We Will be Free" by Garth Brooks

I know two things about this band:
1) It's Garth &@#$ing Brooks!
2) see #1.

It's the Magic: The Great Gates

Better Know an Abandoned Project

As I may have mentioned a few hundred times, there was a Great Designer Search held by the folks over at Wizards to see who would be the newest Magic card designer. Some other guy won, but before they started weeding out participants for quality, I was involved.

The initial take on the GDS2 was to focus on the collaborative nature of card design. To this end, they put up a wiki specifically for these designs, plus whatever else. Hopefuls would put up their block ideas, complete with mechanics, settings, etc., and would work with one another to refine those ideas. I was on a boat for most of this is sucking bandwidth through a coffee stir, so my participation was...limited at best. To the credit of many of the other participants, they remained active after being eliminated and helped the remaining contenders compete for the final spot, marking themselves as merits to the community.

Star Trek: Redemption Crew, pt 02

First off, I want to say that yes, I get that making dark and gritty versions of characters A) doesn't require any fucking talent and B) misses the point of Star Trek, and maybe slapping the names of characters I didn't really like onto tangentally similar assholes doesn't do much, but this shit is happening.

I got nuttin' else; let's do this!

Captain Jadzia Dax left everything she knew behind for a lover from a previous life. Their passion faded years later and Jadzia was left, bitter and alone from the experience. She’s quickly climbing the ranks, partying her way to the top, but beneath her charming smile and good connections, there is a fierce mind, honed with centuries of experience and focused by years of anger and perceived injustice. She is often seen as a counterpoint to the long-lived, dispassionate, and ethical Tuvok.

Linkstorm: Think about the future

 

I'm at Terry's this week, and I ended up watching part of a special on how if...something happened, in a few centuries, sea levels could rise over two hundred feet. I think that the doomsaying is interesting as part of a thought experiment, but it seems like everyone's trying to earnestly see the future, and there are quite a few people who are selling them visions of the future.