I watched “The Substance” yesterday with Tetyana as our Halloween night spooky movie.

The premise was really interesting; a company offers a service where you can inject yourself with a serum to create a “better” version of yourself. You are the matrix, they are the other. It's not a clone, it's basically just sprouting another human being out of you. You do not share the other's memory (and them yours), and yet only one of you can be conscious at a time. There are rules:

• You/Your other must feed your other/its matrix with IV while unconscious
• Your other must stabilize every day, which involves the other extracting some cerebrospinal fluid out of you (the matrix) and injecting it to themselves
• You must switch every 7 days, no exceptions
• Remember you are one

Our protagonist, Elisabeth, goes through with this procedure. Sue is born. The movie explores the dynamic between Sue and Elisabeth. The cinematography is where this movie really shines in my opinion, it is original and striking without every feeling too needlessly artsy. There were a ton of interesting shots, or ways the camera was used, positioned, or how the movement/lack of it was used. While being overall consistent for the movie, the cinematography was very noticeably different when following Elisabeth or Sue. While Elisabeth's was very sober, plain almost minimalist for the most part, Sue's was hectic, glamourous with very, very close-up shots.

The sound design was also very claustrophobic in a way, with a lot of low pass filter creating an effect of being underwater, while having some bodily sounds being unfiltered. This ties in to the body horror part of the movie. There are a bunch of disgusting sounds in there.

Another part of the body horror was nudity. There was so much ass. My notes for this portion of the review are simply “ass ass ass ass ass ass ass ass [...]“. This is when Sue is on-screen, and she is extremely sexualised, not only by the movie, but by the entertainment industry, which plays an important part in the story. The other side of body horror comes in during the stabilizing requirements, and during other scenes that I cannot spoil. Most of it is during the last 20min of the film, which are so wild I would never in a million years predicted it.

The script is the weakest part of this movie in my opinion, with glaring plot holes and overall not being airtight, never giving you the “wow that is so clever” feeling from seeing something unfolding. It is not bad, but apart from the premise, it is serviceable. However, the movie does not take itself seriously (without the satire being too in your face most of the time), so the weakness of the scenario is not a fatal flaw. The music is not the main focus of the movie, and does its job here. Apart from one or two tracks, it doesn't do anything special. The acting is to be commended, both actresses (Elisabeth – Demi Moore & Sue – Margaret Qualley) are doing a great job and selling a believable performance. The director, who also wrote, co-edited, and co-produced the film, Coralie Fargeat, is also to be saluted, as I especially liked the direction. And I also have to mention Benjamin Kracun who was responsible for the much appreciated cinematography.

The themes of the use of women by the entertainment industry (sole focus on beauty, youth, and unrealistic standards as well as rampant sexualization for monetisation purpose) and parenting, are very unsubtly present here. The second one was dealt with more depth and almost nuance, while the first was pretty simplistic. I don't believe the movie could have gotten away without mentioning the first though, so it is understandable. What the movie says about the former and self-hate, self-loathing, things taken for granted/lack of appreciation for the things we have, aging... were really interesting in my opinion, even if I can't fully relate to the last one yet. Overall, this movie touches on multiple subject, without being too verbose. A lot of them are mostly indirectly approached, which is nice to see; the movie is not afraid of the viewer not understanding/getting everything.

I would recommend this movie, it is a nice breath of fresh air in the horror genre, which — last I checked — was pretty stale. But don't expect too much horror. 16/20

Went to a concert yesterday. It was the first concert I had ever been to by my own volition (if you discount the frosh week concert). Tetyana and I went to see Океан Ельзи (Okean Elsy) a ukrainian band that is touring the US and Canada before going back to perform in Ukraine. When I was working at Tetyana's family restaurant, their songs were cycling the playlist quite often, and I liked them.

After driving for 45min, we arrived at the venue early, probably at around 7h30 when their set was only starting at 8. There were no opening bands, it was just them. We found a spot at the first elevated platform, avoiding the pit, but despite our early arrival, we weren't at the first row of that mini balcony. It was not an issue for me, despite my petite stature (I'm only 180cm after all [5'11'' for you weirdos]), and we managed to find a triangle opening for Tetyana to see the stage. Shortly after we arrived, the pre-show entertainment started: an auction of some band items and other memorabilia, which profit would go to the defence of Ukraine. If you have been living under a rock, Ukraine has been actively at war for 2 years, defending itself against the full scale invasion from russia. The band even had a flag from the famous Azov's third separate assault brigade (3-тя окрема штурмова бригада) on the auction. The auction ended at around 7h50. I was starting to shift on my feet, uncomfortable, as I had spent the whole day running around to set up the second-biggest event of the year at work.

Unfortunately, while the show was supposed to start at 8pm, the band only showed up at 8h30. During my wait, I was checking out the stage. It was pretty bare bone, with a couple of light on top of the rigging. On the stage, on the guitarist side, a plethora of guitars were exhibited: a fender telecaster, gibson sg, some acoustic guitars, more electric ones.... On the bassist side only two: a hofner violin bass and another identical hofner violin bass that he didn't touch for the entire set — based (prepared) minimalist. I, too, enjoy short scale bases. I know nothing about pianos or drums, so I will just say that there was an acoustic drum set and an electric piano on stage. Despite the distractions, I was still uncomfortable.

Without introductions, the band came out and started with their first and second songs. God damn, the lead singer sounds as good if not better live than in recordings. I had put in my ear plugs at that point — I already have tinnitus — but they still sounded great. The welcome speech followed, and to my surprise, the lead singer is speaking quite good english to the crowd which, you won't be shocked to learn, was 90% ukrainian. Then they did the unthinkable; they sang songs in english. They have released two albums recently, one in ukrainian, and one in english. It was the first time they did one in english, and the reasoning they gave was that they wanted ukraine and ukrainian culture to be heard of around the world by its own merit, and not as a side mention when talking about the war. I was a bit apprehensive, as in France, whenever an artist starts to sing in english from french, or starts to mix both, it's usually quite shit. Don't get me wrong, I am not talking about french bands that sing in english from the get-go, like my beloved Gojira, but the ones that see money and fame in singing in english and decide to transition. In any case, I was pleasantly surprised, as their english stuff was quite good. They sang Might Have Been a Dream, which I really liked, and is Tetyana's favorite song of their english album, which I haven't had the chance to listen to yet. I have listened to that song's studio counterpart in the car, and the live one was better. The studio version sounded too clean and the lead singer's english was better too — I liked his stronger accent and the more scuffed production of the live one more.

A quick transition later talking candidly about the war in Ukraine, and the band went back to ukrainian songs, with some of the audience singing — although timidly — the refrain of some. I, alas, could not take part in that as I do not really speak ukrainian and do not know the band's discography as well as I should. I could only clap and nod to the beat. The songs were good and their performance was solid. The lead singer performance is again really to be commended, he sounded incredibly good.

They sang some of their classics like я так хочу... (I do want it), не йди (Don't go), Tetyana's favorite без тебе мене нема (Without you there is no I). They were all great, but despite that the crowd and me were tired and there was not much engagement from our part. Which bring us to one of the other classics that they played, which I think they fumbled. It's без бою (Without a Fight), which starts slow and builds up to the refrain where the singer yells in a powerful voice — contrasting with the almost whisper of the start — “я не здамся без бою” (I will not give up without a fight). For their performance everything was the same as the recording if a bit modernised, and energised, adding to the build-up. Except when it was time for the cathartic yelling of the “я не здамся без бою”; the lead singer, instead of singing, turned his mic to the now very tired and lukewarm crowd which was probably not expecting it and kinda flunked it. And instead of learning his lesson, he did the same for the other two refrains. To the crowd's credit, they did wake up a bit after the second refrain, which they might have expected this time. But man, I would have loved to experience the song the way it is usually sung by the singer.

The show was great otherwise, and the song selection was a nice mix of classics, new stuff, english stuff, with a good balance of mellow to energetic stuff. The instrument performers were also good, the guitar was shredding an appropriate amount, the bass was playing in the pocket, and the drums were keeping time good (my lack of music expertise is showing). The mixing was very good, no issue of overpowering bass, too loud drums or too forward guitars. The voice was perfect and I have nothing but praise for their performance.

I would have loved if they also had played на небі (In the sky) and Обійми (Embrace) but I understand why they weren't in the setlist as — while they are beautiful songs — they might have put the crowd to sleep. Overall, it was a great concert, that could only have been made better if the band had started on time. It was a successful first concert, and I am looking forward to my second concert experience, coming up pretty soon in November, seeing Jaeger (go pre-save his album now).

The Toronto Blue Jays, fresh off a last place finish in 2024 but finishing with 91, 92, and 89 wins from 2021-2023, have pieces to make a deep push in the playoffs, but need some much needed help to do so. Their young talent is the biggest question mark, as some of them need a lot of work that might not fit their “win now” mentality. Bo Bichette and Vlad Jr. are both on the tail end of their Blue Jays tenure, both reaching free agency in 2026. Pitchers Kevin Gausman, Chris Bassitt, and outfielder George Springer will also reach free agency around that time. Pitcher Jose Berrios has an opt out in 2027, and can choose to go into free agency in his age 33 season. Because of this, and the incentive to build a successful team as Canada's only baseball team (rip Montreal), I begin my optimistic wish list for Toronto's future. I will break it down position by position and try to make it as digestible as possible, while providing 3 “tiers” of thought: cheap, average, and lucrative. I will try to add definitions for terms I use that not everyone would know to help with this.

BREAKDOWN OF MINOR LEAGUES: MLB AAA AA High A Low A

ARBITRATION: player has reached enough service time to advocate for themselves if they believe they deserve a larger contract, if both sides cannot agree, it is taken to a third party arbitration hearing, not good for player-team relations

SPOTRAC.COM: website that evaluates player contracts and estimated player market value

PLAYER OPTION: clause in additional years of a contract where the player can choose to opt in or opt out, going to free agency

TEAM OPTION: clause in additional years of a contract where the team can choose to opt in or opt out, sending player to free agency

FANGRAPHS.COM: website that gives super in depth looks at each team and players, projections, and evaluations

CY YOUNG AWARD: best pitcher award

TEAM BREAKDOWN/WISHLIST ——————————————————————

CATCHER: Alejandro Kirk, Tyler Heinemen, Brian Serven

After trading away Danny Jansen this past season, it's clear that Captain Kirk is the primary catcher for the years to come, now in his arbitration years and set to reach free agency in 2027. Originally signing as an international free agent way back in 2016, he is just now getting his spot as the no1 catcher. Taking a step back offensively in 2024 however, the Blue Jays should nix having Tyler Heinemen and Serven as the backups (kind of nothing players outside of being able to play catcher), and instead sign a no2 catcher that can also serve as a pinch hitter when needed. This is when trading your top catching prospect hurts you. Gabriel Moreno, traded from Toronto to Arizona, has become a top catcher in the game at only 24 years old. Traded with outfielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. for Daulton Varsho, this trade still baffles me as you traded a top catching prospect and a quality outfielder for a decent outfielder who can play catcher but probably won't ever again.

The catcher free agent class is usually pretty weak, as a good catcher is one of the more important pieces to keep around. Ironically, Danny Jansen is a free agent again, but will probably be asking for a multi-year deal worth more than I would spend on a no2 catcher. After departing with Moreno, their catching prospect list is basically non-existent, as none of their catchers rank.

Cheap: Yasmani Grandal

Grandal will be entering his age 36 season, and has fallen off significantly after his time in Milwaukee. Injuries and poor performance filled out his 4 year contract with the White Sox, having just one good year from 2020-2023. Signing with the Pirates this year on a 1 year, 2.5mil contract, he put up better numbers than his last year with Chicago hitting more homers in less games. His best years are behind him, but as a switch hitting bench bat, he could provide some offense on a game to game basis. Spotrac has his projected market value to be 1.3m/y but I think matching his previous contract with another 1 year, 2.5-3 mil deal is a good cheap option for a no2 catcher.

Average: Gary Sanchez

Gary Sanchez is a veteran of the AL East division, playing with the Yankees for the majority of his career before stints with the Twins, Mets, Padres, and most recently, the Milwaukee Brewers. Batting .220 in 2024 with 11 homers in 89 games isn't anything special, but only 31, I can see him recovering some of his power lost from his Yankee days, and would sign him to a 2 year, 8 mil deal. Having him as a bench option/secondary catcher seems like the better option as his average and on base percentage is up from his last year with the Yankees, having played half as many games.

Lucrative: Elias Diaz

Diaz will “only” be 34 in 2025, and has more than 6 years of service time as a major league catcher. Starting with the Pirates but having his best seasons in Colorado, Diaz is a good backup option, batting .270 with Colorado this year before being traded to San Diego. He only hit half as many homers this year as he did last year, but still hit for a decent average. His market value is projected to be much higher than I think it should be at 13.1m/y, coming off of a 3 year, 14 mil extension and taking a step back in his production during those years, I can see signing him to a 2 year, 15mil deal.

SUMMARY: Yasmani Grandal – 1yr,2.5-3 mil Gary Sanchez – 2yr, 8mil Elias Diaz – 2yr, 15mil

FIRST BASE: Vlad Jr, Spencer Horwitz

The biggest question mark for the Blue Jays is whether Vlad Jr. can return to his 2021 season production or if this could be the final days of Vlad Jr. in a Blue Jays jersey. By far the most expensive player to evaluate, it's hard to see the Blue Jays not at least trying to keep Vladdy on the Jays. In his last years of arbitration and making almost 30 mil in arbitration in 2025, it's hard to see both sides agreeing on a number for a long term deal. Hitting 30 homers and batting over .300, he is edging closer to his best season with Toronto (40 homers, .300+ average), but with little time remaining on his tenure, the Jays should be putting him as their top priority. Spotrac has him valued as a potential 10 year, 250mil player, akin to the Braves' Matt Olson (8yr, 168 mil) which would become the largest contract in Blue Jays history, beating out George Springer's 6 year, 150 mil contract. Only missing 18 games since 2021, I think he is a safe person to bet big on, and at the very least, maintain his production for the majority of his career. In this game of ifs, I have to picture a reality where they don't get Vladdy to resign, either due to the front office's own mismanagement or because of a more lucrative deal from another team, most likely a routine contender.

Cheap: Spencer Horwitz

Just starting his tenure as a major leaguer and having a good first season in Toronto, the Jays can continue to develop Horwitz as their first baseman following a potential departure from Vladdy. Under contract until 2031, and not arbitration eligible until 2027, he is the perfect cheap, homegrown option to invest in and make their starting first baseman of the future. Hitting over .300 for the first months of his career and ending with a .265 average and 12 home runs is more than quality for a 24 year old drafted in 2019. His pre arbitration contract is only 741,000/y and he has the tools necessary to become a main piece of the Blue Jays future.

Average: Anthony Rizzo/Rhys Hoskins

This one is a little different because both players have options (Rizzo team option, Hoskins player option) so this is assuming both players have their options opted out of, sending both to free agency. Much like the signing of Brandon Belt last season, an added first baseman option will let Vladdy play games at DH and let him rest a little throughout the season without having to take him out of the lineup.

Anthony Rizzo, a World Series champion in 2016 with the Chicago Cubs and back in the World Series with the Yankees this year, hasn't had the same production since his time with the Cubs, and has been sidelined with injury during his tenure with the Yankees. The Yankees are expected to decline his option, I think Rizzo is a good left handed option, and if healthy, can still have quality performance on offense and defense. Signing a 32 mil contract from 2022-23 and another contract for 2023-25, the Yankees are expected to buy out the last year of his 40mil contract for 6 mil. From the start of his Yankees tenure to now, his market value has plummeted from 17/mil to an estimated 2 mil/y salary. Because of this, and his notable defense, I think he is a good option to have as a backup/bench bat. His last full season was 2022, where he hit 32 homers to a .224 average, and if he can get close to this production as a first baseman/DH/bench bat, can be a good signing for the Blue Jays. Despite him being 36 next season, I would give him a 2yr, 10 mil contract with an option for a third year.

Rhys Hoskins is kind of the opposite. Missing all of 2023 due to injury, and signing a short-term deal with the Milwaukee Brewers and proving he is still a quality player, I think Hoskins will opt out of his contract to pursue a more lucrative deal. Hitting 26 homers to a .214 average is nothing to scoff at after missing an entire year. His last full season was with the Phillies in 2022 where he hit 30 homers to a .246 average, pretty close to his most recent season. His estimated market value sits at 11.8mil/y, and I think that's fair given his current 17mil/y contract. At 31 years old, I would give him a 4yr, 50 mil contract, or a shorter 2 year, 30 mil contract with a player option for a third year.

Lucrative: Vladdy Jr.

Obviously, the lucrative option would be to sign Vladdy long term. Returning to form after a down year in 2023 where he only hit 26 homers to a .264 average, and only 25, the Blue Jays almost have to re-sign Vladdy, a generational cornerstone when at his best, an above average player at his worst. I would give him an 8yr, 200mil deal with options for a 9th and 10th year for a total of 250 mil.

SUMMARY: Horwitz – 747,000/y, Team control until 2031 Rizzo – 2yr, 10 mil, option for third year Hoskins – 4yr, 50mil or 2yr, 30mil with an option for a third year Vlad Jr. – 8yr, 200mil with options for 9th and 10th year

SECOND BASE: Will Wagner, Ernie Clement, Leo Jimenez

With a plethora of unproven infielders, it's hard to say how they will navigate 2nd base. Like Spencer Horwitz, Will Wagner performed well during his first few months with the Jays after being acquired from Houston. Batting over .300 in his first 25 games, it's still hard to tell what he will do in a full season given the chance. Ernie Clement has been a flexible infield option as well, playing 2nd, 3rd, and SS last season. He is on his way to being a productive everyday player, having played his career high in games last season and hitting to a .263 average. To compete for a championship in the next couple years however, they may need more. I can see Clement as the starting second baseman to begin the season, and depending on his production, reevaluate from there. He is almost 30 which is a bit old to develop as an infielder, and he will make 2.5mil next season. Leo Jimenez is too young and too green to evaluate as an everyday player, and has not performed well in his time given at the major league level. I believe he will start in the minor leagues and get called up when needed. Playing in only 60 games mostly due to injuries to the main core, he averaged .229 last season. Second base doesn't always have to be an impact position, but someone who should be in the field as many games as possible with some flexibility in their ability to play other positions. The top second baseman last season was Ketel Marte for Arizona, hitting 36 homers to a .292 batting average, by far an outlier on the offensive front. Former Blue Jay Marcus Semien is a close second place, who with Toronto broke the single season home run record for a second baseman but took a step back offensively with the Texas Rangers' collapse in the second half, only hitting to a .237 batting average.

Cheap: Use what they have in Wagner, Clement, Jimenez

Having an excess of middle infielders makes it easy to plug in someone you already have in your system, without the need to look elsewhere. Wagner showed promise and with Jimenez, are young and cheap with many years of team control. Ernie Clement showed success at the major league level but is getting older for someone who is just now getting significant playing time. He will be entering his age 29 season.

Average: Jorge Polanco

Switch hitting second baseman has a 12 million club option with Seattle for 2025, but only hitting 16 homers to a .213 average, I see Seattle declining his option, sending him to free agency. In the last year of his contract extension from 2019 with Minnesota, Jorge Polanco was a key piece of the Twins' success and still relatively young at 31 years old. Because of this, and his former success , hitting 33 homers to a .258 average in 2021, I think he would be a good short term, win now contract if he can return to form. His market value is a little higher than I would give him at 13.7/y, but a short term deal could be beneficial for both sides. Because of his past and as a switch hitter, I think a 2 year, 25 mil deal with an option for a third year worth 15mil would work well.

Lucrative: Gleyber Torres

Yankee mainstay Gleyber Torres hits free agency this winter, and depending on the Yankee's success in this year's World Series, the team might not re-sign Torres with young infielders on the rise in their minor league system. He's only missed a handful of games in his last 3 seasons, and a veteran of the AL East, could be a good steal for the Jays, even if at a hefty price. The Jays have a lot of young infielders, but could sign Torres to a multi-year deal to have some offensive stability while the young players develop. He took a step back offensively this year, dropping his homers from 25 to 15, and his average from .273 to .253, but looking at his first half vs second half stats, he performed much better in the second half as the leadoff hitter, hitting over .300 the last few months of the season. The Blue Jays' known issues with production in the leadoff spot puts Gleyber in a good spot to provide some early offense for Bo and Vladdy, who will get more opportunities to drive in runs early. Torres is only 27, and will fetch a high price. He received 14.2mil in arbitration last season, and due to his step back offensively, could be signed to a 3 year, 50 mil deal with options for more on the hope that he can return to his 20+ homer, .250+ average with consistency.

SUMMARY: Wagner, Clement, Jimenez – <4 mil/y and a lot of team control Jorge Polanco – 2y, 25mil with option for third year at 15mil Gleyber Torres – 3y, 50mil with options for fourth and fifth year

THIRD BASE: Clement (projected starter on FanGraphs), Addison Barger, Orelvis Martinez

The Blue Jays haven't had a consistent third baseman since acquiring Matt Chapman from Oakland in 2022, departing with Cavan Biggio and Santiago Espinal and settling on deals for Justin Turner and Isiah Kiner-Falefa last year. Their top third base prospect, Orelvis Martinez, hit to a .267 average in the minor leagues before getting called up to the Jays, and promptly suspended for 80 games after violating the PED policy. In years previous, he's been nothing special, but is only 22 years old. Another third base prospect, Addison Barger, got significant playing time last year but hit to a <.200 average, and will most likely start 2025 on the minor league roster. Another third base prospect, Cutter Coffey, one of the players acquired from Boston in the Danny Jansen trade, hit 14 home runs in the minor leagues before being traded, where he only hit 1 the rest of the season. This position is very much a work in progress, and in a win now scenario, needs significant improvement unless you move Vladdy back to third base, something he did a little bit last year but hasn't played full time since 2019. Moving Vlad to third would allow Horwitz or another first baseman (think Rizzo or Hoskins) to play everyday and still let someone play DH without removing much from the field defensively.

Cheap: JD Davis

Because of the unreliability from the Jays third basemen in their organization already, the best cheap option to acquire would be JD Davis, who has shown power in the past but didn't perform well last year where he only played in 50 games. He hit 18 homers to a .248 average with San Francisco in 2023, and could return to that 15+ homer form given a full season. In seasons where he played more than 100 games, he has hit at least 12 home runs and at least a .248 average. A 1yr, 2.5 mil deal, same as last season, should be good enough for him.

Average: Yoan Moncada

Riddled with injuries these past few seasons, Yoan Moncada needs a “prove it” deal, the opportunity to show the league you still got it on a short 1 year contract, to get back on the right track. As a switch hitting third baseman who was touted as a top prospect with Red Sox and later the White Sox, he is only a few years removed from his best campaign, where he hit 25 homers to a .315 average in 2019. Still young at 29, and most likely to have his 25mil team option opted out of, he will be looking for somewhere to show his stuff. Playing poorly from 2020-2024, only playing in a handful of games the last couple seasons, his price tag will be much lower than his contract was, and a 1 yr, 4 million dollar deal would be a good prove it deal for him.

Lucrative: Alex Bregman

Bregman is tricky, because there is a big possibility that the Astros resign Bregman, who has played his entire career in Houston, winning 2 championships in 2017* and 2022 respectfully. He is coming off a 5 year, 100mil extension signed in 2020, and will probably be asking for close to that if he hits free agency. Hitting 41 home runs in 2019, it's no question why he got the contract extension, but since 2020 has performed to a slightly above average statline, as a 20+ homer .250+ average player. If he can't get a deal done because his asking price is too high or Houston's offer is too low, I can see a 4 year, 80 million dollar deal for a quality third base option who has only missed significant time once in his career.

SUMMARY: JD Davis – 1yr, 2.5mil Yoan Moncada – 1yr, 4mil Alex Bregman – 4yr, 80 mil

SHORTSTOP: Bo Bichette, Ernie Clement, Josh Kasevich

Bo Bichette has been a mainstay at the shortstop position since 2019, hitting for a .300+ average almost every season, with his lowest coming this year due to injury at .225, but only playing 81 games (also important to note that it was a hand injury, so offensive struggles were likely because of that). He is set to earn 17.5mil in 2025, his last season before reaching free agency. During his stint on the injured list, Ernie Clement and others held down his position, but not performing nearly as well as Bichette had in years prior. Josh Kasevich has yet to debut on the Blue Jays roster, but performed to a .325 average in 41 games at AAA. I think he will start in the minor leagues, and probably only debut due to injuries or late in the season, so I think signing someone who can slot in to multiple positions while also taking over on rest days for Bo if needed.

Cheap: Amed Rosario

A flexible INF/OF, Rosario has had consistent success at the major league level, with most of his 9 seasons consisting of .260+ averages and 5-15 home runs. He has played most of the season each year, with stints on the Dodgers, Guardians, Mets, and Reds. Not a huge impact player offensively, but his value is in his versatility and ability to stay on the field, not to mention his low cost. Rosario signed a 1.5mil deal in 2024 with Tampa Bay before being sent to the Reds. His estimated value is 2.3m/y, so a 1y, 2.5 mil deal is more than doable.

Average: Ha-Seong Kim

San Diego has at least 50 shortstops last time I checked, Kim one of them, and his contract for 2025 rests on a mutual option. The Padres need to cut payroll, and Kim is expected to opt out of his side, despite a down year offensively. He only hit 11 homers to a .233 average, but at 29 years old and a veteran of the Korean league, Kim is still a worthy player. Kim missed 40 games this year due to injury, but played in 150 games in 2022 and 2023. He is coming off a 4 year, 28 mil contract signed in 2021, and his market value is estimated at 12.3mil/y. I wouldn't spend that much on someone who's best season was only 17 homers at a .266 average, but a 3 year, 33 mil deal with an option for a 4th works well for me, as he has also played second base in San Diego, another spot the Jays need to fill.

Lucrative: Bo Bichette

It's no mystery that Bo Bichette is talented, and that last year was an outlier to his overall production, but signing him to a long term deal would still come with some ifs. 26 years old is super young for a shortstop, and is coming off a 3 year, 33.6mil extension signed in 2023. Set to reach free agency after this next season, signing him now on the idea that he returns to form instead of waiting until after the 2025 season in case his stock rises so much he chooses to hit the open market is the best bet for a solid infield for years to come. Not counting 2024, where he missed half the season, he has hit over 60 home runs to a .300+ average since his debut in 2019. After a down year, you could probably get him to sign a long term deal for less than if he had played a full season, and a 7yr, 150mil contract is somehow on the cheaper end for a player like Bobear.

SUMMARY: Amed Rosario – 1yr, 2.5mil Ha-Seong Kim – 3yr, 33 mil with an option for a 4th year at 15mil Bo Bichette – 7yr, 150mil

OUTFIELDERS: George Springer, Daulton Varsho, Nathan Lukes, Joey Loperfido, Jonatan Clase

Instead of doing 3 players for each outfield position, I will present 5 outfielders, 2 cheap, 2 average, and 1 lucrative.

The Blue Jays outfield has seen massive turnover in recent years, going from proven sluggers like Teoscar Hernandez and Lourdes Gurriel to defensive standouts like Kevin Kiermaier and Daulton Varsho, but the constant member of the outfield, George Springer, has fallen off completely from his best years. The highest Blue Jays contract in history at 6yrs, 150mil, Springer is a shell of his former self, hitting to a .220 average last season. George will be 35 during the 2025 season, and a 35 year old outfielder is like one of those dogs with the training wheels because their legs are shot. A worthy candidate to replace George Springer as the top outfielder is Daulton Varsho, and while he was acquired through a horrible, lopsided trade, has proven he can patrol Center Field to a gold glove standard. Lukes, Loperfido, and Clase are young and unproven, but can fill out Left and Right field if needed. Outside of these names, there aren't a lot of impact players for the Jays' outfield. Minor leaguer Alan Roden would be the first one called up if needed, hitting to a .314 average in 71 games at AAA. There are always a lot of quality outfielders on the market, we'll see if the Jays can snag anyone of note for next season.

Cheap: Michael Conforto

Conforto has been through injury hell since he hit over .300 in the shortened covid season, missing all of 2022. He signed a 2 year deal with San Francisco, and performed well enough, playing most games during those two seasons and matching his production from 2021, even surpassing his home run numbers this last season, hitting 20 and batting .237. I can also see him taking somewhat of a prove it deal, improving last season but still needing to return to his 2019 standard, where he hit over 30 home runs for the first and only time in his career. His market value is set at 4.7mil/y, but I don't think he would go for anything less than 10 mil/y. A 1 yr, 15mil deal should be good enough value for what he is hoping to do in 2025. Conforto is a primary Right Fielder but can play Left and Center if needed.

Cheap: Harrison Bader

Besides a short run during his time with the Yankees, Bader has been a defense first outfielder for his career. I would compare this signing to the signing of Kiermaier a couple years ago, adding great defense but with Bader having slightly better offensive numbers. Having Bader as a Center Fielder allows Varsho to rest vs lefties, or allows him to slide to Left with Springer in Right for a more complete outfield. At 30 years old, and valued at 7.1m/y, I think a 1yr, 10 mil or a 2yr, 18 mil deal, comparable financially to Kiermaier's contract (1yr, 10.5mil).

Average: Tyler O'Neill

Canada's own Tyler O'Neill hit 31 homers last year, and would provide much needed power to the middle of the order for people not named Vlad Jr. He made just under 6 mil in arbitration in 2024, and is valued at 16.2mil/y after this great season. He did miss time with injury the past 3 years, which could lower his value a bit, but that makes the 31 homers this season stand out that much more. A corner outfielder, he can slot in as the everyday Left or Right fielder, and also DH when needed. Only 29, I can see signing him to a 4yr, 60 mil contract.

Average: Alex Verdugo

As a member of both the Red Sox and the Yankees, Verdugo is no stranger to the AL East, and has proven to be a +defender with solid offensive output. Only 28, he will probably be looking for a multi-year deal. Making 8.7mil last season in arbitration, I think a 5 year, 60 mil contract with options can be beneficial for both sides, as he provides a left handed bat and solid defense at the corner outfield positions.

Lucrative: Juan Soto

Juan Soto is on the fast track to the Hall of Fame. Only 25 years old, he won the World Series in 2019, and has over .300 for almost his entire career. Hitting for average and power, Juan Soto is the upper echelon of offensive production. His “worst” season is still a 25+ homer season, and had a career high 41 homers in 2024. The Yankees will do everything in their power to re-sign Soto, but why shouldn't the Jays do the same? Making a whopping 31 mil in arbitration this season, he will no doubt be a $500 million dollar man. Slotting in Right or Left, and as a power hitting left-handed bat, Juan Soto will be at the top of the list for every team worth their salt. A 15yr, 500mil contract is an insane amount of money, and is well deserved for a man of Soto's caliber.

SUMMARY: Michael Conforto – 1yr, 15mil Harrison Bader – 1yr, 10mil or 2yr, 18mil Tyler O'Neill – 4yr, 60 mil Alex Verdugo – 5 yr 60 mil Juan Soto – 15yr, 500mil

DESIGNATED HITTER: Vlad Jr., Spencer Horwitz, George Springer

As far as offensive production goes, the Jays need a significant improvement in their DH slot, having an everyday power presence while allowing Vladdy, Horwitz, and Springer to play their normal positions. DH's vary more year to year and don't receive long term contracts because they only hit. (The Yankees' Giancarlo Stanton is one of the only DH's to make significant money and only hit, as Ohtani will return to pitching in 2025). Because of this and the tendency to not sign a DH only player, the options are usually slim.

Cheap: Eloy Jimenez

Debuting with the Chicago White Sox and starting off strong with a 30+ homer season, Jimenez has never been the same player since, struggling with injuries and poor performance. He actually played the same amount of games in 2021 as he did in the shortened 2020 season because of injuries, but put up decent enough numbers in 2023, but not to the standard of his debut season. Because of his strong first season in Chicago, he was signed to a 6yr, 43 mil contract extension, and never lived up to the price tag. He has a team option for 2025, but at 16.5mil, he will most certainly have it declined. He's only 27, and could benefit highly from a 1yr prove it deal, if he can stay healthy. His estimated market value is only 2.3m/y, and a 1yr, 3mil contract for a DH on the hopes they can get back to their 25+ homer days is perfect for a Jays team that wants results without spending big.

Average: JD Martinez

Veteran slugger JD Martinez has produced his entire career, and at 37 years old, is only now starting to slow down. From 2014-2023 (not counting the shortened covid season) Martinez has played over 100 games each season, hitting to a .270+ average. 2024 has arguably been the worst of his career, only hitting 16 homers to a .235 average, but can still provide a power bat at the DH spot, not having to play every day either. At 38, a big money deal is risky, but with 7.5mil of his most recent contract deferred until 2034, could be attracted to a 1yr, 12 mil deal.

Lucrative: Joc Pederson

Another proven power bat, this time from the left side, Joc Pederson hit 23 homers to a .275 average in 132 games in 2024, one of his more consistent offensive seasons. A notorious power bat and two time World Series champion, he will most likely opt out of his 14 mil deal for 2025 and look for a multi-year contract in his age 32 season. His market value is estimated close to what he would earn this year, I think a 3yr, 50mil contract given he still produces is more than beneficial for the Jays.

SUMMARY: Eloy Jimenez – 1yr, 3mil JD Martinez – 1yr, 12mil Joc Pederson – 3yr, 50 mil

STARTING ROTATION: Kevin Gausman, Jose Berrios, Bowden Francis, Chris Bassitt, Yariel Rodriguez

The Blue Jays lucked out with Bowden Francis. When Kikuchi was traded, that opened up a spot in the rotation, and Francis broke out. Pitching to a 3.30 ERA and flirting with a no hitter on multiple occasions, Francis is an excellent pitcher for the future of the Jays. With an all righty rotation however, I think signing a lefty will be good for variety. With Rodriguez' struggles in his first season and subsequently pushed into a bullpen role, a spot is able to be opened up if needed. Alek Manoah (although also right-handed) should return for the second half of 2025 after his UCL surgery. Unfortunately their top lefty pitching prospect, 22 year old Ricky Tiedemann also is recovering from surgery and will miss the first half with Manoah. Lefty Ryan Yarbrough was traded for last season, so there is a possibility that he gets re-signed as a first half replacement for Manoah and Tiedemann.

Cheap: Ryan Yarbrough

Although mostly used from the bullpen this past season, Yarbrough was a starter for his first few years, pitching over 140 innings in 2018, 2019, and 2021 with Tampa Bay. Finishing last season with a 3.19 ERA in 44 games, Yarbrough could be a good lefty option to platoon that no5 starter spot with Rodriguez. Valued at 4.5mil/y renewing his tenure with the Jays on a 1yr, 4 mil contract should hold down the rotation until Manoah and Tiedemann can return from injury.

Average: John Means

The Baltimore lefty has been through injury hell, Only pitching more than 25 games in 2 seasons since 2019. In 2023 and 2024 he only pitched 4 games, and performed well with a a <3 ERA. Now a free agent, John Means will be looking for another 1 year prove it deal to show he can stay healthy and produce at a quality standard, which he did in 2019 and 2021, pitching over 140 innings to a 3.60 ERA. Making 3.3mil in 2024, a 1yr, 6 mil deal can help him show that he can still produce.

Lucrative: Blake Snell

The two time CY Young award winner got off to a slow start in 2024, not signing with a team until after Spring Training, which significantly halted his performance early on. Recovering tenfold and throwing a no hitter this year, Snell is expected to opt out of his last minute contract and hit free agency for the second consecutive season. In what has historically been an up and down statline on a year to year basis, Snell has shown consistency his last 3 seasons, pitching over 100 innings to a <3.50 ERA and winning the CY Young in 2023. He would slot in as the new ace, and a power lefty pitcher would round out the rotation nicely. Snell will most likely want to go to a regular playoff contender, and is valued at 26.3m/y. His biggest question mark in his career has been consistency, but after a third year of consistent performance, a 4yr, 150mil contract is well worth the cost.

SUMMARY: Yarbrough – 1yr, 4mil John Means – 1yr, 6 mil Blake Snell – 4yr, 150mil

BULLPEN: Jordan Romano, Chad Green, Erik Swanson, Genesis Cabrera, Ryan Burr, Brendon Little

Outside of closer Jordan Romano, setup man Chad Green, and lefty Genesis Cabrera, the bullpen is riddled with holes. In what was seemingly a revolving door of L talent, the bullpen is by far the part that needs the biggest change. The next guys up from AAA would be Zach Pop, Luis Frias, or Dillon Tate, all of which had poor performance in 2024. While not every pitcher in the bullpen needs to be an A+ guy, you should at least have consistency. There are always relief pitchers on the market, and on a wide range of price tags.

Cheap: Jose Leclerc

2024 was a step back for Leclerc after winning the World Series with Texas in 2023, pitching to a 4.32 ERA in 64 games. The veteran right hander is a consistent arm however, pitching over 50 innings in 6 of his 8 seasons. Coming off a big extension signed in 2019, and because relievers don't usually fetch a high price, a 2yr, 8 mil deal for Leclerc would add another stable arm in the bullpen.

Average: Kirby Yates

Yates was a Blue Jay for all of 6 seconds before injuring himself and sitting out his 2021 contract, but has since proven himself to be a top reliever in the game again. Cooking up a 1.17 ERA in 61.7 innings for Texas this year is outstanding for the veteran now entering his age 38 season, but age doesn't seem to have affected him as he put up his best numbers of his career. Because he is most likely on his way out of the league, I can see him settling for a 1yr, 8 mil deal.

Lucrative: Jeff Hoffman

Coming off a career year with the Phillies, pitching to a 2.17 ERA in 66 innings, his second consecutive season with an ERA in the 2's, Hoffman is a great choice to be that no1 guy out of the bullpen. Age 31, he will be looking for a multi-year deal. Estimated value set at 6.2m/y, I think a 3 year, 20 mil deal would give the Jays their A+ guy out of the bullpen to set up for Green and Romano in the 8th and 9th.

SUMMARY: Jose Leclerc – 2yr, 8mil Kirby Yates – 1yr, 8mil Jeff Hoffman – 3yr, 20mil

this has been my most ambitious post by far, and if any of these happen, I am the GOAT.

September

This month I read 3 books, 4 e-books, and 1 e-audiobook, all from the Toronto Public Library, totaling to 8 books.

Before we begin:

Dishonourable Mentions

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

Synopsis: Mira Bunting is the founder of the activist gardening group Birnam Wood. They’re based in New Zealand, and are dedicated to growing local produce wherever they can find the land for it, even if it’s illegal. But Birnam Wood is struggling financially to survive. Then Mira finds an isolated plot of land that would be perfect for a secret urban farm. But it seems she’s not the only person interested in it.

My thoughts: Every synopsis I read of this book makes me want to like it, but I just could not get into the story. The narration felt very detached, and it was difficult to get invested in any of the characters. I also was hoping for something similar to Devolution by Max Brooks, but apparently that’s not what “eco-thriller” means.

You may like this book if: you got the MacBeth reference in the title

End of Story by A.J. Finn

Synopsis: Sebastian Trapp is a famous mystery novelist with a tragic family past. He’s dying, and invites longtime fan Nicky Hunter to come to San Francisco and interview him for a memoir. Will Nicky be able to figure out what really happened to Sebastian’s wife and son, or is she just another fly caught in the spider’s web?

My thoughts: In contrast to Birnam Wood, I actually did read the first third of the book, but I still wasn’t impressed. The central mystery was finally starting to be revealed, but it just didn’t seem like it was going to be interesting enough to be worth all the time I would have spent reading it. The characters also felt either irritating or very distant (or both), so it was hard to get invested.

You may like this book if: you are obsessed with the meta of mystery fiction

And now for the real reviews:

The Third Wife of Faraday House by B.R. Myers

Synopsis: Emeline Fitzpatrick is a ward of Judge and Mrs Shackleton in 1816 Halifax. Emeline is penniless, and her only redeeming feature is her beauty, so Mrs Shackleton is determined to marry her off to a suitable suitor as soon as possible (before her beauty fades). But Emeline only has eyes for one man: the handsome British navy lieutenant Ned Fletcher. He has promised to whisk her away to sunny Bermuda, and Emeline is desperate to leave gloomy Halifax behind. But when they are caught kissing at a debutante ball, Ned abandoned Emeline to face the shameful scandal all on her own. In a desperate maneuver, the Shackletons accept a marriage proposal for Emeline on her behalf, but it’s not for Ned. Instead, she’ll be married off to Captain Graves, who lives on a remote island on the Nova Scotia coast, and won’t have heard about her scandalous actions. Emeline is distraught. But when she reaches Faraday House, things are worse than she could have ever imagined. Captain Graves’ first wife Esther died years ago, and his second wife Georgina is currently dying. After Georgina’s passing, Emeline will become his third wife. The house itself is a veritable haunted mansion, with only a few staff to struggle with the upkeep. Day by day, Georgina’s condition worsens, and Emeline becomes more and more desperate for Ned to rescue her. Will her knight in shining armor come to take her to Bermuda? Or will Emeline have to use her wits for once, and figure out what’s really going on at Faraday House?

My thoughts: Overall I did like this book. I’ve read B.R. Myers’s previous book in my July 2023 roundup, and I like that she’s used the same formula of 19th century mystery where most of the things have a reasonable explanation, but there’s still a little bit of supernatural activity (as a treat). I also liked how Emeline had a lot of character development (although most of that was only possible because she had such a long way to go). Considering her relationship with the Shackletons at the beginning of the book was so contentious, I was pleased that she was able to repair it and build a great life for herself.

Rating: 3/5 shillings hidden in your mom’s tea that caused her to choke and die, that you only mention as an afterthought because apparently we don’t have time to unpack all that now

Worst Case Scenario by T J Newman

Synopsis: It’s a beautiful day in Waketa, Minnesota, but that’s all about to change. 35,000 feet about them, a pilot has a heart attack while flying a commercial airliner with nearly 300 souls on board. Dead, he slumps over the controls, pushing the stick forward and sending the plane into an unrecoverable trajectory towards the ground. It’s headed for Waketa, and ends up crashing into the Clover Hill nuclear power plant. Post 9/11, government official claimed that all nuclear plants in the US were plane-proof, but nothing in the world can stop an 80-ton jetliner travelling at 500 miles per hour. Now, Clover Hill is completely decimated, and the radioactive water that cools the spent uranium rods is leaking. If the rods aren’t cooled, they’ll cause a meltdown as bad as Chernobyl. But if the leaking, radioactive water reaches the nearby Mississippi river, it’ll contaminate the entire river basin, leading to a global food and immigration catastrophe. Will the people of Waketa be able to band together and save the day?

My thoughts: I really enjoyed reading Drowning by this author last month, so I had high hopes (but was also a bit apprehensive) at the thought of reading her newest release. Unfortunately, the plane crash was not really the central point of the book, and that’s always my favourite part. The crash itself did feel a bit unrealistic. I’m no expert, but you’re telling me that a plane colliding with a power line (before it even touched the ground) was enough to send debris all over Waketa and nearly level it? Maybe I need to see it rendered by the crew of Mayday to really believe it. Overall, the whole premise of a plane crashing into a nuclear power plant did seem a bit silly. I didn’t like how the timeline in the book was managed. The crew of the power plant had about 16 hours to avert major disaster, and they addressed the first problem within the first 3-4 hours. But then the book jumps forward to them discovering the second problem when there was less than one hour to address it? What were you doing with all that extra time? (Logically I know the crew was working very hard but you can’t just skip to the end to make it more dramatic). I also had some issues with the American President; namely, that he was flirting with Joss during the crisis, and that seemed to be the main reason why he cared about her at all. He kept going on long tangents whenever they were on the phone together. There’s literally an emergency going on, now is not the time to be flirting with your employee! I also didn’t love how Joss and Ethan were set up to be flirting when Ethan literally has a wife and kids. This time I know the point was for Joss to reflect on how different her life could have been, and I guess in a round-about way contributed to her making the choice to make a sacrifice, but still. I was also kind of annoyed that the local firefighters spent all their time trying to rescue a single child that was stuck in a single-car accident, instead of dealing with literally anything else (like the 17-car pileup on the only major highway in and out of Waketa, or the nuclear powerplant itself).

Rating: 3/5 folks who hate the government but have the only set of underwater welding gear in town

The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian

Synopsis: Cassie is a flight attendant with a secret. The secret is not that she’s an alcoholic, or that she likes flirting with the first class passengers on her flights (and many others). It’s that she met Alex Sokolov on her flight to Dubai; they went out to dinner, had a lot to drink, and hooked up in his luxe hotel room. And when she woke up in his hotel room, Alex Sokolov was dead. But Cassie was black out drunk, so most of the night was a complete blur. Did she kill him? Considering that she woke up next to his body covered in his blood, does it matter? So she cleans herself up, leaves his hotel, and catches her flight back to the US, determined to quit drinking, and to not tell anyone what really happened. But the scandalous murder is soon making headlines internationally, and the FBI have started to investigate. Can Cassie lie her way out of this situation, or has she finally gotten herself in too deep?

My thoughts: I picked up this book because critics were raving about the HBO series of the same name, so I figured I’d go right to the source. However, I was not impressed. The book was very introspective but in a shallow way: Cassie kept thinking about how bad her habits were but was never able to do anything about it. Also the fact that the killer’s identity was revealed really early meant that all of Cassie’s wondering about whether she could be a killer was kind of pointless (we know that she’s not a killer). Circling back to Cassie’s lack of character development, she basically did not change at all until the epilogue (Readers will know that I hate it when the author skips over really important stuff that happens between the end of the book and the epilogue). She had very little agency (except to make stupid small decisions) and I thought it was super unrealistic that she had been recruited to the CIA after the entire debacle and proving how unreliable she was. Additionally, I was really disappointed about the overall plot. When the author started dropping unusual details into the FBI interview transcripts, I thought they would amount to a lot more than they did. This was the thing that made me keep reading when I was initially unimpressed, and I unfortunately remained unimpressed. Those details were in fact clues to the big reveal, but they didn’t really go anywhere, and the final reveal itself was incredibly rushed.

Rating: 2/5 primal urges to summon a waiter to bring you Tsingtaos

Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice

Synopsis: 10 years after the world ended, Evan Whitesky and his family are thriving. They’ve left behind the old rez and are living in the bush, using ancestral Anishinaabe practices and knowledge to build their own community. But after 10 years, resources are running low. The lake has fewer fish, the berry bushes have smaller yields, and the deer and bears avoid the area. If they’re going to keep surviving, they’ll have to move somewhere else. The remaining elders dream of returning to their ancestral homelands, where the birch trees grow by the water, and they decide that it’s time to send out a small expedition in the hopes of finding a new home. But this isn’t the first time that members of their community have left in order to explore, and it’s risky. Will Evan and the others be prepared for what they might find?

My thoughts: I enjoyed the first book in this series (Moon of the Crusted Snow, see my July 2023 roundup), and I was really pleased to see that Evan and his community were thriving 10 years after the apocalypse. However, it did make me wonder how possible it is for communities to survive 20 or 50 years after the end of the world. Evan’s community was still using a lot of goods that were industrially manufactured pre-apocalypse (like clothing, knives, guns, etc), and they’ll all eventually be used up without any possibility for replacement, unless they can come up with alternatives themselves. Otherwise, I thought it was super satisfying that all of the indigenous communities were flourishing, while the white people had devolved into racist militarism, and the determining factor mainly seemed to be how people were engaging with the land. The indigenous communities were very aware of how the land was doing, and one of the main reasons that Evan wanted to move to a new area was because there weren’t enough resources to support the natural wildlife plus the humans.

Rating: 3/5 useless Leaf’s fan’s iPhones

A Life Consumed: Lilly Samson’s Dispatches from the TB Front by Diane Sims

Synopsis: In 1923, Lilly Samson was 22 years old, and had just started teaching near Sault Ste Marie, Ontario. She had a wonderful fiance, Bill, and a loving Swedish family. That year, she caught tuberculosis (TB). After months of illness, she wasn’t recovering, so she was sent to a sanatorium in Gravenhurst with the hopes of recovering her health. Instead, she spent 3 years in that sanatorium, and eventually died in 1927. Decades later, her niece Diane found the letters that Lilly sent to her family while in the “san” and compiled them into a book.

My thoughts: I actually discovered this book when I was looking for travel guides for Gravenhurst, Ontario (Readers will know that I took a little trip to Gravenhurst this summer and thoroughly enjoyed it), and it piqued my interest. I thought this book was a really interesting look into TB, as well as a snapshot of life and medical care in Ontario in the 1920s. It doesn’t really go too much into the actual medical care or the science behind the treatment that Lilly received; instead, it covers the life of Lilly and the other “sanites”, as portrayed in her letters. The author faithfully transcribes the letters into the book, and also uses a bit of creative liberty in order to add scenes of life in the san, which are inspired by events referenced in the letters. In the epilogue, she mentions that getting a diagnosis of TB a hundred years ago was about equivalent to how we’d receive a diagnosis of cancer now: extremely scary, and often fatal, and that comparison really stuck with me.

Rating: 3/5 fashionable jackets ordered from the Eaton’s catalogue

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske (The Last Binding #1)

Synopsis: After the death of his parents (who weren’t particularly good people so it’s not that much of heartache for him), Sir Robert Blyth needs a job in order to keep the household afloat. Robin’s been appointed to the British Home Office, as the Assistant in the Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints. But when he arrives for his first day, at what he expects will be a boring middle management position, it’s nothing like what he expects. It turns out that there are magicians all over Britain (and possibly the world), who use cradling (a series of hand motions that you would use when playing Cats Cradle) to perform magic. Robin is told all of this (unbushelled is the term for it) by Edwin Courcey, the liaison to the Chief Minister of the Magical Assembly. Robin is flabbergasted by this reveal, and Edwin is frustrated. The person who Robin has replaced, Reggie Gatling, has been mysteriously missing for weeks, and Edwin is very concerned that something very bad has happened to him. This impression is only strengthened when Robin is attacked on his way home from work by a mysterious group of men, who curse him with runes (and now his having visions of the future too). Will Edwin and Robin uncover this mystery and remove the runes? Or are they in way over their heads?

My thoughts: Readers will know that I don’t visualize things in my head while I read, but I think this definitely worked to my advantage for this book. If I had seen what cradling actually looks like, I would not have been impressed at all, and figured it to be a ridiculous and silly way to do magic. But since all I see are the written word, I don’t have a problem with it, and I appreciate the author for creating something unique. At the beginning, this book seems like it’s going to be about bureaucracy and administration (because of Robin and Edwin’s jobs), but it is mostly adventure and intrigue, so don’t be worried. I thought the romance between Robin and Edwin was adorable (the classic jock/nerd alliance), and they generally worked well together as a team. My biggest complaint with this book (and the whole series in general) is that Robin’s assistant, Adelaide Harita Morresey, doesn’t get a bigger role. I thought she was an excellent character, and was super disappointment that she’s barely in any of the books despite having tons of potential.

Rating: 4/5 enchanted mazes that will destroy any magician that dares to enter

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske (The Last Binding #2)

Synopsis: Robin and Edwin have uncovered Walter Courcey’s plan to find all three items of the Last Contract, and use it to unlawfully redistribute magic from British magicians. Unfortunately they were forced to give Walter the coin, they're committed to stopping him from finding the cup and the knife. Robin dispatches his sister Maud to travel to America and warn the current holder of the cup that Walter’s men are coming for her. But the elderly Elizabeth Navenby is determined to return to England and help fight. Unfortunately for her, Mrs. Navenby is killed (and the cup stolen) almost immediately after setting sail to England with Maud aboard the RMS Lyric. Now, Maud is trapped alone on a giant steamship with a group of mysterious killers, and only Robin’s journal of recorded visions to guide her. She manages to recruit a few reluctant allies: Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, noted ex-boyfriend of Edwin’s and overall brooding figure, who mysteriously lost his magic; Violet Debenam, a actress in America who delights in doing the most scandalous thing at all times (and who has become a recurring character in Robin’s visions); and Alan Ross, a journalist interviewing the first class passengers about their luxury experience on the voyage, and also stealing jewelry and selling pornography on the side. Will Maud be able to rally her allies and find the cup? Or will this voyage be her last?

My thoughts: Overall I also enjoyed this book. I thought that everyone being trapped together on an ocean liner made for an interesting dynamic between characters, especially considering the societal norms that they all had to adhere to. Maud and Violet were constantly encountering their enemies and having to act cordially towards them because they were in public. The Lyric was also a great setting because it provided a wide variety of places, events, and other characters for the main cast to explore while looking for the cup. For this book, the main romantic pairing was between Maud and Violet. I didn’t like this romantic subplot as much for a couple of reasons. I was still holding out for an Adelaide Morrissey-focused book, so I was disappointed that she wasn’t there. I also think that the author was looking for ways to push the envelope, and it felt like a few things were included for the sake of being shocking and scandalous (which you are allowed to do, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it).

Rating: 4/5 zoobreak scenarios

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske (The Last Binding #3)

Synopsis: There are three objects needed to reenact the Last Contract, and start redistributing magical power between British Magicians. Walter Courcey has the coin, but his brother Edwin (and Edwin’s friends) have the cup. The last object is the knife, which is thought to be hidden in a magical house that was recently inherited by Violet Debenam. Now, it’s a race against time: by day, Violet is desperately trying to unlock the secrets of the house in order to locate the knife. By night, she’s defending the house against attempts by Walter’s lackeys to breach it and take control. It doesn’t help that Walter also has the support of the Magical Assembly on his side, and is attempting to contest the will that names Violet as the rightful owner of the estate. Will the group be able to defeat Walter and protect British magicians, or are they all doomed?

My thoughts: I did enjoy this book, but I thought it kind of fell apart in the second half. Since it takes place around 1910, I was really expecting that the “looming threat” that Walter wanted to prepare for was the Great War, but there didn’t appear to be any references towards it. I also found the final climax to be confusing: I wasn’t really clear what exactly happened to magic. No one has any magic, except if you live in a magical estate? Personally, I don’t know if that makes people substantially better off than if Walter had succeeded. I also really did not care for the dynamic between Alan and Jack (the main romantic pairing for this book). I thought it was a good idea for the author to branch out into different kinds of love interests (particularly Alan, who is a poor immigrant worker, and thus lived a very different life from Jack Alston, who is literally a Lord). However, the class dynamic completely pervaded all of the romantic aspects of their relationship to a point where it felt like Jack was continually wielding his power over Alan. I was hoping that the author would take the opportunity to flip the dynamic, or even make it reciprocal, but that never really happened.

Rating: 3/5 trees that have an ancient magical aura and know your greatest secrets

I'm running out of time and I can't spare too much to read. My project — Humble Purge Act II — is near completion, and I just need a big push for the next two months to vanquish my backlog once and for all. I still managed to read a bit, two books, one artbook and 40-ish manga chapters, nothing to be ashamed of.

A Stranger in Town – Kelly Armstrong

For plot synopsis, please refer to Elisa's Reading Roundup: I Love the Yukon/ it's Such a Brilliant Place.

That book was good. It goes even further in demystifying the hostiles, which is not bad per se, but the mystery was more intriguing. A couple of the least interesting plot lines are dropped, and the main plot is more consistent. Everything that was good about the others is here. I just really hated the ending, kept imagining a fucking plane-clown-car.

Empire of Silence (Suneater Book 1) – Christopher Ruocchio

Hadrian Marlowe, son of the very dreaded Lord Marlowe, is not doing too hot. His father despises him, in favour of his more lordly, but also more brutish and stupid younger brother. However, Hadrian can rest easy, by tradition the oldest will be heir to the House. But at the same time, Hadrian does not want to rule, or at least not like his father. His wish is granted, and after one too many rebellious acts, his Father decides to send him to the Chantry (clergy equivalent), to be part of the Inquisition. The Inquisition is a branch of the Chantry that will purge your planet of the heretics, or simply destroy your planet if it is deemed too heretical. Somehow, Hadrian is even less keen on doing that; is there any chance he can escape his fate?

Did you like Dune? Well the author does and the 30 or so first pages are literally just like Dune.

• Son of a space lord (who's related to the Emperor) with a signet ring signifying his rank — check
• They fight using personal shields that stop anything fast so you have to be slow to penetrate them — check
• The use of computers was banned by the Great Convention Chantry so you have human computers called mentats scholiast. Our main protagonist initially wants to become one — check
• The hero has two instructors/father figures in his swords master and more philosopher teacher — check
• The throne room is gigantesque but imperceptibly gets smaller as you get to the throne, making the throne's occupant more imposing — check

There is more stuff that I'm not putting down, but damn man, chill. The story thankfully becomes something more and strays pretty far away from Dune in content, but the writing is still pretty similar. I'm not sure why all the Dune references needed to be put in the first 30 pages. It's a good book, it may be great even, but for some reason I had some trouble getting into it, and it took me way too long to finish it, almost three weeks, which is entirely too much for 600-page book. The third book of the series is apparently a masterpiece, so I will push on.

The Deepest of Secrets – Kelly Armstrong

For plot synopsis, please refer to Elisa's Reading Roundup: I Love the Yukon/ it's Such a Brilliant Place.

THERE IS AN INTRO SECTION SEPARATE FROM THE REST OF THE BOOK, AMEN. It might not seem like much, but this is such a quality of life improvement. There were the odd one or two paragraphs re-establishing relationships and events in the actual book, but they are completely manageable and didn't detract from the story. I like this one a lot, it was a nice break from the usual story structure we get from this series. Well almost, they faked us out, but it is still a nice change of pace. They dropped so many storylines and characters that were not as interesting in this one, and it's a breath of fresh air; everything is streamlined and nothing is fighting for its space in the book. Very solid and nice conclusion to this first part of the series. I'll probably take a break and only come back to Rockton in the next few months, can't have too much of a good thing.

This title kinda sucks ass though

Current ranking: Book 2>Book7>Book 3>Book6>Book 5>Book 4>Book 1

Disco Elysium Artbook – ZA/UM et al.

Yes, I pirated this as no copies are available — it only came with the collector's edition of the game which now retail anywhere north of 500$ on eBay.

Disco Elysium is an amazing game, where the writing is only rivalled by the visuals. I am not a very artsy person, and I still went out of my way to read an artbook. The writing is pretentious and smells of art students taking themselves too seriously, but they deserve it. The art is here to steal the show. Where I don't really feel either way for the character portraits, UI and set design, I fucking LOVE the artwork for the cabinet of thought and the skill portraits. I would happily get any and all of them and hang them in my living room (Tetyana would probably not let me). Below are my favourite skill portraits, one for each category, the though cabinet, etc.

The skill portraits are by Aleksander Rostov, the thought cabinet and horsey horse by Anton Vill

_{This is the original version that I like better, but couldn't find in high definition)}

_{I also love encyclopedia}

_{In the artbook, the painting is a bit different, with a black character having a knife on a white one, and vice-versa for the second pair}

Hunter X Hunter – Yoshihiro Togashi

Chapter 11- 50

All the secondary characters are only here to marvel at how strong our two special little boys are, and further explain how what they are doing is sooo impressive. A bunch of stuff is setups just to showcase their strength, and makes no sense. A multi door with increasing weight, lmao what? Oh, and the 11-year-old kid being able to push 16 tons, come on. That same kid was dropped into the arena of death where only the strongest survive, with 200 floors of increasing difficulty — he of course made it to the top when he was 6 years old! Him and his friend Gon learn about a new technique that takes bazillion hours to learn, they get it in 2min. Then Gon intuitively learns another technique that even the masters of this art take decades to learn, and of course he does it on the fly! We just follow two Gary Stus around and it's not fun because there are no stakes. Nothing matters in the end — they are stronger than anyone they meet, and by a lot. If they aren't, they just have to think hard (for a day or so) about overcoming a challenge and they'll get it. The power scaling makes no sense, whether they succeed at a task or not is arbitrary.

I think the jury has deliberated; I just fucking hate shōnens.

PS: announcing that you got married in your manga; based king

That's all for this month, no planning on reading a bunch, next month, so it should be a bit lighter. I do have to catch up a bit on the Fred Hampton readings.

Thanks for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

Last year's summer was not amazing for me. I was forced out of university before it was done, and where I was excited to spend one more summer in Kingston, it all vanished with my dad getting brain cancer and later dying. The separation caused a final rift in my relationship and I got broken up with. There were some people I saw here and there but with the move I felt I lost my consistent social life. On top of that, moving to the big city from Kingston, I had no idea how navigate meeting people. Everyone was so good at shutting everyone out and I had no clue how to get in. To add to this, I got an injury that caused a nerve shock, creating a ton of pain shooting through my left arm, destroying my sleep and ability to exercise. I was working all the time, because I felt I had to be there, but I wasn't doing much or accomplishing anything.

After a week of every day feeling more vulnerable, weak, and isolated than the last, I remember going to my home gym, trying to lift some weights, and being unable to lift 2 pounds with my left shoulder, and I mentally collapsed. This collapse lasted several hours, and because it became so late, when I reached out for help, I didn't get much response from anyone. Not really to fault them, even at rock bottom I knew it was 1 30 AM on a work night. Getting no responses I started to reach out to more people, including my ex, who had called me multiple times since the breakup due to her mental health reasons. I knew I was in a bad spot, and knew it was my time where I needed help. Her response was “Don't come to me about this” which is somewhere close to as bad as you can be when replying to someone in a mental health crisis asking for help. She had also recently gotten an award that was offered to me. Queen's Athletics shut me out as the recipient because I dropped a semester to be with my sister in the hospital. The award represents supporting the cheer team in memory of a teammate and dear friend of mine who had helped me in the past, but ended up taking her own life some years back. The person with the award now turning me away in my time of need was another layer to the crisis. This whole everything was pretty brutal. Luckily, a bit later, Elisa got back to me and we chatted for a while.

When talking to Elisa I expressed that I felt like everything had collapsed. My friends groups, my support systems, my family, my prospects for further education, really just all of it. It felt like every aspect of my life was measurably worse, and things were not improving. She expressed that loneliness in Toronto is pretty tough and had been struggled with it a lot over her life too. Maybe it was just the fact that both of us understood how hard it is to be long-distance with Bennet, but we decided that we could tackle this head-on. We set up some plans to hang out, she had some ideas, and we got to work. Plan one was a Fall time event at Square One. This was October 2nd, 2023.

Naturally, we called it operation friendsmaxxing. We decided that to tackle this loneliness thing we would come up with more plans, and I made a goal of hanging out with someone every day. Liam, Elisa, and I started hanging out in some capacity very frequently, sometimes doing cool and interesting things, sometimes watching movies that weren't even the most interesting with nothing to say to each other (since we last saw each other a day or two before). I grabbed some food with some old family friends, and in particular, I remember going to Joey's with Rob, the dad of a family friend who knew my dad but they fell out near the end. We talked. He asked about my dad and said his side of things and wanted to know mine. We talked about his life and times when he thought it was truly over for him. We talked about my life and how it seemed like my life was truly done for. My old coach Shaver called me a couple days later (I had called her that fateful night too) and we chatted about everything, including the award which was weighing on my mind. Dumping everything on everyone else helped a bit, and hanging out a lot helped a bit. Things were brutal, but something had kind of started, and it was time to make it what it could be.

I don't really remember it much. Maybe my mind was just in overdrive simmering in everything that was so overwhelming. I realized that there were indeed people around before this. There were the vampire nights, which require a shout-out to Eddie and Tetyana for those costumes, they seem to be the best at dressing up and I need to get better. These were a blast, but in my head, I had been so isolated and out of it that I felt like I was grasping at straws to make something happen. From now on, plans would be the default state unless they fell through.

There were a ton of plans for the next while, and after hanging out with people so much, I realized that socializing was, as I still say, like a muscle. Like hitting the gym, going once or twice makes you super sore and tired, and it's kind of foreign, and it's easy to just forget to do. Like going to the gym, if you do it all the time, make space for it, and make it happen, it starts to become natural, it keeps happening, and it makes you feel better. We had a book club back in Kingston (Vgh) that I missed, but I needed to appreciate that it was here too! Not only that, but the people in the book club tended to have lots of cool ideas for things to do. I decided I didn't have to do something every day, but would focus on making higher-quality plans. Where before I felt like I was grasping at straws to hang out, my social life started to become more regular and more successful.

I remember Pattycom. I remember getting my first coffee by accident, taking Nick's order that they got wrong, and feeling like I was glowing. While I was still glowing, we would be chatted up by a random table saying it was international talk to a stranger day, and a guy started talking about his security work and helping a woman recover her sex tapes from her porn recording room at her ex's house. I remember missing the first giant Pattycom visit where 10+ people could make it and being a little angry. I remember the next week there being even more people and feeling so relieved that it wasn't going to be a one-off thing. The small weeks where it was two or three of us. The big weeks where we took up half the place. As someone who was always scared of caffeine after watching my mom go through caffeine withdrawal, coffee became a big player in my new social life.

Things were looking well up, but the terrible events continued to pile up. Losing more friends and family was the default state. My grandpa had a stroke and lost his memory. He slowly started to recover, then had a heart attack and died. Both of these hit me very hard. An old family friend who I hadn't seen in a while, but went to Queen's, died of an infection. My capstone project mate who did most of our project and still happily helped me out with my section when he heard about my dad also died in a car crash. I am very familiar with death, but you still can only handle so much at once. It affected me heavily, but this time, I had friends. I was on a cheer team that I didn't like that was going pretty terribly, and while that team didn't help, I had friends there behind me to air out my frustrations who I knew I could be excited to see no matter what. Worst case scenario, I just had to stick it out till Saturday. Frankly, there was so much happening and I was so stressed that I can barely remember when things happened, or sometimes even much of what happened. I don't even remember it being winter at all. On one hand, it's strange, but on the other hand, maybe that meant that the winter didn't make me miserable like it has in many different years.

I remember writing my Father's Day article where I let myself be vulnerable, which as someone with a solid dose of PTSD, doesn't happen very often. This allowed an introspective and emotional outlet in the Printhouse, and my friends were supportive and not just freaked out by me, which was cool. The Muggies happened! I proposed to my now ex-wife, the drama surrounding the slap, the delicious food and drink, the award for my Father's Day article, and the cigarette in the taxi on the way home was a night of living the high life. We truly could not get much higher.

We made plans for the summer in Edna's backyard, and there were so many ideas from everyone. We did even more than we could have planned for, and I think probably half the plans haven't even been crossed off. I can't even remember when this summer started. So much has been happening so often with so many people that it has just been the best. People say time speeds up as you get older, and I think it's partially true. Having so many plans that are so diverse changes that. Week by week and month by month can go so fast if you do the same thing every day, but we did everything. This summer feels like it has lasted years. Looking back, I can't even recount all the amazing things I did with so many amazing people. I would think I would dread winter because it means this summer is winding down, but I know I'm going to be looking around for even more plans and things to do, and with the right people, it can happen.

We read Dune. We read Dungeon Meshi. Now, we are more than halfway through Fred Hampton. All of these books have been amazing experiences. Dune was the first sci-fi that I really enjoyed as an adult. I didn't know they made them like that. Dungeon Meshi was this weird readable anime that you read backwards? It was funny reading a comic like a kid again, but I loved the adventure and the inspiration it gave me to cook more. It was a great experience. Fred Hampton is my recommendation and it's great seeing how people understand and interact with so many of the concepts in our discussions. We talk about the injustices and the learning what the movement was like and what they were about. I love when people are curious about the same things as me. I love reading.

I think I learned that doing things and socializing is not optional. You can't just wake up and not go to your job for a while. You shouldn't be able to with your own time, but you technically can. You should be doing things by default, and occasionally booking a rest. I would rather meet up with people and fall asleep by accident over not meet up with people. Schedule things ahead of time, book them into your calendar, and try to book more things later. If you have a night of nothing, try to make two plans. If you can make something happen, book it in and make it happen. You can show up and be tired or out of it, I've fallen asleep at a couple of coffee meetups, but I was there, which was better than not being there. It's also restful. If you go home from work and lie down to recover for the next day, you will be tired. If you socialize or do something cool, you will not only have done something but have something to look forward to to do again. This is a way better state to be in. There are little things everywhere, shows, deals, diners, fairs, festivals, trails, clubs, sports, etc. There is always something.

Last night, I went out for dinner with Rob again. We went to Joey's and I told him that it had been around a year since the time we went out, when I was down and out, and he had helped me a ton. We had an amazing time, and it was a nice full-circle moment for me. A year ago, I thought it was just misery from here on out. I thought the fun part of my life was over, and it would just be slowly rotting from then on. It turns out, a lot can change in a year. A place that I thought was leaving me isolated, as it turns out, had some more life in it. With a lot of effort, that turned into more than I could have possibly imagined.

Things aren't perfect, I still have a lot of unresolved issues simmering in my head from the struggles I've been through over the years, but I've found something that really is pretty nice.

You can't stop the rain The friends that come around To talk about the highs and lows, the ups and downs

Oncle

An anthropological investigation of a dead, pandemic-era Discord server

Portrait by Nick Verrelli

If I had a nickel for every Discord bot I have programmed, I would have two nickels.

The first was Verrelli Bot. Inspired by the bot work of Dom in our QCompSci messenger group chats, Verrelli Bot posted Markov-chains of Nick’s scraped (and now deleted) Twitter account. Good for a couple laughs and even as inspiration for a few tweets.

The second, Verrelli Bot 2, was my Javascript magnum opus.

What started as a replacement for the dogshit ranking system of MEE6 bot, soon spiralled into a full-blown economic and political model, spanning several eras and dynasties. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was December 2020 to March 2021; and deep in the midst of an international lockdown, we had nothing better to do than log onto Discord every day. The whole period was a blur to me. I can’t remember doing much except sitting in my basement office, my remote work on one screen and Discord open on my Lenovo gaming laptop¹.

At the core of Verrelli Bot 2 was NoahCoin – the digital upgrade of my fiat, Dollar Store brand currency, NoahBuck. In the beginning, it only had a few commands. v-mine was utilized to gain a small, random amount of NoahCoin. v-transfer would send NoahCoin to another person. v-slots would gamble a choice number of NoahCoin in the emoji casino. This was enough to kickstart a grand economic rat race and a bot project ending with dozens of commands.

Recounting each server event that took place in the three months between the introduction of Verrelli Bot 2.0 (December 29th, 2020) and the end of the server (March 11th, 2021) would be as futile as it would be boring. But I would like to present an anthropological, archeological, and sociological analysis of one of the recovered artifacts from the server: The infamous decree which became known as The Char Accords.

NOTE: From here onward, “Verrelli Bot” and “v-bot” will be used interchangeably, referring to the Verrelli Bot 2.0 (and all subsequent versions).

The Accords

On January 22nd 2021, Char ascended to the role of sole ruler of the server, and pronounced his decree. The full text is featured below and was later reprinted in the Nick York Times issue of that same day.

Upon further analysis within its original cultural context, the Char Accords reveal a great amount of detail regarding day-to-day life within Discordian society under the Machine Age of Verrelli Bot.

1. Rather than Charcord, the city as a whole will establish the new name of the discord to promote democracy.

The First Accord reveals that democracy and democratic values were at the forefront of the public discourse on server ownership. The server, up until this point, was filled with backstabbing tyranny over the digital throne. Everyone wanted to be the king, and no one trusted anyone.

This raises the question: How did one become the server ruler?

If their NNCBC (National Noahcord Bank of Commerce) account equaled or surpassed one million NoahCoins (held in NNCBC accounts by v-bot), their account would be reset back to zero and they would be granted the ‘Supreme Chancellor’ role, replacing whoever held it last. With the Chancellor role, they would be able to access specific v-bot commands that others could not: v-decree, v-tax, v-gag, and v-deputy – to name a few.

Originally, the Supreme Chancellor role would be given to whoever had the most NoahCoins. However, this led to extreme NoahCoin wealth disparity, with some users ranking in the millions while some only had hundreds. To solve both the inequality and rising NoahCoin inflation, the Verrelli Bot 2.5 [Definitive Golden Edition] update came with an economic overhaul that would both even the playing field and remove excess NoahCoins from circulation.

In this text, Char is referring to v-name, a command that allowed the Chancellor to rename the server. Of course, they could do it manually with the Supreme Chancellor role, but there was greater fanfare in having the bot do it publicly.

By not immediately renaming the server to “Charcord”, Char attempted to distance himself from the narcissistic regimes that came before him – including his own previous Charcord.

Ancient Discordian professor and scholar Dr. Nicholas commented, “The Chancellor was so desperate to distance himself from his past self that he claimed it was a divergent personality responsible; a Dark Char, if you will.”

2. Curfew has been lifted.

The “curfew” was the NoahCoin Farming Curfew imposed by the prior Jagcord Administration. Notoriously unpopular among the general populace, it banned the use of the v-farm command between the hours of 8pm and 11am.

An explanation of the v-farm command from the Verrelli Bot 2.5 [Definitive Golden Edition] patchnotes (published January 11th, 2021) can be found below:

This v-farm command became a very popular alternative to the widely used v-mine. Though slower (the cool-down on v-mining changed from time to time, but generally remained around 5 minutes), the profit was worth the risk of others potentially stealing your hard-earned crops².

The curfew that the Jag Regime had imposed was to stop so-called “overnight tryhards” who clogged up everyone’s notifications with 3am v-farm and v-mine attempts.

When asked for a comment on the curfew, Jag said “You can call them tryhards, I call them bots. I couldn’t escape Alex and Nick’s partnership. They had a strong bond. This was my wrench.”

By undoing the curfew, Char made himself friendly to the average farming citizen, as well as the aforementioned Bambino-Nicholas Alliance.

3. V-Tax, following an inauguration taxation, has been abolished.

v-tax was one of the most contentious v-bot commands that a Chancellor could use. Once daily, a Chancellor could type v-tax [integer between 1 and 5] to withdraw that percentage from every active NoahBank account and place it within their own account. Universally despised, it was still used by almost every Chancellor to keep their pockets stuffed. Anything less than v-tax 5 was seldom used.

Even Char couldn’t escape the allure of one final tax payout.

As Nick adds, “The hypocrisy of final taxation did not do much to ingratiate the new Chancellor to his citizens and was met with bipartisan uproar.”

4. I will be launching v-grant, a system which grants 10,000 NoahCoin to the citizens of the cord.

v-grant was added to solve a particular problem in the server at the time – there wasn’t much to do once you ran out of NoahCoin. This was a common problem, given that many vagrants gambled away their life savings in the v-casino on the v-slots.

v-mine, which users could do once every 5-10 minutes, took too long and produced little gain. v-daily and v-startup were recently banned following an Anti-Communism Committee investigation.

Char attempted to make himself a provider, a saviour of the people, doling out free money day-by-day, granted that you keep him in power.

Bambino in Growing Up in Kaitcord: Life as a V-Farmer sarcastically comments, “The irony in watching later Chancellors start each morning with v-grant and then v-tax 5…”

5. V-Request abolished, to prevent those from sneakily peaking at opposing parties balances.

To become Chancellor, your NNCBC account had to equal or surpass one million. This would empty your account and give you the Supreme Chancellor role with all its admin privileges. This economic overhaul from the 2.5 update also spawned a new host of strategies designed to take control of the server. To start was the obvious: political factions would form and donate money to a single person, allowing them to become the leader. The donors would normally be granted some high ranking role in the new society, generally the Sheriff position.

There were more advanced tactics too. The Bambino-Nicholas alliance was notorious for offloading hundreds of thousands of NoahCoins into ‘offshore’, inactive member accounts, to be later v-heisted back.

Another common tactic was ‘Pushing over’, whereby rival factions would push an enemy bank account over the one million mark, zeroing out the account, and then immediately pushing an allied account over the million mark to snatch away the throne.

For example: Account A has 700,000 NoahCoin Account B has 800,000 NoahCoin Account C has 900,000 NoahCoin

Account A and B are allied against Account C. They could easily combine funds and take the Chancellor role. However, they want to make sure Account C has no easy way to stop their new rule. Account B first v-transfers 100,000 NoahCoin to Account C. Account C passes hits one million, becomes Chancellor, and their balance is back to 0.

Account A has 700,000 NoahCoin Account B has 700,000 NoahCoin Account C has 0 NoahCoin

Now, Account B v-transfers 300,000 NoahCoin to Account A, making them the new Chancellor, with their political rival now bankrupt.

These strategies heavily relied on knowing how much each person had in their bank account. Originally, users could see their balance with v-balance or v-bal. Eventually, it had to be patched in to allow privately messaging Verrelli Bot this command, as users would check their balance in chat and immediately delete it, leaving a string of empty Discord notifications.

Evenso, a loophole was found with the command v-request. This command was used to request money from someone else on the server. If the requested account did not have available funds, the request was automatically – and publicly – cancelled with an error message.

By sending varying v-request amounts, users could check which requests went through and which produced insufficient fund errors. This allowed the attacker to estimate within precise amounts the exact bank balance of their target.

With the Fifth Accord, Char aimed to nullify this tactic entirely.

6. V-transfers must now be accepted to prevent forceful overthrowing.

See Section 5 for the “pushing over” political strategies.

This Accord was never implemented due to the cultural significance of v-transfer politics.

“We had more NoahCoin than we knew what to do with. We couldn't fit all our cash under our own mattresses safely – so we did the next best thing, we hid it under our neighbor's mattress. Of course, we never told them about it. There were risks, but it was the secret that allowed us to ensure the safety of our dynasties. Who doesn't stash away a little cash for a rainy day?” – Nick, on offshoring NoahCoin in inactive accounts

7. V-trial in place, launching a jury system which will democractically [sic] vote for a punishment rather than imprisonment without trial.

Culturally, the Supreme Chancellor was not the only bot role. The other was “Sheriff”, which could be granted to any user by the Chancellor (including themselves) by using the v-deputy command. The Sheriff had access to v-imprison and v-release. V-imprison stripped a user of all their roles and banned access to all voice calls and chats except one: Prison Yard.

This power was abused. Many mass imprisonments followed regime changes. Sometimes, though, the Sheriff used their power for good, imprisoning those who stole v-farm crops or other such crimes (which varied from one ruler to the next).

In later versions of the prison, timeouts could be set on prisoners' chats. One message per hour, or even per day. Some prisoners used their one message to petition for release. Others used it for a rebellious v-mine command.

Due to technical limitations, this Accord was never implemented. Yet it was, in the opinion of the author, by far the most progressive of all the Accords – trying to put an end to the often dual tyrannies of Chancellor and Sheriff.

8. To prevent citizens to overwhelm [sic] the farm sites, a minimum of 1000 NoahCoin must be used to purchase seeds.

v-farm was the main alternative to gain NoahCoins, aside from v-mine. Even within this system, there were strategies to keep money in your account and out of your enemies. There were ten virtual farm “plots” which could be filled by using v-farm. People who were rich and wanted to keep others from gaining money filled all those farms with v-farm 1, ensuring that for the next hour no one could farm and the resulting harvest would only be between 0 and 10 NoahCoins. See Section 2 for further explanation on the mechanics of v-farming.

Char aimed to put an end to this practice and leave the farms open for those with a genuine seed investment.

9. Nick News will continue to come out daily. V-Pay will be used to pay workers for their piece, 20k a news article, to promote creativity. Minimum requirements determined by the editor. This balance will not be taken from anyone's wallet.

The support of “Nick News” came to the Discord server as a surprise. One week earlier (decades in Discord time), Char had actually banned Nick’s Discord newspaper, The Nick York Times, under suspicion of Anti-Char and Pro-Communist propaganda. By the time that the Char Accords rolled around, it was evident that he was desperate to undo the actions of his past and set himself up as a new man in the eyes of the public.

The Nick York Times is a topic for its own Printhouse article, but must be mentioned here. Started by Nick while v-imprisoned under the Jagcord Regime, it was his series of plaintext articles on Discordian news, culture, and the NoahCoin economy. It grew in popularity, eventually having its own v-bot command (v-news) and a series of writers. It also spawned the widely acclaimed “wa wa wee wa” strip series by Bambino. A true testament to the free time many had under lockdown, publishing nearly daily editions for multiple weeks.

“Like any journalist publication, it was both loved and hated. I like to think we did a lot of good work in those days. We brought people news that mattered to them as it happened, just barely keeping ahead of the daily grind required to run a paper. I’m proud to say we had quite the diversity of columnists, and I was just happy to see people expressing themselves in the art of writing. Of course, like any paper, we had a political leaning...” – Nick, Editor-in-Chief of the Nick York Times

10. ENJOY!

Suspiciously, this 10th Accord was absent in the Nick York Times version printed the same day.

The Aftermath

Not even 24 hours had passed before Nick, the newly appointed Sheriff under Char, v-transferred Bambino enough NoahCoins to make him the new Chancellor.

The Char Accords had only just begun their implementation before a Caesarean betrayal shot Char back down to nothing. He all but removed himself from the political sphere of the server afterwards.

A Snapshot in Time

This was only the tip of the iceberg. Not mentioned here are the v-lotteries, v-mines closing due to auto-miners, the v-duels (and the infamous PANSHOT! bug), the v-slots odds update controversy, v-dawg (the server pet), v-prison break by suicide technique, the earth being mined dry, and of course, The Nat Job.

Of all these, The Char Accords remain one of the most intriguing relics to survive the Discordian Bot era. Scholars today still debate on the cultural impact of the Accords and what may have happened if they fully went into effect.

“It would have been a utopia if it happened.” – Char

The server itself persisted for another two months, with countless unrecorded political upheavals, purges, and revolutions. V-bot continued to be upgraded, until version 2.8 [THE LAST COMETH], which ironically finally re-implemented the Twitter Markov chains that the original v-bot was known for.

On March 11th, 2021, by collective user action, all NoahCoins were v-incinerate’d. This fulfilled the prerequisite conditions for v-killswitch. The killswitch was activated. The server logs were dumped and Verrelli Bot kicked all users, forever fossilizing the server in 2021.

All this is to say,

We don’t have roles or bots in our Discord servers anymore.

Everybody had their hands out, Everything was for the taking, Now it’s all over.

Stay frosty, Noah

Thanks to Nick, Jag, Char, and Alex for all the commentary. And special thanks to Kaitlyn for the proofread and revisions.

¹ The Lenovo gaming laptop which was running 24/7 on a wall socket to host the bot

² “I’m not ashamed to say it: back in my day, in my youth before Kaitcord, I was a notorious crop thief. I would monitor my Discord notifications for others v-farming, and would set a timer on my phone to remind me when their crops were ready for harvest. I would swoop in and rob them blind. It wasn’t an honest living, but a girl’s gotta eat.” – Kaitlyn, The Last Supreme Chancellor before Fossilization

August

This month I read 4 ebooks and 2 eaudiobooks and 1 physical book from the Toronto Public Library, totalling to 7 books.

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

Synopsis: All of Cambria has been torn apart by the ongoing divine war, after the Underling god Dacre was unable to recapture his estranged wife, the skyward goddess Enva. Although the City of Oath, in the Eastern Borough, is attempting to minimize the effects of the war, it’s having a huge impact on rivals Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt. They’re both interning for the Oath Gazette, fighting over a single columnist position. Iris dropped out of school to support her alcoholic mother, who has spiraled ever since her brother Forrest enlisted to fight in the war for Enva. She’s only at the Oath Gazette after winning an essay contest. Roman, on the other hand, comes from a privileged family and got his internship through family connections. But he’s dreading his upcoming arranged marriage to the daughter of one of his father’s clients, who appears to be developing illegal chemical weapons for Dacre’s side. Fed up with the Gazette’s commitment to Dacre propaganda and reeling after her mother’s death, Iris quits her internship to sign up to be a war correspondent for the Inkridden Tribune, hoping to find some sign of her brother. She’s sent to a small town near the front lines, armed only with her magic typewriter that has been allowing her to exchange letters with a mysterious penpal named Carver, her only solace in these tough times. But Carver is actually Roman Kitt, and the connection that he and Iris are forming has left him desparate to protect her, no matter what.

My Thoughts: For me, despite its issues, this book was unputdownable, and I quickly devoured it. I thought the mythology was cool, and appreciated how it made a classic WW1-style war feel a bit more unique. I also liked how Iris and Roman were depicted as journalists: dedicated to reporting the truth, instead of harassing people in order to get the scoop. Readers will know, however, that I am a hater of the you’ve-got-mail trope, and it was one of the big issues I had with this book. By itself, I probably would have been able to look past it, but it went hand-in-hand with Roman being incredibly paternalistic towards Iris. I didn’t like that he had all the power when he knew Iris’s identity but refused to reveal his own when they were penpals. I also thought it was crazy that he followed her to the front lines based only on the connections formed in their letters (which is not real life), even though Iris couldn’t stand him at the office (which is real life). The book ended on a devastating cliffhanger, and I’ve heard that the sequel isn’t executed well, so we’ll see how I fare once I actually get my hands on it.

Rating: 4/5 honeymoons at a picturesque bed and breakfast run by lesbians

Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421 by TJ Newman

Synopsis: A summer day at the pool ended tragically when Annie slipped and hit her head on the concrete. She died that day, and her mother, Chris, and father, Will, never really recovered. 6 years later, their marriage is falling apart, and their remaining daughter Shannon is desperate for the independence that her parents are too scared to give her. Shannon is frustrated that her dad insists on flying with her from Hawaii to summer camp in San Francisco; she’s 11 years old, and can definitely handle herself. But two minutes into their flight, the airplane loses an engine, all hydraulics, and is forced to ditch into the ocean. By some miracle, the plane lands largely intact, and passengers are faced with an impossible scenario: leave the plane (conditions are rough and the water is covered in flammable jet fuel), or stay in the plane and risk being trapped inside. Will and Shannon decide to stay inside. Within minutes, the plane fills with water and sinks to the ocean floor, trapping a few survivors with a limited bubble of air. Will they make it out alive?

My thoughts: I’ve seen Falling (the author’s first book) by the same author for AGES in bookstores, and I’m pretty sure that I did read it, but the only thing I remembered is that I didn’t like it. However, I’m glad that I decided to give Drowning a chance. Readers will know that I love fire and rescue shows, and also that I love air crash investigation shows, so it was a match made in heaven. It definitely made me very emotional but sometimes you just want to feel some adrenaline and have a good cry. I would definitely recommend it.

Rating: 4/5 messages in a water bottle

VenCo by Cherie Dimaline

Synopsis: Lucky St. James has always been unlucky. After her mom died when she was young, she was taken in by her grandmother Stella. Stella was a doting grandmother, but they only ever scraped by. Now, Stella’s dementia is getting worse, and their rent is being raised again. Lucky’s job at a temp agency doesn’t make enough to cover the bills, and she can’t bear to take her grandma out of the Toronto apartment where they grew up together. It’s full of memories and ghost stories, like the one Stella loves to tell about the psychiatric hospital that used to be down the block, and how one of the inmates dug a tunnel to try to escape. One afternoon while doing laundry, Lucky discovers the legendary tunnel, but the only thing in it is a strange silver spoon. A few days later, she’s approached by a beautiful woman with a tantelizing offer: come work for her company, VenCo. It’s a huge woman-run company with offices around the US, and they're looking to open a publishing house. For Lucky, an aspiring writer, it’s too good to be true. The woman invites Lucky and Stella to visit their Salem, Massachusetts office, so that Lucky can learn more about what the position entails; so they pack up the car for a road trip. Except when they get to Salem, it’s not what Lucky was expecting. Instead of corporate glass and steel, they’ve arrived at the historic mansion belonging to Mina Good and her wife Wendy. There, Mina explains that VenCo is isn’t what you might think. Mina is collecting a coven of witches. Once they find all seven, each with their own silver spoon, the coven will be complete and they’ll be able to change the world. Lucky is the sixth witch, and she has less than two weeks to find the seventh and complete the coven. Is Lucky (who, by the way, has no magic powers to speak of) out of her depth? Or will she really be able to find the elusive seventh witch and save the coven before it even begins?

My thoughts: I really enjoyed reading a book that was written from a very feminist and women-centered lens, especially one that was very pro-seniors. Readers will know that belonging to a coven full of feminine energy is literally the dream. I also really liked how Lucky made her magic all her own by drawing on the lessons from her mother, Arnia. They were a mix of Indigenous spirituality and general life lessons, and I thought they were used really well for the final battle. I also thought it was kind of cool that the cross-country road trip happened from the northern US down to the south, instead of being the typical east-west (I don’t know if it was intentional but it was cool to have a trope subtly flipped like that). My main nitpick is that I wish that the other witches in the coven had more character development and presence besides the story of how they each got their spoons, but I understand that 5 supporting characters can be a lot to balance. As a final note, this book had HUGE prequel energy (becuse it involved Lucky getting her powers, and the formation of the coven), which I haven’t ever seen before in a book that wasn’t intentionally advertised as being a prequel. From my research it doesn’t seem like the author is turning this into a series, so I thought it was a bold choice for her to focus on the building-up aspect of the storyline, and I appreciated it.

Rating: 3/5 elderly women that seem to attract gay men in spades

The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield

Synopsis: What if Apollo 17 wasn’t the last ever mission to the moon? It’s 1973, and NASA is preparing to send a group of astronauts back to the moon in the Apollo 18 mission. But this isn’t any ordinary mission; it’s funded primarily by the Deparment of Defense, so the priorities are a lot less about science and a lot more about National Security. The Soviets have just launched Almaz, a spy satellite with astounding resolution and capabilities. If it becomes operational, it’ll be very difficult for the US to keep their own secrets on their own soil. So, Apollo 18 will have to do something that’s never been done before: rendezvous mid-spaceflight with Almaz, incapacitate it, and continue on to the moon. But mission control is fully confident that the crew of Luke Hemmings, Michael Esdale, and Tom Hoffman have what it takes to pull off the most complicated Apollo mission yet. Except, just weeks before launch, Tom is killed in a routine helicopter flight, forcing backup commander Chad Miller to take his place. Commander Kaz Zemeckis, a former test pilot and current liaison between the White House and Misson Control, has a bad feeling about this. Thankfully he’ll be acting as the CAPCOM, communicating directly with the astronauts once they’re in space. Can he keep the mission afloat and bring the astronauts safely back to Earth? Or are there more surprises in store?

My thoughts: I don’t necessarily think that my summary does the plot justice, because it’s a bit of a slow burn, so I didn’t want to give everything away. The title is a bit misleading because it’s an alternate history novel with cold war intrigue, not a murder mystery, but I really did like this book! Especially how the author tried to line up things in the book with real-life people and events, in order to make things as plausible as possible. Funnily enough, I’m pretty sure this is my second time reading it. I don’t actually remember reading it for the first time, but the plot beats definitely felt familiar (but not in a predictable way). I am glad that I came back to it for another go-around though.

Rating: 4/5 mysterious, possibly bottomless, holes on the Moon

The Defector by Chris Hadfield

Synopsis: It’s the day before Yom Kippur, 1973. A soviet fighter pilot, callsign Grief, has crashed his MiG-25 fighter plane into the Levantine Sea just off the coast of Israel. Except, Grief didn’t actually crash. In reality, he landed his plane safely in an Israeli hangar and is attempting to defect to the US. The MiG-25 is currently one of the best recon and combat aircrafts in the world, and the Americans would love dearly to get their hands on one. So Commander Kaz Zemeckis is assigned to keep an eye on the pilot accompaning this miracle plane. Can Grief be trusted? Or is there more than meets the eye?

My thoughts: Based on the success of The Apollo Murders, I was really excited to try the second book in the series. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a let down. For me, the pacing was really off, because the book felt like it ended in the middle of the plot, immediately after the incident at Groom Lake. Anything that got wrapped up had to be addressed in the epilogue, and a lot of things were not. I was also expecting the Apollo Soyuz plotline to matter a lot more. I’m hoping that this is all building towards a third book that will pick up where everything left off, but I’m not really counting on it. However, I definitely enjoyed the first three quarters of the book.

Rating: 3/5 tickets to see old blue eyes

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treuer

Synopsis: Anton Treuer, an Obijwe from the region around the Leech Lake Reservation in Northern Minnesota, has put together an introductory guide that covers everything you may have wanted to know about Indians but were too afraid to ask. It covers things like terminology, history, economics, politics, and languages. Each section is split into direct questions with easy to understand answers.

My thoughts: This is a really great introductory book for people who are vaguely aware of issues facing Indigenous peoples but don’t really know a lot of concrete details. It might be because this is the Young Readers Edition (randomly, TPL has a lot of copies of the Young Readers Edition, but not nearly as many of the original edition for adults), but this book is extremely clear, direct, and to the point, so it’s very easy to digest and understand. I think the book was structured really well, and could easily serve as a reference material, especially if you only want to explore a few of the questions or topics that are covered. I really liked that the author injected a lot of his own personal experiences and even family photos. It made sure that he wasn’t generalizing to all Indigenous people, and also made everything discussed seem more concrete for the reader. I also found the comparisons between the US and Canada really interesting; I’m glad that the author made sure to emphasize that even though Canada is farther along in the conversation of reconciliation than the US, things are not necessarily substantially better for Indigenous peoples in Canada, and that there’s still much to be done.

Rating: ⅗ White mechanics that say “Miigwech” and “Gigawaabamin miinawaa” to their Ojibwe customers

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T Kingfisher

Synopsis: Mona is one of the few wizards that are left in Riverbraid, although you wouldn’t know it, since she’s only 14 and her magic only works on bread. When anti-wizard sentiment, spurred by Inquisitor Oberon, starts increasing, she’s perfectly happy to stay at her aunt’s bakery with her animated gingerbread man and her sourdough starter Bob. But early one morning, Mona enters the bakery to find a dead girl on the floor. The girl’s name was Tibbie, and she was killed by the mysterious Spring Green Man simply for being a wizard. Now, Mona can’t just ignore everything that’s going on. With the help of Tibbie’s brother Spindle, she’s determined to contact the Duchess of Riverbraid. Surely once a responsible adult finds out what’s been happening they’ll put a stop to everything, right? Right?!

My thoughts: I’ve read adult books by T Kingfisher before (see my April 2023 roundup) I think this was technically a middle grade book, and although I wasn’t intending to read a kids book I’m not mad about it. Overall I did like it! I thought the themes were interesting; they revolved around the idea of reluctant heroes and war veterans, and also the idea of children having to take charge when adults cannot or willnot. The characters were charming, and the final siege was cool. I appreciated that the author did a bit of world-building with regards to the magic system, by teaching Mona about sympathy magic.

Rating: 4/5 provinces where rats are NOT ALLOWED (very Alberta-core)

Coffee is awesome. I drink it everyday and it makes me feel super fucking good. I have about 3-5 cups a day, sometimes less if I get a bit too jittery and sometimes more if I'm feeling extra awesome. A couple of friends who will remain nameless keep ‘detoxing’ from coffee every so often and I struggle to understand why they do this. While we were hanging out I may have been a tad schizophrenic but I believed I heard them say things along the lines that it isn’t good for you. Or that being dependent on coffee is a no no. To make sure I wasn’t schizophrenic I asked them about their coffee breaks.

Q: Why do you 'detox' or take breaks from drinking coffee? A1: I've only done it twice, once during Lent when u are supposed to give up something and now because [redacted] is and its nice to do things with friends :3 A2: To avoid migraines from withdrawals, so I don't like to be too dependent on it because if I am drinking like three cups a day, but then i have a day where I don't drink around that amount it fucks me up.

Strange.. It seems like being dependent on it and then manually taking it away for a week would just induce withdrawals without any benefits of detoxing for a prolonged period of time, yet this is what A2 chooses to do from time to time. A1… well A1 is a troller.

Is my argument disingenuous? Probably. I did what any titan of academia would do. I googled “is coffee bad for you?” This is what I found:

“High intake of boiled, unfiltered coffee has been associated with mild increase in cholesterol levels. The bottom line? Your coffee habit is probably fine and may even have some benefits. But if you have side effects from coffee, such as heartburn, nervousness or insomnia, consider cutting back.” – Mayo Clinic (First google result obviously)

“Regular coffee consumption may reduce your risk for certain health conditions, including diabetes, stroke, depression, cardiovascular disease, and even some types of cancer. However, having too much caffeine can cause you to be jittery and anxious and make it difficult to sleep at night.” – Verywellhealth.com (random ass stupid health site idk?)

““The overall evidence has been pretty convincing that coffee has been more healthful than harmful in terms of health outcomes,” said Frank Hu, chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in an April 5, 2021, article in Discover. “For most people, moderate coffee consumption can be incorporated into a healthy diet.” Hu said that moderate coffee intake—about 2–5 cups a day—is linked to a lower likelihood of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, liver and endometrial cancers, Parkinson’s disease, and depression. It’s even possible that people who drink coffee can reduce their risk of early death. – Harvard mfer Frank Hu (Harvard Idk man whatever)

Do I actually have a real point here? Not really. That being said, I want to say that coffee is delicious and lovely. I think we all should be drinking many cups a day. As for A2 if they are really getting migraines or having panic attacks then they should stop and I should stop trolling them. However, to prepare for a rare time where no caffeine would be readily available to you is silly. If you have a day where you don’t drink your normal amount of coffee then that’s unfortunately a skill issue and you deserve to suffer. If you are randomly detoxing from coffee for a week in preparation for a caffeine doomsday then you also deserve to suffer. I guess I do have a point.

You deserve to suffer.

Spencer's Health and Fitness Part 2

Well, a few people have asked for it, so here is part 2. I think the first while learning fitness should be pretty freeform. Do whatever you want as long as it's exercise. Try out a little bit of everything if you can. Some weights, a bit of cardio, just messing about really. After a little while, it's good to come up with a proper plan. It can help with scheduling, it can help with recovery for your body, and it can help you actually reach some long-term goals more realistically.

The goal of this article is to come up with some basic fitness plans to help move people to their goals, with a focus on working out in a gym as well as diet. These are where I have the most experience, but I will ensure that I touch on mobility, cardio, and flexibility in a way that can generally apply.

What to Look For in a Program

Completeness

To start this section, I will group and borrow some info from Spencer's Basics Of Health and Fitness 1:

Broadly speaking, your body's basic patterns are somewhere around:
- Squatting: Crouching position -> Standing position
	- Legs, hips, lower back
- Pushing: Close to torso -> far from torso
	- Chest, shoulders, triceps
- Pulling: Far from torso -> close to torso
	- Upper back, lats, biceps
- Twisting: Asymmetric forces on the body
	- Abs, obliques, some back muscles
- Carrying: Holding and moving with something
	- Forearms, traps, core muscles in general

Aspects of Movement
- Strength: the amount of weight you can lift
- Cardio: Ability to do aerobic movement for a duration
- Flexibility: Ability to bend
- Conditioning: Ability to lift weight for a duration
- Explosiveness: Ability to move fast
- Mobility: The ability to functionally use your full range of motion
	- I referred to this as endpoint strength, which is a better description, but I will refer to it as mobility from now on

A complete program should have all of this. Any program you actually do almost certainly won't. Why? It's a lot. If you have hours to work out all the time and a good work ethic, you can make it all happen. If you're in a pinch or have goals that put more demand on some of these than others, you will focus on some aspects and put less effort into, or ignore altogether other aspects. Let us look at powerlifting, for example. Note that I won't assign a score because being more complete is not necessarily better.

Powerlifters do 3 things: Squat, Bench Press, and Deadlift. Anything else they do is to ensure that they can do these “big 3” better. Furthermore, they optimize themselves to do the highest single rep weight they can do. What does this mean? Let's take a beginner program and use it as an example:

(You would use an app to get the weights you would use for each lift, we will get back to that later)

Stronglifts 5x5 Workout 1: – Squats 5x5 – Bench Press 5x5 – Rows 5x5 Workout 2: – Squats 5x5 – Overhead Press 5x5 – Deadlifts 1x5 Work out every other day, 3 or 4 times a week

Now let's put it through the checklist:

Movement patterns: – Squatting: Yes, all the time – Pushing: Yes, all the time – Pulling: Yes, minimal deadlifts (because of all the squatting using the same muscles), and some rows – Twisting: No – Carrying: Barely. A deadlift is a pick-up, but there is no movement with it.

Aspects of movement: – Strength: Absolutely. All in. – Cardio: No – Flexibility: No. In fact, usually, powerlifting makes flexibility worse, which I will explain later – Conditioning: Not much. People will cycle higher and lower reps, but very rarely do they do very high rep – Explosiveness: Maybe. No throwing or anything, but bar speed could be taken into account – Mobility: No

This makes powerlifting look pretty incomplete as a structure. Why, then, is it so popular? For starters, it is very simple in every way. It is beginner-friendly, easily adaptable, and also easy to hit the gym, do, and get out quickly. For people who want to get stronger, they can almost certainly find a simple, quick, and easy-to-understand program that they can make work for them in mere minutes. Different people have different goals, and for many people, simply getting stronger and moving some weight is their goal.

The funny thing about powerlifting is that it provides the bedrock for almost all other programs too. You can take 3 or 4 movements you want to get stronger at, put them into a powerlifting program, and then add to it to make it more complete based on your goals. For example, if you did the above program but had a bunch of mobility drills beforehand, it would include mobility. If you did 3 days of this program and had a 4th day for conditioning and cardio, you could incorporate more movements as well as more aspects of movement. Suddenly, you have a pretty damn complete program! So let's for a second see what this would look like if I wanted to buff up the program. Let's say I recommended this program to a friend learning the ropes, what would I change?

Everyone

Overall Structure – 3 workouts per week – Core movements will be done with a programming app – Accessory work will be done with higher reps (3 sets of 12-20 reps) and should be tough, but based on feel – A set is how many times you do a bunch of reps. If I do 20 squats right now, I have done 1 set of 20 squats. If I do it again, it is now 2 sets of 20 reps. – One of the benefits of 5x5 is it is simple, one of the downsides is that it makes a bunch of people confuse sets and reps – the first number is sets, second is reps. 3x5 would be 3 sets of 5 reps, ie, you do 5 squats, rest, do 5 squats, rest, then do 5 squats.

Warmup: – 20 minutes moderate intensity cardio (seated bike is my personal go-to) – YTWI with some very light weights

Men:

Workout 1: Core movements – Squats 5x5 – Bench Press 5x5 – Rows 5x5 Accessory movements: – Dumbbell incline bench – Dumbbell row – Pec Fly – Rear Dely Fly – Curls Workout 2: Core movements – Squats 5x5 – Overhead Press 5x5 – Deadlifts 1x5 Accessory movements: – Arnold press – Pulldowns (or chin ups) – Rear delt fly – Pullovers – Rotator cuff strengthening – Tricep kickbacks

Women:

Workout 1: Core movements – Squats 5x5 – Overhead Press 5x5 – Deadlifts 1x5 Accessory movements: – Arnold press – Pulldowns (or chin ups) – Rear delt fly – Pullovers – Bad girls – Tricep kickbacks Workout 2: Core movements – Squats 5x5 – Bench Press 5x5 – Rows 5x5 Accessory movements: – Dumbbell Romanian deadlifts – Dumbbell row – Donkey kicks – Rear Dely Fly – Curls

Everyone again

Workout 3 – 20 jump lunges – 10 push ups (can use knees) – 3 swimmers (slow) – 15 crunches – a few banded neck extensions (front, side back) repeat the above three times – Farmer Carries – (when forearms tired) Hugging carries – (when tired) Plan your feet wide and start rotating your body to bring the weight side to side – Pre-hab mobility work – Based on specific personal weaknesses to prevent injury

Cooldown: maybe 2x20 seconds each? keep it casual – Neck stretches – tricep stretch – rhomboid stretch – touch toes – kneeling lunge, lean foreward and back – calf stretch

That just got a little more complicated, didn't it? Yes, but we did also just go from something very basic to a program that I would feel confident running myself. I have made adjustments for some common separation of goals where men have a greater focus on the upper body, women have a greater focus on the lower body. But I digress, let's run it through that gauntlet again:

Movement patterns: – Squatting: Yes, all the time – Pushing: Yes, all the time – Pulling: Yes – Twisting: A bit at the end of the big carry – Carrying: Yes, a bit

Aspects of movement: – Strength: Core work – Cardio: Warmups, Third day – Flexibility: Some stretching – Conditioning: Accessory work – Explosiveness: Jump lunges provide a bit – Mobility: YTWI + pre-hab

The increased complexity takes this beginner powerlifting program and turns it into a still beginner-friendly relatively complete program! If you were to stick to this program, frankly, it could take you pretty far on only 3 workouts per week, with one workout taking minimal equipment. You should be stronger, faster, and more injury-resilient. That being said, Stronglifts 5x5 is a program that isn't really best done forever, it's just a bit basic in the way the weight progresses (I will explain in 2 paragraphs). While great for people new to weights, longer-term gym-goers will find that eventually, they stop making progress with this scheme. What to do now? Well, Stronglifts 5x5 is the very core of this program, so what you can do instead is take another powerlifting program, replace Stronglifts 5x5 with that, and make some adjustments to the rest of the work to make sure you cover the bases you want to, and you're off to the races.

But let's pause here for a second. I said the way Stronglifts 5x5 progresses is a bit basic so it won't last forever. I put its progression off earlier too, so it's time to address that.

Progression

If you're fine just having some fun in the gym and making progress a bit here and there, by all means, you can just hit the gym and increase the weight a bit when it feels easy. This will work to some extent, but generally, it is good to not only be pushed a bit but have structure. There are a few common ways routines will progress.

Linear: This tells you to increase the weight by a certain amount every week or every workout. This is what Stronglifts 5x5 uses. Every week, if you can hit the numbers, you will increase the weight by 10 pounds for major compounds, or 5 pounds for smaller compounds. This can find your limits pretty fast but is not a great strategy for long-term progression once you have gotten past the initial strength you get from starting to train. It simply progresses very fast, and after lifting for more than a short while, our body does not get stronger as fast as the program increases the weight. This is why people recommend it for newer gym-goers: it gives people some time to learn with lighter weights, then fairly quickly find out how strong they are, which allows them to properly utilize a plan that will help them out in the long run. It has a role, and it does an amazing job at that. You will be progressing week to week.

Non-Linear Progression: This is for everything else, but for the sake of simplicity, I will place here programs that generally increase weight based on performance. For example, let's say you finished off your 5x5 but it was super easy, you could increase by 10 pounds. If it was hard but doable, increase by 5 pounds. If it is very hard, keep it the same. If you are stuck at the same for a few weeks, decrease by x pounds or y% of max weight to try to break through that barrier. This is great when you are still fairly new, but have hit your linear progression wall. It allows you to progress as your body gets stronger but still assumes that you are generally making consistent upward strength progress across all movements. This can be done effectively forever if you keep being able to increase the weights, but if you find yourself hitting the same ceilings again and again after dropping the weight a few times, it might be time to look into something more complicated. You will generally be progressing at a scale of maybe month to month.

Undulating Periodization: These generally use some freak math to decide how much to increase your estimated maximum weights by, but those increases happen pretty infrequently. In between these increases, you will likely have multiple steps where you alter the movement to attempt to squeeze more juice out of your main lift. These alterations could be changing how you do the exercise, like doing high volume, then speed, then strength and assessing how you have done, or it could even swap out exercises, like replacing squats with front squats for a week, which can help work muscles in a specific way or even just different from the usual at all. Things here become complicated, and you will be progressing over longer periods, maybe testing every 3 months to see how things feel. At this point, you may also be perfectly happy with losing strength or looks in certain areas to help reach your goals in others.

Please note that undulating periodization is non-linear periodization. I just have these separated a bit because I think it's worth it for the sake of understanding.

Reverse Periodization: Weights decrease as volume increases. This can help with endurance, and I would use it as I would dial into cheer competitions. It would help my conditioning and reduce risk of injury, as well as increase the energy I would put into my sport. You can use this if you want to dial in for a more cardio or aerobic-based activity, but broadly speaking, more of your time will be spent doing the above. You only need to reduce the weights if the weights are high enough to demand reduction.

Progression is a major part of what makes a routine the difficulty it is broadly considered. Linear progression is considered for beginners not because only a beginner would do that, but rather because this will get a beginner farther faster. It is the right tool for the job and should be used. Doing undulating periodization as a beginner would suck because the weight increases are so slow that your body would simply out-progress the program. You could do it and increase overall strain in other ways, but that would still mean the core of your program isn't doing its job. Beginners will progress better with a beginner program.

And on the point of progressing with a program, stick to your programs!!! If you are content with doing your program, keep running it. constantly swapping programs will never let the program dial in where you are and you will constantly be in the adjustment period of a program, which will slow your progress. If you are pushed by a program and are making consistent progress, stick with it! If it is boring you, try swapping up the accessory work first. Needless fiddling only serves to waste your time and energy, as programs take time to reach their potential. Only change your program if:

1. You are making no more progress with your current program
2. Your program feels too easy and does not push you at all (most programs will be like this for a month while the weights adjust to your strength from beginning estimates)
3. You have a change in the overall goal. Not just “I want to do x exercise a bit more”, but maybe you signed up for a competition, started a new sport, or are preparing for a larger lifestyle change.
4. You genuinely dread your program. You avoid the gym because the program sucks so much

Level of Program

Even I would not necessarily use an advanced program right now. No one else reading this should even really look at them at this point, but it would be incomplete to not include them. If you are fairly new, pick a beginner program. It is the right tool for the right job. If you have been consistent and have hit a plateau with your strength on your starting program, look at intermediate. Many of these intermediate programs have built world records. If you are a high-level athlete at a sport or want to dial in and have run the intermediate ones consistently for >3 years, look to advanced.

Many of these programs are just the building blocks of something more complex. If they don't seem complete to the point of achieving your goals add some accessories that do that. Also, make sure to fill them out a bit to hit every movement pattern at least once a week, ideally twice. After you have done what the core program insists, do some accessories you make up after to fill it out. You can have fun with these but still work hard. I find 2 accessories per body part I want to work on is a solid starting point. Over 4 and you are either not going hard enough, or are doing way more than you need to, maybe to a detriment. A good rule of thumb is 3 sets per accessory.

Beginner

All of these are pretty simple linear progression programs to help you find your groove

Stronglifts 5x5 (I did this one) – has a really easy free app GZCL Starting Strength

Intermediate

These take you out of linear progression and you can run them for years, different ones may work better at different times in your life

Madcow 5x5 (if you like the 5x5) – Like SL 5x5 but with slower progression 5/3/1 (crowd favourite) – Dead simple, works, tried and true – lots of accessory work recommendations – only focuses on 1 body part per workout, may underutilize your capacity – This helps it be well-balanced – this may not be a bad thing for you Cube method (a personal fave) – Beats the soul out of a major compound every workout PPL (More bodybuilding focused) – Push, pull legs (often repeated twice or with 1 more day for conditioning/cardio) – More of a genre of program than a specific one – Less focused on strength – more focused on looks PHAT – Made for athletes – does strength and looks PHUL – Separates upper and lower body days

Advanced / Sport Specific

Juggernaut 2.0 (a personal fave) – Spreadsheets on spreadsheets on spreadsheets – requires reading a book Fullsterkur (strongman) – costs actual money – requires some space and equipment – related to cube method, actually I might try this GUTS – a more complex and complete bodybuilding program

Some people will tell you that you need to record the weights of every exercise, how it felt, how your day was going into it, etc. You can, and it will help, but just trying to do your program consistently is like 50% of the picture. Pushing yourself is another 10%, good sleep is another like 10%, eating well is another 10% paying attention to aches and pains is like 10%, and all those other little details make up the rest. Will it matter? Yeah for sure, but the main part is just focusing on putting in good work, and with your life, do you really need to try to optimize your entire life around being a perfect athlete?

Diet

This won't be a review or ranking of specific diets, but rather I will keep it to dieting as a whole. With that, we must start at the core of dieting.

Calories.

There are calorie reductionists who say just eat less and just eat more, but that denies some of the human experience and relationship with food. Some people say calories don't matter, but that is a reactionary anti-the-first stance and is broadly not going to hold up well in practice. The answer lies somewhere between, and when I say somewhere between, I mean calorie reductionism is more or less correct, but Jesus some people need to stop being such pricks about it. The manosphere has done immense damage to effective diet advice because I think they care far less about dieting and far more about the assault on their ego that happens when they learn that women don't exist purely for their gaze. Anyway, I digress.

A calorie is a unit of energy. Our body is effectively storage for energy. Our bodies are also built to survive. If you eat a surplus of energy, the body says “Hey, times are plentiful, I should store some of this energy for later” and makes fat. If you eat a deficit of energy, the body says “shit, I can't get what I need from food, lets use some of that stored energy from earlier to make up for it.” But the body burns its fat.

If you eat a bunch of food, your body will adapt to it and need yet more food to grow. Be it that your body realizes it doesn't need to be as efficient, or maybe that it just doesn't absorb as many nutrients because there is so much food, I don't know. If you want to gain weight, you will start by needing to eat a bit more, and over time, that amount will creep slowly up to maintain the same weight gain pace. The same happens with the opposite. When people go on a diet, they usually can start pretty easily. You eat a bit less. Suddenly, you are down 1.5 pounds eating that same amount less that should have dropped you 10 pounds and you're not losing any weight. Your body has adapted, you need to go lower, and as you keep going, that little bit less you were eating is suddenly a lot less, and you're hungry all the time, which also means you're in a bad mood all the time.

This is where I think a lot of the distinction of the disagreement above comes from. Calorie reductionists have all of this cycle pretty much built in. Do you now need less calories? Just eat even less. The focus is still on calories, just the numbers need to be played with. Other people try to invite that complexity and mental condition into it. It's an honourable venture, I think it is often done in good faith. Most people want their body to be their body and not a scientific venture, but, in my opinion, change is easiest done when you make it a bit of a scientific venture.

Keeping Count

So how do you know how much to eat and how much to adjust to gain/lose weight? Well, the calculators that take lifestyle, weight, and that into account suck. Everyone's body is different, including yours from itself a few years ago. If you really want to know and do things based on the numbers, you have to pay for MacroFactor, the only app I know that does a good job with all of this. It automatically adjusts your numbers for you so you don't have to hyperfocus on it, and you input all the food you eat and your weight every day or so. It finds the trends and adjusts accordingly. It isn't a lot of work, and it is effective, but I can see it not being for everybody.

It does one thing you don't need the app for: writing down everything you eat. This is a good strategy. You can end the day, look at your list, and say “That extra thing I got? I didn't need that, and it didn't affect the rest of my day at all.” Alan Thrall, a now old-head strongman Youtuber said his best diet advice was to get rid of “ands.” When you grab a burger, don't get a burger and fries, just grab the burger. A breakfast sandwich and a donut? Just get a breakfast sandwich. A burger, fries, and a coke? Just grab a burger and fries with water. Getting rid of one “and” here and there makes a big difference over the span of a week, and still lets you retain your lifestyle. Writing everything down and getting rid of a thing or two here and there is a fantastic way to start.

This stems from my overall best diet advice: The diet for you is the diet that works.

I have seen so many people go on diets. So often, it is no diet to vegetarian or vegan, and after a month, it is back to no diet. This is what causes the research that “1 year after starting a diet most people have gained weight.” It isn't the diet so to speak, it is the fact that people try to do a diet that they will inevitably fail at, fail at it, go back to their old habits with an unhealthy dose of failure, and continue on their previous trend that they wanted to change, with a bonus of feeling now worse, which promotes stress eating, which is more failure, and it can spiral. This is not good. I would go as far as to say that this sounds pretty bad. The lesson is: when you start a diet, you need to already have your reflexes primed. Do you know what's vegan? An entire bag of chips. Do you know what wasn't intended when you came up with your diet? Eating an entire bag of chips every night. But why is eating a bag of chips every night not good for you?

We need to go over just a couple more things before we reach our main goal here. First: Macros and micros. Macros are your fats, carbs, and proteins. Micros are your vitamins, minerals, sodium, etc. Carbohydrates are a fast source of energy for the body, your body can easily break them down into sugar, which can be a good fast fuel source. Proteins are good for building and maintaining muscle, and fats are good for not only getting you a large volume of calories but also things like hormone production and joint health. Micros are smaller things that are important, but if you generally eat healthy, you shouldn't have to worry about them. What I will say here is make sure you get your vitamin D, if you are diabetic or have another health condition, ask your doctor about what to look out for, and also all women are iron deficient. If you get a blood test and are unhealthily short in something, look into taking vitamins to fix it, it may make you feel better.

Lastly: Just moderately not great foods. There are a lot of foods out there which aren't great, but aren't so bad that we do anything about it. For example, Mcdonald's has shockingly good macronutrient balance on a lot of its items. Why do I feel so bad after eating even just a moderate amount? Well, there's a lot of canola oil, high fructose corn syrup, and sodium. These are all pretty much fine if there's a bit, but altogether in that quantity combines a sugar spike from the corn syrup, water retention and bloat from the sodium, dehydration from the lack of actual water, and just broadly the impact canola oil has on some people, which may be part of all the processing. There is also a lack of something: it is a lot of calories, but not a lot of micronutrients. The combination of this means that while there isn't anything truly wrong with it at its core, some Maccas won't kill you or anything, it may leave you off feeling not so great, and you can certainly do better. In a pinch here and there it's all good, but if it's all the time, it might be time to look for something healthier or make your backup food.

What to Know Before A Diet

There are a bunch of different things you need to know to be prepared for a diet if you want it to succeed outside of how much you want to eat. You should have a handful of:

Breakfasts: Quick, easy, and can be grab-and-go in a pinch. A breakfast that takes 10 ingredients and 40 minutes to make is surely delicious and nutritious, but when you need to get to work and need to go fast, you don't want everything to fall apart right at the start of the day, as you will be thinking about how to make it up for the whole day, and that's stressful.

Lunches: These can be spots near you that support your diet, quick re-ups that can be done halfway through the day, or something that reheats easily in a container. Many people don't have access to a full kitchen halfway through the day, and if that is the case, you need a plan and a backup plan.

Dinners: Bigger and likely your most complete meals. These can take a little bit longer and have some more prep work to them, but they should be really tasty and leave you feeling good.

Snacks: Something you can grab and eat in 2 seconds that tastes good and is healthy. Want to eat a bag of chips? Well now you have to go to the store and get them, but a bag of trail mix is much better and also right there.

Soups and stews: Very important. These will take more time, but leave you with a mountain of delicious and extremely healthy food. If you have a Sunday afternoon off, you can easily have a soup bubbling in the background and end up with 2 weeks of lunches that freeze and reheat well.

Quick and Simple: Recipes that take like 15 minutes and 4 ingredients to make that are healthy and taste good. It doesn't have to be brilliant, but it can be pretty damn good, healthy, and it'll do on a weeknight.

Emergency Backups: This is not meal prep, but you should always have at least 2 healthy reheatable meals, maybe a soup or stew, in the freezer. Sometimes things happen. Maybe you are exhausted, maybe something popped up and you are out of time and in a huge hurry with no time to cook. No need for fast food, you have a backup in the freezer. Again? You're still good. On the extremely rare case that 3 unforeseen things happen, sure fuck it grab some Maccas, but also check what's happened here. When there are too many emergencies, it might be good to revisit how you got there and plan for if it may happen again. I try to keep at least 5 of these, usually from my soups and stews, because I know I can run through a whole week on exhaustion emergency meals if need be. The only time I have ever found this important is in cases of mental health and burnout. Have I ever run out of all my emergency meals? No. There is always something good at home, and that is very reassuring to me. Funnily enough, that helps my mental and makes it less likely to be necessary.

Smoothies: Smoothies are a very easy food, both to make and consume. It is good to have a good smoothie that you know you like, plus smoothies fit into almost every diet.

Flexes: Big dishes that you can make for friends that are absolutely delicious. Not just good for the diet, but will kill the game with anyone. Dinner party shit.

Desserts: Made to either prove to people that you aren't a big stickler or add to a potluck or something where you want to have fun. It will go a little outside the core values of your diet, but add your own personal flair to it, and make sure it lets loose a little.

Friends: Please don't eat them. Friends who have dieted likely know good recipes and tips and tricks that helped them succeed. Get some insight on what worked for them, what they do in a pinch, and how they handle a night out. All of that is going to happen to you eventually, and their insight might give you good ideas for how you want to handle them as well.

You should have a handful of ideas for all of these, and for things like quick and simple, breakfasts, lunches, and snacks, you should have a lot of experience with them before you start your diet.

What Diet Should I Pick?

Every diet claims it is oh-so-good for you, and generally, they are right. There are so many news articles on so many trending diets claiming that they are the best, will extend your lifespan, will help your gut health, whatever. What matters is that you aren't eating like shit. Almost any diet will accomplish that. If you are new to dieting, don't jump into anything restrictive right away. Restriction can bring creativity, but if you don't have much experience, can also pin you into a bad habit of doing something that is technically a part of the diet, like a bag of chips while on a vegan diet, because someone made a pork freekeh and you thought it was going to be a salad, and now you can't eat pork. When you've been paying attention to dieting for years, you will see fads and trends show up and melt away. Vegan, Keto, Mediterranean, even that piece of shit carnivore diet that barely arrived spare dumbass manosphere types is a diet I guess. In 5 years it won't matter if what you picked was trendy or not, what will matter is if you ate delicious food, enjoyed food with friends, stuck to it, and reached your goals. Hell, you can even mix and match. Intermittent fasting, Mediterranean lunches, keto dinners? Sounds delicious!

Also, there's a beautiful concept called cheat meals. Allow yourself to just dig in now and then. You've been healthy for 2 weeks, digging into some pizza for a meal won't be bad. Having no fun and giving up on your diet will. Your body takes time to adjust, one big overshoot or one big undershoot here and there won't do much in the long run. Also, you can do cheat meals that adhere to your diet somewhat. Maybe you shouldn't eat pizza, but it's the Superbowl and you skipped lunch for this, you can have a slice and some saucy wings. Going out that night? Skipping lunch not only means more calories for alcohol but starving yourself also means alcohol hits harder! (I am not liable for your terrible decisions)

The best diet is just generally trying to eat healthier. Your friends made unhealthy food? Give in here and there (putting up a bit of resistance can even get you some extra attention), because friends are the most important. Try the food that they make even if it isn't part of your diet. Those times are called good memories.

Starting

Well, you have an idea for a diet, you have a bunch of recipes planned, you've tested some dishes, you like them, and you have a couple of backups in the fridge. NOW is the time to start the diet, not 2 months ago when you barely touched your side of salad and decided to become a vegan in 1 day. You can do that and succeed? Godspeed, but I sure as hell can't.

My approach tends to look like this: 1. Change my snacks 2. change my breakfast 3. change my lunch 4. change my dinner

I don't snack much, so that just means finishing my current snacks and replacing them with new ones for when I crave them. I also don't eat many sweets at all, so I find this to be the lowest barrier. I can swap it out without thinking too much or changing my lifestyle at all. Breakfast is next because I usually either do something extremely quick and simple or skip breakfast altogether. This is a change that I will experience every day, but I generally will have planned this out and found something that I know will work. I am also happy eating the same breakfast every day, so it doesn't take much thought. My lunch comes next. I usually have tested some quick and simple meals, and if I'm not sure about something for some reason, I have my emergency meals ready as a backup. This is starting to take a bit more effort, but I have a backup plan, and I have some of the common ingredients in the fridge so I can swap plans fast if I need to. Last is dinner. This is something that takes some proper cooking and planning most of the time. This is the biggest jump, but I'm already almost completely there, so it's OK if it doesn't work out like I imagined, most of my meals are already there! I had one time when I wasn't yet vegetarian, but only my dinners had meat. Turns out, I rather liked being in that spot, and I didn't even want to go any further. In trying to make it to my diet, I accidentally found a diet that worked for me, one that I could stick to happily for the long term. These days, I have something different altogether, and guess what, I like it, so it's working.

Your diets and transitions to your diets will likely look different based on your lifestyle and priorities. Just know, you don't need to go all at once. Take your time, dip your toes, and then slowly integrate your new ideas. Maybe you grab fast food every lunch at work and that's a part of your routine. That might be the hardest to change, maybe save that for last. Maybe it's the part of your current diet which you like the least and you want to change it first. Maybe after swapping that out you realize you like everything else and are just happy now. Maybe you find a menu item or different spot that matches your diet better and you want to keep that routine.

The goal here isn't to change what you eat. It's to make you happier and healthier.

Now read that again.

I'm at the pizza hut I'm at the taco bell The combination made my eyes bleed

Oncle Spenny

I've gone through many stages of “pro wrestling” enjoyment, starting at genuine “wow this is really real and cool” to “nahh this is fake and dumb” to now appreciating it as a niche performance art and trying to understand it on a technical level. With iconic characters throughout history, professional wrestling has become a generational pastime, with both participation and enjoyment passed down through families.

Originating in the era of carnies during the late 1800s and adapted from Greco-Roman wrestling, the “kayfabe” or “worked” art of wrestling was quickly popularized in the 1920s, with the first “Golden Era” of wrestling emerging in the late 40's. The first wrestling “celebrity” to be known nationwide would be “Gorgeous George”, known for his flamboyant attire, he was an early predecessor to characters like “Mr Wonderful” Paul Orndorff and “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair.

Mostly involving grappling and various holds, early wrestling, aided by the lacking technology, allows the performers to cover the face or mouth and communicate with the “referee” and their opponent on what to do next. This is now referred to as “calling a match” or “calling spots”. With any performance art, time only allows for more interpretation and adaptation of the industry, creating flashier showmanship and larger events following its inception. In the era of technology, camera cuts are utilized to maintain that charade.

WWE has become synonymous with pro wrestling, often used as a replacement for pro wrestling (think UFC for MMA). Before the corporate entity, pro wrestling was separated into territories. In the late 1940s, during this first golden era, the “National Wrestling Alliance” was formed (and exists to this day). Often just called the “NWA” for short, they established a “World Champion” agreed upon by the various promoters, who would then travel to the various territories and face off against the biggest draws in those places. Because of this, many promoters would want their star to stay local to create the most profit for them, leading to many promoters separating from the NWA. One of these promoters, Vince McMahon Sr. would create the WWWF, and after selling it to his son, Vince McMahon Jr. would transition it into WWF and purchase many of the territories by the late 80s, and is now known worldwide as WWE.

With the eminent takeover of cable television, Vince McMahon Jr. would “poach” the top stars in the failing territories. Now under one corporate umbrella, American professional wrestling was now mostly controlled by one supreme being, Vince McMahon. It would be under McMahon's guidance that characters such as Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage became household names in the 80s and 90s, with the over the top, outlandish way of speaking becoming a staple of professional wrestling. There have been different iterations of the same characters or “gimmicks” throughout wrestling's existence, but for every gimmick that works and clicks with the fanbase, there are 10 that don't and fail. For every Hulk Hogan there is a “Shockmaster” and for every Undertaker there is “OZ”.

The late 80's and early 90's were a breaking ground for new ideas, some good, some horrible, most racist, but at its very simplest, it was the era of ego. Everyone thinks they should get paid more and get more opportunity in the spotlight, and this was highlighted by the creation of “WCW”, backed by billionaire Ted Turner and TBS. With the WWF shifting to a revolutionary weekly program with the debut of “Monday Night RAW” in Jan. 1993, WCW would shift to this method in Sep. 1995 under the guidance of new VP Eric Bischoff, their debut episode of “Monday Night Nitro” was broadcasted from Minnesota <3. Shifting to a more reality tv based form of storytelling and utilizing the backing of billionaire Ted Turner, WCW Nitro would become the first real competitor to WWE and Monday Night RAW. This was the beginning of the “Monday Night Wars” and would go on to create some of the most iconic characters in its history.

Top stars like Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair would revive their careers left lacking in the WWF, while homegrown characters like Sting and Goldberg would achieve their biggest success in the “new” WCW. Wrestlers who believed themselves to be misused or underutilized in WWF would “jump ship” to WCW to try and find better success, including Jeff Jarrett, Brett Hart, Mr. Perfect, and many, many, more. For almost 2 years straight WCW was beating the WWF, forcing McMahon and his cronies to think outside of the box. No more could they rely on the do good, boy scout, dynamic and opted for an edgier, more mature business model. Called the “Attitude Era”, characters like “The Rock” and “Stone Cold Steve Austin”, would become icons of the era but it would be WCW's “Mean” Mark Calloway that might be the biggest name in wrestling history, after he was hired by the WWF and turned into “The Undertaker”. While WCW headed downhill, The Undertaker became the biggest name in wrestling. Longevity became Calloway's biggest strength, wrestling well into the 2020's.

Below is a small sample size of iconic characters who left WCW for WWF and became household names. WCW ————— WWF The Giant – The Big Show Eddie Guerrero – no name change Oz/Vinnie Vegas – Diesel (then back to WCW as Kevin Nash, and back to WWF as Kevin Nash) Damon Striker – Edge Cactus Jack – Mick Foley (Mankind, Cactus Jack, Dude Love) Chris Jericho – no name change Terra Ryzing – HHH “Stunning” Steve Austin – “Stone Cold” Steve Austin

By 2000, the WWF had won the “Monday Night Wars” and WCW had gone bankrupt, with the blame game still being played today by various entitles (Hogan, Flair, Bischoff, Hart, and more) with many of its top stars already having left for McMahon's company. McMahon would purchase WCW and work it into a “kayfabe” storyline with his son and daughter, having WCW stars “invade” the WWF and attack their top stars.

History would repeat itself in 2002, with the creation of “Total Nonstop Action” or TNA Wrestling under the NWA umbrella. Helmed by the previously mentioned Jeff Jarrett, TNA would become the next place where talent can go to achieve the success they think they deserve. Hogan would again become part of a WWF (now WWE) derivative, and TNA would repeat the same steps by WCW in hiring people from the competition. Wrestlers like Christian, Kurt Angle, The Dudley Boyz and Scott Steiner created a second wave of success in their careers, getting rehired by WWE down the line. Much like WCW, however, as the company began to go downhill in the 2010s, various stars in TNA (shortly rebranded as Impact Wrestling) were picked up by WWE and given a larger platform to perform.

TNA ———– WWE Abyss- Chris Park (producer, joined 2019) Eli Drake – LA Knight (joined 2021) Rosita – Zelina Vega/Queen Zelina (joined 2017) AJ Styles – no name change (joined 2016) Bobby Roode – no name change (joined 2016) Samoa Joe – no name change (joined 2015) CM Punk – no name change (joined 2006, rejoined 2023)

But now we reach the modern day. WWE is flourishing under billion dollar network deals. Although ideas change, some things always work. A Hulk Hogan becomes a John Cena, an Undertaker becomes Bray Wyatt, and the wheel keeps turning.

The more things change, the more things stay the same, as they say. Another billionaire, another company, this time “All Elite Wrestling” or AEW. Founded by Tony Khan in 2019, AEW is the modern day WCW, offering big money to former WWE wrestlers and broadcasted on TBS and TNT. WCW had Nitro, AEW has Dynamite. WWE has Smackdown, AEW has Rampage. Helmed by Khan, AEW hired some of the top wrestlers on the independent wrestling scene, as well as the top “free agents” formerly with WWE. Starting out as the wrestling fanatic's alternative to WWE, AEW found quick success but has faltered, with wrestlers having creative control over their characters (nobody wants to look bad). The first wave of AEW wrestlers joining WWE has begun, with Jade Cargill, Hamilton, Ontario's own Ethan Page, and Brian Pillman Jr. now in WWE.

More deeply embedded in pop culture than ever, its becoming increasingly interesting for me to attempt to navigate this niche section of “sports entertainment”, now viewing it through a creative lens, taking note of the quality of writing or storytelling within matches, the character arc, and overall presentation of it all. I long joke that it's “redneck Shakespeare” or a “stuntman's soap opera”, but in this current state I genuinely enjoy where pro wrestling is today.

Thank you for sticking with me on this, I know its not something people are itching to read but if you made it this far, have a brew on me.

The year is 200X. Me and my best bud were hanging out at a kids' entertainment area in the mall. Equipped with an indoor jungle gym, a tiny zip line, a little fake treehouse I used to chill and drink orange fanta in, probably a ball pit, and plenty of other things that could keep a kid occupied for hours while their parents go shopping. This is not our first time here, and as we waltz onto familiar ground my friend goes ahead of me and I agree to meet up with him later. An hour passes... I am nowhere to be found. My friend, concerned by my disappearance, goes searching. At the computer section, he finds me, glued to my screen. I'm enthralled by this game that lets you play as Kirby and beat up Mario and other Nintendo characters that I did not recognize. I had to be proverbially dragged away from the computer so we could hang out like normal kids.

Much later in life did I learn that this game was Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64.

The year is 2008, my brothers invite some friends over to play on our Nintendo Wii. They bring this game I've never heard of before, apparently it just came out. I got to play as Kirby and beat up Mario and Link and some more characters I did not recognize. I was addicted, and fortunately, we decided to get the game for ourselves too. I spent many many hours appreciating every nook and cranny of that game, even though I sucked at it.

This game was Super Smash Bros Brawl for the Nintendo Wii.

The year is 2012, my middle brother installs this mod for Brawl on our Wii. He says it's to make the game more balanced. I didn't really get it but it looked cool with the purple menus. I think I am better at this game than I was before, but I still consistently lose to my brother when we fight each other. Despite this I am enthralled, plus it has Mewtwo now!!

This was Project M.

The year is 2014. I've somehow stumbled upon a livestream of a Super Smash Bros. tournament. Names get thrown around I don't recognize. Two players approach the camera and begin playing. I have played Project M before but I've never seen it being played like this. The skill on display by these players was nothing short of bewildering. Even though I didn't understand what was going on half the time I couldn't help but watch the spectacle.

This was Apex 2014.

The year is 2015. I now own a 3ds with Smash 4 on it, I am going to put in 200 hours just fighting the level 9 CPU. From Apex I found another tournament, the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. The grand stage for Smash Bros. but also many other more traditional fighting games. I see the final frontier of fighting games around the world, and I am amazed. I was familiar with the genre. I have been exposed to Street Fighter Ex plus Alpha, Street Fighter 4, and Marvel vs Capcom 3 on our home consoles by now. However, to me, these games were impenetrably complicated, so I just stuck to smash. “I could never learn those games,” I thought to myself.

That tournament... was EVO.

The year is 2016. I continue to play Smash 4 and dabble in Smash Bros. Melee. I found a website that lets me play Melee online, but I live in the UAE so games are scarce. Watching Evo becomes a yearly ritual. I wake up at 2 am to catch the Smash grand finals. It's lonely, I silently cheer at my computer desk while my family sleeps. I move back to Canada. While browsing the Smash Bros. forums I find a tournament being held in Kingston. I enter the tournament (won one tho btw) and begin entering weekly tournaments held at Queen's. They have other fighting games there too.

“I could never learn those games, but they look really cool,” I think to myself.

The year is 2017. I play mainly Melee now. I continue to attend the Queen's weeklies. I watch analysis videos on fighting games. They look awesome. I pick up another game called Rivals of Aether, it's a lot like Melee, it's pretty fun. I continue to watch Evo. At this point I try to watch all the games being played at Evo, I find them all very engaging.

“I wish I could play those games, but I have nobody to learn it with,” I think to myself.

The year is 2018. I enter University. I managed to convince my floormate to try and learn Dragon Ball FighterZ with me. We played a few games, it didn't stick. I prioritize doing my schoolwork and socializing with my new friends, so I don't have time to enter the weeklies anymore.

Years pass... I continue to watch Evo from the sidelines and dabble in Melee.

I started fencing too, my first thought is how similar it is to fighting games.

The year is 2024. I have made many friends from my university days. I could even talk to some of them about fighting games. One of them in particular is heavily invested in Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike. This year, Evo announces 3rd Strike as part of its main lineup, a once in a lifetime opportunity. He says he will go no matter what, and a group of us decide to join him. I have been watching for years now, what better chance to go than now? Since we're going, why not enter the tournament too? The unrealized dream of playing a fighting game begins to materialize in front of my very eyes. We begin training, we all suck equally.

Months pass, we travel to New York to compete in a smaller tournament. We meet our friend's mentor, who remarks that we have come far, I'm flattered. The next day we fight, and I win a game! We learn many things, and witness levels of skill we could never imagine. We talk to some of the people, one of them tells us “It's good to have a rival”. I agree.

We return home, that phrase echoing in my mind, and continue training. Every inch I gain over my rival is returned twofold. A silent arms race between two opponents. The day of competition looms over us all. With our weapons stockpiled and our blades sharp, we embark on the journey to the world stage.

Then our flight got canceled. That dream, once so clear now disintegrating away like sand through my fingers. We rebook our flights, but they are too late for us to compete. I try not to cry, I don't know if I succeeded.

I wake at 3 am, beaten and broken by the emotional lashes of the previous 12 hours. I can't sleep, so I look for a solution. There is a flight that will take me there on time, at a pretty penny. I reevaluate some financial decisions and draw out the money necessary to make it, I can't let it end here.

Despite it all, I make it, and enter the tournament. I defeat my first opponent, and feel confident. Then I lose to the second. “All that money just to do the same as NYC?” I fear. I cannot let it end here. I approach my third opponent, one more loss and it's lights out. I defeat him. “At least it will be an improvement” I tell myself. Then I beat my next opponent, and the next. My blade is sharp, forged in the flames of a 6 month rivalry. I approach my next opponent, and find his claws sharper...

To the world, I may have lost. But to myself, I have won. Not the whole tournament, but my dream. All these years of imagining what it's like, of wishing to be at Evo myself, of hoping to break the barrier that faced me every other time I tried. There I was, at Evo, having beaten 4 other people, in an actual real fighting game that is not Smash.

I stand at the ridge of this cold mountain and look at the view. My shoes dusty with the many steps of my journey. The icy peak barely visible through the clouds, but the view at this height is unlike anything I thought it would be. The vast lush valley sits below me and I admire how far I have come. I could continue to climb, and maybe I will, but those extra steps will be accompanied by the unending thought. “I did it...

...I've finally played a fighting game.”

Bit of a shorter review this quarter 😊

Stats breakdown from Apr – June 2024

• Total books read: ~4
• Reading mediums: all audiobooks
• Time spent reading: 24.5 hours

Books Read + Reviews

Dune by Frank Herbert Medium: audiobook

Truthfully, my review of Dune as a whole is not much different than what I wrote for Book 1. I really enjoyed reading it, as well as the weekly discussions and memes it spawned. I can tell that this is the type of book where you can get something new out of it each time you read, so I may revisit it in time. All that to say, the book was very unique, clever, and well done in my opinion. Looking forward to reading Dune Messiah next.

Everything I know About Love by Dolly Alderton Medium: Audiobook

I added this book to my TBR after hearing Dolly Alderton’s dinner party mentorship to Jessica Pan in the book I read last quarter. This book felt like a grown up version of when you were a kid and read those Chicken Soup for the Soul books. The book is a collection of vignettes from Alderton’s twenties that made me laugh, cry, and brought me comfort. Alderton tells the stories of her youth in a way I found quite riveting, personally nostalgic, and inspiring at times. She also occasionally peppers in recipes or other comedic bits that made this feel like I was reading through her life's scrapbook. The book has been adapted as a TV series and I think it lends itself well to that given how I felt like I had followed her and her friends through multiple seasons. Looking forward to watching it in the future. I also liked the transition from girlhood to womanhood and themes of friendship. Someone summed this up as a cross between Bridget Jones’ Diary, Sex and The City, and a self-help book and I'd say that's pretty dead on. Not groundbreaking but enjoyable and good for the soul.

Also if you saw that cute trend going around sometime ago to the audio of “nearly everything I know about love I learnt in my long-term friendships with women”, it comes from this author.

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell Medium: Audiobook

Amanda Montell is both an author and a linguist who uses the latter as the lens in which she views the topics she addresses in her books. I read her first book “Wordsl*t: A Feminist Guide to Talking Back the English Language” back in 2021 and have taken a lot of learnings from it to this day. I highly recommend everyone read it at some point because what she discusses and uncovers from meta-analysis is not quite what you would expect (especially following the girlboss era).

That said, I was curious about her second book – Cultish. The title of the book is also what she has named the language that surrounds cults and other fanatical groups (kinda like a portmanteau of Cult + English). This book is paced more like a six part video essay and makes its way through “traditional” cults (Scientology, Jonestown, etc), MLMs, fitness societies (cross-fit, peleton, etc), and more. Like many others, I've always been curious about what drives people to join cults, how leaders amass their followings, and if a certain type of person is more likely to end up in a cult. Montell also touches on some of the research on this (while infusing her linguistics lens) and pulls at the threads of all these fanatical groups (big or small) to weave an engaging and interesting tapestry of this culture. I really enjoyed listening to the audiobook and it's given me a lot to think about since reading. This has been my favourite non-fiction read of 2024 thus far.

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert Medium: Audiobook

I blitzed this as my hold finally came in after the bookclub had finished this. While I appreciated the brevity of this one, I unfortunately didn't like it as much as Dune. But maybe that's to be expected. Aside from that, I think my sentiments echo those of other bookclub members (or at least the ones I heard when Saturday coffee was hosted in my backyard).

Thanks for reading if you got this far!

Introduction

Super Factory Manager (SFM) is a Minecraft mod which introduces a programming language for logistical tasks. The mod enables users to move items, fluids, and other resources between inventories with high precision and throughput.

You place cables in the world to connect inventories, followed by a manager block that contains the disk which contains the program.

Caption: A demonstration of the mod moving items between chests

Caption: The in-game code editor

Caption: SFM program

NAME "A simple program"

EVERY 20 TICKS DO
    -- on their own, input statements do nothing
    -- there is no item buffer
    INPUT FROM a

    -- all the magic happens here
    OUTPUT TO b
END

There exists a bug in the mod where the manager suddently 'stops working'.

My leading hypothesis is that my caching logic is at fault. Unfortunately, all attempts at reproducing the bug have failed. The only indicators of its existence are the multitudes of people joining my Discord server to ask why their stuff isn't working. Not good.

Learning programming is frustrating enough without having to consider that you're not the one doing something wrong.

Thus, addressing the bug in the is of the highest priority.

The Update to the Mod

Included in the wave of tiny improvements in the latest latest version of the mod (4.16.0), one feature stands above the others: the logging.

Traditionally, Minecraft has a console that displays the logs from the game, which mods can contribute to. Usually when a mod is being uppity, the logs are the best source of information.

Caption: logs from Minecraft when launched using PrismMC. The game has safely exited.

Things get complicated when playing on a server. Non-admin players cannot see the logs of the server. How am I to get debug information from my users without road-blocks like needing admin assistance?

Thus, each manager block now has its own logging implementation that synchronizes to clients. Players can see the logs regarding their programs, isolated from the concerns of the normal logs of the game.

Caption: class definitions used in my logging

// My thing
public record TranslatableLogEvent(
    Level level, // Log level, e.g. INFO, WARN, ERROR
    Instant instant, // Time of the event
    TranslatableContents contents
)

// From the base game
public class TranslatableContents implements ComponentContents {
   private final String key;
   private final Object[] args;
}

Vanilla Minecraft has helpfully established TranslatableComponent for communicating stuff from the server to the client to be displayed in the user's language of choice. By reusing this class, we easily get the benefits of the game's localization system for user-facing logs.

Caption: an example of using a TranslatableComponent

ConfirmScreen confirmscreen = new ConfirmScreen(
    this::confirmResult,
    Component.translatable("deathScreen.quit.confirm"),
    CommonComponents.EMPTY,
    Component.translatable("deathScreen.titleScreen"),
    Component.translatable("deathScreen.respawn")
);

Game Versions

The process of releasing updates for Super Factory Manager is complicated by the fact that the mod supports multiple versions of Minecraft:

• 1.19.2
• 1.19.4
• 1.20
• 1.20.1
• 1.20.2
• 1.20.3
• 1.20.4

Changes between versions can be substantial: GUI and capability reworks, Minecraft Forge drama leading to the release of NeoForge, and other mods I interact with not being available on all the versions I support.

To accommodate the slight variations in my code between the versions, I have opted to create a git branch for each version of the game that is supported.

When I work on the mod, I work on the oldest branch (1.19.2) until satisfaction, then I merge the changes to the next branch, going up the version pairs until the latest version has all the changes.

merge
1.19.2 => 1.19.4
1.19.4 => 1.20
1.20 => 1.20.1
etc.

Sometimes, methods I depend on are pulled out from under me, or are made obsolete in these version upgrades.

Caption: my old code

private Button.OnTooltip buildTooltip(LocalizationEntry entry) {
	return (btn, pose, mx, my) -> renderTooltip(
			pose,
			font.split(
					entry.getComponent(),
					Math.max(
							width
							/ 2
							- 43,
							170
					)
			),
			mx,
			my
	);
}

Caption: my new code, leveraging a new base-game method

private Tooltip buildTooltip(LocalizationEntry entry) {
	return Tooltip.create(entry.getComponent());
}

It is interesting to observe how I [fail to] leverage abstractions to minimize the differences between versions. Some things are only visible after jumping between versions, adding another dimension to programming.

Caption: A layered representation of git branches as stacked pages, Aero inspired

Interacting with multiple branches is best accompanied by opening all the versions at once in IntelliJ, requiring you to clone the repo multiple times. This lets you jump around the code on any version without friction, and it helps avoid giving Gradle an aneurysm.

To merge branches from two clones (without needing to push), you can fetch the other repo path, followed by git merge FETCH_HEAD. I made a helper script to automate this. It pauses in the event of merge conflicts, where I switch over to IntelliJ which has great tooling.

TODO: make the script use rebase instead of fast-forward

Release Process

I've created a simple Command Line Interface (CLI) for helping me run my scripts for the release process. I have a folder named “actions” which contains nicely named scripts which can be invoked with no arguments, and I have a entrypoint script that uses fzf to show me the scripts by name to have me choose which to run.

Caption: the PowerShell script I use

# Action loop
while ($true) {
  # Prompt user to select an action
  $action = Get-ChildItem -Path actions `
    | Select-Object -ExpandProperty name `
    | Sort-Object -Descending `
    | fzf --prompt "Action: " --header "Select an action to run"
  if ([string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($action)) {
    break
  }

  # Run the selected action
  . ".\actions\$action"
  
  # Leave the action display on the screen for a moment
  # (the action loop clears it with fzf)
  pause
}

Caption: video of the action script in action

It takes way too long for the jars folder to open in explorer.exe off-screen here

I present to you the (shortened) instructions I wrote to myself for the release process:

Manual: Bump `mod_version` in gradle.properties
Manual: Commit bump
Action: Propagate changes
Action: Run gameTestServer for all versions
Action: Build
Action: Wipe jars summary dir
Action: Collect jars
Action: Update PrismMC test instances to use latest build output
Action: Update test servers to latest build output
Action: Launch PrismMC
Action: Launch test server

for each version:
    Launch version from PrismMC
    Multiplayer -> join localhost
    Break previous setup
    Build new setup from scratch -- ensure core gameplay loop is always tested
    Validate changelog accuracy
    /stop
    Quit game

Action: Tag
Action: Push all
... upload jars

The Problem

I test mc1.20.3 for problems. No issues found.

Caption: SFM logs working, singleplayer

I test mc1.20.4 for problems. The logs are not shoing when playing on a server, but they work in singleplayer.

Caption: SFM logs not working, multiplayer

This game update included significant changes to packet handling.

What should happen is that the default text is cleared and some logs should be streamed in.

It works in single player. It does not work when playing on a server.

There is nothing abnormal in the server logs. The client logs, however, reveal the first piece of the puzzle:

Caption: client logs of a stacktrace incriminating my mod

[01:43:56] [Render thread/ERROR] [minecraft/BlockableEventLoop]: Error executing task on Client
java.util.concurrent.CompletionException: io.netty.util.IllegalReferenceCountException: refCnt: 0
	at java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture.encodeThrowable(CompletableFuture.java:315)
	at java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture.completeThrowable(CompletableFuture.java:320)
	at java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture$AsyncSupply.run$$$capture(CompletableFuture.java:1770) 
	...
	at ca.teamdman.sfm.common.logging.TranslatableLogger.decode(TranslatableLogger.java:56)
	at ca.teamdman.sfm.common.net.ClientboundManagerLogsPacket.handleInner(ClientboundManagerLogsPacket.java:69)

Caption: Jujutsu Kaisen screengrab: “We are the exception!”

IntelliJ helpfully recognizes the stack trace and creates links to jump to the offending code. This brings us to our handleInner method as a possible culprit.

Caption: the logs packet handle methods

public record ClientboundManagerLogsPacket(
        int windowId,
        FriendlyByteBuf logsBuf
) implements CustomPacketPayload {
	...
	// called by game code
	public static void handle(
            ClientboundManagerLogsPacket msg, PlayPayloadContext context
    ) {
        context.workHandler().submitAsync(msg::handleInner);
    }

	public void handleInner() {
		// we are on the client, so we can safely use getInstance() to get the current player
		LocalPlayer player = Minecraft.getInstance().player;
        if (player == null
            || !(player.containerMenu instanceof ManagerContainerMenu menu) // pattern match :D
            || menu.containerId != this.windowId()) {
            SFM.LOGGER.error("Invalid logs packet received, ignoring.");
            return;
        }
		var logs = TranslatableLogger.decode(this.logsBuf);
		menu.logs.addAll(logs);
	}

Caption: the method that decodes multiple log entries

public static ArrayDeque<TranslatableLogEvent> decode(FriendlyByteBuf buf) {
	int size = buf.readVarInt(); // this line throws the error
	ArrayDeque<TranslatableLogEvent> contents = new ArrayDeque<>(size);
	for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
		contents.add(TranslatableLogEvent.decode(buf));
	}
	return contents;
}

Caption: ManagerBlockEntity sending a log update packet to a player

MutableInstant hasSince = new MutableInstant();
if (!menu.logs.isEmpty()) {
	hasSince.initFrom(menu.logs.getLast().instant());
}
ArrayDeque<TranslatableLogEvent> logsToSend = logger.getLogsAfter(hasSince);
if (!logsToSend.isEmpty()) {
	// Add the latest entry to the server copy
	// since the server copy is only used for checking what the latest log timestamp is
	menu.logs.add(logsToSend.getLast());

	// Send the logs
	while (!logsToSend.isEmpty()) {
		int remaining = logsToSend.size();
		PacketDistributor.PLAYER.with(player).send(
			ClientboundManagerLogsPacket.drainToCreate(
				menu.containerId,
				logsToSend
			)
		);
		if (logsToSend.size() >= remaining) {
			throw new IllegalStateException("Failed to send logs, infinite loop detected");
		}
	}
}

It's dying when we try to read the number of logs to decode. It's not even an IndexOutOfBoundsException, it's something more sinister.

Caption: Goblin Slayer screengrab: “And there are goblins near there.”

This packet is a little odd, compared to most others. It directly stores a byte buffer object instead of a useful type like Collection<TranslatableLogEvent>.

This is a consequence of the way I batch logs together across multiple packets to avoid hitting max packet length problems.

To properly maximize packet size (to minimize the number of packets), we use an algorithm to convert log entries to individual byte buffers. We add those buffers to the current packet's buffer, and we start a new packet if it would have gone over the byte limit.

This means that the byte-encoding of this data happens earlier than usual; earlier than the packet constructor.

Caption: the packet's encoding and decoding methods

public record ClientboundManagerLogsPacket(
        int windowId,
        FriendlyByteBuf logsBuf
) implements CustomPacketPayload {
	...
	// called by game code
	@Override
    public void write(FriendlyByteBuf friendlyByteBuf) {
        encode(this, friendlyByteBuf);
    }
    public static void encode(
		ClientboundManagerLogsPacket msg,
		FriendlyByteBuf friendlyByteBuf
    ) {
        friendlyByteBuf.writeVarInt(msg.windowId());
        friendlyByteBuf.writeBytes(msg.logsBuf); // forward the bytes
    }
	
	// called by game code
	public static ClientboundManagerLogsPacket decode(FriendlyByteBuf friendlyByteBuf) {
        return new ClientboundManagerLogsPacket(
                friendlyByteBuf.readVarInt(),
                friendlyByteBuf
        );
    }

Did you notice?

In the decode method, we saved a reference to the buffer object we received as a parameter, instead of copying the information to a buffer we own.

We are hunting for some use-after-free-ish IllegalReferenceCountException: refCnt: 0 problem, and this object reuse (borrow) is sketchy as hell.

Caption: Frieren screengrab: “That's what my experience as a mage is telling me.”

Here lies a critical difference between 1.20.3 and 1.20.4: the buffer object is released after the decode call in the later version, before the handle method's async work is invoked.

Getting to this point was pretty straightforward (😭)

The fix should be to make our own buffer object instead of storing a reference to the one we passed in, right?

Caption: the decode method now creates a buffer object

public static void encode(
            ClientboundManagerLogsPacket msg, FriendlyByteBuf friendlyByteBuf
) {
	friendlyByteBuf.writeVarInt(msg.windowId());
	friendlyByteBuf.writeBytes(msg.logsBuf);
}

public static ClientboundManagerLogsPacket decode(FriendlyByteBuf friendlyByteBuf) {
	int windowId = friendlyByteBuf.readVarInt();
	FriendlyByteBuf logsBuf = new FriendlyByteBuf(Unpooled.buffer());
	friendlyByteBuf.readBytes(logsBuf);
	return new ClientboundManagerLogsPacket(
			windowId,
			logsBuf
	);
}

Not quite.

Caption: the client gets disconnected when logs are received

Perhaps pre-allocating the buffer will fix that?

Caption: giving the buffer a size

public static void encode(
		ClientboundManagerLogsPacket msg, FriendlyByteBuf friendlyByteBuf
) {
	friendlyByteBuf.writeVarInt(msg.windowId());
	friendlyByteBuf.writeBytes(msg.logsBuf);
}

public static ClientboundManagerLogsPacket decode(FriendlyByteBuf friendlyByteBuf) {
	int windowId = friendlyByteBuf.readVarInt();
	FriendlyByteBuf logsBuf = new FriendlyByteBuf(Unpooled.buffer(friendlyByteBuf.readableBytes()));
	friendlyByteBuf.readBytes(logsBuf, friendlyByteBuf.readableBytes());
	return new ClientboundManagerLogsPacket(
			windowId,
			logsBuf
	);
}

Kinda.

Caption: SFM logs still not working

There's an IndexOutOfBoundsException in the logs now.

There were a few more iterations before I arrived at the working version

Further investigation (breakpoints) reveals that the encode method is actually being hit twice for the same packet. This is attributable to the introduction of a game-native packet splitting mechanism in the 1.20.4 update.

Captions: different stack traces both calling encode

The encode method I wrote did not anticipate being called multiple times for the same packet.

Caption: javadoc that tells us we are draining the object

/**
 * Transfers the specified source buffer's data to this buffer starting at
 * the current {@code writerIndex} until the source buffer becomes
 * unreadable, and increases the {@code writerIndex} by the number of
 * the transferred bytes.  This method is basically same with
 * {@link #writeBytes(ByteBuf, int, int)}, except that this method
 * increases the {@code readerIndex} of the source buffer by the number of
 * the transferred bytes while {@link #writeBytes(ByteBuf, int, int)}
 * does not.
 * If {@code this.writableBytes} is less than {@code src.readableBytes},
 * {@link #ensureWritable(int)} will be called in an attempt to expand
 * capacity to accommodate.
 */
public abstract ByteBuf writeBytes(ByteBuf src);

The working solution involves calling a different method to avoid the modifying behaviour.

Caption: the encode method no longer drains the object

public static void encode(
		ClientboundManagerLogsPacket msg, FriendlyByteBuf friendlyByteBuf
) {
	friendlyByteBuf.writeVarInt(msg.windowId());
	friendlyByteBuf.writeVarInt(msg.logsBuf.readableBytes());
	friendlyByteBuf.writeBytes(msg.logsBuf, 0, msg.logsBuf.readableBytes()); // !!!IMPORTANT!!!
	// We use this write method specifically to NOT modify the reader index.
	// The encode method may be called multiple times, so we want to ensure it is idempotent.
}

public static ClientboundManagerLogsPacket decode(FriendlyByteBuf friendlyByteBuf) {
	int windowId = friendlyByteBuf.readVarInt();

	int size = friendlyByteBuf.readVarInt(); // don't trust readableBytes
	// https://discord.com/channels/313125603924639766/1154167065519861831/1192251649398419506

	FriendlyByteBuf logsBuf = new FriendlyByteBuf(Unpooled.buffer(size));
	friendlyByteBuf.readBytes(logsBuf, size);
	return new ClientboundManagerLogsPacket(
			windowId,
			logsBuf
	);
}

Caption: SFM logs working, multiplayer

The additional code that encodes the length of the byte buffer technically isn't necessary since we can use the readBytes method to just read the rest of the buffer, but it's better to be explicit about our assumptions.

Perhaps a future change will give us a buffer that is shared between packets, expecting us to only read as much as we wrote. It is good to have some warning in place if our assumptions are violated.

At least everything works now.

Closing Remarks

Attempting to reproduce the resolution process of the bug was tricky, even with git and IntelliJ local history at my disposal. There was a behaviour I could not recreate for a gif that I wasted a lot of time trying for. 😥

Documenting the problem solving process is hard.

My life would have been easier writing this article if I had git commit'd at some key moments. Oh well.

The bug still exists in the mod, but at least now I can tell users to send me their logs.

Drawing by Nick Verrelli

The conceit for this article came after walking out of the theater with Kaitlyn. We had just finished watching Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse. I, having started the day not knowing it was Part 1 of 2, was brutally disappointed by the ending. How could they just leave it on a cliffhanger like that?!¹ And now I need to wait five more years² to see how this ends?!³ Kaitlyn tried to soothe my dissatisfaction, but it was no use… I was already whining about “the good old days” (prehistory).

“Imagine if a wandering shaman storyteller came to your village, right? And you all sat around the bonfire and he told you the most beautiful, engaging, moving story you had ever heard. And halfway through, in the middle of the action, he packed up his bag and said he would return in twenty-four moons to finish it. You and the other villagers would beat him to death! If you were to do this in ancient amphitheaters, you would be stoned to death!”

Or would you?

Of course, we have no records of such a thing happening. But we do have discussions on the art of drama, dating back nearly 2,400 years. And theatre is exactly like film in literally every way, so… This is perfect! This led me to my copy of Aristotle’s Poetics. Highlighted and handed down to me from my father, it was exactly what I was looking for: A dead Greek guy to tell me if I was right or wrong.

Poetics is the oldest and (some would claim) most fundamental study of the art of drama. Written in the fourth century B.C.⁴ by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, it discusses the history, art, and process of theater. Spoken through the lens of Ancient Greek theatre, Aristotle analyzes what makes plots good, bad, compelling, or just straight incomprehensible. His treatise on the art is regarded as fundamental because Ancient Greek theatre is, in essence, the beginning of the Western dramatic lineage. As Ferguson remarks in his introductory essay of my copy, “He [Aristotle] got in on the ground floor.” (Pg. 1)

Most historians agree that Poetics was a series of lecture notes. Anyone who has taught or given a presentation knows how scant and fractured those can be. Poetics isn’t meant to be a strict series of rules on how to write a story or create a drama (though many later Renaissance readers took it as such). Ferguson reminds us, “The Poetics is much more like a cookbook than it is a textbook in elementary engineering.” (Pg. 3) On top of this, Poetics is incomplete. It’s part of a larger text (now lost) that discusses light poetry, Tragedy, and Comedy (As a side note, I would have loved to read what Aristotle had to say about comedic theatre). All we have to work with are his general points on playwriting, the dramatic art, and the analysis of Tragedy — Aristotle’s personal favourite kind of play. You will see plenty of references to Tragedy in specific through the selected quotes, though you should take it as a general reference to the art of drama. Many points laid out are repeated for the art of Epic poetry.

After a quick reading (as the text of Poetics is extremely short) and seeing remarkable similarities to modern screenwriting tips and contemporary film criticism, I thought it would be interesting to see how it holds up in modern times. Good thing I have after-hours access to the Time Travel Facility. Let’s bring Aristotle to 2024 and ask the eternal question: kino or bino?

NOTE: It goes without saying that we cannot really deduce anything about what Aristotle or any historical figure beyond the last 75 years would really think of modernity. I know you’ve all seen the posts I’m referring to. This article aims to be nothing more than a fun comparison of an ancient text on an ancient theatre to my own thoughts on modern cinema and its critics. For all I know, Aristotle would’ve loved nothing more than to chomp down on buttery popcorn, slurp Diet Sprite, and watch Free Guy (2021, Dir. Shawn Levy). As for myself, I love reading about our distant but all-too-human ancestors. Reading vulgar Roman graffiti, angry letters between feudal castles, upset customer reviews on Sumerian bronze… the more we change, the more we stay the same.

That’s enough talk though. Hop in the Accent, Ari, we are going to the Cineplex!

Art as Imitation

“Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation.” (Chapter I)

To begin, let's get a grasp on what art is for Aristotle. Put simply: All forms of art, from drama to music to painting, are ‘imitations’. This can most clearly be seen in art such as painting and sculpture in which the artist uses stone or paints to imitate something we physically see or can imagine. Imitation does not necessarily imply realism, since abstract and artistic forms can imitate subtle emotion, states, qualities of human conscious experience.

“Poets, like painters, musicians, and dancers, Aristotle says, all ‘imitate action’ in their various ways. By ‘action’ he means, not physical activity, but a movement-of-spirit, and by ‘imitation’ he means, not superficial copying, but the representation of the countless forms which the life of the human spirit may take, in the media of the arts: musical sound, paint, word, or gesture.” (Ferguson, Pg. 4)

It is a bit hard to conceptualize this ‘movement-of-spirit’ that is imitated. I personally think of it in the way an emotionally charged song can make you feel sad or heroic, even in the absence of lyrics. The song imitates the heroic or sorrowful ‘spirit’ in the swooping orchestra or pitiful piano. Aristotle says so much:

“...for even dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movements.” (Chapter I)

Okay, so if art is imitation, why do we ‘do’ art? Why do we enjoy viewing and creating art? Aristotle says the reason is simple: Because it's built into our code, that we as humans are pre-programmed with two instincts. The first being a love for imitation, and the second being a love for harmony and rhythm:

“Poetry in the general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, ‘Ah, that is he.’” (Chapter IV)

We are social creatures. We learn through imitation. It’s how we can do… anything. It’s how we went from goo goo gaga baby to a functional, reasoning, and integrated adult. Our movement, language, culture, mannerisms, all spring from imitation. Because of this, we enjoy learning. Elevation of our knowledge through recognition is key to the Aristotelian pleasure in art. It is also why we find strange artistic enjoyment in things otherwise grotesque to us. Aristotle above mentions corpses and deformed animals. In real life these leave us disgusted and repulsed, but our pleasure in seeing them ‘within’ art is pleasure of recognition mixed with the safety of mere representation. Our boy, Brad Troemel, says it well: “...for a fleeting moment, visual art can mirror reality and show it back to us with a clarity like nothing else...”

Rhythm and harmony, the second instinct we hold, refers to a more general aesthetic enjoyment of the countless forms of art. Aristotle doesn’t speak much on why we enjoy harmony and rhythm, only that humans do.

“The Plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy: Character holds the second place. A similar fact is seen in painting. The most beautiful colors, laid on confusedly, will not give as much pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Thus Tragedy is the imitation of an action, and of the agents mainly with a view to the action.” (Chapter IV)

A scathing critique of abstract art from nearly two and a half millennia ago… Wow… Joking aside, I don’t think Aristotle would have hated contemporary, abstract art. He recognizes that colours in themselves can be beautiful. Arrangements of colour can be aesthetically pleasing and provoking in their own right:

“For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the coloring, or some such other cause.” (Chapter IV)

But missing the imitation — that subtle, barely conscious “aha!” of seeing something real represented in an artistic form — it is a lesser, baser pleasure. I, too, would take a napkin pencil sketch over a Jackson Pollock.⁵

Singularity of Action and Unity of Plot

“Unity of plot does not, as some persons think, consist in the unity of the hero. For infinitely various are the incidents in one man’s life which cannot be reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many actions of one man out of which we cannot make one action. Hence the error, as it appears, of all poets who have composed a Heracleid, a Theseid, or other poems of the kind. They imagine that as Heracles was one man, the story of Heracles must also be a unity. But Homer, as in all else he is of surpassing merit, here too—whether from art or natural genius—seems to have happily discerned the truth. In composing the Odyssey he did not include all the adventures of Odysseus—such as his wound on Parnassus, or his feigned madness at the mustering of the host—incidents between which there was no necessary or probable connection: but he made the Odyssey, and likewise the Iliad, to center round an action that in our sense of the word is one.” (Chapter VIII)

This is the first half of Chapter VIII. I include it in its entirety because I believe it fully represents the main thesis of Poetics. A plot is made good through its single ‘action’. The critical error of bad poets, playwrights, screenwriters, and authors is focusing on anything but that singular plot unity — whether that be characters, historical events, etc. When we sit down to write a plot, we are confronted with a near infinite source of events to pull from. Of course, we could write a Spider-Man movie that is full of scenes of Peter making dinner, taking a piss, scrolling on Instagram. But this isn’t a plot. It’s just a series of scenes with no uniting action. Aristotle cites Homer (a personal poetic hero of his) as an example of this. Homer had the whole mythos of the Odysseus⁶ to draw on for the Odyssey, yet only selected key events that connected to each other and centered on the key action: Odysseus’ journey home. To include anything else would dilute and confuse the plot.

The second half of the chapter is as follows:

“As, therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference is not an organic part of the whole.” (Chapter VIII)

The structure of a plot should not contain anything that can be removed without a difference on the whole. A very erudite way to state what anyone who has seen a TV show in the past decade knows: CUT FILLER EPISODES. If it doesn’t affect the plot or mean anything to the plot, DROP IT. Your show, movie, book should be constructed such that any piece, if removed, disrupts the entire thing. This doesn’t mean it needs to be all action, action, action. Anyone who has seen a Ghibli film knows that downtime, contemplative slowness, can be essential for the story. What would Ghibli movies be without those moments of quiet between set pieces?

You know who I do need to call out here… One Piece heads… I’m sorry… But you would give Aristotle a heart attack if you told him how many episodes/chapters there are (and still going). That, or he would die on the spot from laughter.

Is it realistic, though?

“As in the structure of the plot, so too in the portraiture of character, the poet should always aim either at the necessary or the probable. Thus a person of a given character should speak or act in a given way, by the rule either of necessity or of probability, just as this event should follow that by necessary or probable sequence. It is therefore evident that the unravelling of the plot, no less than the complication, must arise out of the plot itself, it must not be brought about by the Deus ex Machina—as in the Medea, or in the Return of the Greeks in the Iliad. The Deus ex Machina should be employed only for events external to the drama—for antecedent or subsequent events, which lie beyond the range of human knowledge, and which require to be reported or foretold; for to the gods we ascribe the power of seeing all things. Within the action there must be nothing irrational. If the irrational cannot be excluded, it should be outside the scope of the tragedy.” (Chapter XV)

This is a common criticism of bad films heard today: “Things just happen.” “Nothing makes any sense.” “Nobody acts like a real person would.” “Things just happen and then it is over.” “It doesn’t matter because [RANDOM EVENT] happens at the end and fixes it all.”

How many times have you screamed, “Why are you splitting up?!” at your TV while characters do the most irrational and stupid thing possible in a horror movie?

When people act irrationally, we realize. It breaks immersion. Hard. Same goes for impossible or irrational sequences of events. The Deux ex Machina, the god who comes in and fixes everything, ruins a plot. Why? Because the events don’t follow what is probable or necessary. Things ‘just happen’ because the writer deemed it so to shove the story along.

This doesn’t mean that the poet should stray away from things that are unrealistic, fictitious, or impossible. Only that if you are going to write unrealistic things, the movement of the plot should still follow what is probable from that fictitious starting point. Similarly if you are going to have an inconsistent character, they should be consistently inconsistent.

This was a major criticism I heard and spoke of myself regarding the new Star Wars trilogy. In each of the new movies, the Force was able to do something completely new that just happened to conveniently get the characters out of trouble. In the original trilogy, the Force was mysterious and vague, but had general properties like telekinesis, precognition, heightened reflexes, connection to other creatures. In the new movies, people are teleporting items across the galaxy, swapping spaces, having psychic skype calls. A new problem arises and a new Force power appears to solve it. Lazy.

Summed up in a sentence:

“Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities.” (Chapter XXIV)

Plot Holes and Inconsistency

“In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies. The need of such a rule is shown by the fault found in Carcinus. Amphiaraus was on his way from the temple. This fact escaped the observation of one who did not see the situation. On the stage, however, the piece failed, the audience being offended at the oversight.” (Chapter XVII)

This entry serves as practical writing tips for the aspiring poet: Place the world vividly in your mind, act things out, see all the action before you. Aristotle notes what happens when we forget to do this — we get plot holes.⁷ The playwright Carcinus makes a fatal error. One of the characters, Amphiaraus, exits a temple that he was never shown or told to have entered. Ermh, plot hole! WatchMojo Top Ten Plot Holes in Ancient Greek Theatre!

We remember from the last section, events in a plot must follow from probability and necessity. If your character just shows up places, teleporting around, you don’t have a proper plot.

In an age of CinemaSins and Nostalgia Critic, it can be easy to forget that not every nitpick is a valid criticism, at least not of the writers:

“Within the art of poetry itself there are two kinds of faults—those which touch its essence, and those which are accidental. If a poet has chosen to imitate something, through want of capacity, the errors inherent in the poetry. But if the failure is due to a wrong choice—if he has represented a horse as throwing out both his off legs at once, or introduced technical inaccuracies in medicine, for example, or in any other art—the error is not essential to the poetry. These are the points of view from which we should consider and answer the objections raised by the critics.” (Chapter XXV)

He continues later in the same chapter:

“Again, does the error touch the essentials of the poetic art, or some accident of it? For example, not to know that a hind has no horns is a less serious matter than to paint it inartistically.” (Chapter XXV)

To Aristotle, the critics pointing out trivial mistakes in the play (or movie, in our case) is not a fault of the poetic art. To be fair, it's different today in the information age. Not knowing how exactly a horse runs or what an elephant looks like is not as excusable as it might’ve once been. Though I believe the point still stands: Trivial mistakes in film, though fun to pick out, are not cinematic sins. The error of Carcinus remains a fault of the poet; the sequence of events do not follow each other. The whole of the dramatic art is the selection, arrangement, and unification of scenes.

However, even the irrational and inconsistent can be masked by extremely competent writing:

“Take even the irrational incidents in the Odyssey, where Odysseus is left upon the shore of Ithaca. How intolerable even these might have been would be apparent if an inferior poet were to treat the subject. As it is, the absurdity is veiled by the poetic charm with which the poet invests it.” (Chapter XXIV)

Aristotle’s love of Homer shines through again. (I haven’t read any Homer. Refer to Liam or Nick on if this guy deserves the hype.)⁸

Some absurdities only slip by in writing and cannot exist on stage or on screen:

“The irrational, on which the wonderful depends for its chief effects, has wider scope in Epic poetry, because there the person acting is not seen. Thus, the pursuit of Hector would be ludicrous if placed upon the stage—the Greeks standing still and not joining in the pursuit, and Achilles waving them back. But in the Epic poem the absurdity passes unnoticed.” (Chapter XXIV)

Epic poetry was normally read by a single actor, while other genres had multiple actors and sets. Since you aren’t seeing the action before your very eyes, you allow for more leniency in your suspension of disbelief. Avid readers know this all too well. In recent memory, I think of Alia from Dune. A two-year-old running around stabbing people and talking like an adult is frankly absurd and would have been impossible to seriously portray on the big screen. Villeneuve didn’t even bother to try. Even just the psychic fetus scenes were humourous enough. It's a shame too, because Alia was one of my favourite parts of the book.

At any point in converting a written text to a visual medium, it should be considered if it is even possible to adapt. And if it is, what are you losing in making it so?

Magnitude and Length

“Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor, again, can one of vast size be beautiful; for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator; as for instance if there were one a thousand miles long. As, therefore, in the case of animate bodies and organisms a certain magnitude is necessary, and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view; so in the plot, a certain length is necessary, and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory.” (Chapter VII)

During one’s first reading, it might seem a bit strange to hear Aristotle say that small and large things carry less beauty. Maybe it is just me, but I get what he is cooking here. Looking down at an ant doesn’t feel the same as viewing it through a magnifying glass or in a zoomed-in picture. Similarly, we are always standing on the planet, but the magnificence of Earth is only visible when we can view it all at once in a picture taken from space. In both cases the beauty is apparent when things are brought into a human magnitude. The same is for any art — including plays, movies, shows. You could make a movie that is a millisecond long. You could also make a movie that is 10,000,000,000 hours long. Neither of these will be as artistic as one with appropriate length.

So then, what is the appropriate length? Aristotle suggests a length that is “easily embraced by memory.” Couldn’t agree more. When movies are split into two or three parts, when TV seasons end on plot-inconclusive cliffhangers, you are forcing your audience to wait. To eventually forget. The majestic unified plot is shattered across time, diluted like “wine with too much water”.

“Of all plots and actions the epeisodic are the worst. I call a plot “epeisodic” in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence. Bad poets compose such pieces by their own fault, good poets, to please the players; for, as they write show pieces for competition, they stretch the plot beyond its capacity and are often forced to break the natural continuity.” (Chapter IX)

The poets of today are no longer stretching plots to win competitions, but producers and screenwriters are stretching plots for profit. Nothing breaks the heart more than a great show that should have ended four seasons earlier. Nothing is stupider than a movie trilogy that should have been a single film. The Hobbit should have been one or two movies. The Boys should have been three seasons — it even could have been one. At least Arcane, which I remember for its own infuriating cliffhanger, has the decency to stop after the second season.

Women

“In respect of character, there are four things to be aimed at. First, and most important, it must be good. [...] This rule is relative to each class. Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless. The second thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valor, but valor in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness, is inappropriate.” (Chapter XV)⁹

- Least sexist Greek man

Not only are women ‘worthless’ as moral characters, but clever and valorous women are inappropriate in drama. Yes, we’ve all heard the Petersonian complaints over and over. It’s upsetting, boring, and unfortunately nothing new.

I’ve even had a friend tell me that “Woke Hollywood keeps shoving manly women down our throats.”

Unfortunately, I think Aristotle would be in his camp.

Spectacle

“The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.” (Chapter IV)

‘Spectacle’ referred to here is everything on stage. In ancient times, it would be costumes, masks, sets. For us it’s all that, and the extra effects that film gives us: CGI, editing tricks, camera movement and angles, green screens. Aristotle says all this is disconnected from the writer’s art. The feeling and power of the story should be felt regardless of the actors and effects used. It’s also noted that the spectacular effects aren’t the work of the writer, who should only focus on making a proper and coherent plot.

“Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet. For the plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes place. This is the impression we should receive from hearing the story of the Oedipus. But to produce this effect by the mere spectacle is a less artistic method, and dependent on extraneous aids.” (Chapter XIV)

Fear and pity, the chief emotions of the Tragic play, are said to be aroused both by the plot and by spectacle. The writing is key, though. The drama should be constructed that even just by reading it, you are moved to fear, pity, anger, joy. You can use extra aids, but a master of the art doesn’t need them. Personally when I think of fear aroused by spectacle, I think of the much maligned jump scare. Paranormal Activities and Five Nights at Freddy’s are not known as artistic pinnacles of the thriller/horror genre, even if they instill us with dread and fear. What we do remember and discuss in high esteem are the ‘slow-burn thrillers’ that ‘don’t even show anything but make your skin crawl’. Aristotle agrees, spectacle is cheap and easy. Superior poets don’t use it as a crutch.

“The element of the irrational, and, similarly, depravity of character, are justly censured when there is no inner necessity for introducing them. Such is the irrational element in the introduction of Aegeus by Euripides and the badness of Menelaus in the Orestes.” (Chapter XXV)

Perhaps not surprisingly, Aristotle would not have enjoyed the senseless gore present in much of modern horror. Displaying evil for evil’s sake and violence just for shock is not the purpose of the arts. One should not remove them, merely ‘censure’ the acts (allude to or obscure them off screen). If your story depends on gore, shock, and brutality, it is weak and cannot stand on its own. Again, using spectacle as a crutch.

Though in defense of Freddy, Chica, and co, I don’t think fans of horror games and movies place high importance on the ‘beauty of plot’. Scott Cawthon wasn’t attempting to create a poetic experience, but an interactive one where you are a participant. Sometimes it's just fun to spike your own adrenaline in a safe environment.¹⁰

End Credits

All in all, Poetics provides unique and compelling insight into the art of storytelling. Keep your story unified and consistent. Keep the parts and episodes at an appropriate length. If you can remove a part without it affecting the rest of the story, do it. Write a screenplay so good that it doesn’t even need to be put on the screen to move you. The major issues with a play or movie begin far before costumes, sets, CGI, and effects. A good plot is a work of art in itself; it shines on its own merit.

My own speculation here, but I don’t think we live in a unique age of slop media. Every year in Ancient Greece, dozens of plays were put on during the Dionysa festivals, many of which feature the same gods, demigods, heroes, and stories seen countless times before. When Aristotle warns us that simply writing Heracleid or Theseid doesn’t guarantee a good plot, I’d bet he’s thinking of all the shitters he sat through . For every Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, there are a hundred more that didn’t survive because they stunk. But they didn't have to! We humans are, by nature, imitative. We are all born to make art! And good art at that!

If any of this interests you, I’d highly recommend to give Poetics a read. You can crush it in a lazy afternoon (as I did). Though outdated in places, it speaks to a deep part in all of us — the part that knows a movie, book, or play is bad, even when we can’t seem to express why. Though we may never have an exact science of art and human condition, I admire all attempts to explain it.

But this leaves one question still unanswered before we head back to the Time Travel Facility.

So? Did Aristotle like our trip to the Cineplex?

Well, I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to ask. He’s still in the washroom marveling at the automatic flushing urinals.

With the summer heat now upon us, It’s always a good reminder to — Stay frosty, Noah

Sources for this article: I read Butcher’s translation of Poetics with an introductory essay by Francis Ferguson. This is the source of all the quotations. I read Whalley’s translation of Poetics, who turns out to have been a professor at Queen’s! Cha Gheill! The added commentary there helped me to understand some of the chewier parts. I also read Oedipus Rex, since it is referenced quite often as Aristotle’s favourite tragedy. Pretty good stuff.