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from Alex Black

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.

 
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from kaitlyn z.c.

Thank you to the ever-lovely Elisa and Edna for inspiring me to write this ❤

I'm writing this intro on Thursday August 1st — I just finished reading my 11th book of 2024. As I was walking to the Newmarket Public Library to return my book (go support your local library NOW), I couldn't help but feel a little burst of happiness and pride in my chest.

In 2023, I set a personal goal on my StoryGraph account to read 12 books within the year — 1 book each month. Sounds easy, right? I finished 2023 with 10 books read, and I just barely made it to that 10th book.

Now, a little over half way through 2024, and I've read more books than I read in the entirety of 2023. Lets go! Woohoo! What a return to form!

Anywho, as I continue my goal to get back into regular reading, I've decided to share my thoughts on my reads with you — via the trusted format of the Reading Round-Up.

So here we go!

Reading Stats for January to June 2024

  • Total Books Read: 10
  • Reading Mediums: 9 physical books, 1 online
  • Books Owned vs. Borrowed: 6 books owned, 2 books borrowed from friends, 1 book borrowed from library, 1 book read for free online

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Stories of Your Life and Others

Reading Medium: Physical

Owned vs. Borrowed: Owned

Synopsis: What if men built a tower from Earth to Heaven-and broke through to Heaven's other side? What if we discovered that the fundamentals of mathematics were arbitrary and inconsistent? What if there were a science of naming things that calls life into being from inanimate matter? What if exposure to an alien language forever changed our perception of time? What if all the beliefs of fundamentalist Christianity were literally true, and the sight of sinners being swallowed into fiery pits were a routine event on city streets? These are the kinds of outrageous questions posed by the stories of Ted Chiang. Stories of your life... and others.

My Thoughts: Recommended to me by Noah and Elisa, I was looking forward to reading this collection of sci-fi short stories. I hadn't read much sci-fi (readers will know that I have a bit of a reputation of being a serial romance reader), so this felt like a good introduction into the genre. The fact that it was a collection of short stories was also appealing to me at the time, as I was struggling to get out of a bad reading slump.

I have to say, I am definitely interested in reading more science fiction now. Each one of Ted Chiang’s short stories is wonderfully unique, tonally diverse, and moving in different ways. I’m honestly impressed that Ted Chiang wrote all of these short stories, since each one feels like it could have been penned by different authors with different writing styles, beliefs, interests, etc.

Here are my quick thoughts on each short story:

Tower of Babylon (4 / 5) — An incredibly well-written retelling of the construction and journey up the tower of Babylon. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style and the voice of the main character. Such a great introduction into Ted Chiang’s work.

Understand (5 / 5) — This story reminded me of Flowers for Algernon in the best way (one of the few sci-fi stories I've read before, I love it). I’m a sucker for stories about a main character who is gaining superhuman levels of intelligence and losing themselves mentally as a result, and the writing style reflects that. Definitely one of my favourite stories in this collection.

Division by Zero (2 / 5) — Found myself kind of skimming through this one. Didn't find it too interesting or memorable.

Story of Your Life (4 / 5) — The story that inspired the film Arrival ! Reading this made me appreciate how well the film captured just how mind-bendy the whole concept is. Very well executed, very well-written.

Seventy-Two Letters (5 / 5) — LOVED the Victorian-England-but-steampunk setting in this story! Also loved the concept of golems and how they would be used in this alternate universe. Great pacing and tension throughout the plot, I was engaged throughout the entire story. Definitely one of my favourite stories in this collection.

The Evolution of Human Science (2 / 5) — Extremely short and I'm not gonna lie, I barely remember what it was about. Not very interesting or memorable, especially considering that the story before and the story after it were such bangers.

Hell Is The Absence of God (5 / 5) — THIS BANGER. My #1 favourite story in this collection! WOW. Set in a world where God, Heaven, Hell, souls, miracles, and angels actually exist / are universally known, this story explores how actually devastating this world would be. Imagine, you could see a loved one suffering in hell if you look down at the right spot?! You could know people who have lost their eyes (or worse...) due to accidentally seeing an angel?! Insanity. The collateral damage described during an angel's visitation, wow... So incredibly well-written — it was one of those stories that are so good, you lose yourself a little bit when it's over. If you want to read any of Ted Chiang's works or just dip your toe into sci-fi short stories, I cannot recommend Hell Is The Absence of God enough.

Liking What You See: A Documentary (4 / 5) — I liked the documentary script format of this story, as well as its exploration into themes of society's (kind of fucked up) relationship with physical beauty and our perception of others/ourselves. A very good story, but a little underwhelming to be the last story in the collection.

My personal ranking of Ted Chiang's short stories in Stories of Your Life and Others :

  1. Hell Is The Absence of God
  2. Understand
  3. Seventy-Two Letters
  4. Tower of Babylon
  5. Story of Your Life
  6. Liking What You See: A Documentary
  7. Division by Zero
  8. The Evolution of Human Science

My (Overall) Rating: 4 / 5

You, Again by Kate Goldbeck

You, Again

Reading Medium: Physical

Owned vs. Borrowed: Owned

Synopsis: When Ari and Josh first meet, the wrong kind of sparks fly. They hate each other. Instantly.

A free-spirited, struggling comedian who likes to keep things casual, Ari sublets, takes gigs, and she never sleeps over after hooking up. Born-and-bred Manhattanite Josh has ambitious plans: Take the culinary world by storm, find The One, and make her breakfast in his spotless kitchen. They have absolutely nothing in common... except that they happen to be sleeping with the same woman.

Ari and Josh never expect their paths to cross again. But years later, as they're both reeling from ego-bruising breakups, a chance encounter leads to a surprising connection: friendship. Turns out, spending time with your former nemesis is fun when you're too sad to hate each other — and too sad for hate sex.

As friends-without-benefits, they find comfort in late-night Netflix binges, swiping through each other's online dating profiles, and bickering across boroughs. It's better than romance. Until one night, the unspoken boundaries of their platonic relationship begin to blur...

My Thoughts: Before I go on, yes... This book was originally Reylo fanfiction... Shut up! I didn't know until I finished the book, leave me alone! Anyways...

I will admit that I did tear through this book. I'm a fan of romances that take place over the span of years, which this book does quite well. The premise / introduction was hilarious and very “classic rom-com” — they meet because they're both sleeping with the same woman?! C'mon, that's funny.

I really enjoyed how Ari and Josh's friendship was developed, and how it slowly became romantic. It felt realistic, or as realistic as a rom-com could be. I loved the way New York City was described throughout the story as well: Obviously romanticized, I know, but it felt cozy — like the New York City we know and love from You've Got Mail (1998) and When Harry Met Sally (1989).

The sex scenes... I admit, they were hot as hell. They also felt earned, the story didn't rush into them, which I appreciate.

The third act conflict that happens in every romance — you know, the one that forces them to separate for a bit before they inevitably get back together — didn't feel completely forced either. It made sense, it sounded like something I would hear a friend go through. The only thing that annoyed me was the main girl Ari's logic / reasoning towards the end of the book. Ari's character was kind of all over the place, but especially towards the end. The ending made me roll my eyes a bit, but it was still satisfactory enough that it didn't ruin the whole story for me. However, for that kinda awkward ending and Ari's character being a bit annoying towards the end, I did remove a star from my final rating.

My Rating: 4 / 5

Roaming by Jillian Tamaki & Mariko Tamaki

Roaming

Reading Medium: Physical

Owned vs. Borrowed: Borrowed from my friend Nick

Synopsis: Spring break, 2009. High school best friends Zoe and Dani are now freshman college students, meeting in a place they’ve wanted to visit forever: New York City. Tagging along is Dani’s classmate Fiona, a mercurial art student with an opinion on everything. Together, the three cram in as much of the city as possible, gleefully falling into tourist traps, pondering so-called great works of art, sidestepping creeps, and eating lots and lots of pizza (folded in half, of course).

My Thoughts: WOW this graphic novel has such beautiful artwork! Such simplistic yet gorgeous colouring, I loved the orange and purple tones that were used throughout the book. There were full pages that I would just stare at without reading anything, just admiring the artwork — the sign of a high quality graphic novel.

Plot-wise, I enjoyed this story. It was a sweet, slice-of-life story about 3 friends (well, 2 friends and some bitch, more on that in a second) exploring New York City for the first time together. I loved the way New York City was depicted as well, it felt as grand and wonderful (and a little bit seedy but still cool) as these sweet characters were seeing it.

The third character in this story, Fiona, caused the majority of the conflict in this book. At the end of the book, I guess I was supposed to empathize with her... but SIKE, I hated this bitch! You want me to feel bad for her? She was so horrible to Zoe and Dani, and nearly ruined their trip! Fuck her!

I guess this book did a good job at making me feel defensive for Zoe and Dani, so kudos to the authors there. However, if you were trying to make me feel bad for this Fiona bitch — valiant effort, but not this time.

My Rating: 3.5 / 5

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

Ducks

Reading Medium: Physical

Owned vs. Borrowed: Borrowed from my friend Nick

Synopsis: Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou — a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush — part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can’t find it in the homeland they love so much. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed.

My Thoughts: Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. If I could only recommend one graphic novel to everyone, it would be this one. Wow.

Ducks is a phenomenal autobiography by Kate Beaton. Her art style is remarkable, striking a wonderful balance between coyly simplistic and stunningly detailed. She really did capture the Albertan landscape so well.

Cut off from the rest of civilization, Beaton depicts oil sands workers as an insular community — lonely, part of a misogynistic boys' club, often depressed but unable/unwilling to talk about mental health. Beaton showcases this world in which loneliness drives many men to behaviours they wouldn't even consider in their “real lives” back at home. Harassment and sexual assault are either considered normal or brushed under the rug while working at the oil sands — trigger warning there for potential readers.

Beaton worked at the oil sands for two years, and she makes the scars that the experience left on her clear. Her artwork being in all shades of grey really adds to the environment's dreary feel.

Beaton also touches on the environmental impact of the oil sands, but her focus is primarily on the human impact of living in such extreme isolation and being expendable... all to make a decent wage.

The ending really left its mark on me — it's wonderfully done. Highly, highly recommend.

My Rating: 5 / 5

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

Hark A Vagrant

Reading Medium: Physical

Owned vs. Borrowed: Owned

Synopsis: Hark! A Vagrant is an uproarious romp through history and literature seen through the sharp, contemporary lens of New Yorker cartoonist and comics sensation Kate Beaton. No era or tome emerges unscathed as Beaton rightly skewers the Western world’s revolutionaries, leaders, sycophants, and suffragists while equally honing her wit on the hapless heroes, heroines, and villains of the best-loved fiction.

My Thoughts: I needed something a little bit more lighthearted after Ducks, and I was very curious about Kate Beaton's past work, so I picked up this anthology of her funny comics!

Kate Beaton has great comedic timing, it's seriously an impressive skill to have as a comics artist. I deeply admire her art style — it's so distinct, it's loose and light but she is such a master at facial expressions.

This was a quick, lighthearted read — while a couple of the comics fell a bit flat for me, it was overall a fun and funny collection.

My Rating: 3.5 / 5

Dune by Frank Herbert

Dune

This review has been removed in protest.

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

Dune Messiah

This review has been removed in protest.

Funny Story by Emily Henry

Funny Story

Reading Medium: Physical

Owned vs. Borrowed: Owned

Synopsis: Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... Right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic — with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads — Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... Right?

My Thoughts: Oh, Emily Henry, the woman that you are. Readers may know (and if you don't yet, take note) — Emily Henry is my all-time favourite romance writer. Everything she touches turns to romance gold. I cannot recommend her books enough.

I adored Funny Story — I read it all within 48 hours. Each and every character felt real and unique, she has such a talent for writing realistic yet lovable characters.

The plot was fun and well-paced, the main couple's chemistry was great (I had a crush on Miles too), the sex scenes were hot yet sweet, the environment / town descriptions were so cozy, I just loved everything about this book. Definitely another comfort read that I am very happy to add to the Emily Henry section of my bookshelf.

In case you are curious, my current personal ranking for Emily Henry's books are:

(Note, these are all very close in ranking and are all 5 / 5 for me)

  1. People We Meet On Vacation
  2. Book Lovers
  3. Beach Read
  4. Funny Story
  5. Happy Place

My Rating: 5 / 5

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

Emily Wilde

Reading Medium: Physical

Owned vs. Borrowed: Owned

Synopsis: Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party — or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily's research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.

But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones — the most elusive of all faeries — lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all — her own heart.

My Thoughts: Oh, how I adored this book! Emily Wilde masterfully toes the line between cozy fantasy and dark fantasy — it's wonderful. Heather Fawcett's writing style is addictive, the chosen formatting of journal entries that fall somewhere between academic and personal was so much fun.

The world-building was immaculate. I loved delving into the extensive lore of the faeries, as well as meeting the townsfolk alongside Emily Wilde.

I really loved Emily Wilde and Wendell Bambleby as characters as well — I laughed out loud whenever Wendell “stole Emily's journal to write his own entries” and we got his perspective. It was so clever and fun. I was charmed by Wendell, but I was so impressed by Emily. It is rare to find a character in a fantasy world that relies on her wits rather than her strength to get out of a tricky situation. Seeing Emily Wilde outsmart her way out of faerie trickery, rather than waving a sword around and punching faeries in the face, was incredibly satisfying. It also made so much sense for her character — of course an expert on faeries would be this remarkably clever!

I loved this book. I highly recommend if you are looking for a good fantasy read. Stay tuned to hear my thoughts on the sequel, Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands, in my next Reading Round-Up!

My Rating: 5 / 5

Delicious in Dungeon (AKA Dungeon Meshi) by Ryoko Kui

Delicious in Dungeon

Reading Medium: Online via MangaDex

Owned vs. Borrowed: Read for free online

Synopsis: When young adventurer Laios and his company are attacked and soundly thrashed by a dragon deep in a dungeon, the party loses all its money and provisions... and a member! They're eager to go back and save her, but there is just one problem: If they set out with no food or coin to speak of, they're sure to starve on the way! But Laios comes up with a brilliant idea: “Let's eat the monsters!” Slimes, basilisks, and even dragons... None are safe from the appetites of these dungeon-crawling gourmands!

My Thoughts: Wow! Dungeon Meshi!

Honestly, I loved this manga. I haven't read a manga this good since Fullmetal Alchemist — which is high praise, considering that Fullmetal Alchemist is one of my all-time favourite stories in general.

I will never get over Ryoko Kui's artistic skills and character design, because WOW. No one's out here doing character design like Ryoko Kui. She has the opposite of Same Face Syndrome — every single character had such a refreshing, unique design. Even down to their noses, no character had the same nose! As an artist, I am on my knees in awe over her character design.

On top of her character design, her artwork throughout the manga was just stunning. Some of my favourite panels were in the Griffin chapter — there were so many times I would just stop reading and zoom into random details in her artwork to admire them. She's gotta be one of the best manga/comics artists out there right now, wow.

In terms of plot, I thoroughly enjoyed Dungeon Meshi. I fell in love with each character — especially Marcille, who is so literally me it's insane. The plot was so unique, the world-building was phenomenal, the ending had me smiling so much it hurt.

If you're looking to get into manga, or if you're looking for your next manga to read, I highly recommend Delicious in Dungeon.

My Rating: 5 / 5

This has been Kaitlyn's first Reading Round-Up (yay!), signing off!

 
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from Boulos Bones

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.”

 
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from e-den

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!

Q2 2024 reads

 
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from TeamDman

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
sfm demo.gif

Caption: The in-game code editor
code.png

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.
logs.png

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 act.ps1

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 gif

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 gif

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 gif

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 gif

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 gif

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.

 
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from Noah

Me n Aristotle 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. 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.


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 Odysseus 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. 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.)

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)

- 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.


¹ Kaitlyn: “It’s just the first part, Noah” ² Kaitlyn: “It won’t be five years, Noah” ³ Kaitlyn: “Good animation takes a long time!” ⁴ Common eracels stay silent, a Christchad is talking ⁵ It can be argued that Jackson Pollock paintings are imitative, even in the Aristotelian sense. I don't know if I would, but you certainly can. ⁶ I do find it funny that Aristotle shouted out Heracles and the Trojan War specifically here. I’m sure during his time the yearly theater competitions were saturated with awful slop plays about Heraclean adventures. I can just hear him pleading, “Just because the story is about a single guy, doesn’t make it a single, unified plot!” ⁷ Imagine not being able to visualize things in your head… lmao ⁸ He probably does. ⁹ Just found out sexism exists… damn, that shit sucks ¹⁰ It may be evil out there… but there is Evil Within… too….
 
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from ThatOneGay

Monthly Movie Review: May 2024:

For my second monthly movie review, I’d like to focus on my two favourite movies I saw in May, Challengers directed by Luca Guadagnino, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga directed by George Miller. These were both such great watches in their own ways, but both shared a great energy that really left an impact on me this month.

Challengers (2024)

I watched Challengers in theatres with my brother as part of an all-day movie watching marathon. Starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O'Connor as three talented Tennis pros, the film cuts between the main setting of the final match of a Challengers Tennis tournament in New Rochelle in August 2019. As well as between various points in our three main characters’ relationships with each other over a 13-year span. What is interesting here is that the movie is broken up into parts corresponding with the various sections of a tennis match, and flashbacks occur in thematically relevant parts of this Tennis match. This choice worked well for the movie, helping to slowly build the tensions over the course of the movie until the final sequence of the match reaching a fever pitch, finally breaking at the last possible second with nearly no falling action, capturing this one near perfect moment at its apex. The triangular relationship between the three is predominantly heterosexual, but there are strong homoerotic undercurrents between O’Connor’s character (who is very briefly confirmed as bisexual), and Faist’s. All of these contributing to a very sexy movie. I wanted to first start with the performances, each one of which is great, but especially Zendaya's. I'm really starting to love her as an actress, and she played this part so well. Her character, Tashi, is a struggler, a striver, and a manipulator, who is constantly messing with Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist), in part due to her own Tennis ambitions being stunted by a major injury. Josh O’Connor’s Patrick is also a great, skeezy portrayal of a man who comes from a privileged background, who has a lot of talent, but only just coasts by due to an apparent lack of real ambition. Finally Art, played by Mike Faist is another kind of rich kid coasting, although he does have more ambition than Patrick, by the time of the Challenger Tournament he has lost his passion for playing and want to retire from his Tennis Pro career after this season. Art is also a bit of a bad guy, trying to end Tashi and Patrick’s relationship in college by lying to both of them about the other. The music was also phenomenal in this film, especially the original piece “Challengers” this throbbing electronic piece, often playing when there is an argument between two characters, served to heighten the tension. I listened to “Challengers” a lot while writing this retrospective, and I’d recommend giving the movie soundtrack a listen. The camera work is my second favourite part of the movie, which was incredibly ambitious. There were lots of rapid movement of the camera going back and forth to mirror the nature of a tennis match, at one point even taking the perspective of the ball itself. The camera felt so alive, especially in tense moments where it started to move in such intense ways. There are at least two shots from this film where they have Patrick and Mike playing tennis on top of a court with a glass floor and the camera is facing up at them from below. God there are so many wild moments with the camera its hard to cover them all. Also, congratulations to Justin Kuritzkes for writing the script, which was apparently the first script he wrote that became a movie. This movie is a must watch, I cannot recommend it enough.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Directed by George Miller, who also dircted all other Mad Max's, this movie is a sequel to 2015's 'Mad Max: Fury Road' in much the same style and vein. Furiosa was an interesting dive into the eponymous character, who despite the title, was also pretty much the main character of “Mad Max: Fury Road”. The movie has a distinctive visual style that was also present in “Fury Road”, which I grew to admire over the course of the film, really making it stand out. The film itself is a revenge story, where a young Furiosa is kidnapped from her home in a place of abundance in a post-apocalyptic Australia, and her mother is killed rescuing her and keeping their home a secret from the biker warlord Demetus. As she grows up she becomes a lieutenant of warlord Immortan Joe and seeks revenge on Dementus. The film is filled with bombastic action and incredible set pieces that serve as a backdrop to the evolution of Furiosa from a vulnerable child to a hardened wasteland killer. The main performances of Furiosa (Alyla Browne as a child Furiosa and Ayna Taylor-Joy as the older version), Furiosa’s mother Mary (Charlee Fraser), Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), and Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) were all great. I was especially impressed with the Alyla Browne and Charlee Fraser. Alyla Browne was a great child actor, one who also happens to look like both a young Anya Taylor-Joy and Charlize Theron which was doubly incredible. She was the main character for roughly half of the movie and played it so well, most of her acting was non-verbal and she did such an impressive job for such a young actor. Charlee Fraser was also incredible, appearing only in the first fifth of the movie she left a strong impression as a fierce, capable mother who sacrifices herself to keep her daughter and her community safe. Chris Hemsworth also did a great job, but he also had such a good opportunity to play this heinous character, who also undergoes a subtle shift from the first half of the film to the second. I mentioned in my review on the Cafe of the eerie feeling I got from this movie. I’ll try to expand on that here without repeating myself too much, but I really did love it. Even though there are almost no pre-apocalyptic ruins or structures in this setting except for an oil refinery and iron mine, it still feels as if the ghosts of a fallen world are all around the characters. The movie almost feels haunted by this sense of decay and death, with only a much-diminished humanity still struggling on. I felt a sadness for a world gone by and for a new one that replaced it which barely survives. People are either causally or purposefully cruel in response to an incredibly cruel natural and human world, making compassion and kindness feel near extinct. The sense of boundless emptiness also heightened this sense, the world felt so wide and open but full of nothing. Only the smallest pockets of people existing like they were frightened mice living on the corpse of some decaying giant. I am so sad that “Furiosa” was pulled from theatres before even a month had passed, I think it did not get the recognition it deserved and I hope that you who is reading this can watch it and appreciate it. It is such a stark film, and I think it is a great watch.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed, and I hope you watch “Challengers” and “Furiosa”.

 
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from Eddie's Bookclub Thoughts

How Dune took everything from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

The goal of this presentation is to denounce the blatant theft that Frank Herbert committed on Bethesda, by taking everything from one of their game. (Godd Howard is weeping). Frank had the gal to rip of half the lore of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind a whole 37 years before it was released. I hope that with enough visual and contextual evidence, this case will compel you to boycott any Dune related products, and tarnish the name of Frank Herbert forever.

Video of the intros – believe it or not those are two different videos from two different pieces of media

The People: Fremens and Ashlanders

Let's first look at some relevant world inhabitants of both universes:

Ashlanders

A religious sect of the Aldmers following St Veloth separated from their peers, left their homes in an exodus to a promised land. Now calling themselves Chimers, they travelled to a new hostile land, Resdayn (today's Morrowind) and slowly adapted and thrived in this new harsh environment. They were also free to practice their cult in the open. The Chimers eventually became the Dunmers, and organised themselves into great Houses. Except one people of the Dunmers, the Ashlanders. They were confined to the wilderness and harsh climate of Vvardenfell and organised themselves in clans, with at their head an Ashkhan, and a Wise Woman on the spiritual side. The Ashlanders are very proud, and challenges (often duels) are a common and important part of the culture. They can be called for all matters, from sport to honour. Religion is a big part of ashlander culture, they venerate their own deities, and there is a cult who awaits for a certain prophecy to be fulfilled — for the Nerevarine to arrive. The overall culture of Ashlanders is heavily inspired by irl arabic cultures, but they are also incredibly xenophobic.

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Fremen

The Fremens are thought to have come to Arrakis from another planet. A religious sect of that planet, the Zensunni, took part in a hajra — “a migration to find a place to live as well as a holy journey [...]”* — which brought them to Arrakis where they settled. After settling, they thrived in this new hostile land, called themselves Fremens and recognised themselves as a people rather than a religion. They then organised themselves into Sietchs. They are guided by the head of the Sietch, the naib, and a Reverend Mother — a spiritual and religious figure. The Fremen are a very proud people, and ritual challenges often take place and are an important part of their culture. Religions is a strong part of the Fremen culture, they venerate the Shai-Hulud, and a majority believes in a prophecy about coming messiah. Fremen culture is heavily inspired by irl arabic cultures and the islamic faith, but they are also incredibly xenophobic.

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In common

So we have two religious sects, leaving they homeworld/continent, on a religious journey to find a promised land. Both people had to adapt to a very harsh land, which lead to the development of a ruthless culture. They are both pariah of the civilised world and organised themselves in clans. At the head of their respective clans is a leader which is the strongest of the tribe, and a woman serving as a religious leader. Duels are common place, and a certain part of both people await the prophesied messiah. Both cultures are heavily inspired by irl arabic cultures. Conclusion: Fremen==Ashlanders

Video of the duels – see the similarities, which one is from Dune and which is from Morrowind, it is impossible to tell

The Setting: Arrakis and Morrowind

We will now look at the land and setting present in each universe:

Morrowind and VVardenfell

Morrowind is a region of Tamriel, which is comprised of the mainland, with a more temperate climate, and Vvardenfell, an island with at its centre a volcano. Although at first hospitable, after the first eruption of it's central Volcano — an event called the Sun's Death — Vvardenfell became extremely inhospitable. It is now characterised by arid wastes, rocky highlands and incessant ash storms. The deserts of ash are called the ashlands, and although some permanent settlements exist, the only people brave enough to live there unsettled are the ashlanders. The people who could, left for the mainland but the Great Houses still have a presence on the island. The Great Houses form the Grand Council and oversee every aspect of politics, trade and commerce in Morrowind. There are many political plots in motions at any given times for such and such House to take power, and they are all vying for power in the background. Open warfare between the Houses was banned by the Tribunal — the official religious institution of the Dunmers — and the Houses now rely on secret plots and the Morag Tong. The Morag Tong is a guild of assassins with a strict code, that will carry out political assassination for the Great Houses. This way the Great Houses can still further their plots, while maintaining a semblance of balance and stability. Ultimately, Morrowind was absorbed into the Empire, after the diplomatic negotiations with the Great Houses and the Tribunal. The Cyrodiilic Empire, the Third Empire, successfully conquered all of Tamriel — the main continent of the planet, Nirn. Not all Great Houses welcome the Empire, and the Ashlanders are particularly hostile to it. But as long as the Empire is allowed to extract resources from Morrowind, they tolerate the dissidents.

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The Imperium and Arrakis

Arrakis — Dune — Desert Planet. Arrakis is a planet part of the Imperium. In the books we are introduced to the two main area distinctions on the planet; the cities and the desert. While life in the cities is not great, the desert life is even harsher, as on top of the arid wasteland and sometimes rocky terrain, you have to look out for worms. If that wasn't enough, there are also sandstorms which can be quite deadly. No one from the Imperium but the natives live on Arrakis by choice, yet the Imperium still has a strong presence on the planet, due to an inestimable resource it has: spice. A Great House, the Harkonnens — then the Atreides — then the Harkonnens again, is overseeing every single aspect of politics, trade and commerce on Arrakis. The Imperium and its functioning is not described in great detail in the book, but we can infer an almost antagonistic relationship with some of the Great Houses and the Emperor. The Fremens are particularly hostile to the Imperium and the Harkonnens which rules on its behalf. After the events of the first book, the Imperium uses the Muad'Dib religion to rule over the land, with the government and religion being heavily intertwined.

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In common

Both lands are part of a bigger Empire after annexation. Both have Imperial colons on the territory, with more or less power depending on the specific territory. Both harbour natives and non-native populations, with the native being harden by a harsh climate as well as colonial occupation and repressions. Expectedly, the natives are hostile toward the colonial empire. This colonial empire uses Great Houses to rule over the land, but the relationship is more complicated than a simple alliance, and every Great House is different. Both lands are roughly separated in two regions; (sorta) hospitable were some natives are not welcomed, and unhospitable where some natives have taken over. This second region presents very harsh climate conditions, with storms of the small particle variety. Both lands (after some point) have government and religion heavily intertwined.

Video of the storms – which one is Dune, which one is Morrowind, again, impossible to tell

The Prophecies

Nerevarine Prophecy

The Nerevarine prophecy states the return of Nerevar, and save the descendent of the Chimers, the Dunmers, cast down the Tribunal as false Gods and drive the Empire out of Morrowind.

The reincarnation of Nerevar, the Nerevarine, will be an outsider born of uncertain parent, on a certain day. They will initially come from and be affiliated with the Empire, which exploits Morrowind in its imperialist colonialist endeavour. The Nerevarine will unite the Great Houses, and the Ashlander tribes of Morrowind under one banner. The Nerevarine will also be immune to Blight, or the Corprus disease, a plague from Morrowind. The Nerevarine will commune with Azura (a Goddess in the Elder Scrolls) and she will chose them. The Nerevarine will defeat the great Evil from the House unmourned.

Our character in Morrowind is initially chosen by the Empire to further its political goals, by pretending to be the Nerevarine. Our character, a former prisoner, was chosen because he fulfils the initial requirements of the prophecy: Born on a certain day to uncertain parents. We claim to be a prophet by using the local prophecy of the Ashlanders, despite not really knowing if the prophecy is real. We are not the first ones to have claimed to be the Nerevarine, and there are a few trials that we are asked to perform to verify our status. This includes one requiring performing an action that would kill anyone but the chosen one. After communing with Azura, we have the evidence needed to unite the tribes and Great Houses under the common enemy, Dagoth Ur. It is to note that it is never made clear whether the prophecy is real, or whether Azura was just using us to get to her mean. It is Azura after all who created the prophecy. In any case, we “fulfil” the prophecy, but not in the way the natives of Morrowind expected, and after the fact, the Empire is still in Morrowind, if a bit changed.

Muad'Dib/Lisan al Gaib

The prophecy of the Lisan Al Gaib is not explicitly narrated in the books, but a few components are given to us through dialogues.

  • The Lisan Al Gaib will be an outsider
  • He will be born of a Bene Gesserit mother
  • He shall know the [Fremen] ways as though born to them
  • He will be a messiah and unite the Fremen, defeating their oppressor
  • Random vague tidbits (will quote the holy words...)

This prophecy was however implanted by the Bene Gesserit as part of the Missionna Protectiva, and is not something that came about organically on Dune. Paul fills the first parts of the prophecy as he is not native to Arrakis, and his mother is a Bene Gesserit. He also displays some knowledge of some of the Fremen ways, but it could be by sheer luck. The prophecy is by design very murky, and some Fremen are very eager to recognise Paul as the Lisan Al Gaib. After some initial pushback, Paul fully embraces his role in the prophecy and unites the Fremen tribes. He then sets his sight on the driving the oppressor out of Arrakis. Paul ultimately fulfills the prophecy, but the Imperium however remains on the planet, but is significantly changed. Paul unites the Great Houses, under the banner of the Jihad to assert his power as emperor.

In common

So we have a stranger to entering and eastern inspired land. This stranger is initially affiliated with an empire that exploits this land. A local prophecy that the stranger is aware of describes them being a messiah and saving the locals from that empire. The stranger uses that prophecy to their advantage and claims to be a prophet. The stranger unites the native people and the Great Houses against a common enemy. The stranger ultimately fulfills the prophecy, but not in the way it was intended, and the Empire remains.

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What happens in both stories

Morrowind World and Main Quest

At the very beginning of our adventure, the Emperor chooses us to be shipped to Vvardenfell. If at first affiliated with the emperor, and by extension the Tribunal, we are to become an enemies of the latter by intermingling with the Ashlanders. The tribunal had been oppressing the Ashlanders using it's elite soldiers the Ordinator long before our arrival. Although we were aware of the prophecy before hand, and that we were at the center of it, the locals further our understanding of it, and we have to prove to them that we are indeed the Nerevarine. The tribunal is actively hostile towards us, and we cannot take refuge in the civilised regions they control. We ultimately use the prophecy to our advantage and start uniting the different Ashlanders tribes against a common enemy.

Dune

The Atreides, including Paul, are commanded by the Emperor to rule over Arrakis. Smelling a trap from the Harkonnens, the Atreides start forming relationships with the locals of Arrakis, the Fremens. The Fremens had been oppressed by the Harkonnens since before the Atreides set foot on Arrakis, and have a deep hatred of them. The Emperor betrays the Atreides and with the Sardaukars, its elite shock troops, begin decimating Atreides and Fremens alike. Paul, which is aware of the prophecy, takes refuge with the Fremens, and has to prove that he is indeed the messiah from the prophecy. He takes advantage of the powers the prophecy grants him and unites the different Sietches against a common enemy.

Miscellaneous

Ordinators and Sardaukar

Just want to reinforce the similarities between the Sardaukars and the Ordinators. While the Sardaukars are the elite units of the Emperor, whose existence justifies its dominion over the Great Houses, The Ordinators are the elite unit of the Tribunal, now allied with the Empire, which grant a definite legitimacy to the Tribunal, especially after their loss of power. While the Ordinators' role encompasses more responsibilities, the Sardaukars also have many roles, from guarding the emperor, to dealing with clandestine operations. While the Sardaukars originate for Salusa Secondus, almost all Ordinators come from House Indoril.

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Thu'um and the Voice

The Voice in Dune is a Bene Gesserit technique that allows the user to project their voices in a way that forces people to obey a command, i.e. bends their will. Sorta similarly in The Elder Scrolls, the voice — or thuum — allows user to project words of power using their vocal chords, but with more varied and reality bending effect. Just like the Voice, the Thuum is not gatekept by mystical/biological properties, and regular humans can learn to use it, although it take more time.

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Water of Life\Kwisazt Hiderach — Ring of Moon and Star

As you all know, in Dune, Paul has to drink the Water of Life and survive to prove that he is the Kwisatz Haderach — as only the Kwisatz Haderach would survive this trial. Similarly, in Morrowind, the main protagonist has to don the Moon and Star Ring to prove that he is indeed the prophesised Nerevarine — as the ring would kill anyone who is not the Nerevarine.

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Ending of the prophet's story

At the end of Dune Messiah, Paul goes to the desert and his fate is a bit uncertain (although death is the most likely one). We learn in the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, set a few years after Morrowind, that the Nerevarine's fate is also unknown. He went on an expedition to Akavir, a foreign, mysterious and dangerous land. Since he never returned, his fate is also most likely death.

Tribunal/Alia

SPOILERS FOR CHILDREN OF DUNE

There is a striking similarity between the decline of the Tribunal and the decline of the Muad'Dib religion following the loss of Paul.

In Dune, before going off to the desert, Paul puts Alia in charge. Alia doubles down on the involvement of religion in government, and also goes mad because of the intrusion of the Barron into her head. There are frictions between the maybe more legitimate faction of fremen led by Leto II. Alia is ultimately stopped by the hero, here Leto II.

In Morrowind, before the events of the game, Nerevar “goes MIA” (is murdered by the Tribunal) and they put themselves in charge of the country. They double down on the involvement of religion into government and after Dagoth Uhr cuts off their access to divine power. The three members of the Tribunal either become dead, recluse, or mad. In particular, Almalexia which resides in the capital of Morrowind goes mad and uses religion to her sick goals, while tension grows between her and the King's forces (arguably a more legitimate faction). Almalexia is ultimately stopped by the Nerevarine.

Gaps in the Comparison

Obviously Mr. Herbert didn't copy The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind too hard, as it would have been obvious. There are many elements of Morrowind that are not found in Dune, but it is most interesting to look at which major elements appear in Dune, but not in Morrowind.

Video of the worm – marvel at the size of the worms in Morrowind

Shaia Hulud

There is no real parallel to the Sand Worms in Morrowind, props to Frank for inventing something original, instead of lifting everything from Morrowind. The worms are an integral part of Arrakis, and the Fremen life, but also of great importance to the rest of the Universe as their are an integral part of the cycle of spice. There is nothing comparable, in Morrowind. If we wanted to really stretch things, we could say that the kwarma. Kwarma go through multiples stages of life, like the Shaia Hulud, and even start in worm phase (Kwarma Forager). The products of the kwarmas (eggs, cuttle, scrib jelly and jerky) are very important to Vvardenfell and the main export of Morrowind. However, it is direct by product of the kwarma's that is the main resource, and it is absolutely not vital to any other country or group of Tamriel. Kwarma's are relatively harmless, and do not live in the sand, or even in desert regions. It is also not a means of transportation, for this we would have to turn to another bug-like creature, the Stilt Strider.

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Melange/Spice

Since there are no worms to perpetuate the spice cycle in Morrowind, there is no spice there. There are also no analogous substances in the Elder Scrolls universe. The only thing that could almost get close to the spice is moon sugar. It is then refined to make skooma, a drug. This drug doesn't give you prescience, you just get Fortified Strength and Speed as well as Drain Intelligence and Agility. Long term use also decreases literacy and vocabulary (like tiktok). Also, the Empire is not in Morrowind for moon sugar, as it's main exporter in another province of Tamriel; Elsweyr.

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Conclusion

Are you convinced? What more must I do to get you to believe me. Do you think I'm a mad man? You do don't you. It matters not. Come Nerevar, friend or traitor, come. Come and look upon the Heart and Akulakahn, and bring Wraithguard, I have need of it. Come to the Heart chamber, I wait for you there, where we last met, countless ages ago. Come to me through fire and war, I welcome you! Welcome Moon-and-Star, I have prepared a place for you! Come, bring Wraithguard to the Heart chamber, together, let us free the cursed false gods! Welcome Nerevar, together we shall speak for the law and the land and drive the mongrel dogs of the Empire from Morrowind! Is this how you honor the 6th house and the tribe unmourned? Come to me openly, and not by stealth. Dagoth Ur welcomes you Nerevar, my old friend... but to this place where destiny is made, why have you come unprepared? Welcome, Moon-and-Star, to this place where YOUR destiny is made. What a fool you are, I'm a god! How can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating innocence! How could you be so naive? There is no escape, no recall or intervention can work in this place! Come! Lay down your weapons! It is not too late for my mercy...

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Sources:

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind — Bethesda

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion — Bethesda

The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Page (UESP) — many people

Was Morrowind inspired by Dune — r/teslore

Morrowind and Dune — r/Morrowind

I'm feeling a lot of similarities between Morrowind's lore and “Dune” — r/teslore

Questions about Kwama — r/teslore

Dune — Frank Herbert

Dune Messiah — Frank Herbert

The Dune encyclopedia — Dr. Willis E. McNelly

Dune Wiki — many people

Disclaimer

Just like what the Bene Gesserit did with the Lisan Al Gaib Prophecy, I have kept everything very vague here, so that I can emphasise the similarities between both works, and push the narrative. Although what is written is true, the words are stretched to their furthest extend and their accuracy might be diminished. Both works amount to much, much, more than what was written here, as they had to be reduced to their barest bones to fit inside each other.

Also Dune came out before Morrowind.

 
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from Eddie's Appendices

This article is a bit more freeform and shorter as I just want to get it out while it's fresh.

Let me preface this article by saying that I don't hate Dune 2, it's just clickbait. The movie was a ton a fun, and I was enjoying myself for the whole time, which is quite the prowess from the filmmakers, as the movie is extremely long. The music is as good as in the first one, the cinematography is as good too, and it pick up the pace significantly. Nevertheless, my boy Denis (we are on a first name basis) had to alter the story to make it more palatable as a movie — something colloquially called “adapting”. While I have no beef with the Dune movies as movies, I have some issues with Dune Part 2 as an adaptation of the book. Also, it goes without saying, but this appendix will be very tinted by what I got from the book and what it represents to me, i.e. how I interpreted it, but also how I interpreted the movies.

Issue from the first movie that come back to bite the second in the ass

In the first movie, the plot to have the Duke doubt Jessica is completely scrapped. If you recall, in the book, Hawat had intercepted a partial message that made it clear that there was a traitor in House Atreides, close to the Duke. While it was revealed later that it was Yueh, until he sees Paul at the end of the first book, Hawat is persuaded that Jessica is to blame. This leads Hawat to work for the Baron, after some careful last minute manipulations by him, as he had just lost his mentat. This comes back later, with a feud between Feyd and the Baron, which both use Hawat, whose playing all sides (and thus always comes out on top). Without Hawat, the Harkonnens appear a bit stupid and definitely less conniving and calculated in the movies. They suffer the politics of the Emperor, rather than shape it (to an extent). They are also more of a one dimensional big bad antagonist. They are indirectly made more honorable and playing by the rules, and less cowardly, which imo is the antithesis of the Harkonnens.

Also the Baron isn't 900lb, wtf?!!!11!

Issues originating here

Jamis fight

Jamis fight in the books is where Paul kinda “wakes up” to his role in the prophecy, and the affect he can have on the Fremen. It's also where is prescience is made more apparent to him. The whole fight, and the aftermath with the ceremony for Jamis, is setup as something really important and deepens the lore of the Fremen, with how alien their rites and traditions are. It's also where Chani and Paul get closer together. Finally, right after the fight is when his mother becomes afraid of what Paul might become and reinforces the severity of killing a man. This is pretty much completely scrapped in the movie.

Relationship dynamic between Paul and Jessica

Speaking of Jessica and her relationship to Paul, in the books their relationship is much less antagonistic than in the movie. Movie Jessica is basically dead set on using the Fremen and Paul to get what she wants, and it is made obvious that she's le bad and her motivations are unpure. She completely dominates Paul and in the end achieve her goal, through scheming and manipulation of the native population. She has absolutely no chills and is adamant on pushing Paul to become the Kwisatz Haderach, and having him rule the Fremen. Paul basically submits to her and for most of the movie until the final climax, is content to just do his thing blowing up spice harvesters. Her character, and relationship dynamic with Paul was a lot more nuanced and interesting in the book. There was more push and pull and either side about who was leading the other to act. She was also less of a driving force to the narrative, while somehow having more depth.

Paul's loss of agency

Our most specialest quirked up white boy is taking the back seat in the movie for most of its runtime. He just takes part in Stilgar's raids, and does a good job, which lead the Fremen to accept him. While his mom is doing the heavy lifting and doubling down on the Missiona Protectiva. In the book, he is more proactive about everything, especially changing the prophecy to prevent the Jihad/trying to make the Jihad less destructive. There is a constant internal fight in Paul to try to deviate from the path which leads to the Jihad, which manifest externally too (for instance when he decides to be called Paul-Muad'Dib instead of just Muad'Dib). This is completely absent here, and he barely uses his prescience, which was a big driving force behind his actions in the book. This version of Paul is very passive and more reactionary rather than calculated. Some of his action in the movies don't have the same weight either, since the context of the Jihad almost missing. Also at while he was fighting all along to prevent the Jihad, he realises at the end of the book that everything he has done will lead to the Jihad and accepts his fate. This right here is my shit, I love a story where the protagonist are actively working against the predetermined outcome, only to realise too late that they brought this outcome by working against it.

North vs South

The dichotomy north vs south, with the latter being very down with the prophecy is not something that appeared in the book, and imo although sorta expending the lore, oversimplifies the diversity of the people of the sietch. While other tribes were mentioned in the book, we mostly on hear about Sietch Tabr and some unamed southern sietches where the children are kept in. In the book Sietch Tabr although not completely expended upon, had people who adulate Paul, are neutral, or negative towards him. In the movie, it really flattens the Fremen. Our boy Stilgar whose enamoured by the prophecy while being the leader of a Northern Sietch, is actually from the south, so he doesn't even escape from the rule.

Stilgar

LISAN AL-GAIB! Speaking of Stilgar, my boy is so fun in the movie, but I appreciated the relationship he had with Paul better in the book. Friend to then follower, and it was made clear to the reader that Stilgar going from friend to follower was a big step/ point of no return in the Muad-Dib prophecy. In the movie he is the most devout follower, the adoring fan, right from the beginning. He doesn't even admit he's the Lisan Al-Gaib, as it was written! Just more proof that he is!

Chani

While I like how Chani is less of an adoring fan (basically what Stilgar was changed into) in the movie and has more depth, the subplot with Jessica and Irulan is very weird and I am extremely curious to see how it unfolds, because there is no way it becomes good. The events of the second book don't really allow enough room for this subplot, especially with what happens in the very beginning, and what is literally one of the main plot of the book.

There are more changes, that I'm not particularly a big fan of, some that I don't care about, and others that I approve of. Dune is a very vast and meaningful work, and it is just impossible to impart every single meaning or interpretation into two 3h movies. Denis adaptation just didn't seem to catch my specific interpretation of the book, and that's alright. It's not as if he was betraying the source material, so I'm happy with the movies he has produced, especially since they kinda rock as movies.

 
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from catcafe

Why this is an article: I thought I should make this an article for all the #artgirlies out there who also struggle to draw faces.

Why you should read: I've loved drawing human characters since I was 13. Drawing fanart for Homestuck (ew), Hetalia (super ew), Gravity Falls (acceptable), TAZ (acceptable), and eventually progressing to ttrpg stuff means that I've just been drawing random twinks for however the fuck long it's been. Here's a summary of what I've cobbled together:

How I think about drawing faces

Kim Jung Gi Drawing Faces in perspective

screenshot of kim jun gi drawing faces in perspective youtube video

I used to do the circle – jawline – fill in thing but I've seen the light for doing Kim Jung Gi (awesome, awesome fucking artist) where he does forehead-eyebrows-nose ridge- eyes- nose- etc. (watch the youtube video for specifics). I believe the main thing is 3D space. The references I use below are 3D models. The head is a 3D object you're trying to capture in 2D (the same thing also applies to fingers (and everything else, but fingers is a big example), which look INCOMPREHENSIBLY BAD usually until you do some shading to 'pop them' into 3D). By doing Kim Jung Gi's method, you're 'forced' to think in 3D at the first step by thinking about how the forehead line should look.

No, but actually how do you think about drawing faces

I don't. And it's not in the like haha funny oo I don't think but it's more like. I have a reference, or what I know it should look like (vaguely), and focus on things like the ratios of distances between eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, etc.

References for practice and actually drawing

When drawing something I've fully committed to or doing studies, I always gather a bunch of references. Especially for faces, because faces are REALLY goddamn difficult.

Here are the ones that I find very very useful:

Reference Angle

screenshot of reference angle website You can modify the 3d head to look through their database of faces. Extremely useful if you're trying to find a certain face angle + expression combo. usage: Solely for irl face angles and diverse faces. The expressions aren't that prominent, and the search function for some angles isn't 100% accurate. However, there's a good variety of races if you need to practice that.

3D head model with lighting

usage of male head model with different lighting This is a 3d model with 1) Movable primary and secondary lighting 2) Very, very extensible for any angle you can think of. 3) Flat planes so the face parts are simplified, making face stuff easier to draw. usage: When I can't find the face angle I need on Reference Angle I go here. If I'm drawing something that focuses on lighting I also go here because the movable lights are REALLY convenient.

My Art Reference Tumblr :)

screenshot of star-nomads.tumblr.com This is more of a general art thing, but I have a huge trove of references I use when making up character stuff. These are all tailored to my taste, but I think you, the reader, can find some interesting Tumblrs to find images from the blogs the posts are from.

Closing Words

I have a huge /visual library/ (visual library is a library of things that you've drawn before and know how they should look like) because I'm a NEET. Think while you draw and don't burn out. I have complete faith that you can do it!!! Also read this if you're a creative: https://bato.to/chapter/1729292

 
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from Scriptorium

have in previous posts talked shit on Rob Liefeld. There are a lot of valid criticisms to levy, but I've also expressed in previous posts my theory of the utility of all art forms; that all art, almost surely popular art, is serving some people something, even if it isn't immediately apparent what that something is. This is a painful inconsistency in my writings, and so to rectify this, I'm forced to give Mr. Liefeld an even shake in order to preserve my intellectual integrity. (That was a lie, the real reason I'm writing this is that I was reading X-Force, and it kinda rocks, actually.)

A little while ago I heard a cartoonist give an interesting defence of Rob's work. While Rob's art was this extreme, hyperbolic style that intends to sort of shock-jockey you with absurd proportions, pouches, and blasters, he said that it felt like that art was attainable. He was able to look at Rob's art and say, okay, I think I can do that. I can be a cartoonist like this guy if I try.

I'm not going to tell you I especially like Rob Liefeld's art, that would just be a lie for the sake of being subversive. However I can recognize this powerful, often unspoken effect that some artists can have on their readers. Stan Sakai is an artist I feel this way about. Liefeld and Sakai are two artists who couldn't be further apart, but have a similar effect: their artwork is expressive and feels attainable to a reader. It isn't as easy to draw like them as you might think, but it's easy to comprehend why what they do works and how it gets you excited about drawing.

Let's make another comparison. In the manga Berserk the late Kentaro Miura illustrated page after page of intricate, highly rendered drawings that are quite frankly impossible to replicate. In Stan Sakai's long running samurai comic, Usagi Yojimbo, he employs a much more cartoon-like, clean linework that is no less stylistically unique than the aforementioned example. Sometimes I read a comic because it was in the dollar bin and It looked interesting, other times maybe because it's a particularly interesting piece of comic history that I'm unacquainted with. With Usagi Yojimbo though, I have found myself authentically enthralled in its pages. This thing has its jaws in me, and I'm sure you can recall a similar experience when you're simply captivated by some work.

Everyone has their preference, and this may sound absurd to some, but I would much rather read an issue of Usagi Yojimbo than Berserk. Berserk is exhausting to look at. I won't argue that it's not impressive- it absolutely is, but it is just like, a lot. This is because it is so highly rendered, but also because as an artist it is so beyond my comprehension to draw a comic at that level. (side-note: Berserk isn't really my cup of tea to begin with, but I use it as an example here because it's convenient.)

The artwork in Usagi Yojimbo is simpler, but no less effective. It is amazing, solid cartooning that understands that each panel is in service to a story that's being told and benefits that story in some way. It is simply masterful and has its own virtues over more rendered styles. When I read Usagi, not only do I feel like I can sort of relax and just read, but meanwhile I also get excited about my own drawing. I can think “Wow, I want to make something like this” and I don't feel stupid about that because it feels attainable, (even though Sakai is 1000x the artist that I am.)

It's a plausible theory that the more complicated a message becomes, the more becomes lost in the ether of the medium. At least for me, I enjoy the satisfaction of knowing I am being presented with a set of glyphs and manmade markings that I can fully decode and comprehend- there is no information on the sheet that I am not grasping.

This kind of artwork is what I'll call 'mentally accessible', and that provides a number of distinct advantages. One is that you don't feel guilty about turning the page because maybe you missed some details on a page that is incredibly detailed. Another is that it is easier to observe the drawing techniques and elements of design in a bare, minimalist space. Comics are an escape from the world, which at times can feel overwhelming, complicated, and overstimulating. At times like these, clarity and legibility provide an incredible sense of ease and confidence.

Usagi Yojimbo is an extreme example of this, but I think this is a strength of cartooning as an entire genre. I realize at this point in the post I'm just regurgitating Scott McCloud's theories, so consider further readings. Can you spot Usagi?

Consider the spread above, from McCloud's Understanding Comics. Reality and Meaning are opposites— a dichotomy that has disturbing implications, but let's just move forward with this for the moment. Now imagine your mind as a hard drive. You have files on your hard drive, and you want to transfer them to someone else's machine. Before you send those files, you might compress them into another format that takes up less space. Cartooning is much the same— in order to preserve mental bandwidth and make the process easy, we compress reality. I present this as a metaphor, but it isn't far from the literal truth. What is easier to comprehend, a novel that is several hundred pages, or a poem that is ten lines?

On the other hand, I've always had a rocky relationship with photography. I haven't practiced it in a number of years now. For me, photography has often felt more like a science than an art. It is, in my experience less a form of expression than a capture of the way things are. In my photography classes, I vastly preferred to stage photoshoots as much as I could as opposed to taking candid photos, because it felt like the more I removed my photo from reality, the easier it would be to collect something dramatic, some sense of story or meaning.

Pure, unrestrained images of reality contain no meaning at all. Only images that resemble reality, but necessarily lack the infinite fidelity of reality, can comment on it. This is why drawing and writing are closer to one another than drawing is to photography, because drawing and writing are not trying to show you the objective truth, but tell you something.

Of course, we enjoy fidelity, and it has many important uses. An image being close to reality has its own sense of relevancy, or perhaps necessity for comprehension. Information that is compressed to an extreme degree will be utterly annihilated, and this may vary depending on what is being said. There is also a certain bliss in being unable to fully absorb something, a feeling of closeness to what is real, a validation of the message. This is why REALITY and MEANING are on two ends of a scale which encompass the comprehensible image. Where an artist positions themselves on this scale is part of what makes their work unique and appealing.

Let's bring this back to comics as I close the post out. Lots of comic strips, chiefly Peanuts come to mind, have a similar effect on me as Sakai's work. Charles Schulz's simple, clean and legible artwork, accompanied by an uncomplicated but witty sense of humour has a comforting effect on a reader and an energizing shot in the arm to the aspiring comics-maker. Hergé is another solid example of someone who I find affirming, and after I read their work just want to start drawing immediately. Yes, this comic, and this artwork understand me. This is a language I can learn to speak. These artists are/were masters of their craft- but that doesn't mean your feeling of “I can do that too!” is mistaken. Comics are a medium that is compatible with any kind of drawing at any level of practice because it's ultimately about telling a story, not just how well you can render a drawing.

 
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from Eddie

An update to my previous article about starting going to the gym again after COVID. Below are disclosed the results of my bulk, my new training program, the start of my cut and the other things.

How the bulk went

The bulk is now over and I'm bigger (no way). I had to change my whole pants wardrobe not once, but twice. I also had to donate a bunch of my clothes away, but my lovely wife Tetyana is delighted to be able to buy me clothes, I'm sure. I gained some size here and there, Tetyana recorded some measurements — from when I started gaining weight, to a couple weeks after the start of my cut.

Body Part June 2023 March 2024 Change
Neck 13.5” 14” +0.5”
Chest 36” 40” +4”
Waist 28.5” 32” +3.5”
Hips 34” 34.5” +0.5”
Butt 35.5” 40” +4.5”
Thigh 20” 25” +5”
Biceps NA 14” NA

That's some pretty decent growth, and the legs and butt saw the most of it. My chest also grew reasonably, but the figure here doesn't paint the full picture. Chest measurement also include all the upper back development, therefore any increase is to be taken with a grain of salt. Physique-wise, my chest looks more 3D and less flat. My back is alright, and I will probably have a back focus after I'm done growing my chest. My arms did see some pretty one sided development – my triceps grew the most. My side triceps now looks pretty dope. I wish I had recorded their size in June though.

As for the bulk, its details are accurately described in my previous article; I ate a lot, and also not that clean. Honestly for me it was more about proving to myself that I could grow after having so much trouble all these years. I succeeded, but the last three weeks of the bulk were the hardest: I was so tired of eating. Those three weeks saw no gain of mass, I just stagnated at 81-82kg.

Let's take a closer look at my weight gain, with something that everybody loves: graphs!

graphstonks

lbs imperial measurement for you degenerates

As you can see, in that 22 weeks bulk, which started on October 28th 2023, I put on a whopping 13kg or ~28.7lb. But I didn't start recording my weight conscientiously until after a couple month, and my actual weight gain journey started in June of last year, when I was only about 62.5kg. Therefore this entire weight gain took me from 62.5kg to 81.5kg, a solid 19kg or ~42lb in about 9 months.

Aside on weight measurements

The methodology was simple: I weighed myself after coming home from work everyday at around 5pm. For missed days, I've just took the average of the adjacent values. The most important metric — and the one I paid the most attention to — was my weekly average. As you can see, my daily values kinda yoyoed all over the place, and the weekly ones give a better picture. This method of tracking weight is the one that I would recommend, whether you are trying to gain or lose weight.

I will now relate in excruciating details what this weight gain did to me, including the gross parts, readers beware (highlight to reveal):

I shapeshifted into a shitting mutant,

my system ceaselessly processing so many a nutriment,

I once went to the washroom once at work while on shift,

to now every two hours needing to shit.

I eschewed diarrhea, the stools were solid,

but the volume excreted gargantuan and the smell horrid.

The fating was incessant, intempestive, unrelenting, unremitting,

even, I was told, as I was slumbering.


My body had transformed into a perpetual fart mill,

my stomach and bowels churning through their infill,

and then producing the most nefarious of gas strike,

all from carbs, fats and proteins alike.

I did also gain some fat, as it is unavoidable as a natural lifter (i.e. steroids free). This gain is usually manageable, unless you do something stupid like gaining 19kg in 9 months 🙃. It was the first time in my life that I had not been skin and bones. The experience of even a small amount of fat is surprisingly pretty noticeable: Sitting down, I never had even the tiniest fold in my belly and I find them discomforting. However, it was also the first time my ass was comfortable to sit on, the added muscle and fat made it nice and cushiony. Bending over to pick something up, and feeling my skin clump up on itself was a peculiar feeling at first. What was also a first for me was that I could feel some part of me jiggling as I was moving about; very unsettling. Looks wise — it's ok. I do miss my abs, who were gone only a short few month after the start of the bulk. I am also not really in love with my love handles, as it breaks the shape of my silhouette, but I still look decent otherwise. Some pretty significant stretch marks have also appeared, but I don't really care for them, it is the price to pay to get a bigger booter.

It is customary amongst gym enthusiasts to follow a bulk with a cut: a weight loss phase trying to keep as much muscle as possible, and losing as much fat as possible. I also did start that.

How the cut is going

I am currently 6 weeks into my cut, and as hard as it is for me to gain weight, losing it is no issue. I've already lost six and a half pounds. You however don't want to lose weight too fast during a cut, because you could then loose some of you hard earned muscle. After some thorough research on the intrawebs, those seems to be the core tenets of a successful cut:

  • Don't lose weight too fast; 1% per week at most seems to be conducive to proper muscle retention
  • Try to eat ~0.8g of protein per pound of body weight (literature unclear on the specific number; lower values still yield good results)
  • Stimulate your muscles more often per week; it should aid to prevent muscle break down
  • Have a balanced diet; you still need fat for you body to function normally, as well as carbs.

There are a thousand more tricks, but those seems to be the main ones to get you where you wanna be. My goal was to lose 4kg in 8 weeks, but seeing how I've lost 3 in 4 weeks — and I still have love handles and obscured abs — I will try to get down to 74-75kg. That is a revised goal from losing 6-7kg. At first as a former very skinny guy, I was very reluctant to letting go of any weight I had managed to gain. But I am getting over my fear; if I have gained that weight, I can do it again. Furthermore, I don't really want to hang weight that happens to be purely fat. I might reassess the goal as I am getting closer to 74kg, but I don't want to get too shredded anyways; it is way too much effort. Speaking of effort, I changed my training a bit.

New program

Instead of going to the gym three times a week, and have four sessions workout plan, I now train four times a week still with four sessions. I do about the same amount of work, so my gym sessions are a bit shorter, with about 5 exercises each, comes down to ~1h10 usually. I've also cut down on the number of sets for each muscle group each session, as research suggest there is diminishing returns for anything past 6 sets. I've shifted my focus away from powerlifting, we will discuss of this later. I put a bigger emphasize on chest, and added some core work. Finally, I focused on exercises that were, according to the scientific literature, more effective, and simplified my training.

Training Session Exercise Sets x Reps Weight (lb) Rest Notes
#1 Back, Chest, Shoulders, Triceps Chest supported rows 3x8 40 1:45
1 Close grip bench 3x12 65 2:00
1 Lat Raise 3x8 60 1:30
1 Lat Pulldown 3x12 80 1:45
1 Incline Bench Press 3x10 95 1:45
#2 Back, Legs, Chest Bulgarian Split Squats 4x10 15 kettle 1:45
2 Incline Bench 3x5 135 2:00
2 Leg Raise 4x10 1:30 Roman chair
2 Leg Curl 3x15 75 1:45
2 Bench 4x5 135 1:45
#3 Legs, Back, Shoulders Military Press 4x5 90 2:00 Switch to push press after failure
3 Leg Press 3x12 140 2:00
3 Back extension 4x9 1:30 Unilateral
3 Lat Raise 3x8 60 1:30
3 Lunge 3x20 (10 each leg) 30 kettle uni 2:00
#4 Arms, Chest, Back Cable Curl 4x13 140 SS Superset with triceps
4 Triceps extension 4x15 180 1:30
4 Pullups 3-4x8 -70 1:30 Neutral grip
4 Bench (Strength) 5x3 155 2:30
4 Preacher Curls 3x8-10 bar+25 2:00 Myo-rep match, Ez bar
4 Leg Raise 4x10 1:30 Roman chair

This is what my training roughly looks like. This is not set in stones, and usually I will feel free to swap any exercise with another, or even swap muscle groups if I'm still too sore. That freedom does come at a cost though, I have been slacking on some exercises. The exercises I have been avoiding are bench press and pullups. Both have been moved aside to favour incline bench and chest supported rows. Once my cut is done, I will commence Operation Boobies: getting a 225lb bench, and solid arms. Chest, biceps and triceps will be my focus. I will maintain my back, and put legs on the back burner.

How training going

Telling you what I've been doing is fine, but how have I been doing? Well, going back the first training article, I followed the plan I laid out in it, and I made quick progress. A bit too quick. My 5x5 for deadlift went from 225 to 300lb, 155 to 195lb for squats and 115 to 135 for bench. But this last workout plan had way too many exercises and sets per sessions, and I didn't really do proper deloads (taking some time off off heavy work). Fatigue, not only in my muscles, but also in my connective tissues accumulated. Let me tell you this story...

[click play below before reading the rest] :

If I recall correctly it was right around Christmas week, the streets were quiet, more so than usual. Got to the gym tired, exhausted even, the usual you might say. The place is packed like an Irish bar on St Patty's. I still managed to find some spot in between some rough looking guys, probably the goons of some organisation or another. To save some time I though I could cut some corners on the warmup. I was toying with the idea like a fidget-spinner and I finally decided a bad warmup was better than none. As you can guess, this story doesn't have a happy ending. Happy endings are for children's book and shady massage parlours. I was supposed to do a 5x5 at 295lbs, but come on 300lbs is just one little 2.5lb one each side extra. And I felt like I deserved something extra. Took position and started lifting — or more like flying through — my warmups. 135, 225, 275 and voilà I was at my working weight; 300. But they didn't feel right. It was like handling a “stuffed carpet” — awkward, tiring and and although you expect it, still surprisingly heavy. I disregarded that, after all, I wasn't done with the workout until the workout was done with me. Started my first set at 300lb, it was heavy as hell, but I kept my back as tight as loyal henchman keeps his lips, and it went well. Had two minutes until my next set, just sipping on my flask, wishing it was scotch instead of water . Time came around to get back to work. Did one rep, then two, then three... Right as I was about to lower the fifth one, POP POP POP — SHRAK; I was shot in the back. I felt it, heard it too, but I didn't hear the shooter come or go. Damn, three times, whoever it was it wanted me dead. Too bad it takes more than that to put me down.

THE END

[you can stop the song now]

Nobody shot me and I instead tore something in my upper back. Could have been the rhomboid, I'm not sure and never got radios done as my doctor said to just rest. It didn't hurt at first, but I still felt something. When the next day came around, I tried to sit up from the bed and felt a sharp pain in my right upper back. Tried to breath in deep: Yaouch. Tried to round my upper back: Yaouch. This lasted one week, and then there was only pain if I did some work at the gym. So anything loading my upper back had to be removed. In the end, even after I was healed, I haven't reintroduced deadlift into my routine. Or squats. That's when I moved away from powerlifting to only bodybuilding. I have deadlifted since, light weights, but it feels meh. I'll keep strenghtening my upper back before going back to it. Heavy squats are fine, and will be reintroduced during Operation Boobies. Will probably wait on Operation Bootie to start deadlifting again.

I started training heavy again, in March, and apart from a sort of phantom tightness, my upper back feels fine.

Conclusion

I've had a pretty successful bulk I would say, and the cut is on it's way to be successful too. There is much I have learned about the two processes, but I still have many more things to discover. I now have also learned to properly deload, and with this valuable lesson in mind, I am sure Operation Boobies will be successful. I'll change my training plan, workout smarter and avoid injuries at all cost. All hinges on the result of my first cut though, as I don't want to start bulking again if I'm still too fat. Nevertheless, I am most excited about bulking again, and changing up my training, from my cut training, which is pretty boring. As promised in the last training article, here is the link, and the password is JuicyBooty576&(()$^$@).

 
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from niffyjiffy

What We Have in Common with Generative AI

The Test

Being a teacher, I’m often asked in casual conversation for my opinion on standardized testing. Once the conversation progresses past the usual banter about Bill Gates, Dan Quayle, and No Child Left Behind, I tend to present a couple of example problems. Consider the following two:

• Fred has 6 apples and eats 2 of them. How many apples does he have now? • Miss Flannery O’Shaughnessy owns an apple preserves shop. The apples arrive at a rate A(t) = 2500sin(2πt) + 3000 and are sold at a rate of 2000cos(2πt) + 3000, where t is in years since January 1, 2000. How much capacity does Flannery need in order to store the maximum surplus of apples she will accumulate? On the face of it the problems are quite different in complexity and in subject matter; however, their similarities are much more illuminating. I note in particular: • Both problems include all information necessary to solve the problem • The answer to both problems can be calculated to infinite accuracy • The solution path is unique and prescribable • To achieve the above three, the problem had to be written by somebody who already knows the solution and can be checked by someone who doesn’t

I find this formulation steers the conversation in a productive direction. People soon recall the absurd paint-by-numbers feeling they dealt with in school. It’s injurious to one's sense of creativity to realize that tests and homework involve reproducing an answer key that existed before you and that will outstay you by many years. The thought gives words to a student's nagging suspicion that they haven't learned to do anything at all, that our knowledge only exists if it is observed. It is a much better explanation for Impostor Syndrome; the pressure on students is immense, and that pressure is precisely to replicate a model student.

Although a canned math problem is the most obvious prototype of this phenomenon, this problem pervades most grade-level subjects. Biology classes are often criticized for their reliance on memorization, but this isn’t precise. Any application of biology, be it field research or medicine, requires even more memorization, so of course prerequisite classes must begin to build this base of knowledge. The problem is not that memorization is required, but that it is flowcharted. Questions are written suggestively, and students learn to react to words in the questions with a sentence they have learned by brute force. This is the reason that people respond so viscerally to the phrase “The mitochondrion is the powerhouse of the cell.” Nobody uses the word “mitochondrion” (or “powerhouse” for that matter) outside of this context, and students who learned biology just from school struggle to imagine mitochondrion as anything but an answer to bubble in.

Even English classes suffer from this. Although no essay stands a chance of replicating an answer key word for word, several innovations in essay technology have brought us perilously close. Rubrics now tend to specify a structure both for the external and internal organization of paragraphs, so if a student is struggling to find a voice, they can reduce the problem to filling information into a predetermined outline. Even the information itself is systematized; most English classes come with a list of themes, devices, and motifs that make for good body paragraphs. Thus, students who didn’t at all connect with a poem or novel they read can still write five paragraphs about how this effect was achieved.

Seen this way, a grade-school education amounts to measurement against an existing standard until success is achieved. Students are repetitively taught to a standard and small adjustments are made until they are close enough to merit a passing grade. No feedback is acquired directly from a student; their voice is their data. This ought to remind you of something.

ChatGPT

In ChatGPT, the modern student has found a strange but useful cellmate with whom they have a lot in common. Like a student, a generative AI is trained by showing it what it ought to produce, then making direct adjustments until it reaches that aim. A perfect AI algorithm will replicate patterns in style, content, and form by any means necessary. Naturally, AI is frighteningly good at school. For any assignment that comes with a clear scoring system, it is just a matter of time before AI pulverizes itself into a process that scores well. Despite this efficacy, AI is not always a great role model. One of the key problems an AI engineer must solve is the proficiency with which AI can cheat. If the goal is simply to get a good grade with as few adjustments as possible, copy-paste is a pretty good first attempt. Efforts are made to prune these emergent schemes, but as the AI’s thought lacks a visible essence, these illicit strategies always lurk somewhere beneath the surface.

Furthermore, the AI lacks any inherent confidence in its generations. Each algorithm is only worth as much as its ability to survive being measured. If it scores poorly, it will be crudely adjusted, whatever the cost, to get the number to go back up. Failing this, the algorithm will be pruned, or perhaps randomly overwritten until it starts to improve. This aspect of AI saddens me in a way that doesn’t generally reflect my conservative stance on AI personhood. Sensitivity to failure is something I see in a lot of my math students, even those who are generally in the habit of succeeding. Any value they calculate or inference they make is either answer or not, and numbers that are not immediately graded lack meaning and create anxiety. Students’ individuality and logic are extremely fragile, and students experiencing failure are more likely to discard what they tried than to build on it. Likewise, the hilarious creativity of early AI art was worth something, but this boldness and humor has receded as the AI gets closer to replicating DeviantArt with mathematical exactitude.

What is to Be Done

It is a disconcerting but ultimately reassuring discovery that the school that AI has mastered is not a one-to-one fit to knowledge or education. Had technology not dropped this gauntlet before us, I believe that Bill Gates and George Bush would be patting themselves on the back for their revamp of the education system. However, AI made clear that our students must become something more. The jobs built around subservient workers who respond well to Skinner-box-style management and restrictive goals are effectively ready to be replaced by AI. But AI has learned to shirk its strength in its convictions and to fear the playful stubbornness that creates invention and imagination. That’s there for our children to unlearn so that they may inherit the earth.

 
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from ThatOneGay

This is my first attempt at writing a Printhouse article which was inspired by the monthly book reviews of Elisa and Eddie. This will follow roughly the same concept as their reviews, but obviously with movies. I will be looking back over my Kino Night in Kanada reviews and reevaluating them, adding any new thoughts I have about these movies since watching them, or anything else I forgot to add in the reviews. I only watched 4 different movies this month, but since I re-watched Dune: Part Two three times after my first watch, I have had a busy month for movie watching in my estimation. With this in mind, I’m going to start with my retrospective on Dune. If I feel like it, I might change my rating of each film I watched here, but I’ll try to stick to mostly just putting down my thoughts. With that out of the way, on with the reviews!

DUNE (2021):

As I’ve said before, I’m a huge Dunehead, I’ve read the six books written by Frank Herbert and I’m currently re-reading Dune with some of the people from CMC. This movie is perhaps one of my favourites of all time, with my re-watch of it this month marking my eighth viewing. I adore everything about this movie, it’s such a beautiful spectacle of filmmaking, everything feels so grand and operatic and larger than life, I’m always grinning when I watch Dune. I won’t say it’s a perfect movie objectively, but it’s a perfect movie to me. I’ve listened to the soundtrack a few times and I’m always blown away with Hans Zimmer’s score, the cinematography by Greig Fraiser deserves the Oscar it won, and the design by Patrice Vermette works beautifully to help the setting. These three aspects of the film are the strongest, helping show the incredible vision Denis Villeneuve had for the film.

Since I loved the three aforementioned aspects of the film so much, I’ll give an example from each that I really liked. From the OST, the track “Arrakeen” is a great one, playing during the arrival of the Atreides family to Arrakis. It starts of with this strange high drone, and the ever-present drum hits that form part of the core musical theme in the movie, it works to highlight the strange and perilous journey that the main characters have just undertaken. The discomfort is represented by the droning notes, while the drums represent Arrakis itself. For the cinematography, there’s a shot late in the movie, the main characters are on the run from a safe house under attack and one of them has just died. Paul and Jessica run through a very tight corridor cut into the rock itself and the camera takes a point of view perspective from the two characters and executes a dolly zoom of the hallway coming up to meet them. It’s a disorientating shot that shows the panicked, grief-stricken moment for Paul and Jessica, as a friend of theirs’ has just died to save them while they run for their own.

What I thought was notable about the design was how the city of Arrakeen was envisioned. It’s a sandstone brutalism that I thought was quite interesting, the whole city and the governor’s palace look like one big bunker, protecting the human inhabitants from the sun and the elements. It makes the place come off as so alien and unwelcoming from the exterior, but inside the palace, its relatively comfortable, with high airy rooms with lots of natural light from narrow windows.

The editing of the film is something that I have admittedly not paid close attention to in my eight viewings, but it is quite good, it won an Oscar after all. There are a few scenes from the book that I know were filmed but ended up being cut, which is a shame, but is understandable, nonetheless. The dinner scene from the books is so iconic and I wish it could have been included but since it is a chapter with such interiority, with most of the chapter happening in the minds and thoughts of the characters that I understood the difficulty in translating that to the screen. If you want a good dive into an analysis of Dune’s editing, the YouTube video “Why Dune’s Editing Feels Different” by Thomas Flight is a good place to start. My promise to myself now is to watch Dune again, but this time focus on the editing to draw some deeper conclusions from it for myself.

I’m going to now touch on the writing quickly, probably more quickly than it deserves. I confess that I have more of a familiarity with the workings of score, cinematography, and design than I do with writing so my review and analysis of the writing here is likely going to be quite shallow.

The script itself is lifted largely from the book, there are some scenes that are created for the movie, I think that Leto being made into a more loving and caring father who does not seem as concerned for the continuation of his house, giving Paul an ‘out’ so to speak of being Duke is interesting. In the book the duke is a quite likable character, but he is a bit more Machiavellian. Since the movie must work on a shorter time scale, pretty much all characters either get elided to a degree or significantly less attention, which is just a normal part of the adaptational process. Returning to my point on Leto, he still is shown to be a loving father to Paul in the book, but he is more stiff, aristocratic, and formal than is shown in the movie, and I can’t imagine the book Leto saying it is alright if Paul chooses not to become the duke. Since I don’t want this review to be overly long, I’ll only talk about one more character’s writing before moving on.

Jessica in the movie was a bit of a surprise for me, when the movie came out, there were descriptors like “weepy” and “hysterical” being used by people who didn’t like her portrayal in the film. I will admit that I leaned in that direction after my first viewing, but with this review I am taking the whole performance into context here with a quick look at the book. Jessica only seems ‘overly emotional’ to me in scenes that are appropriate for it, and she mostly breaks down when she is alone. During the Gom Jabbar scene, she is crying while reciting the Bene Gesserit ‘Litany against Fear’ (I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer) precisely because she knows that she very well may have killed her own son, her only child, and she rightly fears for his life. In the book, Paul picks up on her fear before he undergoes the Gom Jabbar, and the book tells us that she quickly hides the minute signals that let Paul know her state of mind. In the movie when Jessica is summoned back into the room with Paul and the Reverend Mother, she opens the door quickly and anxiously, but has no visible signs of the emotions she was just experiencing. She breaks down again after the Reverend Mother and the other Bene Gesserit depart from Caladan, thinking she is alone after being scolded by her old mentor for almost getting her son killed and warned of the lethal danger on Arrakis. This is not a scene from the book, but it again shows Jessica’s state of mind, and when she is interrupted by Paul, she composes herself again quite quickly. To me these scenes show Jessica as a human, mother, and a Bene Gesserit with a mastery over herself. There are a few more instances I could give as examples, but this section has gotten so long already.

My final section will be a brief look at the acting, which unlike the last section I promise will be shorter. For range of emotion, Rebecca Ferguson as Jessica did perhaps the heaviest lifting, being the most present parent to Paul, teaching him Bene Gesserit skills that males are not allowed to learn. Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides plays his role well as both a warm but not totally there father to Paul, as well as a duke and leader. Timothee Chalamet, I think did fine in his role, to me it was serviceable, nothing that jumped out at me. I think every other character that appears in this movie does not get enough screen time (unfortunately) to really give a super deep dive into the performance, I will say the acting done by everyone in the movie is at its baseline, competent. This isn’t to say it was mediocre, but that it was professional and convincing, but not a lot of standout performances that wowed me. That part was largely done by the technical aspects of the film. With that, I’ll end my review of Dune with a strong recommendation, obviously I think the optimal viewing for this film is in theatres on IMAX, as that is what the movie was shot in. It is such a technically impressive film, a real spectacle, and it has a special place in my heart.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

In my original review of Dune: Part Two I said I was not taken with the movie as much as I was the first. That was only my first impression of it though. Since then, I have seen Dune: Part Two an additional 3 times, twice more in regular theatres and once in IMAX. The movie is much more impressive in IMAX, like Dune, Dune: Part Two is shot in IMAX so the shots are taller, there’s more to shots that are cropped in a regular screening, and the sound quality is more intense in IMAX, I know that the movie’s theatrical run is almost done, but if you can, I highly recommend watching it in IMAX. Both Dune movies are incredible spectacles, and IMAX only enhances that.

One of the main differences between the two movies for me is vibes-based. The first one seems to be a bit weightier and more confident in being a more unconventional and at times slower movie, it feels like the movie is saying ‘we’re doing something new and different, and we know it’s good.” The new Dune is a bit more action-y and a bit lighter then the first, they acknowledged people complaining that the first Dune was “humourless”, criticisms of which I despised. I think that quippy Marvel dialogue had predisposed people to expect that sort of thing in movies, but it was stupid in my eyes.

Once again, I adored the cinematography, Greig Fraser returned in his role as cinematographer, and he knocked it out of the park. I will mention a few points that stood out to me. The opening sequence of the film takes place during a solar eclipse, making for a sumptuous viewing experience. This obviously was the result of many different moving parts, with praise for the editor (Joe Walker returning as) and the visual effects team and the set designers as well. The whole sequence gets cast in an orange glow from the eclipse, the sky itself is an orange colour for most of it. It’s such an interesting way to dive right back into the story from where we left off, with action, spectacle, and a cool factor all perfectly blending. During this sequence there are two shots that I loved. The first one is of the desert dune stretching into the horizon, with the sky and sands the same colour of orange, meeting together in this totally alien image. It reminds me of some of the shots from Dune 1984, and I think it’s an homage to that.

The second sequence I want to bring up is the sequence that introduced Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (played excellently by Austin Butler). Honestly, the decision to have an extended sequence in the middle of the film to introduce a new and important character can be a gamble, but it paid off big time. It was such a great sequence that by the time it ended I was a little sad. The exterior scenes of Giedi Prime are shot in Infrared, giving everything a washed out, black and white palette. This effect heights the sense of Harkonnen brutality and emotion, making you feel their almost alien qualities.

The third shot that I adored is towards the end of the film, the emperor’s (played by Christopher Walken) ship is arriving on Arrakis, it is a chrome plated circle, massive in scale, and as it flies over Arrakeen it looms over you in the shot and you can see the city reflected on the ship as it passes over. It was one of the most interesting shots I’ve seen. After awe, my first thought was “how did they do that?” Obviously it was through visual effects, but how they achieved a mirror effect on a CGI spaceship was something I was fascinated by.

Also, the sequence of Paul and Feyd-Rautha’s duel was something I loved, there’s no music, minimal cuts, and great choreography, the shot of the two with poised to fight with Arrakis in the background is another winner from this movie. A final point I will mention is how much I enjoyed the way they depicted Paul’s visions in this movie, there’s always these bursts of orange and blue, hinting at the effects of the Spice on Paul, before they show fragmented shots and information, before Paul makes a fateful decision that renders them clear (praise to Joe Walker again for his creative editing here).

The score has a lot of the same tracks and leitmotifs as the first, but with a few new ones. Specifically, a theme for Feyd-Rautha that was great, it combined the some of the Harkonnen theme from the first movie with a new composition that includes these high-pitched and blaring industrial noises. To me it really helped show what kind of character Feyd-Rautha is in this movie. Since there was a lot of carry over from the first Dune in the soundtrack, it was not as impactful in its totality as it was in the first movie. Still, Hans Zimmer created a great soundtrack that was used excellently. The performances were stepped up a notch in this movie. Rebecca Ferguson still kills as Jessica, but a few of the main characters undergo a radical shift in this film, one of whom is Jessica. Ferguson handles this well, becoming something more sinister and scheming than what she was in the first movie. Timothee Chalamet gets a whole lot more to work with here, and really starts to shine, his character also undergoes a radical shift that he plays well. Here he gets to have more of a range to express Paul. I think that this is one of Chalemet’s best performances, a true achievement on his part.

Zendaya also is a standout here, in the first movie, she has very minimal screentime, and that is wholly made up for it here. She becomes an almost second protagonist, highlighting the contradictions and tensions in the story as Chani in a way she didn’t in the book. These two leads did great work together and separately in the film and I found myself more engaged with her character then I ever was in the book. As I mentioned above, Austin Butler is great as Feyd-Rautha, Paul’s dark mirror. He plays him as this young man who swings between rage and mirth. In a set of movies where the Harkonnens are much more serious and maybe even dull compared to their book counterparts, Butler brings some of that playfulness that one got to see in the book. Despite it being a more disturbed levity on Feyd-Rautha’s part, I loved how half the time he seemed on the verge of laughter, the corner of his mouth twitching up into a half smile.

Javier Bardem’s portrayal of Stilgar here is also more fleshed out, both from the first movie and from the book. He at times serves as a comic relief of sorts, even if Stilgar doesn’t think so himself. When I watched the movie for the second time with Spencer and Nick, Spencer said that he found that the humour slowly faded away as the movie got more serious. This was something I had not consciously noticed but think was dead on, it happens in the lighter moments and doesn’t ruin the tone of a scene at all. Bardem does a good job of threading change from levity to seriousness as the movie progress, like all the actors.

A few quickfire mentions of performances before I move on. Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan was a good one, she was in many ways a sort of audience character. Her scenes helped to illuminate the goings on in the background and to catch us up to speed on what happened in the last movie. Charlotte Rampling returned as the Reverand Mother Gaius Helen Mohaim, she had more to do in this film like pretty much everyone else. She plays the part of a grand puppet master well, and her interactions with Irulan help give some good scenes outside of Arrakis and Giedi Prime. Finally, David Bautista as Glossu Rabban Harkonnen gets a bit more screentime. His character remains the same overall from both movies, but Bautista plays him well, Rabban has a lot of big emotion that can be a bit much, but that’s more on the character writing. Still, he plays the part of this nasty and violent guy well.

Because Dune: Part Two is slightly longer than the first Dune, but adapts less material, the filmmakers had more room to bring something new to the film. As I mentioned, Chani is much more fleshed out and different here than in the book. Denis Villeneuve is a Dune fan and hopes to make a third film by adapting the book Dune: Messiah. A book that was written by Frank Herbert in reaction to people finding Paul a straightforward hero. Villeneuve takes this opportunity to cast Chani in a more prominent role, actively questioning Paul’s role and intentions, while still depicting a convincing relationship between the two. There is also a fleshing out of the Fremen and a creation of internal differences between the Fremen in this movie. A cultural divide between Fremen living in the north and the south of Arrakis was depicted which was not present in the books. I was onboard with this choice, and many of the others as well. I thought they were done with sincere care for the source material and a desire to either improve on aspects that were lacking, or to highlight themes that Frank Herbert wanted people to pick up on.

After all these viewings I can say that I love Dune: Part Two as much as I love Dune, it was such a great time and I once again highly recommend it.

Amadeus (1984):

Thinking back on Amadeus, I realize I perhaps undersold it in my original review. This is such a beauty of a film. Its scenes are so luxurious and full of life, it really is a great period piece. The music and the sets really make it such a treasure to dive into. I said before that the rivalry between Salieri and Mozart was the best part and I still maintain that but with an aside that the music and sets and costumes are a close second best. The fact that Salieri is seething with resentment and jealousy throughout the whole film makes it such a delicious drama. We are forced into his perspective because of how the movie is structured, with Mozart’s point of view only secondary. This lets the viewer ride along with Salieri’s emotions, to witness the anger when slighted by Mozart, intentionally or not, or his awe when witnessing Mozart’s work.

I watched the Director’s Cut, which did have one scene that went on for too long, in which Mozart is watching a play with his family, and I think it could’ve been cut by perhaps 2 or 3 minutes. Other than this I have no complaints about the movie.

The use of diegetic music was an inspired choice that really made it feel like you’re watching Salieri’s memories instead of a movie, and how he is haunted by Mozart’s genius through his entire life. My favourite part is still the scene in Mozart’s apartment where he and Salieri are working together, and I still think that there was some intention on Salieri’s part to harm Mozart by pushing him to work harder. Perhaps not a murderous intention, but a sinister one, nonetheless. I don’t have much more to say here, I mostly wanted to make it clearer that this was a good movie which is well worth the watch.

Starship Troopers (1997)

Starship Troopers is such a fun watch, guys. It has the glossy, sweaty sheen of 80s and 90s action flicks, with all the schlocky goodness that comes with it. Its satirical subtext is not so obscure that you would miss it on a casual viewing, so it’s not like it’s that dense of a movie. I don’t have much more to say that I haven’t already said in my Kino Night in Kanada review, other than to recommend that you watch this movie as soon as possible, preferably with friends and some beers.

The End: For Now

Since this is my first Monthly Movie Review, things will probably change as I go, reflecting any changes I think would make these reviews better. I also would like to hear from you, the readers. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for structure, style, and content. Future Monthly Movie Reviews will not cover all the movies I watched in a month, only the ones that I might have more to say on. Since I saw a small number of movies this month, I decided to write a bit about each of them to have some more substance to this article. Thank you for reading.

 
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from e-den

I love the return to form that is happening with café patrons reading more and sharing their reviews 🥰 Inspired by the reading roundups of Elisa & Eddie, I thought I'd share my reviews of what I’ve been reading thus far in 2024 (but in my own style).

I will preface this with the fact that I don't like to know too much about a book going in. I think going in mostly blind to most media is something I'm starting to really appreciate. It is for that reason that I won't say too much about the contents of the books in my reviews. I also will not ascribe a rating to each as 1) I don't care enough to keep track as I finish reads 2) you may feel differently and 3) most books land fairly neutral anyways.

So with that out of the way, let's get into my reading roundup for the first quarter of 2024…

Stats breakdown from Jan – Mar 2024

  • Total books read: ~7
  • Reading mediums: 1 physical book, 5 audiobooks, 1 e-book
  • Time spent reading: 34 hours

Books Read + Reviews

Heartstopper Volume 5 by Alice Oseman Medium: e-book copy of graphic novel

This was newly released in December 2023 and I was fortunate that I got to read this in the first week of January through the library. The Heartstopper graphic novels are such a comfort read, and this was no exception. This latest installment further explores Nick & Charlie's relationship, especially with Nick being in his senior year. Unlike most of the other volumes I read last year, the content of this one has not been captured in the show yet so it was especially endearing to get a glimpse of what's next for all the characters in this universe.

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport Medium: Audiobook

I read Newport’s Deep Work back in 2021 and I have had this one on my list since then. For anyone unfamiliar, Digital Minimalism is about being intentional with your technology use and curating how you want to interact with it so it only enriches your life. However, I think if I had read this back in 2021, some of the messages, insights, and action items would have been lost on me. Visiting this now that I am already somewhat in a state of digital minimalism allowed me to have new considerations for what this meant for me in my life, and how I might implement the takeaways. I will probably share more about this in another upcoming Printhouse article, but I do think it's a worthy read if the concept piques your interest.

Everyone in this Room will Someday be Dead by Emily Austin Medium: Audiobook

This was an… interesting one. I added this to my TBR based on a video from one of my favourite creators where she shared a minimal synopsis and did a live reading of an excerpt. The gist of this one is that it's about a young woman who struggles with social interactions and cues. The main character gets herself into some predicaments as a result, such as accidentally accepting a job where the previous employee died and getting in a relationship with someone she had no interest in dating in the first place. I think this tidbit about the previous employee dying lead me to expect something that leaned more thriller, but this was not the case. While I could appreciate some of the thought patterns and observations the main character makes, the whole thing is very stream of consciousness inner dialogue. That said, I think one of the beautiful things about reading is that it can expose us to different perspectives. So while I could not relate to a lot of what the protagonist experiences and normally would not have chosen this read for myself, I was able to expand my horizons. Additionally, I thought this book was set in New York or something so the narrator dropping Toronto-relevant names (and mispronouncing Elgin) was a jumpscare.

Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come – One Introvert’s Year of Saying Yes by Jessica Pan Medium: Audiobook

I think the title of this book downplays and does a disservice to what it actually has to offer. The book is part self-help and part memoir. It follows Jessica Pan, self-proclaimed Shintrovert (Shy Introvert), and her adventures over the course of a year to become more outgoing and confident. While this is what she identifies as her goal at the beginning of the process, and it does provide somewhat of a through line for her experiences, Pan touches on so many other themes and experiences. What stood out to me: her pursuit to make friends and the effort it entailed as an adult (especially as an expat); her candid reflections on loneliness; the perceptions by others of what she was doing; the lessons she picked up from her various mentors; her journey towards feeling more confident performing on stage; and above all, how to host a great dinner party. Although the beginning felt a bit preachy and pick me girl, Pan eventually finds her footing and transitions her storytelling into something vulnerable and endearing. Since I listened to this via audiobook, by the end I felt like I had been on a long wholesome phone call with an old friend. I think you'll appreciate this read if you want to break out of your shell more, make more meaningful connections with both new and old people in your life, and/or improve your social life.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang Medium: Audiobook

Wow. I think this is my favourite read of 2024 so far. This was another one of those books that came highly recommended by the BookTok community but where the synopsis was kept minimal. June Hayward is friends with Athena Liu, an Asian American author who is a successful starlet of the publishing industry. June witnesses the tragic death of Athena, takes the manuscript for Athena’s upcoming novel, and goes on to rework it and pass it off as her own. The only hiccup? The novel is about the history of Chinese labourers in WWI. And you guessed it… June is white. The book follows June’s actions and how she continues to double down on her lies. It's incredible how Kuang is able to oscillate June's racist delulus with brief moments of guilt and clarity. This has me even more interested to read Babel by this author now that I've been exposed to her writing style.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Hunger Games Prequel) by Suzanne Collins Medium: Physical

As far as a spin-off prequel about President Snow goes, this was quite good. I also found the world-building intriguing with how Panem, The Hunger Games, and other aspects we first visited in Katniss’ timeline came to be. Readers of The Hunger Games trilogy are treated to a number of moments of realization on the origins. Most of all, I didn't expect to be reading about Coriolanus Snow being horrendously down bad but there you go.

If I could sum this book up in one line it would be: boy gets his heart broken once and decides to make it everyone else's problem for the rest of his life.

Re: the film – I watched it the day after finishing the book and it felt very Shein quality to me. Looked good visually but upon closer inspection it's shabby and a rushed job. Naturally, the books will usually be better than the adaptation and have more details. I also get that film adaptations are a different medium so stories have to be told differently. But the movie really spoon-fed the audience in a way that downplayed their intelligence and cut out any payoff they might have experienced from piecing things together. There was also no chemistry between the main characters and it just felt like they were tolerating each other?? I think it would have fared better as a mini series.

Dune by Frank Herbert (Book 1 – Dune) Medium: Audiobook

I am pleasantly surprised to say I have really been enjoying reading Dune. Many thanks to Liam for putting us on to this and Noah for proposing the book club! Dune club has definitely made this large read more digestible and I've enjoyed discussing what we read week over week. That said, I'm constantly in awe of how intelligent the writing is and how deep we get to explore the thoughts and motivations of each character. Particularly how they must weigh their words so meticulously (an art I've always admired). The perspective switching is also done very seamlessly and heightens the immersive experience. I unfortunately think that the movie(s) will pale in comparison to me after reading the book but looking forward to it anyways. Lady Jessica is also such a girl boss and the concept of the Bene Gesserit is so cool.

Review of Book 2 & 3 to be covered in the next reading roundup.

Thanks for reading if you got this far!

Q1 2024 reads

 
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from Alex Black

Once again falling short in the playoff push last season against a pretty good team idk, the Blue Jays need a definitive step forward this season. Departures of Matt Chapman, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Jordan Hicks, Whit Merrifield, and Brandon Belt, although not major, are a lot of holes to fill for the Jays, and after failing to get Ohtani, they settled for a bunch of smaller role players to fill those spots. They signed pitcher Yariel Rodriguez to a five year deal, hoping he can show the same level of skill he showed in the World Baseball Classic for Cuba and in the Japanese Leagues. The Jays also ended up reacquiring Kiermaier on another one year deal, signed utility player Isiah Kiner-Falefa to a two year deal, and veteran third baseman Justin Turner to a one year deal. They also signed DH Daniel Vogelbach and veteran first baseman Joey Votto to minor league deals, which means if they perform well they can get a spot on the roster, and if not the team can release them. Santiago Espinal was also traded, opening up more second base opportunities for rookie David Schneider and Cavan Biggio.

The Blue Jays center core of George Springer, Bo Bichette, Vlad Jr, and the catching tandem of Danny Jansen (as I write this I found out he starts the season injured) and Alejandro Kirk all need to stay healthy, as well as perform to their ability. Vlad Jr has all the makings to become the A+ player his dad was, but needs to take a step forward this season. He currently holds the second highest arbitration salary at over 20 million, and has not performed to that price tag. With his free agency in a few years, the price tag will only go up, and if he does not perform to the Blue Jays standards, could get moved in the coming seasons. Alek Manoah is also returning to the big league roster after he fell apart last season for seemingly no reason. A player who skipped most of the minor leagues, and did not play in the 2020 season, Manoah missing a year of development in addition to fast tracking to the main roster could be a reason for his shakiness, and a fresh season with a full offseason of work could be the remedy for him.

With the Baltimore Orioles, New York Yankees, and Tampa Bay Rays all contenders for the AL East, its important that the Blue Jays stay as consistent as possible, something that has been trouble for them in the past. An excellent defensive team, the offense is the biggest question for them this year.

As of right now, the Blue Jays 2024 roster looks like this:

STARTING ROTATION – Jose Berrios, Kevin Gausman, Chris Bassitt, Yusei Kikuchi, Yariel Rodriguez/Alek Manoah/Mitch White

BULLPEN – Jordan Romano, Erik Swanson, Trevor Richards, Zach Pop, Nate Pearson, Tim Mayza, Chad Green, Genesis Cabrera, Yimi Garcia

CATCHERS – Danny Jansen, Alejandro Kirk, Brian Serven

INFIELDERS – Bo Bichette, Cavan Biggio, Ernie Clement, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Spencer Horwitz, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Davis Schneider, Justin Turner

OUTFIELDERS – Kevin Kiermaier, George Springer, Daulton Varsho, Cavan Biggio

DH – Justin Turner

 
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