I am writing this article as a small part of a larger series that will hopefully be useful for people getting into the gym, or broadly wanting to get a bit more into health and fitness. I have been in the gym for about 10 years, and it has been a cornerstone of an extremely tumultuous life.

The gym can be an amazing place. It can be a place where you go to improve yourself. It can be a place where you can become more familiar with your body and how it moves. It can be a place where you can go to get stronger to help those around you. It can be a place for meditative contemplation and taking stress out in a healthy way. Almost everyone I talk to says a very similar thing. The gym is always there for you. When things are going well, the gym can be there making you physically feel great too. When things are going terribly, the gym can be a place to focus and burn your energy, or just get away from it. It really is a good place to be, and in my opinion, almost everyone should be there in some capacity. I knew a guy, Steve, who couldn't move the bottom half of his body, and he asked me, a random 16-year-old he didn't know, to help lift him to machines and strap him in place to do his movements. If he can do it with confidence, you can too.

Health

Here are some general ideas of what constitutes physical health. It isn't everything, but everything is connected, and these give some good ideas to pay attention to.

Sleep: Good sleep will help with mental clarity and ability, physical ability, mood, and hormone function. If you feel like your sleep is really good, it is probably good enough. If you feel like you're always tired, waking up feeling terrible, or if you can't ever get to sleep, most sleep can be improved simply through less use of electronics before bed, having a consistent bedtime and wake-up time, and dialling in diet and exercise alongside it.

Diet: Knowing what you eat is important. Having an eating disorder is unhealthy. Broadly speaking, eat healthy foods most of the time, and ensure that you have general control over your eating. If you start snacking when you are stressed, be aware of it, and work on the root causes of the stress while working on not using food to solve it. Get a good amount of protein, there should be some protein in every meal. If you eat more than your body uses, your body should start to store that energy and gain weight. If you consume less than your body uses, your body will need to use those energy stores, and you will lose a bit of weight. This level is your TDEE, and online calculators aren't great at finding it. To start, just be aware of what you eat and try to make it a bit healthier if you so decide.

Movement: When you sit for a while, your body may feel stiff. If it was stiff, you would need to stretch to fix it. Stretching does not help, rather, you need to move your body more to get rid of that feeling. Your body needs to move. The contraction of your muscles helps pump blood around your body, and literally, your body is made to move. It is a body. If your work demands you sit for extended periods of time, walk around a little or do some push-ups every half hour. Steps aren't the be-all and end-all for movement, but it's not the worst metric. Get some steps in. Bike to work if possible. Do a couple of squats and push-ups at the very start of the day too if possible, getting your body moving after sleep is good for it and your mental health.

Aches and Pains: Your body likely has some aches. Chances are they don't need to be there unless you're doing something stupid and it only hurts when you do that stupid thing (my right wrist hurts when I throw someone and catch them with one hand while they are spinning). Find a good physio or related service, and get them to check out any annoying aches. Knee pain, elbow pain, neck pain, etc. Chances are you can live pretty pain-free, it's just a matter of knowing what is actually causing grief so you can fix it. Find an aggressive young physio. Over the last 10 years, we have discovered that the RICE method (Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate) can reduce pain, but actually slows down healing. Many still prescribe it to help with healing. Now, the general advice is to get things moving as fast as you can in a range that may be uncomfortable but isn't painful. If your physio tells you some bullshit like rest then do 2 generic exercises, it might be good to look for a new one.

Mental health: Be physically healthy, get paid enough, and have some friends you see frequently. Easier said than done, but frankly, this probably puts you 90% of the way to good mental health. Therapy can be useful too I suppose.

Supplements: Supplements can act as a little boost to a specific missing aspect of a diet. You can use a protein powder if you struggle to hit protein goals. Fish oil is good, creatine can be useful for athletes. You don't need to spend money on supplements. They can help a bit, but having a more consistent sleep pattern, diet, and exercise regimen will all trump the difference supplements make and it won't be close. That being said, get some blood work done and see if you have any vitamin deficiencies. Take something if one of them is notable. Women, iron is useful and is in your blood. Women have a general tendency to eat less as well as lose more blood than men. If you are frequently super tired or short of breath, look into it.

Movement

Here we will work with some basics, but I won't go into too too much detail.

You have bones, and tendons connect those bones to muscles. Muscles broadly connect things in your body and pull them together. When you grab something, you have forearm muscles that are contracting, pulling both ends closer together, and the magic of your body does this in such a way that closes your fingers. Try holding your forearm as you open and close your hands. Feel something moving? If so, the contraction is what you're feeling. If you don't feel anything, well, we can work on that.

So the body has a lot of these muscles, and they coordinate and do things for you. When you pick something up, you have to grab it with your hands, bend your arm, move your legs, straighten your back, and hold it up with your shoulders. Talking about each muscle individually takes too much effort, so I like to reduce it to fewer movement patterns.

Broadly speaking, your body's basic patterns are somewhere around: – Squatting: Crouching position –> Standing position – Pushing: Close to torso –> far from torso – Pulling: Far from torso –> close to torso – Twisting: Asymmetric forces on the body – Carrying: Holding and moving with something

I am leaving out a couple of movements commonly grouped in as basic movement patterns:

• lunging
  • I decided to keep things simple by counting this as an asymmetric squat. I think of this as a combination of squatting and twisting in terms of lifting weights.
• hinging
  • This is hinging around the hips to generate power instead of using legs alongside the hips. I decided that I would group this in with squatting purely because I think strictly hinging with no leg bend is an assistance movement and not as broad a movement pattern as the rest of these (at least in the gym).

I think these movement patterns are enough to have a pretty complete understanding of how you want your body to move when lifting weights. Pretty much every exercise can fall into these categories, or at least directly adjacent to one. For example, curls, which may start with a weight at your hip and end with a weight just in front of you, still serve to pull that weight closer to the part of your body your arm is attached to: the shoulder. Using your triceps would do the opposite. This broadly makes the biceps a pull muscle and the triceps a push muscle. Using this logic, we can categorize our muscles in a productive way for hitting the gym.

• Squatting: Legs, hips, lower back
• Pushing: Chest, shoulders, triceps
• Pulling: Upper back, lats, biceps
• Twisting: Abs, obliques, some back muscles
• Carrying: Forearms, traps, core muscles in general

Aspects of movement

Flexibility: The ability to bend, and the ability to remain strong in bent positions, broadly translates to how difficult it is for you to randomly get injured in everyday life (unless you have a condition that specifically makes it not so). Also, it makes things much more comfortable. If you do not use your body's full range of motion, your body will adapt to not using it. If you do use your body's range of motion, your body will adapt to using it. The best way to keep your body feeling great as you get older – or even just now – is literally to use it how you want to use it. Don't let your range of motion disappear. Someone who has not used their hips or stretched their legs may trip and fall as they get older and take quite an impact. Someone who has retained their ability to bend may be able to catch themselves much better with minimal discomfort.

Strength: How much you can exert yourself to lift weight. Strength is effectively the ability of your muscles to move mass. Heavier weights require more strength to move, lighter weights require less strength to move. If you can pick up something heavier, you have more strength at your disposal. A person who can pick up a 100-pound object may find an 80-pound object heavy. A person who can pick up a 400-pound object can probably readily pick up and move something that is 150 pounds. It is less strain to pick up something that is a smaller percentage of your total strength capacity, so becoming stronger makes things feel much easier and lighter. It also just feels so good to pick up something heavy.

Cardio: The ability to do things for an extended period of time. People are designed for endurance. Sweating is very effective at reducing our core temperature, and we have multiple great methods for getting around that we should take advantage of. If you cannot jog 3 to 5 kilometres right now, you might want to look into that. It doesn't have to be fast, you don't have to be pretty at the end of it, but if you can't, improving your cardio will generally improve your life. Hell, I'm not picky, choose biking or some other form of cardio and do a similar test. Cardio is the efficient long-term movement of your body, and not having it means your heart will have to work significantly harder than necessary to do far less work. There are tons of different ways to train cardio, chances are one will work for you.

Conditioning: Think of this as a blend between strength and cardio. OK, you can lift something heavy, but can you do it multiple times? Maybe you can move a big heavy box around. Can you do 50? If you're doing gardening or a friend is moving, one bag or box won't help too much, but having good conditioning means that you will be able to handle all kinds of challenges, and you can do it much longer than most people. Many strong people struggle when it comes to this. They can get big and lift heavy things, but get wiped in 5 minutes when it comes to actually doing something outside of the gym. Whatever lifts you do, make sure you sprinkle in some sets of very high reps (15 to 20) here and there, it is good for you and often helps find weak points.

Endpoint strength: How well does your body handle being pushed to the ends of its comfortable range of motion? It was thought for a long time when squatting that we should avoid our knees going over our toes because that is when most injuries occur. Turns out, training having your knees past your toes in a squat is good for athletes because they often end up in that position in their sport, and if they haven't trained it, it is now even more likely to get injured. Shoulder injuries, ankle injuries, and knee injuries are all extremely common. Lots of people feel unstable in certain ranges of motion. Training with some resistance in these weird positions can help your body learn to be comfortable in these positions and can stop you from getting injured if your body accidentally or unexpectedly gets forced into these positions.

Explosiveness: OK, so you can move heavy weight, but can you move it fast? From sprinting to fast deadlifts, explosiveness is very useful. It helps you move with better control faster, as well as can give comparable strength gains with significantly less weight. Explosiveness also carries a lot of fun. Sports and generally having impromptu fun, like chasing a stranger's dog, requires coordination and explosiveness whereas, without it, it just wouldn't be the same. A bonus to explosiveness is that it can help with weight goals. Having no fat makes explosive training tougher, the impacts hit harder. Having too much fat can also make it tougher, fat jiggles a bit, and too much fat doesn't feel amazing when doing sprints. I would know.

Getting started

Do not spend any money when getting started. If you have no old clothes you think you could work out in, get the cheapest crew shirts and whatever pants or shorts you can get a hold of for cheap and that's all you need. Old beater shoes are a gym staple. Spending money doesn't help in the gym (spare getting a gym membership). This is you, your brain, and your body. Your goals and what you have fun doing change over time. Early on, purchasing stuff might make you feel locked into liking one thing. If you want to run and your shoes are absolute garbage, maybe get some shoes.

Some apps might be able to assist you, like teaching you how to run and stopping you from just sprinting until you burn out, giving you a pace or something to work at. No need to buy one yet, there should be something free available.

Step 1: Exercise once. Get to the gym, go for a run, do some squats and some push-ups, go for a bike ride, fuck it literally anything. Before a meal, after a meal, in the morning, in the afternoon, at lunch, at night. Just get a little done. Make yourself a bit tired, then stop. Don't go insane and run a marathon, don't max out a deadlift, just do a little bit of something. A run around the block or a nearby park, go to the gym and go do some machines, they usually have pictures on them somewhere to show you how to use them. I've been doing this for around a decade and still looked around to figure out what the hell a machine was just yesterday. I sat in it facing the wrong way and looked for what I could grab. Nothing that way apparently. Ask for help, say you're new and ask a random person who looks confident to show you. I would find it incredibly strange if they said no, I have only ever had great experiences with it.

Step 2: Tell someone about it and tell them to check in on you in 2 or 3 days to make sure you've done another one. Even better, get a friend to start their little journey with you! Keep each other accountable, and make it a social experience. It's much nicer to go through anything with a friend, and it's also a good outlet to complain about soreness and such.

Step 3: Keep it up 3-4 times a week for a month (it's a jump I know I know). Have someone keeping you accountable, and if they ask you and you haven't completed it, you have to do it now. No need to do anything crazy, just make working out or going to the gym a habit. It starts feeling really good, trust me. If something is uncomfortable, maybe running is hurting your shins, maybe switch to biking weights, or swimming, which is nice on the joints. Just keep exercising.

The first step is to make a habit of doing some form of exercise. Don't worry about being great, no matter what you do, your goals will change in 5 years. Just have some fun and do something.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 :)

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

The Movie

I'm just riffing here because this movie blew my mind at just how little it blew my mind. Spoiler I guess? There isn't really much to spoil. I haven't watched a ton of movies, but because of that, I like movies a good chunk. They often feel new to me, I don't recognize all the patterns that make them predictable, and they can take me somewhere new. Even bad movies I can generally find good in.

Civil War was a brand-new experience for me. When the movie was done, I felt exactly the same as when it started. Literally no difference. The movie had no direct effect that lasted at all. I felt like I had time-travelled. My mood had nothing new, I gleaned no new info, no new experience. It was actually unreal how little anything this movie was, especially given that it looked pretty good.

At one point when I was talking to Shrey about music, he told me that while I listen to music, listen to the production, get lost in the stories, and think about the lyrics, he hears music. If it sounds nice enough it's nice enough. The only way I can explain this movie is that it isn't for people who watch movies, it is for people who see movies. It looks good, the characters move around, and there's a big conflict somewhere in there that the characters navigate from start to end. I went in knowing that it was apparently pretty apolitical somehow, but I wasn't expecting it to have absolutely nothing at all about anything anywhere.

So the movie follows some journalists in an American civil war who are trying to talk to the president. Let's start here because it seems to be something that happens. It is the ultimate quest that happens. First, why would the president listen to them? They have no reason. If they did manage to ask the president a question, why would he answer? No real reason. What question? The only character that poses some mediocre questions dies, so they really have nothing even if the president was with them and promised to answer. Do they make it? Well, kind of. They see the president but he just kind of dies. So this whole quest is just kind of nothing, so let's look smaller.

Maybe it is a larger quest of discovery in a chaotic world? Well, nothing is really discovered. Externally, the main group just navigates some problems on the way, which they navigate by saying they're the press. Everyone for some reason respects the press a ton and lets them do their thing. In an early sequence, the press are in the way and taking pictures while people are trying to rescue a shot comrade. No one cares about the press in the way taking pictures, they just kind of move on. No characters really develop. They don't even start with development, they just exist at the start. There seems to be an attempt at a “Come and See” like the development of a young photographer, but it ends up just being her looking into the camera a couple of times. Not even looking particularly messed up, it's just a person looking.

What happened

At some point, they are in a parking lot and take a picture of a helicopter. I forget if it was first but it didn't really do anything so I'll put it here anyway.

The gas station. They try to buy gas and the American dollar is worth nothing. Canadian dollars are more tempting. Some looters are being tortured. Nothing really happens, they just talk about the need to be brave and take pictures. OK. They just kind of walk around for a second, frankly, I completely forgot about the scene spare the joke about 300 USD buying a sandwich.

Next, they go to a place with a firefight and we get the above-mentioned scene where the press are just actively in the way. This does touch on a civil war being cruel and disorganized with killings of surrendered people, and I think was generally supposed to show that risk and show that there are indeed gunfights in this movie that might carry risk. 

They make a stop at a refugee camp where they drink around a fire, and hell, if we all just hung out real nice around a fire wouldn't life just be so nice? We wouldn't have to be so worried!

There is a sniper battle scene. This one is brutal. They get shot at so put their van in cover. They notice a sniper in full camo aiming at where the bullets are coming from, so... they run over to where the sniper is, flash their press badges, and try to talk to the snipers. This seems like the best way to get the sniper spotted, but anyway, the sniper naturally is with them. Who are you fighting for? I'm just keeping myself alive. Who are you fighting? The other guy. I feel like this was supposed to be a soldier solidarity of I fight not for the generals but for the guys in the foxhole next to me. All I can say is: “What?” Mate it's a civil war. You have chosen to be an active militant on your own and you are in a battle with one other person. If you don't have anyone in the foxhole and nor does the other person, then just, why? Also, the paint on the sniper seemed designed to not be able to be read as any alliance. This scene really bothered me. It was a real peak of feeling like it was supposed to be intense, but it was just the press fucking everything up, no one caring and everyone involved being sculpted to have as little political depth as possible, to the point of no character having any... character. Sometimes they do something a little shocking one way or another, but they are all so devoid of any real motivation or sense of place in the world. You know, maybe that's it. No character here feels like they have any real mission they are on because of their beliefs of the world. They are all just existing and doing something. Why? Well, you know.

So they needed to spice it up. One of the characters gets kidnapped and gets caught up with a pink sunglasses guy who is filling a mass grave. Interesting. Pink Glasses asks the characters where they are from and when the press people say American cities he says ”Yeah that's America.” A guy we barely met says Hong Kong and pink sunglasses kills him. OK. The press main guy who was apparently his friend starts I am a doctor screaming and the scene ends with an extra press person killing pink sunglasses with their car. This was the only scene that almost had a sovl. Ooh, xenophobia he doesn't like non-American Americans. I can see that happening. Somehow, it still felt like an apolitical guy. Like no real political anything. It didn't seem like a message of racism here and there in this system is bad and violent, it truly seemed like just a freak hick who did that and it was bad. Anyone can get behind that! Almost no one would think of themselves as that character, so it can pass. This is when the only character to think of questions for the president dies. Guess they have no real aim in their quest anymore.

They arrive at the base and realize the war is pretty much le over. The president is surrounded and has almost nothing left while the Cali-Texans have a lot. The scoop they had is done. The president is meaningless now since he lost. He isn't the president of anything, and if they reached him, they wouldn't get any questions because the president would get domed the second they got close with anyone. Anyways, they continue. This is the only time you see jets and they just kind of fly over the camera. Jets would be critical in this situation, but there you go.

Anyways, there is a pretty cool battle scene and the press does nothing but get more and more in the way of anything just to take pictures of hallways before any opps show up. Eventually one of them dies and it's supposed to be so dramatic but, you know, it really wasn't. They follow soldiers to the president and stop the soldiers from killing the president to get a final quote which is... “Don't let them kill me.” This felt rather underwhelming. 

So

This movie wasn't bad. It was truly nothing. No one did anything worth anything, no characters developed, and there was no political stance in a movie about an American civil war.

It felt like there was supposed to be a PTSD arc for the young photographer but it ended up manifesting as just her looking at the camera sometimes.

At one point I noticed how it really seemed like cameras were likened to guns and thought that could make a cool statement. Maybe the way we operate the press is violence? Maybe the way we just take pictures isn't actually helping people and we have a responsibility to do that? Or maybe it's just to show that the press is actually brave and cool guys!

I think we brought up two theories for what this movie was really about. One was about showing the chaos that America sows overseas and bringing it home to show what it is like to have a coup and political chaos, uprisings, and violence result from it. The other is that the press is the main bastion of truth in documenting what is really going on. It felt like the first option was something you could manifest, but the way the film is shot with taking pictures all the time makes it seem more like the second. The press shows us stuff may not be the most challenging take for anyone to digest, which seems to fit the feel of the movie as well.

So was it at least about how the civil war would really damage the fabric of everything? Well, in avoiding politics it kind of made no real sense why the civil war was actually happening. There were some words thrown around, but nothing that really felt like it truly explained what regime shift people really wanted that would truly sustain such a large mobilization and sustained effort. What it did do was show how you could be a cool journalist on the front lines of a big internal war capturing all these big stories. Also, the war was conclusive with the president losing, which makes starting a civil war seem much cooler. They killed the president! Kind of a pro-war macro and pro-war micro-scale film. I don't think this was intended.

What blew my mind is something that I found out later. Alex Garland, who had previously made Ex Machina and Annihilation, both of which I loved, both wrote and directed this. It is fascinating that someone could write and direct a film for A24, the art hoe film studio, and come up with a vision of an American civil war that is absolutely boneless. Not directed but someone else's ideas, not had a studio outline it but it got jacked or anything like that. This was a vision that was created from start to end by one person, and it is just so flaccid. How? It does look great. The pacing is good. It does have this overall visual delivery that I really enjoy. How did it end up that nothing?

Bonus

World War Z is a book that I really liked that had a terrible film adaptation. Well, it's not a terrible film, it's a fine enough zombie action movie, but it isn't World War Z. It just isn't like the book. We noted that the apocalypse America just looks like a zombie movie, be it deliberately or by association by this point. I couldn't help but think: of a movie about a journalist documenting something relatively impersonally, just relaying experiences as they happened, with great visuals and a really good knack for telling these short stories from all around. This movie could have been an amazing World War Z. The same visuals and overall direction given to the invasion of the white house could have made a phenomenal battle for Yonkers. Instead, it's boneless politics bait. There you go.

---

The press should be treated like police

Do not talk to them

They are the enemy of the people

---

Oncle

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.

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!

stonks

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&(()$^$@).

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.

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!

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

We are continuing on our mission with another three-letter group: NTM. This time we trade the heat of the south of France to the heat from the part of Paris with the worst reputation, Seine-St-Dennis or le 93 (9-3). Formed by Kool Shen and JoeyStarr, this group is with IAM, one of the first to bring french rap to international light. Today, we will be looking at their fourth and last album:

Suprême NTM -1998

Same thing here, we will look at a couple of song, and I'll break the flow by introducing some french tidbits here and there. Let's start with the first song after the intro.

Back dans les bacs

Here we are introduced to Kool Shen and JoeyStarr's rapping. They are wildly different from one another, where Kool Shen is clear and calm, JoeyStarr is a bit more raw and aggressive. The latter sounds like he always has a ton of phlegm in his throat and play on that during the album. This song is basically them just hyping themselves up, and propping up the album and their rapping after being absent for 3 years. They are celebrating the release of their album which is “Back dans les bacs” (back in the “bacs”, “bacs” are containers where CDs are sold in France). They also explain why they rap and reaffirm their devotion to hip hop rather than money. As for the music, for the rhythm it's your usual big bass, snare, high hats and some kind of synth for the melody. It is as expected, repetitive, but they play with the layers to keep it interesting. We're off to a good start: it's energetic, fun, and the rapping, if less technical than IAM, still flows well.

Laisse pas traîner ton fils

As for “Petit Frère” from IAM, this song is about the banlieues in France. Where “Petit Frère” was addressed to the elder siblings of the little bros, this song is addressed to their parents. The tittle roughly translates to “Don't let your son down”, but the phrasing “laisser trainer” in french is something we would use for dirty laundry, in the sense “don't leave your dirty laundry on the ground”. They start by explaining that with the year 2000 coming, the youth of this generation wasn't given the same deal as their elders, and the world is more hostile towards them. There is no work available, the system is broken and not working in their favour. The young folks coming up in this climate are silenced and ignored. The only possible way out for them, in their own eyes, is the streets, which are dangerous for multiple reasons, explains Kool Shen. He exhorts parents to listen to their kids, and give them the love and attention they deserve. JoeyStarr has a more personal relationship to this topic, as he explains, with his father being abusive and pushing him away, onto the streets. His father was always saying horrible things to him, assaulting him, leading JoeyStarr to seek validation in the streets. But to stay in the good grace of the family you make on the streets, you need to prove yourself, and — as Kool Shen relates — you have to be ready to do anything to retain their approval. The rest of the song continues in this fashion, warning about the dangers of pushing your kids away while the streets welcomes them. As far as rapping is concerned, Kool Shen gets a bit more technical and poetic here, aligning alliterations, metaphors, comparisons... It flows well and is contrasted by JoeyStarr's style, which is definitely more raw — some would say sloppy —, and maybe more expressive. It is surely less technical and melodic, but works as a “pouring my heart out”. On the beat: the bass is tight, and although the progression is simple, it works. For the melody, this is also repetitive, but works well as it doesn't step on the toes of the voices. Speaking of voices, there are some welcomed female vocals during the refrain, which bring some refreshing notes of melancholy/despair. There isn't much else I can say about the instrumentals in this style of hip hop anyway; the voices are at the forefront and the music serves the voices. The music can't do anything too crazy.

Aparte: JoeyStarr – a piece of shit

You can't really sing about being raised on the streets and having a terrible father, leading to needing to be violent and kinda fucked up, and not be violent and kinda fucked up. But we mustn't forget that JoeyStarr's upbringing and the abuse from his father are an explanations for his behaviour; not an exoneration. His condemnation with Kool Shen was the first one he had (see in the next song), but from 1999 and onward, he kept backsliding into actual crimes: he beat up his girlfriend, an air hostess, a random bystander, his ex, he owned a non-sterilised pitbull which almost ate someone else's dog, dealt cocaine, weed and possessed multiple firearms (firearms are almost completely forbidden in France), beat up another girlfriend, owned a protected animal — a tiny monkey which he beat up too... To a certain extent I can understand the will to separate the art from the artist, but nah. If the crimes had just been getting into fights with the police, dealing drugs and idk robbery... sure. But assaulting his girlfriends, women in general, abusing animals and endangering other people's animals is absolutely unforgivable. He unfortunately has somehow acquired a semblance of forgiveness in France; he is invited to talk shows, awards ceremony, does movies, voice acting for major roles... And every time some journalist asks him about his crimes, especially the domestic violence, he spews some bullshit like “sure, I hit her, but you have to be two to dance the tango”, implying that whatever girlfriend was asking for it/deserved it. This shows that he is absolutely not apologetic for what he has done, and deserves no forgiveness nor sympathy.

On est encore là, Pt 1 & On est encore là, Pt 2 (We're still here)

In this song, which is sorta in two parts, we will talk about a then, and now, relevant and fun topic in french hip hop: censorship! A song in one of NTM's previous albums, had ruffled a couple of feathers in the police (there is a joke here that I need you to understand; in France, the police is referred to as chickens instead of pigs. Police->Chicken->Feather, get it?) and they had been trialed and convicted of “outrage à la police” or in english “offense to the police”. Six month of prison time (three unsuspended), 50 000 francs fine — old french money before the euro — or 17 000CAD today AND prohibition from performing for six months was their sentence. This is crazy for such a mild song. In “Police”, they say that cops are often racists, violent, drunk and mentally challenged. The gist of the song is about how prejudiced the police is, how officers don't suffer consequences for any wrongdoing, and how they are actually just working for anyone high enough in the socio/political hierarchy. Good things that's not the case today :) In any case, let's move away from NTM and look at France in general

Hip Hop and censorship in France

In the homeland, for audio/visual media, the censorship regulatory body is the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (The Higher Audiovisual Council) or CSA. For as long as I can remember growing up, I always used to hear on the radio/TV about some artists getting in trouble with the CSA ever other week. To be entirely fair to the CSA, it is not complete censorship, stuff just can't be shown on TV or listened to on the radio (public or private). They also don't have any right to look at the content before it hits the TV or radio, they just act after the fact, based on reports. However, whether they ban something or not from the radio or TV is pretty arbitrary to say the least. In general, the enforcement of the laws is more than biased. Hip Hop artists get tackled all the time for what they say in songs, but racists saying shit on TV or the radio don't get flack. At the same time that NTM was convicted, the leader of the far right party in France said that “races were not all equal” (it is to note that using the word race for humans in France has a far stronger racist undertone than in english). The same person had also said that the Holocaust and gas chambers were just a minor detail in History and didn't get in trouble with the CSA or justice. The group we looked at in part one, IAM, also complained about this hypocrisy in “Dangereux” (also in the album I reviewed), where they said that everything that the journals, the TV and the radio were allowed to do and say was prohibited for them. One of the singer of IAM, Akhenaton was also summoned by a judge at one point for his lyrics.

Back to the song: after a really short intro, we are greeted with some hype. Big but non-intrusive bass, some nice strings, some piano in the background. Rhythmically cool and melodically interesting. Kool Shen starts rapping with communicative conviction. Obviously, he starts addressing the censorship of their song, and explains that if you're not already part of the established media, they will try to sink you. Nevertheless, he thanks those who listen, and those who despite the possible censorship continue to rap. After the refrain, JoeyStarr laments that they (the establishment) try to silence them, when him and Kool Shen are speaking for the people who can't. He wants to be allowed to speak, as it is the only thing he knows how to do to make things better. Kool Shen takes over and speaks about their condemnation, and the general hypocrisy, with other people saying much worse yet not getting in trouble. He also touches on the — then — recent surge in support for the far right across France, and says that it also affects the left, which becomes more and more right wing. To illustrate this, he points out one new law passed by the then “left wing” government, a law that restricts immigration further.

Let's judge the album as a whole: Length is good in this one, there are technically 16 songs, but there is an intro, outro an intermission and a song in two parts. This brings this album to 12 songs, which is more reasonable. Those make the album about 50 min long which is a good length, long enough to be able to get in the groove, but not too long that you wish the album ended already. It's a whole 20 min shorter than the previous album we looked at. Although I almost like this album on average more than the last one, it doesn't reach the heights of “L'école du micro d'argent” when it's good. One thing setting it back in my opinion is the mixing/mastering; the voices of JoeyStarr and Kool Shen do not cut well through the mix. It's not that they are drowned by the instrumentals, everything is clear and intelligible, but they just don't cut clearly above it. “C'est arrivé près d'chez toi” is a prime example of that, with the trebles spikes just way too loud compared to the voices. JoeyStarr's voice is also deeper than Kool Shen, but is mixed at the same level, and sometimes gets a bit drowned out by the bass. Speaking of JoeyStarr, he really is not on par with Kool Shen. His texts aren't as good, his rapping isn't as good, to top it off, he's an asshole. Despite those flaw, this album stills gets the second-highest seal of approval from me. I will however not buy it, not to support what I discussed in the aparte on JoeyStarr. I skip nothing here, every song is good, and when the album ends, I almost still want more. 17/20 Note: for those of you that find the french language off-putting but still want to experience NTM, they collaborated with Nas on a version of “Affirmative Action”.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

Bitcoin. NFTs. Artificial Intelligence. It feels like every couple of years, a newfangled technology leaps to prominence following the sudden enrichment of a few lucky people. Unfortunately, those lucky people tend to be unlikeable libertarians. This leads to a tendency among people who enjoy arguing with unlikeable libertarians to dismiss the technology outright. Admittedly, I am guilty of this. There may be or there may not be useful applications of the blockchain that aren't pyramid schemes built around collecting pixel art of chimpanzees, but the objectionable aesthetic of the people advancing the technology makes me biased against the core technology itself.

AI is different. The utility of AI technologies is obvious to anyone who isn't sticking their fingers in their ears or burying their head in the sand out of fear. AI tools like ChatGPT are being used and abused by millions of people. Image generation technology is producing images of increasingly astounding clarity. Every few months, a new tool exponentially more capable than what was being used even a year before is announced. Unlike NFTs – which have died, and Bitcoin – which lives in an endless yoyo of collapse and recovery, AI has already begun to be integrated into the social fabric in a way that makes it obvious that it is not going anywhere. Yet despite this widespread adoption, AI seems to fill many people with a not totally unreasonable dread. Digital artists in particular seem to be the most vocal critics of this technology. Their reactions to it vacillate between desperate fear of replacement and smug disdain towards its supposed incapability. In this article I'm going to address and respond to the response to AI from professional artists and their friends and allies: what they are right about and what they get wrong.

Are AI images art?

The most common criticism levied by artists is that AI is incapable of producing art. I suppose this opinion is subjective, as art is difficult to define, but I would strongly agree. AI is not an “artist” or a producer of art in itself, but a tool of production.

One of my favourite art commentators, Brad Troemel, points out that art fundamentally is an expression of subjective experience. In Troemel's opinion, art flows from the artist's relationship with and perception of the world around them. Each artist's style is unique and usually distinguishable, even if only subtly. I think this is a fairly intuitive statement. It's why diversity is valued so highly in art in a way that it isn't in warehouse work or manufacturing line supervision. The art world generally wants there to be a large range of subjective experiences among artists as it leads correspondingly to a wide range of artistic expression. The fact that AI “art” generators tend to produce images, poems, and stories that mimic human art implies that the AI is not engaging in art as an artist. While it is technically possible that the subjective experience of a diffusion model or a large language model is similar to a human's, I seriously doubt it. If AI were engaging in art as a producer rather than as a tool of production, we should expect it to produce something different from human art, possibly something incomprehensible or more akin to the average output of Deep Dream than Stable Diffusion. As it exists now, generative AI merely mimics what a probability model expects a human to produce. If a human is not involved in the design process of a piece, an AI art piece is merely a simulacrum of human expression.

To be art, a piece must be made with AI instead of by it. The qualitative distinction here is frustratingly unobjective. If I were to draw a stick figure scene and feed it into an image-to-image model, would the product be made by or with AI? If I draw 99% of a complete landscape and then use AI to generate a tree in the background of the image, is the final piece made by or with AI? In the latter case, how is the use of AI fundamentally different than the use of another assistive tool like a ruler or a compass? YOU may have hard answers to all of these questions, but that doesn't actually matter. The distinction between “too much” and the “right amount” of AI assistance in the artistic process will vary between different producers and consumers of art.

Are artists replaceable?

Artists aren't wrong to make the point that pure AI images are not art and I support that position, it's just irrelevant to the debate around generative AI. This point exists as a mask over the true dispute between digital artists and AI, which is that AI is a nearly apocalyptic threat to artists as a social class. In accusing images made with or by AI of being “fake” art, they are not motivated by some instinct to snobbishly gate-keep but by a material need to convince consumers of art that what they produce can not be replaced.

As a commodity, art has 2 broad use values. The first is art for its own sake. There is an “art world” of artists, galleries, and collectors that produce and consume art as a commodity due to the perception of art production as a noble pursuit. To the people in this world, the idea that AI could replace artists is farcical. Art exists to expose observers to a unique subjectivity. Fundamentally, the logic of the art world is an unusual condition of production. Artists in this sphere are monopoly producers, the value of their art determined largely by the perception of them as a brand. A piece by Banksy is more valuable than your average street artist not because of the socially necessary labour time of Banksy's work but because art by Banksy is a class of commodity in and of itself.

The art world only makes up a tiny fraction of art consumption. Most consumption of art falls under art's other use value: representation of a concept in the world at large. Images drawn by humans exist as book covers, advertisements, warning signs, representations of fictional characters, and even, unfortunately, pornography. The consumer of this class of art commodity is everyone. It is impossible to live in the 21st century and not consume some subset of this second class of art as a commodity. The vast majority of expenditure on this specific class of commodity art is done not for the love of art in and of itself but because the art serves some sort of social purpose.

It is true that AI can never replace artists whose art lies largely within the first category, but most working artists fall into the second category. They live on commissions or contracts or as designers within a corporate structure. It is this second category of artists whose position is threatened by AI image generation. Because their art is only art incidentally and is instead consumed for a purpose outside pure appreciation, their work could conceivably be replaced with an image that is not art, as long as it is a close enough approximation to still sufficiently fulfill the social purpose a human artist would've been hired to meet. It is certainly true that there are people who appreciate the artistry of book covers, print advertisements, and even road signs, but this appreciation is not why those forms of visual art are manufactured.

Of course, this is only a threat if AI is capable of fulfilling the social need common art fulfills. Digital artists' second refrain after “AI art is not art” is usually “Even if AI art is art, it isn't good art.” This isn't unfounded. There still exists a gap between human artists and AI art, but complaints made today are often “this high-quality image of a man has an extra finger” and not the complaint that “this image is not recognizable as a man” that people were making only a year or two ago. The progress of AI image generation has been extremely rapid and there isn't a good reason to believe we've reached a plateau in capability. Take for example the popular generator MidJourney. These are pairs of images generated from the same prompts one year apart:

“A superhero like Batman with a dark red futuristic cardinal themed costume. He has a mask with a beak. In comic book style.”

“A female teenage superhero. She has red hair. Her costume is Italy-themed. She has an Italian flag for a cape. In comic book style.”

AI image generation has progressed so incredibly fast that as early as 2022 it was found that image generators could literally be trained to use human brainwaves as a prompt to reconstruct an imagined image. (Takagi, Yu and Nishimoto, Shinji, 2022)

Image generation threatens the livelihood of the common artist and threatens to destroy them as a social class. This is the real source of animosity between artists and AI. The existence of AI image generation lowers the labour value of art as a commodity for its use value as a representation of a concept to well below the cost of hiring an artist to perform the same social function. The answer to “are artists replaceable” is in many cases, yes.

The future of artists

If you asked the average person whether or not they would rather buy a book that has a cover drawn by a human or an AI, they would probably say a human. But what about when it becomes impossible to tell the difference? What about if a book with an AI-drawn cover is a dollar cheaper? If you asked the average person if they would rather buy food grown by a local farmer or a farmer on the other side of the planet, they will probably SAY local but buy cheaper foreign produce anyway. When actually confronted with the consumer decision the cheaper option is chosen more often as long as it meets the same need.

To an outsider, the fight between artists and AI seems less like an ideological dispute between “pro” and “anti” AI and more like the impotent riots of the Luddites in Britain between 1811 and 1817. Just as the Luddites were unable to stop capitalism's tendency to concentrate wealth, proletarianize, and increase productivity so too will artists be unable to roll the world back to how it was before the AI explosion. As @h has said about this very topic, “the genie cannot be put back in the bottle.”

Even though artists are staring down an AI-generated image of a barrel of a gun, art will continue to be made. Artistic expression is a part of the human condition. Art will still be produced as a hobby and there will still be (a much smaller group of) artists able to survive by selling their art to common people, just as there are still people who sell artisanal candles and knit hats even though 99% of candles and hats are now mass produced.

There will also continue to be Banksys and Gerhard Richters. Artists whose art is a luxury product consumed within the community of the “art world.” These people will probably come to embrace AI as a useful tool like their predecessors did with the once unprestigious acrylic paint and plastic paint brushes. However, with the prospect of a professional career in art becoming even bleaker in a post-AI world, more of these people will be sons and daughters of the wealthy and connected within that already insular community of fine artists.

Capital concentration is inevitable and immiseration comes for us all. Artists are no exception.

Coming soon

It's been a long time since I published something on the printhouse. That's because I've fallen into a bad habit of starting research on an article, planning the article, and then coming up with an idea for a different article and starting all over again. As a result, I have an ever-clogging pipeline of articles in production. Look for the following coming in the indeterminate future: – Range Feudalism 2: If they are victims of this tendency, why do farmers tend to support this? – Software Exchange Value redux: my original article contains a fundamental error so I unpublished it. I'm reworking it and when it is released again, it's going to be very different from how it was before. – Automation: a follow-up to this article about the (im)possibility of AI technology totally replacing the proletariat. – Culture War: what is it and where does it come from? Is there any escape? – Deep learning From First Principles: an explanation of how exactly AI works assuming nothing but high school math knowledge.

I think in a previous article I promised to write Rage for the Machine, a history of the CIA's infiltration of anti-establishment/counter culture, but I've scrapped this article because a lot of the evidence is simply too schizophrenic or dubious.

Brief summary if you're interested in reading:

Apollo Kagwa is just beginning to settle into his new life as a committed and involved father, unlike his own father who abandoned him, when his wife Emma begins acting strange. Disconnected and uninterested in their new baby boy, Emma at first seems to be exhibiting signs of post-partum depression, but it becomes clear that her troubles go beyond that. Before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act—beyond any parent's comprehension—and vanishes, seemingly into thin air. Thus begins Apollo's journey through an enchanted world to find his wife.

Score: ⚫⚫⚫⚪⚪

Not what I expected but interesting enough (barely) to read through just out of curiosity for what happens next.

Summary if you're not interested in reading below:

I love thrillers and fantasy. But I did not sign up for 448 pages of parenting horror. I went through the entire book wondering when the fairies showed up AND THERE WERE NO FAIRIES.

Themes:

The theme was don't share your child's pictures on the internet or child predators (fantasy edition) will get them. This isn’t a joke. The bad guy starts kidnapping children so he can livestream them interacting and then getting eaten by a troll (there’s a line about SUBSCRIBER TIERS in the book).

The actual themes are that parenthood is difficult but a gift, love for your family conquers all, and generational trauma can be broken. And don’t share your child's pictures on the internet or child predators will get them. But the ending technology stuff is incredibly overwhelming compared to the emotional resolution for both Emma and Apollo.

A lot of technology shows up throughout the book halfway through – Patrice being a tech guru, William being a programmer, BOTH OF THEM WRITING SHITTY APPS?? Patrice wrote Daylight, an app that DRAINS IPAD BATTERY IN 4 MINUTES because SCREEN BRIGHTNESS. The other guy wrote an app that’s ‘airbnb for boats’ (how it’s actually described by him in the book). There’s a paragraph about Patrice’s big powerful machine with an Intel i7 blah blah blah- and there’s a ‘tell it to me in English’ scene too. I hate it here. The abrupt switch from ‘living normal life’ to ‘TECHNOLOGY IS HERE NOW’ wasn’t eased by any mention of tech advancements to clue the reader in.

Another issue I had was all the women either live off the grid or aren’t involved at all with technology. Why wasn’t Emma concerned at all with Apollo posting every detail of their son on Facebook? Why wasn’t there also at least an argument between the two about blaming him for posting so much when those stalking photos showed up? Pacing:

The first third of the book is about the life of Apollo, his grandfather’s and grandmother’s life, then his and his wife’s. It was kind of dull because it really, really wants to drill into you Apollo's daddy issues and his father's issues. The next 2 thirds meander through the big issue of Apollo struggling being a new parent and dealing with his wife's postpartum depression, except this time she's right to kill the child. There's a lot of ‘this was established, but that was wrong actually’ to switch up the story, but it's all people telling Apollo rather than him figuring out anything on his own. The same is true for the plot itself, with people sending him messages to tell him where to go.

And there's barely any magic. On the magic island he gets beat up with clubs.

In the last fourth of the book we really get into confrontation. The villain's father gives a monologue on why they do evil things in a noble attempt to give his son time to escape, and his son ignores his father's dead body to go back to the computer and spy on people through their laptops. He also calls the father of the family he's spying on a ‘beta cuck’.

Writing Style:

The descriptions and overall writing style is fine.

It’s annoying how the book keeps pulling out of the action of the scenes by referring to ‘us’. ‘Our solar system’, ‘your imagination’, small things like that peppered throughout the book that feel incredibly out of place while we’re still in the mind of the characters. It really does feel like the author is ‘telling’ you a story, in the way that a grandfather might tell a story to his fidgety young grandson by referring to him directly so he’d be more invested.

It happened again. I'm going to lose it. (Author’s note: I got used to this later, but it doesn't change my opinion that it sucks as a part of the writing ‘style’.)

The repetition of the main character’s reassurance to himself: “I am the god Apollo” is a really nice touch. It's repeated throughout the story at crucial moments, and anchors the character. This also has the very funny payoff (other than making you pay attention to his name) where you can clap at the end when you realise he kills the troll with sunlight. (Author’s note: Apollo is god of the sun)

Final Thoughts:

It's a solid book but not the book for me. I'm not a parent and I think technology is good actually and I already know that posting your child on the internet is stupid. I wish the characters were written better so more of them could feel alive rather than simple fixtures of Apollo's life. The brief moments with Cal from the magic island are so fun because she's allowed to be a person, not just a character in his orbit. Even though we read about Apollo's mom's life, we never see who she is afterwards outside of her being a hardworking immigrant mother to him. Emma's friends are completely written out of Apollo's life once Emma exits from his. Patrice suddenly becomes a tech guru halfway through the book because the story needs one to fight the super tech savvy guy (they reveal the bad guy as an internet troll too and it turns out the thing the children are being fed to is A MYTHICAL TROLL. WOW! Revolutionary for young boomers/old millenials who embody ‘old man yells at cloud’).

Really interesting themes of generational trauma and parenthood that get absolutely overwhelmed by ‘don’t spam post your child on the internet or the predators will kidnap them’ conclusion.

(This is an article that's been sitting in my notes bin for over half a year. I think I imagined I might add more to it, but I guess not. I wrote it, I haven't posted anything on here in a while, so what the hell..)

he surface of the planet is sleek, white ice without terrain as far as the eye can see, but for the snow dunes which rise and fall, moving over time as waves with the wind. Even in the insulated safety of your cockpit and hard-suit, you can feel the cold taunting your extremities- like an icy god playing with you on the tip of his knife. The only thing that lives here is the brutal and vast howling wind.

As your Mech carries you on the trek across this ghost-world, your mind wanders to the ice. You wonder how deep it goes, and remember that your briefing had no mention of that.

Suddenly the white-blue canvas of nothingness is pierced by a small black beetle crawling over the horizon- or it reminds you of one as it approaches from a great distance. But as it approaches, it is clear that these are no beetles. Hulking, almost waddling metal beings, holding close to the chest giant assault rifles and glaring back at you with a piercing red, glowing eye.

Nonno and Nonna's house was truly a portal to another place in time- homemade lasagna, a smell I had yet to learn was homemade wine, and so on. One thing was for certain though, Nonna would sit us down at the television and put on the channel that only plays 80's cartoons. It would become fairly obvious that she just wanted an excuse to watch Looney Tunes- but there was always one sound in particular that I was waiting for. Ever since then, myself and countless other idiot kids have been hooked on giant robots ever since.

There's a lot of reasons that the impossible mecha fantasy is attractive- It is something that is made by humans but is not human. The mecha robot is transcendent, an idealized form that we can assume. The mecha symbolizes more than any vehicle or weapon can on it's own; it is a projection of identity and a visual of raw titanic power. The psychology of mecha is a blogpost for another time, but the important thing is that it is a visceral genre that plays with expressions of self, power fantasies, and fascinations with machines- just all the stuff we're addicted to.

At some other indeterminate point in time, brother Noah sent me in the direction of LANCER, a tabletop game not unlike, and yet very unlike some dungeons and dragons you may be familiar with. Of course, I was enchanted by the artwork at first, which is brilliant. By Miguel Lopez and Tom Parkinson Morgan, (aka, Abbadon,) Lancer is a game where your players will be taking on the role of elite mechanized cavalry pilots, rivalled in skill by few, and taking on a galaxy of deadly machinery. In this post I'll mostly rave about the game, and share some snippets from our recently wrapped campaign, which spanned about a total 18 sessions, (or, by my crude estimation somewhere around 70 hours, give or take).

It started as a one-shot, just a short little adventure to try out the system and see if it would stick. I wrote up an intro mission called “OLD_DOG”, but there was a problem- we were going to need a team. A group of specially assembled psychos who were up to the challenge of the most nerdy shit known to all mankind...

You are aboard the Starship UNS Marigold, a small sized freighter ship that runs the edge of Union space, the outskirts of governed territory. When you had boarded the Marigold, you noted the bizarre asymmetry of the geometric craft- it seemed a miracle that this frankensteins starship could lift off the ground at all, though for that it gives no small thanks to an army of retractable stabilizing fins and growling blue thrusters. The only hint of elegance on this monstrous ship are the bright yellow and orange flowers painted along sections of the hull, seemingly having grown over the ship's previous markings.

Three realtime days have passed since takeoff. You knew that you had not been put aboard the most luxurious type of craft (in fact, this is probably as cheap as it gets,) but this had been torture- with no windows on the entire ship, and only a tiny crewman's quarter to call your own, what had only a few days earlier seemed a dauntingly large vessel quickly shrank into a cramped, claustrophobic box in the middle of outer space, with no exits. More than that, if you have never experienced zero-G environments before, you're probably only now getting used to your own weightlessness.

The setting of Lancer is one of the most unique pre-written settings I've seen for a game. Set in the impossibly distant future of 5016u, humanity has spread across the stars and become a vast, scattered and diasporan race. The only real galactic government is an organization called Union; a collection of worlds dedicated to equity and human rights. Recently reformed and re-consolidating its power, Union looks to turn a new leaf for the galaxy, and from its own checkered past.

Union and much of the galaxy at large exist in a state of post-capitalist, post-scarcity; thanks to the invention of 'printers', and an endless supply of resources thanks to space-travel, there is no need for such primitive class struggles. The revolution has happened, and it happened a millennium ago. For many, the barbarism of capitalist society is not even a memory. But not all the galaxy is so enlightened, or free. This is the Union's great project, and where our heroes come in.

The dystopian science fiction has become deeply engrained in the greater genre, and is not entirely without it's merits. A dystopian fiction has much to say about real life issues, reflecting on a dark future that when done well, is the consequence of the poor choices humanity makes today. Indeed there is much value in the cautionary tale- but we also need fictions to aspire to, fictions that give us hope for a brighter day. While Lancer's galaxy is far from perfect, it is a fiction built around a hopeful future.

A 'lancer' is essentially a term for an ace pilot, a mecha pilot whose skills are a cut above the rest by virtue of raw talent or special training. Imagine a galaxy populated with human life- how many more geniuses, incredible talents and wunderkinds would be produced. Some of these wunderkinds become Lancers.

First in no particular order, was Sebastian Silverago, a farmboy from the deep-union world Karthas who likes to set things on fire. In his pee-paw's old mech, he signed up with Union to improve his skills in the mech-tourneys. Then there was Cordelia Darlington, a pale-haired princess and a deadly markswoman from the serene world of Vernado, accompanied by her retinue of protective royal mechanics. In order to earn her birthright, she took to the battlefield. Finally, Mercury Callaghan: The man from the edge of the galaxy. An experienced killer and an ex-pirate looking to make good with the law, you can always count on Callaghan to do something unconventional, or potentially insane.

The game system itself though, could fit right into whatever type of world you can think to make it work in, with minimal tweaking.

 
THE GALAXY OF "LANCER, The 1984 Original Series"
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1. Cradle     4. Vernado
2. Karrakis   5. Nebula Terminal
3. Karthas    6. Ichor

Building Lancer characters is based more around the horizontal progression than slowly powering up over time. Each frame (essentially your robot's class,) has three levels you can put into it. Mixing and matching parts from different machine archetypes to create something nasty and effective is the fun of Lancer characters, taking all the options in the book and making a sheet that feels truly unique to your character.

Like a shower-curtain, the goliath pushes aside brick, splintering wood and shattering glass. The goliath's red eye scans the battlefield, assessing. Even now, you know that the UNS Marigold has begun its descent from above the clouds. The clock is ticking now.

The Goliath points this giant's shotgun, bearing a giant shield mounted on the upper arm which is inscribed with the names of the dead of the city guard. A resounding BROOOOOMP! erupts from the black barrel of this sonic weapon.

Let's face it, when it comes to D&D combat mechanics, it is what it is. There are some times that rolls simply need to be fudged on the other side of that screen, and that's just a necessity for extracting narrative tension from those mechanics. After your turn is over, you begin a new quest to find the bottom of the pretzel bowl, because you will be doing nothing at all for the next 20 minutes. In Lancer, it never felt necessary to do any of that, and while I don't have an exact answer why, I have to imagine it's because the combat feels so interactive as it is.

I would joke that I had successfully tricked everyone into just playing a wargame with me, but it is true in a lot of ways. In Lancer, you're going to be thinking about things like line of sight, range, cover, terrain, and team tactics. More-so, as the GM, setting traps for players has never felt so devious and evil.

The most interesting, and interactive part of the whole game is the way Lancer handles initiative. You wont be rolling or adding any agility bonuses. Instead, each team decides their own turn order as the round progresses. This leads to some seriously interesting strategic decisions. Should Callaghan go first, trying and take down the big opponent with his melee attacks, or allow Cordelia to try her smartgun on the invisible assassins, but meanwhile risking a big attack on himself from the enemy demolisher? There were plenty of moments where the difference in the decision of which party member would go first was palpably the difference between life and death- and watching the party seriously discuss the merits of their options is one of the true joys of GMing.

Likewise, as a GM you will begin to think tactically as well. Player characters in Lancer are powerful from the start, and this really enables a DM to stop pulling punches- making things deadly in this game rewards the experience greatly. Of course, you don't do this by padding npc stats (usually,) but by fielding considered teams of NPCs that have their own strategies and can compensate for each other's weaknesses. Want to add some snipers to the next fight to really force the players to use cover?– better add some defenders to protect against a straight charge, or a controller to provide an additional distraction. As aforementioned, Lancer is kind of a game for when the GM wants to play killteam, but the players want a roleplaying game, and in my opinion, it fuses the best of both worlds.

Lancer is clearly though not explicitly inspired by battletech, but takes advantage of the recent and gushing influx of D&D roleplayers by taking that tactical, interactive combat and making it player-sided and diverse enough to work with the 'new crowd'.

Let me put it this way, it's like battletech, except not for old geezers. This is the young folks' battletech, a battletech for blue-haired baristas, for graphic-tee loving anarcho-communists, and for tumblr girlies- which is deeply to its credit. (battletech also rules btw)

Towering mechs bearing waving banners have turned the sky into a patchwork quilt of many colours. Knights, Union Soldiers, and freelancers have formed the united army that now marches on enemy ground. Above your own heads a black banner flies, on which a coiling red dragon holds an orange flower between its fangs.

Your band marches past smoking craters, destroyed homes, and a large but deliberately placed metal slate, painted with obscenities and most prolifically; “UNION DOGS, FUCK OFF AND GO HOME!” The heavy rain has made alliance with the blistering winds which bombard your company.

Your skin yet stings from the kiss of the tattoo artist's laser brush, but by now you are built of tougher stuff and it is barely a fleeting nuisance to your senses. You are running on little sleep, but you've gone with less. Ahead may be your greatest battle yet- a siege that may end the war on the planet called Ichor.

If you can get an enthusiastic group together to play Lancer, I highly recommend. We probably got lucky, because any rpg group is a unique and singular dynamic, and everybody just really understood the vibe of the game. Sometimes the rules can get a little crunchy and you might have to crack open and check the rules on something now and again, but it's not overbearing on the overall experience.

LANCER, The 1984 Original Series (a story only four people will ever know): PART ONE 1. Pilot(s) 2. Trial By Fire 3. Beer Pong 4. Goodbye, Centurion 5. Dragonslayers 6. Left Behind 7. Rescue Part I 8. Rescue Part II 9. The LANCER Halloween Special PART TWO 1. Time-Bomb 2. The LANCER Holiday Special 3. Red Wire 4. Glass Throne 5. The Phantom Centurion 6. One Last Night on Ichor 7. Tombworld 8. He said, “I guess I'm just homesick.”

further reading: – massif press – transformers, the movie – Neon Genesis Evangelion – zeroranger