Monthly Archives: November 2022

The Collateral Damage in Boycotting The Harry Potter Movies

 

J.K. Rowling, having proved that her ‘plea for tolerance’ had quite stark limits, had enraged numerous people with comments and opinions on trans people. This has prompted the quite predictable backlash not only against her but the properties that carry her name, principally the Harry Potter Franchise, inspiring fan driven boycotts.

When it comes to the published novels there are very limited financial effects beyond Rowling and her publisher. No one else shares on royalties from each copy sold and so with each copy boycotted one Rowling and publishers suffer a loss, albeit a very tiny one.

The same is not true when it comes to the movies.

Feature films have a much larger number of people who derive continuing financial benefits from each copy sold or rented. In addition to the performers, both the ones catapulted to stardom and those who continue to be working actors, the two screenwriters, four directors, six cinematographers, five editors, five composers, and others are denied residuals with each copy not rented or sold.

Yes, the amount of money per rental or sale is quite small, btu that is true to Rowling as well.

I am not telling you that you should not boycott the Harry Potter movies, or the films of other detestable people, looking at you Polanski, but you should know that those shells are landing on others besides your hated targets. If you boycott, do it informed and aware of everyone effected.

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Greg Bear Has Left

Greg Bear Has Left

Following complication from surgery, SF author Greg Bear passed away this weekend.

I have read many but not all of his works and found his writing to be clear, smart, and entertaining. Twice I had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with this noted writer, both times at room parties at conventions.

The more humorous chat concerned his novel Anvil of Stars in which a human ship with alien assistance is one a quest to discover and destroy the civilization that annihilated Earth by completely shattering the planet. Being of quite limited means at the time I had purchased my copy of the novel from a used bookstore. (Let us now also mourn the passing to Adamas Avenue Books as well.) Shortly after the characters have launched their won civilization ending vengeance the next several pages confirmed if they had in fact correctly located the guilty party. The several pages that were in fact missing from my copy.

I relayed this to Bear, and he responded with a jesting tone that’s what I deserved for cheating him out of a royalty.

As I said it was in jest and he laughed as he pronounced my sentence. From panel discussions and those who knew him Greg Bear seemed a thoughtful, considerate, and good man. He will be missed.

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Streaming Review: The Bombardment

 

A Danish/Netflix co-production The Bombardment is dramatization of an RAF raid that mistakenly bombed a religious school in addition to the target the national headquarters for the Gestapo.

In March 1945 the Danish resistance feared that the Gestapo were on the verge of destroying Netflixtheir organization and after much pleading and the Gestapo’s use of captured resistance member as human shields the RAF launches Operation Carthage, a daring low-level raid to bomb the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen.

The Bombardment, titled The Shadow in my Eye in Denmark, uses fictional characters to explore the events leading up to and immediately following the raid.

Henry – a young boy traumatized by an aerial attack he witnessed and now with a crippling fear of open skies and psychosomatic muteness.

Rigmor — Henry’s cousin and a very self-assured and outgoing young girl. Henry comes to live with her in the city where he can better grapple with his fear of the open sky.

Eva — Rigmor’s younger friend who has also witnessed the brutality of the war.

Teresa — a nun in training and teacher at the school whose faith has been damaged by the horrors of the war.

Frederick – a young man collaborating with the occupying Nazis who becomes infatuated with Teresa.

The Bombardment does a fine job capturing the daily life of the people of Copenhagen as they deal with both the tedium of normal life alongside with the terror and brutality of German occupation. The film’s opening text establishes the coming disaster giving the normal daily life a cloud of impending doom.  It also does a fair representation of the tragic accident that led several of the bombers in the flight to attack the school instead of their intended target. While characters grow and change by their encounter with the bombing the film actually leans back from making any grand statement about war, leaving such conclusions to each viewer’s own interpretation. While not a film I will revisit or even find terribly memorable The Bombardment is competently constructed and does not overstay its welcome.

The Bombardment streams on Netflix.

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The Senate is Kherson

 

In the last week Ukrainian forces liberated the city of Kherson from the murderous Russian forces while in the United States the Democratic Party not only retained control of Senate but quite possibly expanded their number, while limiting fascistic GOPers to very limited gains within the House of Representatives.

Yes, I am drawing a direct and clear parallel between the Russian butchery in Ukraine and the attempts to end American Democracy. If this upsets someone, I don’t care. American Democracy is far from perfect but by the blood, toil, and death of patriots it has expanded until the current incarnation of the Republican party devoted itself to self-serving sanctimonious power over liberty. American Democracy is something I will defend unlike those lying false pretenders.

The liberation of Kherson is not the end of the Ukrainian war, it is like Operation Torch in the European theater but one step closer to that victory, not the victory itself. And the same with the election. The Senate was saved and the House crippled but the war wages on, Berlin lies ahead for our democratic army not behind us.

The Japanese Emperor surrendered his nation and saved his people from a devastating invasion and from incalculable death while the mad men of Nazi Germany clung to their evil dreams and destroyed their nation. So, it will be with the Modern Republican party. The evil men now with their rigor mortis clenched fingers on the tiller will not surrender their controls, they will not save their people but rather insist that sacrifice everything to save the leaders’ precious bank accounts. This is an electoral war of destruction and until the GOP is burned to the ground and rebuilt it will go on.

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Series Review: ANDOR

 

First off let me say that posting will be light here for the next few months. I work in the enrollment department of a Medicare Advantage Health Care company and there will be hours and hours and hours of overtime work during this Annual Enrollment Period. Now, onto the review.

Andor is the Disney + series fleshing out the backstory of the character Cassian Andor see in the feature film Rouge One: A Star Wars Story. When the series was announced I was less than enthused and frankly rather skeptical. Cassian was mildly interesting in the film, which I enjoyed, but I felt no burning desire to know him better. When the cast list was released and it was clear there would be no return of everyone’s favorite sassy droid, K2SO, my interest in the series fell even further. With the bland and disappointing The Book of Bobba Fett I very nearly skipped this show.

I am so glad I did not.

Andor is the gritty, morally ambiguous story of the birth of the rebellion and Cassian’s recruitment into it. This is not a redressed fairy tale with knight, wizards, mysticism, and farm boys. Instead, we are dropped into a space opera world that is all too familiar to us. Cassian is a petty criminal, surviving on the edges of the Galactic Empire by selling stollen equipment. The

Disney Studios

oppressive fascistic empire is everywhere and callus in its disinterest towards it subjugated population. The resistance is fracture between zealots, politicians, and thieves. The Intelligence Bureau is a pit of backstabbing careerists, but some are intelligent and talented, presenting a far more real and recognizable threat than cartoonish villainy. The prison labor, its injustice and cruelty, is familiar to anyone with passing knowledge of reality’s greatest incarcerator.

Despite the startling white set, the clean rich apartments of its elite characters, Andor has a very noirish feeling to its story. Again and again characters are forced to compromise their personal morals on the altar of the ‘greater good.’

I adore this series with its rich characterization, its willingness to abandon ‘heroic’ tropes, and get its hands dirtywith the nasty, ugly, violent, and degrading business of revolution.

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I Failed My Players

 

Saturday Afternoon/Evening I ran my Space Opera TTRPG for my dear friends and sadly my brain betrayed me, and I achieved none of the tone or mood I has hoped for.

It was not a lack of preparation. I had worked my spreadsheets and gotten all the data collected I would I need, I wrote up an outline of the adventure, the characters, and the goals.

(A brief word on the spreadsheets. Space Opera from FGU came out in the 80s and is a very computation intensive game. Now, in the second decade of the 21st century I have crafted 9 spreadsheets to track the dates, the training, the distances traveled, the fuel used, and many other factors. I am quite proud of these sheets.)

However, when I got to the game, my brain failed completely. I was unable to sequence events properly and barely remained coherent as I ran the session. I ended the session early — was particularly disappointing as we had an unavoidable late start — and barely made it home awake.

I don’t know if it was a rejection, I received earlier in the week that had undermined my morale or a lack of good sleep due to apnea mask issues or some other factor, but it really hurt my weekend. Even more than the migraine I suffered the next day.

I shall have to make sure to not repeat this piss poor performance. I care too much for my players to want to ever have that happen again.

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The Shared Fantasy Element of Star Wars & The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

 

On a surface examination it would seem that the pop space fantasy Star Wars and the ground hard sf novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress would have very little in common. One is a fairy tale quest reimagined in a galaxy far away taking place long ago while the other is retelling of the American Revolution set on a lunar penal colony.

Both are concerned with the overthrow of a cruel dictatorial government, one a cartoonishly evil emperor the other a multinational penal system condemning the guilty and the innocent.

But both works have a fantasy element in common, an unbelievably restrained set of revolutionaries.

Revolutions eat their young is a common sentiment. In reality, all too often after a successful revolution and the old guard is turned out, usually fatally, the next most common occurrence is the revolutionaries turn on each other. Divisions that had been set aside as they fought a common enemy resurface and what starts as disagreement turns quickly into violence and assassination.

It often takes a stiff spine and stomach to throw a revolution and it’s very easy to drift across the line from moral action into ‘the ends justify the means.’ After that the will to perform ‘questionable’ acts to win is easily turned against former allies.

In both Star Wars and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress the revolutionaries are upstanding characters that never got their hands truly dirty. The Empire is toppled and it is all just flowers and puppies and a new Republic is born.  In Moon Manny and his conspirators tried to rig the government so that they remained in power but lacking the blood methods usually employed to neutralize former allies they found themselves outmaneuvered and despite their intent an independent government formed.

I got thinking about this because the newest Star Wars television series Andor is gritty, grey, and morally dark.

I love it.

Andor feels real. It feels like the hard choices and nasty work of throwing a revolution. It flies directly opposed to the fantasy revolt of Star Wars and luckily for continuity it will never reach the post revolution period, but until it ends, I plan to be along for the ride.

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My 2024-2025 Nightmare Scenario

 

A disaster in 2025 is possibly being laide next week here in 2022. Next week throughout the country vital positions in government are being contested by conspiracy-minded election deniers. Should they win offices in enough future battle groups states then they will be able to subvert our constitutional republic in the presidential elections of 2024.

It will not take many victories to place into vital offices, such as various Secretaries of State to make it possible for these antidemocratic Republicans to either submit a slate of electors of their own choosing or simply submit none at all. Either way with the battleground states at the tipping point thy would be able to install a wholly illegitimate Republican president, one that is very likely to be again Trump.

We would begin 2025 with a president who not only lost the popular votes but only by corrupt means installed into office. The souther enslaving states declared their secession from the Union because Lincoln won the presidency without a single Southern electoral vote but the election itself was seen as legitimate. The election and installing of an illegitimate president will be a magnitude worse.

When this corrupt presidency issues executive orders and action what will be the reaction of the deep blue Democratic states? Will California, Oregon, Washington, New York, and others ‘bend the knee’ to the white house?

I doubt it.

Will they honor the Supreme Court when its social conservative majority rules against them?

I doubt it.

There you have the shattering of our Constitutional Republic.

There you have the end of the Union.

Next Tuesday the future is in your hands, choose wisely.

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