Fiction Break: A Still Point In Time 5

Stark Expo, 13 June, 1942

Clara strolled into the Modern Marvels Pavilion, arm-in-arm with the handsome young man she thought would one day become Captain America. She took in the sights, gasping appreciatively as the dark-haired man in uniform pointed at the displays. The Doctor was doing his best to ignore the scrawny young man that Barnes had brought along with him, surreptitiously scanning with his sonic screwdriver when no one was looking. Clara wasn't sure why they needed the disguises, let alone why the Doctor was holographically disguised as a young woman, but she was playing along for now.

They had passed a display that claimed to be a robot of some kind, but looked like a man in a red suit, when the Doctor's face lit up and he pulled Clara and Barnes towards a stage where a red car was parked.


via Gfycat

"Ladies and gentlemen, Mister Howard Stark!" came a disembodied voice as a dapper man with a moustache and top hat joined several showgirls in front of the car. He gave one a kiss before trading his top hat for a microphone and addressed the crowd, "Ladies and gentlemen: What if I told you that in just a few short years, your automobile won't even have to touch the ground at all?" The showgirls removed the tires, and then the man flipped a switch.

The car began to hum and lift slowly off the ground. Clara gasped a little, and then giggled when she heard the Doctor scoff slightly, the sound of which was amusingly strange coming out of his now-feminine mouth.

He tilted his hand towards the stage as the sonic screwdriver pitched up and whined in sync with the hum of the car. Suddenly, sparks flew from the gadgets in the wheel well and the car dropped gracelessly.

"I did say it'd be a few years, didn't I?" The dapper man said, still smiling, and the crowd applauded.


The Time Vortex

After she'd had her fill of dancing with her new friend Bucky, Clara and the Doctor returned to the TARDIS. "Do you plan on staying that way?" she asked.

"Hm? Stay what way?" he answered distractedly, already working the control console.

Clara gave him an arch look and gestured at the Doctor's red dress and platinum curls.

"Oh, right, that." He cleared his throat and flicked a switch, the hologram vanishing and his vulture-like features returning.

Clara breathed a sigh of relief. "So what was all that back there? I don't recall flying cars in my own time, let alone the 1940s."

"Exactly right." He adjusteda few controls to bring up a diagram of lines extrapolated from the scalpel. "The man you just saw on stage was Howard Stark. In your universe, he was killed by a corporate rival of his family as a teenager. In this universe, he lived to adulthood and was a prolific inventor. What we saw was the tipping point of this timeline. In one version, the car levitates successfully, he gets a government contract, flying cars in World War II, Nazis copy them, chaos ensues. In another timeline, the car failed catastrophically, killing Stark." The Doctor turned the dial again, revealing another timeline. "According to the TARDIS databanks, this was the best possible outcome. Stark lives, Captain America is born, and a golden age of super heroes is ushered in decades later."

"But, Doctor, that's three."

"Ehm?"

Clara's brow furrowed, "That's three. You said earlier there were two timelines, but you just listed off three."

"Well, there was a war on, Clara," the Doctor grumbled, "It's possible I miscounted."

Clara giggled at his irritation, and as the Doctor noticed he decided to change the subject, "What say we go give the good news to our friend in Lagos?"


Lagos, Nigeria 2018

It had been several years since he had last seen them, but Isaiah still remembered the excitable old man and his pretty young companion when they returned. He was grateful to hear that he'd no longer be seeing things that weren't there, even if he didn't quite understand what the old man was saying. (Isaiah's grasp of English was quite strong, but he wasn't so sure of the Doctor's.) He waved to them as they left, smiling and laughing and enjoying a job well done.

snap

But… something wasn't quite right. Isaiah looked down at his hand. Flecks of dust were coming off of it. The more he shook it, the more dust fell. As the Doctor and Clara stepped into their box, Isaiah tried calling out to them, tried to let them know something was wrong, but by the time he could, he'd already blown away in the hot, dry air of Lagos.

Fiction Break: A Still Point In Time 4

Stark Expo, 13 June, 1942

Strains of Glenn Miller's In The Mood wafted over the warm summer evening air punctuated by fireworks, masking the groaning sound of the TARDIS landing behind a cotton candy stand. The door opened, and Clara stepped out wearing a cushy beige cardigan and matching dress. She stopped and admired the fireworks bursting in the sky behind the giant globe that sat in the center square of the Expo. The Doctor stepped out behind her and noticed Clara glaring at him.

"What?" he said innocently.

"You insisted that I dress period-appropriate, reasoning that we were guests in this timeline, but here you are in a hoodie and jumper that look like they were attacked by a ravenous pack of moths."

"Oh, that's fine. Here, problem solved," Clara's eyes widened as the wizened visage of the Doctor melted away into that of a woman no older than her, blonde hair in a style fashionable for the 1940s and wearing a red floral-print dress.

"What... wait, what exactly did you just..." Clara was having trouble finding the words to describe what she'd just seen. The Doctor smiled through the young woman's face, and his voice came in a soft American accent as he held up a small device that looked like a pager.

"Image inducer. The TARDIS databanks found it in the aborted timeline and replicated the technology. Because it keeps trying to reassert itself, little parts of the other timeline bleed through. This little gadget is amazing, it's like a cross between the holographic clothes we wore to see the Papal Mainframe and the TARDIS's own perception filter. You probably haven't noticed, but you're speaking in American accent now, too."

Clara clutched at her throat momentarily, but the Doctor strode off in his patent leather pumps, continuing to talk, "Now then, the information I was able to pull out of our rodent friend's temporal dissection says that Captain America himself is witness to the focal point in time that caused the straw to go all bendy. We just have to follow him there and make sure it's fixed."

"And how do we do that? Wouldn't he be off punching Nazis? We are in the thick of World War II," Clara asked, following towards a pair of large statues.

"Easy. I had the TARDIS send him a psychic message. He thinks he's set up a double date with a friend of his and a couple of pretty young girls. Now, the image inducer has me covered, but do you think you can manage to pretend to be a pretty young girl for a few minutes at least?"

Clara bristled for a moment, "Doctor, I am a..." she started, before trailing off as her eye caught a handsome young dark-haired man in a dress uniform. "That must be him, yeah? He's cute. I can't just call him Captain America, though, can I? I mean that's not him yet."

"I think he goes by Bucky now," The Doctor said, fiddling with his screwdriver while Clara flagged down the soldier. He smiled, and approached with his short, slight blonde friend in tow. As they met, the soldier draped his arm around Clara and the Doctor ignored his friend. They all strolled together into the Modern Marvels Pavilion.


To be Concluded

It has been a hell of a week, hasn't it?

Hi, folks.

When Erin wrote last week about how rough she'd been feeling lately, it really resonated with me. I hadn't realized it at the time, but writing has become a bit of a chore for me  as well.

I began working outside of my home late last year, which I hadn't done for nearly a decade prior. While I was working at home, when an idea came to me I could stop what I was doing and bang something out, or at least take down some notes, because the computer was right there in front of me and I was good enough at my job that I could take 20 minutes to write something without missing a beat in my day job. Now I've got to get up earlier, drive across town, be stuck somewhere for 9 hours, then drive back across town and wind down from work, and by that point it's difficult to get the old fingers moving.

Not only that, but working from home took its toll on me in other ways. My immune system is pretty worthless considering that I wasn't around sick people for so long, so I've had two or three sinus infections and a few upset stomachs from things going around. Like now. I have both, and I'm still working.

The job is good, though. I'm treated well, paid well, and have a level of work satisfaction I wasn't previously aware of, so there's that. But my personal time has become more valuable to me because there's now less of it, and being that I'm forced to be "on" for a full third of the day, pretending like socializing is easy and fun and not just something I'm good at but hate to do, that takes a toll as well.

I was feeling this before I started A Still Point In Time, which I openly admit is a silly bit of fan-fiction, but I've only got one chapter left, and I completely intend on turning it in soon. Expect a special guest star or two, as well as a relevant twist ending (a post-credits sequence if you will, given the subject matter). But I do feel like I owe Erin, and all of you, an apology for missing schedule here and there.

Also, she did say I'm not allowed to write anything else until Still Point is done, so I'll preemptively rap my knuckles with a ruler, if I can find one.

Fiction Break: A Still Point In Time 3

Back on board the TARDIS (now thankfully free of whatever potentially toxic fumes had exploded from the console), Clara changed into a less dusty and soot-covered outfit. She'd spent a surprisingly small amount of time crawling through burned-out buildings, but a hot shower to get the dust out of her hair felt good. Nigeria's weather was very different to the cool, damp shores of England.

Having teased the last of the water from her hair, she joined the Doctor on the TARDIS's upper level where he was standing with his hands on his hips and a look of consternation on his face. Surrounding him were a pair of chalkboards with what looked like crude drawings of professional wrestlers; what looked like a film projector with the silver scalpel where the film should be; and an old-fashioned boxy console screen on a long mechanical arm dropping from an indeterminate point in the ceiling.

She studied the crude chalk drawings. "I knew a girl growing up whose whole family was in wrestling. She was quite a bit younger than me, but I bet she went into it."

"What does any of this have to do with wrestling?" The Doctor frowned. "Oh, you mean these?" He pointed at the chalk sketches. "I've been pulling information from the tracking knife and correlating it with what the TARDIS has been soaking up from local media and historical records. It's really quite fascinating."

Clara braced herself for a storm of nonsensical words and long-winded explanations when the Doctor rounded on her with what appeared to be a little plastic man. "Meet Captain America!" Clara stared at the little plastic man, dressed in blues and whites with touches of reds and carrying a tiny disc of red and white.

"Captain what now?"

"America! He was a sickly, underfed boy whose parents were Irish immigrants. He signed up for the Army during World War 2 and fought a secret division of the Nazis called Hydra!" The Doctor's eyes were sparkling with the child-like gleam that Clara adored.

"I think I remember hearing about him, but Doctor, he was a comic book. He wasn't real." Clara immediately regretted saying that, as if she were telling a child that Father Christmas wasn't real.

"Then explain this," he said, pulling the console screen down by the knob. It held what looked like news footage of a man in a more modern and sleek version of the toy's uniform leaping over a car and flinging his metal disc. It ricocheted off three aliens that looked halfway related to Silurians before returning to the man's hand. As he fought through a larger group of the aliens, Clara caught a glimpse of what looked like a gold and red Cyberman, a woman in all black with startlingly red hair, and an absolute giant of a man with green skin.

The projector hissed and sparked and the picture suddenly changed, throwing the image of a large purple man with ceremonial robes being surrounded by people throwing lightning, shooting lasers from their eyes, and other fantastical things. Another hiss, another spark, and the projector now showed the building in Lagos, but complete and surrounded by a small army who were failing to hold off a man with what looked like knives protruding from his knuckles.

"They're all real, Clara!" She looked back to the Doctor, who had the most excited look on his face. A spark flew from the projector and a bell on the console clanged loudly, silencing any further questions she might have. The Doctor nearly flew over the railing, dashing down to the console in a blur and shouting "We have a destination! The still point we're looking for. The point where the straw goes all bendy!"

He looked at her, grinning like a madman. "The Stark Expo. June 13, 1942."

Fiction Break: A Still Point In Time 2

Clara followed as the Doctor stalked the wreckage of the building. For the most part, the TARDIS's telepathic field was doing its job and no one was giving them any funny looks as they clambered over charred walls and ducked under caution tape, but Clara could swear she'd periodically see people staring at them out of the corner of her eye only for them to be gone when she turned to look at them. Sure it wasn't her imagination, she decided to interrupt the Doctor's grumbling search.

"So... I'm sure it's just my imagination, but I keep seeing people... I don't know, noticing us? And then when I look again they're gone. What's up with that?" she asked, only half-expecting a reply from him.

"You're right, it's your imagination. But they really are there. Well, only they aren't." His explanation was only leaving her more confused, which must have been apparent on her face, so with a great sigh, he stopped, dropping the piece of rubble he'd surely not been about to lick, and gave her his full attention.

"You remember when I said this was the wrong Lagos?" he asked, pulling a straw from his pocket, "Well, imagine this straw is your Earth. Your 2016, with your Lagos and your Nigeria. Now this," he pulled another straw from his pocket, "is where we are now. A parallel universe. Now, see the bendy part in this straw? At some point, the history of this world went all bendy. Right now, we're bent off to one side, but for some reason our new friend back there, Isaiah, can still see the other bendy bit. So can we, to a certain extent, because we're not even from this straw. We're so far not from this straw that the bendy bit is actually confusing the TARDIS computers to the point where she can't find the hole she came in through."

Clara pondered this for a moment. "Okay. I think I get it. I'm not asking where you're pulling all these straws from, but we jumped from one to the other, and you're trying to figure out where the straw went all bendy and straighten it, right? That way we can get back to the right straw?" When he nodded, she pressed him, "So what are you looking for?"

"Organic matter," he said, pulling the box out of his pocket again, "so I can use this."

"You're gonna make me ask what's in the box, aren't you? It's not a head, is it? Awful small head if it is."

The Doctor knelt, apparently finding what he was looking for. He shoved his arm into a hole near the bottom of a burnt-out wall and pulled it back holding a half-crushed, lightly singed, and certainly very dead rat. Clara cleared her throat uncomfortably as the Doctor knelt, opening the box and placing the rat on the ground next to it. From the box he pulled a large silver scalpel that seemed to have some arcane, indecipherable writing on it.

"It's called a tracking knife. I nicked it from some particularly nasty characters living in a pocket of looped time. They'd use it to dissect living things, garner secrets from their timelines. It harvests biodata. I need an organic connection to this universe so I can track its timeline back to see where the divergence happened. We're looking for a still point in time, something that can be easily manipulated."

"And once we find that, we can go back and fix it? The knife is going to tell you all that by cutting up a dead rat?" Clara was still clearly uncomfortable with the dissection, but understood the reasoning behind it and looked on in interest as little lines of blue light began to appear in the air over the rat's now bisected body.

"I don't particularly feel like walking up to one of these nice people here and asking for a volunteer for a live temporal vivisection. It would be more effective, but it's more Missy's style than mine." The Doctor plucked at several of the strands, and they vibrated curiously. He manipulated the knife with suspicious skill, and several more intersecting strands appeared. "The knife should be able to get enough information for me to compare to the TARDIS databanks. I left the computer collating information from local sources, so we should be able to more accurately track down the bendy bits."

The strands began to coalesce into a single line, small symbols appearing at various points along it. The Doctor made a further cut and a fork appeared in them. "Gotcha," he said, standing and placing the knife gingerly back in the small box, "June 1943. Western Hemisphere, likely East Coast of the United States."

"Well, what are we waiting for then?" Clara asked, turning on her heel. "Let's go save a universe!"

Fiction Break: A Still Point In Time

In the spirit of Infinity War's crossovers...

The man shifted uneasily in his chair, scratching at his grayed temples. Across from him sat, to his eyes, a walking scarecrow and a very pretty (if out of place) girl. She looked annoyed, but the scarecrow man looked impatient, perhaps expectant.

The man's hand shook as he reached for the small tumbler of whiskey. He sipped, choked back a grimace, and took a deep breath.

"I know you are going to think I am crazy, but I believe very much so that I am not. Everybody in Lagos remembers the day the heroes came crashing through and 'accidentally' blew up the Wakandans," his voice catching on the word 'accidentally' like it held a bitter taste to it, "but no one remembers when the mutants came to Lagos. No one but me."

The scarecrow man's eyebrows furrowed together, and for a moment the man was afraid they would leap off of his forehead and assault him. There was a moment of quiet, then he continued.

"And that's not all. I remember both of these events, and I remember the great Apocalypse. I read in the news about the robots in Europe, but no one else remembers entire cities disintegrating. What's wrong with me, Mister Doctor?"


One Hour Earlier...

Clara stumbled out of the TARDIS, choking on the smoke that followed her through the doors. Whatever was burning in there, she decided, could not be anything but hazardous to her health, and she sometimes worried she'd breathed in far too much of it over the years she'd traveled with the Doctor. She took in a lungful of dusty air and looked around. Hot, dry sun beat down on her, and she was surrounded by the noises and smells of a bustling marketplace of a dusty, dry city. The Doctor came charging out of the doors, dispelling the cloud of smoke that had followed her, his coat covered in soot and his face crossed with more lines than she'd remembered before the explosion. He was muttering something to himself about time tracks, dimensional boundaries, and crossed realities until she interrupted him.

"Doctor? Doctor! Where are we?"

He stopped and looked around for a long second before sticking his finger in his mouth and holding it up in the air and pronouncing, "Lagos. Nigeria. Earth. 2016. But the wrong one." He glanced up at the side of a building that looked like it had seen better days. Several of the upper floors of the North side of it had suffered structural damage and had clearly been on fire recently. He frowned, digging in his pocket until he found a small wooden box, tilted the lid open, then shut it firmly and shoved it back in his pocket.

"How can it be the wrong one?" Clara asked, "Isn't there only the one Lagos?"

The Doctor looked supremely annoyed, "Clara, do you remember that awful bingy-bingy noise before the cloister bells started ringing? That was the TARDIS jumping off course. And then when the walls started closing in? Something went wrong with the dimensional stabilizer, and we got pushed through a weak point between universes. Wherever we are, it's not the right Lagos. For one thing, that building," he said, pointing up at the burned out husk, "isn't supposed to be all exploded. I should know, I had tea there just next week and it was still in one piece."

Clara, trying to keep up with the shifting tenses in his explanation, suddenly noticed an elderly Nigerian man staring at them in disbelief. She tugged at his coat and whispered under her breath at the Doctor.

"Doctor, I think that man there just noticed us."

"Well of course he noticed us. We just stepped out of a smoking blue box that probably made an awful racket landing and... hold on, that man just noticed us. The TARDIS telepathic fields must have malfunctioned and -"

Clara cut him off, "Then why hasn't anyone else noticed us?"

"Ah," The Doctor patted the pocket he'd stowed the box in, before starting off towards the man. Clara shook her head and followed.


...Now

His name was Isaiah, and the Doctor was drinking in every detail of his story. Every fantastical detail. In this world, it seemed, there'd been a swell of enhanced individuals -- soldiers and inventors, robots and aliens -- appearing through history and operating quite publicly. But Isaiah's story fell apart in several places as he tried to reconcile two very different versions of history that were living in his head. This was very distressing to him, especially as it seemed no one else remembered one set of events. The Doctor and Clara sat with him for a very long time, listening to all he had to share.

When Isaiah had finished his stories, one accounting of bizarre events from two perspectives throughout his remembered history, the Doctor leaned back in his chair, his eyebrows finally leaving attack position. He pulled a slender tool from his coat pocket, shoved it rudely in Isaiah's face, and pressed the button. Isaiah flinched at the green light on the tip and the whine it let loose. The Doctor snatched it away from him, popped open the tip, and stared intently at the shifting metal on the inside.

"Well then. It's little wonder you're so perturbed. Your consciousness is split between two versions of reality, one that doesn't exist anymore and the one that exists around you, and you can't reconcile the two. Part of that little human pea-brain is quite literally stuck in the wrong universe. But why? What makes you of all people special?"

Clara sunk her elbow into the Doctor's ribs, handing him a notecard that he studied intensely for a moment before grudginly bringing his gaze back to Isaiah.

"By which I mean 'I am terribly sorry to hear about your distress. I can only imagine how I would feel in your place, and I will do everything I can to resolve this situation for you. Shake hands and smile politely.' "

Clara rolled her eyes and looked apologetically at Isaiah as the Doctor took off towards the ruined building.


To be continued...

Who Hunts The Hunters?

Obvious title is obvious.

I play a lot of video games. I mean, a lot.

Primarily, I play cooperative game modes. In some of those cooperative game modes, sometimes the interfaces are poorly coded, such as in Mass Effect: Andromeda. In these more poorly coded interfaces, often the voice chat is on by default, and there's a surprisingly generous portion of the playerbase that doesn't realize this. As a result, you often hear a lot of background noise: dogs barking, heavy breathing, televisions, cars driving by, jackhammers, people having sex, someone being horribly murdered in the background, or a combination of any of the above.

Stay with me. This is relevant, I promise.

Over the last week or so, Bully Hunters was announced. It is ostensibly an elite squad of possibly female gamers on call 24/7 to hunt down and exact revenge on toxic male gamers that harass other female gamers that are just trying to play a game. They announced a livestream event, an hour to show off their system in action, hunting down a bully live and providing statistics on why they're necessary.

And then the stream happened.



An hour turned into 35 minutes of unadulterated cringe.

The experts they brought on parroted Gender Studies talking points, which really came as no surprise. The in-game footage they showed was choppy and looked like it was either poorly encoded, pre-recorded footage or was being played on a computer from 2002. The presenters were stiff and uncharismatic, the audience was lifeless, and the event cues were ripped straight from a garage-level presentation of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. But it didn't stop there.

The statistics discussed by the 'professionals' -- a clinical counselor with a focus on living with diabetes and a clinical psychologist with a focus on marriage counseling -- were revealed to have been extrapolated by a self-reporting survey of 874 people on social media platforms Twitter and Reddit, and inflated from the 874 respondents to a total of 3 million women being driven out of gaming.

One "casual gamer," therosethorn, was revealed to be not only the casual gamer with a level 1 account owning only one game, but the bully, the bully hunter, and several other bully hunters as well. Not to mention that one of her previous names (and the url of her profile page) was testbhv1 (test bully hunter victim 1?).

Full disclosure here: this screenshot was taken from my own Steam account while I was writing this, as I'd lost the original screenshot. That's right, it's still there.

An additional problem arises in that, unless I'm mistaken, you can't hear the enemy team (let alone join a game in-progress if you're playing competitively) in Counterstrike: Global Offensive. If she was able to hear the bully, that means they were on the same team, and if she invited the Bully Hunter in, then she'd go to the same team, thereby making that glorious knife kill from earlier nigh-on impossible. If she somehow joined the opposing team, then due to the hectic nature of a CS:GO match, she'd stand just as much a chance of killing the person that called her for help as she did killing the bully, or even being killed by the bully herself, which is something that happens anyway. I'm not kidding, you play one of these games, and you die a lot. One more death will mean literally nothing to you.

A few watchful eyes happened to notice the prominent SteelSeries branding backing the Bully Hunters, and asked them directly about it. SteelSeries, a fairly well-respected gaming peripheral company (I even have a Fallout-themed headset they made) initially stood their ground when asked, but eventually buckled after being confronted by the shady nature of the entire event.

And I can't blame them at all. After Bully Hunters host and spokesperson Natalie Casanova aka ZombiUnicorn was exposed as having used a slur on a livestream several times (something that poor PewDiePie was crucified for), and using a gendered slur in several tweets, people kept digging, and found that the entire thing was slapped together by marketing company FCB Chicago. Eventually other sponsors Vertagear and, ironically, the Diverse Gaming Coalition also folded, throwing FCB Chicago and, in the case of the latter, ZombiUnicorn under the bus.

This is bad. Not only does it paint people that play games in general in a bad light, but it also paints women that play games as personally helpless, having to bring in outside help to fight their battles for them. I've played with a lot of women in my time; some of my best long-term co-op partners have been women, and I've always trusted them to hold their own, whether they're tanking for my medic or I'm tanking for their medic, and have never been let down. But this? You don't stop 'bullies' by giving them air-time or more exposure. You don't give them an easily exploitable platform so they can play nice until they convince you they're hunter material. Instead, you starve them of oxygen. You give them no reaction until they get bored. Do you want to see the most effective weapon against in-game harassment? I'll show you:

A Dumpster Fire-Side Chat With Wil

Wil, it's not always about you or your crusade. 

I had an interesting chat with a new co-worker today. Isaac -- we'll call him Isaac, as that's not his name but he looks like an Isaac to me --was talking with another coworker about people smoking weed. I asked him simply, "Who are they hurting?" He asked if I was Libertarian. I said that, while I respect some of their ideas, I'm not anti-government enough to call myself that.

He then went on to hopefully ask if I was Conservative. I told him my political compasses usually put me in the lower left quadrant, leaning Left with small L libertarian tendencies. He jokingly said "We'll bring you to the Right side yet."

Good luck, pal. If Erin hasn't converted me after 10 years of being a good example, I doubt you'll make much progress overnight.

But that's not why we're here. Tonight, we're here to talk to one my favourite self-imposed punching bags, one Wil Wheaton.

Pull up a seat, William. I'd like to ask you a question: Why?

William, how old are you? Oh Christ, you were born in 1972? You're that much older than me? No, sit back down, I'm not done yet. Pour me another drink, will ya fella? Cheers.

William, why would you screenshot just the article photo and the headline, and then read your own interpretation of the article? And then follow that up with the pound-signs for #fuck racism and #fuck racists. And why would you leave a space in the hashtags? You know that breaks a hashtag, right? You should know, being the world's oldest Millenial.

See, and the worst part is, William "Ban the Nazis" Wheaton, aka William "I'm a good person" Wheaton, is that you left no link to the original source. I had to dig up previous versions of a few different articles to determine that the image and headline were altered from this Washington Post article. You know, the left-leaning Washington Post. Or is this another example of Liberals Get The Bullet Too? (Is it still a bullet? Do you California Revolutionaries still use that phrase, or have you replaced "bullet" because of how problematic it is? Or do you hate us lowly untermensch Liberals so much that we justify usage of the damnable firearm?)

William, did you read the article? It mentions Black Panther exactly once. Then it goes on to talk about Ready Player One and A Wrinkle In Time in reference to theatre blockbusters, and Bright and The Cloverfield Paradox in reference to alternative format releases. The spirit and message of the article is that, as the production and advertising budgets of big blockbuster movies inflates, so does the amount they need to earn to be profitable, so a movie that makes, for example $500 million with a production budget of $250 million and advertising of $150 million can't be considered profitable. It also talks about how the domestic box office is meaning less and less as US profits flatline and profits in other countries like China are carrying otherwise mediocre successes (like, say Warcraft) to smashing successes.

William, I'd say you're better than this, but you're literally not. I've talked about you more than I've talked about any one person on this blog. I sought to save you before you were lost, and now I chastise you for taking a cheap, manufactured opportunity to push a narrative.

Stop it, William. Not because you're better than this, but because we are.

Won't Somebody Think Of The Children?

That's all I can hear. 

I'd like to share a little detail about myself: I was not raised in a religious environment. I think the closest was that one of my Irish grandparents forbade me from being raised Catholic. One of the Catholic grandparents, I believe. As a result, I was raised around very little religious influence and did not attend a church with any regularity until I was in high school, at which point a tall, freckled ginger invited me to go to her youth group meetings with her.

I feel, in the long run, I may have been a bad influence on her. She's since gone on to marry the school's most intense metal-head and had a couple of offspring with him.

I was ejected from this congregation after nearly a year of asking too many questions and bringing in other people who asked too many questions. I have a tendency to ask difficult questions, and as I've grown, the language and placement of my questions have been refined to the point where they can be boiled down to "Is it, though?"

This approach to life not only leads to interesting answers, but to conflict as well. Such as every time a white dude commits a crime, and the inevitable progressive cry of "It's terrorism" goes up and I'm compelled to ask "Is it, though?"

I've always preferred ballistics to energy

The most entertaining train of thought that I've heard recently has been regarding the Parkland students that have had their smug teenage faces plastered over every Left-leaning news outlet: "Just when I thought ______ couldn't go any lower, they stoop to making fun of children."

Well, I'm not exactly who you're aiming at, but yes, I would stoop to making fun of children.

I can't stand children. But above all that, I used to be one. I used to be a snotty, idealistic little brat that wanted to be the hero of my own story, and then after attending a high school in Alabama and being a freaky little goth kid at said school, very nearly becoming a headline myself in one of these stories. I remember how emotionally charged and how uneducated about the world I was, so I will absolutely make fun of children, and most importantly, why do you sound like Helen goddamn Lovejoy? Why have you spent the last few decades laughing at anyone who said "Won't somebody think of the children" just to turn around and say the exact thing the moment there's some children who got on CNN and said exactly what you wanted to hear?

But no, I don't think they're 'crisis actors.' I don't think they're just doing it for attention, but damn if they didn't get attention; Emma Gonzalez and David The Hogg are gonna have a career in front of them. Did you know Emma has her own article in Teen Vogue discussing her hair, or lack thereof?

Did you know that David Hogg has been featured heavily for attacking advertisers, supporters, or even companies that have discounts with the NRA?(Wait, hang on, that link may have been wrong. My bad.)

I will not stop saying that Gonzalez looks like a Fallout character.

I will not stop pointing out the irony of her wearing a Cuban patch on her coat.

I will not stop saying that Hogg looks like a special effect, or that he and his sister's armband gambit was hilarious.

I'm not sure whether to make a sandwich joke, a fascism joke, or an American Psycho joke.

These are kids who got thrust into the spotlight and ran with it. They're public figures now, subject to criticism and ridicule. If you don't want them to face that, then don't promote them.

Sit! Good boy. Beg! Good boy. Shake hands! NO NOT LIKE THAT

Ladies and gentlemen. What you have just witnessed was a man annoying his girlfriend and making fun of a reviled Authoritarian government system. This was uploaded originally in April of 2016. Over a month later, he was arrested. He was found guilty of being "Grossly Offensive" just yesterday. Off all the things I could talk about this week, it absolutely had to be this one.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a free speech supporter. Not just a supporter of the First Amendment, but the idea of freedom of speech and freedom of expression as well. As long as you aren't causing actual harm, you should not face legal consequence; and if you face social consequence, you should have every right to defend your position.

Being of a strong Irish descent, I used to playfully tease an ex-girlfriend of mine who was of strong Scottish descent that "At least the Irish put up a fight! Scotland rolled over and took it after William Wallace." Part of me really did believe it (probably that same part of me that had signed up to the Sinn Fein mailing list for a few years). But either way, I still really wanted to visit Scotland one day.

Not anymore, though. Fair Glasgow, you have been struck from my bucket list; I'm not setting foot in the country that plans on jailing a man for teaching his dog to shake hands in a tastelessly funny way.

From The Great Dictator to Monty Python's "Mr. Hitler" to Captain America: The First Avenger's skits with Cap punching out Hitler, Hitler and the Nazis have been played for laughs at their expense dozens of times. Games from Wolfenstein to Sniper Elite have let you play out the fantasy of being the one that kills Hitler, not to mention scores of Nazi soldiers. And that's not even getting into memes -- how many remixes of that bunker scene have we seen? I don't even need to say the name of the movie for you to know what I'm talking about. Chances are you've laughed yourself hoarse over some version of that scene that you've found particularly hilarious.

But here we are now. A man annoys his girlfriend by teaching his dog to shake to a historically vile set of words, even saying "there's nothing less cute than a Nazi," and his country arrests him, drags on legal proceedings for almost two years, and finds him literally guilty of being offensive.

To the crown of Scotland:

I am Salem and I confess.

I have been #GrosslyOffensive.

I wish to be barred from entering your country.

On pain of death if need be.

Ideological Whiplash and the Treatment For It

Siddown, kiddos. Uncle Salem's got the whiskey back, and the white collar's going back on. The Reverend is in. 

I have been asked a few times my thoughts regarding the recent noises that President Trump has made regarding violence and video games.

I am, frankly, unconcerned. This is hardly the first time that video games have been put through the government ringer. I'm old enough to remember the Family Entertainment Protection Act and its sponsor. I've heard the tales of Tipper Gore and the PMRC.

I'm only surprised that it took this long for Trump and Hillary Clinton to align on an issue. I'm also aware that, after analyzing (that's not something that you pay Stormy Daniels not to talk about, in case you need it pointed out) the situation, that it's more than likely this is a giant cloud of hot air that Trump is pushing to distract from the NRA.

What perturbs me about the situation is the moral vanguard of defenders that have arisen to defend the poor, defenseless art form against the big scary cheeto man.

Such as Polygon.

 
Or Feminist Frequency.


Or Vice's Motherboard.


Or any number of examples that I could dig up with a marginal effort.

See, there's something you should realize as you pull an ideological 180 so quickly that your scraggly beards crawl up to cover your prematurely-balding heads: that you're no longer welcome to defend an art form after you spend the better part of the decade bashing it.

You don't get spend five years vacillating between implying and outright declaring that video games will turn you into anything from a rapist to a murderer because the pretty Armenian girl with the teleseminar background bats her eyelashes approvingly at you, then turn around and pretend to be strident defenders of artistic freedom when the mean man in the big house on the hill says the same things she did, albeit not nearly as artistically.

It rings incredibly hollow and lends an inordinate amount of credence to the Trump Derangement Syndrome theory. You truly are pivoting on a position just because he said something you agreed with 10 minutes ago.

Video games survived government overreach once before, and yes, you played a part in that. You're not needed anymore. The internet exists, and gives a voice to each and every person that chooses to use that voice. Even people you don't like. Especially people you've spent the last 5 or so years painting as the most dangerous villains on the planet.

There is the road. Those are some rocks. Kick the rocks. At least the rocks won't kick back.

Catastrophic Human Emulation Failure

Booting system

Commencing system check...

Memory unit: yellow

Initializing tactics log...

Catastrophic damage detected

Vitals: Red

Warning: trauma detected in the following systems

• Ocular tracking
• Vocal fluidity
• Empathy emulation
• Digital dexterity modules

Ambulatory systems offline

Black Box system failure

IFF system failure

Pod connection not found

DBU Setup failed

Primary inertia control system offline

Engaging secondary motion control systems...

Primary boot sequence halted: Offline repairs recommended before continuing

Mission status: incomplete

Emergency override initiated...

Loading backup personality profile...

WARNING: BACKUP PERSONALITY PROFILE COMPROMISED

Salem (Finally) Watches A Movie: Black Panther

Well, I finally saw it. After all the hype, the backlash, and the culture wars going on around Black Panther, I finally got to see it and make up my mind for myself.

That's all I really wanted, world. I wanted to make up my mind for myself. I didn't want to be told that Black Panther was a cultural milestone or that it was racist against me (somehow. I'm not quite white enough for the ethnostate, sorry guys). I wanted it to be a good movie.

Our story starts on Sunday, the day I'd originally planned to see the movie. I woke up reasonably early for me, just in time to catch the last matinee at 12:30. I made it with time enough to spare, taking into account missing most of the pre-show commercials and preview trailers. I pulled into the parking lot of the Winrock Theaters, and... just kept driving. And driving.

There were no parking spots. I'm not sure if the movie was sold out or not; I never even got a chance to ask. Every single spot in the Regal Winrock theaters of Albuquerque was filled. I'm not even talking about "It was too full to park my unreasonably large van because I haven't figured out how to fit in a space without two empty ones on either side" full; I'm talking "Every single spot was full and I'd have had to park at Toys R Us a mile away just to see if there were still seats open" full.

So instead, I took the day off Wednesday, slept in late, and caught the 3:45 IMAX showing, which was damn near empty. And here's where my thoughts begin:

You're all wrong.

• Black Panther is not "alt-right." Yes, Wakanda is xenophobic. Yes, it does have barriers and walls and hides from the world. It's an ethnostate, if not on purpose. It's a bit violent, especially its ritual combat for the throne. Wakanda could have been considered "alt-right" about two generations back, but T'Chaka, late of Civil War's catalyst event, had begun outreach programs, notably in Lagos. Sure, no one had been invited to Wakanda, but it was progress. Progress that was carried forward under T'Challa. 
• Neither is the movie about you. It's an excellent portrayal of a deeply traditional society that had a massive technological advantage, but as the villain of the piece shows, it's a society with no real connection to American culture. As a movie based around a culture, though, it works very well. To the hidden disappointment of many, it is neither documentary nor fantasy.

With that out of the way, was it good? Did it stand on its own merits? In a word, yes. It's a very good movie, and a very worthy induction into the MCU canon. Visually, it was very striking, and my only complaint was that the movie shifts very, very quickly between dark and bright scenes, and these tired old eyes don't adjust quite as quickly as they used to. Set design and art direction deserve all the applause they get in this film. The movie's story is not overly complicated or simplistic, and flows well.

The cast is mostly excellent.

• I make no secret that I was disappointed at Chadwick Boseman's casting, as I was rooting for Chiwetel Ejiofor to be cast as T'Challa. My consolation prize of him appearing as Mordo in Doctor Strange was satisfying, at least, and Boseman has won me over. He seemed almost too confident in Civil War, but in his solo debut, he has a lot more range on display, showing youthful vigor and moments of self-doubt that perhaps Ejiofor wouldn't have delivered on as well. 
• Of special note is his chemistry with Letitia Wright's Shuri, his little sister and Wakanda's science whiz. Their playful bickering lent for the most authentic brother/sister combo I think I've seen in this genre of movie. 
• Andy Sirkis was hamming it up, almost like a villainous Drax (see Guardians of the Galaxy) and was having waaay more fun than anyone else on-screen... it's a shame what happened to his character. 
• Danai Gurira is excellent as always, and has a scene-stealing moment during a fever-pitched battle near the end of the movie. 
• And finally, the memes are right about Michael B Jordan: this is the second Human Torch that Marvel has redeemed, as his Killmonger chews the scenery maniacally, almost out-hamming Sirkis at times. I wouldn't go so far as to call him a good villain, but he's certainly on the higher end of MCU villains; better than Ronan or Stane, but not quite to the level of a Loki or Hela.
• While Martin Freeman turned in a standard Martin Freeman-level performance, I couldn't help but wonder why he was there. Aside from the obvious ties to Civil War, there really seemed to be no purpose for his character. Even the one time he actually did take action near the end, it's something that Shuri easily could have (and basically did) done earlier. 
• As for Forrest Whittaker, he was... well, he was Forrest Whittaker. I suppose Morgan Freeman wasn't available.

Was it perfect, though? No, it wasn't. It deserves the good reviews it's getting, but it's certainly not flawless:

• The opening is very weak, with literal narration providing the backstory of Wakanda with some tech that you don't even realize until later in the movie is Wakandan showing a sort of sand-sculpture representation of the warring tribes that formed Wakanda and the events of the world around it. Fortunately, the movie rights itself and spends the rest of its runtime showing and not telling, even if that runtime does seem to stretch on longer than it needs to. 
• The pace is good, but it easily could have been 20 minutes shorter or so and been even tighter.
• Some of the effects missed the mark, and Panther does not look nearly as fluidly realistic as he did in Civil War, and the battle between he and Killmonger, both wearing panther suits, had little impact as neither of them looked very real. The CGI at times felt very unpolished and reminded me of Blade II or the Matrix movies.

The movie could be criticized for having an inconsistent message to it, but I like to chalk that up to different characters actually having different motivations. I respected greatly how, on the whole, it takes a rather moderate view. The traditionalist characters strongly believe that Wakanda should not become involved at all in the outside world, and when Killmonger comes on the scene, he's very clearly parroting activist talking points in a cartoonish manner, wanting to use the resources of Wakanda not to uplift others but to destroy the world and rebuild it to his will. Neither of these views ultimately win out, as at the end of the movie Wakanda seems to have a new goal: benevolent outreach programs, to share its tech and resources with those in need.

All in all, this was a satisfying movie. It earns its place amongst Marvel's top films. It's not going to change the world, and it doesn't really need to... unless you're one of those people with an irrational need to see yourself represented physically on-screen (a viewpoint which I don't understand how anyone who enjoys sci-fi or fantasy can hold), you'll like it. If you were a fan of Avengers-related comics, you'll like it. It respects the source material and translates it very well.

Black Panther: An Addendum

This is inevitably going to be a three-part series, as the review will be up once I've seen it. 

One has to be very careful when picking one's words when talking about something like Black Panther. What was just another high concept super-hero movie in a universe already extraordinarily well-established has, thanks in large part to the cultural critics that have been chapping my ass for the past few years, quickly become an exceedingly commercialized rally point for a puzzling social movement.

Marvel, to its credit, has very little blame in this aside from introducing an already-beloved character in a giant movie and translating him very well to the screen, putting out the requisite toy line, and picking a strategic song for the trailer.

One must be very careful, for example, these days not to imply that "collectivist identitarian" is a flattering term for someone that someone else would rather prefer to call an "asshole Nazi," regardless if both terms apply.

Inside joke, dear readers. I apologize.

But can we talk about Black Panther for a moment?

You're right, we can't. We can't, for example, bring up the fact that Wakanda is a stupendously rich nation in the middle of some very poor nations. We can't bring up the fact that Wakanda is an xenophobic ethnostate with possibly the strictest immigration laws outside of Dr. Doom's Latveria or that, in the MCU, it had no outreach to poor countries despite its wealth until Civil War. We can't talk about how Wakanda zealously defends its borders, notoriously slaughtering intruders, or how T'Challa himself is the ruler of a Patriarchal society, having literally inherited his powers, tech, and position from his own father.

But I suppose if one side can twist things in its favour, the other can do so just as well.

Did they, though? Have we asked actual
Africans how they feel on this?

That'd just be awkward, though. Not that that first side isn't finally getting around to not-good-enough-isms.

In that spirit, I'd like to make it very clear that when I review Black Panther, I intend to hold it to its own merits: Did it tell a good story? Did it fit well in the greater MCU? Did it work well on its own as a movie as well as setting up story threads for future movies, as I expect to see it represented heavily in Infinity War? Does it tie up loose ends from previous movies?

What I'm not going to do is blame any shortcomings on "Trump's America." Seriously, it makes me ashamed that 3/4 of me comes from the same place as you, Ed Power.

When I go see Black Panther, I'm going to see what I hope to be another highly-entertaining entry in the MCU saga, one that I can appreciate as a fan and as someone who has been reading books  starring that character since I was a teenager. The last thing I want is for the movie to fail, because that's going to basically be Ghostbusters 2016: Round 2, and I've had just about enough of that.

I want it to succeed. I want it to be good.

Salem Wants To Watch A Movie: Black Panther

Look, you all know I'm an unrepentant MCU fanboy. I've seen them all multiple times, with even my least favourite hitting three re-watches. Yes, even Thor: The Dark World; I make apologies for that one all the time. Despite popular opinion, Iron Man 3 is not only one of my favourite MCU films, but it's also one of my favourite movies.

As we're staying on a theme, you might remember two weeks ago I explained why I hadn't yet seen The Last Jedi, mainly because of the controversy around it. There's a similar situation brewing with Black Panther. 

Look, SyFyWire, I'm not sure where you've been for the last hundred years or so, but science fiction frequently stars people that are not just white dudes, but women and people of other ethnicities. Hell, a lot of it is people of other species, be they fantasy races such as elves, dwarves, and orcs, or alien races such as Cardassian, Gou'ould, or Turian. Since the MCU movies started hitting theatres, our main concern hasn't been "Are we going to be able to identify with the white dude in the movie?" so much as "Is this movie going to respect the source material and give us something fun and compelling?"

And the MCU has yet to disappoint (okay, except for maybe The Dark World). Literally nobody looking forward to Black Panther is mad that there's not a white dude in the lead role. Quite the opposite; anyone familiar with the source material would probably be livid were they to re-cast T'Challa as a white man. You saw the reaction to Tilda Swinton's casting as the Ancient One, right?

I'm still hyped for Black Panther. It's another addition to the MCU canon, and it's looking pretty good so far. But some of us are concerned... not that we won't, again, be unable to identify with the lead role; I'm sure I can identify with the king of a xenophobic, isolationist African country that's technologically advanced and prosperous due to extra-terrestrial mineral resources and has a super suit and cadre of female bodyguards as much as the next person. I can  possibly identify with it as much as I can identify with a woman who grew up trained as a super-assassin by elements of the Russian military, or a brilliant scientist who put himself in harm's way and was rewarded by turning into an uncontrollable green rage monster, or a demi-god who had to learn a lesson in humility before daddy would give him his powers back.

No, I'm worried because a lot of people are playing up the minority element in this movie. Not to the same extent it was played up in Ghostbusters; Feige and Disney would never release something on the same level of quality that Sony somehow managed. But I guarantee you that a lot of people who wanted to watch it won't, because you've talked them into the idea that they don't want to see it.

The same thing nearly happened to me with The Last Jedi, and it's been happening for a while. Lord knows the progressive fandom has been doing its absolute level best to convince me that I'm not at all interested and in fact am outraged at Jodie Whittaker's casting as The Doctor, when I have no idea* if she'll be good or not.

* Aside from the fact there's never been a bad Doctor. Shut up, there hasn't. Colin Baker was fantastic.

In short, knock it off. Stop propping up strawmen to try and convince yourselves that your ideological enemies are mad that something cool is coming out. Stop pretending like it's never happened before. I feel like slapping the next person that forgot that Blade had two fantastic movies (and one questionable one) before the X-Men franchise even started picking up any real steam.

Hype it up. Share the love. Celebrate it if you feel you need to. But when you start celebrating how what you love is going to piss off some monolithic and imaginary ideal of the people you hate, you're doing fandom absolutely the wrong way. It's worse than the gatekeeping that you preach against. It's sub-cultural gentrification, and it's annoying as all hell.

Salem Watches Star Wars: On The Last Jedi Weekend

OK, there's actually spoilers in this one... for a month-old movie.

I saw it. So, after my trepidation last week, how did it measure up?

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is... a movie. Goodnight, everyone!

[Salem's attempt to sneak out has been intercepted with Erin carrying a very large shotgun.]

Thanks, Erin. That brings to mind the perfect metaphor. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is what would happen if you took a bunch of Star Wars, dropped it down the barrel of a very large shotgun, and fired it one-handed without aiming at a theatre screen. Minus the monetary damages and police inquiry, of course. Now please put the shotgun down?

There's a lot to love here. There's a whole lot of things that work really, really well, but there's also a lot that either doesn't work at all or could have been easily avoided (and made for a tighter, more focused film). Let's talk about the good, shall we?

I have found my spirit animal, and it is Grumpy Luke. Grumpy Luke, living on his own on an island, surrounded by the bones of an ancient religion and waiting to die. Grumpy Luke, who so casually tosses his (and his father's) lightsaber over his shoulder and stalks away. Mark Hamill may have voiced reservations about how his character was handled, but I think he did a magnificent job with what he was given, and I feel what he was given wasn't all that bad. I've heard complaints about how he wouldn't have tried to kill Ben, given his choice to save Vader, but in the context of the scene, he faltered for a moment and that's what caused the whole thing. "Just one faltering moment causes catastrophe down the line" seems to be a running theme with Jedi, as what created Vader was Obi-Wan's cockiness and underestimation of Darth Maul that caused a worthier teacher to die. The entire sequence with Rey and Luke on the island is really great, and I wish the movie would have focused more on this.

And speaking of Rey, she has finally grown some kind of character with the revelation of her parents being absolute nobodies that sold her for beer money, and is starting to earn what she was given in the first film now that her defiant self-image has been shattered. Something seems visually off about her, though, and I can't put my finger on it; given that it's been 2 years between movies but mere seconds on-screen, the difference is a little jarring.

Most of the rest of the cast does well. Leia, Finn, and Poe are well done, Poe especially getting a lot of character arc, and you can't screw up Chewie and R2. I've heard complaints about Leia's "Mary Poppins" moment, but given we saw her Force sensitivity first flare way back in Empire and it's been 30 years, I'm more than okay with her having a strong Force moment.

Kylo Ren finally becomes interesting, with a more fleshed-out backstory and real personal vulnerability. His moments of flirting with the Light really make me hope that by the end of the next movie he and Rey switch places, with Rey falling to the Dark side and Ren redeemed, but having to live with the atrocities he's committed. The throne room fight scene, with the most hilarious red herring of the entire series, is fantastic. Hands down, the best fight scene in all of Star Wars, topping my previous of Chirrut taking apart a squad of Stormtroopers in Rogue One. When I try to explain what I like about fight scenes to people, I always point to Liam Neeson in Rob Roy. Swinging a sword for more than a few seconds turns into hard work, and Rey and Kylo take a real beating from Snoke's guards, nearly losing several times.

Now onto the things that don't work.

Admiral Holdo. Look, I was going into this biased, as Holdo herself is a meme already, but I'm going to look past the joke of Vice Admiral Gender Studies and criticize her by her actions and her words. From the moment that Poe first speaks to her, she takes every opportunity to be insufferably smug and snide. I understand that Poe was recently demoted and has a reputation as a hothead, but I've been in a position of leadership. I wasn't the admiral of a military, but even I know that if you have a recently disciplined hothead under your wing, you let him know that you're aware of that, but you keep him at least somewhat informed and you give him something to do. Holdo basically blows him off and at no point even drops a hint that she has a plan other than "Keep flying that-a-way." All she had to say was "Thank  you for your input, Commander, there is a plan, and this is what I need you to do" and then tell him to go make sure all the ships are properly fueled or something in case we need them. Holdo reminds me of those Civil War generals that were promoted because they contributed monetarily and became war heroes, but were absolute disasters when it came to actual leadership.

Which brings us to Canto Bight. If Holdo had told Poe there was a plan, there would have been absolutely no need for Finn and Rose to go there. There would have been no need for a Disney film to bash rich people, no need for an alien horse race, and no need for us to pretend that Finn and Rose have any chemistry whatsoever. And no need for Benicio Del Toro's squinty, stuttery face to show up and be absolutely pointless. The entire casino planet subplot was unnecessary, and only served to distract from the opportunity for more quiet character moments and training sequences between Rey and Luke, or the opportunity to maybe make the already tech-savant Rose the one that breaks the security on the Imperial ship.

I'm torn on the salt planet. It was a neat idea, and those crystal foxes are adorable, but there were parts that worked and parts that didn't. The face-off between Luke and Kylo Ren was hilarious, as the movie turned into an absolute anime by the end of that sequence with Luke's casual "See you around, kid." The salt-speeders were terrible, though. They had no guns, no offensive capabilities on display, and couldn't even fly, instead just sort of skimming on a single ski. They weren't even really big enough to damage anything they crashed into, despite how bad of an idea Finn had.

Also, let's stop fooling ourselves. Captain Phasma is not a good character. Captain Phasma is a waste of a character. She shows up, looks cool, gets smacked down in a humiliating way, and exits the movie ingloriously. I give up. They're not going to do anything with Phasma.

There was a good movie in there, somewhere. The Force Awakens was a better movie, even if it did play it safe, but I'd have left a good third of this movie on the editing room floor, as it's so incredibly uneven in its current state. This is still worth a watch to keep up with the Star Wars mythos, but it's a hard sell.

Salem (has not) Watched a Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

That wasn't a typo. I haven't seen it yet.

Spoilers? I don't know. Can I spoil a movie I haven't seen?

I'm not boycotting it or anything. I literally don't care enough about Star Wars to worry that they're casting the wrong types of people or pushing the wrong types of messages. Hell, I was there for the prequels. Whatever they do, it can't be worse than that.

There's a woman at work who is a massive Star Wars fan and was part of the training process for my new job. She's asked me several times and gets increasingly frustrated when I tell her I haven't yet. Curiously, she's a little confused as to why she hasn't gone to see it a second time, but we'll get to that.

I meant to go on Christmas, when I had a 3 day weekend. I meant to go on New Years' Day, when I had 5 days off. I meant to go this last weekend when I had another 3 day weekend, and every other weekend in between. And granted, I'm in the middle of a major depressive episode, but I went to go see Thor: Ragnarok and Justice League. I even had a $5 movie ticket coupon that could have gotten me into a 3D showing, and I kept putting it off until it expired.

I've quite enjoyed watching the YouTube criticism videos. The memes are fantastic. Luke's Milk and Swolo Ren in particular, and I have no idea if she's a good character or not, but I get a giggle out of Vice Admiral Gender Studies.

What I haven't enjoyed are the conspiracy theories about an insidious plot to undermine western society. Granted, while there are some things to criticize (such as the one-of-each casting that looks like the attractive, yet non-threatening, racially diverse cast of a CW show - thanks, Cat Grant), I don't think Alex Jones needs to worry so much about Star Wars. On the flip side, I also do not enjoy the hyperbolic two-pronged assault of "Star Wars being a triumph in diversity" and "anyone who criticizes it is an evil Nazi Gamergater MRA Drumpfist manbaby." Seriously, knock it off. Stop being so obnoxious about your celebration, and stop attacking anyone who disagrees with you over it.

The Chinese have a word for this now, by the way: "Baizou." This translates roughly to "white lefties" and translates literally, or so I'm told, to "libtard." I don't know if it's related in any way, but despite casting an Asian in a prominent role and putting her front and center in the marketing (which China usually loves), China went to go see The Last Jedi once and never went back.

I guess you could say The Last Jedi had a little trouble in big China.

I'm so not sorry for that.

I think the thing that spurred me to write this was this incident. One guy, somewhere, anonymously edited a cam version of The Last Jedi to remove the prominence of the female characters, which probably took maybe just a few hours, uploaded it to ThePirateBay, and set off yet another internet firestorm. No declaration of intent, just a description of what he did, and some jumped-up lefty lifestyle blog gave him exactly the reaction he was assuredly looking for.

I really should go and see it sometime this week, but I can't help but shake the feeling that I've already had the Star Wars: The Last Jedi experience.

A Time to Live, a Time to Die... a Time to Regenerate

Man, I was *not* looking forward to this.. 

Has it really been six months? Spoilers...

So begins the final reprieve of Peter Capaldi, he who is too pure for this world, good enough to transcend any writing problems and turn any bad episode watchable, any decent episode memorable, and any great episode an absolute masterpiece. Sylvester McCoy may always remain my Doctor, but Capaldi is unequivocally the best Doctor. Which is why, even after two excellent seasons, two fun Christmas specials, and one hit or miss season, I wasn't at all looking forward to this episode. To paraphrase the Tenth Doctor, I didn't want him to go. To paraphrase the Twelfth Doctor, I did not want him to change.

But as he's taught me over many years, all things do change. We have to let go of things, let go of people. They won't always be around but we can always remember them. So how will we remember him, based on his farewell?

In a word: Gorgeous.

I am such a nerd. 

This may well be Moffat's best episode since taking over the show (let's face it, nothing's going to beat The Girl In The Fireplace), and definitely in the top 3 for director Rachel Talala who, for the record, is no slouch herself, having not only directed rather good episodes of Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supernatural, Haven, and Continuum (all... or most, at least, excellent sci-fi shows) but also Tank Girl and one of the better Nightmare On Elm Streets. Talalay seems to be Moffat's directorial big gun, as he's put her in charge of all of Capaldi's finale episodes, most notably the masterpiece that is Heaven Sent. She's got a real gift for Capaldi's style.

Let's get one thing out of the way first, as it's the only real complaint that I have about this episode and I need to be very clear about why I have a problem with it: the First Doctor was not a raging sexist, and the lines about Polly or Bill cleaning the TARDIS or a man being a nurse are horribly out of place. One was not discriminatory in being a grumpy old asshole. Unless your name was Susan, you were fair game. Just ask Ian Chesterton. I'm trying to pretend that most of those comments were for the Captain's behalf.

OK, you get a pass for one of the most beautiful moments in human history.

Getting that out of the way, though, David Bradley's performance as the First Doctor is absolutely spot-on. While his face my be different, his performance is eerily reminiscent of William Hartnell's original portrayal. He hit all of his marks perfectly, catching the nuances of being a man both younger and older than Capaldi's Twelve, and the chemistry between himself and Capaldi's Doctor's is brilliant. Possibly the best I've seen, even better than Smith and Tennant's interactions. The disapproving looks Bradley shoots Capaldi, and the uncomfortable embarrassment of twelve extremely long lives between them on Capaldi's behalf speak volumes more than could be expected.

One thing I thought I'd have a problem with, but didn't, was Bill Potts. I'm on record as saying that Bill turned out much better than I'd hoped and expected, and her ending was just that: an ending. A clean break, with a satisfying end that had been telegraphed properly and tied up all the loose ends. So when I heard she was coming back, it felt wrong, but tying it into the main story gave us an opportunity not to continue her story, but to give a proper coda, an epilogue. "The post-script of Bill Potts", so to speak, and it was handled unexpectedly well. What was really unexpected, and handled even better, was the gift given to Twelve: his memory of Clara. By this point in the episode I was already tearing up (especially after the Captain identified himself), and when she appeared to him by way of the glass constructs, I audibly sobbed.

The most important takeaway, though, is that this episode was small and quiet. Very little actually happened, the vast majority of the episode being character-based moments: a final bit of growth for some, and a proper farewell for others. And I bring this up because it's what Christmas specials mostly aren't. From The Christmas Invasion all the way through The Return of Doctor Mysterio, Christmas specials have been all about giant spectacle and high-level emotional moments, with a healthy side dish of absolute silliness. Twice Upon A Time bucks that trend, and for its own benefit, as the big action-packed scene lasts maybe 30 seconds and is over halfway through the episode, leaving us time to become involved with the characters and invested in them.

Have you ever had to say goodbye to yourself?

Which brings us to the regeneration. What are we able to glean from that short moment?

• There's the obvious: Jodie Whittaker is the Thirteenth Doctor now. 
• She's kept her accent, from what I can tell from the one phrase we've gotten: "Aww, brilliant!" 
• She can pull some great facial expressions so far. 
• Most importantly, they let her crash the TARDIS. This genuinely had me worried, as every modern Doctor so far has done so in their regenerations, save maybe War-to-Nine, and Thirteen has managed to crash the TARDIS in spectacular fashion, perhaps only second to Eight-to-War (which I'm barely counting, considering that he only parked inside a crashing ship). 

This was very important to me, considering the highly-charged gender politics of the Current Year™, as I was afraid that Thirteen would be treated with inappropriate kid gloves and land the TARDIS safely or leave it parked during her regeneration. Turns out they went balls out (no pun intended) and not only did she blow out the console with her regeneration, but she managed to detonate the central column and get unceremoniously ejected out the front doors mid-flight to fall to her apparent death. Good show, Thirteen. I can't wait to see what happens next.

I'll have you know I made it through this entire review
without a single woman driver joke.

This is absolutely a cannot-miss of an episode. It's emotional, quiet, intense, and touching. The only negative points are the blatant and out-of-character sexism of the First Doctor, and so many things that simply shouldn't work actually end up working really well.