When I was younger I never had the experience of being picked up and shipped of to some distant relative to spend the summer out of my parent’s hair, working, building character and tangling with the paranormal. Fortunately, thanks to the Disney Channel and Gravity Falls, I can live the experience vicariously through the lives of twelve year old twins Dipper and Mabel Pines.
I feel for Dipper. Really, I do.
His parents have shipped him off with his twin sister all the way to Gravity Falls, Oregon, to work with their great uncle (or grunkle) Stan in his tourist trap, the Mystery Shack. The thing about Gravity Falls is it’s not exactly… normal. There are gnomes, dinosaurs, ghosts and arcade cabinets that can create real video game characters for a short time. It’s weird, spooky and he has this really annoying sister to deal with. And somehow it all works to make great stories.
Central to the show is the question of what is going on in Gravity Falls. Dipper stumbles across the weirdness early in the first episode and the show just keeps spinning things up from there. A strange journal found hidden in the forest clues Dipper in to the fact that others have investigated the town before and he begins researching the matter on his own. That is, when Mabel isn’t bothering him with the pet pig she won at the town fair or Grukle Stan isn’t making him chop firewood or Soos isn’t distracting him by goofing off or he isn’t crushing on Wendy, a local girl who works in the Mystery Shack.
Okay, not much researching gets done.
Which is not the same thing as saying no research gets done. Gravity Falls moves at it’s own pace, content to explore the three main characters, the twins and their grunkle, and the weirdness around them with plenty of self-aware laughs and the occasional fitting aesop.
Watching Gravity Falls is kind of like watching a mashup of Duck Tales and The X-Files. There’s lots of mystery but also an abrasive father figure and a couple of precocious kids with their own agendas. Stan is probably the most interesting character in the show, his superficial greed and general lack of social graces masking an ambitious but thoughtful and caring personality. Stan doesn’t dislike his niece and nephew, he just comes from a generation where men didn’t show affection much and, on top of that, he’s not used to kids. At first he comes off as an aloof and pretty calloused person. But, as the twins and the audience get to know him better, little touches start to come through.
The first time he tells Dipper he’s proud of him it feels like a really meaningful moment. At the end of the first season we learn how much it means. Late in the first season an old, disused room of the shack is uncovered and we see him pick up a pair of glasses almost identical to those he’s wearing from a side table before anyone notices them and slips them into a pocket. As the twins argue about who will get to use the new room we see him in his chair staring at the glasses thoughtfully. These and other moments, many of which would be spoilers to talk about, serve to let us know Stan has a past and it’s just as much a mystery as Gravity Falls is. Learning about him is just as much fun as learning about the town.
Mabel is all energy and enthusiasm. She sees something she wants – a pig, a sweater, some friends or a cute boy – and she goes after it %110. She drives the boys nuts and wears her heart on her sleeve and honestly, we don’t care. When she’s having fun, we’re thrilled. When she’s sad, we’re sad. And when Dipper decides, time and again, that he’ll walk through fire for her, we understand why. If she were to get hurt it feels like something precious would be lost.
Dipper is us. He wants to know what’s going on. He wants things to work out well. He’s not very confident but he means well. He makes heroic, self-sacrificing decisions with a wistful sigh and the hint of a smile. He over works, over plays and generally handles his life in a pretty average way. His relationship with Mabel defines the show, rarely will you see siblings share such an authentic feeling relationship, and even when things don’t work out their way the closer bond they share makes us feel like they still got something worthwhile.
Watch this show. Sure, it’s animated. But it has heart, passion, humor and mystery all in equal measures. It won’t fail to surprise you but you’ll never be upset with where it winds up, either.
Tag Archives: Cool Things
Cool Things: Soulminder
Timothy Zahn is the king of well crafted scifi thrillers, specializing in space opera. But in Soulminder he outdoes himself twice.
The premise – Dr. Adrian Sommers looses his five year old son in a car accident. For years he lapses into obsession, convinced that with the right technique his son’s body could have been healed. Finally he perfects the Soulminder, a device to that hangs on to the human soul long enough to let modern medicine repair the body intended to host it so the soul can be returned. A new medical procedure capable of saving thousands of lives has been created. And with it comes problems. So very, very many problems. The first comes when a man who’s soul is in a Soulminder is declared dead and malicious parties try to have the body cremated. And the cases only get more bizarre from there.
Zahn is always at his best when there’s scheming and clever tricks to be played and the concept of the Soulminder gives him an incredible new set of gambits to make. Soulminder is episodic, with each chapter covering a new problem Soulminder causes Dr. Sommers, his clients and frequently, the legal systems of the countries where Soulminder Inc. is operating. While the ideas are interesting and each new problem is handled in a clever way, many of the problems Zahn presents us with are frankly disturbing, not only in what they do to the people trapped in them but how realistic they sound. If a Soulminder trap were to be created in the modern day, these are exactly the kinds of things we could probably expect to happen as a result.
On the other hand, Zahn also approaches this new technology with a clear understanding of the need for moral oversight. In fact, the second chapter of the book deals extensively with how religious leaders and other sources of moral oversight might react to something like Soulminder and, in a refreshing change from the way such figures are normally treated in scifi, even Sommers’ most strident critics are treated fairly and respectfully, with the understanding that they are also doing their best to deal fairly with strange, new technologies. In fact, for the fairness and clear understanding Zahn shows to his religious characters alone this book is a stand-out among scifi today and worth your reading.
Sommers tries his best to ethically use his technology but ultimately others have to be involved and the problems just keep multiplying. That leads to his ultimate solution which, while interesting, does disturb me to a certain degree. I’m not sure if Zahn was trying to make a point with it or not, and I don’t think there really was a better solution for the problems Sommers faced, but I have to admit on reflection it’s uncomfortably close to an endorsement of suicide. I don’t think that’s what Zahn meant by it, I may just be overanalyzing it and in the context of Soulminder, a technology that’s more fantasy than true prediction of the future in my opinion, it may be the only right solution. It’s the only thing keeping me from recommending this book to anyone and everyone who loves good thrillers.
But still, that small caveat aside, it’s a good book. If you don’t mind reading about the darker things man can do with technology and trying to work out whether the solutions we find to those problems are correct, Soulminder is the book for you.
Cool Things: Big Hero 6
It’s time to contradict a rule I shared with you just last month – I’ve only seen this movie once. I’m still okay with recommending it to you.
Big Hero 6 is, hands down, the best movie released in 2014 that I’ve watched so far. For those wondering, other movies of this year that I’ve seen include The Amazing Spiderman 2, The Lego Movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Edge of Tomorrow. And yes, Big Hero 6 is better than all of them. Not by much, in the cases of fellow Marvel property Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Edge of Tomorrow, but still better.
Let’s start with the basics. If you’ve seen any of the trailers you know that, at it’s heart, the movie is about grief. Protagonist Hiro Hamada lost his parents at a young age and his remaining family consists of his single aunt and older brother, Tadashi. Then Tadashi dies.
The sum total of Tadashi’s legacy consists of his younger brother, his four friends from college and his experimental healthcare assistant robot Baymax. Again, if you’ve seen a trailer for this film you already know that the squishy, huggable Baymax is a major character in this story.
Other films and other media have tackled the issue of robots among us before. It may seem hard to believe that there’s any new ground to break. And maybe there’s not but every moment Baymax is on the screen he’s so fun, so charming and so pure-hearted you really won’t care. It may be odd to say but it’s Baymax, the creature of programmed behavior and mannerisms, that comes off as the real hero of this bunch.
Baymax has one purpose in life – to see to the health of the people around him. When it becomes apparent to Baymax that Hiro is suffering from grief and depression he starts working to cure it. Most of the important moments of emotional development in the story are a direct result of Baymax’s actions.
Robots tend to be very flat, one dimensional characters even in their best depictions. But Baymax surpasses that problem in spades and he alone would make the movie worthwhile. Fortunately we get more than just one good character in this movie.
Hiro is a very believable protagonist as well. Sure, he’s a genius and most of us movie goers aren’t but in watching him get caught up in dreams, goals and ultimately grief we see in him a very human, relatable character who’s just trying to figure out who he’s supposed to be in a world that seems very set on taking away all his points of refrerence.
The supporting cast is a lot of fun, too, and better experienced than described. Unfortunately, outside of the mask-wearing villain and Tadashi there’s not much development among them. The movie is already pretty packed and there wouldn’t have been much time for developing them more but it’s still kind of disappointing to have funny stereotypes rather than funny characters. Keep your fingers crossed for a sequel and maybe we’ll see more of them developed.
It’s really hard to talk overmuch about the plot in this film. Most of the villain, from his identity to his goals, is kept a secret until the end so I can’t really say much about it. A shrewd writer will probably see through the twist but the ride is still more than worth it. I will say I like the way the story sets up and then subverts common expectations.
In the end the one complaint I had about Big Hero 6 after walking out of the theater is that I wanted more of it. More fun, more time with the characters, more stories to explore and enjoy. And if that’s the only complaint you have then the movie is obviously doing a lot right.
Cool Things: Titan A.E
Does anyone else out there remember this movie? Because it was awesome.
It had a pop-punk soundtrack that was either the best or the worst of it’s era, depending on how much you like that kind of thing, and the art, both hand drawn and digital, was beautiful. The CG hasn’t held up that well with time but for a film produced in the 1990s and released in the year 2000 it’s pretty impressive. The hand drawn stuff is just plain top of the line, classic stuff. It’s never going to age or look bad.
Seriously, whether you absolutely love space opera or you’re just looking for a fun, simple primer to the genre, you can’t go wrong with this movie. It’s animated, sure, but the story is not just for kids, the main characters are fun and the animation is gorgeous. Makes you wonder why there aren’t more fully animated space operas – it really solves the problem of aliens looking fake next to their human counterparts.
Okay, enough about how this film looks. It’s a visual treat but movies need to be more for me to recommend them.
Titan A.E. is an incredibly bold movie, a reminder of different times. For starters, look at the title. That “A.E.” part? It stands for “after Earth” and it’s a signifier of time period, like B.C., A.D. or B.C.E. Yes, this film begins with the death of Planet Earth, not from pollution or relentless warfare but planet destroying superbeings! Humanity has somehow drawn the ire of an alien race called the Drej who decide that blowing up our planet is the best way to deal with us. We’re not told explicitly what they dislike about us but we do know it’s somehow tied to a large spaceship called the Titan.
The creators of the Titan manage to get it off Earth before the planet is destroyed but they kind of disappear afterwards. Cale, our hero, is the son of a chief scientist on the project who’s left effectively an orphan. Humanity, with no home planet or interstellar real estate to work from, is left a poor and dying race and Cale is drifting from job to job and focuses on just scraping by.
Then he meets Captain Joe Korso, someone who claims that he knew Cale’s father and shows Cale that his father left him a clue to find the Titan. And in no time we’re off to find the Titan and see if it can still help humanity in some way – after all, the Drej still seem to want it.
In little, tiny pieces or possibly thrown into the heart of a sun.
There’s a lot of chasing, a lot of searching and a lot of cool spaceships in flight from that point onward. Sure, the story’s not exactly fresh, it basically boils down to a race for the MacGuffin. Sure, Cale’s not a terribly original character and you’ll either love or hate the supporting cast, much like the music, but the whole thing is done with so much heart and cheer that it’s almost impossible not to have fun when you’re watching it.
Titan A.E. isn’t an instant classic but it is a good piece of film trying to do something that animation hasn’t always shot at: Telling honest stories looking at human nature in an straight forward way suitable for all ages. It’s worth seeing on that account alone.
Cool Things: Edge of Tomorrow
So I’ve talked about this movie before, how it did a great job of adapting a work across mediums and culture. (A warning: The post in question has spoilers galore and it’s long. If you still want to read it click here.) That post was mostly written a few days after watching the movie and I have a hard time recommending a movie before I’ve seen it at least twice, in no small part because most movies – good movies at least – cannot be properly understood after just one watching. And while there are some movies (and books) that are good for a single watching (or reading) to be put aside afterwards, the best entertainment, the kind I try to recommend, holds up to multiple experiences.
I finished rewatching the film, this time at home on BluRay, and I find it does. So what makes Edge of Tomorrow a film worth looking at?
I think the biggest thing is it’s thematic choice of the value of courage. It’s not apparent at the beginning but our hero, Major William Cage, is a coward of the highest, purest degree. In an odd kind of way it’s refreshing. There’s no hesitation or shame in Cage’s cowardice at the beginning of the film. Cage is a PR man for the US military in a war against the Mimics, alien invaders who’s march across the world seemingly can’t be stopped.
Well, sort of. Humanity won a battle thanks to Rita Vritaski and the high tech battle suits known as “Jackets” that were engineered expressly to give humans more of a punch against Mimics. No one’s sure how Rita managed to drive the Mimics back but now they’re hoping a repeat is on tap. A huge force has gathered in England to retake the continent of Europe in a high tech reenactment of Normandy and Cage is offered the chance to go with Rita’s unit and film the landing for propaganda.
He says no, because he likes not getting shot.
Offended at the blunt nature of Cage’s cowardice his commanding officer has him busted down to an enlisted man and railroads him into the infantry. Rather than landing with a crack veteran unit he lands with pure rookies, himself one of the least experienced of them all. In the insane melee Cage kills a strange looking Mimic and gets burned to death by its strange blue blood.
After dying he wakes up again the day before the invasion, about to be run into the infantry again. This is going to be something of a theme since Cage isn’t a very good soldier, he was in the reserves before the Mimics invaded and he apparently never went on active duty. This whole loop through time until you get things right isn’t exactly a new story, in film it dates back over twenty years to the movie Groundhog Day. The idea might have first been introduced in a short story called “Doubled and Redoubled”, published in 1941. But what’s interesting about this story is that Cage isn’t the only one time travelling.
Apparently all that blood he got on him when he killed that first alien pulled him into the time loop – that’s how they fight. It’s not that the Mimics have never lost a fight in this war, they’ve just been going around as many times as it takes to not loose in the end. But humans can get sucked into the time loop as well as evidenced by Cage – and, as it turns out, Rita.
What really makes this movie great is a combination of two things. The first is the very careful way the loops show Cage’s character progression from craven coward to wanting to help but lacking skill to able to help but jaded into not caring and finally arriving at the point where he has the courage to sacrifice even the things he wants in order to do what he’s accepted as the right thing. It’s a fascinating journey and it still holds up the second time around. The other thing that makes it work is the incredibly nuanced performances of leading actors Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt who make you believe these two people have actually traveled through time and been deeply marked by the experience.
Oh, the action sequences and alien monster stuff is really good too.
The promo materials for Edge of Tomorrow called the movie a thinking man’s action film and I really think it lives up to that title. It’s an incredibly beautiful movie with well written, well acted characters and a plot just twisty enough to keep you engaged but not so bizarre as to be unbelievable. Provided you’re okay with the space-aliens-travelling-through-time-to-conquer-Earth part. So why aren’t you watching it yet?!
Cool Things: Plunder of Souls
Ethan Kaille has a rough life. He’s one of only two thieftakers in Boston and the other hates his guts, there’s a cholera outbreak in town and tensions between the British troops and the British townfolk are growing ever higher. And someone’s desecrating graves and Ethan’s been hired to find out who and bring them to justice.
No, actually one thing that’s interesting about D.B. Jackson’s titular thieftaker is that his adventures don’t tumble one after the other in rapid succession. There’s actually been about a year between this adventure and Ethan’s last, no doubt so that interesting events of history can line up with fictional events. While the author obviously has that goal in mind it also allows the world some time to pass around the characters which really makes things feel more realistic.
Another nice touch about this story is that Ethan is not investigating a death under unusual circumstances this time. As I said at the beginning he’s been called in to figure out why graves are being desecrated and to bring the perpetrator to justice. Now if you haven’t read my previous recommendation of the Thieftaker Chronicles you need to know that Ethan is a conjuror, a kind of wizard who has to balance his need to make money with his need not to get burned at the stake as a witch. While Ethan has a kind of truce with the authorities in Boston that lets him do his job mostly in peace he is going to have other things to deal with.
For one thing, while conjurors can protect themselves from disease for a little while the materials they need to do it are very hard to find and very expensive and the cholera outbreak isn’t going anywhere. Plus Kaille opens the book by showing up his rival thieftaker Sephira Pryce and she’s not happy about it. While Ethan has conjuring to back him up Sephira has hired muscle and now a hired conjuror of her own and their rivalry is coming to a serious head. But worst of all something is interfering with Ethan’s ability to conjure. And not just Ethan’s, but the abilities of every conjuror in the city.
The best thing about the story in A Plunder of Souls is the development of the characters. While Ethan is a very well established character the supporting characters haven’t gotten as much screen time in the previous couple of books. Even Sephira, who has been turning up a lot in previous books, was mostly a secondary antagonist before where as now she and Ethan establish an uneasy peace that lets us see her in a new light. All of this is great but above and beyond that, unlike in previous books, the villain is also very well developed.
It turns out that Ethan has a history with the villain, another conjuror who has a twisted relationship with Ethan and… well just about everybody. While there’s not a whole lot that’s new to the urban fantasy/paranormal investigation genres in this story’s formula the execution of the formula and the construction of the characters on both sides of the conflict makes it worthwhile. On top of that the villain offers real intelligence and menace whenever he’s on hand to threaten Ethan. Finally the feel and danger of pre-Revolution America is icing on the cake, making the setting in the Theiftaker Chronicles much more real and engaging than many other urban fantasies.
A decent, if formulaic, story filled with very interesting characters makes A Plunder of Souls a read that’s attractive and fun.
Cool Things: Jani and the Greater Game
Steampunk meets space opera? Yes, please!
One of the worldbuilding challenges a steampunk story faces is explaining how technology managed to get so advanced without the British Empire’s place in the world going in a weird direction. Some people chose to gloss over the question, never addressing it, some actually do try to warp the development of the world and change Britain’s place in the world and some just create a new world with analogs for the British Empire and it’s colonies. Eric Brown’s Jani and the Greater Game both answers the question in a nice way and integrates the secret of advanced technology into the foundation of the story.
Now there’s a spoiler here so you’re warned but it’s hard to discuss the book without mentioning this and I can’t really see anyone not getting this by the end of the first chapter or so.
So the way the world works is the British find a crashed spaceship in the late 1800s and start reverse engineering it’s technology. This makes the British Empire an even more dominate force on the planet than it was in our timeline and triggers a kind of cold war between the British, the Chinese and the Russians over the land of Nepal, where the space ship is located. Of course, most people don’t know what makes Nepal so special but at least the leaders of Britain and Russia do. (It’s not clear if the Chinese are aware of what makes the territory so valuable but that’s forgivable since they’re not really a part of the story of this book.)
The primary character of this book is Janisha (Jani to family and friends), a young half English half Indian woman who has been called back to India from studying medicine in England because her father has fallen ill. Along the way her airship is shot down by Russians. Because that’s the kind of thing that happens to airships during cold wars.
Once again this plot point serves multiple purposes. Not only does it establish the Russians as our antagonists in this story it also provides a very natural reason for Jani to encounter the airships’ most exotic passenger – Jelch, an alien that was under heavy guard in the hold of the airship. When Jani’s ride crashes Jelch’s prison breaks open and the guards wind up dead. Jani offers Jelch medical treatment but Jelch tells her the medicine she knows will not work on him. Still, Jani’s generosity and compassion is something Jelch has apparently not seen much of from humanity and he’s moved to leave her a gift and protect her from the Russian landing party that has been sent to eliminate survivors.
Another plot point that it won’t take a perceptive reader long to figure out is that Jelch is on earth to oppose an invasion from a second alien species. Earth is a piece in the Greater Game being played by this expanding alien empire. The aliens already have agents on earth and, along with the Russians, these alien agents will plague Jani and her friends from beginning to end.
Now like War of the Worlds there are undoubtedly parallels between the British Empire and the invading aliens intended but, at least in the first installment of the series (and yes, this is a series), there’s no preachy moralizing or hitting us over the head with messages. While Jani does feel a bit like a Mary Sue at times she and the cast around her are at least well written and beginning to grow from hastily sketched archetypes to well rounded characters and the story promises to put a new, fun skin on the fairly well explored prevent-otherworldly-invasion storyline. If you enjoy steampunk sensibilities it’s worth your while to check it out.
Local Theater: A Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas
We’re back for more local theaterings! Yes, there was an all for One show already this season that I didn’t remember to plug, but Interval was a very high concept show and I wasn’t sure what to say about it beyond it being about two people on a park bench. This time around there’s a little more backstory available for the show. Like, a whole book series worth.
Little House on the Prairie is a classic piece of Americana, a tale of the West and the settlers that loved it. While Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about a huge chunk of her early life there is a two year period which she left a blank. There are some personal papers and other documents that give a decent picture of what her life was like but that period of time isn’t a part of her famous series of books.
There are plenty of possible reasons for that. The family was hard up financially and Laura’s father was managing a hotel, a line of work that didn’t really fit with the theme of the stories. Also, on the advice of her publisher, Laura made herself older in her first two books than she actually was at the time, to make the viewpoint of her narrator more believable, and cutting the period out of the novels allowed her to sync her actual age and the age of her character in the stories back up. Finally, her youngest sibling had died in infancy and the death cast a pall over the family that Laura probably didn’t care to share with the world at large.
But there’s nothing like public interest to fill in the holes in a person’s life. A Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas tells the story of part of those missing years, taking us into the hotel Charles Ingalls managed and letting us join with the Ingalls family as they struggle to deal with the loss of a child and the poverty of their circumstances.
I can’t say much more about the story as I’ve never read this play and I’m (gasp!) not involved in the show! But it promises music, fun and heart, so if you’re in Fort Wayne early this November it might be worth your checking out.
How to Survive a Horror Movie
Well they tell me Halloween’s coming up. I’ve never been a huge fan of this particular occasion, since I’m only moderately enthusiastic about dressing up in costumes and my sweet tooth isn’t that big either. Still, I thought it might be fun to take another tongue in cheek look at genre savvy this year and so, without further ado, I present you with How to Survive a Horror Movie.
Now this idea may sound preposterous on the face of it. After all, there are so many different approaches to horror movies, different kinds of threats and/or monsters to menace the characters (henceforth “the opposition” in this article) that being prepared for all of them seems like an impossible task. But it’s important to keep in mind that tackling impossible tasks is what fiction is all about and horror movies are just as much fiction as anything else. So let’s get dangerously genre savvy and see what you’ll need to survive should you find the creepy music tinkling in the soundtrack of your life.
Now I’m going to assume that you’re media savvy enough, or common sensical enough, to realize the basic measures that need to be taken to survive a horror movie. Things like:
- Avoid dark places.
- Don’t go anywhere alone.
- But don’t couple up. Three is a good number.
- Don’t investigate strange noises even if you have an entire combat infantry regiment for backup.
But there’s more to surviving a horror movie than just that. Let’s take a look at some things you shouldn’t do, let me make a few suggestions on added precautions to take and finally look at a few places where your mileage may vary.
For starters, don’t:
- Try to acquire conventional weapons, at least nothing beyond a decent knife. The opposition tends to target the largest, most dangerous people first to prove its overwhelming power and make itself as scary as possible.
- Mock the opposition directly or the people you’re with. Antagonizing the opposition just draws it’s attention, much like trying to out muscle it. On the other hand, being a jerk is a lot like looping a millstone around your neck. People will hesitate just a fraction of a second when you’re in trouble, and that’s enough to sink you.
- Try and drop off the radar completely. The opposition never forgets you’re there and if your friends do… well, it’s like asking to be left alone. And we all know how that ends.
On the other hand, do:
- Try and keep the attitude light. Jokes are okay, just not mean-spirited ones. While the opposition often strikes when you’re feeling relatively secure, and breaking up a lighthearted mood does add to it’s threatening nature, it can’t strike you directly, as then you die unafraid (which is unacceptable) and it can’t continually strike during a punch line – that makes it predictable and thus less frightening.
- Get ahold of a bag of salt. From giant slugs or oozes to ghosts and demons, salt is a great general purpose horror survival tool, either as a weapon or a defense. And if you get trapped somewhere for a long period of time you can use it to season your food.
- Get ahold of a bag of rice. If the opposition is OCD, as vampires (see Sesame Street or just look up arithmania) or human psychopaths tend to be, the need to count it, or at least clean it up when you spill it, will slow them down.
- Get ahold of a bag of fresh garlic. The opposition often smells horribly, which is to say you will not enjoy smelling them; often to the point where your attempts to flee will be overcome by gagging. Garlic was good enough for Van Hellsing to overcome this problem, so it’s good enough for you.
- Try to avoid confusion over which bag is which and combine all three of the above items into one bag. Trying to dissolve a giant slug with a bag of garlic will just make you look silly. Shortly before you end up looking dead.
- Find and burn anything that falls into the uncanny valley. Leaving that stuff around is just asking for trouble.
- Burn any documents in languages you can’t read, especially when it’s in dead languages. Don’t try and figure them out. Don’t take them around to experts. Don’t hang sings around your neck that say “Victim, Please Eat Me”. Just get ’em gone then get out of town.
- Put objects to be destroyed directly into the fire and watch them burn. Put them in a box or something else before burning them and you’ll walk away thinking they’re gone when they’re actually hidden in the ashes. Or worse, some kind of switcharoo will take place and you’ll burn the wrong thing.
- Maintain a respectful attitude towards the objects you destroy. The fact that you regret destroying them may be enough to deflect whatever vengeful spirit is using them as a vessel to attack you. Yeah, the odds are bad but it’s worth a shot. Don’t laugh like a maniac unless you’re prepared to try and out-evil horrible ancient evils.
Finally, here are a few things where value is going to depend on what your opposition is, or what kind of person you are.
- First and foremost, wearing a cross or other holy symbol. If you wear one all the time, great, keep it on. Ditching it probably paints you as a target. But if you don’t wear one normally, putting one on is just as big a target – the opposition loves hypocrites. And not in a good way. Of course, many forms of opposition don’t care about your faith one way or another but oftentimes you won’t know what you’re facing until it’s too late.
- Learning about the opposition is a two edged sword. The opposition gets a lot of it’s fear factor from the fact that you don’t know anything about it. On the other hand, it’s a bad idea to start your research before you know you’re in a horror movie – being the know-it-all is just a another kind of target on your back, so don’t do this until you’re sure you’re in a horror movie so finding out the opposition’s weaknesses, if it has any, can be a death sentence. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Just don’t be the annoying dumb guy.
- Building positive relationships with the people you’re stuck with seems like a good idea. It keeps them from leaving you behind and it makes the time pass easier. However, the opposition likes nice guys. And not in a way that’s any better than it likes hypocrites. There’s a careful balance between being a target and getting along, especially since jerks are just as big a target as the overly nice. It’s probably best to act like yourself and hope everything pans out. Not much of a plan, I know, but in some ways fiction is exactly like life…
So there you have it. The next time you find atonal music drifting through the background you’ll be ready, or as ready as anyone ever can be, to face the horrors of… horror. So long as the film has a decent budget you should come out okay.
Cool Things: Scorpion
It’s not often that I talk about TV shows on this blog, much less ones that are still in the airing. Scorpion only has a couple episodes under it’s belt so far and that makes talking about it meaningfully even more difficult. I still think it’s still worth your consideration.
The premise is that the Federal Government is building a special unit to deal with unique, highly sophisticated technological crimes. So far, so good. There’s been a lot of programs with that premise in the past, we live in an age of evolving information technology with an ever-greater impact on our lives and people are still grappling with the implications that has on their safety and security.
The thing about Scorpion is that it’s as much a comedy as it is a thriller. You see, four of the five main characters are certifiable geniuses with attendant impediments to proper social functioning. From the moment we see Walter O’Brien breaking up with his girlfriend and, in the process presenting her with a flowchart that will help her work through the emotions that she’ll be dealing with, we know that the people we’re about to meet are not normal.
Scorpion is a goofy mashup of 24 and The Big Bang Theory, chalk full of looming disasters, technobabble and humorous social awkwardness. But where 24 is all about the suspense and The Big Bang Theory celebrates geekiness with the nudge-nudge-wink-wink glee of an insider, Scorpion is more about how the brilliance of some minds leaves them isolated.
The heart and soul of Scorpion is less Walter and his quartet of geniuses. It’s not even Paige, their girl Friday, who is the social buffer they need to interact well with “normal” society. At least as far as I’ve seen, as of this writing, the heart of the show is Ralph, Paige’s son.
Walter first meets Ralph at the diner just after he breaks up with his girlfriend. Ralph has been suspended from school – and not for the first time from the sound of things – and has gone with his single mother to work. Walter sees him pushing objects around on the diner’s counter in a seemingly random fashion and he watches for a moment. Then he steps over and starts pushing salt shakers and creamer packets himself. After a few seconds Paige interrupts and Walter leaves, but not before telling her she needs to help her son. Walter could see what she missed.
Ralph was playing chess.
Paige thinks her son is slower than normal kids, handicapped in some way. On their next meeting, Walter is forced to tell her, “I’m sorry, but you’re son’s a genius.”
In our society we tend to think of people who are better than us at something as privileged and special. Scorpion is a TV show about how they’re also awkward and difficult. That doesn’t mean we can’t connect with them, but it’s going to take a lot of effort. Walter and his team are a larger than life portrait of why that’s worthwhile – thanks to a Homeland Security agent that realizes their potential they’re out to save the US one problem at a time.
But Ralph embodies Scorpion’s real message. Paige tells Walter her nail polish is streaky because Ralph likes to paint and he puts it on every morning. “He doesn’t like to paint,” Walter tells her. “He wants to hold your hand, but doesn’t know how to process physical contact.”
Even “mentally enabled” people like Ralph and Walter face a host of challenges just making it through the day. They need love, support and understanding just as much as the next person. Unfortunately, in today’s society there’s a tendency to say, “Oh, they’re smart, they can handle it” and leaving it at that. Scorpion makes a convincing case for the smart people we know very much needing the understanding and help of people who’s strengths lie in other areas.
Scorpion is still a new show, the cast isn’t entirely comfortable in their roles yet and there’s no telling if the writing will continue to be as strong and effectively character driven as the first couple of episodes, which are all I’ve seen as of this writing. But it promises to deal with a rarely addressed topic in an insightful, meaningful and entertaining way. And that makes it more than worthy of your attention.
Nate Chen Publications 