YouTube Obsession

I’m pretty sure I’ve written about the Gundam Channel Youtube back when it had the very AOL coded name: “Gundam Info.” However, it deserves another shoutout for recently posting the first 3 Gundam movies from 1981.

The movies are essentially a shortening of the original anime’s run in 1979. So parts of the movies can feel a little “deus ex” but otherwise a really great set of movies. This original Gundam set the standard for its many, many spin-offs, by adeptly straddling the line between the horrors of war and “Wow, cool robot!” A feat many other franchises attempt to ape and few accomplish.

Watching

My partner and I since finishing our live action Sailor Moon journey, desperate for a new show started watching Apple TV’s Monarch. It’s a natural fit for our interests, we love Godzilla, kaiju in general and I’ll always give Kurt Russell a chance.

And boy, I just don’t understand how this got a second season (Currently airing btw). Spoilers obviously.

The danger of having every character in your main-cast have a “mysterious backstory’ is that it’s really hard to get connected to any character. There needs to be at least one emotionally principled character who can be the lodestone for the audience to latch onto. Even Russell’s ever charming performance is undercut by his character actually being defined by another actor, in flashbacks, set 80 years in the past. Oh and everyone is an asshole.

Listen, I love unlikeable characters, Indiana Jones in Raiders is a an asshole but his character is not wishy-washy. He has a clear goal and very clear principles. That makes him easy to understand. In Monarch, characters flip-flop their goals and personalities at a whim. Often times I wondered if the writers just swapped characters in a scene because they would suddenly act like another character.

They also have very tropey character archetypes: The over-bearing but ultimately supportive police chief:

POLICE CHEIF
You shot up the entire market and destroyed millions of dollars in city property! I should be taking your badge and gun….but you got the bad guy…great job Shaft”

The over enthusiastic nerd doing sci-fi techno babble:

NERD
That’s it! I just need to extend the hyper-wave giga-form into nano primes..

LUNKHEAD BRUTE
In english Einstein, I don’t speak nerd.

NERD demonstrates sarcastically on a Chinese finger trap. Speaking like a neanderthal

NERD
Big thingy, go in little thingy. Big thingy no get out.

And many more!

I have no problem with tropes, they work, that’s why they’re tropes. The tone just isn’t consistent enough to match the horrific and somber notes they want to hit. It makes the audience question how they’re supposed to feel about something happening. Which is further exasperated by schizophrenic main characters who change how they act every episode.

TLDR: It’s messy and it often gives me a headache. Oh and not enough kaiju.

In the show’s favor I have to point out that it is a very Asian cast. Which is, unfortunately, a rarity in a Western production so I have to give major props to the actors. I just wish they had better characters.

Reading

While at the library I randomly saw Harlan Ellison’s short story collection from 1980 Shatterday:

This is a great way to introduce your book. It was also the perfect book to pull me back into my regular reading schedule because this guy is so vitriolic that it’s hard not to get wrapped up in his energy.

Those are just from his introduction. I highly recommend people who write at least read the introduction because it really got me fired up to write.

Before this, I had only ever read what is arguably his most famous contribution to sci-fi, I have No Mouth, and I must Scream so I knew he was an angry writer. You cannot read No Mouth without coming to that conclusion but reading his philosophy on writing clarifies his anger into ethos. The workmanship, the labor of writing is no magic spell, just a good idea and the sweat and tears to get it on paper.

The stories are great too. Just as angry and shocking as you would expect with bits of humor quite dark.

Playing

I saw a YouTube comment that describes exactly how I continue to feel about Marathon after 20+ hours: “It’s my favorite game, I hate it. When I’m not playing the game, its all I think about: What I could have done different, what ability I should have used, how I could have laid that claymore mine when I was being chased, I was this close to finishing that guy off….ad infinitum.

There is just no chill in Marathon. Every raid something is on the line. And despite the relatively less hardcore stress compared to Tarkov, I’m burnt out after a few raids, my apes gone, my cortisol spiked. The stress point in Marathon is that I actually care about the story of this world and I want to see what is happening before it wipes in a few months. Classic FOMO. Where in Tarkov I had no vested interest in the “story”. Also, toward the end, I played a lot of Tarkov offline, so I could take my time and play SPT as long as I want.

If I want to experience all of Marathon, I just need to treat it like a second job and that’s not happening. But in no small part this has helped me get back into my regular reading schedule, so thank you Marathon!

Other Notables

** Polymarket Pop-up bar is as terrible as it sounds.

** Disney pulls out of OpenAi. Hook this shit directly to my veins, I love it, omg it’s like the NFT crash all over again… hnnng

** “What could Voldemort do against an AC-130?”