System Error
It’s no good – you turn it on, and the TV just goes black. Fiddle the cables, fiddle the cartridge, blow on it to your heart’s content. The system’s shot.
Elizabeth Sandifer
About Elizabeth Sandifer
Posts by Elizabeth Sandifer:
The Door
Let’s start with the ending, simply because it’s shocking in such an unusual way for Game of Thrones – the death of what is by literally any standard a minor character elevated to a point of unparalleled cruelty. Bran’s warging into Hodor has always been presented as a slightly upsetting thing – using him to kill Locke in Season Four is a particularly striking example. But here it is used, in effect, to order him to his death. And this is in turn presented, in a fucked up invocation of Moffatian time-wime, as the origin story for the character – an order that gave a perfectly innocent young boy a traumatic brain injury. Which we are then forced to linger on at extensive length so that what is basically a pun can be unfolded in all its horror.
A claim that’s been echoing in my head the last few weeks is that the most interesting thing about Game of Thrones is that it’s a liberal apologia for feudalism that thinks it’s doing a materialist critique of history. (Only with tits and dragons.) Which isn’t the whole truth, but is at least something I haven’t managed to figure out how to write about yet. And I mention it only because it’s essential to this ending, which is after all only a season-midpoint – a still lowballed gambit in the structure of escalating set pieces that defines the latter portions of a Game of Thrones season. It is, in other words, our authorized moment of reflection on the cruelty of aristocracy. Bran is literally one of the magic important people, and so Willis has to go to his awful death for him. The cruelty of this is milked, the credits roll, we move on to speculating about next week.
And yet it is constructed at such meticulous length – the “everything is going very badly now” structure of “Hardholme” accelerated into a ten-minute scene, with a neatly timed progression of deaths that starts at “fucking hell another wolf” and ends at climactic revelation. It is allowed to have the full weight of what Game of Thrones does well, including its most tits and dragons instincts. They’re determined enough to earn that final scene that they dispose of “the origin of the White Walkers” in a daft little two minute scene early on just to set it up. (The “Inside the Episode” featurette has them speaking in awed tones about learning the twist from Martin, going out of its way to spoil the books in doing so.) In much the same way that the show was deliberate in starting slow, it is deliberate in letting the full perversity of this moment play out. And the result is genuinely interesting. We’re getting to the point in Game of Thrones where it has to finally start resolving its moral ambiguities, or at least where its statements on them begin to feel definitive. This scene – in all its cruelties and resonances, is a compelling one. If I had to award Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) for 2016 today, “The Door” would probably be my pick, largely on the back of that scene.…
Saturday Waffling (May 21st, 2016)
First off, two Patreon-related bits of news. First, N.K. Jemisin, author of the best SF/F novel of 2015, has just started a Patreon. She’s offering excerpts from forthcoming works, exclusive short stories, and more cool content. Awesome stuff, and totally worth it. Plus it’d be fun to see her hit her $2000 a month goal in the first twenty-four hours. She’s on track, and personally, I think the $60 it would cost to back her at $5 a month is a better use of your fandom dollars than a MidAmericacon II membership. Your mileage may vary, or your financial circumstances allow for both.
Second, my own Patreon has dipped slightly below the Game of Thrones reviews threshold. I’m not going to discontinue them immediately, but this is a magical ritual to pay my rent.
In other news, the magical ritual to pay for my move, aka Neoreaction a Basilisk, continues to do amazingly well on Kickstarter. We’re into the high-end goals now, and it looks like it’s going to be really close on whether this makes it over $14k and gets to what I sort of consider the “complete” book. We’re only about $350 away from “Lizard People, Dear Reader,” which is a number we could in theory hit today. The goals after that are all pretty fun, so I’m optimistic the pace can keep up. But please, if you enjoy the work I do (and we do) here, even if you can’t afford to back it or aren’t quite $5 worth of interested, spread the word. What helps drive sales at this point in a campaign is when new people hear about the book. So link them to an excerpt, to a podcast, to the Kickstarter. And if you’re on the fence about it, I’ve added a new $1 tier whereby you can just download the review copy I posted as a backers only update. If you like it, maybe consider upgrading from that if you can. If you don’t, I appreciate your not cancelling the pledge.
We’ve got the final two Neoreaction a Basilisk podcasts this week, with our very own Jane Campbell (who should be back on Tuesdays soon) and a guest I’ve long wanted to get on the site, Alex Reed of Seeming. Also, be sure to stop by on Wednesday morning for Major Site News. (It’s good news! Awesome news even!)…
Just Ban Slates Already
Since this seems like the sort of post that might get a bit of attention, I figure I should toss a link to my Kickstarter at the top, and politely ask you to at least click through and look at it to see if it’s something you’re interested in backing.
I’ve mostly stayed out of Hugos stuff for the last couple weeks, having a book to promote and all. And because it didn’t seem necessary. The situation was straightforward and as expected last year – one more year of Puppies and then normal business would be restored. Except that over the last couple of weeks several analyses have thrown some cold water on the hope that the E Pluribus Hugo nomination reform expected to pass at MidAmericon II this year will be quite the fix that many of us hoped for, with reports suggesting that it will at best allow the overwhelming majority of fans to have 1-2 slots per category that are not dictated by a tiny minority of racist dunderheads. A considerable number of new proposals to deal with this have thus been circulated, most of them preposterously baroque, clearly ineffectual, or both. This is strange, as the problem is not actually particularly hard to solve if you want to. Just ban slates.
After all, the Hugo Ballot is fifteen categories long. Each category has five nominating slots (possibly four after this year). That’s seventy-five slots on a ballot, all of which can be filled with any novel, short story, podcast, fan writer, or whatever that you want. The odds that two ballots are going to be identical through means other than active coordination are already vanishingly small. The odds that dozens or hundreds are is simply non-existent. If you want to get rid of the disruptive voting practices by which a vindictive psychopath is ruining the Hugo Awards, just get rid of them directly. I mean, the Hugo FAQ already pretty much declares them against the rules by saying “don’t nominate or vote for something you have not read or seen, and don’t vote based on reputation — the Hugos are meant to honor your choices and judgments.” It’s just that there’s not a single mechanism to actually enforce that.
There are, of course, other proposals out there – Kevin Standlee has put three up on File 770. But these all involve significant revamping of the system, introducing things like a third stage of voting (with seemingly no thought as to how this would fit into the timetable) or arbitrarily allowing categories to be extended. These might work. They might also be gamed, however, much like E Pluribus Hugo looks to be gameable. What isn’t gameable – what is indeed inherently ungameable – is simply banning organized campaigns to do anything other than have fans nominate works they read and enjoyed. (And notably, if in fact there have been seekrit leftist attempts to manipulate the Hugos for years, an allegation that literally not a shred of evidence has ever been presented for, this would have the effect of shutting them down too.)…
City of the Dead 10: The Torture Garden
Holly and James are back with another installment of City of the Dead, their madcap trip through the film catalog of Amicus Films. This one apparently has both killer cats and pianos, as well as Hollywood robots and an immortal Edgar Allen Poe. So yeah, that’s an impressive pile of topics. I’m suitably in awe.
Comics Reviews (May 18th, 2016)
Reviews will possibly be late next week, as I’ll be traveling and may not get to the shop until Thursday.
Civil War II #0
A tremendous amount of nothing happens (par for the course in zero issues), and more to the point, the nothing that happens doesn’t actually connect directly with the Free Comic Book Day issue of this. But there’s some very heavy-handed thematic stuff at least. Ugh. And Bendis’s track record in crossovers is, to say the least, weak. This looks set to be a disaster, frankly.
Silver Surfer #4
A cute conclusion to the story arc that’s well-earned, entertaining, and drawn with typical brilliance by Michael Allred. That said, it’s not doing anything new with this character or take, hasn’t in a while, and concludes by basically reiterating the status quo of the book instead of suggesting that it has some new ideas. It’s been fun, but this feels like a good time to step away from thist itle.
Spider-Man #4
A two-scene issue, with little relationship between them, which is to say very much a Bendis thing. The first scene, in which Ganke outs Miles to Goldballs, is interesting by the end, and Goldballs is as endearingly dumb a character as he was in the X-Men books, but takes a while to get going. The latter scene, in which Miles monologues a bit too much while dodging missiles, would probably have been better with a different cover that didn’t basically spoil the final-page cliffhanger. Still, it’s got a very classic Spider-Man vibe to it.
Karnak #4
There’s an element of Ellis-by-numbers to this book that can be frustrating – dialogue like “… Why can’t I just kill all the people” or “<vastly annoyed sigh>” is funny, but funny in a way that makes you go “yep, Warren Ellis all right.” Which means that this comic lives or dies by the coolness of its ideas and/or visuals. This one’s visuals – ten pages of nearly dialogue-free fight scene that Roland Boschi does very prettily, but without much that holds the interest. Although the David Bowie cameo is fun. I suspect this will read far better in trade, though.
Scarlet #9
A quiet issue in a lot of ways, albeit one with some good character beats. And those are important for this book – so much of what works about this series is the way in which Scarlet has an entirely coherent and validly heroic worldview that is nevertheless aggressively out of line with conventional morality, and this gets relatively unproblematically presented as “the good guy.” She gets several moments to shine here. All told, this remains a book I’m deeply glad exists, because it’s tackling a story and ideas that I think need to be tackled.
Spider-Woman #7
Man, they’d have to reall fuck up the finish for this not to be the best crossover Marvel’s done in years at this point. I strongly suspect I’ll keep looking at Spider-Woman for at least an issue or two after this wraps.…
Eruditorum Presscast: Sam Keeper (Neoreaction a Basilisk 3)
For the third of our series of Neoreaction a Basilisk (currently available on Kickstarter) podcasts I’m joined by Sam Keeper of the thoroughly phenomenal site Storming the Ivory Tower for a conversation that talks a lot about the structural aspects of the book, as well as my secret traumatic origin story that explains my weird obsession with the alt-right. It’s an absolute blast of a podcast, as you’d expect from someone as brilliant as Sam (and seriously, Sam is one of the best and smartest voices in the quasi-academic pop culture blogging circuit right now).
That’s for download right here.
The Kickstarter also hit $9000 last night, which means that “The Blind All-Seeing Eye of Gamergate” will be going up on the blog when I finish writing it, and that the next stretch goal is “Lizard People, Dear Reader.” Which is another essay I’ve not thought too much about, but I promised that if we hit $9k yesterday I’d offer some disorganized thoughts about it, so here goes.
The basic topic is something I’ve wanted to play with for a while, just because I’ve always had a soft spot for weird Illuminati conspiracy theories. And the lizard people conspiracy theories are some of the best. I mean, how can you not love theories that say the world is secretly run by lizard people? But although the piece will start with lizard people, it’s really my big conspiracy theories essay, which just feels like a natural fit for a book about eschatology.
In a lot of ways it’s easiest to talk about what I don’t want to do. I’m still going back and forth over how much Robert Anton Wilson to put in. Wilson’s fantastic and obviously a huge touchstone for this sort of thing, but he’s such a huge touchstone that he feels almost overdone. I also did a fun little bit on the Illuminatus Trilogy in TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 4, so I’m loathe to go back. So yeah, I think I just talked myself out of Wilson.
Another thing I want to avoid is duplicating “The Blind All-Seeing Eye of Gamergate,” which is about a particular kind of paranoia and dodgy reasoning that you can certainly find in lizard people conspiracy theories. So not an essay that’s based on close-reading David Icke, and certainly not a debunking type essay. I also don’t want to get into “what does it all mean,” not least because the answer tends to just be “it’s antisemitism with the serial numbers filed off.”
So that’s the obvious angles to avoid. As for what I do want to do… since the Kickstarter began, I’ve found myself mindful of the way in which Glycon is kind of a tangible absence in the text. I mean, here I am talking about serpents and philosophical horror and I don’t have any Glycon. And part of that is just that I wanted to talk about new stuff in Neoreaction a Basilisk, but the omission grates. I’m tempted to try to make an opposition between lizard people and Glycon – two very different models for how reptiles secretly control the world.…
Neoreaction a Basilisk: Excerpt Five
This will be the last excerpt I post here, unsurprisingly from fairly late in the book. The epigraph early on marks the closest thing the book has to chapter breaks. (So this is the end of the fifth and start of the sixth of seven quasi-chapters.) This may be my favorite excerpt, just by dint of how much it highlight’s the book’s ability to move among and synthesize a wide variety of topics. Anyway, Neoreaction a Basilisk is available on Kickstarter, and I’ve linked a PDF of it in a backers-only update, so if you want to read it, you can do so right now.
And this is, in a nutshell, what’s scary about white nationalists – a fear eloquently articulated by Land’s heroic racist John Derbyshire, whom he quotes in the epigraph to Part 4a, the start of his “multi-part sub-digression into racial terror” as saying, “my own sense of the thing is that underneath the happy talk, underneath the dogged adherence to failed ideas and dead theories, underneath the shrieking and anathematizing at people like me, there is a deep and cold despair. In our innermost hearts, we don’t believe racial harmony can be attained.” And it’s true – the possibility that racism is an intractable and permanent problem is a scary one that has to be considered regardless of one’s certainty that there is no moral or rational basis for discrimination based on race. It’s just that the reason racism might be insoluble is less, as Derbyshire suggests, a fundamental “trend to separation” and more that there are still white people like John Derbyshire who are inclined to wax poetic about the precise reasons they hate black people, and that they exist in dangerously high numbers. This is not to deny the existence of racism even on the progressive left, nor to say that progressive racism is not just as much of a long-term danger. Rather, it’s to point out the practical scariness of white nationalists: their presence ensures that an intelligent or productive discussion of race is always going to be poisoned by a bunch of dipshits chiming in to rant about human biodiversity.
Underpinning all of this is the fact that the white nationalist horror is a mythology. This is what underlies the “Zimmerman is white in every way that matters” issue that underpinned the Trayvon Martin shooting – that his whiteness is almost wholly negative, coming from the ability to avoid being viewed as black or Hispanic or anything else. But there’s an inherent paranoia at the heart of this: the white nationalist monster, historically significant as it is and will be, has a glaring weak point in the form of its own monstrous terror of being invaded or violated. And moreover, that monster carries a power of its own, and one that is based in the same mythology as white nationalism.
Because, of course, the other way to describe whiteness instead of being not-seen-as-nonwhite is simply as being seen as “normal.” And the idea that appearing at first glance like someone who probably has European ancestry is “normal” is a concept that emerges out of historical systems of power that emerged from Europe – systems of power, notably, that include both Moldbug’s beloved monarchy and hated dissenters.…
All The Ghosts You Felt So Certain Of (Donkey Kong Country)
To start, a dyad. The game is based on a double, after all. There is no traditional attract mode. Indeed, almost all of the arcade trappings that defined the platformer’s shift to home consoles are gone, the lone holdout having been the score, kept vestigially in Super Mario World and gone here. And yet the start of the game is all about attraction – a wire-framed Rare logo, followed by an ostentatiously 3-D Nintendo logo.
The content is akin to that of Banzai Bill or the polygonal space ships of Star Fox – a straightforward demonstration of technological prowess. In this case, a clever hack for 3D graphics in which the output of high-powered digital rendering on ultra-expensive Silicon Graphics machines was converted into sixteen-bit sprites in the same way that Mortal Kombat used video and ClayFighter had used claymation figures. The result were the smoothest 3D models in console history.
Unfortunately, it holds up terribly. To a modern eye it looks pixelated and muddy – a bad imitation of the future. It doesn’t help that the computing strength used to render the models here is a sneeze compared to a modern console, or that the design for Donkey Kong here became the new standard, reused all the way to the present day, so that this appears to be a primitive copy instead of a preview of the future.
Next, nostalgia. The old familiar girders, rendered in vivid 3D. An old and wizened monkey sits atop it, turning the crank of a gramophone. The classic music chimes forth, nearly allowed to resolve, when on the last note a boombox drops from the sky, followed by a younger ape long on attitude, who kicks the old man off. The girders transform to trees, and there is rocking out, a shredding guitar remix of the music as the new generation of Kong boogies.
Once again, the message is unmistakable. Not so much a passing of the torch as the law of the jungle, young eating old. This ain’t your father’s goofy monkey. But the choice of history to dethrone is careful. Nintendo didn’t offer just any property out to a British studio that had (by this point twice) impressed with their technical prowess – they offered one that hadn’t had a game in a decade, whose importance to the company was already as the discarded past to their main franchise.
This confluence of technological history and brand history has been present before – consider the way in which the Mega Man series haunted Mega Man X, or the sepia-toned recaps of the previous Metroid games. But it has never been so explicit – the sixteen-bit era literally kicking the decrepit eight-bit era off its chair. Of course, Cranky Kong then blasts his replacement as Donkey Kong with a barrel of TNT, so it’s not quite that simple.
Comparison, then. The best aspect to focus on is the console wars, 1994 having been a strange ceasefire in which Nintendo unexpectedly won the generation because the challengers all vacated the field.…
Book of the Stranger
A stunner, paying off not only the (we can now confidently call it) deliberate pace and structure of the first three episodes but on numerous longstanding pieces of storytelling. In this regard, you can’t not start at the beginning, which for a half-scene feels like “oh god can we start an episode anywhere other than the Wall” until, abruptly, it switches into an event the show has been building to since the Stark diaspora commenced in the second episode. It’s a moment that shifts the entire show on its axis, and it’s structured beautifully, given all the time in the world to breathe. And that’s the opening. It follows that up with an immensely satisfying scene in which Sansa becomes the dominant figure of the relationship (and also well done owning the slight arbitrariness of their relationship – Benioff and Weiss claim they’ve never actually been on camera together before this episode, which is hard to believe but entirely possible), and then a lovely grace note of Brienne meeting Davos and Melisandre.
There’s an obvious question of how to end an episode that starts that big. The answer – to lean on the way this reaches back to Season One and recreate the cliffhanger of “Fire and Blood.” I howled with laughter as she torched the Dothraki – a charmingly direct solution that served as a satisfying reminder of what constitutes a Daenerys-scaled problem at this point. Although the earlier, fairly large Daenerys scene is also satisfying, giving Daenerys a small moment of victory – her first of the season – that quietly prefigures her later one. So much of what makes the last scene work is its beautiful inevitability – Daenerys is already safe as of the time Jorah and Daario get to her. That’s already a reasonably-sized moment that is keeping up the episode’s momentum when it happens. So Daenerys’s casual acquisition of the entirety of the fucking Dothraki is wonderful icing on top of the cake.
But the fact that Daenerys is on a fast ticket back to Meereen also enlivens that plot satisfying, which is good, as Tyrion is one of the bits of this episode that isn’t quite working. The general momentum and direction of this episode lends credence to his claim that he’s going to have the advantage over the slavers. Tyrion is good at what he does. In many ways, it’s been seasons since he had a substantial moment of victory, and so he’s massively overdue to get something. And yet the scene is pointing overwhelmingly towards him making a mistake – to the point where you wonder for a moment if he’s about to Stark it up completely and get put down by Grey Worm or Missandei. The sense of marking time would be frustrating were it not for the knowledge that there has to be a breakthrough coming at this point.
Because literally everything else is just plowing forward. Even the two smallest scenes – the Greyjoys and Osha’s death – have weight to them.…