Zum Thema „Altern“

This is a German translation of this post of mine, “On Aging”. To read it in English go there.

von Mark Rosenfelder alias zompist

Originalfassung zuerst am 21. Februar 2020 gepostet

Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Raphael Landeck

Dank der Launen des Schicksals sind viele meiner Freunde ungefähr zehn Jahre jünger als ich und viele meiner Leser (von zompist.com oder dem ZBB oder meinen Büchern) sind 20 oder mehr Jahre jünger.

Also dachte ich, dass einigen von euch vielleicht ein Blick nach vorne gefallen würde, bei dem ihr von jemandem, der nicht zu den eigenen Eltern gehört, hören könnt, wie es ist, im mittleren Alter zu sein (ich bin Ende 50). All das ist natürlich extrem subjektiv – es wird euch vielleicht nicht ganz genau so passieren. Aber ich denke, das meiste davon wird ziemlich allgemein verbreitet sein.

Es wird ab und zu etwas düster werden, aber das könnt ihr ab.

(Zitat aus „Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?“ – „Können wir nicht über was Anderes reden?“ von Roz Chast:)

ETWAS, DAS IHR WISSEN SOLLTET:

Sobald man seinen körperlichen Höhepunkt überschritten hat – sagen wir mal, 25 – geht der Verfall allmählich voran. Jedes Jahr – außer wenn etwas „passiert“ – wird man etwas langsamer, etwas verschrumpelter, bis man 90 erreicht.

An dem Punkt fangen die Dinge an, sehr viel schneller auseinander zu fallen. Was der Grund ist, weshalb, wenn ich davon höre, dass Leute versuchen, herauszufinden, wie sie 120 werden können, ich sie fragen will:

SEIT IHR VOLLKOMMEN DURCHGEKNALLT?

(Zitat Ende)

Schmerzen und Unannehmlichkeiten

Ironischerweise bin ich wahrscheinlich körperlich fitter als ich es jemals gewesen bin. Ich bin von Natur aus eher träge und hasse Training, aber jetzt gehe ich regelmäßig ins Fitnessstudio. Ein Grund dafür ist, dass ich gebrechliche Eltern beobachtet habe (siehe unten).

Aber der andere Grund ist: nach einem bestimmten Punkt, 40 oder 45 oder 50, verliert man seine Unsterblichkeit. Sogar träge Nerds können durch die Zeit von 20 bis 30 gehen und dabei ihren Körper mehr oder weniger ignorieren, außer wenn es um Essen und Sex geht. Danach fängt man an, ungewollte Schmerzen zu kriegen, die nicht offensichtlich mit irgend etwas verknüpft sind, das man tut. Man kriegt vielleicht für eine Woche Rückenkrämpfe. Sich hinknien und wieder vom Boden aufstehen, das geht nicht mehr mühelos. Mit Lebensmitteln ein paar Treppen steigen fängt an, schwere Arbeit zu sein. Man kriegt vielleicht Probleme mit dem Ischias. Wenn man nicht trainiert, kann man sich, na ja, die ganze Zeit irgendwie mies fühlen.

Probleme mit dem Ischias sind, außer wenn man sie hat, ziemlich interessant. Sie sind eine Störung der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung. Man fühlt sich, als ob man einen brennenden Schmerz im Bein hat – es ist nur so, dass es überhaupt nichts im Bein ist; es ist ein entzündeter Nerv im Rücken. Er wird von der Wirbelsäule oder etwas anderem eingezwängt, und da es kein normaler Schmerz ist, wird keine Veränderung der Körperhaltung, nichts, das man mit seinem Bein machen kann, helfen. Es stellt sich heraus, dass die Heilung Training ist. Man muss bessere Bauchmuskulatur bekommen, um zu helfen, sich aufrecht zu halten.

Die gute Nachricht ist, dass man trainieren und fit werden kann. Das stimmt sogar in jedem Alter – ich habe ein Buch zum Thema Training gelesen, das Studien mit Menschen über 90 erwähnte. Man kann sogar dann noch Muskeln entwickeln. In meinem Alter ist es aber der Unterschied dazwischen, sich ziemlich gut zu fühlen (auch bekannt als „wie man sich mit 25 körperlich immer gefühlt hat“), und sich ausgelaugt zu fühlen.

Augen und Reflexe

Eine nicht gerade willkommene Tatsache ist, dass sich die Augen immer weiter verändern, und nicht zum Besseren. Ich bin kurzsichtig, was jahrzehntelang bedeutet hat, dass ich für Sachen, die nah vor mir waren, überhaupt keine Brille gebraucht habe, und normalerweise habe ich mit Sachen direkt vor mir zu tun. Vor ein paar Jahren bekam ich Probleme mit Büchern und Computern.

Bei Büchern stellte sich heraus, dass die Lösung war: „halte sie näher an die Augen“. Aber für Computer war sie „besorge dir eine besondere Brille“. Also habe ich jetzt zwei verschiedene Brillen; praktisch gesehen nutze ich eine innerhalb des Hauses (da ich meistens am Computer sitze) und eine außerhalb (größtenteils zum Autofahren). Ich wollte keine Bifokalbrille, weil ich meine Zeit am Computer nicht damit verbringen will, meine Nase runter zu sehen.

Wenn ihr viele Computerspiele spielt, fragt ihr euch vielleicht, wann gehen meine Reflexe kaputt? Nun, die gute Nachricht ist, ich habe noch keinen Verfall bemerkt. Ich habe nicht die Reflexe eines Teenager-Profis… aber die hatte ich auch nicht, als ich ein Teenager war. Ehrlicherweise denke ich, dass gute Fähigkeiten bei Computerspielen sehr viel mehr mit Übung als mit Naturtalenten zu tun haben. Ich bin kein guter Sniper – aber ich habe auch nicht Jahre darein gesteckt, das zu üben. Ich spiele jede Nacht Overwatch, und zumindest auf meinem Niveau ist es wichtiger, die Karten zu kennen, die eigene Spielfigur zu kennen, sich seiner Umgebung bewusst zu sein, zu kommunizieren, und Teamwork zu verstehen, als toll zielen zu können.

(Ich wünschte, ich könnte besser zielen. Auf der anderen Seite bin ich sehr viel besser darin als ich es vor 12 Jahren war, als ich angefangen habe, Shooter zu spielen. Außerdem haben Spiele erkennbar meine Hand-Augen-Koordination verbessert. Es passiert mir heute seltener, dass ich etwas fallen lasse als früher.)

Manchmal mache ich mir Sorgen um mein Gedächtnis. Aber die Beweislage ist immer noch unentschieden. Die Sache ist die, wenn man mit 25 etwas Dummes macht, denkt man sich nicht, „Oh nein, mein Gehirn verabschiedet sich“. Wenn man mit 55 etwas Dummes macht, kann man das denken. So weit ich es beurteilen kann, kann ich immer noch komplizierte Sachen lernen, was gut ist, weil ich mir damit meinen Lebensunterhalt verdiene.

Vielleicht mit all diesem verknüpft: Ich habe immer sorgfältige Arbeit mit vielen Wiederholungen gemocht: Karten erstellen oder komplizierte Zeichnungen zeichnen oder einen Text redigieren, bis er genau richtig war. Aber jetzt nicht mehr ganz so sehr. Als ich ein Teenager war, fing ich mit einem Atlas an, und kopierte im Wesentlichen einfach nur Karten von verschiedenen Teilen der Erde. Ich habe ihn nicht abgeschlossen, aber ich habe viele Karten gemacht. Ich würde jetzt nicht mehr die Geduld dafür haben. Oder die Augen, um es alles auf Papier zu machen, ohne zoomen zu können.

Eltern und Tod

Meine Großeltern väterlicherseits starben bei einem Autounfall, als ich ungefähr 12 war. Ich erinnere mich daran, wie mein Vater sagte, dass es ernüchternd war, plötzlich der Älteste in der Familie zu sein. Er hatte recht, das ist es, aber mir ist das erst wirklich klar geworden, als meine Eltern starben.

Es ist inzwischen bittersüß, mir mein Hochzeitsalbum anzusehen, weil so viele Leute tot sind. Meine Eltern, die meisten meiner Tanten und Onkel, unsere alte Familienfreundin Mrs. Lovell.

Meine Frau ist jetzt gerade in Peru und hilft bei ihrer extrem gebrechlichen (und extrem gemeinen) Mutter aus. Freunde von mir haben mit der selben Sache zu tun. Eltern werden krank, werden vielleicht dement, verlieren ihre Partner, und sterben am Ende.

Es ist also grundsätzlich so, dass man zwischen 40 und 60 anfängt, sich selbst etwas sterblich zu fühlen, aber man wird auch tief in die Probleme von Leuten zwischen 80 und 100 verwickelt. Man lernt viel über das normale Leben in diesem Alter, und man wird wahrscheinlich auch Sachen machen, von denen man – um es mal höflich auszudrücken – gehofft hatte, dass nur eine Krankenschwester oder Pflegekraft sie würde machen müssen.

Die Details werden natürlich verschieden sein. Der Vorgang kann davon abhängen, welche Krankheiten sie haben, wo sie leben, was für Persönlichkeiten sie haben, und wie viel Hilfe sie brauchen. Aber es wird sehr viel Angst und Sorgen in Anspruch nehmen, und (Spoiler-Warnung) am Ende werden sie nicht mehr da sein. Und es wird bei euch einen Eindruck hinterlassen. Ich denke jetzt, wo sie nicht mehr da sind, sehr viel mehr über meine Eltern nach, als ich das gemacht habe, während sie zwischen 80 und 90 waren.

In einem gewissen Sinn scheint der ganze Prozess darauf hin entworfen zu sein, bis zu dem Punkt auf uns einzuschlagen, an dem wir den Tod akzeptieren. Wenn man jung ist, scheint das Sterben so ziemlich das Schlimmste zu sein, das es jemals gegeben hat. (Ich kenne eine Frau, die kaum 30 ist und dabei ist, an Krebs zu sterben… es ist herzzerreißend, es fühlt sich einfach falsch an.) Aber der ganze Alterungsprozess, der Jahre dauert und uns an Orte bringt, zu denen wir lieber nicht gehen würden… gegen Ende des Ganzen kann man immer noch die Vorstellung hassen, den oder die Betreffenden zu verlieren, aber trotzdem das Ende der Schmerzen oder der Verluste oder der dementen Verwirrung, die er oder sie durchmacht, willkommen heißen.

Manchmal wird der Vorgang dafür sorgen, dass man Dinge zu schätzen weiß, die die eigenen Eltern gemacht haben. Zum Beispiel dachten meine voraus und zogen zwischen 70 und 80 in ein Haus, das nur aus einem Erdgeschoss bestand. Das war extrem schlau: Zu der Zeit, als sie gebrechlich waren und keine Treppen mehr steigen konnten, kannten sie ihr Haus sehr gut. (In ein neues Haus zu ziehen, wenn man alt und verwirrt ist, ist ein Alptraum.)

Oder auch das Gegenteil. Meine Eltern hatten nicht viel Interesse am Training. Wenn sie fit waren, waren sie aktiv, aber sie hatten einfach nicht das Konzept, zu trainieren, um Stärke und Ausdauer zu entwickeln. Meine Mutter war einmal in der Reha und hatte erstaunlich viel Erfolg: sie kam in einem Monat von einem Punkt, an dem sie fast bettlägerig war, zu einem Punkt, an dem sie die langen Korridore der Reha-Einrichtung mehrmals auf und ab gehen konnte. Aber sie hasste Training und weigerte sich, es später weiter zu machen. Ich will nicht so sein. Wenn es zu dem Punkt kommt, an dem ein Kilo zu viel zu tragen ist, will ich wirklich verdammt viel Training machen, damit ich nicht ganz so gebrechlich bin.

Offenheit gegenüber Erfahrungen

Eine Sache, die ihr euch vielleicht fragt: wird man konservativer, wenn man älter wird? Kommt man dazu, die jungen Leute und ihre Musik zu hassen?

Viel hängt davon ab, ob man Kinder hat. Bis dahin stellt man sich normalerweise automatisch auf die Seite des Kindes in jeder Debatte – man geht davon aus, dass Autoritäten immer Unrecht haben und das Menschen mehr Unabhängigkeit haben sollten und machen können sollten, was sie mögen. Ein paar Jahre, in denen man sich um Babys kümmert, ihre Pos abwischt, dafür sorgt, dass sie sich nicht mit ihren Fingernägeln verletzen oder ihre Finger in Steckdosen stecken, neigen dazu, das zu verändern. Plötzlich fängt Gehorsam an, wie eine Tugend zu wirken, und etwas Ruhe und Frieden zu finden, wirkt wie ein legitimes und schwer zu erreichendes Ziel.

Ich werde also mit meinen Eltern anfangen, die eindeutig Kinder hatten. Beide wurden in den 1920er Jahren geboren. Sie wurden nicht konservativer; im Allgemeinen trat sogar das Gegenteil ein. Mein Vater war immer ein Linksliberaler. Meine Mutter war das nicht gerade, und hatte Schwierigkeiten damit, neue Sachen wie, zum Beispiel, die 1960er Jahre zu akzeptieren. Sie sagten früher immer, dass ihre Wählerstimmen sich gegenseitig ausglichen, aber in ihren späteren Jahren mochte sie nicht, was aus der Republikanischen Partei geworden war. (Auf der Grundlage von Berichten anderer Leute würde ich aber sagen: Um Gottes Willen, lasst eure Eltern nicht Fox News sehen oder sich Talk-Radio anhören.)

Ich habe keine Kinder, und ich habe mich eindeutig im Laufe der Jahrzehnte immer und immer weiter nach links bewegt. Ich bin durch eine christliche Phase gegangen, in der ich „Linksliberaler“ als Beleidigung benutzte (obwohl ich nie ein Fundamentalist oder ein Republikaner war). Mir wurde Linksliberalismus wichtiger, als sich das Land in den 90ern nach rechts bewegte. Und die Wirtschaftskrise hat mich genauso getroffen wie die Jugend – sie machte das Leben sehr viel unsicherer und enthüllte, dass die Plutokratie direkt dystopisch wurde. Also ist es jetzt so, dass, wenn das Land entscheiden sollte, dass es etwas demokratischen Sozialismus will, ich dem gegenüber offen wäre. Es gibt immer noch einige Leute auf der extremen Linken, die mich abstoßen, aber ich mag zum Beispiel Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wirklich gerne.

Was neue Musik, Bücher, Comics und so weiter angeht… nun, es gibt zwei entgegengesetzte Faktoren. Erstens wird man irgendwann entdecken, was man mag, und damit zufrieden sein. Als ich 20 war, machte ich manchmal Listen von Großer Literatur, die ich lesen sollte. Ich habe aufgehört, mir Sorgen um Große Literatur zu machen – inzwischen ist klar, dass ich das Meiste davon nie lesen werde. (Was sich als etwas Gutes herausstellt, da das Meiste davon jetzt vollkommen aus der Mode gekommen ist.)

Und ja, Leute werden Musik machen, die man nicht wirklich kapiert. Das ist ok, obwohl man auch akzeptieren sollte, dass „das ist nichts für mich“ nicht dasselbe ist wie „das ist schlecht“.

Außerdem kann die Popkultur extrem wichtig sein, wenn man ein Teenager oder zwischen 20 und 30 ist, und es ist unwahrscheinlich, dass dieses Gefühl weiter bestehen bleibt. Es ist wie erste Liebe, die man per definitionem nicht nochmal haben kann.

Zweitens kann man absolut Freude an neuen Sachen haben. Es ist eine Entscheidung. Man macht einfach damit weiter, Sachen auszuprobieren, und sagt niemals „es gibt keine gute Musik mehr“. Ich bin keinesfalls ein Musik-Geek, aber ich kann leicht einen Haufen Musiker nennen, die ich mag, und die das meiste von ihrer Arbeit seit 2000 gemacht haben: The Naked and Famous, Ladytron, Arcade Fire, Janelle Monáe, Tegan & Sara, Mika, Anaxaton6, La Femme, Angelique Kidjo, McBess, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Gorillaz, Fiona Apple, Postmodern Jukebox, The Chemical Brothers. Plus einen Haufen One-Hit-Wonder-Songs, größtenteils von jwz’s Mixtapes.

(Was Anaxaton6 angeht, Barry Andrews ist ein alter Furz, aber das ist das Projekt, bei dem er etwas von seinem neuen experimentellen Kram macht.)

Zum Thema Comics – das goldene Zeitalter der Comics ist genau jetzt, geht raus und freut euch darüber.

Als Teenager traf ich eine Frau, die zwischen 60 und 70 Esperanto lernte. Sie brauchte ziemlich lange, aber sie machte es. Ich schwor mir damals, dass ich eine neue Sprache lernen würde, wenn ich 60 sein würde (was, oh Mann, ziemlich bald der Fall sein wird). Und wie sich herausstellt, habe ich in letzter Zeit ziemlich viel Akkadisch und biblisches Hebräisch gelernt.

Das erinnert mich an eine weitere Veränderung. Es mag nur bei mir so sein, ich weiß nicht. Aber aus irgendeinem Grund gefällt mir absurder, etwas alberner Humor nicht mehr so sehr wie früher. Es war mal, ihr wisst schon, mein Ding; ich konnte wie jeder Nerd Monty Python zitieren und liebte Pogo und Sam & Max und Bugs Bunny und MST3K und SpinnWebe und Mad und Woody Allen und die Marx Brothers und sehr viel ähnlichen Kram. Ich hasse diese Dinge nicht, und mir gefällt manchmal etwas neues in der selben Richtung, wie Ryan North’s Squirrel Girl. Aber wenn ich in die Bibliothek gehe, komme ich normalerweise mit Sachbüchern zurück, oder klassischer Literatur aus anderen Kulturen (wie Jin Ping Mei). Na ja, das und Comics, aber sogar da ist es so dass, wenn ich etwas mehrmals lese, es weniger häufig Mad ist und häufiger etwas wie Planetary oder Schuiten & Peeters. Ich verstehe das nicht ganz, und es ist nicht als Werturteil gemeint. Ich habe den Verdacht, dass absurdistischer Humor sich gut damit verträgt, ein schlauer junger Geek zu sein. Als ein älterer Geek habe ich weniger Interesse daran, mich über die Welt lustig zu machen, und mehr daran, (zum Beispiel) zu sehen, was im Schāhnāme steht.

Ich habe vor Kurzem einen Text von einer Frau gelesen, die zwischen 50 und 60 wieder auf dem Beziehungsmarkt gelandet ist. Eine der ersten Sachen, die sie gemacht hat, war es, bewusst ihre Gefühle über das Aussehen älterer Leute anzupassen. Sie lernte es im wesentlichen, Leute zwischen 50 und 60 attraktiv zu finden. Ich bin zum Glück nicht auf dem Beziehungsmarkt, aber ich hoffe, dass, wenn ich es wäre, ich sie nachahmen könnte, denn das ist extrem schlau und es scheint für viele Männer schwer zu sein. Wenige Dinge sind erbärmlicher als ein Mann im mittleren Alter, der von Frauen zwischen 20 und 30 besessen ist. (Nach dem, was ich gehört habe, ging es in ziemlich viel von der Großen Literatur der Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts darum.)

Ein Gedanke zum Abschluss: Wenn wir durch das Leben gehen, entwickeln wir uns sozusagen durch das grammatische Zeitsystem. Ein Beispiel: Wenn man 18 ist, heißt „Ich bin Schriftsteller“, dass man vorhat, Bücher zu schreiben. Wenn man 58 ist, heißt es, dass man Bücher schreibt. Wenn man 88 ist, heißt es, dass man Bücher geschrieben hat.

Das ist nicht unbedingt tiefsinnig, aber eine der Schlussfolgerungen ist, dass, genauso, wie man nicht mehr länger unsterblich ist, man auch entdeckt, dass man nicht mehr länger unendlich ist. Es ist etwas ernüchternd, daran zu denken, dass ich fast mit Sicherheit mehr als die Hälfte der Bücher gelesen habe, die ich jemals lesen werde. Trotzdem könnte ich bestimmt noch eine epische Trilogie schreiben. Die echte Lektion hier ist es, es nicht wie Robert Jordan zu machen, und anzufangen, eine Serie zu schreiben, bei der man dann stirbt, bevor man sie fertig geschrieben hat.

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Re-ranked

I’ve now rated 500 movies on Flickchart, so I figured I’d post my updated top 20. New ones are bolded.

• Casablanca
• Kill Bill Vol. 1
• Young Frankenstein
• The Fifth Element
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Memento
• WALL-E
• Rear Window
• The Princess Bride
• I Love You to Death
• Princess Mononoke
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Tampopo
• Return of the Jedi
• Fantasia
• A Clockwork Orange
• The Matrix
• Mulan

Not that exciting, but at least the embarrassments are off the first page. I spent a fair amount of time trying to think of movies the algorithm wasn’t showing me. That works fine, but it removes the “I hadn’t thought of that in years” effect of the random matchups.

I think I’m about done, because I’m running out of movies I’ve seen. I’m sure I’m missing a couple hundred, but I’m having to click the “Haven’t seen that” buttons more and more.

Naturally this is all for fun… especially since I’m relying in many cases on memories of when I saw a film up to 40 years ago. I mean, I haven’t actually seen A Clockwork Orange since college; maybe it’s not as much of a mindfuck as it seemed then. I suspect that TRON is way less cool than it seemed in 1982. I also wonder if my memory that Roger Moore Bond films were cheesily entertaining would hold up. I mean, he’s no Sean Connery, but it would be a good night at the movies.

Cyberpunk rebuttal!

My friend Niteowl, who I still think of as a frightening TF2 Spy, has written a response to my Cyberpunk 2077 review.

I wanted to highlight one of his points:

When we are taking open world sandbox games […] I play for the action and small stories. The side missions, the little nuances that attempt to paint a world by inference. And there are so many here. Mostly about the horror of combining the worst of capitalism and technology together. 

There is a story about a lovely dad and son side business, or would be, if they had been selling pretty much anything else. Or a various side missions about migrants, invariably gone horribly wrong. Or a side mission involving scuba gear which is the most affecting bit of gameplay I’ve ever played.

What are the results if greed and technology continue unfettered? What are the unintended consequences? What are the mortifying, obvious consequences? As a Canadian it’s like America Taken To 11. For profit health care is monstrous. For profit security/health care when your body parts can be harvested? Unspeakable.

Now, I took all this differently in my post on C77’s worldbuilding. I think this point of view (cyberpunk = laissez-mourir capitalism + high tech) comes with the territory, and CDPR gets it from William Gibson and Mike Pondsmith (creator of the Cyberpunk TTRPG). I wished they’d taken it farther (in terms of weird abilities and situations) or looked at it critically (by at least referring to non-cyberpunk parts of the world). I’d also note that this is sort of the default mode of sf and sf/horror video games– cf. The Outer Worlds Mirror’s Edge, Bioshock, or even Viscera Cleanup Detail. We expect that an evil corp is going to drill for oil in Hell, or unleash a mutant plague, or institute debt slavery in the stars, or whatever. (Heck, even Half-Life and Portal fit into this pattern.)

But yeah, taking a step back, Cyberpunk 2077 provides a concentrated blast of this acerbic worldview, and it’s all the better done because you’re in it. You see the dysfunctional city and its discontents. And at its best C77 conveys things going wrong by focusing on individuals like Judy. (There’s also Keanu to lay it all out for you… mmm, let’s not focus on that.)

So, although it’s not a new insight that we’re living in a cyberpunk dystopia, they did a really good job of showing what one is like. (Personally, I’d have liked a reminder that things don’t have to be this way. We could go for Star Trek space communism instead! But it’s not CDPR’s job to figure a way out.)

While I’m here, I’ll also comment on PCGamer’s terrible advice to CDPR, to fix C77 and then abandon it. The writer opines that “I don’t think there’s much room for CP2077 to grow—at least not without a complete and fundamental rewire.” Which makes no sense at all. First, a disappointing first game doesn’t mean much, or else we’d never have had Witcher 3 at all. Mass Effect is another game with kinda terrible gameplay, and they fixed that in Mass Effect 2. Second, the writer’s preference for Witcher 4 is the worst sort of fanboy stick-in-the-muddism. It’s OK to want something almost exactly like what you got before; it’s not OK to demand it of the creator.

My dumb outsider advice to CDPR would be:

• Stick to what you’re good at: complex, depressive, even overwrought stories. Don’t waste your time creating more automobiles to collect, or random thugs to beat down.
• Better stealth please. It still bugs me that the best way to get through fights is with a knife.
• Probably a new main character. Nothing against V, but this is a case where Nick Hornby’s rule applies: tell us about the worst thing that ever happened to your character. V’s experience here qualifies. I don’t want a sequel where, I dunno, V’s head gets invaded again, this time by Awkwafina.
• Maybe pick up a book on project management? Less overpromising, less crunch mode.

Amarna

I’ve been perusing the secret diplomatic messages of Egypt— top-level messages between the rulers of all the major Middle Eastern states. These were acquired via an egregious lapse in security. The Egyptians just left the tablets in a room, 3300 years ago.

That is, I’m reading The Amarna Letters, translated by William Moran. Amarna is the modern name— really el-ʿAmārna. The ancient name was Akhetaten, and it was the new capital established by Amenhotep IV, pictured above, better known as Akhenaten, as part of his plan to re-orient Egypt toward the sole worship of Aten. Or to give him his proper name, “the living one, the Ra-Horus of the horizon, who rejoices in the horizon in his identity of light which is in the sun-disk [Aten].” You may be able to see why we abbreviate it.

The letters are almost all written in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the day. Very bad Akkadian, I should add, with a good deal of West Semitic interference. A few are in Hittite or Hurrian. Curiously, though Egypt controlled Canaan at this time, it never occurred to anyone to write to the Egyptian king in Egyptian.

There are over 300 letters. There are a couple from the Egyptian king, probably drafts or copies of letters sent. Apparently there was another place where Egyptian records were kept, and we don’t have that, so most of the correspondence is from abroad. (So my statement above may be wrong. If anyone did write to the king in Egyptian, it wouldn’t have been filed with the Akkadian documents.)

Your first question is undoubtedly, how do I, a Middle Eastern king, start a letter to the king of Egypt? Like this:

Say to Nimu’wareya, the king of Egypt, my brother: Thus Kadašman-Enlil, the king of Karaduniyaš, your brother. For me all indeed goes well. For you, your household, your wives, and for your sons, your country, your chariots, your horses, your magnates, may all go very well.

I like the way you wish well to the king’s horses and chariots. This is like telling a modern president that you wish his nuclear weapons to be in good working order.

Other kings wrote Mimmuwareya, or Napḫurureya, or Nibḫurrereya. These are attempts at Neferkheperura, Akhenaten’s throne name. As for Karaduniyaš, that was the Kassite name for Babylon. The Kassites were originally nomads from the Zagros, who took over Babylon in 1590, and ruled for nearly half a millennium— pretty impressive as Mesopotamian dynasties go.

What did the kings talk about? Overwhelmingly, gifts and marriages. They rarely talk about peace or borders or trade, though they assure each other that they love each other. This period was fairly peaceful anyway, so there’s no political grandstanding.

The Kassites knew how to be diplomatic about their requests. One king, Burra-Buriaš, assures Amenhotep, “In my brother’s country, everything is available and my brother needs absolutely nothing. Furthermore, in my country everything too is available and I for my part need absolutely nothing.” That said, he sends Amenhotep four minas of lapis lazuli and five teams of horses. (A mina is 1/2 kg.) For his part, he is “engaged in a work” and needs “much fine gold.” He complains that the last gift of 40 minas of gold, when put into the kiln, yielded “not even 10 minas”. He discreetly suggests that the king did not personally check the shipment, so some minor official altered it.

The Assyrian king is more direct:

Gold in your country is dirt; one simply gathers it up. Why are you so sparing of it? I am engaged in building a new palace. Send me as much gold as is needed for its adornment.

There’s an almost comic series of letters from Tušratta, the Hurrian king. He claims that Amenhotep had promised him two solid gold statues. However, he received only wooden statues plated with gold. He repeatedly asks for the missing statues, writes to the Queen about it as well, and when Amenhotep dies he writes to his heir, Tutankhamun.

I can’t find a reference to the size of the statues, and we may not be able to get to the bottom of the mystery after 3300 years, but I can’t help thinking that the whole mess rests on a misunderstanding. Even for their own use, so far as I know, the Egyptians didn’t make large statues of gold. The famous mask of Tutankhamun is hollow, the gold being no more than 3 mm thick. Even so, it weighs 10 kg, or 20 minas. What would you want a solid statue for anyway? I think Tušratta just assumed that the statue would be solid. And perhaps the Egyptians didn’t want to disabuse him because the idea of a solid statue fit their image, and what was the king going to do anyway, scrape the gold off?

Tušratta feels particularly entitled because he sent his daughter as a wife for the king. This was the other major preoccupation of kings. They sometimes seem to assume that the daughter or sister they provided would be queen of Egypt, rather than just one resident of the harem. (Kings didn’t all have harems: it doesn’t seem to have been a custom in Babylon, for instance.)

A little ironically, Egypt didn’t produce the gold it was famous for. It had a near-monopoly because it had exclusive access to sources farther south in Africa. Similarly, the Kassites produced neither horses, which came from the Iranian mountains, nor lapis lazuli, which came from Afghanistan.

One curiosity of Amarna diplomacy: kings sometimes complain that their messengers are detained, sometimes for years. One even threatens to detain an Egyptian messenger until his own are freed. It’s not clear why all this was a problem, since surely everyone would have benefited if their messages could go through faster. It doesn’t seem that it gave the detaining king any special leverage. Perhaps it was a matter of prestige: having some foreign ambassadors at court showed that you were a formidable world power.

There are also a large number of letters from Egyptian vassals in Canaan. Curiously, the initial salutation is simpler, though humbler:

Say to the king, my lord: Message of ‘Abdi-Aštarti, servant of the king. I fall at the feet of the king, my lord, seven times and seven times, here and now, both on the stomach and on the back.

On the front and then the back? Did you roll over in front of the king? I don’t know.

Most of these letters are agitated, because Egypt was neglecting her colonial possessions, and they were threatened by a local rebellion and/or by the Hurrians. Their needs are small— just 200 archers or so. They don’t seem to have received these, perhaps because Akhenaten was too busy with his religious project.

As it happens that rebellion was led by the same ‘Abdi-Aštarti who wrote the above letter, perhaps in better days. His little kingdom or chiefdom was known as Amurru, and spoke Amorite. His son Aziru allied the kingdom with the Hittites.

I find the letters fascinating, though there’s a reason most histories, like this blog post, just quote the juicy bits. They’re highly repetitive, and of course they form no coherent narrative. Moran has done his best placing letters from the same person together, but without Egyptian replies, and without much historical context, it’s not very satisfying as history. Still, the glimpse into day-to-day affairs and ways of speaking is quite interesting.

Trump, with hindsight

It might be interesting, five nightmare years later, to look at what Trump looked like 4.5 years ago and what he looks like today. In particular, I’m going to review my own posting from March 2016, written during the primary season.

Now, my basic thesis then was that Trump was a was a bad man– “a blowhard racist and proto-fascist”, but the other candidates were even crazier. Looking at some specific predictions:

If elected, he would do bad things.  But these are precisely the bad things that any Republican candidate would do, and which he would do because he agrees with the GOP Congressional leadership: pass a huge tax cut for the rich, name a neo-Scalia to the Supreme Court, repeal Obamacare, ignore climate change, deport illegal immigrants, build a wall on the border, reverse gay marriage, restrict abortion, be aggressive abroad, and return to torture.

Pretty correct, and where it’s not, Trump was not as bad as expected. He failed to repeal Obamacare, gay marriage is still legal, and he didn’t start any new wars. Torture hasn’t been in the news the way it was during Bush’s term, though maybe it’s just that it’s been crowded out of the news cycle..

Trump is just an intensification of GOP strategy for the last eight years: rile up the base’s anger, encourage government dysfunction, court white men by opposing every other group, aggressively disregard the facts.

I’d state this stronger today– his penchant for outright lying wasn’t quite as salient then– but this is essentially correct.

The other main point was that the other candidates were worse. To some extent, conservatives feared that Trump wouldn’t be conservative enough– but he turned out to be nasty enough for them. He reduced legal immigration by half– as Ted Cruz demanded. He refused to negotiate with the Palestinians, and trashcanned the Iran deal– as Cruz and Rubio demanded. He came around to their views on gun control and abortion.

On the other hand, he completely ignored Cruz/Rubio ideas like a flat tax, abolishing the IRS, defunding Planned Parenthood, and carpet-bombing the Middle East.

At the moment, of course, Trump is attempting to overturn an election where he got walloped. This too was predictable– he declared the 2016 election fraudulent before it happened. I’d point out that though the coup is likely to sizzle out, it basically has the support of the GOP in Congress, and that the actual Plan A for stealing the election– voter suppression– was the very serious work of local Republicans. Trump has no monopoly on GOP attempts to undermine democracy.

This isn’t to say that Trump didn’t supply his own style of crazy. No one could really have predicted his love-fest with Kim Jong-un, his proposal to buy Greenland, his sharing of confidential intel with the Russian ambassador. No one else was in a position to do so much overt corruption. Nothing required the GOP to ignore and mishandle the Covid epidemic, and though it’s hard to imagine Ted Cruz handling it well, maybe he’d merely have handled it as badly as Boris Johnson. Oh wait, that turns out to be worse than the US. (919 deaths/1M pop vs. 874.)

Anyway, the main point is: it was pretty clear how bad a president Trump would be; also how bad a president Cruz or Rubio would have been.

As I said last month, Trump was a far better candidate in 2016, not least because he was so hard to pin down. Was he going to be a conservative or a populist? Did he want to raise taxes or lower them? Would he march lockstep with Paul Ryan or go his own way? In poli sci terms, it was an interesting approach, because the actual voters are far more populist than the conservative candidates and pundits.

In many ways Trump caved to the conservatives. There was no talk of raising taxes on the rich, after all. On the other hand, he may have damped down some of the GOP’s enthusiasm for cutting Social Security, destroying health care, attacking the IRS, and championing free trade. Remember Paul Ryan’s plans, or threats, for 2017?

Almea+400

My Almea+400 project now has an introductory video:

The music for the video is by Robin Morton, a singer and composer. He’s also created this piece of Verdurian music, Žažarka Řohuepë, and hopes to write about Almean music of all kinds and perform samples.

The first bit of worldbuilding for Almea+400 is this page of terminology for modern life. This is an expansion of an earlier page which, for reasons that seemed clever at the time, used a good deal of Swedish. The Verdurian and Kebreni lexicons have also been updated. For Kebreni, I particularly thank Josef Wolanczyk (Pedant), who created over 300 words while translating several texts into Kebreni, greatly expanding the language.

I also changed my default WordPress theme, so this page looks different. WordPress’s themes are astonishingly terrible, with margins that waste most of the screen space. This one gives the text a little more room and more importantly doesn’t crop the pictures.

If you liked the Categories list, it’s still there, but you have to click the hamburger logo at the top of the page.

The Rise of Skywalker

A long time ago, but in this galaxy, a filmmaker named Lucas promised us nine movies. And by God we got nine movies, and I just watched the last one, only 42 years after the first. Its name is Star Wars <orchestral sting> The Rise of Skywalker.

I bet this gives us mucho XP

I was wary of this one, because reviews were bad, and I already knew they shafted Rose Tico. It’s still better than the second trilogy, but I think it’s pretty clear that Abrams’s vision was “do the first trilogy over, only with more fanservice.” This theme is a little confused by Ep 8, whose message is “Fanservice is bad.”

Overall impression: it’s not terrible, it finishes up the story, and has some nice spectacle. It’s also muddy verging on incoherent, has a sub-Lucas level of political understanding, and tackily plays on people’s fondness for the first trilogy.

First… Palpatine. This move makes very little sense. In The Force Awakens Abrams seemed to get that he could use the same universe to tell a new story with new villains. Admittedly Johnson killed off his big bad, but Lord S’mores was a bore anyway. But… Palpatine. The whole thing about Star Wars is that Sith keep coming, man. Palpatine wasn’t even interestingly different from any other Dark Lord; he’s no Joker that needs to be a perennial enemy. (And even if he was, for God’s sake don’t make every movie about Joker.)

Worse yet, Palpatine has no convincing goal here. The last two films showed the First Order almost entirely winning. Palp promises Kylo the galaxy, but Kylo has the galaxy. There isn’t the slightest idea what power he needs beyond that. The opening crawl says that Parp wants “revenge”, but… whuh? His enemies are almost all dead, notably, those who killed him the first time. I know that Trump has taught us that comically stupid dictators are a real possible thing, but using the power of a galactic empire to hunt down a few perps seems like a waste of everyone’s time.

Plus… the fanservice. Again, such a decline from his own damn movie: Han Solo didn’t just appear in Awakens, he earned his hero status all over again. In this movie the movie lingers over Chewie, Leia, Luke, Han, Lando, just assuming that we love them. It’s like Abrams is nudging us, “Didn’t you just love the first trilogy? Here is an actor from those films. You just love them, don’t you?” Yeah, they were fun, but we kind of want you to get on with this movie.

Now, back to the tradition of going through the notes I wrote while watching the film.

• “Revenge”? Didn’t the Dark Side already win?
• Kylo. You have mooks for this. Delegate.
• The huge trapezoid has a very French BD feel.
• Palp can offer “everything” except, apparently, plastic surgery.
• Why is he offering Supreme Leader Kylo Ren what he already has?
• Little as it is, the Resistance here is way bigger than after Ep 8, when it could fit inside the Falcon.
• The heroes arguing is about at Lucas dialog level. This isn’t a compliment.
• Kylo’s new helmet is… underwhelming.
• Perp can increase their fleet “10,000-fold”? One, what for. Two, they already won. Three, even “tenfold” would be stretching it. Four, how did Pulpy get them manufactured?
• Aliens are the new Orientalism.
• Why did you park the Falcon miles away?
• I guess you have to have supernatural power to take over a galaxy when your troops never hit anything.
• Plot comes conveniently packaged in obvious artifacts. Hey, has any real-world bit of politics hinged on finding an ancient artifact?
• Healing the monster is a nice touch. Another reason why women make the best protagonists. Your standard space marine wouldn’t have thought of that.
• But, Rey has a tendency to forget about her pals.
• Ooh, Kajimi is in the Nether.
• “If this fails, it was all for nothing”… I get the “last chance” idea, but maybe never having a Plan B is the Resistance’s problem.
• Why couldn’t Ren sense Chewie when, you know, he was getting captured?
• Wow, stormtrooper mooks suck.
• Well, Rey’s mooks do too. Can’t leave them alone for ten minutes without them getting captured.
• The spy’s motivation is about the first real one we’ve gotten.
• Kylo’s spiel hasn’t improved. Look, shouldn’t be that hard to convince a Jedi to help you. Promise her that you will let her take care of orphans or something.
• While watching, I was sad about Chewie. On reflection: he was captured way too easily, and rescued way too easily. Things happen in this movie because the treatment said they do; it doesn’t sell them.
• Finn is like All Hero All the Time now. Which is fine, but Poe’s roguishness is actually more interesting.
• The existence of other deserters is a nice touch. Though it seems careless of the First Order.
• Skimmer scene: Rey too does not like to delegate. Admittedly her crew shows later on that they are of absolutely no help.
• The ruined Death Star is pretty interesting to see.
• Why is she platforming when we saw her levitating earlier?
• How does she keep her clothes so white? Gandalf at least knew the practicality of gray.
• Another plot artifact. Story is video-game-ready.
• The directors presumably hate each other. Still, Kylo was saying the Sith/Jedi thing should end, last film, and now he’s all in on Sithism.
• So the rescue mission did absolutely nothing.
• The healing thing. OK, at the time I felt it was really unclear. Now I understand that it’s supposed to be a Big Thing. As such it feels unearned. This affects Kylo because of… what? Since it’s never really explained what Kylo was after, it’s also a mystery why he changes because of this, much less what he’s after now.
• Have to object once again to the visual of the planet blowing up. A planet doesn’t explode the same way a battleship does.
• Omigod you followed Luke to Iona? I like Rey but I can’t easily follow her motivations either.
• Han, then Luke. Too many dead guys all over this picture.
• “Some things are stronger than blood”… yes, finally. But you, Mr. Abrams, made kinship the key to the film’s plot.
• How did Palpy build all this shit?
• The navs can be switched. See, the empire has a Plan B. Of course, it’s discovered in less than a minute.
• The animal charge is a nice touch. Low tech conquering high tech is always fun.
• Palp has a weird theory of power transfer.
• Finn. We need to talk about “cover.”
• “Join me and your friends won’t die”… c’mon Palpy, would a Sith even entertain that kind of offer?
• The fleet appearing: Oh come on.
• All of a sudden the destroyers are way easy to take out.
• Wait, killing Palp is good now? At least she’s in gray now.
• So kiss already. OK, they did. Now he’s dead.
• Problem with Sith hierarchies: the empire kind of dissipates when they’re decapitated. There was a reason it happened to Sauron, but wouldn’t a bunch of First Orderers say “Welp, time to become warlords and bandits”?
• Somehow the entire galactic power structure that Kylo built up also disappears. Abrams apparently has no idea of how big a galactic power structure is, what it’s doing when Kylo is doing one-man missions, who manned the Destroyers. I don’t need a wiki on this, but it’s part of the whole problem of him also never explaining what’s at stake for anyone.
• I like the way Rey kneels down to interact with droids.
• Wait, no one needs light sabers any more?
• No one gets a romance?

Predictive text toy

Over on my board, we’ve been amusing ourselves with this toy. You enter a short text, and an AI will then attempt to continue it.

You may remember my Markov generator. This is similar, but uses a neural network. The really impressive thing is the ability to keep on topic! I assume it’s using parts of a corpus, but it’s able to continue using words you suggested.

Here are some of my attempts; my starter text is in bold.

When the aliens came, no one was quite prepared to see what came out of their gleaming blue spacecraft: ersatz humanoids, but in real human form. With no sense of the Earth, they had no reason to attack New York City.

The aliens returned six weeks later with the first prototype: a new, streamlined model for the ship that still looked rather human, but now glowed blue. A group of young scientists in a nearby laboratory, now working in harmony with the machines, began work on a “computer” that could communicate with the craft’s computer.

The most important element of this “computer” was the ability to speak alien languages. The ship quickly became a popular meeting point among alien visitors. In fact, a number of countries soon decided to take over the job of managing this new alien visitor.

2

Although the existence of God cannot be proven, scientists now believe that there is evidence for the existence of godlings. Although scientists agree that there is life on other planets, they do not believe there is life on planet Earth.

As Godling, Adam is seen in biblical accounts as being a being that had great knowledge, wisdom, skill, and courage.

Adam was known to have given his brother the serpent a rod, which was so powerful the earth trembled under it. And God was also given a man whose name was Seth, whom Adam called his brother, and he became father of all the living creatures on earth. (Genesis 3:1-2)

3

I have a killer idea for a video game. You can play as anyone you like from history, and replay their life in their own culture. Let’s call it “Nostalgia: It’s the way we feel when we were kids, or our parents were.”

You’ll be the first to hear about my new game if you help me raise $1,000 to pay for all the artists, people, marketing, and travel to Montreal. I want to get it out there so that we can show how we can make a game with real people, from people who didn’t expect it to take off like this. This game is going to make a lot of people’s families cry. As you might have read in the last post, “All the art I use is original. All the art is original.” All the art is for sale – it doesn’t exist anywhere else. But a lot of people seem to be confused about where to look for it.

4

In the year 2510, the remains of human civilization are run by three corporations: Facebook, Google, and Walmart.

Walmart is a corporation founded by a former United States Marine named Sam Walton. In the year 2510, after the government’s attempt to shut down Walmart has fallen flat, Walmart decides to shut down Walmart. One of the key differences between Walmart and most other corporations is: The majority of the population can’t survive without Walmart’s products or services. It is also a company that can sell its products or services even in other countries at a lower price than its competitors.

After a number of years, a series of disasters leads to Walmart’s demise. This leads to the “Walmart Effect”: After Walmart’s demise, a whole chain of stores, restaurants, department stores, hardware stores, and grocery stores are created, with the name “Walmart”. A number of other Walmart franchises and subsidiaries become available, often to other companies that are in conflict with Walmart. These corporations provide products or services to the populace that are more in tune with their worldview.

 

From ZBB member alice:

When I told the ZBB about my new theory which combined syntax, pickles, and tea, she tried to give me the run down she had about the ZBB being a place for people to read about my theories. I went to the ZBB as a new visitor a few times and didn’t even leave a note so I think they might have figured that.

I think the main reason why I didn’t go back to the ZBB is because I liked the layout. I didn’t like the idea that the only way I was going to get to read about my theories was to buy a book, a tablet, and send them via airmail. I wanted to learn about the ideas I had come up with, not just go to a bookstore.

I also like going to other coffee shops, but coffee isn’t the only thing I like to drink!

Raphael found this one:

It was twenty years ago today. Sergeant Pepper told the band to play. The band played, until they couldn’t anymore. It was the longest, most embarrassing performance at a music festival in history. They didn’t even start it, they just ended it.

In the twenty-three years since that day, Pepper has had to wear many uniforms, in many different countries. He has had to do a lot of traveling – to Europe, the Middle East, South Africa. He has had to make many compromises, to keep everything intact. For the past twenty-three years he has lived alone – in a large, modern brick apartment at the top of the same building (he could never bring himself to live alone). His apartment was as clean as a church’s. It was the sort of apartment you might take with you in a warzone, if you had to. He had gotten so involved in this band (he has since moved onto another project), that he had become a bit overwhelmed by the idea of not sharing it with a partner. He hated to share it with a partner, especially since he didn’t sleep very well.

And from Pabappa. Note that the AI continues to use the supplied name Repilia, but ‘decides’ that it’s not a country but a woman.

“Our war against Repilia must come to an end. Repilia will rule our homeland; our men will be disarmed. There shall be no future wars within our territory, as our battles were fought in disobedience of Gahanaya.” When the women in the assembly heard this, they began to worry about the soldiers camped out to the north of the temple. “My, that wasn’t bad. I would have thought they’d have been happy to see our leader come back. But what about the soldiers south of the temple? It seems Repilia may need them.” “My lord, the northern forces were not under our commands. They are my soldiers, and I am not going to give them arms. That may be a little harsh, but I hope it’ll appease the women at the assembly. After all, Repilia is not the same woman she looked like just the two of us.” “If that’s the case, then the army must fall. The army that led us to Repilia is all that’s left in northern territory.”

Black Panther

So, tonight I finally saw Black Panther, which you may have heard of. If you haven’t, I suggest you go see it; it’s pretty good. This is actually the first Marvel movie I’ve seen. I hear they have, what, half a dozen by now?

We’ll get to the actual people below, but they have to work hard not to be upstaged by the set and costume design, which are some of the best to be seen in any sf/fantasy film. E.g. the big reveal of Africa’s biggest city, Wakanda:

Whoops, that is Africa’s biggest city, but it’s the real city of  Lagos, Nigeria.  Here’s Wakanda:

So, this is a really cool shot, and it kind of ruins one of my jokes, comparing Wakanda to Numbani from Overwatch. This is far better done, not least because it isn’t just futuristic slabs as in every other movie and video game; it has interesting textures and seems anchored to the natural world. The street scenes are great too– it looks like a lively city that definitely doesn’t look American.

Still, I included the picture of Lagos for a reason– as a reminder of how mind-bogglingly large it is (the metropolitan area houses 21 million people, a little more than New York), and that the continent isn’t the basket case some people depict it as. (Nigeria’s per capita income is about the same as India, which today we think of, or should, as a rising power.)

The movie itself has a lot to say about oppression and unfairly divided wealth, especially as it relates to Black people, but its view of Africa outside Wakanda is uniformly negative. It’s the “Third World” that Wakanda hides itself as; the only scene set in non-Wakandan Africa is a human-trafficking operation. Not every movie can be everything, but in this area the movie is maybe a little too American.

Now, superhero movies are kind of forced to have a stereotyped and somewhat dumb structure. First you have to show that the superhero is awesome: they go and beat up normal mooks in amazing ways. But since 90 minutes of beating up mooks would get old, you have to have a supervillain, and the hero has to be beaten, and it’s hard not to make them look incompetent. Finally they get to be awesome again and the villain is decisively overcome.

This was a major problem in The Dark Knight, and Black Panther can’t quite escape it. Chadwick Boseman gets his early awesome scenes, but he also spends a lot of the movie looking kind of lost.

There’s also a special problem with the Black Panther character, which– to be honest– was created by a couple of white guys with pretty retro ideas about Africa, full of rhinos and kings and acacia trees. That is, he’s a superhero but also a traditional king His country is supposed to be wealthy and technologically advanced, yet also an absolute monarchy. (The main driver of the movie’s plot is that the king is chosen via a fight to the death.) The political contradiction was faced in the comics by Ta-Nehisi Coates, but he and Boseman both have problems humanizing the king– both T’challas are regal and austere and a little humorless.  On the other hand, that does give him a real character arc, and by the end of the movie he does have something to smile about.

Fortunately for T’challa and the movie, he’s also surrounded by badass women who don’t have to go through that act-two round of doubt and defeat. The standouts here are his sister Shuri (Leticia Wright) and his main general Okoye (Danai Gurira). I would gladly watch a movie centering on either of them. Okoye is beautiful to watch, making the superheroics look effortless. Shuri has great fight scenes too, but she’s also Wakanda’s Q, its scientific heart, and there’s nothing like her smirky smile when she’s carelessly explaining some tech she knows her listeners won’t understand.

The main antagonist, Erik Killmonger, is unusually good for a supervillain, because Ryan Coogler (director and co-writer) gives him an intelligent ideology and plan. (And at least at first, he’s more likeable than T’challa.) He wants to fight back— he wants to use Wakandan technology to take over the world and “run it right.” When he get a chance to confront the Wakandans, he asks them what they were doing when Africa was being carved up and millions of its people enslaved. No one answers, because they have no answer. They were protecting their little turf and that’s it.

Now, the dude apparently wants to use terrorism to create this empire– his plan consists of shipping out weapons, which he’s hoping will be used to kill a lot of people. So, that’s pretty bad. But he’s useful as a critique of Wakandan complacency, and an object lesson in why alpha-male combat might not be the best political system. And again, all this is way more sophisticated than most superhero stories, which are mostly about supercriminals with no relation to actual crime, and near-supernatural threats with no relation to actual global threats.

A few minor cavils:

• Bits of the plot were obviously storyboarded, but not thought out. E.g. the operation in Busan (hi D.Va!) made no sense at all: the artifact wasn’t recovered, not enough operatives were sent, and Klaue was not secured.
• T’challa asks his frenemy M’baku to safeguard his mother while the capital is held by Killmonger. Then, to push an alliance, he says Killmonger will come after M’baku. These statements don’t seem compatible…
• “Hanuman”?  Yikes.

Even more than the set design, the costume design is consistently great. Okoye and the rest of the all-female royal bodyguard are especially striking in their red armor. The designer went to the trouble of creating designs for each of Wakanda’s five tribes… most viewers won’t notice, but there’s a reason (e.g.) Lupita Nyong’o always wears green. This is great worldbuilding: it adds depth without getting in the way, and it rewards deeper viewing and re-viewing.

Edit: Gaze, if you dare, on Tom & Lorenzo’s overview of the costumes of Okoye, Nakia, and Shuri in particular. Ruth Carter deservedly got an Oscar for this.

Finally, a word on diversity, which is that it’s awesome. If you’re a Hollywood exec, rather than rebooting Batman for the 119th time, let some people tell stories that weren’t often given that chance before. The novelty and passion will make a better film. Also, trust me, give Shuri her own movie.

 

 

 

King’s Bounty Dark Side redux

I finished King’s Bounty: The Dark Side. I already reviewed it, and pretty much everything I said then still applies, but I thought I’d record that I finally finished it, four years later.

One cute thing about the game is its occasional light jabs at other fantasy properties, e.g. this bit from an elven poetry contest:

Overall thoughts: if you’ve never played these, go play Armored Princess. But if you have, this one is just different enough to enjoy. I just replayed both. Which makes it sound trivial, but it’s not– they are sprawling games; DS alone takes about 60 hours.

Somewhat to my surprise, I found AP quite difficult this time– I could win the battles but kept running out of money to buy units. Fortunately, I learned that there are console commands! Hit shift-tilde; the key one is rage which refills your rage meter. You can type money n to get n gold pieces, and doublearmy n to double the units in slot n of your army. You don’t need these, but especially in DS, to keep refilling units means constantly teleporting around, and it gets tedious.

The heart of the game is its little battles… it’s hard not to talk about them without diminutives, because they’re cute and look like something in a board game. They are almost always winnable (unless you’ve chosen to fight enemies marked “deadly”), but the goal is really to lose as few of your own units as possible. This is harder in DS, since the units that can resurrect themselves and/or others are much rarer. But it’s fun to use lots of ranged units and high-damage tanks to decimate the enemy before they can even move.

The one thing I don’t like about the game (and the reason I’m not going to start another playthrough, at least for another few years) is the back-and-forth quests. These dudes always want something from another island, and not infrequently you have to interrogate everyone on that island to get it… or everyone in the game, unless you Google the quest.

The game also has some weird attitudes about women. (Note, it’s made by Russians, so they probably haven’t been challenged on this stuff so much.) On the one hand, its female units are badasses. The hardest fight in the game is against a few thousand Dryads– they can put your low-level characters to sleep, and they keep summoning new allies. One of the islands is Amazonia, which is suffering a rebellion of men, which you helpfully put down.  On the other hand, my character, the demoness, dresses like a dominatrix and gets a bevy of corrupted prisoners to wait on her. (But, well, your character is so small on the screen that you can almost always ignore this.)