BITES YOU BITES YOU BITES YOU

#life

THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021) + letterboxd reviews

So I’m listening to the Rogue Protocol audiobook (it was the one that didn’t have a waitlist at the library) and I’m mostly just losing it thinking about how from the perspective of any human in the series, Murderbot is actually the BIGGEST Deus Ex Machina. It’s particularly evident in RP, but it holds up for the whole series: ASR: To all of the survey team members, It’s basically like their normal jobs all of a sudden went to hell BUT luckily for them, their amazon Alexa had already rebelled against its controllers and was capable of saving all their lives. Like there was no way they could have or would have expected that, and in-universe that sequence of events was astronomically unlikely. AC: To Tapan and the rest of the polycule, an incredibly cheap, fantastically competent, unreasonably loyal and helpful security consultant just showed up exactly when they needed it, saved their lives multiple times, and then got their data back, before vanishing into thin air.

RP: This is honestly the biggest one, but like, literally a random SecUnit appeared on an empty station at the exact moment that it needed to to save Abene’s life, followed immediately by it killing a bunch of combat bots and rescuing the team from the security they were supposed to have. And then it just…leaves. Via hull breach.

ES: At this point Pin Lee, Gurathin, and Ratthi do know about MB so it’s more of a Chekhov’s gun to them than a deus ex machina, but it still fits the space in the story from their perspective: their negotiations to get Mensah back have been going nowhere, they’re all feeling pretty hopeless, and then BOOM, the rogue SecUnit which ran off and they haven’t seen in months shows up boasting a bunch of upgrades and a makeover and pretty much handles everything for them.

NE: Again, most of the people in this book are familiar with MB so it’s less deus ex machina to them, but to ART’s crew? They’ve been kidnapped, their ship compromised, possibly in the worst situation they’ve ever been in as a crew, and then Peri’s SecUnit Friend which it found randomly a while back just shows up to get them out of a bad situation. (They don’t know about the alien remnant wormhole drive or the kidnapping at this point there’s honestly no reason for Peri’s SecUnit to even be in the system.) It manages to do this twice simultaneously.

Anyway I’ve said all this before but I just think it’s great, especially because Murderbot totally does not see what all these people must be seeing, which is the most helpful person imaginable wondering in to rescue them over and over again

Murderbot is who Spider-Man wants to be

“oh no, my audience has begun to guess the big twists of my story and are accurately predicting what will happen!”

incorrect response: write the rest of the story to be as twisty, shocking and counter to expectations as possible, regardless of whether this is a logical or satisfying way for the plot to go

correct response:

can someone elaborate on the “make hoax” and “post angry tweet about “leak”“ part. i’m stupid and don’t understand things

sure!

(you’re not stupid. I posted this thinking it would amuse a handful of mutuals who all knew the context and that would be about it, so I didn’t think about providing any other explanation. I had no idea it would spread this far.)

I’ll start from the very beginning just to be thorough. so this is Alex Hirsch, creator and head writer of Gravity Falls, a show which had a big focus on mystery, conspiracies, codes and ciphers, etc. the whole plot is kicked off by one of the main characters finding a mysterious old journal in the woods, which detailed all kinds of weird and supernatural things, but then ended abruptly with the author saying they had to hide the journal because they were being watched. the central driving mystery of the show, therefore, was the question of who wrote the journal and what happened to them.

now, the thing about Gravity Falls is that, while it must be said that the writers weren’t always quite as sure of their plans as we tend to like to think they are, it is very much a fair play mystery, with legitimate clues to what was going on. but the writers were caught off guard by how quickly the show attracted a dedicated audience, including a lot of people outside the primary presumed demographic, who started solving the clues faster than expected. so some of the fans were able to correctly guess who the author was before it was revealed in the show, and the theory started spreading. this put the writers in something of a panic, because this was THE mystery that the whole story revolved around, with ¾ of the show building up to the dramatic reveal in the middle of season 2. they wanted it to be a mystery that could be figured out, sure, but they weren’t prepared for people to solve it so far in advance of when it was planned to be revealed, which would have really taken away from the big moment. they weren’t going to change the main story itself, but having been caught unaware by how much attention the fans were paying, they wanted to up the ante and make the mystery more complex to solve going forward–but first they needed to buy some time and throw the fandom off the scent for a little longer.

hence, Alex’s plan as described above. they whipped up a fake shot that appears to give away the identity of the author as being another character in the show, put it on a screen in the studio as if it was a real animation frame, took a picture of it, and ‘leaked’ it online. it was initially decided to be a hoax (albeit, I think, presumed to be a hoax originating from outside the production team), until Alex posted this tweet:

…before quickly deleting it (though not so quickly that it didn’t get seen, of course).

it worked well enough to distract most people for a while, and wasn’t revealed as a hoax until a year later, when an episode aired that definitively proved that the supposed screenshot could never have happened, at which point Alex owned up to the whole thing as seen in the tweet above. by then the episode with the real reveal wasn’t far off, and while people did still work it out ahead of time, it was more of an “OH MY GOD I KNEW IT!” moment than a “booooooring, we’ve known that for ages” moment, which of course was what the writers wanted all along.

personally I find this a fascinating approach to dealing with the problem of spoilers, because it doesn’t affect the story itself at all; if you watch Gravity Falls today–or if you were watching it when it aired without any significant contact with the fandom–you’d never know about it. ultimately, the problem the writers were facing wasn’t that some people might guess the answer to the mystery–they never wanted to make it completely impossible to predict–so much as it was that they hadn’t designed the story to stand up to so many people working on the puzzle together, which resulted in a sort of total output of puzzle-solving ability that far outstripped the capability of any one solo human being. so their solution is something that’s very much targeted toward delaying that group problem-solving, without actually affecting the experience of any individual person watching the show.

plus, it’s very in keeping with the overall tone of the show.

and now you know!

Still the best reaction ever xD

everybody loves O k o y e

The most important takeaway from Black Panther is that now that Wakanda is opening up to the world, Shuri can at last become the international genius fashion icon that she was always destined to be on a social media platform that she herself invents over a boring weekend 

Okay so Sunless Skies:

Your ship is as slow and dinky as ever but it’s kind of hilarious cartwheeling around because I can’t control the damn thing.

You don’t press a button to dock, you have to manually maneuver into the dock area and kill the brakes. Then you can pick options from a list that pops up.

It seems like you can choose to ally yourself with different factions right from the get go rather than doing stuff for one person and then unlocking someone else.

You spend supplies to use your navigator bat thing now.

One of the first ports I stopped at is essentially ~aesthetic~ the island (no seriously, they want you to choose an aesthetic right off the bat and there are three factions to support that all have their own aesthetics)

I died within like, five minutes

OMGs the art! The art is amazing!

I’m not going to want to play Sunless Sea anymore because this game looks so much better.

I am mystified as to whether it will run on my laptop so holding out on early access even though 'm a backer.

Grrr. It must have something to do with the weavers!

I’ve been thinking about this since the episode aired but tbh we really need to be wailing more about the fact that of all the grand relics the one that Magnus made is the one that can be used to turn back time and fix mistakes.

And that however powerful it might be he clearly either couldn’t or wouldn’t use it to save his own world and who knows how many others.