The New Garage Chronicles

After two years of ignoring it because the fandom struck me as having all the problems modern fandom has, I finally listened to Epic The Musical last weekend and I'm glad I stayed away from it! Because the show turned out to be a giant fucking analysis bear trap and stepping in it on purpose after the footpath it's on sees less traffic is much preferrable to stepping in it accidentally at the peak of it's popularity.

What a fascinating adaptation and a fascinating story. In general, I'm not great at analysing musicals b/c I'm like barely not musically literate enough to keep track of all the relevant leitmotifs but just musically literate enough that I subconsciously pick up on when stuff aligns. Like, I was already mulling over the depiction of fatherhood/mentorhood (because of course I was) before I noticed that Telemachus' motif doesn't actually show up in Act 2 until Odysseus finally arrives in Ithaca because he doesn't think he's capable of being a good father anymore, but I didn't pick up on the reason I liked all of the gods' songs the best until I realised I'm just being a slut for percussion once again.

Speaking of gods -- Epic may be my favourite portrayal of Zeus ever? In general I really like the way the gods are written in Epic, with their recognisably human psychology and their ability to empathise with human concerns, but also the fundamental inhumanity of their status and their motivations was really well done and makes the story fun to analyse. Athena has arguably the stronger traditional "character arc" between her and Odysseus, she gets to experience positive growth and be rewarded for it, and her haughtiness and immaturity is the thing that ultimately lies under Ody's problems -- but she's not really the person the story is about, because it can't be! She's literally a god! She just gets to be the one moving it all.

And I think that general understanding of what the gods are and how to use them narratively is also why Zeus is such a treat. A lot of people trying to do a "myth-accurate" Zeus end up just making him a repulsive gross old sex pest with too much power in a way that never quite feels right to me, whereas Epic takes the subtext of sexual threat in his character and actually uses that to exemplify what he is like and for what reasons. Zeus in Epic is not just threatening and sexually aggressive, he is also sensual and compelling -- y'know. Like power is supposed to be. You want power, when it's used for your benefit, and you're scared of it when it's used against you. Zeus, lecherous and almighty, irreverent and fickle even while fulfilling his duties, in a way that benefits Odysseus works so much better because in the span of two minutes using the power of song writing and Luke Holt's incredible voice, Epic presents both sides of power.

It's just very tasty over all. I'm usually a Main Character Liker, but whenever a story has characters who aren't the protagonist that I have a lot to say about, that's where I feel like I'm being served a full course meal. And while I do have a lot to say about Ody, I have way more to say about how everyone else around Ody informs him.

I said jokingly on Discord that every time I venture outside of my bubble I realise people around me have no taste, but at the same time I am genuinely so tempted to get insufferable about Iron Lung and how the true way to appreciate the way psychosis and mental fragmentation under stress and isolation is found through the knowledge that the script was written by a fellow torture pervert.

(I came to post about this on DW because unfortunately the Other Big Spaceship Fandom on Tumblr is getting on my last goddamn nerve and I am at this moment incapable of speaking nicely to my fellow humans about it.)

Amanda Swell Entertainment made a video about a black model having her photo stolen and having some white influencer paste her face onto that image and instead of focusing on the meaningful issues like digital blackface and content theft the video is all about how the white influencer said "AI did this"

And she just.... takes her at her word and doesn't question it and just complains about people using AI.

I love her but this fucking sucks. Why are we not calling out a liar to her face for trying to shift blame to AI or "AI companies" doing this shit. Someone made a clear touched up image of her face on another woman's body and we're blaming the technology used?

Fuck it. Welcome back "Button That Makes Beautiful Art" discourse. I hope you die.

I cannot with these fucking Youtube thinkpieces of "does the internet rot your brain" and "is your lack of local friendships making you a less functional person" and "are impersonal relationships the downfall of society"

I'm glad none of you have been as profoundly lonely as I have, I guess, but I'm pretty sure my online friendships were healthier than your IRL ones before the pandemic, and I was not privileged enough to just sit inside while the world ground to a halt around me.

I am currently working night shift and the inability to play Beat Saber after work is genuinely making me a little bit stir crazy. Over on Tumblr I commented that I really want to make a mod that makes the song title increasingly gory the more times I've failed to pass a song -- I genuinely feel like that is more achievable than actually passing some of the songs in my queue b/c I feel the rust every time I have a chance to go back to the game.

Maybe I should see if I can struggle the Linux version to work. Then I could play in ten minute increments again and not have to commit to a full play session the way switching OSes requires.

I genuinely think sound based moves in Pokémon doubles should roll a chance to wake all other Pokémon on the field. This would increase volatility, but it would also help with balance, and make sleep mechanics more interesting.

Actually crazy how much you'd think occasionally having an OS that simply will not do what you want would be frustrating and put me off from experimenting with Mint, but I'm finding out that it's actually the other way around. Even if I have to do things for a slightly cumbersome way for a while, when it does reach a critical level of annoyance I often find myself developing new skills to compensate, which makes using Mint a lot more fun than using Windows.

Crossposted from Tumblr

Having narrowly avoided reading Shrike the riot act about how the current situation – in which he and Beebs are now dealing with a mutual rejection of all of the bonding they’d been doing up to this point – is all Shrike’s own fucking fault, I do also want to talk about what agency Beebs has over the situation, and the ways in which he is also culpable for his own part of the bad communication.

Because, like, it’s fairly obvious that Beebs is also practicing some crazy selective sharing with Shrike, right? He may have taken Shrike at his word about having left Enforcement, but he openly references Shrike still having some unfinished business with the suit and the presumably-everything-else associated with it. And while I acknowledge that this is Shrike, and he may have simply not cared to ask, I genuinely don’t get the sense that Shrike knows much about Beebs’ personal history. I maintain that it’s likely that Beebs is actively hiding things from Shrike too, otherwise he wouldn’t be acting guilty and cagey whenever the topic of Shrike associating with him comes up.

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I haven't really been Linuxposting as much as I expected because truly the experience has for the most part been so seamless and easy that I haven't felt the need to seek emotional support, but on Friday I took my first crack at debugging my NVidia issues that have stopped me from playing Beat Saber on Linux, and I managed to bone it up badly enough that I had to reinstall Mint entirely.

And amusingly enough this experience has only made me more convinced that switching to Linux was not only the right call, but an incredible boon to me specifically, because the reinstall took a grand total of two hours and in four I was up and running with everything looking exactly the way it had been pre-reinstall.

I've never felt such a sense of power over my computing apparatus forreal.

It's kind of galling just how much Monkey Wrench seems to be written For Me, Specifically, especially b/c within the episodes that are out they've both established extremely clear visual symbolism (in the form of triangles, diamonds and circles) and extremely clear colour symbolism (in the form of the primaries red, yellow and blue, plus the villainous green) and now I'm looking through all of the episodes with a magnifying glass, spotting those patterns everywhere and questioning if that's a design decision made for cohesion and visual interest or if it's worldbuilding hiding in plain sight.

I already kind of convinced myself that purple is the designated Endling Colour:tm:, but the case is so shaky I know I'm basically just seeing the Shrike-Punti parallel and extrapolating where doing that isn't necessary. But like why would they establish Secondary Colours Bad if they were gonna use PURPLE there?

I am back from my general holiday revelry and one of the last things I did with Saikku was watch Monkey Wrench. It has now joined the list of "indie animation I watch on Youtube where I genuinely cannot wait for the next episode", and furthermore I feel extremely called out by the fact that not a week later, after my first rewatch, I made a joke on Discord about how Shrike and Beebs are like if "fandom Bulkjack was interesting"

God. I do not know when to shut my fucking mouth do I.

I've just managed to install Linux Mint 22.1 on my computer and I've discovered that first install Linux takes just as much updating and polishing the inside of the screen to get it up and running as Windows.

I did immediately find a way to get all of my Firefox settings over, and I'm currently working out how to best install Discord so that I don't run into hardware issues -- plus the obligatory "cleaning up the interface and setting myself some nice background images and system sounds.