Author: Geoff

Founder, creator, guy what does stuff for and in Vintrock

April 11, 2023

The Mandalorian Is A Mess (Spoilers)

This contains spoilers for Season 3 of The Mandalorian, as it discusses major plot points. Read further at your own discretion.

Um, Wut?

Season 3 of The Mandalorian is a flat-out mess. It has no apparent direction, plan, or point. The show has wandered the wilderness, with a series of pointless side-quests and abandoned plot lines. Sure, it was cool seeing Christopher Lloyd, Jack Black, Lizzo in Chapter 22, and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee in Chapter 21. But Chapter 22. like the previous 5, was verging on stupid and was entirely pointless.

This whole season has been like that, feeling more like they’re making it up as they go along rather than having some broader season-long story to tell. We start with Mando deciding he needs IG-11 to “make sure the air is safe” on Mandalore. He starts to search for the necessary parts (well, for about 10 minutes), and instead ends up with an astromech droid. That droid screws up (and Grogu loses his little dome), so Mando has to “seal his helmet” and go in on his own anyway. He needed a droid for what, exactly, then?

Return of Bo-Katan

We get exploring ruins, a few no-too-bad fights, and the setup for Bo-Katan having a legitimate claim on the Darksabre. A pointless “let’s rescue the foundling” side mission reveals just how stupid the “don’t remove your helmet in public” thing is. The rescue team, “hiding” under a cliff while LIGHTING A FIRE, has to eat, so they scatter to private locations. Yeah, that isn’t a tactically stupid thing to do at all. And for all the concern about “the creature will kill if it knows we’re here”, one would think a fire would be the last thing you’d want.

Then we get the “oh yeah, we had pirates, forgot about them” episode (although with a cool aerial battle). Of course the one pirate got away, so we can expect another pointless and meaningless diversion when he pops up. And the Mandalorians now have a home, no more hiding in the shadows. Okay, then. At least we got to see Carson Teva again, and a taste of the ineptitude of the New Republic. They were clearly not ready to actually govern after beating the Emperor.

Let’s Take Back An Empty Planet

On the planet of over-indulgence, we get another pointless side quest. And somehow Lizzo being disappointed in her chief of security is enough to cow a man who was prepared to unleash massive death on the population. “I’m going to kill everyone here!” leads to “I’m disappointed in you” with, essentially “sorry, Mom” and he’s sent to his room without supper. Good grief. But this episode isn’t done. This useless side mission is followed by the lamest fist fight so far, and it ends when Mando basically hands the Darksabre to Bo-Katan with a “oh yeah, you dropped this back on Mandalore”. Bo-Katan back in charge, the next step is to “take back Mandalore”.

And that “grand quest” should be a ten-minute on-screen sequence. Pack up the ships, hyperspace to Mandalore, touch down, drop the ramp, step off. There, you’ve taken back Mandalore. The planet is entirely empty. Sure, there’s a few monsters you might deal with. But it isn’t like they have to plan some grand campaign to take it back from someone else occupying the place. Unless, of course, the “what happened to Moff Gideon” thing resolves to “he set up his base here”. Odd, since there was zero indication there were any ships or anything there during the “let’s stumble upon a mythosaur” sequence. You’d think that anyone entering the system would detect the constant radio noise of the comms from hundreds of TIE fighters and multiple cruisers of various classes.

An aside: in the scene where Mando and Bo-Katan enter the droid cantina, there was a perfect opportunity to make a callback to Episode IV. A droid bartender could have pointed at them and yelled “hey, we don’t serve your kind in here”. With all the other pointless callbacks, this was one that might have actually been funny and on-point. Instead we get a lame line from Mando about “our kind”.

So What’s The Point Again?

Season 1 of The Mandalorian was brilliant. It was focused, every episode moved the plot forward, and while the real destination wasn’t obvious up front, it at least had one. The second season was less cohesive, but still had a main mission: get Grogu to the Jedi. That season was, however, littered with multiple “let’s set up another spinoff” episodes. It wasn’t horrible, but it felt less satisfying. Luke showing up at the end and basically mowing down droids like a Weedeater was pretty cool.

Season 3 is meandering around the galaxy, feeling more like a bunch of characters searching for a story, or at least for something to do. All the key plot points that got us to where the story is at the end of Chapter 22 could have been done in a single episode, two at most. Seriously, none of the side quests have done anything to advance whatever the main story is supposed to be.

The Mandalorian has evolved into a mess similar to the one in Book of Boba Fett. That was a series that appeared to be more about fan service than telling a compelling story. There was no larger story arc, and it felt far too much like they were making it up as they went along. This season of The Mandalorian feels like that. A series of “let’s have an adventure!” with only a notional idea that maybe there’s a bigger thing happening.

I Guess We’ve Been Spoiled

Trying to hold up against some of the best Star Wars TV is a challenge. Living up to the standards set in Season 1 are hard enough. But then you add in The Bad Batch, Obi-wan Kenobi, and Andor, and that sets the bar incredibly high. The Mandalorian started out so well, and it has since decayed. I’m not giving up on it just yet. But unless they turn it around, I’m not sure I’ll bother watching a season 4, should such a thing come out.

April 10, 2023

When The Plot Twists

Warning: This contains spoilers from episode 3 of season 4 of Succession. Major plot points will be discussed, so read at your own discretion. If you haven’t watched the episode yet, don’t read any further. Seriously. Just stop now, watch it, then come back.

A Brilliantly Simple Plot Twist

It is amazing when a show’s team decides to take the story in a new and radical direction. This happened on Succession, in the most recent episode of the final season of the show. Episode 3 of the 4th season, Conner’s Wedding, starts off as expected. We see the first stages of a ludicrous and over-the-top wedding. Logan is plotting and scheming, testing his youngest son. Tom is trying to find more ways to stay useful and be important. The early scenes are basically a carry-over from the previous episode. The closest to a ‘surprise’ we get is that Logan tells Roman, his youngest, to let Gerri know she’s on the way out.

And while the plotting and scheming continue, we get the twist. Not the “Gerri is fired” twist. The “Logan is dead” twist. At some point, we knew that Logan would have to either retire or die. The show is named “Succession”, not “Game of Org Charts”. Someone has to succeed the old man. And for most of the second and third season, it didn’t look like Logan was going anywhere any time soon.

The whole thing plays out while the main characters are basically in no control of where they are going, physically. The children and Cousin Greg are on a boat, leaving dock and sailing toward the Statue of Liberty. Logan and his team, along with Tom, are in a plane in the air. There’s no hopping into a luxury SUV or limo to meet at some office, apartment, restaurant, or karaoke bar. Boats don’t turn on a dime. Planes can’t just park where they are.

The brilliance was, after a few minutes of “perhaps he’s faking it to test the kids”, it was clear that Logan really was going. There’s a body on the floor of a plane. A flight attendant is giving CPR. We hear the distinct sound of a defibrillator being fired. Doors are closed. He doesn’t just pop up, and there would be little point of playing out a lifesaving routine since nobody is using Facetime or Zoom for this. A visual performance wasn’t required. It was all done without the grabbing of chests, shortness of breath, or all the other trappings of an “old man death scene”. We see him get on a plane. We get to hear phone calls.

It’s Par For The Show

Really, this fits with how Succession has played out from the start. There is plenty of absurdity, over-the-top behaviour, a sense of entitlement, and basically no boundaries or limits. There are also virtually no consequences except those imposed by the limits of physics and what the universe allows, which does track for the most part with the real world. The ultra-wealthy are largely immune to the artificial consequences imposed by society. They only thing they can’t ignore is things like gravity and mortality.

I’ve been watching the show regularly from the start, but I’m still not certain I’m a “fan” in the conventional sense. All of the characters are irritating, there are no good guys here, and none rise to the level of anti-hero. Even Cousin Greg is, frankly, obnoxious. The writing and acting, though, are absolutely brilliant. Everyone in the show is scheming and plotting, and most of them actually aren’t very good at it. Having a real curveball thrown at them from time to time is how the showrunners keep the characters off-balance. This curveball, though is a doozy. While it looked like we would get more of the usual plotting and changing allegiances, the story takes a hard right turn, knocking over the crockery and spilling everyone’s drinks.

It Isn’t What I Thought

It wasn’t until I was reading some summaries during season two that I learned the show is meant to be a dark comedy. There was little I found “funny” in a sense that you’d laugh at it. The business elements are entirely fictional, and a complete and utter mess. Unlike Billions, where they actually get a lot of the technical aspects around markets and trading right (or at least close), Succession makes no effort to do so. And that is, apparently, by design. It’s meant to be absurd, not just in how the characters play our their parts, but in how their weird and twisted world works. And if anyone thinks “well, rich people get away with lots”, even rich people aren’t that stupid, and there are limits. You don’t get to be rich without at least a modicum of intelligence.

When I first started watching, I was sort-of expecting something like Billions, just focussed more on the family and business dynamics of who takes over when the old man is gone. It was clear after a few episodes that all the business jargon was used more or less at random, meant to sound “business-y” without worrying about details. Once I got a handle on that, it was then only about the characters and their interactions. The plots and schemes and twists and turns. And the sheer ineptitude of the of all these people.

Which is how the show is brilliant on multiple levels. That ineptitude isn’t necessarily that far from the truth. It’s further demonstrating that being rich doesn’t mean you’re smart. And it isn’t unusual to see ultra-wealthy people somehow believe that they are smarter than everyone else, when the truth is that they are just luckier. They were in the right place at the right time and stumbled onto something that let them build insane levels of wealth. But they succeeded in part because they were at least surrounded by smart (or smarter) people who could actually do the work. If you want to see a so-called “genius” at work, without the supporting talent, just watch the implosion of Twitter.

In For A Bumpier Ride

The ever-changing landscape of who is working with whom in Succession is now in new territory. The first half of season one was off-balance, in part because we’re still learning who the characters are. Things settled down into a pattern in the latter half, plus for the next two seasons. Sure, there were lots of small twists and turns. Characters would be loyal to some faction at one point, only to betray them when it looked like things were better on “the other side”. None of what we were seeing for the past two seasons was particularly surprising. It was, for me, getting a little stale.

They could have gone on like this for some time. At some point, though, they were either going to have to do something more radical. Of course, the showrunners could have simply introduced new characters to add a different dynamic to the show. It could have chugged along while we all waited for it to jump the shark.

But instead, they blew the shark up, and I’m thankful they did it. Not having Brian Cox on the screen is going to be unfortunate, since the man is a brilliant performer. The show, however, needed to get to the point. It was losing its focus for the past two seasons, becoming more of a soap opera (albeit with writing and acting that were several orders of magnitude better, and characters that weren’t glorified cardboard cutouts). In some ways, Logan’s death gets the train back on track. We’ve had too many side-trips that didn’t really advance the plot. Hopefully we’re done with those. We have seven more episodes to find out.

March 2, 2023

Tears on Silent Stone

A man stands silently. Wind ruffles thin and greying hair.

He thinks about the arguments, disagreements about arming, appeasement. The yelling. The elder wants to arm. The younger wants peace.

Then the first annexation. The first invasion.

Disagreement turns, becomes less vehement.

Another annexation, invasion under pretence.

The middle ground transforms to agreement, then passion, commitment.

Commitment followed by enlistment. Departures, see you soon.

The rain when the telegram arrives. Deeply regret to inform you… The tears. Sadness.

The Portland Stone monument. The name, the dates. June 6, 1944.

“I said I would see you again” spoken to empty air.

March 1, 2023

Not Among The Finalists

I got my email today from Writer’s Digest, informing me that I was not among the finalists for the short story competition. I would have been pleasantly surprised if I had been. The story I wrote was put together pretty quickly, and I didn’t have time for an outside editor to look at it. There are changes I’m going to make to the story, and I will get someone else to look it over. I’m considering trying to submit it to Clarkesworld, but they’ve closed submissions for now. They were flooded with “stories” cranked out using things like ChatGPT. If nothing else, I’ll post the story here.

January 16, 2023

Submitted My First Story

I’ve submitted a short story to the Writer’s Digest Annual Short Story Competition. It was something I wrote over the past week, and I probably rushed it. But all I have to lose is the entry fee, and it’s a start. The top 10 stories get published in Writer’s Digest, and that’s the main draw for me. Several of the top positions get prize money, and first overall gets a trip to their annual writer’s conference in New York and an opportunity to pitch work to editors and publishers.

Once I know the outcome, and if I’m not among those selected to be published, then I’ll post a copy of the story here. It’s a science fiction story, and set nominally in my Unimanse fictional universe. It was also an experiment: I chained together a series of drabbles (100-word microfiction stories) to form a larger story. It was fun trying to make it work, keep the plot focused, and make each 100-word section a story of its own.

January 9, 2023

Yup, I Have Been Quiet

I haven’t posted much because I haven’t been doing much. We had a death in the family (my father, after a long illness), so that and the holidays aren’t doing much to inspire creativity right now. However, I’m not worried. This too shall pass, and I know I will be back at it.

December 13, 2022

Social Media Ambivalence

I am experiencing some ambivalence when it comes to social media, although most of that is about Twitter. I use a few different platforms, for different purposes, and I am trying out a pair of newer ones.

What and Why

I currently use most of the common social media platforms. Facebook is mainly about friends and family, keeping up with what they are doing or thinking. LinkedIn is about professional connections, and keeping up with that community. Instagram is a weird mix of friends, family, and various celebrities or other notable personalities. I visit each of them once per day. On Instagram, once I’ve “caught up”, I don’t keep scrolling. I did for a time, and it was easy to lose a lot of time to that. No more.

Then there’s Twitter, Mastodon, and Post. The latter two I’m experimenting with, seeing if I use them differently than I did with Twitter. Twitter is, for me, an oddball. There’s no way to keep up with each and every tweet from the people I follow. I’ve reduced the number of accounts I follow there over the years, but even then, I usually didn’t read everything. It wasn’t hard for a thousand or more tweets to pile up in a 24-hour period, and that’s with me following maybe 50 people.

Twitter The Outlier

I wasn’t sure about Twitter when I first joined in 2009. It was already 3 years old by that point, and appeared to be gaining traction. It was when social media was becoming more of ‘a thing’, and there was an expectation in some circles that you should be part of it. I followed a lot of different people and organizations, all of whom I was interested in, or sometimes connected with, in some way. But it didn’t take long to get buried in tweets. I would check once a day, and there were thousands of unread tweets. This was before promotions and recommendations started to appear on the site.

For the next few years, I would stop using Twitter for months at a time, or even for more than a year. Then I would come back, pay attention for a few weeks or months, then just sort-of “wander off”. I removed more and more of the accounts I followed to try to get the volume of tweets down, but it was relentless/ There were just enough accounts that I wanted to follow, and many are fairly prolific posters.

To Stay Or Go

I have been considering deleting my Twitter accounts for some time now, long before the Elon Musk Imploding Disaster Show arrived on the scene. And leaving isn’t really about the dumpster fire fueled with thermite that Twitter appears to be devolving into. Twitter was a mess before that, it’s just managed to get worse. I, fortunately, had been spared that, in part because I used TweetDeck, which doesn’t show ads, promoted or recommended tweets, or following suggestions. I rarely posted anything. What I did tweet was apparently uninteresting, so I wasn’t subject to the trolls that roam the Twitter landscape.

But I also found that I had little or no engagement from Twitter and my modest number of followers. I generally tweeted a link to my most recent blog posts, as I do on other social media sites. The number of visits to my blogs that were courtesy of Twitter were generally zero. I would get some from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. But almost nothing from Twitter.

The only thing holding me back is that I have a few connections on Twitter that aren’t on other social media platforms, and I’d like to stay connected to them. I go back every week or so and check for notifications on Twitter. But otherwise, I’ve stopped using it again.

Stay, For Now

For the moment, I’m going to keep my personal and Vintrock Twitter accounts. Part of it is to retain the Twitter handles. Part of it is because maybe, perhaps, things might change again. For now that appears unlikely, but who knows. But I’ve got the accounts reasonably secure, I’ve removed a bunch of personal information from them, and it costs me nothing to let them sit. Whether I also stay on Mastodon and Post is a question mark, but I need to give both a lot more time before I decide what I do next. It’s too soon to make any decisions on them.

November 29, 2022

More Progress

While I’ve already technically “won” NaNoWriMo 2022, the book itself isn’t done. I’ve crossed the 60,000 word threshold now. I’m working toward completing one of the other achievements, which is updating my writing progress every day for the month.

Ease Off The Throttle

I don’t expect to work on writing seven days a week. Like any task, breaks are a good thing. It keeps you fresh, and it helps you focus. Starting in December, I expect to focus on writing at least five days a week. The big lesson for me was understanding how productive I was (or wasn’t) going to be, and how much time do I need in a day for writing. I seem to be able to get a fair bit done in about an hour or two, hitting my personal goal of 2,000 words in a day.

Those words are, right now, first draft words. I’m working on getting the story told, knowing I have to go back and revise and revisit what I’ve created. The idea that I can create the “perfect” work on the first try is beyond optimistic. Moreso, since I’m still new to becoming a novelist. Writing itself isn’t hard for me. Writing well is where the challenge lies.

It’s Encouraging

This novel, so far, plus the one I drafted a few years ago, are proving to be encouraging. I enjoy the act of creation, whether it’s crafting a story, building a piece of software, or taking wood and making something. Building is part of who I am, not just what I do. Being able to build entire worlds is fun and a challenge.

I’m into the next section of the novel. One of the big events has now passed, but we’re building toward the finale. Sure, I’ve already planned generally how the story is going to end. But there’s an element of mystery, since I don’t know exactly how it will turn out. And the story has already morphed a bit from my initial vision. Here’s to the final few chapters!