A Mastodon writing prompt story. These are science fiction short stories (usually 480 characters or less), based on an image generated by EW Doc Parris using MidJourney.
Sara could feel the numbness quickly spread as the stunstars hit. She tried to get to her knees, to reduce the pain of hitting the ground. But she was only partway when they took full effect. Sara toppled, hit, and the pain was the only thing she could feel.
She was still conscious, aware of everything. A silver/gray face loomed over her.
“Your aunt says it’s time to come home” the deep metallic bass intoned as she was lifted from the ground.
A Mastodon writing prompt story. These are science fiction short stories (usually 480 characters or less), based on an image generated by EW Doc Parris using MidJourney.
“That’s our home and we intend to take it back. Are you just going to stand there gawking, or are you going to help?”
I paused, thinking, starting to question why I came in the first place. I suppose I could back out now. But, I did kinda promise, and Marti was going to pay well for my services.
I adjusted my gear, powered up my weapon, then nodded.
Warning, this contains spoilers for Chapter 23 of Season 4 of The Mandalorian. Read at your own risk.
Took Long Enough
So it took us 7 episodes (and about 7 hours) to finally get to the point of this thing. Seriously? Take away all the side-quests and distractions, and this should have been the third episode of this season, not the seventh. It could have even been the second episode. We didn’t need to know what was happening with Dr. Pershing. They could have left it as mysterious. A two-minute holo comms sequence with Moff Gideon and Kane, the “His research is lost” line in the holo-Zoom staff meeting, and leave it at that. The “let’s fight pirates” bit. The useless “have to fix IG-11” and it turns out it wasn’t necessary. The rescue, the droid behaviour mystery. Seriously, none of this advanced the narrative.
Too much of this season feels like padding, like fan service and not story telling. It’s like they don’t actually know what story they want to tell, or maybe don’t have a story to tell. I mean, cool, we get some great cameos from some great performers. But we don’t have to try to jam every character the series has presented (that’s still alive) into the season. That’s just not necessary.
Grogu’s New Toy
I was so worried they had pulled a deus ex machine with IG-11 when he came strolling in. But when it was clear he’s just a mech, okay, maybe that’s something that can work. At least Grogu has a bit more mobility, and can do more than make baby noises and Force Grip stuff. It was funny watching him stumble around a bit while he figured the machine out, and pounding away on the “yes” and “no” buttons.
The only concern I would have might be budget. It’s way cheaper to digitally composite a floating egg (which can be closed, reducing detail and fidelity requirements) than an intricate machine. But whatever, not my problem. At least Grogu can be a more active participant in things.
Expect It To Feel Rushed Or Incomplete
There’s only one episode left in the season. That can mean one of two things. First, that they’re going to rush the final conflict between the Mandalorians and Gideon. Don’t be surprised if the New Republic just happens to show up, riding to the rescue. Given how sloppy the story telling as been so far, that wouldn’t be surprising at all. But it would also be a massive disappointment.
The other alternative is that the Mandalorians are chased off “for now” in a lame attempt to set up the next season. Assuming there is one. I have not seen a lot of positive comments or reviews so far, and I see a lot more “glad I skipped this season” instead.
And that leads to the question: will there be a fourth season? With poor reviews, what appears to be a disappointed (and possibly shrinking) audience, this could very well be it for this story line. It could live on in comics and novels. But these aren’t cheap to make, and Disney’s pockets aren’t infinitely deep. I’d rather see the budget put toward ensuring Andor retains it’s high standards and quality. Money spent making another disappointing season like this would be a waste.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There’s not much to write about at the moment. Between a family health thing and family in town for Christmas, there are other things to focus on. Be well. Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Merry Kwanzaa, Merry Festivus, Happy Solstice, and happy holidays for the other festivities and celebrations I’ve overlooked.
