Beepity Boppity Boop - The Lagrange Point Vol. I, Iss. 3.

Welcome to the third issue of The Lagrange Point! If you aren't familiar with this budding e-newsletter, you can find out more in this post here.

In This Issue

Distant Early Warnings

• Saga is back! Again!

Crafter's Corner

• Papercraft - Castle in the Sky

Rantables

• Tailoring the Emperor's New Clothes - projections of power and Elon Musk

And Lastly, A Word

• A first look at Apple TV's Sunny

We're back at it with more Canadian geeky goodness, with some lower-profile indie fare alongside well-known makers. Here's the rundown...

Calgary SF&F publisher EDGE will be releasing Aftermath by Sean O'Brien August 4. The second book in O'Brien's "Beltunner Saga," Aftermath follows asteroid belt miner Collier South, reeling from the events of the first book, but offered a new chance of hope and recovery. The first book was likened to classic writers like Ben Bova, and is more on the "hard" spectrum of sci-fi (although it does centre around an alien artifact).

A co-production between Alberta and BC-based studios, Sunburnt Unicorn is an animated film (with Kathleen Barr, aka Dot Matrix from ReBoot!) in the vein of classic 80's fantasy adventures like The Neverending Story and Return to Oz. The film is making its North American premiere at Fantasia festival in Montreal Saturday Aug. 3. It'll also play in Ottawa's International Animation Fest Sept. 25 to 29.

Award-winning comic Saga, drawn by Calgary-born artist Fiona Staples, returns July 31 with issue 67. Issue 66 took readers on deep dive into antagonist Gale, with some interesting meditations on the cycle of violence and vengeance. Saga is in danger of going the way of Battle Chasers, with increasingly long waits between issues, but loyalists like me keep clinging on.

Lastly, we've got a sneak preview of a coming video game from dev duo James Greer in Calgary and Danny Guo in Vancouver. Petal Runner, first announced at Day of the Devs, promises to be a retro-style RPG in the vein of Pokemon, with motorbike-delivery gameplay and cute virtual pets to boot. It's being published by iam8bit, which has already lent the game a pretty big public profile. One to watch for sure!

Sorry guys, I promise the Ruska heroes are coming. Two of three are painted, and life is almost back under control.

In the meantime... I got to go to Japan last year. It ruled. One personal highlight among many was a trip to BOTH Ghibli Park and Ghibli Museum (yes, they are two different places), where I spent way too much money on souvenirs.

Among those souvenirs was a papercraft kit that assembles into a scale model of Laputa, the Castle in the Sky from... er... Castle in the Sky.

This is what the kit looked like out of the box. As you can see, it's very efficiently packed in there. They also include a generous amount of static grass and flock, to simulate the foliage on the castle.

I'd never built a papercraft kit like this before, but it was pretty straightforward. If there's one tip I have to offer, it's to allow yourself lots of time to finish it. This kit probably took me upwards of 10 hours to put together. The main thing is being very detail-oriented and paying close attention to the instructions, which are highly specific about which part you have to place where.

One you get going, it's very satisfying to see the layers of paper build up into a surprisingly detailed model. It basically functions as three tiers that are in turn placed together.

I think the cleverest part of the model was using a solid blue sheet under a brown one, with tiny holes cut into the brown one to simulate little bodies of water. The beehive-like structures also look pretty good too; they picked some good shades of colour for the rooftops and walls that put me in mind of European architecture.

The finished product is shockingly effective in giving the vibes, if not the perfect recreation, of the movie. And as you can see, the whole thing fits in the palm of your (well, mine at least) hand.

I confess that I thought papercraft models might be kind of hokey, but the quality on this one really pleased me and I'm quite happy with the final product. It also seems like it'd be more environmentally friendly than a plastic model, seeing as how paper is more renewable, and it packs flat to save on space when shipping.

Would craft again!

I like to play this thought experiment.

It’s part escapism, part Sim City-style god game, part wishful thinking.

I think of a desert island survival scenario. I posit a location somehow removed from the whole of humanity, yet teeming with sufficient resources that one could conceivably achieve the basic needs of existence: food, shelter, water.

Such Robinson Crusoe-style musing, which I am sure others have engaged in, seldom accounts for one other factor: company. Humans need companionship as much as anything else, but in that scenario I can rapidly run down a list of figures, famous to the world or familiar only to me, who I don’t think I could stand to be around longer than an hour.

Surely at the top of that list must be one Elon Musk.

It is not merely that his personality ticks off a disturbing number of boxes in the characteristics of sociopathic narcissism, or that he seems physically incapable of centering any conversation on a topic outside of himself. It is that in such a survivalist scenario, I can think of few people more poorly-equipped to succeed.

Musk’s business acumen, and indeed his basic ability to perform even perfunctory labour value to society, are dubious. An inheritor of vast family wealth, he has routinely performed buffoonery of a singular talent, such as reinventing subway tunnels (only non-functional and jammed with gridlock) or defending the onstage smashing of a supposedly damage-proof windshield on a veritable clown car, the design of which would put Homer Simpson to shame.

Yet on the internet, the baffling myth persists that Musk is a genius, tantamount to a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci or a real-life Tony Stark. A cursory googling of interviews from the pre-Twitter-ownership days of Musk’s seemingly unstoppable business empire reveals a fawning public and media landscape, enamored with the man, the myth, the legend.

It’s only in hunting down specific search terms, like “Tesla union busting,” or “Thai cave pedo” that the cracks start to show. There are the repeated testimonies of former and even current employees of Musk as a feckless, immature tyrant, firing workers for his own mistakes. There are also the multiple occasions when his propensity for tweeting inane nonsense landed him and his company in hot water, financially and legally.

Somehow, though, connecting those seemingly disparate events into a more complete and accurate portrait of the man so many have come to see as the most powerful person on the planet proves to be a task beyond common understanding.

One thread that emerged came from Oliver Campbell, a Twitter user whose bio proudly touts his credentials as a Twitch streamer and parent.

“Alright,” tweeted Campbell, presumably cracking the same knuckles which had artfully typed his two self-published novellas.

“I'm going to explain what Elon Musk is likely doing over there at Twitter…What Elon is engaged in is something called ‘Whaling and Culling.’”

Curiously, a casual skim of the internet reveals no references whatsoever to “whaling and culling” outside of some market reports on boating and cattle industries. But it didn’t matter. The internet went wild for the sage wisdom of a Gamergate booster, with the tweet thread amassing thousands of likes. It has since been mysteriously deleted.

This might all be easy to just laugh at it weren’t so pervasive, and more importantly, persistent. As the ancient, weary, aphorism goes: this is nothing new.

Consider, for instance, that the story of a powerful figure engaged in cartoonishly incompetent behaviour is so old that it can, at minimum, be traced back to Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” published in 1837.

That folktale is now so common in the lexicon that we all recognize it as the societal phenomenon of adults incapable of seeing the plain truth of idiocy in a position of authority. The people of Andersen’s story are so thoroughly brainwashed and conditioned by their cultural conditioning that it takes a literal child to point out the obvious. “The Emperor has no clothes,” we declare, even as we repeat the mistake next Monday when Musk tweets out that he has a super big idea for putting microchips in our brains.

Throughout history, there have been points where people finally got wise to the fact they were being cheated by powerful goofs. The overthrowing of the Tsar in Russia. The American revolution. The French revolution.

At those points, there were people who had the nerve to actually say to themselves and each other, “Why on earth should I be giving the things I grow and make to some random fop in a powdered wig who claims a magical being imbued him with divinity?”

The answer, of course, was a circular argument: he/she is the king/queen because that is the way it has always been.

George R.R. Martin commented on the projection of this type of power elegantly in Clash of Kings, in a piece of dialogue between characters Tyrion and Varys that, thankfully, made it into the TV adaptation before it went sour.

“Power is a curious thing, my lord. Perchance you have considered the riddle I posed you that day in the inn?”

“It has crossed my mind a time or two,” Tyrion admitted. “The king, the priest, the rich man—who lives and who dies? Who will the swordsman obey? It’s a riddle without an answer, or rather, too many answers. All depends on the man with the sword.”

“And yet he is no one,” Varys said. “He has neither crown nor gold nor favor of the gods, only a piece of pointed steel.”

“That piece of steel is the power of life and death.”

“Just so… yet if it is the swordsmen who rule us in truth, why do we pretend our kings hold the power? Why should a strong man with a sword ever obey a child king like Joffrey, or a wine-sodden oaf like his father?”

“Because these child kings and drunken oafs can call other strong men, with other swords.”

“Then these other swordsmen have the true power. Or do they?” Varys smiled. “Some say knowledge is power. Some tell us that all power comes from the gods…Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”

“So power is a mummer’s trick?”

“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”

In Elon Musk, we see the epitome of capitalist projection of power: a small man with a huge ego and a tremendous lack of ability or talent. The idea that such a person could exist and could continue to succeed despite his now-glaringly obvious flaws is supposedly anathema to the American century. Surely, the prevailing wisdom goes, he must have earned that wealth, and that power.

The truth, of course, is that capitalism frequently creates powerful people with little talent or usefulness. You would not count chief among your desert island allies Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump, the Saudi royal family or any number of billionaires and millionaires. You would turn to survival experts, to doctors, to farmers, to hunters, to carpenters, to any number of practical, useful people.

If there is one piece of hope to be found in Musk’s shining example of a dumpster fire brought to life throughout his ownership of Twitter, it is that maybe, just maybe, we are reaching another point in history as when the classes of merchants and workers realized they were being ripped off by aristocrats and royal families. Maybe.

So deeply ingrained in capitalist thinking is the idea that wealth is equivalent to talent that people will defend to the death the idea that Musk is a genius, even as all signs point to the opposite. To admit otherwise would be to put to bed the lie that our systems are built on: that we overthrew kings and queens and replaced them with billionaires and millionaires.

The Emperor really did get new clothes. And we collectively tailored them.

This week, we're taking a look at something brand new for a change of pace! Apple TV's Sunny is currently mid-season, with three episodes currently released of ten. The series is based on The Dark Manual, a novel by Irish writer Colin O'Sullivan, and focuses on the story of Suzie Sakamoto, an American immigrant to Kyoto who is married to a programmer, Masahiko (Masa) Sakamoto.

Taking place at an unspecified point in the near future, with technology that look only slightly ahead of where we're at, Suzie's world is upended when her husband and son are apparently killed in a plane crash. As Suzie starts to grieve, things get strange fast when their bodies fail to turn up, but what DOES turn up is a gift from a man claiming to be Masa's coworker: a cheery-if-creepy robot, the titular Sunny.

Sunny is keen to please and claims to have been personally programmed by Masa himself, but Suzie is resistant to having the robot in her life, being prejudiced against AI due to her mother being killed by a self-driving car. But as Sunny's behaviour starts to show signs of Masa's own particular idioms, like a signature double hand-wave, Suzie begins to think the robot might be a clue to finding out about her husband's increasingly shady past.

At three episodes in, the show is noteworthy in three particular areas:
1) It does exceptional work at portraying Suzie as a stranger in a strange land, with her stubbornness about adapting to Japanese norms and language manifesting in culture shock
2) It pursues the JJ Abrams' "mystery box" style of storytelling to great effect, drawing viewers in with a million questions and parceling out information at a slow but satisfying pace
3) It has Rashida Jones playing its lead, Suzie, and she absolutely kills it

This is the first time I've personally seen Jones in a more dramatic role. I've only been familiar with her through The Office and Parks and Rec, but here, she does a stupendous job of portraying a harried, exhausted and emotionally strained wreck of a woman. But far from being a downer, Jones' Suzie is an interesting, active protagonist, believably peeling back the layers of her husband's life with relatable confusion and motivation.

What especially functions well is that the mystery is grounded solidly in how Suzie related to Masa vs. how everyone else related to Masa. Suzie's misanthropic refusal to immerse herself in the country she moved to has alienated herself from the deeper parts of her husband's life, and she's shocked to hear one person say how "funny" he was one moment, and then how "terrifying" he was in the next.

She also bounces off her robotic companion, Sunny, with great effect. While the prop robot has good physicality to begin with, it's the vocal performance by Joanna Sotomura that really gives it life, with a bubbly effervescence that perfectly balances Jones' dour Suzie like the best pairings of buddy cop movies of yore. Indeed, the series is shot very much like a film noir, with neon-drenched city shots at night, and what little daylight scenes do occur pitched in overcast greys.

Japan has been having something of a coup in the cultural collective consciousness of the West lately, with shows like Blue Eye Samurai or Shogun wowing critics and audiences alike and being produced by American companies. Sunny may not quite reach the same levels of critical adulation, but there's definitely enough mystery, great acting and pretty cinematography to merit a look.

Season one continues until September 4, 2024.

That wraps up the third issue of The Lagrange Point! If you enjoyed this little e-newsletter, please consider subscribing, or, if you're already subscribed, sharing it with a friend or family member!

I can't grow this e-newsletter alone. I need lots of mouths spreading lots of words about why people should read The Lagrange Point.

Until next Monday, thank you for reading!

-Tim