MrRigger's Writings and Stuff

"My superpower is creating… guns."

i decided to try a romcom i somehow missed i the 2000s 'head over heels' and i got 3 and a half minutes in and we're introduced to the lonely MC with bad taste in men as evidenced by her extremely short list of ex boyfriends, including her first boyfriend when she was 11 or something because i guess that's still relevant in her adult life.

so she's resigned herself to never finding love and prefers to ignore men to focus all her energy into her career.

this job is immediately presented as though it's for spinsters with no hope of ever finding a man.

the mc's lesbian bestie (whose first line involves her being scolded for being too sexual in the workplace, but moving on) points out their colleagues as evidence that they're doomed to a romance-less, sexless life if they don't switch up their shared career path. the colleagues are three old women, so-dubbed "the menopause triplets":

these women are presented as if they have no idea what's going on at any given moment. this is 2001, and presumably this is an entry level job requiring low effort and no experience.

then their boss bursts into the room, unceremoniously bumping a large painting into the door jam and walls, announcing that it's a new project for our MC.

our MC is thrilled to see the painting. apparently it's a light in the daily slog at her dreary job for loser women with nothing going on in their lives.

And that job is? Conservator of paintings (specializing in Renaissance) at the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The painting being handled like an old couch on its way to the curb?

The Bacchanal of the Andrians by Titian.

Her lesbian colleague who is presumably also a a highly trained & skilled curator finds it depressing that the MC is so excited about the painting.

I was driving through Vermont with a friend, and we pulled over at a tiny shop offering Maple Items. We were on the state highway, not the interstate, so "pulling over" meant "squeezing my tiny car into a parking bay the size of a broad highway shoulder."

As we got out of the car, an older woman emerged from behind the building where she had been pruning her roses. She introduced herself as Tammy.

Her shop offered the promised variety of Maple, but also a number of small antiques and a plethora of dog figurines, plaques, and clearly-hand-stitched garden flags.

A huge purple ribbon hung on the wall behind the register, along with many pictures of small dogs. This was no county fair ribbon. It was the size of my torso. The material had the soft sheen of actual silk.

As I placed my purchases on the counter, I asked, "Do you... Breed dogs?"

Yes. She does. She has bred Yorkies for the last 40 years. Her mother bred Yorkies before her. The purple ribbon was from her national championship winning Yorkie.

You may be expecting that the infodump was going to be about Yorkies.

It was not.

It was about 40 years of drama in the Yorkie breeding community. Where – you must understand – the judging at shows is often about who you're in with, not about the dogs. This is especially true when Tammy's opponents win anything.

And Tammy's mother! Well. Phyllis has been on the Yorkie scene since Yorkies were invented. Because of this, many women of equally venerable age hold deep grudges against Phyllis. The sort of grudges that result in episodes of Midsommar Murders.

This led to deep injustices against Phyllis on the part of judges and prevented her dogs from winning so often she retired from the scene. Judging is all about who you're friends with, after all.

After 20 years in hiding, Phyllis – the One True Queen of Yorkie Breeding – hatched a plot. She may have been out of the show circuit, but she was still breeding dogs. She entered an absolutely perfect bitch in the national competition, but sent her with a handler rather than go in person.

None of the usurpers knew who this dog belonged to, and in dog-breeding circles this Does Not Happen. This could have resulted in further injustices, but Phyllis was crafty. She knew this tournament was being judged by a man from the UK, who knew naught of the drama in the US Yorkie Empire.

With these advantages – and being the best dog there – Phyllis's bitch won the highest honor at the show.

Incensed by this insult to their ill-gotten supremacy, the other owners descended on the handler after the show, demanding to know for whom he was working.

"Phyllis," said he.

The name of the overthrown queen evoked horror in the usurpers.

"PHYLLIS!? She's still ALIVE!???"

Yes, Phyllis yet lived, and this bitch – the dog, not the woman – went on to mother Tammy's current dogs. One of whom, Lucy-Fur, is the reincarnation of Tammy's sister (also Lucy). This is certain for two reasons.

Firstly, Sister Lucy absolutely went straight to Hell upon her death, and Lucy-Fur the dog is positively as evil as Sister Lucy was.

That would be amazing! God knows Tobias doesn't have nearly enough problems, and definitely needs more.

The obvious one would be a night mission that forces him to give in and just acquire a damn owl already. It's so funny to me that he goes the whole series without that morph, despite its obvious utility, out of sheer stubbornness. But even Tobias would (grudgingly) use owl if there was a mission that needed a very skilled flier at night. Heck, he might even enjoy it despite himself.

I could see him being forced into golden eagle morph if they need to carry a lot of weight in raptor shape — maybe he's assisting a fellow Animorph in snake form to the battle, like in #21. Tobias would haaaate it, but he'd probably also see the point in needing a shape that big.

What they need from crow is also what they’d get from pigeon or sparrow, bird that can exist in proximity to humans in large numbers and not be remarked upon. A murder wandering around basically anywhere outdoors is normal, and it’s likely normal crows would join the Animorphs just to see what’s so interesting.

At first, Tobias has to deal with them trying to bully him off, but he's got to go to the barn for missions and meetings, so eventually a peace treaty is negotiated. Cassie may or may not have been involved as a neutral party.

But once peace is established, the crows don't just leave him alone. He's the one coming into their house (as far as they're concerned), so they're going to pay attention. This irritates Tobias, who is not happy about being stalked by a crow mafia.

Eventually the crows come to the conclusion that Tobias isn't actually a hawk, he's actually an incompetent crow, and the murder decides to adopt him. Against his will.

pt. 1 | pt. 2 | pt. 3 | pt. 5 | pt. 6 | pt. 7

The backlash against calling characters "Mary Sue" is valid — the term is often sexist, racist, and simply unfounded. However. I do think that there's a baby in that bathwater, and that "this character is so perfect it becomes a major flaw in the story" can still be a meaningful criticism.

Argument 4: "Mary Sue" is still a valid criticism to the extent the "Mary Sue" character tends to start out good at everything... which can end up giving them nowhere to grow. And character growth is awesome. It makes for some of our all-time favorite heroes: Spike, Anya, Castiel, Zuko. Edmund Pevensie. Taylor Hebert. T-800. So on. Watching a character become talented or ethical or powerful makes for a great story. But if a character starts out talented/ethical/powerful, then the story often ends up in a trap of throwing ever-bigger Godzillas at a character we've already seen defeat Godzilla several times.

Effort and struggle tend to be what make a character interesting or relatable. It's the all-important difference between fearlessness (boring) and courage (relatable).

One example of how doing something badly often looks more impressive than doing it well: Captain America. He got widely derided as "useless" in Avengers (2012), so for Winter Solider (2014) the writers didn't make him more powerful... they added visible effort.

The moment of hesitation before Steve jumps, and the moment after he lands where he has to stop and go "ow" for a few seconds, do so much to sell this moment, vs. the unreal-looking way Steve does almost everything without effort in Avengers movies:

Example of this problem*: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Protagonist Ender has so many abilities so ridiculously beyond what real six-year-olds can do I can't list them all, but the point is that as of his first day of school, he's already curb-stomping kids twice his size and scoring better at training games than any other person ever measured. What problems Ender does have tend to come from being too good at things — hence John Sclazi among others deriding him as insufferably perfect.

Counter-example: Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. Protagonist Jean Valjean is smart enough to invent a new type of fastener, strong enough to lift a carriage unassisted, moral enough that he's literally meant to be a Catholic saint... and the book gets away with it because when we meet him, he has none of that. He'll become the world's greatest dad, but in his first scene he gets in a shouting match with a small child over a single coin and only realizes too late what an ass he's being. He'll end up running an entire town and its wealthiest business, but first we get a long sequence of him unable to get even a chance to earn enough food to survive because of his criminal record. He can go a long, long way (1500 pages!) and the story can still feel coherent, because he starts out with so little.

Tl;dr: Mary Sue ≠ ultra-talented. BUT if a story has a character start out ultra-talented without showing us how they got there, the character tends to stagnate and the reader may lose interest.

#yeah ender lol#from what I remember card was trying to answer the question “can a good person commit genocide”#or rather he was arguing the answer to the question was yes#and could only do it with a mary sue protagonist#but yeah excellent points

Which is partially achieved by saving a single individual from that species, potentially delaying its extinction by a while and ensuring that when it does happen, the cause will be a genetic bottleneck leaving them massively inbred and vulnerable to disease. You may recognize this as a comically christian fundamentalist view of atonement.

And that's also why I've always pushed back so hard against people bringing it up as an additional example of kids facing moral dilemmas in the style of Animorphs. He literally doesn't know his actions will result in death, ever, at any point in the first book. (How he can be a tactical genius and yet not know that about curb-stomping Bonzo as Bonzo's already lying wounded on the floor is... one of life's great mysteries.) The Animorphs are killing strangers so they won't kill the ones that they love, and then they kill their loved ones as well. And not because they were following orders from some adult.

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

Ugh Linvios being the one to hear the confession and letting it play out and giving vetn and tesy that moment because deep down he wishes he had that

It’s the opposite of genz and millennial queers seeing elder gays and crying because you can get that old. You can! They did!

Jake has his tiger, Rachel bounced between grizzly bear and elephant, Marco morphs into a gorilla, Cassie went with a wolf and Tobias and Ax didn't really have an main or primary morphs, electing to go by their baseline state of being a hawk and an Andalite respectively. But, if you had to pick new main battle morphs for them, what would you pick?

I personally am thinking like a big snake like python or something for Cassie. And maybe a bison for Jake. I'm also thinking a hippo but I can't decide between Rachel and Marco for it.

Jokes aside: YES on Bison for Jake. Bison would be my own battle morph if I had one, and I think Jake would make good use of it too. As for the others, what I'd like to see:

Cassie - Mountain Lion. She's got easy access and they're extremely capable.

Marco - Tarantula Hawk - less for outright battle, more for sneaky incapacitation of Human-Controllers without actually hurting them. Though, this being Animorphs, there's a 50/50 chance the victim is allergic and goes into anaphylactic shock.

Marco (again) - A very large weasel of some sort, either honey badger or wolverine.

Marco (again again) - Great White Shark, just for all the movie references I know he'd make.

Rachel - Moose. It'd be a good intermediate between Grizzly and Elephant.

Rachel (again) - Also honey badger or wolverine. She's got a lot of big battle morphs, she could use a smaller one for enclosed spaces.

Ax - I wanna see Ax reverse the "Morphs a giant alien" thing on Visser Three for once, then awkwardly explain to the others that the creature he has morphed is a placid herbivore he once touched on a field trip after Rachel asks where the hell he got that morph from. Followed by an epic kaiju battle between Ax and Visser Three.

Tobias - Oh, hard to say. Probably also Mountain Lion. Somebody needs to morph a mountain lion.

Also yes someone NEEDS to get a badger! Embody the spirit of Stoffel (look him up, he's the greatest!)

Also-also, weasel! I considered it as an alternative morph for Tobias specifically once, but I don't remember why

Moose Rachel is also perfect

An old, decrepit laundromat gets replaced by an upscale bakery? And people are mad? It’s not that the poor hate organic vegan cupcakes, it’s that most of us don’t have a way to do laundry in our own home.

Run-down corner stores replaced by hand-made designer clothing boutiques? We don’t hate your eco-fabric shawl, but I can’t eat that for dinner after work like I could have a can of beans I grabbed from that corner store when I don’t have time to take the bus to the real grocery store after work.

What gentrification brings in and of itself is not typically bad, it’s that gentrification brings institutions of leisure and pleasure and makes it so that the poor have to go farther out of their way for basic necessities. It turns low-income living spaces into local tourist attractions. It can even create food deserts by putting restaurants, grocery stores, etc. in that the majority of the lower class cannot afford.