#void conversing

Waluigi’s a strange character, with many questions surrounding him. Who is he?Why doesn’t he appear in the main games? Why doesn’t he have a game of his own?

He’s a celebrity guest star.

This ties into the fairly common interpretation that the Mario games are actually shows (plays, movies, tv shows, whatever) put on by the Mario gang; this is supported by all the show-business gubbins throughout the games, and explains why Mario and friends play tennis with the bad guys.

The reason that Waluigi fills the role he does is the Mario games are not the things that he’s best known for. He’s not in the main series games much because he’s usually working on his own projects, and he never takes the lead because that’s not what guest stars do. He gets brought on, gets a big cheer from the audience, and then goes back to his own things.

 Most likely, he used to do a lot of work with either Luigi or Wario, and that’s why he’s used the way he is. I’m going to use Luigi for this example timeline, as that’s the one I prefer.

I’m a big ol’ fan of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat”, and I just wanted to show some appreciation for one of my favourite bits of it.

“Potiphar” and “Who’s the Thief?” end in almost exactly the same way. The same refrain, played in the same way. It’s fitting because both of them end with someone being accused of a crime they didn’t commit and being threatened with the repercussions; reflected in the desolate, hopeless refrain.

This is nice, but the contrast between them is what I really love. In the first case, Joseph is all alone in the world, with no one to speak up for him. The refrain leads into “Close Every Door to Me”, which is a powerful, serious, desperate song. But in the second case, Benjamin is with his brothers who all speak up for him (due to their changed priorities over the years), and so the refrain leads into “Benjamin Calypso”, which is one of the more upbeat, silly, and fun songs from musical. 

I’ve been watching The Royal Tutor and today when I watched the most recent episode, I noticed a little thing which I really appreciated. Youngest Prince was imagining the way his brothers would react if they discovered that he works in a café, imagining them all calling him boring. The thing in particular which struck me was that Kai spoke in a way inconsistent with his normal dialog, still speaking simply but without the missing words which are normally found in his speech. 

This kind of thing annoys me when it happens for no reason, but I adored it here, simply because it was happening in Youngest Prince’s imagination. It wasn’t a case of the writers messing up, it was a case of the character putting his own words in his brother mouth, thus creating this half way point between their dialog.

It was a tiny thing, and was only really on Kai (the others don’t speak differently enough to Youngest for me to be able to notice if it was there or not), but I still really appreciated it.

I’ve been reading Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot books of recent, in no particular order, and earlier today I finished “Death on the Nile”.

It’s a really good book, and showcases many of the things which I like so much about Poirot, and many of the reasons why I prefer him to other fictional detectives. There are a whole bunch of reasons for this, things in his characterisation, methods, and demeanour; but the one which really stuck out to me at the end of it, and which I’m going to talk a bit about now, is his kindness.

Poirot is a kind character. He’s firm when he needs to be, and even harsh when circumstances call for it, but at his core he’s always kind. He tries to have empathy with the criminals he defeats, and to really understand why they did what they did. He’ll turn a blind eye to certain things if he believes it’s the right thing to do, and will often give criminals he sympathises with an easier way out (suicide is relatively common in this sense) or do everything he can to protect those who may be hurt by the fallout of the crime coming to light. He sometimes describes his role as being to protect human happiness, and I really think that the character lives up to that ideal.

This kindness comes through a lot more in Poirot than it does in any other fictional detectives I’ve read of, and personally I believe it stems from the kindness of the author. 

I don’t actually know much about Christie the person, so most of my opinions come from reading her works. But I’ve noticed that she’s never (from what I’ve read so far) cruel towards a group of people, which cannot be said for many other Authors from previous periods.

She definitely used terminology which wouldn’t be acceptable now (just look at the original title of “And Then There Were None”), but that’s not really something she can be criticised for. I’m also not going to say that she doesn’t invoke stereotypes, because she does that too; what I’m saying is that the stereotypes she invokes are never (to my experience) cruel. She’d say that a group is passionate, or talkative, or gestures a lot, but she wouldn’t say that they’re lesser in any way.

One consequence of this is that her books feel a lot less dated than many similar authors. When I read a Poirot book, the setting may be old, but the content doesn’t feel so. It’s set in a world before the internet, mobiles, or particularly high speeds, but I never found myself taken out of the book by that (after all, I read a lot of Fantasy, and that’s far more different to the modern day). But when I read the first of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe books I was taken right out of it by his claim that “Pansies ain’t got no iron in their bones”, which was they reason he gave for why gay men would be ineffective in a fight.

I was walking home late last night, and really appreciated the sky, it was on one of my favourite modes.

It was the kind of sky where you don’t really see the sky at all (not that I have anything against the sky). There was a distant fog; such that it didn’t affect my vision unless I was looking at considerable distance, but still thick enough that it could be illuminated by the reflection of the lights of the city, and the lights of the sky.

The result was a wonderful uniform glow all across the sky, with incredibly sharp silhouettes formed by the things around me. The city below me (I was on a hill, which is where most of the best skies are found) was distant enough that is was just as lost to the fog as the sky above, but the lights cut through appearing more star like than ever.

It’s just struck me that we only ever see one side of the moon. It’s not that I’ve only just found out that the Moon’s tidally locked, I was well aware of that, but what this meant didn’t really click with me until just now when I saw a gif of it rotating. 

As soon as I wasn’t looking at familiar side, I had no idea who it was. Who knew the other side of the moon was so smooth? If someone approached me in the street with a picture of our side of the moon I’d say “Yes, that is the moon”, if they approached me with a picture of the far side I’d have to say “No, sorry, I don’t know this smooth boy. Who is it?”. 

I started listening to Missing Richard Simmons due to a misunderstanding. The podcasts I listen to are all funny, and when I first saw Missing Richard Simmons I thought it would be the same. I saw the concept and thought the entire thing was a joke: “Hey remember Richard Simmons? That wacky exercise man? Well let’s where’s Wally him!”