✏️ writing

konnichiwa minna saaaaaaaan!

next month i'll be attempting to do veda (video every day of august) but with blog posts instead - beda (blog every day of august)! so not really videos. but as far as i can tell, veda came first and no one says beda. there's your context.



anyway! here was one of the challenges i found. i thought the prompts were pretty interesting, so i'm gonna take a crack at it.

ummm there's not much else to say. there'll probs be a few days where i forget to post and end up late-posting. i'm very bad at maintaining streaks.

well, see y'all in a couple of days for the first post! adiós for now ✌

🤖 reviewing pt. 2

"Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts
It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black"
- Paint It Black, The Rolling Stones

Westworld. what a great show. what a weird show. what a disturbing show.

i have a lot of thoughts about the show, which i'm going to ramble about in no particular order. there were so many interesting themes and concepts at play! here are the ones that stood out to me the most (spoilers ahead).

• robots and roboethics:
The Terminator. I, Robot. Avengers: Age of Ultron. Wall-E!
to some oversimplified extent, all of these movies involve artificial intelligences that decide the destruction or subjugation of humanity is in their best interest. they're great examples of why even the idea of Westworld is such a terrible proposal. creating robots modeled to think and act like human beings is one thing, but building entire parks full of them is a catastrophically terrible idea. and having tourists abuse/kill the hosts however they please doesn't help any. it only takes one of the higher-ups to think "gee, what if the hosts find a way to revolt?" to institute better safeguards. but nah. people only care about money. and immortality in the second season (which is extremely lucrative!). i'm still baffled by how Maeve was able to become robot Jean Grey through only a tablet and a couple of flunkies. if the system can be hacked that easily, you're not trying hard enough, dangit!!
anyway, back to the profound stuff. is it ethical to treat hosts as though they are inferior to humans? to me, the answer is "no", for a couple of reasons. the first is that they're robots, and could snap your frickin' neck if they get ticked off and let loose. the second is that the business of creating A.I.s as complicated as the hosts is uncomfortably close to playing God. even if the hosts aren't technically human, they're pretty dang close. that's a point i'll discuss a little later. the point to be made here is that i think the hosts are human enough to be treated the way "regular" humans would. that's just my two cents though. not trying to draw the ire of human supremacy groups or anything.

• good vs. evil?
while watching the first episode of Westworld, I thought to myself, "Dolores is such a little sunshine bean. seeing her growth will be fantastic!" and then the little sunshine bean spent the second season cutting a swath of death and destruction through the entire park. yíkes.
most shows have a clear distinction between "good" and "bad". Westworld goes "frick with that, we're gonna have EVERYONE make questionable choices!! ahahahaha!!" it seems simple enough at first. You have Ford and Bernard pitted against the shady characters in the Westworld administration. You got Dolores, Teddy, and William pitted against the villainy of the Man in Black and Logan. (uh, obviously William isn't pitted against the MiB. you get what i mean. or on second thought is he...??) and then, ka-pow! Ford is a puppet master! Bernard's predecessor Arnold killed a buncha hosts (with good intentions, but it was still quite the slaughter)! Dolores and Tedd become the deathbringin' duo of Westworld! William becomes a sadist and puts a black hat on, thus becoming the MiB! :O
it's hard to know which character(s) to root for. good "guys"? i think Maeve is supposed to be anti-Dolores of this show. but she does make some questionable decisions. Elsie and Stubbs are okay, but they do let a lot of violence fly past them (for understandable reasons, but still!). i guess Lutz is okay since he seems to care about both humans and hosts. Sizemore had a change of heart for the better, and then promptly died. i guess there are a few humans/hosts that are worth supporting? it's never easy to tell, though.

• reality vs. fabrication
"if you can't tell, does it matter?"
this is perhaps one of the most thought-provokingly relevant questions concerning Westworld. in the park, the hosts look like real humans. the animals look like real animals. the towns look like real towns. for most guests, the answer would be "no, it really doesn't". but when the lines overlap, things get problematic. Bernard didn't know he was a host because to him, there was no evidence to the contrary. a lot of the Westworld higher-ups practically make a living off deception and lies. and then, of course, you have the season 1 finale where the hosts realize "hey, these narratives were forced upon us, they're fake, and they suck! let's eradicate humanity!"
so yeah, to be quite objective, it very dang well matters. pulling just one thread can unravel the most cleverly constructed lie.

• fluidity of time
one of the most noteworthy aspects of the show's narrative is its nonlinear approach to the storyline. in fact, i'm pretty sure there's only one episode where the events take place in chronological order, and i think even then there's some time-skipping. in season 1 you have the big reveal that Dolores has been reliving her past and getting her memories jumbled up with her experiences in the here and now. in season 2 you're fully aware that nothing is laid out in the order of occurrence, and the scrambled thoughts of Bernard enhance the confusion surrounding when things take place. there were definitely a few times where i thought "wait, isn't this character dead?" only to realize "oh wait, they haven't died onscreen yet".
i think this is one of the big reasons why this show tends to turn people's brains into spaghetti. to be honest, i had to check the Westworld wiki after every episode to get things straight. linear narratives are something that we take for granted. but the disarrangement of time is also what helps makes the show what it is. it also makes it way too dang addictive!!

• family ties
most of the time, this topic probably gets overshadowed by the others above, but i think it's still important to mention. why does Maeve go back for her daughter even though she went through so much trouble to escape? why is Dolores still so protective of her father even after attaining robo-enlightenment? why did Emily chase down the Man in Black even though he's such a terrible person? family! family is the answer. the common ground of hosts and humans. each group is "programmed" to protect those close to them, fervently or begrudgingly. and this usually creates more problems than it solves. Maeve goes on a long journey through two parks for her daughter, even though it's pretty obvious that her daughter has gotten a "new mother" by then. there's really no reason for Dolores to protect her dad, other than the nice chunk of data forcibly stored in his head. and Emily could have left her dad alone to romp about Westworld, but she didn't, and then she got shot. oof.
so yeah. it's a pretty callous thing to say, but a lot of issues could have been avoided if these characters had a bit more apathy. but that wouldn't make for good TV, now would it?

whoof. this post took way too long to write. anyway, that's all i wanted to say about Westworld, in a rather large nutshell. see y'all in 10 years when season 3 drops!

📞😟 calling

"Telefono
Ringing for me
Can I tell you?
I dream in stereo"
- Telefono, Phoenix

i'm an introvert. uhhh i feel like i say that a lot. but it's relevant to this post.

for me, introversion complicates things that should be pretty mundane experiences. meeting new people. being in large groups of people. having to deal with people in general!!

but perhaps the most dreaded social interaction i'm forced to deal with? phone calls.

i. fricking. hate. phone. calls.

if i can schedule appointments online instead of calling, i'll do it in a heartbeat! if i can contact someone through email rather than a phone call, i'll do it in half a heartbeat!! heck, i'd even take a face-to-face convo over a phone call any day of the flipping week.

idk why phone calls are so hard for me. i feel like a lot of people (introverts or otherwise) have problems with them. i guess it's because socializing is hard enough without the added factor of being unable to see the other person's face and body language...

side note: gee, i do talk about being an introvert way too much. just to clarify, i don't think that introverts should be completely exempt from having to socialize. i think it's v important!! it's just hard.

anyway! i feel like i'm getting slightly better with phone convos. still don't like them, but at least i'm sort of getting used to them. there are some things in life you just gotta deal with. (i'll still take my loopholes wherever i can get 'em, though.)

when i was a kid i used to chat with my best friend on the phone for hours on end. looking back on those days, it's really weird to think that i used the telephone that much. not a cell phone, but "the telephone"!!

these days we got texting, fb messenger, snapchat, and a frickton of other forms of media that can link us together - no phone convos needed! but sometimes, a phone call is a nice, archaic way of getting the job done. plus we have video calls now!! when i was a kid, i fantasized about video calls alongside flying cars and houses that could automatically rebuild themselves. well, at least we have one of those three now?

phone calls usually suck. but sometimes they don't. and they're pretty necessary. of course, if you ask me, a face-to-face convo is the best way to communicate with someone. but that's a topic for another post...