The OG Megatron

Posted on by Michael Billips

the-first-megatron.jpg

The name Megatron was not first given to the evil robot leader of the Decepticons. No, in fact, the first appearance of that name in print predates the 1984 release of the Transformers toy line and cartoon series by 22 years.

It was, in fact, first a nickname given to Meg Murray by her father in A Wrinkle in Time, published in 1962. It appears to be simply an application of the Greek ending -τρον ‘instrument of’ to her name, playing off the word mega. So it would mean ‘huge device’ or ‘instrument of awesomeness’! Her father being a genius scientist, him deriving such a name makes sense.

(There’s a slight chance, based on scant and obscure internet evidence, that it’s a play off of magnetron or is its own sort of sealed tube used in “lighthouses and submarines“, being built from mega ‘great, big’ + electronic.)

megatron og

It was Madeleine L’Engle then who was the one that coined the term, not designers at Hasbro and Takara.

And it’s likely they both arrived at it independently from different angles of ‘big awesome instrument/device’! But L’Engle was the first to do it by over two decades.

Black Heroes

Posted on by Michael Billips

There’s two lists here. The list of black heroes that have appeared on film and the list of black heroes that have appeared in comics but have not yet been given proper film treatment.

Major characters that are generally known and have been given thorough treatment in comics or are given character-driven focus in their film incarnation are listed. There are others out there—this list is by far not exhaustive, but focuses on iconic, memorable characters that have made it or really should have made it by now.

Depicted on Film

  • Black Panther
    • Shuri, Nakia, Okoye
  • Luke Cage
    • Misty Knight
  • Cyborg
  • Finn
  • Bishop (more!)
  • Walking Dead:
    • Morgan, T-Dog, Michonne, Sasha, Tyreese, Bob, Gabriel, King Ezekiel
  • Cinna, Thresh, Rue
  • Falcon
  • Nick Fury
  • War Machine
  • Storm
  • D. L. Hawkins, Micah Sanders
  • Blade
  • Morpheus
  • Agent J
  • Mace Windu
  • Worf
  • Ben Sisko
  • Geordi LaForge
  • Lando Calrissian
  • Uhura

Not Yet Depicted on Film

  • Static Shock
  • Green Lantern: John Stewart
  • Steel (That one doesn’t count. The S:TAS depiction was great.)
  • Spyke (Justice not done to the character at all in Last Stand.)
  • Patriot & Captain America: Sam Wilson
  • Ironheart
  • Spawn (That one doesn’t count. Seriously, we need a better Spawn movie.)

 

Thankfully, the list of characters that have been on film (lifted from iconic comic book heroes or now iconic characters from their film) is longer than the one of those that haven’t yet (and 3 technically have been they were just very poorly done). Maybe we’re not doing so bad. Keep it up, keep ’em coming!

Star Wars Titles Explained

Posted on by Michael Billips

With the reveal of Episode VIII’s title I wanted to a look at the progression all the movie titles establish and sort out just what this new title does to the whole saga. It certainly throws a wrench in things.

So there are actually two streams within the titles that focus on the two main, intertwining plots: the Plot of the Galactic Government, i.e. Rebels vs. Imperials, and the Plot of the Force, i.e. Jedi vs. Sith.

For the titles focusing on the government and war, we have:

  • The Phantom Menace
  • Clone Wars
  • Rogue One
  • A New Hope
  • The Empire Strikes Back

And for the titles focusing on the force:

  • Revenge of the Sith
  • Return of the Jedi
  • The Force Awakens
  • The Last Jedi

It could be argued that Phantom Menace is more Force-related since it’s Palpatine, but so much of it was political and military before Revenge of the Sith that we’ll stick with it being mainly about a shadowy plot to overthrow the Republic.

So now to sort out what the heck is going on this new title: The Last Jedi.

Didn’t the Jedi return? Aren’t Finn and Rey basically the new Jedi? How is there a last one now? Do a lot of people die in Episode VIII?

I love the ambiguity of this title. It could refer to so many things. Given the ending of Force Awakens, Luke Skywalker is most obviously who its referring to. He had a lightsaber and was learning the ways of the Force when the only other guy doing both in the galaxy (that we know of) was Darth Vader, who is Sith. Then after everything goes down and Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, and Yoda all die in the same movie, Luke truly is the last trained lightsaber-and-Force-wielding person. So the title conveys the point that Luke was alone for a long time.

Now in the context of Force Awakens, though, “the last Jedi” sort of has the sense of the last guy to do this, as in wield a blue lightsaber, leave your desert planet, and help blow up a giant space ball superweapon and/or fight and distract its red-lightsaber-wielding mastermind.

Alright, this all makes sense, but then how do we make sense of the other titles in light of this? If the Jedi returned, how is there a last one still? Aren’t Rey and Finn and—more importantly—the students Luke had in his little startup academy the returned Jedi? So then Luke isn’t the last Jedi anymore! So why would the next movie have a regressive title?

And then if the Jedi returned, it took 30 years for the Force to awaken? That not much of a return! And then the last of the Jedi comes after? Isn’t this backwards?—The Sith get their revenge for annihilating their order, leaving the last Jedi, then the Force awakens, and the Jedi return as an order. That makes sense right?

We’ll have to see.

It’s possible the events that unfold in it will make the title more relevant. Hopefully a big part of that will be understanding the effect being alone in the universe had on Luke and thus why he exiled himself in response to his academy blowup.

The Last Jedi could also be a play on the notion that Anakin hunted down all the other Jedi until he was the last (lightsaber-wielding) one and his grandson’s enamoration with him is the cause of all these new problems. He made himself the last one to have been trained in the galaxy for a time (before Luke practiced with Obi-Wan) and so bottlenecked the whole saga of the Force.

Speaking of Obi-Wan, before he gave Anakin’s lightsaber to Luke, he was the last Jedi in the galaxy, so the title could be hinting that Rey is indeed a Kenobi. She is taking up that mantle as the only blue-lightsaber-wielding person actively training and fighting in the galaxy and the new film she will be the youngest being trained as a Jedi à la the new Irish Dagobah style.

So who is the last Jedi? All of these could be referred to by one dimension of the title:

  • Luke Skywalker
  • Anakin Skywalker
  • Obi-Wan Kenobi
  • Rey (Kenobi/Skywalker?)

There’s the title of Episode VIII explained and the whole progression of the titles throughout the Star Wars saga put into the context of the two major plots interwining the galaxy.

Whitewashing or Feminism in Doctor Strange?

Posted on by Michael Billips

Tilda Swinton vs. Maragaret Cho on The Ancient One

Battle of the Stereotypes! Clash of the Psychological Frames!

Fu Manchu, Dragon Lady, Magic Asian, Magical Other vs. Feminism, Androgyny

 

Here are the haplogroup maps to remind us before we start this discussion that race doesn’t really have a scientific basis. Saying Asian or White themselves technically is stereotyping and reductionist. There are, however, heuristic and soritical social pragmatic uses for the terms so we will proceed as if this discussion never happened.

 

Asian percentage of total US population: 4%

What’s the percentage of the urban population?

Urban skewing could make this seem like a bigger problem…

What’s the percentage of target audience? How many of the 4% of 350,000 are going to see comic book movies?

 

Ignoring Wong: Servant → Important Player and Fighter

 

Artistic choice not to make another Mr. Miyagi

Dragon Lady stereotype would have been easier to flaut (I wasn’t really aware of trope, maybe in a kunoichi-style female from James Bond or Hong Kong Fu, but had to be reminded of that)

Swinton nailed the bald, androgynous mystic though

The mentor is rarely ever a woman

An actually Tibetan woman would have been the only possible solution but still carries with it “Asians have magic because they are different”

As long as it’s in situ the Magic Asian trope is not as strong as the reverse: a white woman is running a Tibetan institution. Though it’s possible in a pluralistic, post-racial world, it’s nice at this point on the timeline to not make anyone not originally white white.

If Hollywood wasn’t making other far more stupid decisions about casting race, then Dr. Strange would be fine, each potential choice they had equal (Flaut Dragon Lady or Non-Heteronormative Female). Dr. Strange isn’t responsible for other movies’ choices, so in time history will take the side of the quality movies with equally split or close to equally split race casting decisions. The movies that blatantly whitewashed without any debate, though, will be in history textbooks as examples of the idiocy of people of the past.

They were thinking, they care, they were trying and did make other accomplishments in the realm of race. Let them be and move on to more pressing matters. Like Michael Bay.

Showing Gun Safety in Movies

Posted on by Michael Billips

Make showing improper gun safety on film illegal.

Unless that’s what the character would really do, if someone is being BA with a gun they have to do so like anyone would be trained to handle a firearm. Make it as illegal as cigarettes in advertising.

It’s subliminal false advertising for a popular misconception of guns. This misconception costs America lives and American films are contributing to it at home and worldwide. We can put a stop to it on our soil. And hopefully others will follow suit.

Guns command respect. They are wooden practice swords. They’re a powerful force scary enough to be handled carefully. The fact that action heroes keep their fingers on the trigger the whole time is a gross exaggeration beyond the needs of fiction. These heroes could instead be like superheroes and be role models or at least promoters of knowledge for everyday life (for antiheroes and the like)—and help protect viewers from their potentially negative influence. Humor does this. Education does this. Not being gun safety idiots does this.

As artists we need to give audiences the right idea about what guns are, and as a general rule, do so in a way that is politically neutral and most definitely not counterfactual.

Crux of the Star Wars Saga

Posted on by Michael Billips

142.5

I was recently studying the Empire Strikes Back script and realized this line says everything about the Force Awakens and where the new trilogy is going (and where it came from):

YODA: Decide you must how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could. But you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered.

This line is the key to the whole sequel trilogy.

And really the lynch pin of the entire saga.

Anakin brought balance to the force by resetting the force user population, taking down any underlying corruption of the Jedi Council, starting anew with Luke and Leia, and then finally taking out Emperor Palpatine / Darth Sidious and redeeming himself. So Light turns to Darkness turns to Light.

Except for one thing: Anakin’s apple has not fallen far enough from his tree.

Notice the light and dark imagery bookending the pronouncement by Yoda: the Dark Side Cave, the lights of the X-wing, even the brightness of Bespin itself.

This is the turning point where Luke strays from the Light Side path and makes a Dark Side decision.

He shows up on Cloud City, Leia and Chewie are distracted, there’s some maneuvering with Boba Fett in the hallways. Maybe if Luke hadn’t have been there, in a Run Lola Run sort of way, Leia and Chewie would have caught up to Fett before he made it into Slave I. They’re both good shots and could maybe have potentially rescued Han. Leia would have been glad to have Han back, but without the lengthened absence the heart may not have grown fonder. And their love child Ben would never have destroyed the new Jedi order Luke began.

Another consequence of timing to look at is that the duel between Luke and Vader led to Luke hanging on the weather vane on the underside of the city. He then called out to Leia which delayed the Falcon from chasing Fett again. Both of these moments could add up to making the difference between getting Han back or not. And it would mean Leia’s desperation to get Han back would not have cultivated an infatuation for him that burned and then flickered out, putting a young force-sensitive related to Darth Vader through the separation of his parents.

Also if Boba Fett comes back or has anything to do with Snoke, then rescuing Han sooner and possibly killing Fett outright, would have prevented him from being accidentally knocked into the sarlacc, experiencing the lamest death to character coolness ratio, and then being set on a sure path to epic revenge.

When we first see Luke in Return of the Jedi, he is dark and foreboding, apparently murdering Gamorrean guards like Vader picks up Rebel troopers. He’s in all black and kinda cocky. He’s made a Dark Side decision. It’s worth noting that Lucas originally wanted to title the film Revenge of the Jedi. That should tell us what he had in mind for Luke’s character and fate of the Force and the Skywalker–Solo family.

It was that one decision that Luke made, in violation of, in rebellion to Yoda’s prophecy, that chose the path for the galaxy for at least 3 more movies and a handful of spinoffs.

Thanks, Luke. Thanks for being a chummy and boyish tragic hero. You’re vapid in every way except to ruin the galaxy for everyone.

But I guess there would be no more Star Wars movies if you hadn’t.

Favicon Design

Posted on by Michael Billips

When making favicons, there are ways to do it to make them pop or they can be muddied and awkward, leaving you hoping people don’t look too much at the left of the tab (nor at x on the right either).

Here are some basic principles:

  • Don’t use a 100% black square. It’s too harsh, no one does this.
  • The darker the background color, the more you have to soften it with white space, rounding the corners, etc.
  • Transparent backgrounds are common and generally look the best. Really they look slick. (Google is the main one that does this). That little icon floating without anything holding it down disrupts the look of the browser the least.
  • If you are going to use a background, pick a medium to light color and round the corners. Don’t make the contents too small, filling backgrounds looks great.
  • Don’t make the image too detailed. Especially if it’s coming from your logo, don’t just scale your logo down and neglect to simplify it. It will likely not render well or have jaggies in there.

That’s pretty much it! Follow those guidlines and you should have a perfect, memorable favicon for your site.

What We Actually Mean When We Say ‘Generation’

Posted on by Michael Billips

What is a generation?

We toss around the word generation a lot, but it has a lot of different meanings that we’re not too clear on. It always has some sense of a cultural meaning, referring to groups of people somewhat differentiated through time.

The original meaning of such a concept was likely something salient in ancient cultures: the number of descendants separating two individuals on a paternal line or one generation being ‘firstborn son to firstborn son’.

Now we think in decades, as if going from ‘X9 to ‘X0 changes something in the cultural gearworks. It may, in fact, as a self-fulfilling prophecy, making people take action or change their preferences because of the new numbers on the calendar.

We use generation to group decades of people and assign them bounds they don’t well fit into, using terms akin to graphology, phrenology, horoscopes, and the like.

Generation X. “Active, balanced, and family-oriented.” Millennials. “Entitled, detached from institutions, strong sense of community.” Generation Z. “Pluralistic, digital natives.”

We worship the numbers of years and the letters of “generations” far too much. Instead when thinking about cultural shift, which is not constant like the groupings of decades, we shouldn’t think of generations, but in terms of events. The larger the event, the more impact it will have in influencing the behavior of those who witnessed or participated in or were victim to it. Not everyone in a certain span of years will have been affected by an event, so thinking in terms of years is nearly useless.

Event-oriented generations would have a lot more traction when reconstructing the influences on an individual, their psychological environment through the years. If we speak in terms of “they participated in the cultural movement x” or “they spent this stage of development in cultural climate y” that would give us a much better focus on the actual pathways of influence and information dissemination.

The War Against Our Attention

Posted on by Michael Billips

Are you finding it hard to pay attention, stay motivated, be productive?

ADHD, OCD, mild depression, generalized anxiety disorder—just being bad at school, work, life. These are the labels thrown around by people, quite regular functioning people who have managed by genetic blessing or environmental happenstance or great sacrifice (or perhaps quite good foresight and intuition) to seemingly effortlessly navigate the pitching, churning seas of modern life.

But what if it’s just the casualties on an attentional battlefield? What if most cases of all these non-specific disorders on the mild end of these spectrums are just the symptoms of our stimulation patterns? The input trains our brain to operate in a certain way and then we think it’s just broken, that we have some mysterious condition.

More and more we’re starting to see how the stimulation of all of our technology and the pace of modern society affects us mentally. We haven’t closed the research gap in determining that these stimulation patterns are the cause of these urban illnesses, but attempting to control these variables in your life to gain back some attention and focus is worth it.

Here is a list I’ve gathered of the things that could be affecting your cognition in a way that undermines your productivity. You can start examining how you’re conditioning yourself everyday and whether your stimulation patterns aren’t what’s got you down or able to perform at the level you feel you should be.

  • Your exposure to sun/blue/white/bright light
  • Amount of sleep
  • Eating schedule
  • Thought patterns about food
  • The screens you watch: scene changes and scrolling
  • Multitasking, flashing, sidebar pull, codable bombardment, tyranny of the urgent, cache loading, amount of rabbit trails
  • Smartphone attention
  • Narrative rhythm: TV show vs. movie vs. video game — vs. book
  • Subject exertion (type of learning): language is esp. good for you, math lays logical foundation
  • The type music you listen to
  • Noise–quiet ratio, type of noise
  • Your thought patterns about sex, exposure to sexual images
  • Feedback loops, reward
  • Exercise, movement, fresh air, phytoncides
  • Ambiversion: everyone has two tanks, of course of different sizes, and that’s different than brain differences in outgoingness/reservedness
  • Flow factors, engagement vs. stress