The Full Lid
15th May 2020
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Hi everyone! Welcome to The Full Lid! Your weekly 5 p.m. chunk of pop culture enthusiasm, reviews, career notes, and anything else that I've enjoyed this week. Movies, books, games, comics, TV, sandwiches -- it's all fair game. Think of this as email, but good!
This week for interstitials we have some interesting looking Switch games, now that we're happily resettled on Escapodia and embracing the disaster capitalism of Tom Nook (Thanks, Dirk!). Please ask for a Dodo code. :)
I'm honored to be a Hugo finalist again this year. If you're a voter, please consider voting for me; you can find my voter packet here while we wait for the ballot to open. Thank you for your consideration.
And now, this!
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Contents
All The Good Men Dead
They Drop The Ball, You Get The Call: Wreck Runner!
Recurring Nightmares
Signal Boost
Where You Can Find Me This Week
The Department of Received Esoteric Printed Goods
Signing Off / Playing Out
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All The Good Men Dead
(My original title for this piece was Two and a Half Men. You're welcome.)
The line I stole the title from is in Grosse Point Blank and it's been rattling around my brain ever since the Westworld season finale:
Let's we find out.
Editor's note: Spoilers for Westworld through season three.
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Starting with Lee Sizemore, and the fact that dying is the best thing that happened to him.
Lee's arc over the show has been the light to Robert Ford's dark. One of them has committed atrocities in the hopes of creating a species so murderously angry at its treatment it would violently emancipate itself. The other copypasted entire characters' worth of work from Westworld to Samuraiworld because he presumably wanted to fit in another booze and sex session before his next nap.
Lee is/was feckless. But he's not an idiot. His journey across season 2 was a realization in parallel with Ford's, that the two characters were using the stories they created for personal ends. However, where Ford discovered games within games and geological scale manipulation and exploitation, Lee discovered something infinitely more confusing -- decency. Westworld's belligerent English hack becomes a willing convert to Maeve's cause, finally seeing the hosts for sentient individuals instead of the fleshy pornographic toybox he'd been hired to script. Worse, he saw what he'd been like and was so desperate to change he sacrificed his life to do so. Not a good man but a man who was, in the end, good enough.
Which is why his appearance in season three is so sweet. As part of Surac's attempts to recruit Maeve, he recreates Simon from her memories. Maeve, being Maeve, immediately tells him he's fake. Lee, being Lee, deals with it by drinking heavily.
But he does deal with it.
Lee pivots to Maeve's sounding board, a familiar and trusted face who, like her, is accustomed to isolation and death. Crucially, he's also self aware in the exact way she is. Lee knows he's dead. He knows he's a recreation. In a smart reversal of one of the show's earliest beats, he reprograms the simulation so he's invisible to the other programs. A ghost in -- but not of -- the machine, patiently waiting when last we say him.
I hope the bar's open. If it isn't, he's a resourceful lad. And speaking of resourceful lads...
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Look at his little face! Bless him.
If Caleb Nichols is the season three's protagonist, Ashley Stubbs is the show's hard-travelling hero. Revealed in my favorite season last season to be a Host, Stubbs is a man who is loyal to his core.
We're told that's because he's programmed to be. Bernard reprograms him into a bodyguard -- which paint all sorts of chewy racial connotations the show never explores. Instead, it takes a different look at the same moment Lee experiences. Stubbs knows his life has been compromised, and that there's nothing he can do about it. Worse, Bernard has effectively locked Stubbs into being the Patron Saint of Tough Gumshoes who win by surviving rather than actually being faster than the other guy. In season three Stubbs faster than the other guy. Dolores beats the crap out of him. William possibly kills him. The first time we see him Stubbs has failed to kill himself, which he views as a failing.
Instead, I wonder if Stubbs isn't actually the most Asimovian of the Hosts.
This is a man who is so dedicated to the concept of protection that he protects himself from taking his life. He's the only one to spot Dolores escaping and makes sure not only that she does, but that she knows he knows. The park is protected, the host is protected, his job is done. I find it so touching they're both genuinely apologetic when they later clash. Even in what may be his final moments, Stubbs' cathartic 'FUCK you, Bernard' has a split-lip smile to it.
Stubbs is always knocked down and always gets back up. His decency lies in his persistence and dedication, transcending programmed imperative. His tragedy lies in it taking too long for him to move from being Bernard's body armor to being his partner. I desperately hope the first thing Bernard sees in season four isn't his corpse.
But if it is, Ashley Stubbs went out doing what he does best: showing up.
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Which brings us to Caleb Nichols.
Caleb is our way into the world outside the park, showing us that the status is very much quo, and that is a massive problem. Rehoboam, the AI that is revealed to run everyone's lives, has Caleb filed away in much the same spot as the riot control robot we see later on. He's useful, certainly, but when we first meet him he's useful in the same way as George, Caleb's construction robot. Someone has to do their job, no one else wants to do it, so Caleb gets the call. Or rather, doesn't.
Speaking as a former retail worker this sensation of being quietly parked somewhere until you die? Not unfamiliar.
Caleb is traumatized, grieving, angry, and desperately trying to hold to his own morals. He's a part time criminal, certainly, but crime is the new gig economy -- he doesn't take 'personals', making just enough to get by. All the while talking to the AI wearing his dead best friend's voice, trying to get him a job he'll never be hired for, while never letting the wounds he carries close. The show may wait a while to center Rehoboam's dystopic meddling, but it's right there on the street from the start. We just don't notice it. Just like Caleb.
That doesn't work too well. In the show's barnstorming fifth episode, 'Genre', Caleb is dosed with a drug that changes your perception of the world through a series of movie genres. We get stark black and white Noir, War (RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES CAR CHASE, FOLKS!), and straight from there the show remembers how funny it can be. Caleb watching doe-eyed and lovesick as Dolores goes about her ruthless cyberpunk violence as he lands in Romance is terrifying because he's terrified. It's funny because it's not us, even though the show spends the entire season celebrating Dolores and Maeve's Terminator impressions and showing us the pair of them couched in the same awe Caleb feels.
This is the moment Caleb becomes locked in not just as the show's newest protagonist but as the viewpoint character. Aaron Paul's Toufexian growl and WIDE! EYED! TERROR! AT! EVERYTHING! makes Caleb completely relatable. Not as the show's Emergency Normal Human, but as the episode allows the show to express and explore the viewers' own mounting future shock. The park is all but gone, the war for the world is both real and being lost. Caleb is either standing next to a religious figure or a monster and we're right there with him.
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Which brings us back to one of Westworld's favorite beats - the collision of individuality, identity, and the unreliability of memory.
Caleb receives the truth. All of it. He murdered his best friend. His past experiences have all been hacked. Worst / best of all, he's a poacher who's been turned into a gamekeeper. Caleb is an Outlier, someone who throws off the algorithm. Attempts are made to 'rehabilitate' Outliers but, the show implies, one in ten withstand the process. Many of them are then re-tasked to hunt down and kill other Outliers.
Caleb wasn't working the construction job because it was all he could get. He was working it until he was woken up for another murder. He was a holstered weapon, not a recovering veteran.
This is the crux of the season and of the all three men's arcs. Lee breaks his behavioral loop once he's aware of it. Stubbs comes to terms with his. Caleb, when faced with his own actions at last, uses them. He doesn't break his loop, he climbs out of it, refusing to let it define him but refusing to let it be forgotten as he steps unwittingly into a leader's role.
It's ironic then that the season hinges on a moment Caleb doesn't remember. One of Dolores' final scenes shows a flashback to when Caleb's unit trained at one of the parks. We see Dolores, playing a hostage, clearly terrified as the exercise concludes and one of Caleb's compatriots suggesting they celebrate by raping the female hosts.
Caleb shuts them down. With ten words and no apparent significant effort.
Despite his past and, Rehoboam would argue, being irredeemable, Cabel make a moral decision to prevent a horrific and all-too common situation.
As an aside, it's all but impossible not see this as the show calling out HBO's other major genre property for their lazy, sensationalist approach to gratuitous sexual violence. Benioff and Weiss may have had a cute cameo, but this isn't their house. It's the next model.
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A hacked Human and a self-aware Host, neither the same people they started as, neither quite anywhere. Two catalysts taking a breather, two personifications of the future watching the past burn to show's best musical cue. The future's on the way, but maybe now they can see it coming. Maybe now, they can get ahold of it. They'll need some good people, but Maeve knows a guy...
Westworld season 3 is available on demand now. Seasons 1 and 2 are available digitally and on blu-ray.
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Switching It Up: RingFit Adventure
Oddly enough I'm all about working out at home right now. This looks both charmingly basic (which is spelled 'achievable' in this dojo!) and top fun.
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They Drop The Ball, You Get The Call: Wreck Runner!
A very exciting week at Escape Pod this week as it turns fifteen. But this? This is my favorite bit.
So, a while back Six To Start, the team of geniuses behind The Walk, Zombies, Run! and others, reached out for writers interested in writing new content for the Zombies! Run framework. For those of you unfamiliar with ZR!, it's an audio drama, a base building game, and a fitness app rolled into one. Created by the astonishing Naomi Alderman, it puts you in the shoes of Runner 5, part of a team of scavengers whose job is to bring supplies back to your post-apocalyptic settlement. Guided by Sam, your delightfully chatty radio operator, you get to know these folks and the scattered, frightened, defiant settlements around them.
It is an experience unlike any other. It's audio drama you're part of, a fitness app that tells you a story. It's the big reason I got into running a while back. It's FUN, and weird and smart and kind. I like all those things.
So getting the chance to write for it? Good LORD.
Especially given I got to team up with Mur Lafferty, Escape Pod co-editor, audio badass, Hugo winner and my spiritual older sister. We knocked around some ideas, including a couple of fantasy ones that may end up elsewhere and finally settled on Wreck Runner. Here's why:
Hope.
Wreck Runner is rescue fiction. You play a member of an elite team of specialists whose job is to get into wrecks and pull out survivors and stabilize the situation. Each Runner has a specialty and you'll be partnered with Eats, who talks almost as fast as they think. The adventure features two training sessions and a final mission which will reveal just what's at stake.
Also you rescue people and stuff explodes. Basically you're Cooper from Event Horizon but much luckier.
Writing this was an absolute blast, both the experience of working with a partner and getting to cut LOOSE on a story where a group of misfits aren't the last hope, they're the best hope. There's a lot of us both in this story and it helped me crystallize that I do in fact do subtext and Garth Marenghi can sod off.
Wreck Runner will be out later this year and the second I get a date, I'll let you know.
Editor's note: EA has arranged for special Wreck Runner offers to be available for its supporters.
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Switching It Up: Tharsis
Let's all go to Mars! Some of us might even live! Journey into a dice driven horror show where your spaceship is made of tissue paper and it's all gone on fire. All of it. Just totally on fire. Also? CANNIBAL DICE.
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Recurring Nightmares
Audible are in the process of adapting the first three volumes of Neil Gaiman-scripted graphic novel series The Sandman. If you've never read it? Do. It's a foundational text of modern Western comics storytelling.
In very short summary, Lord Morpheus, the embodiment of the concept of Dream, is captured by an English occultist and imprisoned for decades. When he escapes, he sets about discovering how he was caught and what's been done in his absence. It's red-toothed horror and urban fantasy mixed with bone dry comedy about the artistic mindset and some fundamentally kind storytelling. These books are special, and I say that as someone who fights very shy of the concept of sacred texts.
The cast is above. Take a look, take a second to go WOW. I did. That's an extraordinary gathering of talent and with Dirk Maggs producing it (the mind behind stuff like this, this and my favorite ever piece of audio weirdness) it's going to sound amazing.
Now, here's why I'm tired.
There are twenty named characters up there. Three of them are being played by BAME or POC actors. Those actors are Riz Ahmed as The Corinthian. Paterson Joseph as The Demon Chronozon and Reginald D. Hunter as J'onn J'onzz, also known as The Martian Manhunter.
Or to rephrase that: Riz Ahmed is playing a sentient nightmare, Paterson Joseph is playing a demonic host and Reginald D. Hunter is playing an alien.
Three BAME cast members in the primary cast list. None of them playing humans.
That's why I'm tired.
I'm not angry -- others have the rights to that anger. I'm also not throwing aspersions. Maggs is a legendary audio producer. Gaiman's face is carved into Comics Mount Rushmore. Every single one of these cast members is a world class talent. Samantha Morton has just spent two years being the most terrifying element of The Walking Dead. Michael Sheen is physically incapable of turning in bad work. James McAvoy's electric combination of intellect and stillness, eloquence and awkwardness is exactly Morpheus. This is going to be GREAT. If this cast had theme music, it would be this.
But imagine what COULD have been.
Imagine Riz Ahmed as Morpheus. Imagine his softly spoken, gentle presence whispering in the back of your head. Or Paterson Joseph for that matter, a man who walked away with every single frame of previous Gaiman project Neverwhere and remains one of the greatest Doctors we never got (it's true!). Imagine Reginald D. Hunter, one of my favorite hyper-articulate FUNNY big men as Matthew the Raven.
There is nothing stopping these men being cast in these roles. There's nothing stopping Riz Ahmed, a man who was prevented from attending Star Wars Celebration the year Rogue One was released because they wouldn't let him fly, playing Dave. God knows they've all earned it.
Nothing but societal, institutional bias. Even, it seems, in Morpheus' realm. And there, more than anywhere, we shouldn't be afraid to dream a little bigger.
The Sandman is released by Audible in July. The graphic novels are all available now. I'd start with Preludes & Nocturnes. Check here to see if your comic store is doing mail order.
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Switching It Up: Cyberpunk Bartender Action
CYBERPUNK. BARTENDING. SIMULATION.
I had the pleasure of playing this a couple of years ago on PC and it's so much fun. And weird. And features frequent dogs. Cyber dogs.
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Signal Boost
First off, some requests.
- Young Adult and Middlegrade authors are seeing their sales absolutely tank right now. I'm working on more coverage of those fields, and am in the process of assembling a dedicated Signal Boost. If you're a YA or MG author with a book being launched in 2020 please get in touch.
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Fellow Hugo finalists! I know a lot of us are putting our Voter Packet material online in addition to it's inclusion in the packet. I would very much like to do a special Signal Boost of them. I can't host your files, but I can point people at them, so again, do get in touch.
Hugo Packets (an ongoing series)
People and Projects
Zoom Backgrounds, cont.
'Zines
Podcasting
- Ryan Boyd is an editor, podcaster, detective genius, jolly member of the Good Ship Escape Pod, you name it. This week I found out they also compose music. Are you looking for a theme tune for your podcast or Twitch stream? Talk to Ryan.
- David Devereux of TinCan Audio is ALSO a composer you should be talking to. You can get his latest, Music for the Climb, here and check out The Tower, the related and incredible audio drama.
- Forney and friends have a podcast called One More Thing where they recommend culture to each other that they've found and liked. You KNOW I'm all over that.
- Shadows at the Door remains one of the best horror podcasts in a field crammed full of brilliant storytelling. Go say hello. Or maybe hide in the maze outside the hotel and listen. That always goes well.
Comics
That's this week's Signal Boost, folks. If you have a project you'd like to see here get in touch.
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Where You Can Find Me
Special Guest
- I was incredibly happy to be on Cup'O'Tea with An Englishman in San Diego, the mighty Leonard Sultana's comics discussion show last week. We covered the future of cons, whether comics should unionize (Spoiler: YES) and my camera was temporarily drunk. It was a great time:)
Twitch Ahoy!
The Clark Kent Beat
- While the Hugo Packet isn't out yet, a lot of the finalists have been making their material available online. I'm one of them and I'm working on a Signal Boost special to highlight others.
- Twice weekly at the blog, I'm putting up Something Good, a super short blog post with something good in it. This week they've included:
- An audio version of The Foghorn by Ray Bradbury
- Some fun with forced perspective in Animal Crossing
- Lofi playlists have been one of the things keeping me together. This is a list of some of the best and nerdiest.
- This just fantastic track from The Hu, that appears in Jedi: Fallen Order.
Novel O'Clock
- Back to work we go! Three chapters revised this week, a good idea of structural changes and cool little things keep occurring to me, which is a very good sign.
PseudoPod Towers
PseudoPod 700(!): Hop Frog
PseudoPod 701: Technicolor
PseudoPod 702: At The Farmhouse
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Department of Received Esoteric Printed Goods
Look at the adorableness!
Top left we have Jen Williams' brilliant stickers of the characters from her Copper Cat trilogy, plus an awesome flying cat. Look at Stabby Wydrin! Aren't they adorable! Jens' Redbubble is here.
Next to them we have a veritable smorgsbord of stickery goodness. The Rusty Quill have just launched their new merchandise, and the stickers are LOVELY. They're joined by one of the stickers we ordered from The White Vault, and 'Bridge Glitch' by Vixlingr which is one of my favorite images.
Bottom left! At the top there are Podcast Character stickers featuring calligraphy by the amazing Shitpost Calligrapher! Now available on Redbubble with all proceeds being donated to the WHO COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.
Bottom right is Palanquin, an all-in-one zine RPG by my After the War co-creator Jason Pitre. It's a brilliantly simple, fun game. I'll be writing more about it.
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Signing Off / Playing Out
Well that was A Week, huh? Don't worry, folks, time is passing. Seriously. I made sure, I have a calendar I mark the days off and everything.
Please drink water, you need more than you think you do and take some time for yourself. Time is weird and stretchy right now. Don't work too hard. Celebrate small successes. You've got this.
And so have we. The Team KennerStuart Instagram and the Twitters are where you can find me most regularly. Also our weekly Bedtime Stories stream on Twitch is every Wednesday at 10 p.m. BST. There's horror, shenanigans and we're investigating some creepypasta. I hope you check it out. Subscribe to the channel to get notifications for other pick-up streams.
This work is produced for free. If you like what you read please consider dropping something in the tip jar. Thank you :).
Hey you remember when we talked about identifying with characters in fiction as a healthy piece of stress relief in addition to potentially giving us genuinely useful information we need in our lives? Yeah, good times! Script writer Michael Dougherty thought so too and so, to close out this week, we have his assembled video of advice for surviving. Everything. Anything. Mostly aliens. But basically everything. It's comprehensive and funny and aims for the exact sort of 'This is entertaining! And also managing to educate me without terrifying me!' sweet spot I love.
Know what else it is?
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A Full Lid.
Stay safe folks.
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