Cyberangel9999

ARTICLES

Let's All Discuss Lain!

I know this series is known for being abstract and "weird" but that's typically what I veer towards. My mind enjoys picking at the bones, connecting the dots, creating theories. It's typically what I do when I watch Twin Peaks in that with every subsequent rewatch, I form a new theory in my head and watch it through that lens. I enjoy a rewatchable piece of art with no definite answer. It's like being given a thought experiment and being told to think for themselves. There are too many people who would rather have the answer presented to them, out of fear of having to do the work themselves or, more egregiously, they're afraid of being wrong. Well, with art like this, there are typically no wrong answers so why shouldn't we discuss our interpretations?

First, I'd like to start with the fact that everything Lain is experiencing is a symptom of Psychosis and I'm not even saying this to be edgy, I'm saying this as someone who has had experiences with psychotic episodes. She's alone and neglected, no one typically pays any attention to her so, as she moved through the world as quiet little Lain, there's no one to notice if anything is wrong. That's when the internet comes in. Now, if you're a fan of Japanese media at the time, there's quite a few works on how the internet has affected us as a population. It seems as if it's sprouting up new mental illnesses and disorders that we had previously never seen before and that's an ongoing theme in Lain as well. The way the internet exacerbates disorders that stay typically dormant inside the human mind. The internet is a terrible place for someone going through a psychosis episode, typically the part of the human brain that tries to connect things is overclocked so putting that person into a world in which everything is connected creates a special kind of hell for them. Now, I'm not saying the whole thing is an elaborate hallucination, it's not, but this is a factor in acknowledging what is happening to Lain. As the show carries on, we have these exposition points narrated to us about various things in their world. Information that Lain could have easily picked up and carried in her brain to thread through into another "connected" piece of information. It's easy to see throughout the show that not everything we see onscreen is actually happening physically in real life. There's a lot of metaphor/symbolism going on(ala David Lynch) where you can clearly see that this is how Lain sees things, not how they actually are. The scene where she sees the "Lain is a peeping Tom" rumor and immediately sees everyone in her school staring at her is a good example of this. That didn't happen but it's what felt like happened to her. So, with this knowledge going forward, let's rush to the ending. In the ending scene after Lain "reset" the world, everyone is alive and normal again except Lain who no longer exists. Yet, there are small details that seem to be changed. The men in black are two electricians working on power lines, we don't quite see Lain's family setting, and Chise, now alive, seems to basically replace Lain. If we take this version as reality, then perhaps Lain as we saw her didn't really exist at all? A thought: Lain seems to only exist as an internet persona yet she does genuinely seem to have lived at some point. Perhaps the left over data of a girl who died? One who experienced psychosis and killed herself? There's quite a lot of imagery of Lain killing herself in this. My main theory is that Serial Experiments Lain is both about the events leading up to and after Lain's death, only, they're sort of merged together into one thing. To bring up the movie Pulse, the dead reside almost omnipotently using the internet- as they do in a more general sense in real life. You've seen it before, someone's online presence remains forever long after they've died. Through the internet- Lain can still continue to live.

"You're software, not hardware" ect.

There's various things I noticed with this theory, most prominently being the large, tumor-like, overgrowth of computer parts bursting out of her house. The way Arisu doesn't know who Lain is but also does as if their flow of information passed at one point or another. The fact that Lain is able to still "exist" in the world in the end as a non-person, watching over everyone not like a god as some delusions of grandeur would want but as a passing spirit in a crowd.

I think Serial Experiments Lain is about a lot of things. It's about how the internet can give someone the ability to live in a way they're not allowed to in real life. It's about how overcrowded it can be, essentially putting hundreds of people into one room and have them just tell us their thoughts. It can even be a catalyst to events that occur in real life. The problem is that breaking the wall between what happens online and what happens in the world can create untold amounts of damage, blur the lines or reality, and allow us to carry the thoughts and accounts of people we will never know.

Kirk vs. Picard: A better Captain or a better man?

The old Kirk vs. Picard debate has gone on for as long as Riker's had a beard. It's been a good fifty years or so but now I'm ready to toss my hat into the ring. When it comes to the idea of who's a better Captain, I take into consideration how I would fare underneath their command. It's a good thing to note that James T. Kirk actively spends time with his crewmen, worries about their wellbeing, mourns their deaths, and abstains from killing as much as he possibly can. While he has some minor annoyances, as the Captain of a starship, it seems as if he sees his crew as a group of equals he's responsible for. It takes seven seasons just for Picard to play a game of poker with anyone. Not to say that Picard is a bad Captain, he's a brilliant delegator and a charming man, but TNG shows us that the only way to get promoted on Picard's Enterprise is to be okay with sending your men off to die. If Riker wasn't there to be as active in the crew's social lives, Picard wouldn't have that connecting glue between himself and his men. It's almost a reverse of Spock and Kirk's positions(Spock being the much more distant number one allows him to do things Kirk couldn't dream of doing without creating tension). I remember hearing about how Gene Roddenberry didn't like Picard and how he'd rather have Riker be the ship's Captain but the thing is, Riker wouldn't be a good Captain. In fact, Picard's ability to separate him from the others is what saved his crew time and time again. Still, I'd rather have someone who'd mourn me if I died so, in the debate over who's the best Captain, I'd have to say Kirk just might win out.

Now, here's the cincher. What if we had to compare them as men, position of power be damned? As we all know, Kirk's main weakness is how easily he's pulled away from his mission by the sight of a woman. I think there was something genuinely wrong with Gene Roddenberry's brain in that he'd see a woman and immediately feel like they had put him under a spell that tears his mind apart. Like some kind of Lovecraft thing but he has an erection the whole time. I think a lot of Gene's personality is baked into Kirk and this includes a lot of his weird quirks. The smarminess, the ego. Jim Kirk is quite intelligent when it comes to strategy, leadership, breaking through the bullshit, but all of that is paired with a personality that can override any of these at any point in time. That's when Picard truly shines. If they ever made a man who was the human equivalent of a sleeve of saltines, I'd like to think he'd have Picard's mannerisms. That is to say, the less cavalier, less romantic, less idealistic, man that he is in turn becomes his greatest strength. We all know Kirk wouldn't survive half the things Picard lived through- his Cardassian torture, Assimilation, the loss of his loved ones. As a person, there's a resilience found in who he is. Temptation was never even on the table, neither is anger or vengeance. The building blocks that make up a good Captain are different from those that make a good Starfleet officer and a good vision of humanity's future. A Captain's hands must get dirty while Picard's remain as clean cut as his uniform.

Dreamships and The Misunderstanding of A.I.

I don't think many books quite predicted the modern conceptions of A.I. more than Dreamships by Melissa Scott. A deeply well-thought novel full of world-building so dense, I actually expected it to be a part of a series(it's not). The story essentially takes place in a far-off future, where humans have colonized many planets and created their own, newer, problems. The age-old ones still exist, of course. There's a rather interesting class system at play but that never fully is brought to the forefront. No, the story of Dreamships is about A.I. how the evolution of this tool could never compare to the existence of humankind.

Dreampeace is an organization that sees A.I. as a new slave-class made to serve humanity and they want to put a stop to it. Now, Dreampeace has spent years building their arguments to the point that even bringing up the idea of A.I. tends to put a damper on everything. They hack machines in order to dispense their pamphlets, they protest, they do everything for what they think is right- even as the class discrepancies and rights of their fellow humans remain ignored. Our main character, Jian, finds herself on neither end of the argument, preferring to keep her head down and do her work. But, when an experimental ship, The Byron is set for her to pilot(the way piloting in this novel works is fantastic, by the way) she and her two companions are met with Manfred, the ship's A.I.

Throughout the story, they become accustomed to Manfred, and all the new features it holds. The novel then goes back and fourth over whether or not Manfred is reacting as a human would or is simply programmed in order to act like he is. In the end, the A.I. is not put to the test, no, but once things become more dire, the puppet strings begin to show. The true understanding of something to be alive, consciously, as an intelligent lifeform, is the ability to absorb and react to the reality around you. Man-made concepts seem to be the only thing A.I. are capable of understanding. It can absorb a million images of a flower from the internet, read every article on them and their habits, and yet they can do nothing at all to affect or understand the reality of what a flower is and how it grows. Just an influx of information with no reason or skills.

REVIEWS

STASIS LEAKED COMPLETE

Talented writer, Jane Killick has had her fair share of experience with Red Dwarf from giving on-set interviews to helping pen the Red Dwarf Smegazine. While I haven't quite managed to pick up one of her original novels, I did get my hands on her Red Dwarf companion and I have quite a bit to say.

First of all, it runs very cheap(typically between $6-$15, US) and was published in 2012 so it only covers the first ten seasons, missing episodes, and the movie that never was. That said, this is a fantastic comprehensive guide to all things Red Dwarf, each section is divided by episode so you get a small summary of what happens as a refresher before diving into all the behind-the-scenes tid-bits. The whole thing is prefaced by the story of how Red Dwarf even came to be(the concept of stepping out of the bounds of your typical sitcom were practically sacrilege at time) including casting and script choices.

Now, the book isn't made to be read through in one sitting, for some reason I found myself getting incredibly bored doing this, but it is nice in small amounts especially during a rewatch. If it doesn't outright answer any lingering questions you may have on the series, I don't know what will.

The Red Dwarf Novels: A Saga of Smeggery Part 1

So, in 1989, the two-bodied entity called Grant Naylor decided to publish a series of novels based off of their hit TV show, Red Dwarf. These novels have been something of a point of contention for me because they're both my preferred way to 'rewatch' a lot of the series but, doing this, you'll soon find that they start to veer off the course of the show(for better or worse). I think a lot of the comedy bits are punchier in novel form, I still find myself laughing at loud at a lot of the way lines are delivered but also you get the pleasure(or displeasure) of seeing into their minds. Rimmer and Lister's inner monologues start to approach Peep Show territory, and fast, which is always a delight to see. That said, there are particular additions or changes between the show and the novels. The novels actually can get raunchier and aren't held to the limitations of British broadcasting. This both lends to the highest highs and the lowest lows of each book so I'm just going to run through the first two in order to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

INFINITY WELCOMES CAREFUL DRIVERS oddly starts before Lister even steps foot on the ship, chronicling his post-breakup stranding on Mimas and all the events that lead up to him taking up a job aboard Red Dwarf. Rimmer's introduction actually didn't sit right with me for various reasons(getting twisted into a pretzel at a robot-brothel) but I'll suck it up for now. By the time the book really gets going(and it does take a while to set everything up- this version of Red Dwarf actually has an insane amount of worldbuilding to it) it knows what it's about and begins to place every building block to the events that lead up to the entire crew(besides Lister) being wiped out. After that, the book almost faithfully follows the show, cutting out entire episodes while also stuffing the pre-existing ones full of more context. The book is broken up into three parts- the first being a sort of prologue to the show, the second is a quick run through of the first two seasons, the second is suddenly where the story begins to veer off course and into something...different.

Now, another huge change between the show and the novels is that these tend to take the show down deeper under the surface. Danger suddenly feels dangerous, the stakes feel stake-ier, and there's plenty of existentialism to go around. The characters think about the implications of having someone who was invented to be a servant or how much harder it is to face reality than live in a delusion. Rimmer's psyche is like a bear trap- set and open, waiting for you to reach your hand inside. It's all so well-executed, you start to realize these things exist as their own stand-alone thing. You don't have to watch the show in order to read these novels, in fact, they exist in a universe parallel but never quite the same.

That said, BETTER THAN LIFE, the second novel to this series, really knows how to take everything from the previous novel and start running. Better Than Life has to be, weirdly, one of the most beautiful pieces of Sci-fi I've ever read(and I mean on the same level as Canticle for Lebowitz at times). When it isn't busy trying to tell dick jokes, it stops and takes in the world for what it is- rushing forward with the idea that doom doesn't really exist. Just small pockets of terrible awful things. There is no absolute doom we are headed down because, like nature, we too spring forward undefeated. That said, the first section of this book can become a bit of a slog. The entire first part(it's broken up into four this time) covers the guy's fight to escape the Better Than Life game, something that the show only spent one episode on and then immediately left. The books, however, built up to this all the way from the beginning, introducing BTL as almost a drug(similar to Tek in Tekwar) which makes the lengths in which they have to go in order to leave the simulation more plausible. Afterwards, the book follows original plotlines- the kind of stuff that would have most Trekkies spinning in their seats- including one where Lister finally makes his way back to Earth. No, not the Earth he knew, but the Earth that is. Really, the whole back half of the book is an exercise in resurrecting something hopeful and true out of the most cynical of circumstances. The book ends in a way that almost makes you want that to be the end. It's not, and we'll get to those books(more miserably) later.

For now, though, I highly recommend both these Red Dwarf novels. They were good companions for me during a very stressful time in my life. Hopefully, they'll do the same for you.

Crimson Sea 2

I've been on a PS2 kick recently and accidentally happened upon this unheard of title. Crimson Sea 2 is sort of a jrpg mixed with a third-person shooter mixed with Devil May Cry where you defeat a large mass of enemies within a set time limit.

That's sort of it. The game has it's own story involving fighting back an alien threat that uses humanoids(and humans alike) in order to increase their numbers but that all feels like set-dressing. Crimson Sea 2, more than anything is just a fun Sci-fi action game where you sit back, put on some Powerwolf, and start blasting.