The Mirror Universe, Transporter Accidents, Other Parallel Universes, Time Travel, Cloning Technology

I love it! Thank you so much (and that is a very dignified chapeau of high revolutionary pedigree)!!!

For your daily sketch, could you draw Kuvira in a Soviet Red Army uniform from the Russian Civil War (pointy hat at your discretion)?

Daily Kuvira #9

I hope I was accurate. I’m not the best when it comes to historical fashion. hhhhh

My go-to source for the history of scientific romances is Brian Stableford’s 1985 book Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950. (While long out of print, this book is worth its weight in gold.) In Stableford’s account, scientific romances are very much the products of the environment they evolved from. Before the 1890s, publishing in Britain was divided into two rigid categories. On the “respectable” side were the great triple-decker novels, conservative in both style and content, and physically inaccessible to anyone who wasn’t wealthy or who didn’t have access to a circulating library. On the less reputable side were, of course, the penny dreadfuls; cheap to make, quick to read, easy to forget, and not that well-written. Scientific romances (and to a certain extent modern sf) tend to work best in the range between short stories, novellas, and single novels; long enough to properly extrapolate from a central idea, but not so long as to wear out their welcome. It was only at the end of the 19th century, with the decline of the triple-decker, the rise of a literate middle class, publications that catered to them, and of writers that could comfortably support themselves writing for this new audience, that scientific romances had the space and opportunity to emerge. Naturally, this was a different class of writers with different influences that those who had written the gothic works from earlier in the century, so scientific romances evolved in both style and content in a much different direction. (As an example, scientists in 19th-century Britain had a unique tradition of penning essays to explain their theories and their significance to a more general audience, a tendency that was absorbed wholeheartedly into the scientific romance, to the point that both scientists and novelists tried their hands at both essays and stories every so often.)

I was thinking about the literature of 1897 and it got me thinking about the Scientific Romances and how they differ from the Gothic Romances or Gothic Horrors of the age. Clearly, there is some overlap and Frankenstein (much earlier but still relevant) crosses those borders many time without showing a passport for either but by the late 19th you couldn't really compare say 'The War of the Worlds' to 'Dracula'. Where did they diverge so wildly? Or did they?

That’s a really good point, and I’m sorry I took so long to get to this question!  Arguably, Frankenstein himself brings this up- he started out reading ancient mystic texts and moved to more scientific ones later- but I guess there started to be a clearer divide between what we’d call fantasy and what we’d call science fiction as science itself became better known.  You could probably write gothic science fiction in the mode of Asimov, where the science is there to set up philosophical and psychological issues- I’d certainly read about the drama between robot heirs to their creators’ estate and legacy- but the divide certainly feels there.  Returning to H. G. Welles, maybe The Invisible Man is the midpoint?  Or maybe it’s when “scientist” became a common enough profession to not seem mysterious?  Any followers with ideas on this subject, help me out here!

Something to keep in mind when watching ENT is that Archer is a contemporary of all those starship captains from the late 22nd and early 23rd century that got their crews killed or committed horrendous Prime Directive violations that Kirk and Picard had to clean up a century or two later. Hell, Archer’s probably the one who gave the Iotians that gangster book.

Captain Archer’s smugness is so annoying. Especially because he is so wrong. They go down to the planet and all get high and paranoid off some chemicals in the air, and Trip tries to kill T’Pol.. You know, chemicals that they might have detected with a probe, but fuck caution you know

Forgive my bluntness, but isn’t the Myers-Briggs system based off of a deeply simplified interpretation of Jungian psychology that mental health professionals (Jungian psychologists or otherwise) consider littler better than a horoscope? Are companies actually using the test as a way to judge candidates? (Mind you, we could probably say the same things about IQ tests.)

Study Myers-Briggs and learn to fake out the test to thinking you’re an “SP” or “SJ”, preferably extroverted type, depending upon the job that’s giving you a personality test. I suspect that lots of non-professional jobs and non-tech jobs are specifically weeding out people who would map to Myers Briggs NT or NF types, and using iNtuitive Thinker traits as a proxy for autism. Make sure you can fake the test out to your cisnormative personality type expected of your gender; that will be T if male and F if female. I highly suspect that iNtuitive (Thinker or Feeler, but especially Thinker in any retail setting) personality traits are being mapped to unemployable neurodivergence by employment related personality tests.

Look, @coppermarigolds, Space Kuvira rides again!

The most passive-aggressive move Star Wars’s tie-in novels ever made toward their scifi franchise competition: the cover artists started drawing the evil Admiral Daala in a very similar way to Voyager’s Captain Janeway.

Thanks for the answers!

Kudos and questions!

Hello there! I’m yet another person who found out about your series through Night Mind, and I have to say that I’ve really enjoyed all of what I’ve seen. You picked a great concept, and you’ve organized things such that you can keep the narrative going with little risk of it ballooning beyond your ability to handle, something that tends to happen a lot in Slenderman-based series. I also think you’ve done a great job with all your monsters; all of them are threatening and off-putting in some unique way, and they all seem to be thematically for your story.

All that said, I do have a few silly questions for you:

1. Are the same forces keeping the house filled with food and water also taking away Mary’s garbage, or will an upcoming episode reveal that the dining room is packed to the roof with trash bags? ;)

2. Are all of the humanoid monsters female? For that matter, is the amorphous shadow female?

3. In “goodnight?” there were a couple instances of the shadow’s left hand disappearing and reappearing in other parts of the frame. Was that intentional?

4. This is more of a comment, but I found it interesting that “DO NOT TOUCH” seems to be the first time Mary tries to confront the monsters. From what I’ve seen of the series, it appears to me that Mary has been placed into a situation where she is made miserable, but both the house and the monsters are making an effort to avoid killing or physically incapacitating her. However, rather than trying to put her captors and tormentors on the defensive by putting her own life in danger or making a concerted effort to escape the house, Mary has instead curled back into herself and “chosen” to endure their tortures. I know part of the reason for this is that your parents aren’t terribly keen on you starting fires or digging a hole through their basement wall, but would I also be right in assuming there are thematic reasons Mary has taken her particular course of action?

( First off, thank you! I’m glad you’re appreciating the story!

1. So far, trash is treated the same way that food and water is. Everything just clears, restocks, and resets

2. The veiled monster yes, mirror monster yes, and the other two are up to interpretation!

3. The left hand disappearing was a real rookie editing mistake that I didn’t notice until I uploaded… and proceeded to feel bad about for a week lol. The other hands appearing places were intentional.

4. Big thematic reasons. Very big, thematic reasons. And yeah also I can’t blow up my house hahaha. )

That modern Captain Planet discussion you guys had at the beginning of the latest @transmediacrity podcast was surprisingly resonant to me, @wyattsalazar. I’ve been chewing on this essay criticizing the first season of Star Trek: Discovery, and it seems like the attitudes and beliefs that the liberal TNG era was built on are now also verboten, and have been replaced by sadder, crueler things.

I’m imagining something like that one scene in Lord of War where Nick Cage’s plane full of guns is forced to make an emergency landing somewhere in Liberia, and within twelve hours the whole thing is stripped to the skeleton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQgdZTgpczM

Sis and I discussing The Mandalorian, episode 2.

The unnamed battlefield medic who shows up to evac downed units also made her debut in Skies of Arcadia as Fina, though according to her ingame bio she’s actually three people in VC1: the triplets Fina, Mina, and Gina Sellers.

Watching you play Valkyria Chronicles I saw some familiar faces - Vyse and Aika are main characters from Skies of Arcadia. Vyse is kind of a tool but Aika's my homegirl. In said game they fight against the Empress of Valua, and I noticed there's also a city called Valua mentioned in passing during your video.

Oh I thought I’d seen those characters somewhere! I think one of the main dudes behind ValCro had a hand in Skies of Arcadia (it was also published by Sega too if I remember correctly). That’s a neat little thing. Thank you!