She talks to wolves...

Toward the end of the year, I finally got around to watching HBO’s Westworld. Many people had commented that it was just Jurassic Park, but with androids – an argument I found both ridiculous and reductive. Westworld, after all – the original 1973 film – was written and directed by Michael Chrichton. Almost two decades before Michael Chrichton himself wrote Jurassic Park. If anything is just something else, Jurassic Park is Westworld, but with dinosaurs.

One of the most compelling aspects of the original Westworld is that you have no insight into the androids – no reason is provided regarding why they begin killing guests, or whether there’s any reason inside their machinery at all. And while that storytelling aspect is intriguing in a short 1973 film, it wouldn’t have worked for a juicy television series in 2016.

So is HBO’s Westworld “just Jurassic Park, but with androids”? Hardly. It’s a reflective, chaotic, beautiful mess of a show, broaching and tackling a number of interesting topics: the development of sentience. The quality of a society that can embrace a theme park like Westworld. A jab at meta commentary on gaming culture. What makes an entity human. The power of storytelling, and the deconstruction of narrative.

Westworld is a tornado, and one of its best summaries is that oft-repeated bit of Shakespeare: “these violent delights have violent ends.” So I made y’all a thing:

Violence – against others, against yourself – is a tornado, sweeping everyone in its path up indiscriminately and depositing them somewhere new. In the Maze, to come to self-realization? In a paroxysm of emptiness, a fallen and depraved society? We’re not sure. All we know is that white hats are so hard to keep clean.

And we’re grateful to Shakespeare for this line from Romeo and Juliet: “these violent delights have violent ends.” Does anyone ever listen to Friar Laurence?

This design uses the font Musicals by Brain Eaters, and features hat clipart from Clker.com.

You can find this design in both my Zazzle shop, What Duck?, and my RedBubble shop on a diverse array of designs:

On magnets and mugs, buttons and keychains!

On shirts and prints, pillows and travel mugs, stickers and notebooks, and more!

If you’d like anything else, I take requests – so hit the comments.

P.S. If you were a member of my Patreon, you could have received a Limited Edition Postcard of this design as a perk!

Mirrored from geekdame.com. Please comment there.

Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath has come and gon–no, wait, actually it remains for you to purchase at any bookseller you fancy. I mean, probably. Unless the bookseller specializes only in Cheesemaker Biopics Prior to 1900, or Ball Joint Enthusiast tracts. Still, my point stands! Aftermath, the first post-Return of the Jedi novel is out there, and now you can also read my review at Buzzy Mag.

Spoiler: I liked it, but it was a bit of a mess.

Do you know what the most notable aspect of Chuck Wendig’s Star Wars: Aftermath has been? Not that it’s the first post-Return of the Jedi story given to the galaxy. Not that it’s a gripping and fast-paced yarn. Nope. The most notable aspect per the Internet is that it has several gay characters. And space diapers.

I wish I could say I was kidding, but I’m not. I wish I could Jedi mind trick the Internet into being a less bigoted place, but I can’t. What I can do, however, is tell you that Star Wars: Aftermath is a flawed book, but it’s fun, and a worthy addition to the Star Wars we know.

It’s an incredibly busy and diverse galaxy out there, and Wendig’s got that covered in spades. We get a wide view of multitudinous worlds reacting to the news of the Emperor and Vader’s defeat, the exploding of the Death Star, and how the Empire does not shatter. Instead, it crumbles at the edges and the Rebellion victory seeps in as smuggled propaganda, sowing hope with one secretly-watched holomessage at a time.

Read the rest of the review over at Buzzy Mag.

Mirrored from geekdame.com. Please comment there.