Lucien’s Mish-Mash of Random Thoughts, #4

Sorry it’s been a while since I wrote anything. There’s just not been anything that has captured my interest in the way that it should for a hot minute. I have a bunch of random things that I am thinking about, and it is hard to keep it all together in my head long enough to write an entire post about it. However, because I have a huge amount of things rolling around in my head, so I thought that I would write about all of them in a big menagerie of my brain’s bullshit.

My birthday was last Sunday. Nice, right? It would have been, except for one small detail – my identity just got stolen, and so my debit card was defunct. I have a credit card, but I REALLY don’t want to have to depend on that. So a lot of my fun birthday purchases and getting to enjoy myself went right out the shitter. You cannot begin to imagine how frustrated this made me. Seems like shit always goes wrong at once, but such is my life. I also had to miss a day at work to get my headlight bulbs replaced. I bought this car just a couple months ago, and the bulbs are dead. Thankfully it wasn’t a wiring issue, so that’s good.

YouTube has decided to get rid of the Dislike button. Or rather, showing the ratio of Likes to Dislikes. You can still dislike a video. They made this piss-poor argument that it is to stop people from dislike-bombing smaller channels. This was immediately debunked. The real reason is clear – because corporations are tired of having their stuff ratio-ed into oblivion. Most recently it was Nintendo who was obliterated because of their pathetic update to the Switch. Even the endlessly-forgiving fanboys/girls who do nothing but kiss Nintendo’s ass couldn’t apologize for it. Major corporations are tired of looking bad, so they got YouTube to essentially make it so that nobody can say anything wrong about them anymore.

Can the apologists for the Democrats just admit that Biden is a corpo rat? Their new infrastructure bill has been so gutted that it essentially does nothing, and it even gives yet-another tax cut to the rich! Oh, and did you all see Nancy Pelosi did the marriage ceremony for an oil tycoon’s daughter and her husband? If there isn’t a bigger indictment of the Democratic Party and what whores they are to the rich and powerful, I can’t think of one. The social issues are the only thing that they are able to keep the moral high ground, but as the people get more and more screwed by the rich and powerful, it becomes painfully obvious that that is just a smokescreen for their real agenda – screwing the people in service to the real owners of this country.

Reviews of Marvel’s Eternals are coming in, and it has confirmed something that I have been thinking would happen since Endgame – that the MCU doesn’t have a clue what to do next, and there is a creative bankruptcy happening with them. The film has been panned as boring and over-stuffed, with WAY too many characters that you couldn’t give any less of a shit about because the film does nothing to try and sell them.  I knew that film was going to be a complete waste of cinematic money, and that going to see it was not something I would be planning to do.

Speaking of wastes of money, did you all see the video showing that CBS’s fourth-rate Rick and Morty clone, Lower Decks, ripped off a joke from Red Letter Media?  Here’s a link to it.  This is just fucking shameless!  I knew that show was nothing but a giant trash fire, but this is the lowest of the low.  The irony is that Red Letter Media was making fun of how bad the current Star Trek series are, and CBS decides it’s a great idea to take their idea into their terrible show that is literally ripping off the animation style, tone, and adult themed animated series straight from Rick and Morty.

Oh, that reminds me – why is everyone saying that Rick and Morty is getting so bad?  I just watched through season 5, and I still think it’s a show that is funny and engaging.  Is every episode a flawless hit?  No.  But the thing is that the show takes risks.  They take chances.  And the season finale was just spectacular.  The dimensions it has opened to Rick’s character made me grin from ear to ear.  Like, the next season absolutely has to open with Rick and Morty getting home and then talking about what happened. 

The realization about Rick’s backstory changes so many things about how you see the series.  For starters, Beth thought that he abandoned her at a young age, not understanding that he never knew her past a certain point.  She was killed as a toddler.  What would that do to the two of them’s relationship, when she realizes that her version of Rick never abandoned her, and instead did all he could to come back to her, trying to reclaim his life and what relationships he could after his desperate mission to get revenge for his family ended in failure.  That would be an amazing episode.

What’s neat about the series is that its dramatic moments are just as impactful as its comedic ones can be.  Rick is such an engaging character, and none of how he is written ever feels at odds with his character.  He is cold and nihilistic, because he’s seen how fucked up it all is, and how there is no way to change it.  He cares deeply for his family, but also understands that they are but one of many.  Through everything he has done, there is a clear growth of this character, and now that we have filled in the gaps of his “crybaby backstory,” it gives new dimension with the character.  I am DESPERATELY hoping that the writers decide to run with it, and that we get some serious conversations between characters when more of them learn the truth about Rick and what happened to him as a young man. 

Oh, did you guys hear?  The government plans to seriously commit to zero emissions!  By 2050.  You know, a timelines out so long that they can continue to do fuck all about it for the next 30 years and by the time they have to pay the piper, the people who are in power now are dead, so they don’t have to deal with it.  You’d think these corpo rats would understand that they are basically fucking over the world.  Don’t any of these pieces of shit care about their children or grand-children?  Do they just figure that they will be rich enough to exploit whatever way out the corpos give them?  They know how this all ends, right? 

Actually, in 30 years, we will be at the beginning of what is being called the “population bomb.”  It seems there is not a population boom that has happened since the days of lockdown, but the reverse.  My generation isn’t making babies.  Now that Gen Z is getting old enough to procreate, with even less buying power than my generation, it seems that they aren’t looking to make babies either.  We have fallen below the line of population replenishment, and all signs point to a population collapse in the decades leading up to 2100.  It could actually be the extinction of the human race.  The idea that I might get to watch the end of this species, not just the American empire, is kind of awesome.  Not gonna lie.

2022 is shaping up to be one HELL of a year for gaming.  I put out my Most Anticipated Games of 2022 list at the tail end of last month, and I think that next year is going to have some amazing stuff.  So glad I have a partner who not only doesn’t have a problem with my gaming, but also has it as a hobby.  It’s great stuff.  A feeling of togetherness that warms the heart.

Anyway, I think that’s where I will end my rambling thoughts for tonight.  If you all have rambling responses, feel free to post them below.

Until next time, a quote,

“Now this is the power of math!” – Mike Stoklasa

Peace out,

Maverick

Character Analysis: C-137 Rick Sanchez

I’m about to get into some pretty insane spoilers for the Season 5 finale of Rick and Morty, but this is something that has opened my eyes to what makes this character amazing, and I just have to talk about it. If you don’t want to see spoilers, please vacate now.

I’ve been watching the series Rick and Morty for some time now. The stories of the misadventures of Rick Sanchez and his grandson Morty, along with all the people around them is fun. You have the more “light-hearted” (everything in this series has a slightly darker twinge to it) episodes that are just about the random adventures, interspersed with stories that tie into a larger narrative of Rick and how fucked up he is and how fucked up he makes the lives of people who surround him.

When you first meet him, Rick seems like a complete sociopath who is completely devoid of any ability to care about anyone but himself. The first season really paints a picture of the fact that Rick has been an absent father for almost all of Beth’s life, that he treats Jerry like absolute trash because he sees him as a joke, that he doesn’t think much of Summer because he sees her as vapid, and that Morty is a means to an end. However, there are these little moments throughout the first two seasons where you do realize that there is more to him than that. That there is a very personal man who is absolutely tortured by the person he has let himself become and that he wants to try and make things right with his family but is incapable because of his qualms that consistently rear their ugly head at the worst times.

We first see it in the introduction of a character who becomes VERY important to the franchise – Evil Morty. In the episode, they find out that Mortys are being captured to hide a super evil Rick. He kidnaps C-137 Rick and tries to get him to join him in his crusade to be the most diabolical Rick of them all. He sees his memories of all the horrible things he’s done and figures that this guy is perfect. However, as he goes through his memories, he sees that he does care about his family and does have some love for his grandchild. This is reflected when Morty leads a revolution of Mortys and saves him, then to be given a kind word in his detached way, calling him the Mortyest Morty.

Next up, we hear from Bird Person that Rick is tormented and that he is consistently calling out for help, but nobody is understanding him. Morty is certain that he is wrong, but the idea is out there. We also learn about the tragic loneliness of Rick as he rekindles a romance with an alien entity called Unity, only for the entity to realize that Rick has such a destructive and addictive personality that it cannot be with him for fear that it would become him. When Unity leaves him, Rick actually tries to kill himself, and is only saved because he passes out before the machine he created can finish the job.

At the end of the second season, Bird Person tells Beth at his wedding that both him and Rick fought against the governing body of the galaxy, and it is implied that it was a fairly brutal conflict, which they inevitably lost. When it is uncovered that Tammy is an agent for the Galactic Federation, and Bird Person gets killed, Rick takes his family and tries to flee to another world. There, he hears them talking about how much damage he has done to their lives and he does actually feel genuine sadness for what he’s forced onto them because of his own history. So he turns himself in and makes it so they can go home.

We then get to see exactly how much he cares for his daughter, Beth. Throughout the series, he consistently gives Jerry endless shit for how much he ruined his daughter’s life by getting her pregnant, and Beth clearly has some amount of similar feelings, as you learn when you find out that every universe with Summer in it is lame because she is viewed as the thing that took away their ability to follow their dreams. In one episode, Beth comes to realize that she has the same intellect capability as her father and it is being wasted as a wife and mother. It is then that Rick gives her options. Gives her a guilt-free way to leave the family and then pursue her intellect. It is a strange moment where he acknowledges that her being smart is not a blessing. It’s a curse, and one that she will have to deal with all her life. Granted, this all comes back to bite him in a spectacular fashion when you realize that he actually did it, but still.

The kinder, gentler nature of Rick Sanchez seems totally at odds with the character who shows the ability to be cruel in the extreme when need be. He has zero qualms with killing, seeing each life as meaningless because of the fact that there are countless others in dozens of realities. He will bail on an entire reality when he fucks it over beyond his ability to repair because it is simpler than actually trying to undo things. It seems to not match up at all. But then you realize that it does mesh. It absolutely does.

Throughout the series, one thing that Rick seems to hate more than anything is the Council of Ricks. The gathering of Ricks who came together to make a powerful hegemony to their own intellect. One that is more disturbed than I could have imagined, but you always wondered why Rick despised this place with such a fervent passion. In fact, throughout the series, the backstory of Rick is always very up in the air. Beth talks about him bailing when she was very young, and you hear about him fighting for the Resistance, but what else. Season 3 shows Rick being a scientist who was inventing portal tech, when a Rick from another reality comes into his own and extends him an offer to join them. He turns them down, only for there to be a bomb planted that kills his wife and child. In that episode, he says that that is nothing but an illusion as part of his plan. Now we know that what he said was a lie.

Season 5 has really filled in the vast majority of the gaps with Rick’s past. The episode where he is looking to bring back the mind of his best friend after he defeats what the Federation turned him into, you see that Rick was once a much younger, but still tortured person. He helps Bird Person in his fight, looking to get him to join him on a mission of his own, saying that it is a call to adventure. Bird Person refuses, driven to stay in his own battle. This seems odd, but now we have the rest of the story filled in.

It turns out, the thing about his family being killed by a Rick because he wouldn’t join him is true. However, it appears that this wasn’t part of the Council of Ricks. This was in the formative years, before there was a Council. When some Ricks were just starting to come together. After he is lost and destroyed for a while, he decides to hunt down the person who took his world away from him and kill him. Along the way, he learned about the galaxy, about new technologies. His intellect grew as he gained new tools with which to navigate the galaxy and to understand the nature of the multiverse.

However, very quickly he came upon one of the worst parts of the multiverse – the fact that it is infinite. No matter how many Ricks he killed, he couldn’t find the one who had taken his wife and child. Ironically enough, his efforts to kill the one who had hurt him galvanized the Ricks to come together to fight back against him. The conflict continued to escalate until he had to do unfathomable damage to the Rick population overall. This lead to the Council of Ricks making him an offer, but by this point, he was too disillusioned and too broken to really care. He turned them down, deciding to pursue that which he had lost along the way – a family. But this was after you learn that he helped in the establishment of what is called the Central Finite Curve. A walled-off section of the multiverse where the infinite realities where Rick is the smartest person in the universe are kept separate from those that are. A multiverse bastion of their own intellect. But with all that power, he just wanted to get back what he lost.

And so, he chose a reality where the Rick there wasn’t going to be coming back and went home to find Beth, now a grown woman. The timeline matched up enough and he was able to build a new life and new relationships with the people he cared about. This realization puts so much into context about Rick. Why he was so unhinged, what he really wanted from life, and why he despises the Council of Ricks so much. Not only have they become a bastion to their own intellect, one that he is unable to escape, but they are perpetuating a cycle of abuse of his family. They are deliberately getting Jerrys and Beths together in the Central Finite Curve so they don’t have to scour the galaxy for grandchildren. They are easy to find. They are deliberately fucking over his child for their own ends. So much of everything he does value is destroyed because of these people.

The end of the last episode has him being saved by his Morty, when Morty realizes that his grandfather does care, more than any Rick anywhere, and that he wants to be a family. He learned that he is valued, in that way that Rick does value people. It isn’t outspoken, it’s sometimes cold, but it’s there, and he feels it deeply. With the Central Finite Curve destroyed, this opens up a vast plethora of space that Rick can now explore. I see the debate online that Rick is unable to use the portal gun anymore, but in reality, this would just break down the gaps between the Central Finite Curve. Now he will have access to a much larger multiverse to learn.

There are so many other things I could talk about, like how Beth is looking to be following in his footsteps (which is a story-line I am desperately hoping they run with), but for right now, I’ll leave it at that. Rick is a phenomenal character. He has so many layers to him and you never really know exactly what he is going to do in any situation, so you are constantly kept guessing. People say that the series is getting stale, but I personally don’t agree. This series has kept my attention throughout all of it, and now I am dying to know what happens next. It’s gonna be awesome.

Until next time, a quote,

“So it would go without saying that the Rickest Rick would have the Mortyest Morty.” – Rick Sanchez, Rick and Morty

Peace out,

Maverick

The Infinite Space

There’s something that you should know about me – I don’t believe in free will.  I think that all the decisions that people claim that they have the power to make are illusions.  Everything that could happen already has happened, and we are powerless to change the nature of our fate.  It’s not because of some divine being.  In fact, when one truly thinks about this idea that I have, the existence of a divine being becomes even more ridiculous.  Because it makes the idea of lording over this one universe that much less impressive.  I know what you’re thinking – how can you possibly believe that?  How can all choices just be an illusion?  Simple – the Infinite Space.

Let me explain.  I believe that the universe that we exist in is but one of the infinite number of possibilities that exist in an endless ocean of possibilities..  These possibilities are connected through forces unknown.  It sounds like a bold declaration.  But let me give you something to chew on.  Here’s a video from Minute Physics about the Schrodinger’s Cat paradox.

This video got me to thinking about so much stuff.  Why?  Because the concept is interesting..  We don’t know what the truth is until we look to see if the cat is dead or alive.  It truly is both.  How can that be?  The answer seemed pretty obvious to me – both possibilities have to exist.  It can’t be one or the other.  But where is that other possibility?  Easy – the Infinite Space.  In that place, there is a reality where the cat is dead, if we look and kitty is alive (we love kitty!).  There is no other way.  Quantum physics is trying to figure out the answer, but I think that this makes a lot of sense.

Many of my favorite works of fiction have toyed with the concept.  In Bioshock Infinite, there is a kind of particle that can break the bounds between the spaces.  The Lutece’s figure out how to harness it and use it to break the bonds between worlds in the Infinite Space.  Elizabeth has the ability to open doors between the spaces between worlds, but there was a time when she was able to create them on her own.  She called it a form of wish fulfillment.  Whatever she wanted, she just had to concentrate and she could open a door to that thing.  It’s crazy stuff.  While that was interesting, it all ended on a note of disbelief, where Booker is killed and that someone closes the door to all possibilities.  Yet you hear in the end that there is still a universe where he is alive and everything happens as it is supposed to.  So I guess she still failed.

Next up is Rick and Morty.  In this series, they have repeated instances where they go into alternate universes in order to do things.  But the one that really got me was the episode where Morty wants Rick to create a love potion for him to get his girl, and it spirals out of control until they reach a point where Rick had destroyed all of reality and there seems to be no way to put it right.  So he doesn’t.  Instead, he finds a universe that exists where he manages to solve the entire problem, and then both him and Morty die.  The two then bury themselves and carry on.  It is implicated that this strategy is one that Rick has used before, as he says that they won’t get too many opportunities to do this again.  I love the grim undertones of that show.  It really takes all the hijinks in the series and makes them out to have horrific, ongoing consequences.

Finally, there is my favorite game of last year – Life is Strange.  This series did something similar to Bioshock Infinite, but it took the concept a little further.  See, it has Max be given the ability to control time.  But is she truly controlling time?  I did a post about this (link here), but I’ll give my main points here.  When Max uses her talent, you see something interesting.  She remains in a given place, but time moves around her.  It’s how you are able to use it to sneak past guards or get into places without other people knowing it.  But what happens to those timelines that she leaves?  The implication is that they keep going.  So the timeline that Max and Chloe blow up the door to the Principal’s office still happened.  As is the one where (if you are really dumb and couldn’t resist trying everything) Chloe accidentally shoots herself when you’re messing with David’s gun.  Worse still, there is the one where Max saved William and ended up paralyzing and potentially killing Chloe.  That reality continues with Chloe’s parents being destroyed and Max being solely to blame.  But the end of the game fucks that up and makes it just like the Bioshock Infinite ending where you can just go back in time and stop it from happening by stopping the catalyst.  But that wouldn’t have stopped the tornado.  I talked in another post about how dumb the ending to this game was (please don’t make another season.  It can only get worse).  I still love it, but like Mass Effect 3, the ending crashes and burns.

What a digression all of this was.  My point in all of this is that I believe that all possibilities exist in the Infinite Space.  An endless space where every outcome exists in its own reality.  I don’t think there is a way that one could possibly see this, but I like the one in Cosmos, where it’s like this huge area of interconnecting lights that stretch out for forever, with each light being a possibility.  Within the Infinite Space, there are endless possibilities.  There is a universe where the first girl I ever loved and I are together.  There’s a nice thought.  There’s a universe where I chose to turn down the PR company that ended up being a disaster for me.  There’s a universe where I didn’t lost my first apartment.  It is an endless sea of possibility.

But there’s an interesting idea that a girly-mate of mine posed to me – what if there were realities that touched one-another?  I got to thinking about that.  If we are to believe the Infinite Space is a real thing, and all of these universes are connected through a larger tapestry of existence, then I don’t see why universes couldn’t touch one-another.  There are likely points, countless in number, that our universes have touched one-another and even interacted.  I can hear the counter-point –

Then why wouldn’t we know about it?  Wouldn’t there have been like people or something coming through?

It’s hubris on our part to think that only our world or our species could be affected.  There are endless possibilities for how our universes would interact when making contact.  It could also affect anything.  There are countless instances of unexplained things happening.  Any number of those could be our universe interacting with another in an unforeseen way.

The goal of sciences like quantum physics is to understand stuff like this, and I acknowledge that my perception is simply conjecture that is based on what I have taken in and conclusions I have reached.  Could totally be wrong.  Part of the fun with science is finding out.  What do you think about my hypothesis (yes, hypothesis.  It cannot be a theory because there is currently no evidence for it.  For all those who say that evolution is “just a theory”)?  Let me know in the Comments.

Until next time, a quote,

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.” – Daniel J. Boorstin

Peace out,

Maverick