The Future of Star Wars

Well, I've now seen Rise of Skywalker and the entire run of the Mandalorian, and my prognostication for the future of the franchise is... that, well, there's some life yet in it, but it's going to have a hard time flourishing under the foolish stewardship of Disney.

First the movie.  It's been out a week now, so I'll give a quick capsule overview.  As Overlord DVD said, and I agree, it's the best of the sequel trilogy, yet it's also the worst.  It's the best in that it's the most charming to watch, and the characters finally have some charisma and chemistry.  There's a handful of ideas that are actually kind of clever, even if they're hampered by being stuck in a stupid plot, and of course, it's a very pretty movie most of the time.  It also minimizes the wokeness, no doubt as an apology of sorts for the Last Jedi, as well as the numerous franchises that are falling to audience rebellion due to their execrable social and political posturing and their outright hatred for the core audience that loves them.

It's the worst of the Star Wars movies because the plot is stupider than any others.  It finally manages to undo literally everything that happened in the Original Trilogy (and even the whole point of the prequel trilogy, for that matter) just so Rey can do it right the way those stupid white males like Luke and Han and Annakin and Kenobi couldn't.  It doesn't even bother explaining how things happen.  Why is Palpatine alive after we see him die, and then to make it even more final, the Death Star he just died on is blown to atoms?  I dunno.  Shut up and consume.  Speaking of the Death Star being blown to atoms, why is the wreck of it sitting out there in the ocean on Endor?  I dunno.  Shut up and consume.  This kind of farcical nonsense happens over and over again.

Also, Rey is such a dire Mary Sue, that she gets new powers that would have dramatically changed the course of the prior movies if they were actually a thing.  The force teleport thing between her and Kylo, and the force healing are usually shown as the most egregious offenders here.  Although--I have to be fair and point out that the force teleport is a kind of unique thing because they are a force dyad (whatever that is), so it isn't meant to be something that's just a magical convenience.  (No, it's a rather deus ex machina plot device unique to these two characters.)  And the force healing is a thing that's been common in many Expanded Universe things for some time now, and technically, we saw it more recently in an episode of the Mandalorian a few weeks earlier.  Nobody seemed to complain about it then; in fact, in general, the people who love to hate on the movie love to love on the Mandalorian.  But the fact is that the Mandalorian is just as cavalier with established Star Wars plot points, even though they're usually more local and detailed in scope.  The force healing that Baby Yoda does to old Apollo Creed is just the biggest; the details about Mandalorian society are completely at odds with other canon sources of info on the Mandalorians such as the Clone Wars and even Star Wars Rebels.  Since when can Mandalorians not take off their helmets?  They do all the time in those two shows.  Since when are Mandalorians not a race but a creed? On Mandalore and Kalevala in the Clone Wars, they absolutely were the former not the latter, but the new show makes the opposite true. (Although I'm not naive; I know what's happening here.  George Lucas invalidated a bunch of older EU stuff about Mandalorians, and the Disney custodians have been just semi-quietly bringing it back since the acquisition as much as possible.)  On the other hand, they at least are telling entertaining stories (mostly) and the set up for new stuff, especially given the last couple of episodes, is intriguing for once.  If the Mandalorian is the template for New Star Wars, it won't be great, but at least it won't be terrible either.  It'll be somewhere between the quality of the Clone Wars and Rebels, most likely.  Hopefully more like the former than the latter, as r-selected writers and quiet woke moments, such as Sabine Mary Sue, the Mandalorian Asian girl, and bratty Ezra, who's supposed to be a cool, relatable teenager, but only if you were a really stupid, entitled, bratty teenager does that actually work, etc. kinda ruined Rebels a fair bit, and the moments of brilliance it had was much fewer and farther between than on the earlier show.

If I were somehow suddenly put in charge of Star Wars, I'd... well, first, I'd fire almost everyone working on it and tell them to take a hike.  Lower budget stuff with compelling characters, as in the Mandalorian, would be my first step to rehabilitate the brand, whether to theatres or a streaming service or however it was most convenient to be done, with the goal towards making blockbuster movies again.  But I'd have some other design principles in common first too:

• First, I'd have everyone on whatever creative team I put together go outside and engage in some coed team sports.  If that doesn't alleviate the nonsense about women acting like men and vice versa, then those who can't get with the program get fired too.
• Then, we'd do an exercise where we watch both the older 1981 Clash of the Titans and then the 2010 (or whatever year it was exactly) one back to back, with a particular emphasis on the characterization of Perseus and his love interest (which for some dumb reason isn't even Andromeda in the second movie) and why they work.  If I really need to spell out the fact that masculine men and feminine women are attractive to normal people of both sexes and r-selected palette swaps between men and women are off-putting to normal people of both sexes, then I clearly have the wrong creative team.  Adhering to biological sex roles works because... well, because it's biology.  Anything else marks the movies as a time capsule from a period of Clown World.
• By the same token, what is Star Wars?  A space opera?  Yes, heavily based on the Lensmen, Dune, Flash Gordon and John Carter.  It also has lots of elements of the Western in it, and Ruritanian romance.  What do all of these have in common?  They are unique stories created and told by white men for white men.  And while they have a kind of timelessness about them that makes them popular across the world, the core audience for Star Wars has always been white men.  We're not going to chase phantom diversity audiences, we're going to focus on our core demographic.  The majority of the protagonist, and even secondary and love interest characters should all be white.  Diversity casting (otherwise known as blackwashing and brownwashing of white, American culture) is cultural appropriation of the most egregious kind, and if it's good for the conservative goose, it can be good for the liberal gander.  You don't get to complain about cultural appropriation of non-white cultures while looting white cultures for whatever you want to take, and expect us to accept that.
• The sequel trilogy was a debacle, but for "normies" they probably don't want it soundly denounced.  A better way to go about it is what I've always suggested for STAR WARS REMIXED; go forward in time far enough that you wipe the slate clean.  Refer to some of the characters of the old movies as legendary figures about which no truth is remembered, and strongly imply that we don't even know anymore what of what is seen in the older movies was actually true and what wasn't.  And then largely ignore them anyway and focus on more immediate characters and events.  Nostalgic callbacks are for losers who don't have anything interesting to say in their new movie.  A few are kinda fun, but don't overdo it.  Feel free to depart from some of the tropes of Star Wars if necessary; this was done to good effect in many of the better Clone Wars episodes, for instance, and some of the better material in Old Republic.  The latter was seriously held back, on the other hand, by trying to imply too much stasis in many ways; four thousand years before Star Wars, everything was pretty much exactly what Star Wars had been?  C'mon.
• Knock it off with the Jedi and Sith.  Sure, you can have them, but the orders after thousands of years won't look like what they did in the prequels.  I actually like how the Remixed version had a kind of fragmentation of force using and lightsaber wielding traditions as well as a balkanization of the political structure of the galaxy anyway.
• As another aside, in the original trilogy, while the Jedi and Sith were both these kind of space wizards, their powers were subtle, understated, and not terribly drastic and amazing.  When the Emperor starting shooting lighting out of his hands at the end, that was a dramatic moment, because nobody suspected that that could even be done, and it's strongly suggested that he was some kind of force using prodigy anyway (same for Yoda.)  As the movies progressed, even under Lucas' supervision, the Jedi and Sith became outright superheroes, completely disconnected from anything that a "normal" adventuring character in the galaxy could ever expect to be able to match.  The Mary Sue aspects of Rey were previewed by the Mary Sue aspects of the Jedi overall long before Rey took it over the top.  Let's pull that back down.  Sure, they have some pretty cool acrobatic and combat abilities with their sabers, and they are capable of some minor misdirection and persuasion here and there.  Force abilities and lightsabers themselves have gotten too over the top.
• Now, that doesn't mean that wild Hong Kong style fight scenes should go.  Those are, of course, freakin' awesome.  No, what it means is that rather than an action tax on the Jedi, everyone should, if need be, be a credible threat, because cool, swashbuckling action isn't limited to people who use the force.  A Mandalorian, for example, should expect to be the equal of any Jedi.  Stormtroopers should be feared rather than mocked.  Experienced, James Bond-like agents, smugglers, criminals, soldiers, mercenaries, bounty hunters, and what-have-you should all be action heroes of comparable ability to any Jedi, Sith or member of any other knightly order.

In fact, it's really not that hard to make good Star Wars content, as a variety of fan films on Youtube and elsewhere show.  It's just that the people in charge of making actual, official Star Wars content are incompetent people who hate the audience for the franchise, and hate what the franchise actually stands for, so they are deliberately tearing it down.  Not that I think these highlight all of the dot points I do, but they are reasonably good Star Wars fan films, which proves the point: it's not really that hard to do.

Shill media

What happens when the shill media gets tired of shilling?

Remember that with the Last Jedi, the shill media had a score in the 95+ percentile.  The audience reaction was in the 30s until Rotten Tomatoes purged tons of reviews, because they themselves are shills, and they used the dishonest narratives of Russian bots, and alt-right trolls, and crap like that to purge tons of reviews.  (In spite of that, it's still in the mid-40s.  Dishonestly high, compared to reality, but not high.)

The early reviews for Rise of the Skywalker are low.  Mid-50s low.  More reviews are coming in, and the shills are helping that to rise, but it's still not good.  This screenshot says 56%, but the most recent one I saw was 62%.  That'll probably continue to climb over the next few days.

And although I don't trust that the audience score won't be manipulated by positive bots and Disney shills, it'll still be low too.

Either way, this is a confirmed dumpster fire.  It might even be worse than The Last Jedi, although that would be shocking, given the last minute desperate reshoots and cuts done to eliminate the worst aspects of their original cut.  I almost wish we could have just seen Jar Jar Abrams' and Kray Kray Kathy's original vision, just to see how badly they could ruin the franchise, and make sure that neither of them ever work in Hollywood ever again, but instead, we get watered down suck.  So not only is the movie not going to be good enough to please anyone, but it's not even going to suck enough to become a spectacle of badness either.  It's just... bleagh.

The Fall of Skywalker

I strongly suspect that this is completely true.  Sadly, as I said, because I don't talk about Star Wars much with my wife, she bought tickets for us to go see it in gigantic imax on Friday.  Granted; we used free ticket vouchers, so we didn't buy them per se, but for accounting purposes and from an opportunity cost perspective, we've contributed to the opening weekend of Star Wars.  Sigh.  Sometimes she's pretty cute when she's trying to help but gets it wrong.  So, although next weekend isn't likely to be a great opportunity for me to log in and review the movie, I'll eventually do it (probably too late to matter, because everyone who will see the review will already have seen the movie or decided that they won't under any circumstances anyway.)  As the video linked above says, we can already basically review the movie based on the spoilers that have been leaked; even through desperate reshoots, recuts, and re-edits, they still don't have a fan pleaser on their hands, and they know it.  I almost wish that they had gone with their disastrous first instinct, just to make sure that Kathleen Kennedy and Jar Jar Abrams never work in Hollywood again.

Meanwhile, the Mandalorian has played out pretty much as I predicted it would in my earlier post on the subject.  It continues to be... OK.  Not bad at all.  Which, compared to everything else going on in Star Wars the last several years means that relatively speaking it's fantastic, but the truth is that the show isn't great.  I actually really hoped for more from it.  Granted, even though it's a shorter show streaming on a streaming service, it's still a show at the end of the day, and I always give shows several episodes to find their legs before I judge them completely.  But we're almost done now; there's only eight episodes in the first season, and we've now seen six of them, and it really hasn't quite risen to the level of being more than a paint by numbers, emotionless Western set in space, with characters that have almost no charisma or chemistry with each other.  Nobody is really a memorable character; even the title character of the show himself.  The only break-out is Baby Yoda, and there's not even any good reason for it other than he looks like a much quieter and more passive version of Gizmo from the Gremlins movies who doesn't shed. This isn't meant to sound like a negative review, because I don't dislike the show at all; I just really hoped to actively like it better than I do.  Sigh.

For whatever reason, though, I'm getting re-enthused by The Old Republic again.  Now granted, I haven't played that in a long time, and I actually had some issue where it wouldn't launch on my computer with the hot graphics card anymore (probably because I still have Windows XP on that computer and hardly anything runs on that anymore unless it's an old version of the program.)  "Our" laptop has been effectively commandeered by my wife as her own (and it doesn't have a graphics card anyway, and although I attempted to install it on that, it didn't run very well), "my" laptop is provided by work, and I can't install games on it.  I am, however, expecting a new second desktop, which we'll put in the office at home instead of the bedroom, and one of my first things to do with it once it's up and running is reinstall Steam and Old Republic, and then enjoying games that I haven't played in a year or more, including Old Republic, which I' never really played as much as I'd have wanted to.

Playing Old Republic is both fantastically fun in some respects and shockingly frustrating in others, but I'm aware of the limitations of the medium and the studio, so I don't expect to be as frustrated by the unfortunate elements of it as if I didn't understand those quite well, at least.  It's curious that there's a fair bit of activity here.  A new expansion just came out a couple of months ago, and I was probably dragged in because of both my intense schadenfreude watching the sequel trilogy burn in a dumpster and anticipating both the Mandalorian show and the new episodes of the Clone Wars in February.  The Old Republic's most frustrating aspect, though, is the potential I can see through it and in the setting, which isn't realized because something like The Mandalorian or The Clone Wars wasn't the product of the setting.  Can you imagine a decently made ensemble cast ongoing series set in that setting?  How awesome would that be?  Granted, BioWare probably has some strange rights meaning that Lucasfilm would have to pay them royalties back in return to use their version of the setting, or some other such complication, but that's exactly why I've always thought that going forward in time from Return of the Jedi sufficiently that the setting can be made to resemble the Old Republic setting in some ways, and yet do its own interesting things at the same time. That was the whole point of my Star Wars Remixed tag, after all, and I still maintain that that would make better new Star Wars than what we're actually getting by a long shot.  In fact, that's almost always been the main problem with new Star Wars; both the sequel trilogy and much of the Expanded Universe material, for that matter.  It either tinkered with a story that was already told and didn't need any expansion or tinkering, or it sperged out on some minor detail and made it tedious.  What it always needed was new stories about new characters, yet set in the same setting.  Preferably characters that were a little more evergreen, in many respects.  The saga of Luke Skywalker was always a closed circuit; there isn't anything you can do with Luke after Return of the Jedi that's interesting or desirable, because his story was already done. This is the fatal flaw of both the prequel trilogy and the sequel trilogy; trying to milk the same story that was already concluded.  It's also where the potential of the Clone Wars and The Mandalorian, when they were really on their best game, came through.  If only the creators (including Lucas himself in the 90s and 00s) had had the sense to do something new like this, we'd have had a very different conversation about the Star Wars franchise than the one we've had the last couple of decades, where fans are labeled as "toxic" because they rightly recognize that the potential is being wasted.

Anyway, here's an interesting hybrid video put together that's The Mandalorian + The Old Republic.  If this doesn't at least jump start thoughts in your mind about the potential of Star Warsian space opera, there's no hope for you.

Quick update

Quick udpate; my access to blogger was actually somewhat restricted this last week, and even if it wasn't, I've been super busy.  Next week, I'll make some real updates.

But, in the meantime, it's been curious watching the Star Wars franchise literally collapse before our eyes in the wake of the new movie coming out.  I wanted to see the new movie eventually; kinda like how you want to watch a video of a trainwreck, or something, but I didn't want to see it opening weekend, or pay full price for it.

Sadly, my wife, who doesn't care about any of that kind of stuff, went out and bought tickets for us for opening night.  At a discount, I think, but still.  She's cute when she's trying to help, but misses the mark.

Oh, well.  I'll be fun, I suppose, to get the hot take nice and early.

Meanwhile, I'm kinda falling behind on the Mandalorian, which isn't as good as I'd hoped, although I'll get caught up once Christmas vacation is fully upon us.  I'm also watching a bunch of Old Republic playthroughs on YouTube; I'm getting a new computer, and I'll load that game on it again and play through the stories and stuff.  I've always been fascinated by that game, but haven't ever really done enough with it.  Oh, well.  Maybe I'll have some reports there, although naturally by now the game is hardly new anymore.

Bounty Hunter armors

While the graphics for Old Republic aren't really very good, I've long thought that there was a lot of potential in that game for a good Old Republic themed ensemble Clone Wars type show.  One where a major character of each of the eight classes is done and then followed throughout the show, highlighting how their interactions intersect with each other over the course of many narratives.  And while the graphics aren't good, there are some good principles of visual design in the show that, if applied to a different graphics engine, or better yet, turned into actual cosplay costumes or something, would look really cool.

There's a channel on Youtube where the creator basically does Old Republic fashion shows; it's kind of an odd idea, but y'know what?  Why not?  You want your character to look good, after all, if you're going to be looking at them for many, many hours of game play.  Plus, you can consider it concept art for a show of the type I mentioned above, not that there is one.

In honor of the Mandalorian, she did a newer video just a couple of days ago about the ten best bounty hunter armors you can craft, find or buy in the game.  So, for your enjoyment (or not, depending) here they are.

1131 Pentase

System: Pentase
Hex Location: 1131
Star Type:  G7 V
Number of Worlds: 14
Gas Giants: 2
Planetoid Belt: None

Starport Type: A
World Size: Earth sized
Atmosphere Type: Earth like
Surface Water: 60%
Population: Large ~4 billion
Political Affiliation: Cilindarean Arm
Tags: Civil War, Eugenic Mania, Mining World
Notes: Pentase is one of the more "southerly" worlds of the Cilindarean Arm.  It is a beautiful, very Earth-like planet, with multiple ecosystems and a reasonably large population, made up mostly of ethnic Cilindareans.  It is also one of the few sources of pentase steel, a metal harder and yet less brittle than most, and highly valued by the Cilindareans, especially in the construction of their ships and armor and weapons.  It isn't the only source of this type of metal, but it is such an important source of it that the metal is named after the system.  Large deposits are found on the surface of the main planet, but they seem to be meteorite in origin, and asteroids and centaurs and other irregular bodies throughout the solar system, including some of the smaller rocky/metal worlds and their moons, are also good sources of the metal.  For this reason, the world is very important to the Anaxaster.  That said, it is not connected via Cilindarean controlled space lanes, and is somewhat geographically isolated from the rest of the polity.  This has made the political scenario somewhat tense for the neighbors of Pentase, because they know that the Cilindareans would greatly prefer to have unimpeded space lanes to Pentase, and have no problem conquering other planets and exterminating or banishing the population already there if they do not accept their military occupation, but for now, the Cilindareans have treaties with a number of systems that allow them space lane access, and the peace—if uneasy—still remains.

Pentase is also home to internal conflict rooted in the Cilindarean culture.  Ethnic Cilindareans are very socially stratified.  Only full citizens enjoy all of the perks of society, although they have lots of skin in the game and are expected to render a number of duties to the state in return.  The mothakes (singular mothax) are another level in society that, while free, does not qualify for full citizenship.  There is a great deal of envy among many mothakes for the status bestowed upon full citizens by right of birth, although curiously, there is a growing sense of envy among many citizens of the mothax for his freedom from certain responsibilities as well.  A very prominent, wealthy and popular mothax, Harmost Lysander, has rebelled against the citizen planetary governor in Pentase, sparking a civil war in the system that, while sometimes quiet, still lingers.  The anaxaster and the rest of the central government has resisted getting involved; while in theory, the planetary governor has the right of rule and Lysander is a traitor, it's a well-known fact that the planetary governor is both ineffective, petty and a tyrant.  The anaxaster has decided that whomever wins this conflict will be granted legitimacy, as long as the conflict doesn't spill out of the system, or affect the greater Cilindarean Arm overall.  This is a very Cilindarean attitude, where trial by combat is still considered a legitimate legal remedy for the settlement of disputes.

Part of this dispute is the eugenics mania among the citizens of Pentase.  Both genetic engineering and cybernetic augmentation are extremely popular among them, as is a obsessive-compulsive focus on heritage.  Lysander, and many of the rest of the Cilindareans, for that matter, see this as heretical or even abominatus.  Because of this, Lysander has been receiving covert aid from a number of Cilindarean factions who think he should be promoted to full citizen status, or at least given the planetary governorship even though he's only a mothax based on his obvious merit.  The Bernese colony of the Machesk Frontier, which borders the Pentase system, is also not so subtly in favor of his rise at the expense of the current governor, Alcibiades.  This is one of the few times in which the nearby Revanchist colony of the Calder Settlements sees eye to eye with their Bernese rivals.  However, the nearby Seraeans from Outremer are backing Alcibiades, and with less discretion than the others.  This is threatening to become a full-blown diplomatic incident between the Cilindareans ad the three Great Powers if it continues unabated much longer.

2328 Kribblu VII

System: Kribblu VII
Hex Location: 2328
Star Type:  G3 III
Number of Worlds: 8
Gas Giants: 4
Planetoid Belt: Kuiper and asteroid belt

Starport Type: A
World Size: Mars sized
Atmosphere Type: Thin
Surface Water: 23%
Population: Small settlements; ~800,000
Political Affiliation: Dhangetan Cartel
Tags: Thaumatophobia, Balkanization, Secret Cabal
Notes: Kribblu VII is a manufacturing haven, but it is not manufacturing that benefits most of the people in the region.  On paper, the Dhangetan Yith Vhadrath rules the system, but the various cartel heads see him as aloof and uninvolved in cartel business sufficiently to please them.  The excuse that justifies this behavior is his struggle to control various factions on his planet; while he oversees the space port and ship foundries (as well as much of the raw material harvesting both on world and from other sources within the system) with his personnel resources (a great number of Earth-human and skiffer and cepheid bravos and militia, stiffened by mercenary companies of Cilindareans and Arcturans.)  Most visitors see this as the society on Kribblu VII, but in reality, he's at constant war with two other factions who vie for dominance on the surface of the planet; a leftover death-sage known merely as the Arch-Tyrant and his forces of cyber-undead and Neferran dog-soldiers, and a third faction that is a curious mix of Bernese exiles, and Kusans, one of the most unlikely of races to be part of a spunky rebellion against a Dhangetan status quo.

What few know, although some of the clever Dhangetans on other worlds are starting to suspect, is that Vhadrath himself is merely the junior partner of a silent power behind the "throne"; a small triumvirate of Seraean and Idacharian shadow-knights in this case, who are funneling the lion's share of the production to some other source.  It doesn't seem to be the Empire, or if it is, these shadow knights are extraordinarily discrete; most likely it is an independent power play of some kind by them themselves.  These three have also managed to spend an inordinate amount of time creating propaganda about warlocks and space wizards and psionic knights, so that all such, if they're recognized, are seen with a great deal of distrust and hatred by the populace, unless of course, they are relatively recent arrivals from off-world.  They tend to see the Arch-Tyrant as the inevitable end-state of those who meddle with things that man was not meant to know.

Although Kribblu VII is viewed by those from outside as a bizarre powder keg of a world, with all kinds of tensions, conflict and weirdness going on in the system, for the most part, its neighbors are content to let it stay that way.  The very productive shipyards of Suly look with a little bit of anxiety at the manufacturing potential of Kribblu VII as a significant economic threat (as do the smaller and more "boutique" shipyards of Lyrae VI, Jhantor and Miroon, for that matter), but since its production somehow doesn't seem to make it to the general market, and nobody knows for sure where it goes, it's a worry that they can put on the back burner.  Although in the long run, what's happening here is eve more worrisome than what isn't happening in the short run, and the world is starting to get a lot of attention from its neighbors in the Carrick Grand Marches and from the rest of the Dhangetan Cartel, who are both starting to want answers about what mysteries are happening on this planet.

Ad Astra next steps...

Looking over my map and some of the other work on my actual site for AD ASTRA, let's look at what I've got and what I'd like to have before I'm done.

I've said many times before, that I generally consider my "protagonist" peoples to be the Bernese Colonial Worlds, and I see them very vaguely as similar in some ways to the American colonies during the 1600s and 1700s.  This is somewhat vague, but close enough as a space surrogate, I suppose.  But the Bernese colonies are surrounded by a number of other nations and colonies from other nations; if you see the colonies as specifically the British colonies at a time when there were still Spanish, French, Dutch, etc. colonies in America too, if some of those nations were nations of SJW hordes, Sith lords, and worse.  Anyway, I've done the following Bernese colonies so far:

• the Bechtel Marches (3 systems)
• the Carrick Grand Marches (7 systems)

with the following still to be done.

• the Emerus Marches (5 systems)
• the Machesk Frontier (3 systems)
• the Viomium Marches (3 systems)
• Tossa (1 system)

Allied with the Bernese, but not part of them culturally or politically are the Voormellei Federation (4 systems) which has been done already, and the Tantych Kingdom (3 systems) and 3 solo systems, all of which need still to be done.

The Revanchist Colonies are more modern post-American America; the SJW hordes, basically.  They're kind of like kooky and creepy Bolsheviks, just like they actually are in real life, and there's some admittedly not so subtle metaphoring on my part in including these.  Some of the citizens are groaning in globalist slavery under these villains, which should hopefully make them more sympathetic.  Especially if they are ethnic Bernese, which some of them are.  While not the melodramatic villains of your typical space opera, in reality, these are probably actually more villainous in their intentions than even the Seraeans, who are loosely based on the Sith Lords.  I've so far only detailed the 6 worlds of the Carthen Colony, but I have three additional colonies to do still:

• the Calder Settlements (4 systems)
• the Rhyne Colony (3 systems)
• 3 1 system colonies: Liara V, Hewood and Esbrook.

The Revanchists also have their allies.  I've detailed two one-system such allies so far: Bersefels and Shoa-Shanian, but still need to detail:

• the Nhindua Equalocracy (3 systems)
• the Broone Democracy (2 systems)
• and the Gallia Confederation (4 systems)

The Seraean Imperial Colonies are the much more aggressive, "traditional" villains of the setting, and I've done a handful of their worlds so far, including the Principality of Tan Kajak (4 systems) and the Vorgan Than Viceroyalty (4 systems)  The following Imperial colonies still need work:

• the Civitas Ordenis Umraci (8 worlds; one already detailed, but it's a holdover/conversion from back when this was Star Wars + 1,000 years)
• the Kingdom of Phatoru Shdor (3 worlds)
• Moaktor Phok (5 worlds)
• the Sarkmina Duchy (2 worlds)
• 9 independent allies, most of which would be Idacharian rather than Seraean. I've detailed one of these so far, but it's also a holdover from the earlier setting.

The Cilindarean Arm is an actual polity, not a colony of another polity, and while it's not as big as the Bernese Monarch, the Revanchist Republic, or the Seraean Empire, it's bigger than most of the colonies of such in the sector combined, and half of the Arm is outside of the sector anyway.  I've identified 11 systems from this to detail, and two of them are legacy (from Star Wars originally) and therefore already done.  The Cilindareans also have a number of allies and/or clients, many of whom are worlds settled by janissaries in years past.  There are 7 single world groups of these, as well as the 4 system Takach Kingdom, all of which have not been detailed yet.

I have 16 worlds of the Dhangetan Cartel selected to detail, but 11 of them are already done.The Dhangetans are less of a normal polity and more like loosely allied city-states; united more by culture than by politics necessarily.  However, 4 of the worlds already done belong to a subset called the Galaide Worlds.

And finally, I have True Independent Systems.  I have 9 identified, and 4 are already detailed (only one of which is a legacy system, curiously.)

I've got 92 worlds to detail, which is a fairly tall order, given that I've only done so far I think 52, if I counted correctly (although 3 of those are off map and I can't really use them for anything.)

Revised Ad Astra sector map

I've made a new Ad Astra sector map.  It isn't actually different from the one I had before in terms of the data, really, but it certainly is more more attractive and aesthetically appealing, as well as hopefully at least marginally easier to use.  Maybe you remember, if you have followed at all my Ad Astra project (or likely you do not because you have not so followed), the Ad Astra system was originally devised for what was meant to be a Star Wars setting, customized by being set far in the future (kind of a reverse Old Republic.)  However, the mapping and space travel rules were much more similar to the rules from Traveller.  Therefore, my sector map is very similar to what you'd get from using Traveller.  My setting represents a swashbuckling Star Wars like space fantasy set in a pony express colonialism paradigm of Traveller, therefore.

How did I do the mapping?  Traveller assumes some randomization of star system generation, and while I modified the Traveller system significantly to have both different randomization parameters as well as considerably less jargon and technical detail that isn't very helpful for a swashbuckling space opera.  Traveller assumes a 50% density, so on average, half of all hexes on the big 1,280 hex map would have a star system in them.  I generated data on a 33.3% density, so I would have expected an average of 425 systems (I actually got 421.)  (Because of slight differences with regard to hyperdrive assumptions between Ad Astra and Traveller, that actually makes navigation potentially a bit more interesting to have slightly less dense population of stars.)  BUT!  Just because I generated a system and marked the hex as having a system doesn't mean a lot.  I did assign a political color code to each system that got a planet, but for about half of the systems, that's all that they will ever have; a hex number indicating their location, and a color code indicating their broad political affiliation or alignment.

The other half got names assigned too, mostly from a name generator for star systems.  Of this half, about another third—maybe, at most—will get an additional level of detail.  That's about 65-70 systems; I've so far done generation of details for forty-three systems.  One may ask; if that's all I'm really interested in detailing, why did I bother generating systems for the entire sector?  For context, mostly.  I was able to use clusters of same colored systems to create "nations" in the sector, but all I really need for these nations is their name and a paragraph or two of summary, and that way I can refer to them obliquely, i.e., characters can be from them, without me having to detail anything about the systems which comprise them.  As we get closer to my "protagonist" areas, I have a little bit more detail, including the names of the systems, but even then, about a third of the named systems—at the absolute most—would I ever envision having detailed system write-ups.  And detailed is a matter of some relativity, of course.  Detailed enough to be used, I suppose, but if you're really setting anything on one of these planets, you'll still have to do a lot of work on details which I won't be providing as part of this write up.

Anyway, here's the revised map.

Revisiting

I found an older post of mine about what I considered the top five songs of the 80s recently.  I don't normally like making lists, but five years or so ago when I made that, I had younger kids who always liked to see how I ranked things, so it made sense at the time.

Honestly, I'm not quite sure what I was thinking when I made it, though.  Most of what I picked, being new wave synthesizer pop music (because that was my favorite kind of music from that era) will still be OK.  Not ranked, but all in the top five then will remain: "If You Leave" by OMD, "Bizarre Love Triangle" by New Order, and "A Little Respect" by Erasure.  I think picking "Behind the Wheel" from Depeche Mode wasn't really the best choice; I'd swap out "Never Let Me Down Again."  And including "Animal" by Def Leppard because I wanted some hair rock band work was nothing more than tokenism.  Clearly, I think a-ha's "Take On Me" is a much more iconic song of the decade and deserves that slot more.  Besides, if I did have a hair band rock song on it, I wouldn't even pick that one, I don't think.  One hit wonder Autograph with "Turn Up the Radio" would be a better choice, or "Bang Your Head" by Quiet Riot.  "Livin' On a Prayer" by Bon Jovi is probably even more iconic than either, though.

I also rewatched the two episodes that are so far available for The Mandalorian again the other day, and I saw Overlord DVD's review of the first episode.  I do kind of agree with Overlord, but also kind of disagree with him.  I disagree with Overlord that hitting predictable beats of a spaghetti Western is necessarily a bad thing. I actually kinda like that they did that, actually, and while maybe it's not quintessentially heroic space opera, it's still very much one of the elements that was integral to Star Wars. I think part of Overlord DVD's complaints are that he doesn't think the spaghetti western vibe (including the music) is really appropriate for Star Wars, which I very strongly disagree with.  I do agree with him, though, that as far as spaghetti westerns go, this isn't the most exciting plot or characterization that we've seen.  If the show doesn't improve, it'll be seen as ultimately pretty forgettable.  As ODVD says, part of the context is that we're so jaded by having had bad Star Wars thrust at us that we are so happy to have something that isn't insulting and sucks that we think things that are mediocre are incredible.  But that won't last.  I liked all of the prequels and even The Force Awakens the first time I saw them too, although I was aware of the worst of their flaws.  As I saw them again, the flaws become much more obvious, and I wondered that I was even able to have the gilded view that I did watching it once.  I blame my nearly life-long love of the franchise and my desperate desire to see good space opera and fantasy which gilds my view and makes me only see the good parts the first time through.

After a while, the flaws become impossible to ignore, though.  And "after a while" usually means, "the second time I see it" if not even earlier, as I think about watching it the first time.  The prequel trilogy I now see as badly paced, badly scripted, badly cast and in some cases, badly conceived, with way too much deus ex machina and chumping of cool villains that you actually find interesting, but which Lucas then ruined.  Not a complete loss, but mostly badly crafted.  The Force Awakens is a highly derivative plot with unlikable characters who have no chemistry or charisma, a blatant Mary Sue in the form of Rey, and the pointless and needless humiliation of Han Solo just to screw with the fans.  It's actually better crafted, at least in some ways, but much more badly conceived and it much worse than the prequels because of it.

Likewise, the Clone Wars TV show isn't quite as good as I remember.  When it is good, it is, but it's really only good about half of the time.  Granted, the rest of the time it's more likely to be mediocre than actively bad, but still; it's not the franchise saver that I initially thought it was either.  Same thing for the Old Republic games: Knights of the Old Republic and Old Republic itself, of course.  While there are some elements of pure genius in them, there are also loads of really tedious, idiotic and banal crap all through them as well.

The Last Jedi I never thought was any good, even the first time I saw it.  Although I do recognize at least one or two action sequences and some visual design as not bad.  And I never thought Solo or Rogue One were anything better than OK.

Anyway, here's some comments given on the Overlord DVD video that're pretty pertinent, I think.  I liked them and agree with them, at least.

Joshua Crane
Star Wars feels like reconciliation with a cheating spouse. The suspicion will always be there.  Even when Kennedy leaves, I'll always have my shields up. 

sinistavoicez
Yes, you're jaded. I'm jaded. And it is justified. The end.

Angus Podgorny
The plan here is to lure you in with zero SJW content, and then start blasting you with woke SJW scripts toward the end of Season 1. 

Angello Hector
SafeWars: The Mandalorian
When we yearn for something new, but what we get is not too risky, but is better than most of the stuff we've been getting 

kerrick001
I think you hit the nail on the head when you say that Star Wars fans have been so abused at this point, we are just happy to see something that doesn't blatantly suck. I'm a grouchy old man. I liked it better when there was only ONE Boba Fett who was a badass bounty hunter.....not a whole race of them. I liked it when there was ONE IG-88 who was a psychopath droid.... not a whole line of "Bounty Hunter" droids. I liked it when freezing someone in carbonite took a whole room full of equipment and they didn't even know if it would work. Now Boby Fett 2.0 has the Carbonite3000 in the back of his ship......meh.. 

Editor note: there were always a whole race of supercommandos, of which Boba Fett was merely the only representative to appear on screen.  Although that's been kinda weirded out too; Lucas has clearly said it, in dialogue even, that Jango and Boba Fett were not actually Mandalorians, even though they had Mandalorian armor.  Sorry; fanboy nitpick...

Joel Gawne
"The Mandalorian" is the Star Wars equivalent of Imperial Rations.  Your overlords recommend that you take it, because its all you're getting this year. 

Intel Kore
A young, innocent boy was separated from his family at the US-Mexico border. He went on to become The Mandalorian. If there was a wall we'd never see this show! 

RobotShlomo
I can't help but think we're being set up for a bait and switch.

The Mandalorian

Although I wasn't a seriously early adopter, i.e., right away, I did download the Disney+ app to our PS4 (I don't have a Roku, and my Smart TV isn't that smart; if I can add new apps to it, I don't know how to yet.)  Yesterday, my oldest son prevailed on my wife to sign up for an account too (I personally would have been happy waiting until the Christmas holiday, or more around there).  Because he's going through some headwinds which makes my wife feel bad, she sprung for the account (the free trial is only a week long.)

Disney+ is not releasing stuff the same way that, say, Netflix or Amazon Prime is releasing their material.  You can't binge watch the Mandalorian (at least not yet) because they're releasing one episode a week from now to the end of the year. (Why I was OK with waiting until the Christmas holiday to sign up, where I could binge watch the show while off of work.)  But, we got our account on Sunday afternoon, so my youngest son and I watched the first two episodes, which are the only available so far.  So, what's the good, the bad and the ugly on this show so far?

The Good
Luckily, for the most part, the show really embraces the good.  It eschews most of the nonsense that has suffused Star Wars for quite some time, and just attempts to be a fringer story; basically, a spaghetti western set in space.  The title character, who's name and face is not revealed (although he's played by Pedro Pascal and we know what he looks like, and Pedro slipped he name of Din Jaron (sic?) out in an interview at one point.  This is kind of on purpose, I'm sure—to make him like the Clint Eastwood character of the spaghetti westerns, except even one further, because he's wearing a helmet that looks like a cross between a Spartan style Corinthian helmet and a crusader's great helm with a mirrored shade covering the entire t-visor.  The plot is quite straitforward (so far), much like a spaghetti western dragged out into a 10 or so episode miniseries would be.  The character says very little, as expected given the archetype that he's emulating, but there's more subtle characterization going on than you'd expect.  The plot is also quite straightforward so far, and heavily features action that's well conceived and choreographed.  While the main character is an iconic tough guy, he hardly seems to be invincible; he's no Mary Sue, and he is quite frankly, in over his head at some points, much as Clint Eastwood seems to be in A Fistful of Dollars.

Some of this characterization is going on with the supporting cast, though—IG-11, the bounty droid who constantly wants to initiate his self-destruct sequence, or the Nick Nolte voiced ugnaught character Kuiil (I have spoken!)

The show does not (as yet) focus on the big and the bad in Star Wars.  There are a few stormtroopers featured very early on in the first chapter, but they are obviously a remnant of the Imperial defeat; their armor is battered and dirty, and they hang around as a small squad with some kind of officer or nobleman or some such.  There aren't any space-battles at all, yet.  What there is is desolate wilderness frontier planets, much like Tatooine, that are sparsely inhabited by a rather rough lot of mostly aliens and tough guys.  I'd like to see this expand a bit more, but I honestly have little idea where the storyline is going so far, which is kind of interesting.

There is some CGI, of course, but the show features relatively low budget practical effects.  This was deliberate, both to keep the budget manageable, and to get that original Star Wars movie feel to it, and it looks and works absolutely great.  High praise indeed for the look of the show so far.  The music is also unusual; it doesn't sound anything like Star Wars.  It has a similar kind of vibe as the Morricone spaghetti western soundtracks without actually sounding like them, if that makes any sense (if not, go check out the soundtracks on Youtube and listen to them.)

Despite the very early phase that we are in, and the fact that I don't really know much about what the setting is trying to show me, or where the plot is going, I'm so far very impressed with the show.  It's much more personal than I'd have thought, but if it remains that way, I won't complain, and if it (as is much more likely) starts to broaden the scope a bit, introduce more characters and tell us more about the setting and how this ties (assuming that it does, and hints from some of the creators suggest that it will at least give us some Easter eggs to this effect) the fall of the Empire to the rise of the First Order.  While I don't really care much about the First Order or anything else going on in the sequel trilogy, nor am I likely to, some hints at the larger setting would not at all be unwelcome here.  Considering that Mandalorians featured not insignificantly in the Clone Wars and Rebels shows that took place between the prequels and the original trilogy, telling us more about what's going on with the Mandalorians themselves wouldn't be unwelcome at all either.

Is it so good that it makes up for the spit in the eye that is the sequel trilogy?  No, of course not, which is also why I think tying it too closely to that dumpster fire is a bad idea.  It would be theoretically possible, although probably quite beyond the abilities of the morons in charge at LucasFilm and Disney, to have separate Star Wars brands within the greater Star Wars umbrella, and keeping the Mandalorian somewhat separate would be a good idea, though.

The Bad
As I said, so far, the series is a bit sparse.  We don't know a lot about the characters.  We don't know much about the setting.  We don't know much about even the plot.  There's a series of action sequences loosely tied together so far, and that's about as far as it goes.  To be fair, it suggests and maybe implies what's to come, but so far, it hasn't come, and it may not.  This isn't so much a complaint as an observation that the series needs to grow, I think, from the adventures of one guy wandering around in a mostly depopulated frontier fighting jawas, a handful of random outlaws, and dangerous wildlife.  That can only be interesting for so long before it gets tired.  Although, it is a great way to start a saga.  And the more this keeps itself somewhat separated from the comings and goings of the "great saga" of the entire galaxy, the better it will be.

The Ugly
I remain very guarded about the appearance of social justice nonsense in this show.  Even writer and creator Jon Favreau has hinted at coming political/social nonsense in the show.  Luckily, what we do have so far is fairly muted, and something so ingrained in us by Hollywood that we hardly notice it anymore, even though it is both nonsensical and in fact quite hateful.  The first is the presence of the lady Mandalorian blacksmith.  We have been taught for so long that women can be just as tough as men that many of us, especially if you've never actually played any co-ed sports, might actually think that the notion of a woman blacksmith, or a woman in a traditionally male role in general, is not weird and anti-science and anti-biological, so it goes unnoticed.

It might also not be something that most people notice that there aren't any truly American characters of any note yet in the show.  Pedro Pascal is a Chilean, who's family were Allende communists who fled Chile just in case they got a helicopter tour from Pinochet's regime, which suggests that they were thick in the corruption of the Chilean government of the mid-70s.  The Imperials who give him his assignment are played by an Iranian (who's character is named Pershing!) and a German with a very distinctive accent, Werner Herzog.

The exception is Carl Weathers making what is almost (so far) a cameo as the connection between the bounty hunters guild and the Imperial remnants.  Although "American" is a label that is worn somewhat uncomfortably at best, and rejected outright at worst by the African population within America.  They are very clear that they are a nation unto themselves with their own culture, society, values and everything else that makes a nation what it is that are completely separate from that of the Americans who founded, for example, the Constitution, or who conquered the West, which is more relevant to this show.  I'm inclined to take them at their word and not count them as Americans proper, but as African-Americans; a completely different nation that is only called American by virtue of geography, not by any relationship of note with the American nation.  So I don't count Carl Weathers as an American in this context.  This is particularly ironic; not only is the Western—which this show clearly is—such an American genre, but also the ironic fact that the Mandalorians are Nordic blond people according to the Clone Wars, who even have Finnish names of one of their planets (Kalevala).  (Of course, they do also refer to the title character here as a Foundling, which suggests that he was an adopted member of a clan rather than an ethnic Mandalorian.)  The Rebels show seemed to try really hard to undo this with Sabine's obviously Asian character, but honestly, I haven't watched that in its entirety, and don't know much about what it says about the culture, other than that the "bad guy" Mandalorians seem to be all white men.  In my opinion, it's clearly LucasFilm trying to go a different way than George Lucas outlined anyway, probably to restore as much as possible of EU traditions.

The cultural appropriation of what is so iconically and irrevocably American as the Western and refusing to cast it with Americans is an insult that, sadly, we have become very used to, but that doesn't make it any less insulting or ridiculous.  Keep in mind that Hollywood is almost completely controlled by Fake Americans who in fact hate America, its culture, its society, etc..  They desire only its money, and they want to get it by trying to teach Americans to hate their own identity and see themselves as globalist slaves.  But that is a very behind the scenes kind of hatred that can only be somewhat shown given the fact that the show is what it is.  However, knowing that this is lurking behind the scenes has me waiting for the other shoe to drop on this show.  I hope that it doesn't, but I have a very hard time believing that it won't.  Disney is too fundamentally evil of an entity to long tolerate something that Americans actually enjoy.

The Great Star Wars mistake

I suspect that this theory is likely.  Rian Johnson is a major tool, but it's too much to give him credit for ruining Star Wars.  He did so with the full blessing and collusion of Jar Jar Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy, and even Bob Iger, for that matter.

The Force is female, indeed.  No place for white men anymore a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.



Despite misgivings, I went with my wife to see Last Christmas the other day.  It's not a good movie, and I don't recommend it, but it does manage to settle on a good message after farting around for more than half the movie.  That's not worth watching it, though—the main character is completely unlikable, and the movie is insulting in most respects to its audience.  The worst part, the part that stood out to me the most, was a scene where the movie made it clear that there is no place for British men in Britain; the future belongs to interracial lesbian immigrants.

Unreal.  The evil of the SJWs knows no bounds.

(Off schedule) Friday Art Attack

A Superman redesign concept; darker and more futuristic and alien.

A Styracosaurian ceratopsian.  I can't keep track of every described new dinosaur, but I can't find that this is a real one at all.

The murder of Julius Caesar.

Fantasy landscape.

Rome landscape.

Ken Kelly and Conan on a book cover.

Another great fantasy landscape.

The King in Yellow.

Some Star Wars fan art.

A great digital model of a space ship.

Depeche Mode Rankings Podcast Episode: 0 — Establishing Context

https://anchor.fm/joshua-dyal/episodes/Episode-0-Giving-the-Depeche-Mode-reviews-context-e8rj6g

An hour and a half of me talking into my phone while sitting in my car about Depeche Mode in preparation for the detailed, annotated album rankings.  This episode is all about establishing some context before I rank them, about me, about the band, about its history, about my musical tastes, etc.

If you have any interest at all in listening to the rankings (I've recorded two, and they are both over half an hour each.  Sigh.  I'll get those annotated review podcasts out soon, but first; the context...

I've also added the first two reviews; album 14 of 14 and 13 of 14, by my ranking.  I'm not going to continue to post on the blog everytime I add an episode of the podcast review, but I did put a page link to the Depeche Mode reviews over there along the top row, and I'll make sure and update there when new episodes are available.  This way, it'll keep my gaming blog from getting too gummed upw with talk about Depeche Mode (too late!) although that's where I'm working right now, so the blog posts will probably just happen a little less frequently until this project is complete.

Depeche Mode Five Questions: Spirit

I'll do a belated Friday Art Attack on Monday, I think (my schedule looks hopefully light, but today's has not been.)  But first, let me get a bit closer to my wrap-up review of Depeche Mode and their career.  I'm also reading the book Stripped by Jonathan Miller.  It was published a while ago, so it came out about in time to coincide with the release of Exciter nearly twenty years ago now, and obviously there's more to say about them in the years since, but it also gives some behind the scenes information that as far as I know can't be had anywhere else.  Between reading Stripped and watching the documentaries that came out with the deluxe edition remastered re-releases, that's probably the best way to get the "Depeche Mode story", as much as can be gotten without actually sitting down with the band members yourself, getting them drunk, and getting them to talk about the good old days.  Going through this process has had me fine-tuning the scores and rankings just a bit as I've done this; I've found that some albums that I'd kinda slagged off as uninteresting were perhaps a tad unappreciated, and at least once or twice I had the opposite reaction too.

Now that I'm reviewing and rating the last album by the band, I'll be ready go post the finalized rankings soon, as well as give a bigger, broader, retrospective.  I'm actually thinking about recording rather than writing this, though—probably with my voice recorder app on my phone, and then loading it up to YouTube or something and talking about DM there.  That will be a lengthy (because I missed my calling in life; I should have been a lecturing professor.  Plus, I love the sound of my own voice) summary, and I rather like the idea of rambling about it in vocal form rather than typing.  It'll be different, but what can I say?  I've had a lot of podcasts and youtube casts on Depeche Mode going on in the background these last few weeks; in fact, it's specifically a review series by Vaughn George on his channel that got me started on this as well.

I said earlier at one point that one of the things Depeche Mode was like to me personally could be encapsulated by the metaphor of some old girlfriend that you had and you were crazy in love with, but whom you grew apart from, eventually having to break up, and because of nostalgia or whatever, you still occasionally check in on Facebook or whatever to see what she's up to only to be amazed at how different you've become in the years since.  Of course, the reality is that those differences were likely always there, and you just didn't see them because you focused on the things that you did have in common when you were living high and loving life with each other.

Depeche Mode is very different from my ideal in a number of key elements: 1) they're often very insulting to my identity, contemptuous of religion and Christianity, and resentful of some supposed "oppression" that they've suffered at their hands comes through between the lines.  It sounds like, after reading Stripped as far as I have, that a big part of this was Martin Gore being a hopeless and hapless beta all his life, who had a ball-buster girlfriend early on in high school and the first couple of years of his career.  Once he left her and ran off with some skanky German girl, he did a complete about face, declared himself an atheist, cross-dressing, and dressing like he was in the S&M scene (although whether he really truly was in that scene or not is, I suppose, not really confirmed.)  For whatever reason, this hasn't bothered me too much in the past, both because the band themselves hinted at a somewhat allegorical use of the sex and religion metaphors in their music, and I was only too eager to accept that apologia. But that's the definition of passive-aggressive, isn't it?  They insult you and then when you call them out, pretend like that's not really what they meant, and you're misinterpreting them, and somehow they're the victim after all.  I think this is probably hard-coded with Gore's personality, at least.  Maybe some of the others too, but who really knows, because Gore does almost all of the song-writing.  Gahan's foray into the task hasn't given us nearly as much to work with, plus it's less personally revealing in most respects. 2) I don't like Depeche Mode because I cultishly follow them personally; I'm a huge fan of electronic music and a bit of pessimistic, sarcastic personality who naturally gravitated to the darker and more bleak and melancholy, and at exactly the right time for me to get into music, Depeche Mode was carving out their own niche that was perfectly suited to me.  They've, however, moved in different directions with both their sound and even some of their themes over the years.  This has had me feeling a bit left behind, and I've turned to other types of music, or looked at the better Depeche Mode imitators over the years.  As an aside, none of them are as good as Depeche Mode during their peak, but some—De/Vision, Camouflage, Red Flag, and Mesh in particular—are still very credible, and certainly they're putting out stuff that I like better than what DM themselves are doing lately.  The worst part of this is the addition of all kinds of new elements that take them away from their slick, dark, European electronic pop music roots; lots of really noisy rock, gospel, jazz or whatever influences dilute what Depeche Mode so unique and amazing in the first place.  3) Depeche Mode feels tired and old lately.  When they veer too far from their sound, their fans lose interest.  But when they stay too close to it, they seem to get tired and bored themselves, I suspect.  Certainly that's the sound, I think.

In that light, Spirit is very much a part of the four album trajectory that started after Exciter; Playing the Angel was a deliberate "back to roots" sounding album, but they've gotten more tired and filler-sounding every album since then.  Most of what I said for Sounds of the Universe or Delta Machine applies to Spirit as well; there's no moments of stand-out brilliance, such as Wrong or Oh Well.

A lot of people have talked about liking Cover Me, but I think it's tired sounding myself and doesn't do much for me.  It's not bad, but if that's the stand-out track, that's not saying much.  So Much Love is the one that tries to be accessible in a more traditional way, as do the first two tracks, Going Backwards and Where's the Revolution.  Eternal is the obligatory terrible Martin Gore ballad that nobody ever likes, but which he keeps doing.  And for an unusual reason, he did another one and ended the album with it on Fail.

So, it's about the same level as Delta Machine, really.  If I didn't speak English and it were just about the music, I'd probably rank it just a tad higher; maybe about the same level as Sounds of the Universe (although noting that lacking anything as good as Wrong would put it behind it still.)  In fact, I initially had done so, because I had listened to it in the background without really paying attention to the songs that closely, and certainly not to the lyrics.  However, of course, I do speak English.  This is the album where Depeche Mode tried to apply the "get woke go broke" mantra and stepped up their low grade passive-aggressive attacks on Western civilization in favor of hitting you over the head with it.  Appalled that the people of the Anglosphere would actually attempt, even as weakly and half-heartedly as they did, to assert their self-interest in their own countries by voting for Brexit and electing Trump, the themes in the songs are about as subtle as they were in The Last Jedi and just as welcome.  This was a step too far, and I am genuinely kinda pissed off about it.  Shut up, Martin.  Nobody cares what you think about politics.  All of you entertainment types are too stupid and uneducated about anything substantial to be able to say anything about social or political topics without sounding like morons, as well as being too psychologically, emotionally and mentally broken to have any reason to think that any serious person should listen to you anyway.  Seriously; knock it off.  Your job is the entertainer.  You're the court jester.  The musician.  Nobody wants to have their entertainment turn into a smug, holier-than-thou lecture about lunatic left-wing politics by people who are too lacking in self-awareness to realize their own projection and emotional and mental crippling flaws anyway—which I'll point out that by watching the documentaries and reading the Stripped book are now kinda public knowledge after all (not to spoil anything.)

In any case, this get woke go broke attitude drops Spirit below Delta Machine in my estimation; it's the second worst DM album, with only Exciter standing behind it.  I just got it recently; after the last two albums before this had disappointed me I wasn't in a big hurry to rush out and get more of the same, and the Where's the Revolution track on youtube didn't exactly thrill me either or cause me to reevaluate that approach.  So I've heard it the very least of all of the Depeche Mode albums so far.  As more time goes by, will I like it better and get over the stupid political posturing and virtue-signaling, or will more time only cause that to piss me off even more to the point where I like this album the least?  I suspect the latter, but we'll see.

As noted; the best songs are probably... I dunno.  Going Backwards, if you can ignore the words, and Cover Me is OK.  I'm not sure if Fail or Eternal is worse, but they're both terrible.  Three out of ten.

Depeche Mode Five Questions: Delta Machine

After being somewhat enchanted by the song Precious and the entire Playing the Angel album, including the great concert experience I had at the Palace (where LeBron had recently thrown a chair at some fan, prompting a bunch of jokes about getting into a brawl with Dave Gahan.  Needless to say, nobody threw a drink cup at Gahan, and he didn't hit anyone with a chair either.  Would've been really awesome if that had happened, though...) I was a bit disappointed at first by the fact that the Sound of the Universe wasn't very accessible other than the brilliant track Wrong.  I did pick up Sounds of the Universe fairly quickly, although I admit I didn't listen to it all that often, and overall, I'd still rate it as one of the lesser DM albums; a kind of tired retread of the "golden years" of the early 90s, which as you may recall, weren't the golden years of DM in my book (which would rather be the half decade earlier.)  So, although not terrible, it wasn't really one that I was super excited about either, and the "revival" if you will that I went through with DM because of Playing the Angel was stalling out.  And then, of course, a few years later (2013) Delta Machine came out. (►ELTA ▲▲ACHINE?) The bluesy alternative rock band with a bit of a synthesizer new wave legacy continued in the same vein; Dave Gahan went even further into that growly Las Vegas voice, and the music followed his lead (he wrote, again, three tracks on the album. although he now had a different musical partner; remember that Dave is a lyricist on the songs he's credited with only, not a musician.  He's actually pretty upfront that he doesn't really know what he's doing musically; he just has the right personality and voice to be the frontman DM needed.)

In general, given that I've talked about the trends a lot in the other reviews I've done, I'm not sure what else to talk about except this album specifically.  I'd say that it's definitely in the same vein as the last two, but the weakest of that three album series.  Whereas the smoothness; the echoes of the polished European synthpop outfit that were still present on Violator were carried forward to some degree on the other two albums, this one went with a more overtly Songs of Faith and Devotion vibe; a bit scuzzier, growlier, and dirtier sounding.  I never really liked too much of that, so bringing it even more to the forefront again isn't a good move towards getting me enthused, if nothing else.  The gospel wasn't brought back, but somehow this doesn't sound like a polished European synthesizer new wave act at all; it's almost as if Depeche Mode were trying to channel just a touch of Johnny Cash, or something, except the songs weren't generally as good.  Again; this doesn't mean that the album is terrible; even Exciter has some merit, after all, and this album is better than Exciter (although less so than it should have been.)  But most of the songs are filler, and they just aren't the kind of stuff that fits with the brand of DM very well.  Granted, that doesn't mean that they're terribly out of place, because unfortunately, over the last couple of decades, they've released several albums that don't sound like their brand (or rather, I suppose that the brand changed on me too much for me to recognize it anymore) and they've released plenty of filler tracks too.  I continue to maintain that the likely explanation is that Martin Gore is himself kinda tired and bored with writing this stuff; he can still crank it out, but it just doesn't have the genius that it used to.

Curiously, where Sounds of the Universe started out (relatively) strong and kinda faded into silliness and self-parody at the end, Delta Machine starts off relatively weak and gives a bunch of tracks that sound like DM trying to figure out who they were going to be this year, but wrapped it up a bit better.  Or maybe I'm just trying to say that the best two songs on the album are within the last three.

The worst song on the album is probably Slow, which sounds like one of the weird awkward Martin Gore ballads that even Gore got tired of and let Dave sing.  It's also emblematic of why I don't like Depeche Mode nearly as much as I used to.  I'm not a Depeche Mode cultist, as I've said before—I was a fan of polished European synthesizer music, and Depeche Mode literally created their own niche within that form as moody, dark, industrial yet also poppy, poppy yet also serious and artistic, etc.  Slow isn't an electronic music song at all.  Oh, sure; they do eventually play something on a keyboard before they're done, but it's a bit, broad, hoaky, "soulful" country-sounding song, if country were Johnny Cash trying to write some of the less memorable of the Depeche Mode oeuvre of songs.  The actual terrible Martin Gore song is The Child Inside.  It's a contender for worst song too, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone by now, but for some reason it doesn't bother me quite as much as Slow does.  Soft Touch/Raw Nerve is another one that kind of sounds like a parody of a Depeche Mode song; the kind of Dead of Night for Delta Machine.  Eagh.

Curiously, and for the first time, the Gahan songs are some of the best songs this time out; Broken and Should Be Higher join Gore's Soothe My Soul as among the better songs on the album.  Should Be Higher and Soothe My Soul were also two of the three singles released; I didn't nearly as much like Heaven, the lead single from the album and an earlier appearing track.  Alone is another decent track which wouldn't necessarily be one of the better tracks from an album like Playing the Angel, but stands out from this collection.  And the album ends weirdly; the cowboy sounding Goodbye (or wanting to sound cowboy, anyway; Martin Gore sure isn't a cowboy, so it doesn't quite work; like a cowboy trying to cover a weird European song written by someone who's only exposure to the wilderness was in a carefully controlled photo shoot situation) just is another out of place song that wandered in from another section entirely of the record store.

There's also four bonus and/or b-side songs from this era, but most of them aren't very good either; only All That's Mine is really worth bothering with.  Depeche Mode doesn't see themselves as a b-sides band; y'know, one of those bands that has great b-sides that make collecting the singles important because it's the only way to get the b-sides (Pro tip: classic Depeche Mode soundalike band Mesh have GREAT b-sides.  In particular check out the tracks Let Them Crush Us and From This Height, both from 2002.)  That said, there are some really good Depeche Mode b-sides here and there, and other non-album tracks, like a handful of non-album singles releases, so one can have hoped for better this time around.

All in all, this is probably the weakest DM album other than Exciter.  The folksy pseudo-country sound just doesn't suit them at all, and it serves to effectively mute (no pun intended) the classic DM voice.  It just feels like it doesn't know what it wants to be.  More grist for my theory that Depeche Mode is a bit tired of writing the same kinds of albums that made them famous, but sadly, every time they veer very far from that formula, they produce something that is just confusing and weird.  Maybe there are a few musical artists who are able to play successfully "outside of their lane"; I think specifically here of guys like Danny Elfman, who after being frontman and main man for that matter of Oingo Boingo went on to write symphonic film scores, where he's had a lot of success and where he appears to be quite talented.  When I was a kid, Bo Jackson was famous for being named an All-Star in two sports, the only person ever to have done so and probably the only one who ever will.

But Depeche Mode works best when they stay in their lane.  Three stars.

Depeche Mode Five Questions: Sounds of the Universe

2009's Sounds of the Universe was the first album after Playing the Angel, which means that we're now well into a new phase in Depeche Mode's history; one where they're a bit less experimental, and making sure that they hit the beats that their fans expect.  I'm surprised, or maybe not, that what I see now starting on this album, is attempting to retread the same place as Playing the Angel, but maybe a bit more tired and bored.  It has a similar sound to Angel, but overall, the song quality just isn't as good.  There's way too many filler and mediocre tracks, and way too few honestly good ones.

To be fair, there are a lot of tracks from this era, though.  The album itself has thirteen normal tracks, and there are five b-sides or bonus tracks that are also associated with the album, and appear on "complete" versions of it, such as the Deluxe boxed set version.  (It also has some "demo" stuff and more that are older tracks repackaged in different versions.  The Deluxe boxed set really is overkill.)

In that vein, the album doesn't offer much that's genuinely new.  The sounds are now well known.  Dave's Las Vegas vocals are now no longer something worth remarking on.  Although I hadn't listened to this in quite some time, that was my impression before, and listening to it a couple times again in advance of writing this review has convinced me that that's still true.  I maybe shouldn't speak too much until I've had a chance to do the same for Delta Machine and Spirit, but both of those gave me the same impression.  Change and innovation were tamped down considerably in order to provide the fans what Depeche Mode decided, somewhere between Exciter and Playing the Angel, that they wanted.

Now don't get me wrong.  That's not a complaint.  In fact, let me address at this point two separate, yet related and widespread fallacies.  The first is that innovation is automatically good.  It's perfectly possible to innovate in ways that are really stupid.  Maybe, for instance, one could say it was really innovative for Depeche Mode to integrate lots of polka influences in their sound.  I doubt that this would appeal to much of anyone, or make anyone happy.  One could reasonably make the case that that would be really stupid, in fact. Not because polka is stupid, but because it just has absolutely nothing in common with Depeche Mode's sound, and adding it to Depeche Mode's sound would be too far out of alignment with expectations to likely be a good idea.  (I would have used the example of gospel music here instead of polka, but... y'know.  Depeche Mode actually did that, sadly.)  So it's not a complaint that Depeche Mode recognizes what their brand has become and are wary of deviating too much from that at the risk of alienating fans and confusing everyone else.  My personal belief is that this is kind of what happened with Exciter, and DM recognized it, and made a course correction with the latest and current phase, which includes Playing the Angel and all subsequent albums so far.

The second related fallacy is that a true fan likes and appreciates everything that a band does, even if they do add polka and gospel to their slick European synthesizer new wave music.  Or, a slight variation on that, is that if the fans don't, then the fans are like Kathy Bates from Misery, trying to lock Depeche Mode up and forcing them to retread Black Celebration and Music for the Masses forever.  I would think that either of these variations on the same theme shouldn't need debunking; I'm a Depeche Mode fan, not a Depeche Mode cultist.  But sadly, it does need specific debunking, because I hear that kind of crap all the time.  The reality, of course, is that a band like Depeche Mode can produce whatever music that they want to produce, or even throw in the towel and produce nature documentaries about meerkats instead of music for all I care.  Nobody is stopping them from expressing their artistic vision however they please.  But the flipside to that is that the fans can react to this artistic vision however they please.  If I don't like everything Depeche Mode does, that doesn't make me a heretic to the Depeche Mode cult, it just makes me a normal person who has a spectrum of taste that DM (or anyone else, for that matter) may or may not hit with everything that they produce.  And if I don't like certain elements of their oeuvre as much as I do others, I mean, honestly, what normal, healthy person would expect anything other than that?

However, the juxtaposition of attempting make something that the band is pleased with and something that the fans are pleased with, as people change, grow, evolve, etc., can be a tricky balance.  At some point, every entertainer will usually find that they are locked into a rather narrower spectrum than maybe they'd like, because if they deviate too much from that, they'll lose the majority of their fans.  But this can mean that the band themselves gets tired or bored or at least unenthused about doing the same thing again and again.  And even if they don't, even the fans themselves, ironically, will start to lose that giddy enthusiasm; how many years can a fan really be excited about another DM release that'll sound pretty similar to the last several DM releases, for example?  It's a trap that I'm not sure that I see any real way out of other than to recognize it and quit while you're at the top of your game, maybe reinventing yourself with a different brand name if you want to experiment in a different kind of sound.  So all of this discussion about this (and the next two) albums needs to be filtered through that lens.  I personally am a little bit bored with the sound that Depeche Mode is doing right now, but at the same time, I'd hate for them to deviate so much from it that I couldn't even recognize what the heck they're doing anymore.  Also, I suspect that the loss of Alan Wilder as well as just the years and number of songs that they've done means that the quality will gradually go slightly downhill; the copy of a copy of a copy phenomena.

So I've decided that one needs to temper ones expectations of a band with the longevity of Depeche Mode.  The two biggest problems I have with them are 1) the sound that they're replicating as best as they can, more or less, is the Songs of Faith and Devotion (without the gospel) and Violator era, which is not my favorite era of theirs anyway, and 2) both the band and I are probably honestly a little tired of treading this same stretch of water by now, which means that there are diminishing returns for the release of new material.

All that said, this isn't meant to completely damn the album to either irrelevance or disappointment.  Sure, there aren't that many tracks that I really love from the era, but few of them are actively terrible, and there are at least two brilliant songs from this album (or its associated bonus tracks); notably Wrong and Oh Well, and Fragile Tension is also quite good.  Wrong and Oh Well are among the standout tracks crossing multiple decades, so the album wouldn't be a complete loss even if that was all that was any good on it.  Most of the rest of the tracks are serviceable, if a bit forgettable, and the Gahan songs this time around are among the most forgettable—although again, not terrible.  In Sympathy and Perfect I also think are better than average.

Jezebel is the closest thing to the terrible Martin Gore ballad, although it's both better and yet worse than most.  It doesn't sound as bad, but Jezebel and Corrupt both have lyrics and themes that are so ridiculous that they sound like parodies of Depeche Mode songs rather than actual Depeche Mode songs.  Seriously; what?!  Maybe the bonus track The Sun the Moon and the Stars is "really" the terrible Martin Gore ballad from this collection.  Spacewalk is a really strange instrumental.  I try not to bag on instrumentals too much, because they're already handicapped to some degree as it is, but this one definitely should have been a b-side, and Oh Well should have replaced it on the album; it would have greatly improved the overall album to have had Oh Well on it.

A few ancillary observations.  The band thought the cover art for Speak & Spell and even moreso Black Celebration were weird and they didn't like them; then again, this pick up sticks absurd cover somehow made the cut, and any of the weirdest covers previously are better than this one.  Also, the music videos from this era were interesting; Wrong's is actually kind of fascinating to watch in a weird way, but the Hole to Feed was bagged on—deservedly so—by pretty much everyone, as near as I can tell.  It's like a case study of what Anonymous Conservative says about r-selected versus K-selected people and their disgust factor; at best, the video is off-putting, while in reality, it's mostly just kind of an endurance challenge of weird grossness that nobody wants to see.

To be fair, that's not really an issue unless you go out of your way to watch the video, which I certainly recommend that you not do, though.  The album cover; well, you just have live with that, but even then, it could be considerably worse.

Overall, I give this album a score of four.  It's hardly one of the top tier DM albums, in general sounding kind of bland and tired, but at least giving us the brilliant Oh Well and Wrong tracks, and not actively offending us too much except by how laughably unserious Jezebel and Corrupt are.  I'm not sure that that's entirely fair; I think Wrong is better than almost anything on Songs (except maybe In Your Room) and it doesn't have Condemnation or Get Right With Me to bring it down, and yet I'm ranking it one point lower than Songs.  Is that a balanced fair assessment?  I'm not sure, except to point out that the context isn't quite the same either.  Songs is the album that followed Violator, and it was still a new direction for DM, whereas by now, Sounds is... well, it's been done already, and it's just older and more tired.  I can't remove over fifteen years of context from my evaluation of the two albums.  Other than Exciter, this is the lowest score I've given so far to a DM album.  But some album had to be here, otherwise there's no point in reviewing them if there's no criticality, and if I'm planning on ranking them, I need to put them in context with each other.  I guess I'm just suggesting that the album isn't really quite as bad as the score would seem to indicate, though.  I don't mind listening to it, although I don't get excited about doing so either; reviewing it a couple of times so I could write this wasn't unpleasant.  But overall, this album will rank as one of the more forgettable ones.