Hugh Perkins

Dark Angel is I feel ultimately hot. I love her face, and the calm way she approaches I feel many situations, she doesn’t seem to get flustered, even in the face of almost-certain death.

And, unlike to my mind Steven Segal, she doesn’t seem to me to be particularly arrogant, or horrible. She seems to me to be nice to her friends, and to people generally.

I feel she is a departure somewhat from my classic hero-model, because she is not I feel always perfectly ‘nice’ to others. Is this a good thing and why she is successful, or is this a weak-point of the series and why it only has a couple of seasons? Actually I don’t know how many season there are, but I don’t think it is as successful as Prison Break?

I feel Dark Angel’s actions are awesome, very hero-like. I feel her words are often quite caustic, which is fine, but a little off-putting to me at first. I think after a while I start to feel that her acid words are an attempt to cover up an underlying passion to help people and be nice to people.

The plot itself is I feel a league away from the detailed intricate web of suspense that I feel is Prison Break. Still there are moments when I’m not sure what will happen, although I can’t say I’m particularly in suspense.

I really enjoy watching Jessica Alba playing Dark Angel

I started to watch 24 Hours, Season 7. I thought the first four or five seasons were awesome, and I needed a break from Prison Break, which I was starting to be able to predict with more accuracy than was interesting to me.

I didn’t get very far with 24 Hours, Season 7 though. I felt that on the one hand there was an awful lot of what I felt to be very transparent propaganda, and on the other hand I felt the plot seemed to repeat earlier plots. The whole ‘we captured the bad guy, but he turned out to be the good guy undercover’ thing.

So I stopped watching 24 Hours, and started watching Dark Angel instead.

I’ve got about half-way through season two of Prison Break. I’m really enjoying it. It is really well done I feel.

I watched the first half of ‘Knowing’, with Nicholas Cage, yesterday. I couldn’t watch, it was so tediously, unconvincingly done, so dull and boring, and single-threaded, I felt, compared to Prison Break.

Knowing….

• I felt one cannot have precise figures for the number of people who die in an accident involving thousands:
  • what if someone dies the next day from the flu, with injuries, does that count as a death from the accident?
    • what if they die two weeks later from the flu?
    • two months?
    • -> very grey area
  • difficulty knowing who is in the area
    • homeless people
    • people with no friends and family
    • illegal immigrants
• I don’t really give a shit about catastrophes since so few people die in them collectively per year
  • 4,000 people die every month, from car crashes alone, in United States alone
  • I don’t find any fear from the catastrophes, since it affects strangers
  • when we see a catastrophe, I feel the emotion we really feel is not, oh its so sad, all those people died, but: that could have happened to us!
  • is I feel why I feel we are unaffected emotionally by millions dieing in Africa
  • but as a rule I feel we don’t really care too much about catastrophes, unless they affect us personally (I know, I know, they’re great on the media, but still, this is a film, unless it affects the hero personally, I don’t really care too much)
• idiot plot: the hero, the woman, they are I feel idiots, and the plot only works because they are
  • when the hero first meets the woman he says ‘does your daughter have gifts?’. Who says that? Only someone who doesn’t know how to communicate, I feel, but the guy is a teacher!
  • even though this is I feel a crazy thing to say, that the woman reacts so strongly and insanely is I feel a bit of an idiot plot in itself
  • I feel, this is just there to try to add interest to what is otherwise I feel a pretty dull plot…
• there is only a single plot, no subplots, if one discounts what I feel is the idiot plot interaction between the ‘hero’ and his new girlfriend
• I thought it was boring as hell

The good news is, it means that most writers are not as talented as the guy who wrote Prison Break so maybe maybe if I can write stuff that approaches Prison Break stuff I have a chance Unlikely I know, but I have a hope, a dream, which is all a man needs, in order to live, I think?

Right, moving onto Prison Break…

No-one is an idiot I feel. Everything feels like a natural consequence… and yet things entangle in a really interesting way.

How does one plan such a story? From the consequences figure out the actions? From the actions figure out the consequences? How does one express such a plan in hard-copy form? A graph? Free-form writing? Brain diagram? Time-and-space diagram? A little of all?

It’s so well done I feel!

It seems to be more important to have lots of challenges for the hero, than that all challenges are resolved by him alone. Just make life difficult for him, and we are kept constantly in suspense, constantly wondering! And if someone else helps the hero: we like that! And it surprises us.

Right: major observation, I feel. In a book, I really hate it when the story jumps from one character to another. I get sucked into following this character, and when it jumps, I have to spend a few pages getting into the other character, the other story.

In extreme cases, I tend to just skip chapters involving the second or third hero, read through the book as the first hero, then go back and read the chapters involving the second hero, and so on.

For example, in at least one of the HitchHikers Guide to the Galazy series, it jumps around between Ford Prefect and the guy from earth, so I just read through as the guy from earth, then read through the Ford Prefect bits later.

Now, in Prison Break, an audiovisual experience, extravaganza, it seems jumping from character to character is not an issue. Perhaps the extra bandwidth of audiovisual makes this easy for my brain? Perhaps Prison Break is really well done? Jumping around I feel adds to the interest because there is so much going on, I don’t mind it at all, and it’s really well done I feel.

Point to think about: is the jumping around easier because it is audiovisual, or is there something about the way it is done in Prison Break that makes it easy on us?

Maybe it is because everything is seen from the eyes of the hero to start with, and everyone is linked with him first, so when it jumps to the other guys, we already care about him?

I think that is a possible reason, I’ll think about that.

Right, back to watching Prison Break

PS As I copy this into the blog, I realized: I think one way to improve Knowing would be that the numbers are the dates of death of all the people in the school in that year, and their descendants. That would I feel be spooky! Maybe I would be interested in such a film.

I just finished watching Prison Break season 1, and started the first couple of episodes of season 2.

Compared to the first episode of Wired, it feels a little like Disneyland, like a fantasy, so it took a little while to sink back into sufficient suspension of reality to enjoy it, a couple of episodes in fact, but I think I am back in it now.

The plot construction is I feel really detailed and intricate, like, well, something very complex There is always at least a couple of things going on.

A common pattern is:
- a couple of things are going on
- we think they are the same thing, eg two people are going to a storage depot, the detectives are also going to a storage depot
- both mini-plots end at the same point, eg the doors are raised at the same time
- and it turns out they are different plots, not directly connected

An example of this is where John Abruzzi is killed:
- a girl is going in a car with Tweener
- she sees something in a paper
- she looks jumpy, and next thing, we see her making a phone call, or rather, finishing a phone call
- she makes a lame excuse, and insists at stopping at the next motel, again with a lame excuse
- in parallel, we see the police moving on a motel; we naturally assume it is the same one
- John Abruzzi draws up at a motel to assassinate someone
- I realized at this point that actually he was probably going to get killed by the mob
- but actually, it turns out it was the police that set him up
- and the girl wasn’t in touch with the police at all

It seems that suspense and lots of things in parallel seems to be more important than the resolution.

Example:
- the puertorican guy is cementing over the hole in the guard room
- everything is exposed, open, and he’s mixing the cement
- he hears a guard coming. What can he do?
- twenty seconds later, the guard opens the door. What does he see? Everything is perfectly in its place! And we see the puertorican guy hiding outside the door

The resolution in this case seems to me to be clearly unfeasible, but it doesn’t seem to matter: the suspense seems to be more important, more crucial.

There are many cases where the suspense reverses to and fro: we think one thing, then another, then it reverses. This is especially true with the Czech girl.

For example, when she says goodbye to Michael, after escaping from the guard:
- she pull a gun on him
- and starts to phone the police
- but lincoln has the bullets to the gun

Another, more detailed example:
- she wants to betray her friends to the guard
- the guard asks her to sneak on her friends, for money
- she agrees, but says it will be hard, negotiates on the money a little
- then she goes back, and tells her friends that the guard wants to trap them, that she will give them the location of where her friends have set up a trap
- then she goes back and tells the guard that her friends are planning a trap, and tells him where it is
- she negotiates a cut with the guard, guard negotiates sex with her
- as they are ‘getting down’ she starts to grab his gun off the shelf
- guard notices, slaps her, puts her back with the prisoners
- as he is leaving the room where the prisoners are, he notices his knife is missing
- lincoln puts a knife to his throat, ‘fooled you!’: the russian girl was loyal to michael, and michael and lincoln and the girl escape, tieing up braddick and gerry

Well, a friend of mine, who I respect a lot, recommended me to watch “The Wire”, and I finally managed to get hold of it today, but … very disappointed. I hated it!

I don’t know why my friend liked it, I’ll check with him later I guess. I thought it was depressing as anything. I didn’t really like the environment, I thought almost all the people were horrible; the only guy who I liked – the guy who talked to the judge – was treated as a pariah by pretty much everyone he encountered. And there is an excessive amount of swearing I felt. This, coming from someone who is regularly accused in writing groups of swearing too much in my stories myself. Maybe that makes me hate the swearing all the more?

I watched to almost the end of the first episode, and then I couldn’t take it any more.

I think I will go back to Prison Break for now, which I felt was a far more pleasant environment, strangely, than the offices of the detectives, and the towers where the drug dealers hang out, in The Wire.

Ok, it’s quite interesting to watch, but anyway, I’m going to jump straight into analysis, from the point of view of figuring out ‘how it works’, and thus to get some potential insight into writing something similar.

I started to make notes, predictions, at each point where we’re not really sure what’s going to happen next. I’m not very good at predicting what will happen, but I feel it’s a good exercise.

The hero is, well, a hero: he seems to comply pretty well with my observations about a hero: trusts that people will be nice to him, nice to everyone generally, creative, open, a fair amount of energy.

He does do two things which I feel a ‘perfect’ hero wouldn’t do, but that’s fine I guess:
- he didn’t trust his cellmate, and decided to test him, and therefore his cellmate got really pissed at that and moved cell
- in about the same episode, for some reason he is absolutely closed to the psyche guy, without even really trying to communicate with him. I felt this was rather unsympathetic, since the psyche guy was obviously quite intelligent: maybe the psyche guy could have been useful? he would probably be fairly easy to control, in his own way.

Right, moving onto the cliff-hanger type stuff, when I started to make notes about things I noticed a few things:
- many things are resolved by external forces, rather than by the hero. It seem I don’t mind this, so Marion-Zimmer Bradley’s rules are not absolutes it looks like
- there is often several things going on at the same time, each of which looks like it will be either a problem or a solution, and then they all fall through, and then we get the external forces coming up with a solution.

Example: the guy is just about to be executed (warning: spoilers). There are several ways we see his execution can be stopped:
- the hero tries to sabotage the chair. the guard finds some sabotage, through a mole. did he find the real sabotage, or something incidental? I was betting on that the guard had just found something incidental. I was wrong but I think it was a reasonable guess, given how the cliffhangers work in other parts of the season
- the lawyers are busy trying to get a stay of execution. do they succeed?
- the hero tries to pursuade the doctor to get her father , the governor, to grant clemency
– she initially refuses
– then she goes to see the lawyers, and is convinced they have some reasonable ideas
– then she goes to see the governor, who refuses
– just before the execution, he rings up, we think it’s a stay, but it’s not
- finally, just as he’s about to be executed, the execution is halted, by an anonymous tip-off

having lots of things going on adds to the interest, and makes us have to decide between different possibilities, and then it’s all sleight of hand anyway, since the actual solution is something else

Generally, I feel the solution to many problems is that the hero is nice to people, so they solve the problems for him.

Oh yeah: interesting observation, which sounds really obvious, but it’s not really, not to me: whilst we are watching, we feel that everything that happens is chance, or consequential, when in fact it’s precisely defined by the writer. It’s an interesting contrast. For example, if someone has to cross some ground and not be noticed, we feel it is purely chance if he makes it, whereas in fact it’s entirely up to the writer to decide if he makes it or not.

There are so many things going on to hinder the hero, that we feel he really faces a challenge.

I have often heard and read people say that heroes should have flaws in them.

I don’t think I quite agree.

I think what one could say is true is that the heroes should have limits in their abilities, or issues with their circumstances.

However, I think that in general they should probably all be nice to others, even when it doesn’t seem to benefit themselves directly; and be open and enthusiastic.

How would ‘Ratatouille’ be if the rat was like:

‘Oh, great, a mushroom. How crap is that? I wanted peanut butter. Oh and no way to cook it. I better get on at dad again to buy us a decent kitchen. Hey stupid friend, are you listening to me?’

No, the rat has problems, issues, challenges, but his character, as far as interacting with others, is basically flawless. He’s enthusiastic, creative, versatile, open, pleasant to be with.

On the other hand, yeah sure, limitations in the heroes’ abilities, crap circumstances, I think that is incredibly important, otherwise the hero has no challenge.

I originally interpreted the flaws, that people encourage one to add to one’s heroes, to be personality flaws, and made my heroes have nasty personality flaws. I don’t think that was a very successful idea

I might have a ponder over how many heroes I can think of who do have personality flaws. I haven’t thought of one yet, at least: not one who I’ve enjoyed.

Still thinking … hmmm, Doctor Who: always nice, lots of energy, very enthusiastic, not a counter example. … Simon Peyton-Jones, a researcher who invented Haskell, lots of energy, seems a nice guy, very well known (by those in similar fields), so not a counter example … a guy in my college who was negative as anything, and had no friends, and got a third-class (not me I hasten to add, though only by chance really), not a counter-example…

Aladdin …. enthusiastic, lots of energy. Limited abilities: just a vendor in a market.

The guy in Chocolate and Blood. Enthusiastic, open, admittedly seems intelligent, but I feel the openness and enthusiasm is arguably a key quality. Limited abilities: not allowed in America, no obvious way of making money, not a werewolf.

Batman. Pretty cool guy, albeit powerful.

Superman. Cool guy.

Leaving Las Vegas. Well, I hated the film, so that doesn’t count.

American Beauty. Ah, a more challenging example. The guy is basically pretty nasty for much of the film, arguably, and yet I still liked him. Hmmm, the exception that proves the rule.

Grange Hill. That guy who got addicted to heroine. But he was basically a cool guy, just got given a stupid addiction by the script writer, not his fault, it’s what the script-writer inflicted on him Clearly I’m on his side. Not an exception to the rule.

Lord of War. Hmmmm, he sells guns, that get people killed, and yet I really liked the guy, thought he was cool. Interesting. There again, everyone in the film likes him, including his wife, and the leader of various despotic countries, even his competition. He is generally nice to people, within the bounds of how nice one can be, if one is selling guns to killers.

That’s it for now…

I saw a very interesting post on slashdot today. Well, I thought it was interesting:

If this is what it takes to save music…

“…then I guess we should let music die. Music and other entertainment is not important enough by far to trade away privacy and freedom. I don’t care for piracy, but I recognize that only by having complete control of what people communicate and hence their freedom of expression would it be possible to quell piracy. I hope most thinking humans would agree that this is too high a price to preserve the profitability of music.”

This is pretty much the only anti-DRM argument I’ve seen that makes sense to me, and it does make a fair amount of sense, to me.

I for one am quite happy to go down to the local pub/bar/music place to watch local bands perform, and maybe meet a girl or two whilst I’m at it, if it means we lose mainstream bands but keep various freedoms and rights we enjoy.

It’s kind of funny actually: the music industry seems to be spending lots of money and time on making people have a horrible life. Isn’t the primary role of the music industry to be to make people have a happy life? I mean, that’s their key selling point right?

I can see their point about piracy, but still, is it worth so much pain, when their are so many alternatives to mainstream music around that maybe arent *quite* as good, but are really not that bad?

(And: computer games. Sure, I enjoyed ‘The World Ends with You’. A lot. But I think I’d survive without it. Might even survive better; more motivation to get out and meet girls, talk to people and stuff
)

The last few days, since starting to think about heroes, I’ve been approaching people like ‘I think that if I trust myself to this person, they will only do good things for me’, like where you lean backwards, and someone catches you, or that cliff you have to leap off in World Of Warcraft, Test of Faith, and you float harmlessly to the ground.

And I think people are much nicer to me the last few days.

There again, people here are pretty friendly anyway, so it’s hard to tell… the real test is perhaps are people in Shenzhen nice to me?

Anyway, I had a pretty obvious reminder this morning why I am the villain and not the hero.

When I got back to the youth-hostel last night, my flip-flops, the ones I use for the shower, were not where I’d left them, and they were wet. Obviously the other guy in the room had used them.

When I woke up this morning, he was just getting out of bed. I heard him walk across the floor, and my immediate reaction, what I did, was lift myself up to a sitting position, and check he wasn’t wearing my shoes

I’m sure in that moment he understood my soul to the core, my priorities, and it wasn’t being nice to him or making friends with him.

A hero would probably have just let the guy use his flip-flops. It’s just flip-flops, is it really a big deal? Maybe if the other guy liked the the heroes’ flip-flops, the hero might just buy a new pair. They’re like the same price as a burger.

Basically, for the hero, he would probably wake up, say hi to the guy, and prioritize making friends with him, making him feel comfortable.

Anyway, after lying in bed for a while, pretending to be asleep, I sat up again, looked at the guy, and he looked at me waiting for me to say something annoying, and I smiled at him and said ‘hi’, and he smiled back, his eyes shone back, and he said ‘hi’, which I thought was an improvement on other possible outcomes

Britney Spears. I really like Britney Spears music. I like how she looks, how she dances, and how she appears to express herself: the words in the songs.

I do not know if the words in the songs are really hers. Maybe just some of the ideas, and someone else expresses them for her?

Either way… I’m impressed by how open she appears to be. I liked ‘Lucky’, which was quite sad, ‘Every Time’, also a little sad , and ‘Overprotected’.

I also like ‘Circus’, but I can’t help noticing that she seems to me to make a fallacy that I am guilty of most of my life, which I’m going to call the ‘there are two types of people’ fallacy. She says:

‘There are two types of people in the world: those who entertain, and those who observe’.

Technically, it’s not technically wrong, but one can argue that it possibly over-simplifies

I used to say something similar, from an engineer’s standpoint:

‘There are two types of people in the world: people who create, and those who use other people’s creations’.

Really you can apply it to any profession…. it’s fairly meaningless. I feel it is a fallacy, a way to make one’s chosen profession seem more important than … everyone else’s! all grouped together!

I met a homeless person once who said:

‘There are two types of people in the world: survivors and …. idiots’. To be fair, I think he did ok, his life had lots of advantages too, but still, it’s basically the same fallacy I think, and perhaps ‘idiots’ is a little too strong