Anything's Possible for an Impossible (Numbers) · 5:19pm May 22nd, 2023
Whoa, been a while since I reported here, huh? No big.
Current Status: Uh, could be better. I thought I was all that, but oops! Turned out I wasn't! Back to the drawing board!
More below the break.
Blog Number 222: Epic Rigmarole Edition
So, summary time!
On the pony front, honestly I've been stuck in nostalgia mode. Equestria Girls has been getting the brunt of my attention. That's partly because I'm working on an EqG project I want to get right, partly because I came to it so late that it still has that novelty factor for me personally (didn't properly watch the movies till 2019, and I'm still catching up on side media)...
...and partly because I'm just not seeing anything in A New Generation plus that's getting me all that excited. Apologies. Just not feelin' it. Torches and pitchforks are on sale over there.
In terms of regular pony media, I'm mostly slowly catching up to comics stuff. That owes a fair bit to my interest in obscure tags such as Nightmare Rarity, Radiant Hope, and Tiberius the Opossum. Well OK, "obscure" from my point of view, but some of this stuff I wouldn't have minded seeing in the show. So sticking a pin in that.
I dunno. Sorry. I got nothin' to show for it yet.
Or have I...?
Nope, nope, I really got nothin'.
More generally...
On the watching front, I've been catching up with the Disney+ Big Four Animated Shows*. Gravity Falls kinda fell off my radar a while back (don't worry, it'll come back), and Star Vs The Forces of Evil I revisited in abridged form (basically, "just watch the eps I know I like").
* They don't really have a codified genre term yet despite being recognisable: mostly slice-of-life weird fantasy with sudden bursts of epic-scale nefarious conspiracy adventuring that usually involves at least one con or trick (often but not exclusively villainous). It's a fusion I tend to think of as "Epic Rigmarole", or "Epic Rig", partly because the slice-of-life stuff is a rigmarole, and partly because the "rig" seems a good-enough echo of "con" or "trick".
The big stars, of course, are Amphibia and The Owl House.
Both franchises have a multiverse as a plot point, so...
Truth be told (as opposed to...?), I haven't actually finished The Owl House yet, so I can't talk much about that one as a complete package. Amphibia, on the other hand, I finished not too long ago, and I find myself in the odd position of really appreciating its stronger elements and enjoying it in the moment... but still not getting as excited about it as I get for the other shows.
Eh, it's an ambivalent feeling: with the other shows, I love diving back in and getting immersed in the lore and the cast and the moment-to-moment silly cool stuff; with Amphibia, I kinda have to stop and remind myself I enjoy it. As a working guess, I think part of that can be blamed on the filler (which the other shows have too). Somehow, in my mind it kinda swamps its lore points for me, at least more often than it should.
Perhaps it'll make more sense if I point out that Season One for me largely goes like this: "mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm 🙂 Sasha and Grime! 
mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm 🙂 Sasha and Grime! "
They're more adorable than this picture makes them look...
More meat and bone to report on if I finish The Owl House soon (so no spoilers in the comments please: time for that later), but it's definitely a broader topic I want to tie into my Gravity Falls retrospective.
Oh yeah, I was doing a Gravity Falls retrospective, wasn't I? 
On the reading front, it's been a nerd hurdle.
"You know, these -inator jokes are growing stale. I'm switching to -shmirtzer. The whole point of science is to stick your name on everything. That's why I renamed it shmientze."
Mainly, I've been focusing on brushing up my science, yes. Recently, I've been looking into biochemistry, such as DNA repair mechanisms and mutational biases. Apparently, machinery in each cell of the body has to correct DNA roughly one million times a day (remember, there are trillions of cells overall). Talk about high maintenance! You have no idea how much work goes into a human body.
And I mean that in the physicist's sense of the word "work". Which is a thing, look it up... Joule fool. 
But I've also been looking into the weirder aspects of quantum physics. Well, weirder by quantum physics standards, anyway. Like this Scientific American article on the nature of spacetime, positing it as either an emergent field in string theory or a kind of foam made up of spacetime atoms (as part of what looks like a theory of quantum gravity).
Yes, I look up this stuff for fun. It puts the "fun" in "the four fun-damental interactions of matter"!
And I read psychology on the side. Current interest is in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow states", which - given certain conditions are met - can enable one to hyperfocus on a task for long stretches of highly enjoyable absorption time. I've known about the concept for a while, but his book goes into the nuances of the theory to a depth I'm finding increasingly useful.
There's a particularly promising subsection on flow activities, and how different kinds push you beyond normal experience in different ways (for instance, some flow activities like skydiving or going on rides are specifically enjoyable because they scramble our senses so much: the key aspect is having a sense of control or mastery over them). It also points out flow's progressive nature, since mastery over an activity requires a balancing act between too easy (which becomes boring and flat) and too hard (which becomes frustrating and demoralizing).
The most interesting part, for me, is when he goes on to discuss the strengthening of flow by tying such activities into a larger system of meaning (an atomized, ephemeral activity can be fun in the moment but have no lasting influence beyond that). Ancient religious rituals of transcendance, art, and even sport are discussed here (how the Olympics and the Mayan ball games, for instance, were meant as a form of observance), as compared with how less interconnected secular modern hobbies can sometimes be with the rest of our lives.
So yeah: a little here, a little there. I'm no specialist, but I like the freedom of dipping in and out of miscellaneous fields as I please.
Lastly, writing.
I'll get back to you on that.
Well, I've got my eye on this year's May Pairing contest, if only as an impromptu challenge. No idea if I'll pull a rabbit out of the hat before the deadline, but I wouldn't mind seeing if I can get the momentum going at least. This long gap between published fics doesn't suit me.
If all goes well...
Well, that's all for now! Impossible Numbers, out!
Also: yes, I have been binging on Kim Possible eps since I discovered the show was on Disney+. Why do you ask?
I was just thinking about Kim Possible actually.
"Irony! And it's in my favor this time!"
There are worse things to be occupied by.
Ah the endless quest for perfection! I wish you well.
Now me, it's been so long since I've seen some franchises that I've been hit by the nostalgia stick.
Early days Kingdom Hearts stuff mostly, back before Birth by Sleep more or less repeated the pattern of the original game and added yet another layer of unnecessary complication to the whole thing.
I'm finding favorite members in the organization I didn't know I had. Who knew?
(Don't get me wrong I liked Birth By Sleep, but if there was ever a time a series missed the boat for wrapping up, it would have been in the post sleep era.)
I'm right there with you.
I love micro biology. Just the whole concept excites me for some reason.
It's incredible the level of detail and precision that goes into maintaining a cell. It's absolutely amazing.
It's a incredibly intricate design that's for sure.
Ann and Marcy!
Polly and Hop Hop!
The Core and Andreas!
Ha! I can do this game too!
Nah Amphibia was a good show for the most part. I enjoyed the first half before the earth crossover. And there were parts of the latter half that might have worked had things been a little bit built up.
The twist with the moon was not foreshadowed well at all and I wasn't thrilled with what they ultimately did with the core.
The original slant of it being a hive mind showed some unique promise as opposed to the direction it ultimately went in.
Considering Secularism is mostly one big "let's put a pin in this discussion" that's pretty much a given.
5729923
Drakken and Shego are so wonderfully quotable. "So how's Operation Getting-More-Ridiculous-By-The-Day working out?"
Thanks!
I have to admit I dropped off the series right after the first entry. Chain of Memories and II didn't sound bad, as such, but I was a bit leery of the retcons and complications creeping in around that point. So you can imagine I wasn't thrilled to learn both get more ridiculous after that. Plus, boy oh boy did the classic Disney villains gets screwed after the first one.
For me, the big attraction once I got into it was the exploration of how Sasha and Marcy had such complicated and problematic relationships with Anne that Anne learned to grow out of. Getting used to the Plantars and Wartwood was enjoyable enough, but apart from the "death around every corner" nature of the world (the first season has cannibal frogs and mind control fungi, among other horrors), it mostly felt kinda standard. So the heavy early focus on slice-of-life rarely pushed it to greatness, in my view.
That's why I think Sasha and Grime's episodes in the first season stood head and shoulders above the rest. Not only did they both have a fantastic morally dubious mutual alliance, but how Sprig and Anne respond to Sasha's worst traits honestly made all of them more interesting in my opinion.
While it doesn't do it perfectly, I kinda skew towards liking the second half of the show more because of how it put more focus and based more twists around the three girls. Plus the obvious parallels between them and Andrias' past friendship group helps add another wrinkle to the scenario.
I see what you mean: apart from some minor moments (like how initially Darcy has some of Marcy's goofier traits), the Core largely amounts to a stock evil overlord. That said, I don't feel mad about it. The Core never seemed to me to matter as much as the drama around Andrias' increasingly conflicted loyalties and its influence on Marcy and Sasha's arcs.
The moon thing could have been foreshadowed better. What bugs me more is that the Core going murder-suicide runs counter to the idea that it's terrified of dying. Seems like it'd make more sense if the Core got into space, remote-activated the moon instead of plugging into it, then waited for the collision and returned to Amphibia once everyone was dead. Have it be killed in the crossfire of Anne's final attack, and the finale can proceed as usual but make a little bit more sense.
Not much to add to your other points, but I guess that's enough to go on for now.
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They're great. If I ever actually write a crossover, Kim Possible is one of the few shows I would want to base a whole cross over on.
I can't blame you. Plus I'm more of a walkthrough man than an actual playthrough guy, but everything I've heard about Chain of Memories game mechanics has not been flattering.
Honestly weirdness in the lore excites me, which was probably why I got into the series as much as I did.
Kingdom Hearts kinda feels like one of those fever trips from the very first video game. My other favorite series is Bionicle which is somewhat simpler but no less mysterious.
My main draw post the first game however (besides Sora and Kari) are the nobodies and the original organization 13. They just work as a villainous organization with a lot of contrasting personalities, and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is a sweet follow up on that dynamic, if not quite as fast paced or action packed.
I still have a lot of love for that entire group just for their unique dynamic. Which Kingdom Hearts III watered down until it squandered almost everything that made them work as a group.
Yeah I kinda of get why that happened. Disney renaissance had only so many box office hits, and there's only so many ways you can bring back the same villains.
I think things like Union cross shifted back to Disney villains, but that had other problems, including a lack of dialogue and a much different form of animation.
Which is the other problem, getting voice actors for all those rolls to come back again and again. I would have liked to have seen more Disney villains but between those issues and communication problems with Disney I get why they weren't as common afterwards.
Of course Square Enix also tried to hard to lean into it's own mythology while rewriting it for the third major title. There were just a lot of mistakes for the latter games.
Polly was awesome. And I liked how the town was a bit more involved here than in Gravity Falls.
Some elements were weaker because of it, but given Ann's the main focus and she's literally a alien and a massive stick out sort of alien (not just a novelty the way Luz is) that just makes sense to me.
I just like the idea that's just a giant Amphibian exhibit. I love water and a entire world filled with and grody aquatic creatures is the perfect kind of horror story because you never know what's hiding beneath the water at your feet ready to snap you up without a trace. I wish they had done more with that concept as opposed to just monster of the week stories.
See I love slice of life just in general. Not all the time but with a protagonist I can enjoy, I have a blast.
Ironically I think a big part of that is down to the influence of things like MLP and Kingdom Hearts, which highlighted the difference between it's various kinds of characters and made those sorts of differences interesting.
Of course some of it is probably due to the early days of Arthur too.
Grime and Sasha do make up the best stuff of the early seasons, there's no doubt about that.
Their rallying the toads is one of the more interesting points of the series and I think that if they had made the armies more a focus of the conflict it might have been the best story beat of the series.
As it is, I knew the series would come down to the girls welding magic by themselves in the end, so it didn't have the same impact that it should, since I knew the hunt wouldn't amount to much of anything but it's still a great story line.
And that's great, but the majority of that conflict ends sometime before Anne goes to earth. As in the earlier episodes as opposed to the latter ones. So you still have a pretty lackluster ending in comparison after Ann returns from Earth.
I do love Marcy, but she spent most of the series imprisoned or part of the core, and didn't have much to do.
And Ann winds up spending a lot of time on Earth not doing much beyond helping her family at their house. Which hooray we've met the parents of a Disney protagonist and they're not dead! But 21st century earth is a far cry from Amphibia. The setting just isn't as interesting to me. And there are no major conflicts like what you would expect, like Marcy's parents wondering where she is or anything.
It's just a slice of life without much connection to the major plot. So for half or more of a season Sasha is the only one doing anything connected to the story, and even she can feel overdone if you spam her too much.
I wasn't really a fan of that storyline to be honest.
Andreas having a tragic backstory came out of nowhere and really didn't show up fast enough to change my opinion of him. I mean, I liked him already.
He was charming, seemed to genuinely regret screwing over Marcy, and he's voiced by Keith David, who I enjoyed greatly as Dr Facilier, my last favorite Disney villain.
Plus I had just endured MLP's Discord. It would be very hard to drive my standards for villain reformation any lower.
His backstory was just very predictable, felt overdone, and didn't add that much for me. And this is coming from a guy whose had his fair share of issues with parents.
Plus it introduced the idea of his dad as running the core, which just really limited a lot of it's potential.
Honestly, I liked it originally. It had a real creepy mind control vibe, and I liked the idea that it was like a more creative borg collective.
And then they had it be just Andreas's dad in a robot shell and that just ruined the mystique and alien feeling of it.
The annoying thing is that the guy who played him did have the gravitas to play the big bad of the series, but then his voice was filtered through Marcy and the Core, and I just couldn't take any of their dialogue seriously.
Well like I said, the core had a lot of potential, it just felt like it never came to fruition.
The whole eyes thing just throws me. They should have either foreshadowed them ahead of time, or not included it. Just something to have that sequence make more sense.
Then again the whole starship moon thing didn't make much sense to me either. Like when did the core find the time, space, and robo power, to do all this again? I honestly wish they had leaned more into the mythic side of the world for a explanation for the moon moving, like what they had implied was going on from the start.
I was under the impression it would survive that run, but I could be wrong.
I mean it's kinda of dark for a children's show. I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with that, but I do get why they didn't head in that direction.
I think it should have just tried bombarding the planet from orbit. The girls head into space to intercept the weapons and fight it. It would have turned out more or less the same, but it would have made much more sense from a strategic perspective.