As a child, who doesn't know the instinctive fear of keeping a limb outside of the protective shell of one's duvet or blanket? The thought of a monster existing underneath one's bed, inside the closet or elsewhere in one's room is almost like an essential part of everyone's childhood. For most it is something which we look back on more as a cherished memory, along with other silliness that we did or believed in as a child.
Some children are not so lucky, however. They find that some monsters are real, as they suffer various forms of physical, psychological or even sexual abuse at the hands of older children or adults. Instead of 'growing out of it', the constant confirmation makes them ever more anxious and aware of the next attack and the next monster. The next beating or humiliation.
As I struggle to find my way through the fuzzy memories of a childhood trauma along with many subsequent traumatic events of psychological, physical and abusive sexual nature, it's becoming ever more obvious to me that not only are the monsters which I once thought to be hiding in the darkness absolutely real, somewhere along the way I have become more and more like those monsters myself.
I guess it is inevitable when I read through the medical literature on post-traumatic stress disorder and related that such things happen. Children who suffered abuse are after all more likely to become abusers themselves, as if the wrongful behaviour has impressed itself so much in the child's brain that it is the first thing that jumps to mind when a similar situation presents itself. Even if the roles have been reversed.
Whatever this adult man and others did to me when I was about five years old involved a lot of yelling and accusations at the end, leaving me shocked and terrified alone in a dark room. I still hate yelling and accusations. I hope that it's not something which I subconsciously do to others anyway. Just like how being touched by others in any way still makes me feel terrified, as it brings back those old memories of being violated. I don't want to yell. I don't want to accuse. I don't want to do anything to others without it being okay.
I can still feel the dark monsters lurking inside my mind, yearning to take over. Maybe it's just how the human brain tries to defend itself, by putting aggression against aggression, violence against violence. Or just by running away and avoiding any kind of confrontation and conflict.
When the bullies during primary school and beyond encircled me with yelling and insults, or tried to cut me off while I was cycling home, or punched me in the gut and laughed as I buckled over in agony, or spit into my face... I never fought back. I just took it as they say on the chin and tried to ignore it. That is, until the dark monster took over.
During primary school I ended up beating up the leader of the gang of bullies after many months of them bullying me. At least that's what his mother told my mother, and the bullying also mostly ceased after that. I do however not recall anything of it. When this former bully ended up becoming a friend, I accepted that too. What it did teach me was that sometimes violence is okay. Which is how I ended up slapping this bully during HS across the face after yet another bullying session. When the teacher confronted the two of us about it, I apologised to the bully. And that group of bullies were friendly ever after.
When to be friendly? When to be aggressive or even hostile? When to yell or remain calm? They're things one is supposed to learn along with other social skills as one grows up. As I found myself mostly hiding from the world ever since I was five, most of my knowledge came from books, and I found myself enamoured of a pacifist attitude. Always be friendly, always be helpful, never raise your voice or act hostile. Neither words nor stones will break my spirit.
The big tests for that attitude came first in the form of the supremely unhelpful attitude from medical personnel along with psychologists when it came to even acknowledging the fact that I have in fact an intersex body and a pretty unique type of intersex at that. To spend over a decade facing adults who feel qualified to demolish every single part of your self-image, sense of reality and ego in general, it makes you question a lot of things.
Another test came in the form of this woman who wormed her way into my life, using my offer to help her fix her laptop issues to make herself a part of my life, to the point where she somehow ended up being present at some job interviews that I did at the time. She convinced me that her parents were practically evil criminals and that I should help her escape from there. That ended up with us sharing the same apartment for months, and somehow she had made me believe that I loved her and that we were a couple.
I don't think it is normal for even couples if one of them ends up randomly staring at the other while the latter is taking a shower, or to only spend days watching TV and chatting online. She'd also tell me in a loud voice that everything that I liked or thought funny or interesting was stupid and uninteresting before going on a tirade about how stupid humans really are and how much better people like herself are.
She'd also force me to spend watching late-night TV with her so that I'd appear sleep-deprived at work every day and often had to force myself to stay awake during the day. In that state she got me to accompany her all around, to fulfil all her whims and essentially make me into her slave and property. This all came crashing down during another tirade from her towards me, which had me barricading myself in the bedroom while she was on the phone with my mother, telling my mom how bad things were going with me, but that she'd take care of it, no worries.
If one ever needs to know what it feels like to be part of a Stephen King story, there you got it. Think Misery, only with less cutting off of body parts.
After decades of finding monsters where one least expects them, it's not easy to go back to pretending that the world is safe again. Not with those monsters giggling to each other in the dark corners of one's mind, ready to pounce the moment I drop my guard. There has to be a way to deal with this situation beyond being eternally terrified, however.
I have found at this point that I hate feeling terrified, as well as all other feelings akin to it. There has to be nothing more pleasant than feeling safe and secure, being so at ease that you can just drop your guard and not worry for a while. As things are, I consider it a good day when I didn't feel completely unhappy or terrified that day. With monsters literally lurking right around the corner, one has to celebrate the little things in life, after all.
This should be the part where one wakes up, with a parent sitting on the edge of your bed to tell you that it is all okay, that monsters aren't real.
Maya
Friday, 29 May 2020
Friday, 15 May 2020
My formal apology to Ayn Rand, or: reviewing The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand's works generally do not get a lot of attention unless it is in more conservative and liberal circles, with her philosophy of Objectivism [1] mostly receiving ridicule when covered by popular media. Although video games like the Bioshock series are heavily inspired by her later book 'Atlas Shrugged', these revel in showing off just how much Objectivism is wrong and cannot work in real life.
Admittedly, I was among those who thought like that. What is after all more selfish than putting one's own happiness over that of others? What monster wouldn't put altruism and selflessness over one's own self-worth and ego?
At the recommendation of a lawyer friend of mine, I got a copy of The Fountainhead [2], her 1943 novel. After a rough start, I managed to finish the book yesterday and had some time to collect my thoughts on it. Note that in this review I will heavily spoil this 77-year old book, so be forewarned.
At the core of the book's story are the twin stories of two young architects, as they make their way into society. One - Peter Keating - is eager and glad to please. The other - Howard Roark - is self-assured and prefers to go his own way. One follows whatever building style is demanded without putting his own stamp on anything. The other desires only to follow his own style, refusing to ever compromise on his vision.
For most of the book's story, it is Peter who seems to be doing the best, as he gets nearly every commission. Though what Peter knows - but doesn't want to admit to - this is because of two other characters who are merely using Peter for their own goals. There is Ellsworth Toohey, who seeks only power over others, and who promotes Peter over Howard when folk come to him for advice on picking an architect for a new commission. There is also Dominique, whose motive in getting commissions to Peter instead of Howard is one of love. Love for Howard, that is.
I must admit that when I started reading this book, I was biased against it. I expected to dislike it, to see the relentless egoism and selfishness dripping from every page and being glorified. As I finished chapter after chapter I did not see any of this. Instead I got a careful building up of the US architectural world of the 1930s, and the struggles of two young men as they find their place in this highly traditional and unforgiving world. Both Peter and Howard, as well as the other main characters are portrayed in a fashion that is decidedly human. None of them feel like cardboard cut-outs placed there to represent some kind of stereotypical concept.
The story has many shades of grey in it, and as the story progresses, you aren't really sure who to root for. Peter, maybe? He seems nice. Howard feels so arrogant, so maybe not him. Dominique is just an ice princess, so what can one expect from her? Then, as another part completes and the story progresses through the seven year timespan plus flashbacks to characters' childhoods, it becomes so obvious which character is the one to sympathise with.
At this point the character of the publisher Gail Wynand has been added as well, as a newspaper mogul who has risen up from a meagre existence in the ghettoes of New York (Hell's Kitchen). At first glance he seems like he has managed to escape this world, to escape judgement of society and reach sweet freedom. By bouncing Howard Roark's character off these characters, against the background of the struggle around commissions and Howard's uncompromising attitude towards bringing his vision and only his vision to life, we learn more and more about Howard's character, even though he is set up to be as hard to read as possible at the beginning.
By the time the climax rolls around in the final chapters of the book, it feels as though one can finally truly understand the character of Howard Roark. While the character of Peter was easy enough to understand, Roark's character is of such depth and integrity that it really did take an entire book to see most aspects of it and to grasp his motivations. Roark was the only person who was morally and ethically integer, while Keating and Wynand had compromised themselves, setting themselves up for failure once the winds of fortune changed direction.
At the center of it all is the fundamental truth that a brain is an attribute of an individual. There is no collective brain, and thus no thought is ever collectively thought. Instead a thought, an idea or concept is produced by one individual, and can be transformed or expanded upon by other individuals. A creator doesn't create because they are told to do so, but because they want to. They invent, draw, compose and design because it is in their nature. They provide that which ultimately makes society.
Creators by definition place themselves before others, as otherwise they cannot create. If they were to sacrifice themselves for others, they could no longer create. Second-handers are those who praise the concepts of self-sacrifice, of altruism and sacrificing one's happiness and freedom for some goal. Altruism is thereby a kind of slavery, or masochism. It is to surrender oneself to something higher, like society, or religion. It means worshipping or idolising. It means living for someone or something other than oneself.
In essence altruism and self-sacrifice are the exact opposites of self-acceptance and of being allowed to exist and create. Creators are sacrificed on the altar of altruism.
One does have to wonder about how concepts like altruism and self-sacrifice are considered to be such important and self-evident concepts in society, when those who are in charge display neither characteristic. When politicians, sport and music idols can make in a week what the average person working a regular job makes in more than twenty years of backbreaking work, yet the latter are still being asked on TV and in radio spots to be 'altruistic' and donate part of their meagre income to some abstract goal like 'helping the poor', then that should evoke some strong feelings in any reasonable person.
Even though I am the first person to admit that we have to share in some respects for a healthy society, such as with details like health care and schooling, I find myself grudgingly agreeing with aspects of Ayn Rand's arguments. Ideally, a society would have no distinction between individuals in terms of wealth. Those who wish to create can freely do so. There would be no concept of 'jobs', as those who want to create will do so without being forced to do so. There are those who want to run a restaurant or a shop because it appeals to them. Others will still want to play sports, or draw or sculpt even if the only reward they get out of it is to see their vision become reality.
One thing which Aynd Rand really protested against is essentially Stalinism (authoritarianism), portrayed by the Ellsworth Toohey character. It is the worst kind of collectivism, where an individual has less say about what they can and cannot do than under an already oppressive system like neo-liberalism. Where neo-liberalism promotes self-exploitation and sacrificing oneself for 'the greater good', Stalinist-style authoritarianism like that in her native Soviet Union takes it that much further. Instead of promoting self-sacrifice, in an authoritarian system such self-sacrifice is demanded at the point of a gun.
Reflecting on this one book and the world contained in it, I can honestly say that it has left a big impression on me. I also feel sorry for casually dismissing Ayn Rand's works before. She truly was a great writer, with a very good, engaging style and immaculate character building. After reading The Fountainhead I will not say that I am a new convert to Objectivism, but I am grateful for having had this in-depth look at the fundamental ideas and concepts behind it.
True to her own philosophy, Ayn Rand did everything she could to be a creator, and it shows.
Maya
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead
Admittedly, I was among those who thought like that. What is after all more selfish than putting one's own happiness over that of others? What monster wouldn't put altruism and selflessness over one's own self-worth and ego?
At the recommendation of a lawyer friend of mine, I got a copy of The Fountainhead [2], her 1943 novel. After a rough start, I managed to finish the book yesterday and had some time to collect my thoughts on it. Note that in this review I will heavily spoil this 77-year old book, so be forewarned.
At the core of the book's story are the twin stories of two young architects, as they make their way into society. One - Peter Keating - is eager and glad to please. The other - Howard Roark - is self-assured and prefers to go his own way. One follows whatever building style is demanded without putting his own stamp on anything. The other desires only to follow his own style, refusing to ever compromise on his vision.
For most of the book's story, it is Peter who seems to be doing the best, as he gets nearly every commission. Though what Peter knows - but doesn't want to admit to - this is because of two other characters who are merely using Peter for their own goals. There is Ellsworth Toohey, who seeks only power over others, and who promotes Peter over Howard when folk come to him for advice on picking an architect for a new commission. There is also Dominique, whose motive in getting commissions to Peter instead of Howard is one of love. Love for Howard, that is.
I must admit that when I started reading this book, I was biased against it. I expected to dislike it, to see the relentless egoism and selfishness dripping from every page and being glorified. As I finished chapter after chapter I did not see any of this. Instead I got a careful building up of the US architectural world of the 1930s, and the struggles of two young men as they find their place in this highly traditional and unforgiving world. Both Peter and Howard, as well as the other main characters are portrayed in a fashion that is decidedly human. None of them feel like cardboard cut-outs placed there to represent some kind of stereotypical concept.
The story has many shades of grey in it, and as the story progresses, you aren't really sure who to root for. Peter, maybe? He seems nice. Howard feels so arrogant, so maybe not him. Dominique is just an ice princess, so what can one expect from her? Then, as another part completes and the story progresses through the seven year timespan plus flashbacks to characters' childhoods, it becomes so obvious which character is the one to sympathise with.
At this point the character of the publisher Gail Wynand has been added as well, as a newspaper mogul who has risen up from a meagre existence in the ghettoes of New York (Hell's Kitchen). At first glance he seems like he has managed to escape this world, to escape judgement of society and reach sweet freedom. By bouncing Howard Roark's character off these characters, against the background of the struggle around commissions and Howard's uncompromising attitude towards bringing his vision and only his vision to life, we learn more and more about Howard's character, even though he is set up to be as hard to read as possible at the beginning.
By the time the climax rolls around in the final chapters of the book, it feels as though one can finally truly understand the character of Howard Roark. While the character of Peter was easy enough to understand, Roark's character is of such depth and integrity that it really did take an entire book to see most aspects of it and to grasp his motivations. Roark was the only person who was morally and ethically integer, while Keating and Wynand had compromised themselves, setting themselves up for failure once the winds of fortune changed direction.
At the center of it all is the fundamental truth that a brain is an attribute of an individual. There is no collective brain, and thus no thought is ever collectively thought. Instead a thought, an idea or concept is produced by one individual, and can be transformed or expanded upon by other individuals. A creator doesn't create because they are told to do so, but because they want to. They invent, draw, compose and design because it is in their nature. They provide that which ultimately makes society.
Creators by definition place themselves before others, as otherwise they cannot create. If they were to sacrifice themselves for others, they could no longer create. Second-handers are those who praise the concepts of self-sacrifice, of altruism and sacrificing one's happiness and freedom for some goal. Altruism is thereby a kind of slavery, or masochism. It is to surrender oneself to something higher, like society, or religion. It means worshipping or idolising. It means living for someone or something other than oneself.
In essence altruism and self-sacrifice are the exact opposites of self-acceptance and of being allowed to exist and create. Creators are sacrificed on the altar of altruism.
One does have to wonder about how concepts like altruism and self-sacrifice are considered to be such important and self-evident concepts in society, when those who are in charge display neither characteristic. When politicians, sport and music idols can make in a week what the average person working a regular job makes in more than twenty years of backbreaking work, yet the latter are still being asked on TV and in radio spots to be 'altruistic' and donate part of their meagre income to some abstract goal like 'helping the poor', then that should evoke some strong feelings in any reasonable person.
Even though I am the first person to admit that we have to share in some respects for a healthy society, such as with details like health care and schooling, I find myself grudgingly agreeing with aspects of Ayn Rand's arguments. Ideally, a society would have no distinction between individuals in terms of wealth. Those who wish to create can freely do so. There would be no concept of 'jobs', as those who want to create will do so without being forced to do so. There are those who want to run a restaurant or a shop because it appeals to them. Others will still want to play sports, or draw or sculpt even if the only reward they get out of it is to see their vision become reality.
One thing which Aynd Rand really protested against is essentially Stalinism (authoritarianism), portrayed by the Ellsworth Toohey character. It is the worst kind of collectivism, where an individual has less say about what they can and cannot do than under an already oppressive system like neo-liberalism. Where neo-liberalism promotes self-exploitation and sacrificing oneself for 'the greater good', Stalinist-style authoritarianism like that in her native Soviet Union takes it that much further. Instead of promoting self-sacrifice, in an authoritarian system such self-sacrifice is demanded at the point of a gun.
Reflecting on this one book and the world contained in it, I can honestly say that it has left a big impression on me. I also feel sorry for casually dismissing Ayn Rand's works before. She truly was a great writer, with a very good, engaging style and immaculate character building. After reading The Fountainhead I will not say that I am a new convert to Objectivism, but I am grateful for having had this in-depth look at the fundamental ideas and concepts behind it.
True to her own philosophy, Ayn Rand did everything she could to be a creator, and it shows.
Maya
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead
Review: Rewatching Deep Space Nine
It's not enough to just say that one 'likes' Star Trek. This is because of Star Trek's long (40+ year) history and especially the more recent series and movies, which introduce story reboots, altering of the entire time line and a move away from science fiction. This practically necessitates that one places oneself as a fan of a specific incarnation of 'Trek'. As a case in point, I'm not remotely old enough to be familiar with the original Star Trek series (just 'Star Trek') which is now referred to as 'The Original Series' (TOS). Its successor (The Next Generation) was also before my time, but it's one of the ST series which I fully watched. I never really got around to watching more than a few episodes of TOS for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is of how different it feels.
The first Star Trek series which I watched as it aired was Star Trek Voyager (VOY). I thought it was okay back then, me as a child back then figured it did have too much chatter in it, though. Only later as I rewatched it a few years back did I realise the sheer emotional depth and the bleakness of the situation that the Voyager crew went through. Here I could definitely say that rewatching it made me appreciate the series infinitely more.
Deep Space Nine (DS9) is a bit of an odd series in the Star Trek universe. It doesn't take place on a starship, for one. Instead it puts the show on this clunky old Cardassian space station that's orbiting a planet (Bajor). This against the backdrop of the former occupation of Bajor by the Cardassians for the past decades (as covered in TNG as well), with the United Federation of Planets ('Federation') being asked to have a presence in that area as a neutral party to ensure that everyone lives up to their end of the peace agreement.
I do not remember exactly when I first watched this series. It must have been somewhere around the time that I also caught up with TNG. My memories of DS9 from back then are rather vague and incomplete. More of a set of impressions rather than a solid sense of what the story was about. This made rewatching it recently quite an interesting experience, to see how much of it I could recall.
The first two seasons of DS9 were okay, I thought. I remembered some episodes from the first time I saw them, such as 'Move Along Home' (S1, E10) and 'Battle Lines' (S1, E13). Episode 15 ('Progress') was also quite memorable, and served to weave a bit more story around Bajor, though I always felt that too much of the larger context here was lacking. In later seasons the rebuilding of Bajor is mentioned too (e.g. S3, E24), but it is always in passing and there never forms a sense of what the status of Bajor is, or how well the rebuilding is progressing. This even against the plentiful reminiscing by the Bajoran people on the show, including Kira, about the horrors inflicted on Bajor by the Cardassians in the past.
Starting with the fourth season, things got a bit more rough for me, as the ramping up of the Dominion plot line get interrupted by random time travel episodes ('Little Green Men') and a lot of relationship and pregnancy-related drama. This against brilliant episodes like 'Hard Time' (S4, E19) and 'The Quickening' (E24), which sadly are not (significantly) referenced later on, as it is the kind of episode that should have left a serious impact on both Julian and O'Brien. At this point the series really feels like it's ripping itself apart as it tries to both maintain a coherent serial story arc and have independent episodic content at the same time.
The rest of the seasons continue pretty much the same way, with Ferengi homeworld issues, Trill and Klingon mating rituals, Odo's quest to figure out humanity and the occasional bizarre episode like 'The Ascent' (S5, E9) with totally out of character performances by Odo and Quark. There is also the awkward personality shift in Dr. Bashir into a kind of Data replica, with cold, inhuman behaviour and a display of super-human traits, which was never a part of the character until then.
There are the occasional bursts of action, like with the retaking of DS9, but that is followed by more episodes that feel like they can be skipped or at least glanced through briefly, as they serve no real purpose to building up the characters, or to add to the Dominion War story arc. There is also the introduction of a new character (Ezri) at the beginning of season 7, who adds some fresh blood after Jadzia's character began to feel rather stale throughout season 6.
As for season 7 as a whole, though supposedly intended to build up towards the show's climax in the Dominion War, feels more like a half-hearted attempt to try and wrap up the countless loose threads that have been left carelessly lying around from the preceding seasons. Although some episodes are exceedingly good (Nog's battle experiences and struggles with war trauma, for example), as a whole it feels like a show that is running out of time and plans.
The result is sadly a finale that feels flat and forced, with a last-minute plot twist for captain Sisko thrown in that completely wastes the potential. Especially after previous uses of his character in 'Far Beyond The Stars' (S6, E13) and 'Shadows and Symbols' (S7, E2), the ending that DS9 ends up with uses none of that, doesn't tie things together and somewhat fizzles out without leaving behind anything meaningful.
When I look back on how the final episodes of TNG and Voyager affected me emotionally, with a sense of warmth and belonging for TNG, and the bitter-sweet return for Voyager, then DS9 didn't leave me with much more than a handful of memorable episodes. While not the worst Star Trek series by far, it also does not feel inviting to watch it again some day.
Next on my 'to rewatch' list is Star Trek Enterprise, which I thought was the worst Star Trek series ever when it first aired. Maybe it now actually feels decent after suffering through the 'Star Trek' reboot movie by JJ Abrams and enduring the onslaught of Star Trek Discovery and Picard. Also one day I should rewatch all of Babylon 5, as one of the few proper story arc-based series to ever have been released.
Maya
The first Star Trek series which I watched as it aired was Star Trek Voyager (VOY). I thought it was okay back then, me as a child back then figured it did have too much chatter in it, though. Only later as I rewatched it a few years back did I realise the sheer emotional depth and the bleakness of the situation that the Voyager crew went through. Here I could definitely say that rewatching it made me appreciate the series infinitely more.
Deep Space Nine (DS9) is a bit of an odd series in the Star Trek universe. It doesn't take place on a starship, for one. Instead it puts the show on this clunky old Cardassian space station that's orbiting a planet (Bajor). This against the backdrop of the former occupation of Bajor by the Cardassians for the past decades (as covered in TNG as well), with the United Federation of Planets ('Federation') being asked to have a presence in that area as a neutral party to ensure that everyone lives up to their end of the peace agreement.
I do not remember exactly when I first watched this series. It must have been somewhere around the time that I also caught up with TNG. My memories of DS9 from back then are rather vague and incomplete. More of a set of impressions rather than a solid sense of what the story was about. This made rewatching it recently quite an interesting experience, to see how much of it I could recall.
The first two seasons of DS9 were okay, I thought. I remembered some episodes from the first time I saw them, such as 'Move Along Home' (S1, E10) and 'Battle Lines' (S1, E13). Episode 15 ('Progress') was also quite memorable, and served to weave a bit more story around Bajor, though I always felt that too much of the larger context here was lacking. In later seasons the rebuilding of Bajor is mentioned too (e.g. S3, E24), but it is always in passing and there never forms a sense of what the status of Bajor is, or how well the rebuilding is progressing. This even against the plentiful reminiscing by the Bajoran people on the show, including Kira, about the horrors inflicted on Bajor by the Cardassians in the past.
Starting with the fourth season, things got a bit more rough for me, as the ramping up of the Dominion plot line get interrupted by random time travel episodes ('Little Green Men') and a lot of relationship and pregnancy-related drama. This against brilliant episodes like 'Hard Time' (S4, E19) and 'The Quickening' (E24), which sadly are not (significantly) referenced later on, as it is the kind of episode that should have left a serious impact on both Julian and O'Brien. At this point the series really feels like it's ripping itself apart as it tries to both maintain a coherent serial story arc and have independent episodic content at the same time.
The rest of the seasons continue pretty much the same way, with Ferengi homeworld issues, Trill and Klingon mating rituals, Odo's quest to figure out humanity and the occasional bizarre episode like 'The Ascent' (S5, E9) with totally out of character performances by Odo and Quark. There is also the awkward personality shift in Dr. Bashir into a kind of Data replica, with cold, inhuman behaviour and a display of super-human traits, which was never a part of the character until then.
There are the occasional bursts of action, like with the retaking of DS9, but that is followed by more episodes that feel like they can be skipped or at least glanced through briefly, as they serve no real purpose to building up the characters, or to add to the Dominion War story arc. There is also the introduction of a new character (Ezri) at the beginning of season 7, who adds some fresh blood after Jadzia's character began to feel rather stale throughout season 6.
As for season 7 as a whole, though supposedly intended to build up towards the show's climax in the Dominion War, feels more like a half-hearted attempt to try and wrap up the countless loose threads that have been left carelessly lying around from the preceding seasons. Although some episodes are exceedingly good (Nog's battle experiences and struggles with war trauma, for example), as a whole it feels like a show that is running out of time and plans.
The result is sadly a finale that feels flat and forced, with a last-minute plot twist for captain Sisko thrown in that completely wastes the potential. Especially after previous uses of his character in 'Far Beyond The Stars' (S6, E13) and 'Shadows and Symbols' (S7, E2), the ending that DS9 ends up with uses none of that, doesn't tie things together and somewhat fizzles out without leaving behind anything meaningful.
When I look back on how the final episodes of TNG and Voyager affected me emotionally, with a sense of warmth and belonging for TNG, and the bitter-sweet return for Voyager, then DS9 didn't leave me with much more than a handful of memorable episodes. While not the worst Star Trek series by far, it also does not feel inviting to watch it again some day.
Next on my 'to rewatch' list is Star Trek Enterprise, which I thought was the worst Star Trek series ever when it first aired. Maybe it now actually feels decent after suffering through the 'Star Trek' reboot movie by JJ Abrams and enduring the onslaught of Star Trek Discovery and Picard. Also one day I should rewatch all of Babylon 5, as one of the few proper story arc-based series to ever have been released.
Maya
Monday, 11 May 2020
When a hobby project turns into a bit of a grind
In a couple of previous posts I have covered my NymphCast project [1] as well as my approach to testing a project before release [2]. As I noted in that second post, NymphCast is a hobby project, and one definition of a 'hobby' is an activity practiced in one's spare time for the sake of relaxation and enjoyment. Here it should be fairly obvious already that developing an ambitious software project from scratch by oneself would be an excellent example of balancing the fine line between 'enjoyment' and 'unpaid work'.
The past weeks I have made a couple of major changes to the project, moving the SDL-based video display and window-handling routines - including the screensaver element - as well as the entirety of the SDL initialisation to a single class. I also rewrote the SoundCloud app to use the new JSON responses from the SoundCloud backend, adding regular expression and key-value store (KVS) support to the AngelScript API to allow the SoundCloud app in NymphCast to fully work for searches and playback of tracks and albums.
After that first major change, I did notice a regression with the playback of files, with playback no longer stopping by itself after a track or video had finished. This persisted after making the second stack of changes, as noticed after trying to stream an album from SoundCloud, with only the first track playing. This finding led me to dive deep into the ffmpeg-based code, with the debugger backtraces as a guide, to figure out where things were going off the rails.
Sometimes there doesn't seem to be a particular reason why a regression like this happens. In those cases it's usually a case of the existing code (in this case heavily borrowed from ffmpeg's ffplay source) being fragile enough that a small change elsewhere or a timing change makes it fall over and catch on fire. Since I couldn't find a particular cause for this regression, I opted to instead improve the existing code to better detect the end-of-file condition once I felt that I had a solid enough grasp on how the code was interacting with the ffmpeg APIs.
It was at this point that I realised that the project was becoming more my 'work' than my actual work, with it consuming a significant part of each day for the past weeks. More seriously, I wasn't enjoying myself. Though I knew that more tests needed to be run, with the goal of finding more issues that need fixing, it's clear that none of this is really 'fun', and more something that one does because it has to be done. Not to say that hobbies do not have those moments where one has to work through something unpleasant, but the difference between a job and hobby should be that with the latter one volunteers to do the work when one feels like it.
Thus I choose to just push the presumed fix to Github and leave it like that for now.
It feels good to do a bit of recharging after a bit too much 'hobby' work like that. To instead think about some small aspects that one could do at some point in the future when one again relishes a challenge to sink one's fangs into. Until then there are other hobbies and of course paid work to spend time on. The last thing one wants is to burn out on a hobby project.
Some other issues have also popped up over the past months that take the fun out of the project. Take for example the idea of using the same client-side application (NymphCast Player) for desktop and mobile. This ran into a breaking bug in Qt's Android support [3]. After considering writing a native Android client (in Java with NDK-based C++ core), the additional work of getting back into Android development didn't feel extremely appealing. The last time I did Android development, the ADT-based Eclipse IDE was still the cat's pyjama's, and I still haven't come to terms with this newfangled Android Studio thing. Basically there is no fun to be found in that direction either. At least not right now.
I still like the NymphCast project as a whole, and I have noticed that others do too, from the stack of Github tickets where people express their gratitude for the project, as well as a couple of small donations for the project. Yet as a whole, the project is still in this awkward phase where it's supposed to be 'fun' because it's a hobby project while at the same time there exist these external expectations about the project and what it could become.
For the immediate future, I'm still immensely grateful for any Github issue tickets for things that I wouldn't have (easily) found myself, as well as the emotional boost from the donations. It's just a matter of time when I'll feel like grinding through the rest of this debugging and testing, much like how one would get through the less fun parts of a video game.
Maya
[1] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/03/nymphcast-casual-attempt-at-open.html
[2] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-fickle-world-of-software-development.html
[3] https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-83372
The past weeks I have made a couple of major changes to the project, moving the SDL-based video display and window-handling routines - including the screensaver element - as well as the entirety of the SDL initialisation to a single class. I also rewrote the SoundCloud app to use the new JSON responses from the SoundCloud backend, adding regular expression and key-value store (KVS) support to the AngelScript API to allow the SoundCloud app in NymphCast to fully work for searches and playback of tracks and albums.
After that first major change, I did notice a regression with the playback of files, with playback no longer stopping by itself after a track or video had finished. This persisted after making the second stack of changes, as noticed after trying to stream an album from SoundCloud, with only the first track playing. This finding led me to dive deep into the ffmpeg-based code, with the debugger backtraces as a guide, to figure out where things were going off the rails.
Sometimes there doesn't seem to be a particular reason why a regression like this happens. In those cases it's usually a case of the existing code (in this case heavily borrowed from ffmpeg's ffplay source) being fragile enough that a small change elsewhere or a timing change makes it fall over and catch on fire. Since I couldn't find a particular cause for this regression, I opted to instead improve the existing code to better detect the end-of-file condition once I felt that I had a solid enough grasp on how the code was interacting with the ffmpeg APIs.
It was at this point that I realised that the project was becoming more my 'work' than my actual work, with it consuming a significant part of each day for the past weeks. More seriously, I wasn't enjoying myself. Though I knew that more tests needed to be run, with the goal of finding more issues that need fixing, it's clear that none of this is really 'fun', and more something that one does because it has to be done. Not to say that hobbies do not have those moments where one has to work through something unpleasant, but the difference between a job and hobby should be that with the latter one volunteers to do the work when one feels like it.
Thus I choose to just push the presumed fix to Github and leave it like that for now.
It feels good to do a bit of recharging after a bit too much 'hobby' work like that. To instead think about some small aspects that one could do at some point in the future when one again relishes a challenge to sink one's fangs into. Until then there are other hobbies and of course paid work to spend time on. The last thing one wants is to burn out on a hobby project.
Some other issues have also popped up over the past months that take the fun out of the project. Take for example the idea of using the same client-side application (NymphCast Player) for desktop and mobile. This ran into a breaking bug in Qt's Android support [3]. After considering writing a native Android client (in Java with NDK-based C++ core), the additional work of getting back into Android development didn't feel extremely appealing. The last time I did Android development, the ADT-based Eclipse IDE was still the cat's pyjama's, and I still haven't come to terms with this newfangled Android Studio thing. Basically there is no fun to be found in that direction either. At least not right now.
I still like the NymphCast project as a whole, and I have noticed that others do too, from the stack of Github tickets where people express their gratitude for the project, as well as a couple of small donations for the project. Yet as a whole, the project is still in this awkward phase where it's supposed to be 'fun' because it's a hobby project while at the same time there exist these external expectations about the project and what it could become.
For the immediate future, I'm still immensely grateful for any Github issue tickets for things that I wouldn't have (easily) found myself, as well as the emotional boost from the donations. It's just a matter of time when I'll feel like grinding through the rest of this debugging and testing, much like how one would get through the less fun parts of a video game.
Maya
[1] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/03/nymphcast-casual-attempt-at-open.html
[2] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-fickle-world-of-software-development.html
[3] https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-83372
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