2. I finally finished Dune and on an unrelated note is artistic resurrection ethical?
Matrix 4 is good, actually. But we won't get to that yet.
CyberSync is chugging along. It’s getting more and more surreal, honestly. There’s a group drive the entire creative team is pouring preview images into that we’ll use for marketing and such, and it’s beyond rad. As I type this, we’re nine days away from launch on Kickstarter - if you’re here and haven’t followed our prelaunch page do that expeditiously - and that is super exciting but also terrifying. I needed to start booking podcast appearances like two weeks ago, honestly. So if you have a podcast or know anyone with one that would want to chat CyberSync, definitely reach out.
The Apollo City Comics Podcast has been on hiatus for the last few weeks. It’ll be a few more, but for good reason. The way we come back and what we come back with is something we’re really excited about. There are some other podcast-related things I’m working on that aren’t Apollo-related. I can’t divulge much more than that right now but I think, and hope, they’ll connect with people.
I took two exams this week. It’s still super weird being back in school regularly again. It’s rad though. I didn’t like the actual education side of things in high school. I love learning but sheesh this is not the place to start a rant about the American education system but anyway, going back to school for something I’m choosing to do and also the entire experience is so ridiculously different in the best way. It’s the best having big chunks of time dedicated specifically to learning.
I also finished Dune this week finally.
I FINALLY FINISHED DUNE. I didn’t play like any Baldur’s Gate this week, which is painful. But two years after initially starting it I finished Dune. I’m not sure how much more I can say about it that hasn’t already been said but holy hell what an absolute masterpiece. I hadn’t really read it consistently for the first half of it, sporadically reading chapters here or there for nearly two years. Then I picked it back up the other day and got to the point where the movie ends. From that point on I literally couldn’t put it down. I sat, stood, and paced reading for 6 hours to get to the end. I’m super bummed that Part 2 got delayed, but damn it’s going to go unbelievably hard when it does drop.
I also started Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, and it’s fun! I don’t love it as much as I hoped I would, but I had suuuper high expectations. I’m a die-hard AC fan and adore those early games. This is I think in a lot of areas a brilliant modernization of those earlier entries, but I think it drops the ball in a few areas and it’s clear that it was built on the foundation of the newer games structure.
Loki also continues to be one of the few stellar MCU D+ shows. It feels like an actual TV show and the production quality is so nice. It’s driven by some damn good performances and a lot of really great if sometimes uneven, writing. It’s not perfect by any means but I think it’s definitely worth the time. Also, check out this article from Darren Mooney about it. Darren’s a great voice covering film and TV and I always feel like I learn something reading his pieces.
So, for this week I want to center the discussion based on a thought in response to something one of my favorite podcasts dove into. I’ve been binging through Philosophers in Space and they have an episode diving into The Matrix Resurrections. To start I’m a lot more forgiving of this movie than they are, but the quality of the movie isn’t the talking point I found most interesting here.
At around 43:00 they mention a quote from Lana Wachowski about how she utilized bringing Neo and Trinity back to life to deal with the personal grief she was experiencing. The question that Aaron poses is whether or not - from an ethical perspective - using art in this way to deal with grief is good or healthy. It’s also further expanded to factor in the impact of a “mediocre” story with said characters and art.
I think these are a couple of separate issues. I think there’s something worthwhile in the discussion of healthy ways to handle grief. I’m also not entirely sure how to determine whether or not something like what Lana did here is “good” or not. Did it help her? Yes? Who am I to judge that? It’s not my art. And I’m not sure there are any significant tangible negatives to be pointed out here. Whether or not the resulting art was “good”(in the quality, not ethical, sense) or not is I think a separate issue from whether or not it’s ethically sound for the artist to produce it to help with their grief.
At the same time, I can think of instances where I do think the art might start to override the creators. Batman, for example, comes with a certain air that he’s bigger than the artist working on him. It’s up to the artist to do justice to Batman. The comic book example is especially interesting in regards to the artistic resurrection of characters specifically. It’s one of the biggest gags in the industry (specifically with superhero comic characters) that no one ever stays dead. It’s been argued by many that this severely cheapens the impact and meaning of any deaths for these characters. Hell, Magneto is coming back soon and I’m not too happy about it myself. But I don’t know that I would go so far as to say it’s ethically wrong every time someone brings back a comic book character.
My intuitions lead me to feel strongly that I can’t see anything wrong with the idea as Lana describes it. I think that even conceding the gigantic impact of The Matrix and those characters, they’re more personally confined to Lana (and Lilly). Because of that, I have a hard time taking placing myself in a position to say what they could or couldn’t do with their art.
The grief angle is really fascinating to me. I don’t think we put nearly enough energy into accepting grief and all that comes with it as a normal part of society. We kind of do everything we can to not directly talk about it and just shove it to the side, and that’s not healthy. So the conversation about healthy ways to cope with it and what unhealthy ways of coping look like, and where that kind of line is and how to differentiate and things like that are something that I would love to see more progress on., but the way that we’re kind of currently set up to deal with it isn’t really conducive to that kind of conversation.
I’m gonna keep it short and simple again this week and give a quote I saw on my timeline yesterday:
“The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”
-Seneca
Thanks for reading.
Be nice. Be kind. Tell stories.