Author: admin

The perfect and the good

and as the old adage goes, well, this isn’t going to be perfect anytime soon.

I realize that certain posts may benefit (greatly!) from the inclusion of a lot of media, where possible. And that the current layout and material here is coming in at a “mid-90s” level of content creation.

That’s by design.

Or if “design” is too presumptuous, then perhaps “intention” will suffice.

Basically, the path to development comes from a lot of steps, most of which will be stumbling and faltering early on. And there are a thousand steps that go into making that path a perfectly engineered thing. Each and every one of those steps can lead to a stumble, a twisted ankle, a broken leg, or a distraction and following something shiny off into the woods. If one waits for the perfect route before stepping out, then it might not ever get released.

Even rocket companies will conduct a lot of test launches on their road to a successful liftoff. By their nature, those are highly visible, so even the misfires get widely seen.

…and this blog isn’t rocket science.

So if it’s a little rough right now, that’s fine. At the moment, the implausi.blog is an MVP. Minimal Viable Product. It has the bare minimum functionality (draft, post, edit, and email*). The rest will come, organically, evolving over time.

Hope you stick around.

[*] I think? Not entirely sure if that’s functioning correctly either.

Not feeling the fourth

So it’s “Star Wars Day” again, May the Fourth (be with you), and I’m not really feeling it anymore.

I think it’s part of a longer arc, a larger trend, one that I’d like to take the time to explore more fully. Either with a video, a podcast, or both. But I want to give it the attention it deserves, because there is some nuance to it, and it speaks to a larger trend, both in term of the non-consumption mentioned earlier, and wondering how to deal with fictional facism in an era of rising real facism.

The first with look at where we draw the line, and the second will look at the changing tone of the Star Wars universe, as it* negotiates it’s identity in the 21st century.

* As much as a corporate media franchise has intentionality or agency.

We’ll link back here when we get to the point.

Until then, keep your wookies dry.

Conspicuous non-consumption

What do vegan cordcutters who used to play D&D have in common?

Don’t worry, they’ll tell you. (And so will I.)

Because otherwise, how would you know?

Let me introduce you to the idea of conspicuous non-consumption. It can be seen as the antithesis to Veblen’s conspicuous consumption, where people will buy certain brands or products to show off how awesome they are, but what do you do if that brand sucks?

Well, much like the Road Dogg Jess James, you better call somebody. And tell them, obviously, because how else would they know… how awesome you are, for not buying that thing.

It’s the paradox of non-consumption, that the absence of an action doesn’t communicate the intent. It goes hand-in-hand with things like brand boycotts, where the option to not buy, or experience, or engage, for reasons, as opposed to preference, like I’d watch The Flash if I had the money, or time, or wasn’t sick of superhero movies, but I lack the means.

Conspicuous non-consumption is the vocalization of the un-uttered “I’d prefer not to”, that oft-repeated Zizekian aphorism.

But it goes much further than Zizek takes it in our social media driven, Instagram and TikTok influencer kind of age, where every post is an advertisement (some paid, some not) for that particular brand or product.

So, if you want to send a message to Hasbro, or DC, f’rex, you’d have to do more that just not buy those products, you’d have to let people know.

Conspicuously, of course.

For a point of reference, I’m drawing from the following article on CN-C: Conspicuous non-consumption in tourism: Non-innovation or the innovation of nothing? – Elin Brandi Sørensen, Anne-Mette Hjalager, 2020 (sagepub.com)

I’ll be building out this idea shortly, but in the interest of publishing, and not letting the interminable and never-arriving perfect drive out the immediate good, I’ll post this up for now and we’ll come back to it in a moment or three.

Right now, there’s a handful of threads floating about that I need to bring together…

Slight return…

With podcast now up and running (and available here at http://www.buzzsprout.com/1935232/episodes we’re going to be returning to creating content here as well, as a mix of new posts, and companion pieces to go with the original content.

With the recent twit-pocalypse, we’ve also created an account on one of the federated servers for Mastodon. You can find me at @dr.implausible@mastodon.online There’s a few other options for non-Twitter microblogging, but this is the one we’re going to go with for now.

Finally, in behind-the-scenes information, I’ve worked out a mobile editing platform, which should allow for more consistent updates. This is the first test post from that system.

A note on method

The underlying method I’m using here is a cultural anthropological approach that I originally used in my MA Thesis back in 2008-10. The principal is the same: construct a historiography of the key titles and works, wending a way backward through the layers of popular culture that preceded RT’s publication. Once this overarching map is laid out, move forward through the different media streams, tracing the influence and connections between them. Similar to a Social Network Analysis, here we chart the influences chronologically, as they’re drawn into the collective sphere that will become W40K in time.

A number of characteristics are relevant to keep in mind when reviewing any of the media ‘artifacts’ (and I’ll use artifact here, as is generally understood in the field, for any discrete piece of media that gets looked at). These characteristics include:

  • Popularity
  • Reach/Sales
  • Critical Appeal – low reach, high impact titles
  • Range – UK titles over US ones, frex
  • Aesthetic

Also, the same title may be counted twice depending on how it is represented in different forms of media. Frex, Starship Troopers could show up twice, once for the book and once for the film, as they are very different properties, with different aesthetics and interpretations, but both will have had an influence. Same for Dune, Judge Dredd in all its incarnations, etc.