Welcome again to We Have Always Live the Kraken, a pop culture blog transmitted directly to you from the belly of the beast. Here in the Notes we’ll show you this month’s posting schedule, but first here are some thoughts.
Look at all the differences this year!
Another July is now finished, and with it, so too has another San Diego Comic-Con. So I now offer you a brief Con Report. This past SDCC was, for lack of a better way to describe it, weird. Marvel (well, the feature film side of it, anyhow) and Game of Thrones (and HBO in general) were nowhere to be found. The disastrous morning lines for Hasbro, Autograph, Lego, and most importantly Funko had been eliminated for a straight up lottery. Nothing required an outrageous amount of time to get into unless you just had to be one of the first people in. It was almost as if SDCC worked like the con should work, where people were evenly dispersed throughout a multitude of options. It felt a lot different from what I had experienced recently, and honestly, it was a nice change of pace. Sure, I personally felt the floor, while leaner on the edges, became almost unwalkable at times in the more central sections, because of the glut of people that needed new places to go. Plus, it is definitely true that the lottery system needs some tweaks to try and make things fairer, seeing as the only reason the lotteries needed to exist is SDCC simply could not properly manage the morning lines in Sails Pavilion anymore.
These are minor quibbles, though, compared to being able to limit the amount of time spent in line versus actually, you know, doing things. The panels this year were quite strong, and I enjoyed the fact that Hall H was a breeze to get into the entire time. Same for how NBC fully embraced SDCC by bringing Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place (in that case, both as a panel and an amazing off-site). All of this created an energy that was distinct from past years, and as I said, weird, but mostly in a good way. Hell, even the Q&As were a bit weird, as they were all actually mostly pretty damn good. As someone who generally hates Q&As at cons with a passion, this was as surprising to me as it is to anyone, but damn, these questions or comments were mostly on point and full of feels. Hell, one person told Jaime Lee Curtis that she basically saved his life. So basically this was a year to remember, and it will stand out for quite some time, for better or worse (the lotteries may be fairer, but there are definitely a group of people they completely screw over). Of course, don’t get too used to this, as things should be more business as normal next year, when Marvel and HBO will presumably be back even if the lotteries are likely here to stay.
David
From the depths of the Kraken, here is what we are bringing you this month.
Contributor Henrik M. offers the next in his series about Criminally Underrated Cartoons. This time he is looking at MTV’s Undergrads.
Catch of the Week Month:
Each and every week the residents here in the Kraken will offer one recommendation for the week that we think you all would enjoy. It might be a movie. It might be a book. Who knows? This is your… Catch of the Week Month.
Kyu: I’m super late to the party, but I greatly enjoyed reading Ann Leckie’s Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel Ancillary Justice. The first in a trilogy, Justice works well as a stand-alone story about a former spaceship AI on a deeply personal mission that will take her across the galaxy and into the deepest secrets of the Radch Empire. Leckie’s most prominent experimental factor here is the fact that her protagonist uses ‘she’ and ‘her’ as her default pronouns, even if it’s clear that the subject is a male. It’s a fascinating way to interrogate and upend our gender expectations. But it’s just part of how the book examines identity–social, cultural, economic, racial, and especially in a philosophical sense, as the protagonist ancillary navigates the tricky waters of sometimes being one mind in many bodies, sometimes one mind in one body, sometimes one mind in no bodies. Who is she when together, who is she when apart? Watching her discover a new identity, a new purpose, even a path to being something closer to human, is one of the chief joys of the novel. Another is the distinct way in which the protagonist analyzes the subtle emotional and social signals of each conversation–not only unique but necessary, as in a book filled with subtle world-building, it’s important to guide the reader through what’s happening and why it’s important. I also found the novel’s exploration of an imperial society’s mores and morality to be both moving and trenchant. If nothing else–and Ancillary Justice is much more, in fact–this book is a smart, comprehensive portrait of a society that’s rotting from the inside out and the top down. Can one former tool of the empire do something to atone for its sins? That question isn’t fully answered in Justice, but that just makes me more eager to read the rest of the Ancillary trilogy.
David: I was a huge fan of the 2000s Teen Titans, and you should watch that, but I am going to focus on the current show on the air, Teen Titans Go! or more specifically, the movie Teen Titans Go! To the Movies. Now, I have long understood why many fans of the older show have been reluctant to like the new one. They are completely different in tone and animation style, but I have never really had the same issues, because Teen Titans Go! is made for ten-year-olds, and that means it is going to be very different than the more mature 2000s Teen Titans. Teen Titans Go!, though, has its own charms, as it is quite funny and silly and willing to do ridiculous things like having Trigun walk around in a sweater just trying to be a better father to Raven, or directly making fun of older fans that have trouble accepting that this cartoon is made for children and not, well, 30-year-olds who were teenagers when the first show came out. Then there is the movie, which is amazing. It is one of the most entertaining experiences I have had in a movie theatre in quite some time, and well worth a watch, even for Teen Titans Go! haters, because it has the budget to explore some truly amazing formalistic elements animation-wise, as well as the freedom to tread a bit darker than one would expect. This movie is amazing, and I cannot more highly recommend it to anyone that is a comics fan or even just a fan of good humor and fun. Plus, for those OG Teen Titans fans, there is a special surprise just for you, which combined with how great this movie is will hopefully satiate your desire to hate on Teen Titans Go! for not catering to your deep desire for things to be the same as they were when you were younger.
That’s it for this month. Don’t mind the bright lights, those are just mini-suns the Kraken is currently digesting. As long as you don’t stare at them too long, you only have to worry about some very minor radiation poisoning.