"Meanwhile, on Planet Birthday..."

A happy birthday is a very personal and relative expression of, well, happiness.  For some people, it involves guests, cake, alcohol, loud music and dancing, and for others (such as myself) something quieter and less demonstrative is the celebration of choice.

For my birthday this year, Karli and I did a modest four day weekend getaway to Vancouver Island - Karli's mother and stepfather generously let us use their condo in downtown Victoria. I've always done my best to at least take the day for my birthday, and in years gone by I've managed to take the entire week for travel abroad, but since we're off to Disneyland on October 10th, I'm content with a long weekend.

Caterpillar Geek Girl, an Etsy maker that Karli follows on Instagram, had posted that she was going to have a booth at Capital City Comic Con over the weekend, and Karli suggested that we could take a look around on Sunday if we had time. Tickets weren't ridiculously expensive, and it sounded like an excellent addition to my birthday weekend.  I had fortuitously packed an obscure t-shirt from the Doctor Who Time Fracture Experience, so we geared up and headed over to the Victoria Convention Center after breakfast.

CapCon was a bit on the small side by convention standards, but I enjoyed it - my only previous convention experience was at Vancouver Fan Expo in 2019, and although it's not a major event, I found it a bit too crowded for my tastes. Capital City wasn't excessively busy and we were able to see everything in an hour or so. For a small con, they did well.  The Canadian branch of the famous 501st Imperial Stormtroopers, a Star Wars cosplay group specializing in stormtrooper armour, had a large footprint, Tim Russ and Garrett Wang of Star Trek: Voyager fame were on site for autographs and photo ops, and legendary Canadian comic artist Ken Steacy was on Artist's Row - with his family, who are apparently also in the business.  (Not to forget Caterpillar Geek Girl, whose booth we visited to the tune of three genre buttons and two magnets for Karli's work collection.)

It's interesting to visit a convention floor with someone who isn't really a fan.  Fortunately, for the most part I can categorize cosplay at a glance*, so I found myself interpreting some of the more notable costumes for Karli.  For example, there was a quite detailed Warhammer 40K Chaos Space Marine, complete with a smoking bolt pistol - it might not have been up to San Diego standards, but it was obviously a labour of love, if that's the right way to describe the construction of a full set of Heretic Astartes armour.

Not all the costumes required an advanced geek degree - at this point in time it's not really rocket science to recognize a Starfleet uniform or a Hogwarts robe, and Karli was amused to see someone in a Stranger Things Scoops Ahoy uniform wandering the booths.

Post-con, I did some shopping at the Cavity Curiosity Shop, which has proven to be a gold mine of replacement books, as well as producing the occasional hidden gem.**  I'd already taken a look at their web site and was fortunate in that they were all still in stock when I arrived.  I was particularly pleased to get a near-mint copy of Volume One of Keep Watching The Skies, Bill Warren's classic tribute to American science fiction films of the 1950s.

While I was waiting to pay for my purchases, I spotted a battered 1947 copy of Planet Stories magazine priced at $60.00. It wasn't in great shape***, but I've always loved Planet Stories as representing a sort of subgenre in science fiction, and I suspect that a mint copy would be a bit out of my price range, so I added it to my stack of purchases.  Sadly, in the process I somehow managed to lose one of the books from my stack, I suspect it remained on the counter with some piles of books that were being sorted for shelving - the price of doing business, I suppose, and I may still be able to get someone in Karli's family to rescue it on their next visit if I'm lucky.

And really, that covered it off in terms of celebration - four days away with my wonderful wife, broken up by a fun little convention visit and some successful book shopping.  Karli also bought me some red hightop Converse and took me out for Irish stew at the Irish Times Pub, and that was all I needed for my personal equation for happiness.

And yes, we had a little cake to celebrate, courtesy of our absent hosts - I may not be interested in having a party, but what's a birthday without some cake?

- Sid

* Admittedly, for a lot of the anime, my mental scoreboard simply says, "SOMETHING FROM ONE OF A HUNDRED DIFFERENT ANIME SERIES THAT I'VE NEVER SEEN."  But at least I know it's anime.

** I can see a day in the future where I'm going to start downsizing my library, but to quote Aragorn from Peter Jackson's The Return of the King****, it is not this day.

*** I don't mean this as a criticism of either price or condition: 75 years is a long run for anything printed on pulp paper.

**** "Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of Men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand! Men of the West!" 

It's quite a good speech, although not fully up to the standard set by Henry V at Agincourt.

"A place of nightmares, where reality and illusion merge into a twisted, waking dream."

"I started to suspect that there was something far more sinister and ancient lurking beneath the surface of Innsmouth."

H. P. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth

Discovering a Cthulhu sticker on the back of a dusty minivan being driven by a pleasant-looking woman with a small child is like being in one of those movies where everything seems normal, but there are all these little hints that there's a hidden secret that will have terrifying consequences when discovered...

- Sid

"We've all done terrible things."

Some of us - well, most of us - we've all done terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion. Spies, saboteurs, assassins. Everything I did, I did for the Rebellion. And every time I walked away from something I wanted to forget, I told myself it was for a cause that I believed in. A cause that was worth it. Without that, we're lost. Everything we've done would have been for nothing. I couldn't face myself if I gave up now. None of us could.  

Cassian Andor, Rogue One

There's an unspoken assumption in the first Star Wars trilogy that the Rebellion are the good guys, that the Empire can't win because their opposition has the high moral ground, to slightly misquote Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

2016's Rogue One was the first time that we saw that the Rebellion was guilty of its own sins; that there had been times when it was decided that the end would justify the means. We learned about Saw Gerrara's extremist cell, and watched Rebel agent Cassian Andor, capably portrayed by Diego Luna, callously kill an informant to prevent his capture by the Empire - no question here of who shot first.

Based on the previews, Andor, the upcoming Star Wars series on Disney+, will lay out the path by which Cassian Andor became the person that we meet in Rogue One, and presumably show us some of the "terrible things" that he did in the name of the Rebellion.  One of my criticisms of Rogue One was that I wanted to see more depth in the characters, and I'm hoping that the new series will answer the question of exactly how much Andor has sacrificed for the sake of his cause.

The trailers suggest a desperate struggle by an oppressed minority against a brutal foe that has become complacent in their power and invincibility, a more intimate struggle than the one we see played out in the space combat and ground battles of the Rebellion's future.  Generally this sort of resistance relies on deceit and subterfuge rather than valor and courage: the silent knife in the back, the anonymous blaster bolt that comes from nowhere.

To support this, the characters shown in the trailers all seem to be leading double lives: Andor disguised as a member of the Imperial forces; Luthen Rael, dramatically performed by the versatile Stellan Skarsgård, playing the convivial party host then attempting to recruit fighters for the Rebellion; and Genevieve O'Reilly's Senator Mon Mothma attempting to hide in plain sight.

All in all, it looks promising, and it gives the impression of having more depth and maturity than the space opera origins of the franchise - more Game of Thrones than Flash Gordon, if you will. 

There are already two seasons planned: the first season takes place five years before the events of Rogue One and deals with the start of the Rebellion and Andor's transition from cynical thief to idealistic rebel. The second season will be split into four three-episode blocks, each of which will take place in a different year and which will presumably document how Andor's idealism falls prey to expediency.

It's a sobering indication that the road to Hell is still paved with good intentions, even in a galaxy far, far, away.

- Sid