Rebels: "Imperial Supercommandos" (Ep. 3.07)

-- "Strategy is an art. Maybe I'm luring you into a false sense of security."

Oh, wow, it's been a while since I've done one of these. I've just been busy, I guess.

But this was a good, and exciting, episode to jump back in on.

Of course, the Mandalorian stuff is always good. Or, at least, interesting. This one was both.

This episode ties back to... oh, I don't know, some episode or other, back in season two, I think. Another Mandalorian episode, but I'm not going to go look it up, right now. At any rate, in the earlier episode, the Rebels cook up a deal with a Mandalorian outpost for safe passage through their system.  But that outpost has gone silent, so Ezra and Sabine, along with a "guest," go to check it out. They fear the Mandalorians may be setting a trap for Rebel ships passing through the system. Oh, the deal? Well, it wasn't exactly reached by choice on the part of the Mandalorians.

When they get there, though, the find that the base has been wiped out, everyone killed. Those responsible? Imperial Supercommandos. And they are pretty cool looking, let me tell you. They are also traitor Mandalorians who joined the Empire, which is part of why they're so cool. They're like hybrid stormtrooper/Mandalorians. And what kid didn't want that action figure back in the 80s?!?! Or now, probably.

The episode is actually a lot more complex than what I've gone into here, but, hey, no spoilers, right? Well, I guess I kind of did give a spoiler about the commandos... excuse me, supercommandos! But, hey, it's in the title, so I'm going to give it a pass.

And, well, we find out a thing about Sabine, and I think that's going to come back to haunt her. Or us. I am writing this on Halloween evening, so I'm going with the haunt... Hey, you know what? No one ever goes trick-or-treating as a ghost anymore. Did Charlie Brown ruin it for everyone?
Maybe no one ever went as a ghost? Except me... Because I did, sort of, when I was 11: the ghost of Scooby Doo. Yeah, I'm not going to explain that.



"What took you so long?"
"I was using strategy! It takes longer!"

Exploring Personality: Part Eleven -- "Can't we all just get along?"

"...can we all get along?" -- Rodney King

Types 8, 9, and 1 make up the intuition triad of the Enneagram, also known as the body triad because of the tendency of people in this group to say things like, "I knew it in my gut." Reactions can be very instinctual, requiring little thought and ignoring emotions. Intuition isn't well understood by science. It's the brain making a "leap of logic" and, while some studies have shown that forcing people to do something like math intuitively generates more correct responses than people who are required to "logic it out," that does not mean that people who rely on intuition are always right. It's very dependent upon the individual. The motivating emotion for this triad is anger, but it manifests differently for each of the three types (unlike for the intellectual triad where their fear is almost always about decision-making).

The Peacemaker

Ah, the Nine. The Nine is the most common of all of the types. Perhaps up to 40% of all people. Not only do you probably know one, you probably are one. Okay, maybe not quite "probably" but pretty close to it. You can always tell a Nine by his very distinctive characteristic of... oh, wait... the Nine has no distinguishing characteristic. That's what makes a Nine a Nine. Sort of.

The core motivation of the Nine is peace and harmony. Because they want to keep conflict to a minimum -- well, completely absent if possible -- they are adept to seeing all sides to a conflict and helping to bring about a peaceful resolution, hence the name Peacemaker or, as they are also sometimes called, the Mediator. They can see every side, that is, except their own. Their drive to keep things calm, causes them to submerge their own desires so that they often don't even know they have any.

They also tend to take on the characteristics of the people they spend the most time with, called "merging," which can cause them to appear to be the same enneatype as the person they're with. They do this unconsciously as a tactic for creating more harmonious relationships. You can't have a conflict if you always want to do exactly what they person you're with wants to do.

All of the Nine behaviors are driven by their intuition. They're experts at picking up on nonverbal cues from other people and adapting their behavior to go along with or counter, depending on the need, the other emotional state of the other person. So good are they at sensing the condition of other people, they rarely have any idea of how they feel about any given situation. Questions aimed at them about their own feelings often get responses of "I don't know" or "Well, Bob feels..."

I have avoided personal examples in these so far but, this time, I'm going to give you one, because it's such a good example of Nine behavior:

A couple of years ago, we were trying to find out what my oldest son wanted for his birthday dinner. This should be an easy task, right? Not so much when you're a Nine, which he is. The conversation was something like this:
"Hey, so what do you want for your birthday dinner?"
"Oh, I don't care. Whatever you guys want to have."
"It's your birthday; we want to have whatever you want to have."
"Whatever's easiest, then."
"Anything you choose will be the same amount of easy."
"Whatever's cheapest, then."
"Look, that doesn't matter. Just tell us what you want."
"My brother wants pizza."
"Your brother always wants pizza. What do you want?"

I'm not exaggerating when I say that that conversation lasted for half an hour. It chased its tail. It went in circles. It was like the Scooby gang being chased by a ghost in a haunted house: everyone, including the ghost, running right into everyone else, getting scared, and running away again. We had to sit him down and make him think about what he wanted. He kept deferring in his responses to what he felt like other people would want.

Something as simple as "what do you want to eat for your birthday" became a rather tortuous task for him to figure out because, really, he didn't know. And that was an easy question. That's how it goes with Nines.

Ironically, the Nine's obsession with keeping their environment harmonious very frequently results in inner conflict. The fact that they are always burying their own desires (to the point of losing touch with them) to fulfill the desires of others causes them to feel invisible and creates a deep longing to be noticed. Of course, their lack of initiative and internal drive, actually, to not be noticed (because that can create disharmony) comes into conflict with this, a source of their angst. Also, any desires they have are unspoken and, therefore, unmet. These two conditions, unmet desires and feeling invisible, can create a deep well of anger within the Nine. Mostly, this anger goes unrecognized and submerged, but it can leak out as passive/aggressive behavior that the Nine is oblivious to. Occasionally, when pressed, this anger can result in huge outbursts of temper that quickly dissipate.

In stressful situations, especially situations where they're with people they're unfamiliar with, Nines can become nervous and jittery, unable to make any kind of decision because they don't know the people well enough to facilitate activities or resolve conflict. In situations of overt conflict, Nines may well seek physical refuge and, if failing that, will withdraw into themselves.

Nines who have spent the time getting to know themselves and figuring what their desires are can become very purpose-driven while still being able to resolve conflict with or for other people. They can learn to stand by what they actually want and achieve an internal harmony even in the face of external conflict.

Nines may appear to be introverts because of the way in which they become overwhelmed by conflict, but that isn't necessarily the case.

A to Z 2014: Abandoned Places

I know the official theme release day for A to Z is long past, but I have to (for all kinds of National Security reasons) keep mine under wraps right up until the last moment. That's how these things work. I wouldn't want my theme out there wandering around the Internet all unprotected and getting into trouble. My themes have been known to do that, cause trouble and stuff. Okay, maybe not, but I do have to guard my theme more closely than the Colonel guards his chicken recipe.

Because I feel like it; that's why!

Abandoned places have long been used to great effect in all kinds of horror environments. And Scooby Doo. Abandoned (haunted) houses. Abandoned warehouses and factories. And, my favorite, abandoned amusement parks. There's always that gypsy fortune teller machine that scares Scooby and Shaggy, then there's a great chase scene. Oh! And super hero cartoons, too. I'm pretty sure the abandoned amusement park has been used in both Batman and Spider-Man cartoons.

As much as I'm tired of the whole dystopian/post-apocalyptic thing, I think abandoned places have been quite under used in these stories. Think this

Of course, it works because the Statue of Liberty is so recognizable, and the sight of it like this speaks more to us about what has happened than words could have. It's all we need to know.

I think the tendency is just to make up places to be abandoned; how much work does it take to make up an abandoned house for your haunted house story? Not much. But I think there are plenty of actual places out there that have already been abandoned that could add that extra kick of realism to a story. And some of these places have great atmosphere; if you could put that in a bottle and sprinkle it on your pages...
Hey, I'm just sayin'.

Beyond that, some of the stories of these places are just interesting. And the pictures are cool. So you can always just look. Or, you know, add them to your list of places to see before you become an abandoned place yourself.

And, to give credit where credit is due, my wife came up with this idea. I think, now, she has come up with all three of my themes? I know she came up with at least one of the other two (but I'm not looking back at the moment to check the other one). I had a theme of my own for this year, but she sent me a thing with all these pictures of places, cool pictures, and, after I'd looked at them, she gave me that, "Hey! You could use this as your theme!" After looking back at what I'd planned... well, you see which theme won out, don't you.

So enjoy the month! These may be the shortest posts I do on any consistent basis.

Smurftastic!

Are Saturday morning cartoons still a thing? Not having TV, I have no way of knowing. Even if they are, they can't be the same, mean the same, as when I was a kid. Back when, basically, with the exception of a couple of after school shows, cartoons were really only available on Saturday mornings. We'd wait all week for those few hours of cartoons on Saturday mornings.

I used to get up early for them, too. Looney Toons came on at, like, 6:30am, and I didn't want to miss any of it, so I'd get up to watch it. Unlike my friends. I'd spend the night at my best friend's house, and I would be the only one up on Saturday morning. The rest of his family (and it was a big family (Cory was the youngest of 8 kids) would start getting up around 8:30-9:00, and there I'd be sitting on the floor in the family room watching cartoons. Cory was always one of the last ones up, too.

One of my favorites was Thundarr the Barbarian. Thundarr was created by the same guy that came up with Space Ghost, which I also loved. These were the 'toons that were at the tail end of my Saturday morning addiction, though. My real childhood cartoons were shows like Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, Super Friends, and Tom & Jerry. The cartoons of my childhood, my actual childhood, were decidedly "old school."

I was 11 when The Smurfs came out. Still into Saturday morning cartoons but focused on super heroes and the like. I never really got into any of the cutesy cartoon series that so marred the Saturday mornings of the 80s. But I had a 5-year-old brother, and he loved The Smurfs. No, I mean he really loved them. Generally speaking, I ruled the television set, but I wasn't able to override the watching of The Smurfs every Saturday morning. I hated them.

In fact, it may have been my dislike of the Smurfs that caused my initial break from the cartoons I loved so much. At some point not long into the run of that show, it's air time marked the time that I would go outside. I just couldn't sit through it to wait for whatever came after. Not that the stuff that came on after The Smurfs was really any better. My brother watched all that 80s stuff including Jem and Strawberry Shortcake. Thankfully, the stuff I most wanted to watch came on early in the morning before my brother was even awake.

It was with some amount of dread that I greeted the first trailer for the Smurfs movie. And, then, horror as my kids announced that they really wanted to see it. They didn't understand my antipathy toward those little blue... things and that horrible "song" they sang.

I knew I couldn't deal with taking them to see it in the theater. There was just no way I was going to pay money for that. But they didn't know that. And I didn't tell them. Instead, I allowed the movie to come and go without ever bringing it up. It came out at the tail end of the summer movie season after we'd already seen all of the "necessary" movies like Thor and Captain America, so I managed to get away with it.

My daughter saw the dvd on the shelf at Target while we were out Christmas shopping. Despite having been forewarned about asking to buy things for herself, she asked for that. I told her I'd rent it for them, but I was in no way going to buy that movie, so I set it into our line up on Netflix, and it came last week. I had no intention of watching it.

But that's not the way my kids like to do things. They like for me to cuddle on the couch with them and watch movies together. But I had a plan!

See, everyone else is on vacation. That doesn't extend to me. Not really. If a vacation is where you take a break from your regular routine, I was certainly not on one. I still had writing that needed doing, including the blog, food that needed cooking, and a dog that still needed to go out at 6:00am every morning. Vacation, however, means that everyone stays up later and sleeps in longer. Except me. Well, except me on the sleeping in bit. I'm sort of obligated to stay up later, but I still have to crawl out of bed (more like fall out and, then, crawl across the floor) at the same time that I always do. So I've been a little more tired than normal since I've been going on about 3 hours less sleep every night than I usually get.

Do you see the plan? Do you? It was sheer elegance in its simplicity. [Bonus points for anyone that can name the source of that quote/paraphrase without looking it up. Hint: I've talked about the origin of it sometime or other on this blog.] I would just put the movie in, cuddle up on the couch with them, and go promptly to sleep.

It almost worked.

I was asleep before we'd finished getting through the opening credits, which included a couple of smurfs riding on the backs of some birds with loads of smurfberries. It felt sooo good.

And, then, something happened.

I don't even know what it was, but something woke me up. And not far enough into the movie to be able to excuse myself from it because I didn't know what was going on. No. I woke up just in time for the actual plot to get going. Gargamel was rampaging through the smurf village which lead to a group of the smurfs going through a portal into New York City with Gargamel hard on their heels.

I really didn't want to watch that movie, but I couldn't get up. I was preparing myself for an hour of torture. Not that I haven't subjected myself to that kind of thing in the past to appease my children (see Happy Feet, or, rather, don't. Horrible, rotten movie. (I'm glad the sequel did so pathetically poorly)).

Something amazing happened. I enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed The Smurfs! It made me laugh! A lot!

First, there was Neil Patrick Harris. I was never a watcher of Doogie Howser, so I have no nostalgic liking of NPH; however, I greatly appreciate his ability to not just allow but to participate in people laughing at him. But he really got me with his portrayal of Dr. Horrible. [I was going to give you a link to go watch it, but, evidently, it is no longer available to watch free online. If you haven't seen it, though, I would strongly encourage it.]

There was also Jayma Mays. To be honest, she didn't bring anything unique to her part other than being cute, and that's not really all that unique. Especially in Hollywood.

But! But!
There was Hank Azaria. OH MY GOSH! I love Hank Azaria. He's like the Alec Guiness of this generation, but the funny version of Alec Guiness. In fact, I bet Azaria could do Guiness. At any rate, he was so good as Gargamel that I couldn't figure out who was playing the part. I had to look it up (well, have my wife look it up, because, as I said, I was stuck under two kids and a dog on the couch). Azaria's been in some... let's just say "not good" movies, but Azaria is always good. And he was awesome as Gargamel.

And I sat there on the couch with my kids, and I loved that movie. Not as much as they did, but still... it was a huge step for me and a reminder of the lesson to not have preconceived notions about things. My daughter is still on me about buying it for them. I'm even considering it. After all, she does have a birthday in the not too distant future.

I'm not saying that everyone out there should run out to see The Smurfs. I have a much greater ability to appreciate kids' movies than the average adult. Especially the average adult without kids. And it did have a few problems. Like a completely dropped subplot that seemed a bit significant when it was introduced. However, you might just be surprised by it. If you can get over the fact that it's about litlle 6" tall blue people with tails.