Coding, newest Star Wars trailer, work, and more!

[ljwrites]

I've been writing code to auto-post my local files DW, and while I've been adding stuff and debugging it's running more or less reliably these days. If all goes well this post should come from a queue, too. You may have noticed that my posts have increased in frequency, and that's due largely to having an actual draft folder and queue. Being able to work on some posts little by little while others go out to queue just suits my workflow a lot better when it comes to blogging, and it's a big plus to be able to work locally with posts on apps of my choosing and to have local copies on hand.

We have a title and trailer for Star Wars Episode IX! On the one hand I'm thrilled at the visuals and to see the characters I came to love, not to mention tearing up at the sight of Carrie as Leia. On the other I'm terrified that Palpatine is going to be the True Evil and Kylo's going to get some bullshit redemption where his crimes are swept under the rug because multiple mass murders are nbd uwu uwu. Kylostans are already popping out of the woodwork saying he was never a villain and I'm like... stay away from me, scary people. I wish I could just let go and enjoy SW, or alternately not care about it at all.

I've getting some new work thrown my way, if all goes well it looks like I'll be writing/editing a book for much of the year. Going from 0 to 100 on a field I don't know a whole lot about seems to be turning into my scholarly imprimatur, I mean I wrote my thesis in a field I hadn't heard of a year beforehand and wrote a book chapter last year on another field I'm no expert in.

Comments

[fleurviolette]

I'm looking forward to seeing the trio. Their outfits look nice. It's like as if the story is continuing where TFA left off, which I don't mind at this point.

[ljwrites]

Everyone looks SO FREAKING HOT. Also that's what JJ has more or less said about IX, that he's finishing what he started in TFA though he does acknowledge TLJ from time to time. Whatever his flaws JJ is a master of hype, damn him.

[fleurviolette]

I’m just pleasantly surprised, the characters look like themselves and it looks like a Star Wars film.
Yeah, JJ is good at setting up the story. Just look at the first Star Trek reboot film. That was a fun film, and there was a lot of hype for that. Even the first Cloverfield film had hype too.

[minoanmiss]

Yay good work to do!

I probably should care about Kylostans being egregiously wrong and all the ways bringing Palpy back in could go badly, but I don't care about Kyle Ron one way or the other, except that I shallowly enjoy Adam Driver's performance. I just want to see my four bambini kick ass and take names and look beautiful! eeee! *makes squeaky noises*

[ljwrites]

I wish I were as good as ignoring the silliness and focusing on the positives as you T_T But yes, Driver is a great actor and I'll enjoy his performance assuming the movie is not total crap.

And don't you mean five bambini, Finn, Rey, Poe, Rose, and Jannah?? *high-pitched squeeing*

[jesse_the_k]

Yippee for the new job!

Can’t wait for the queue script to be live. Happy to test it!

[ljwrites]

And now I'm writing a project proposal over the weekend. This had better be worth it T_T

The code and settings will be live soon; it's for Mac OS X but relies on Bash and postfix so it should be compatible with some modification with, say, Linux distros. The post is more or less written--I've been documenting the process closely for my own use, just need to let it run for a few more days to work out any remaining bugs. And there have been weird ones, like postfix sending endless error messages which I had to stop & restart it for. The script itself is simple but it interacts with other things like postfix and launchd, which is where I mostly got tripped up.

I wonder if you realize you inspired me to do this setup when you mentioned keeping your local Markup files and DW synchronized? I started thinking about how I could do something like that, and then I couldn't STOP thinking about it.

[jesse_the_k]

I'm so glad I helped spark this! Don't know if you follow mdlbear. He's mentioned his Linux workflow — he's been coding for >30 years — and I felt too baby!user to ask for advice. He also hosts

https://mdlbear.dreamwidth.org/tag/curmudgeon

But I'll be delighted to stumble through what you've done. If I ask for a help and you have no idea or no time you can say "NO IDEA or NO TIME"!

[ljwrites]

What a wonderful journal! I fell down a hole reading his posts about version control and writing on text editors, and now I'm hankering to get local git repo going for my own writing and learn LaTeX lol.

The tutorial post is queued to go live this Wednesday and I'd happy to help if my totes n00b self can figure anything out! (Srsly I got like... everything off of Stack Overflow and SuperUser...) This was a lot of fun, if at times frustrating, to set up and I hope it's helpful to others too.

[jesse_the_k]

...so glad you enjoyed it! I will admit that I'm reading "Learn Enough Command Line" myself, in hopes of being able to implement the hack you're working on.

[ljwrites]

Then you're probably going into it with a better basis than I did--I went in completely cold and made a lot of basic mistakes XD

[lb_lee]

You may not be a Reylo, but you know how to YOLO!

You write that book.

--Mori

[ljwrites]

Omg what a horrible juxtaposition.

I'm writing the proposal and trying to awaken the saleswoman in me.

[lb_lee]

Awaken the salesforce! YOU CAN DO ITTTTTT

--Mori, helpfully

EDIT: Yes I am going to keep making really bad Star Wars jokes through this whole thread.

[ljwrites]

I have sales power! ABSOLUTE POWAH!

[lb_lee]

Well, CLEARLY that's how Palpatine did it! Clever marketing of his memoir: "The Dark Side is Seductive."

--Mori

[loopy777]

I'm worried about Palpatine, but not because of Kylo. TLJ pretty definitively finished the possibility of Kylso forsaking the dark side, IMO, and the trailer shows him reassembling his goofball Darth Cosplay mask.

My problem is that one of the points of the prequels (or at least George Lucas's intent as to one of the points of the prequels) is that the dark side isn't a path to immortality. Love and selflessness is, hence why the Sith turn themselves into monsters in their fight against death, while the Jedi accept death and become spirits. To have Palpatine come back, even in ghost form, is going to go against that message, and I don't trust JJ's sense of storytelling enough to expect him to juggle it well, if he even tries.

But, on the other hand, he did make the sequel trilogy focused on the theme of cycles and repetition, turning it into self-commentary. So maybe he's more on the ball than I realize.

[ljwrites]

I heartily hope you're right. I will be Done with the franchise if they throw away the development from the past two movies and discount Kylo as a villain.

Didn't Darth Plagueis discover immortality in the EU/Legends continuity, though, and didn't Sidious learn everything from him? Also it's being mentioned that Palpatine resurrected himself through cloning in the old continuity. With Luke being very much a part of TRoS in the Light Side way, maybe Palpatine could present a monstrous alternative in the form of a twisted physical immortality. I'm with you on not trusting JJ and he's screwed up plenty, but Sidious's return by itself doesn't seem to be against Lucas's intent if Legends are any indication.

[loopy777]

Well, Palpatine didn't actually return from death in Legends. The 'Dark Empire' comics depict him transferring his spirit at the moment before his death into a clone body, but it's an imperfect method that causes each subsequent clone body to deteriorate more and more rapidly. He stages a whole return and reconquers the galaxy, but his focus becomes stealing a Skywalker body to solve the problem with his health, with the vague hope that someday he would conquer death. It actually fits very well with the prequels, and we know that Lucas at least read and enjoyed this comic (the various anecdotes seem to indicate that he had some interest in the comics and video games, but not the prose works), so there's speculation that it inspired some of the content in the prequels.

Darth Maul returns in the Clone Wars cartoon on Lucas's order, but that's another case of being powerful enough in the dark side to not have actually died.

The matter of Lucas's involvement in the Darth Plagueis novel is much more ambiguous, with some claims that he contributed "notes" in response to ideas, but the author never actually had any direct communication with him. I made a tumblr post going into a lot of detail on the subject of that immortality, but what we actually see Plagueis do in his novel is more about enhancing the physical body through the dark side. Even the cases where he brings someone back to life is pretty much a medical resuscitation. So, like with Palpatine in the comics, we see a fight against death, but not the ability to come back once death has won. That's the difference between the Jedi and the Sith. One accepts death, and in that way finds the way back from it. The other fights against it, and in doing so creates a situation where it will eventually win.

Now, Legends did have dark side Force-ghosts, and they were usually depicted as being anchored to some specific point and being actual haunting-style ghosts. That does create a difference from the Jedi way of ghosting, but as long as we've trashed the Legends material, I'd rather go with a depiction that adheres to the thematic message of the movies and doesn't try to skate by on a technicality.

[rose_griffes]

Look closely at the hands working on fixing Kylo's mask. Those aren't his hands, unless he's started wearing furry gloves. Which would be... an interesting stylistic choice.

[loopy777]

I'm all for Kylo in a fur boa. XD

But yeah, I haven't had the time to watch the trailer on a good screen yet, and you're right. My bet is that it's one of the Knights of Ren.