Ding! 50!

It took me 6 months, but I have finally leveled a character in SWTOR to 50, the current max level. Here she is, my new level 50 Jedi Sage:

Yipee!

To commemorate this event, I thought I'd share some screen shots from my adventures (excuse the low quality video settings--my computer system isn't that great). Cue the nostalgic music...

Overlooking the sarlacc pit

Reenacting The Lion King. If only I could have zoomed out more, it would be clearer that I'm on a narrow rock outcropping.

Speeder surfing (a fun glitch I got once)

My pet orokeet races to keep up with my speeder, like in that imprinted duckling video

Tattooine's twin suns

I loved Alderaan, especially for those sweeping thranta rides.

Wheeeee!

Reclining in the Alderaan palace throne room. I could get used to this.

Upon reaching level 40 (and all levels other than 50), the achievement was greeted by droids carrying a banner that says "Congratulations" (in this shot, it actually says "tulations con", but just picture it scrolling). Not sure why they thought level 50 deserved less celebration.

Hoth: cold, but in some places strikingly beautiful.

Lightsabers are great, but sometimes you need a big gun.

Portrait shot of my Sage on the bridge of her ship, from the load screen

I still haven't finished my class storyline--two more planets to go, I think. Then there are all the hardmode flashpoints and operations to improve my gear and hone my skills. No rest for the Jedi. But it has been, and continues to be, a fun, exciting journey.

Finally Brave

Today marks the premiere of this year's Pixar offering: Brave. As many news articles and reviews have pointed out, Brave is notable as the first Pixar film to have a female protagonist. Sure, they've had a few important female characters in some of their movies--Helen, EVE, Jessie, Dory--but the main characters at the center of each of their first 12 films were all male. In fact, I'd say only two female characters in previous Pixar films have even held the distinction of playing the second lead role (The Incredibles, WALL-E).

I actually wrote about this problem three years ago, when DreamWorks Animation was releasing its first film with a female protagonist (Monsters vs. Aliens), after 11 male-led CG feature films. I figure I might as well update my lists for Pixar and DreamWorks films and their protagonists...

CG feature films (and main character, females in bold):

Pixar
1. Toy Story (Woody)
2. A Bug's Life (Flik)
3. Toy Story 2 (Woody)
4. Monsters, Inc. (Sulley)
5. Finding Nemo (Marlin)
6. The Incredibles (Mr. Incredible)
7. Cars (Lightning McQueen)
8. Ratatoille (Remy)
9. Wall-E (Wall-E)
10. Up (Carl Fredricksen)
11. Toy Story 3 (Woody)
12. Cars 2 (Lightning McQueen)
13. Brave (Merida)

DreamWorks Animation
1. Antz (Z)
2. Shrek (Shrek)
3. Shrek 2 (Shrek)
4. Shark Tale (Oscar)
5. Madagascar (Alex)
6. Over the Hedge (RJ)
7. Flushed Away (Roddy)
8. Shrek the Third (Shrek)
9. Bee Movie (Barry)
10. Kung Fu Panda (Po)
11. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (Alex)
12. Monsters vs. Aliens (Susan)
13. How to Train Your Dragon (Hiccup)
14. Shrek Forever After (Shrek)
15. Megamind (Megamind)
16. Kung Fu Panda 2 (Po)
17. Puss in Boots (Puss)
18. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (Alex)

DreamWorks may have beaten Pixar to the punch with its first female protagonist, but now they're tied again. Looking ahead, DreamWorks has seven films with estimated release dates (according to Wikipedia); the last one, scheduled for late 2014, appears to be the only one with a female protagonist. Pixar's next film will be a Monsters, Inc. sequel with the same old male protagonists. I can't determine any characters in The Good Dinosaur, though the following Pixar film, planned for 2015, will at least take place inside a girl's mind. I would hope mainly female characters populate a girl's mind...

So we have some female protagonists now in this highest echelon of children's animated movies (not that there aren't other great kids' films, but these studios are definitely the two powerhouses), though they are still few and far between. As I said in my old post, I understand that film studios and development teams are mostly composed of men, and people like to create stories about what they know and relate to. First of all, they should try to find more women. But in any case, we are not so different that good writers can't write for the opposite sex. Really, if you can get inside the head of a trash-compacting robot who lives with a cockroach on a long-abandoned Earth, you can probably get inside the head of a woman. We're not that mysterious.

I also understand that movies are a business, and if boys respond more negatively to female-led films than girls do to male-led films, that gives studios motivation to release only male-led movies. But as I argued before, if you always release male-led kids films, of course young boys aren't going to learn to appreciate films with female leads. It's basically a self-fulfilling prophesy. Girls deserve characters to look up to just as much as boys do. Girls don't have to be the best friend or the love interest--we can be heroes in our own right. Pixar and DreamWorks films are so popular and successful, I think they can stand to be put a little faith in their storytelling and their audience, be brave, and release more female-starring films. Help little girls dream bigger. This is a good start, but more often than once a decade would be preferable.

It seems preliminary reviews for Brave are positive but not ecstatic. Certainly better than last year's Cars 2, widely recognized as Pixar's worst, but not as magical as the great Pixar films. The primary criticism is that it seems too...Disneyfied. That is, it's a somewhat formulaic princess fairy tale. I have nothing against princess stories if the princess is as capable as Merida, but I do remember some people expressing disappointment upon learning that Pixar's first female-led movie would be about a princess. It seems they had a point.

I remain extremely excited and optimistic about Brave, and I hope it's a huge hit in theaters. I love bows and arrows, I love spunky young female protagonists, and I adore Scottish accents. I will see the movie this weekend, and in all likelihood I will love it. It doesn't matter if Merida is a princess--she's a master archer and a worthy hero for any kid to admire. Thanks, Pixar, just keep the female protagonists coming.

Ready for Prometheus

Ever since we saw its first trailer back in January, my boyfriend has been repeatedly asking me, "So when does Prometheus come out?" He has fond memories of Alien from his childhood and loves horror as well as sci-fi, so this is right up his alley. Now his wait is finally over.

Strangely enough, up until a month ago I had never seen any of the Alien movies. It has been a huge hole in my science fiction movie experience (remaining hole: I've never seen a Terminator movie, though I did watch the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show). It's especially funny because, as my parents tell it, Sigourney Weaver was my idol when I was a small child. I have no memories of this--I was probably 3 at the time--but apparently we saw an exhibit about Aliens at the science museum, which inspired me to gallop around the house battling imaginary aliens and proclaiming "I'm Sigouwney Weava!"

Well, I've finally watched both Alien and Aliens (it is my understanding that the rest are mostly not worth the trouble). Alien was great, though also frustrating as horror movies tend to be when people are so obviously being stupid, stupid, stupid. At least the cat was saved. Aliens had more, well, aliens, but also a lot more guns, so it seemed a bit more fair, and thus more to my taste. And Bill Paxton--oh my gosh. Did people actually talk like that?! Not just ninja turtles?

Now that I'm all caught up on Alien(s), I'm ready to see Prometheus. Shame it won't have Sigourney Weaver. Over 20 years after I first came to admire her, that lady still kicks ass.

How the Dalai Lama is, and isn't, like Yoda

Last month, I was lucky enough to hear the Dalai Lama speak at the UH Manoa campus. He actually gave two talks that weekend, one open to the general public and one targeted toward students; I went to the student talk, "Educating the Heart".

My favorite part of the talk has to be when I realized that the Dalai Lama is Yoda:

I think among emotions and thoughts, the real destroyer of our inner peace is fear... Fear develop frustration. Frustration develop anger. Anger brings violence.

I know no one likes the Phantom Menace, but you have to know what I was thinking at this point:
Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. 
It's not exactly the same, but along with his grumbling voice, his not-quite-proper English, his sweet yet authoritative wise old man persona... He was Yoda. And I was delighted.

Unfortunately, he then proceeded to say how we shouldn't rely on the use of Force. Yes, it was a message of non-violence--talk it out instead of fighting. Still, it would have been that much sweeter to hear him tell us, "Use the Force."

The missing noble girls of Westeros

No spoilers for recent episodes (I mention last night's, but it's not new information). Only a slight spoiler if you're so far behind that you don't know that someone in Game of Thrones is guilty of incest.

In last night's episode of Game of Thrones, Tyrion tells Cersei that she "beat the odds" because two of her three children are sane (it was always said the Targaryen children of incest had a 50/50 chance of insanity). As I reflected on this exchange between brother and sister, it occurred to me that she beat another set of 50/50 odds by having two boys--it is best, after all, to have both an heir and a spare. Of course, she herself came from a family with two boys and one girl... And Catelyn and Ned Stark were similarly lucky, with three sons and two daughters. This set me off, tallying sons and daughters in the most powerful noble families of Westeros. Some I knew off the top of my head, but I was able to fill in gaps thanks to George R. R. Martin's comprehensive appendices on the noble families of Westeros. The results were quite surprising.

Here is my tally. I only looked at the most prominent families (sorry, Florents and Freys), and I included two generations where the information was accessible--in general, this came down to the children of the current (or recently deceased) lord of each great house, plus the children of that lord's father (including the current lord himself).

Stark (Eddard): 3 boys/2 girls;           Stark Sr.: 3 boys/1 girl
Lannister (Tywin): 2 boys/1 girl;       Lannister Sr.: 4 boys/1 girl
Tully (Hoster): 1 boy/2 girls;              Tully Sr.: 2 boys/0 girls
Targaryen (Aerys): 2 boys/1 girl
Baratheon (Robert...): 2 boys/1 girl;  Baratheon Sr.: 3 boys/0 girls;
Baratheon (Stannis): 0 boys/1 girl
Tyrell (Mace): 3 boys/1 girl;               Tyrell Sr.: 1 boy/2 girls
Martell (Doran): 2 boys/1 girl;           Martell Sr.: 2 boys/1 girl
Greyjoy (Balon): 3 boys/1 girl;           Greyjoy Sr.: 4 boys/0 girls
Arryn (Jon): 1 boy/0 girls

Total: 38 boys/16 girls

Wow. Yes. It would appear that the noble houses of Westeros produce more than twice as many boys as girls. Now it's possible that the appendices didn't bother to mention noble children who died very young, though that group should include approximately equal numbers of boys and girls. It is also possible that the appendices left out sisters who married less important families and thus don't matter much anymore, but overall the appendices are pretty good at reporting marriages as well as deaths (at most, I think there could be girls missing from the Tully Sr., Greyjoy Sr., and maybe Martell Sr. counts). If you see any errors above, please let me know. Still, I find it highly unlikely that any of these sources of error could account for 22 missing girls.

This statistic stands out to me because I was recently reading some articles about the disturbing gender imbalance in parts of Asia (largely in China, but also in India and some other countries) due to gender-selection abortions (one such article: Asia's 163 Million Missing Girls). The noble families of Westeros look like an extreme version of that. But even if the maesters of Westeros have some sort of potion to induce a safe abortion, I'm pretty sure they don't have ultrasound capabilities to allow the identification of an unborn baby's gender. Is it possible that the nobles of Westeros are killing off newborn daughters? Extremely unlikely. First of all, the scandal would surely have gotten out. Second, daughters are useful for forming alliances through marriage. Third, the great noble houses have plenty of money, resources, and household staff, so extra children would not be a burden. If you get a girl, just try again for a boy. Every healthy born baby is an asset.

So what then caused this gender imbalance? I can only think that it is divine providence. I don't mean that praying to the Seven, the Old Gods, the Lord of Light or the Drowned God will give you more sons than daughters (who knows, maybe it will). I'm talking about the god of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin himself. He may not have been aware of it, but as he made up characters for his books, he simply wrote a lot more men into the noble families of Westeros than women. I can guess how this could have happened unintentionally. Martin created a story with a great collection of outstanding female characters. They are particularly outstanding because they live in a society where women have to work hard for influence, so most women end up playing the meek wife. Such meek women are less useful for a narrative than a knight swearing fealty and going into battle. Marrying a daughter off seems less urgent than arranging for succession of a lordship. Not to mention, the men kill each other quickly enough that they need to have a few spares written into the series.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said something for the article mentioned above that helps shed a little light on this situation of gender imbalance: The normal ratio should be 103 or 104 boys for every 100 girls. Over 107 starts to look suspicious, and over 130 is "sci-fi land".

So I guess that solves it. With an equivalent ratio of 237 boys for every 100 girls, we're in fantasy land.

Theme of the week: No evidence is evidence

Anyone else happen to have Fringe, Awake, and Grimm on their TV-viewing schedules? If so, you may have noticed a common thread in their most recent episodes: No evidence is evidence. Spoilers ahead.

Even though Awake airs first, Fringe was the first of the three that I watched. In Friday's episode, called "The Consultant", Walter helps Fauxlivia solve the mystery of the mole in Fringe Division when he tells her "No evidence is evidence." By that, he means that her being unable to find any trace of the mole implies that the mole must be someone high up, with the power to tamper with evidence and erase his tracks. Though she initially can't believe that Colonel Broyles would betray them, by the end of the episode, they have him in custody.

It's a shame Walter can't be in every show (really, he'd be an excellent addition to just about anything). In Thursday's episode of Awake, titled "Ricky's Tacos," Detective Britten's subconscious--or magic power or whatever--is telling him to look back at a case he was working on before his accident. He checks out a building related to the case, but finds nothing. When he tries to find the case file back at the station, it is missing. When he reports this to Captain Harper, rather than being concerned that a whole case file is gone, she questions why he's investigating the closed case in the first place. Britten is deflected. No evidence is evidence, Detective. Of course, we the audience know that the police chief is involved in...something...which requires her to cover up this case and keep Detective Britten distracted. In her position of power, it's not a difficult thing for her to do.

Then we come to Grimm. Friday's episode, "Love Sick," starts with police Captain Renard killing two men (who probably had it coming) in a parking garage. Don't mess with Sam Adama. He knows just what to do to make it look like the men killed each other, but he misses one thing: the guy's cell phone, which could reveal that its most recent call was made to the captain himself. After Nick collects the phone for evidence, Renard is able to replace its SIM card. So, when the lab reports their findings back to Nick, they reveal that the old phone has a completely clean, new SIM card. How odd. No evidence is evidence, Nick. It's time for Nick to figure out that something's up with Renard, because I'm dying to know who/what he is and what he's doing.

I couldn't help but be amused by this apparent theme of the week. I guess it says something about the kind of TV shows that I watch. By now we've learned this lesson very well: If you can't find evidence, or your evidence goes missing, your boss is probably conspiring against you.