A Midsummer Night's Team Building Exercise (NSF56k)

It's been far too long since I've had the chance to post, and I wanted to fix that. There was a class discussion about our big, final project - A Midsummer Night's Dream, and our Professor was saying that she did not believe you could do it in a modern setting. I don't think this is true, I think there are a lot of ways you could do it in a modern setting. The one I mentioned in class was having it set in an office. If I were given the opportunity to stage it, this would be my cast:

Theseus - Executive Vice President of Operations - Miranda Richardson




This is a conscious role reversal. She plays the part of Theseus, and in this case Operations has just swallowed up several other departments including Finance. I'd want Miranda Richardson because of her role as Queen Elizabeth I in Blackadder II. In fact, I'd want Theseus to be played this way - as a brutal flighty despot. You really don't get to see her doing that in this clip, but trust me - if you've seen the series you know exactly what I mean. If you haven't seen the series you need to go watch it yesterday.

The reason I'm putting a woman in Theseus' part is that women tend to have a stronger role in an office environment. In this world, guys tend to be the minority. In my last position, for instance, I was one of three guys (two non-management) on the office staff. This was typical everywhere but at the one call center I worked at. I also like the idea of turning some of Shakespeare's ideas on their heads.

Hippolyta - Former Executive Vice President of Finance, Currently Senior Assistant VP of Operations - Sir Nigel Hawthorne (Yes, I'm well aware that he's dead and mores the pity)





Obviously Hippolyta would have to have more lines. In fact, I'd rather see a little more tension between Theseus and Hippolyta than was seen in the play. If really were putting this on, I might pick Steve Martin as a replacement for Sir Hawthorne. Sure, he's best known as a comedian, but he can do good dramatic work as well - go see The Spanish Prisoner and come talk to me.

In this case, Hawthorne's department has been swallowed up by Operations, and he has been demoted. One chief difference between Shakespeare's play and my adaption is that there would not be a romantic relationship. Instead we have two long term bitter rivals, who are now forced to work together. Obviously Richardson is the victor, but she didn't get to fire Hawthorne, so it wasn't a total victory. The CEO insisted that she keep Hawthorne on and make put him in the deputy's position. The two of them are currently trying to make the best of a bad situation. In terms of behavior, they tend to behave like an old married couple (I'm thinking specifically of my paternal grandparents) - they never have a kind word for each other, but will defend the other against outside threats. As in the case of the actual characters, there is respect, but it is buried under a mountain of sarcasm.

Egeus - Manager of the Special Services Group and heading The Very Big Project - John C. McGinley




Egeus is a character that caused a lot of head scratching in my class, I think my version would be a lot easier to understand. He's the worst boss you've ever had. The sort of boss you instinctively duck in his presence, because you know at any moment he'll start throwing things at you. The sort of boss that begins a one on one "discussion" by kicking your door down. If you don't have a door, he'll have Facilities install one just so he can kick it down.

In the original play, Egeus is a jerk to his daughter, but respectful to Theseus. I'd turn that on it's head. McGinley would play a character that is a full on, fire breathing asshole - unless Hermia (more on her later) is within earshot; when that happens he becomes the most reasonable human being on Earth. In this case, she is his protege and he thinks of her as a daughter, though that feeling isn't reciprocated.

Egeus is part of the conflict in the original play, here too, but in the opposite direction. McGinley is a company man through and through, and highly protective of Hermia. He has two goals - both of which stand in opposition to her, though he doesn't know it in one case. He is trying to prevent her from being transferred to the night shift. The night shift is (as it is so often in the real world) career suicide. He wants her to move up the ladder with him, but she doesn't consider this a "career job" and just wants the extra money that the night shift provides, as well as to get away from McGinley who she finds a bit smothering and creepy. McGinley has no idea that the transfer originated with her. She is also part of the romantic plot, the Lysander character is a team leader at the company is a report to of one of McGinley's rivals (he considers almost everyone a rival) and he does everything he can to try to disuade her.

Hermia - Team Leader Customer Service Team One, Special Services - Felicia Day





She's well known from her role in The Guild and you should seriously watch that. It's a great show. But as Hermia, she'd have a very different role. Hermia in this play is kind of bitchy and self-centered, but in a passive-aggressive way that doesn't always get noticed by her colleagues. She doesn't see this company as her future career, and this causes conflict with her boss - though this conflict is indirect until late in the play (she tries to get quietly transferred to night shift, he thinks someone else is trying to move her and attempts to stop it.) She has an interoffice romance going with Lysander. My goal with this character is to give her less personality than Helena - again, the opposite of the original play.

Lysander - Team Leader Customer Service Team Two - ????

I honestly have no idea who I would cast in this role. I'm not going all "I don't judge guys," I just don't know in terms of drama who the current sex symbol is. Most of the ones I know are from older films. He'd essentially look like the young male lead in a soap opera, and like Helena be kind of a cardboard cut out sort of figure. Like Barbie and Ken come to life.

Lysander reports to one of Egeus' rivals - which is the first reason he hates him, the second is that he's involved with Hermia and Egeus doesn't think he's good enough. Oddly enough, the two are a lot alike and unlike Hermia, Lysander does see himself making a career at the company though Egeus is trying to sabotage it by attempting to have him transferred to the night shift instead of Hermia.

Demetrius & Helena - Team Leads Customer Service Three and Four

John Cusack and Christa Miller

I'm pretty sure you know who John Cusack is but I'm just going to link from here on out to preserve your precious bandwidth. They're a contrast with Hermia and Lysander, older, less focused on the future and more about getting through the day. Both would qualify as the sort of beaten down office workers that I've spent years seeing (and almost turned into myself.)

They're more "everyday people" than Hermia and Lysander.

Rude Mechanicals - Day Shift Customer Service Reps

Or maybe HR staff might make more sense. I really want to include the play within a play. It could either be done as a talent competition or, perhaps as a motivational video. I like the motivational video idea better. I'll admit I'm sourcing the tone of this adaption from Resume with Monsters by William Browning Spencer which you should immediately go read. One of the things I loved in the book were the motivational tracts included in the main characters paychecks that seemed to have the opposite effect.

In the role of Bottom? Jack Black.

I'm unsure who I'd want for the remaining cast members, obviously people who could play straight man against Jack Black.

Oberon, Titania and Puck - Night Shift Customer Service Managers and Customer Service Representative.

For Oberon and Titania, I'd like these two from The League of Gentlemen (WARNING video is probably not safe for work). One of the things I really didn't like about Midsummer is how they handled the fairy kingdom. Fairies were the original "other" - they sometimes looked a bit like us, but it was a parody of humanity. They were weird and obsessive when it came to their behaviors, and even when they looked attractive, they were "off" in a way you couldn't put your finger on. I want to go the troll route here and make the fairy king and queen ugly.

I'd point to Oberon's weirdness by parodying a supervisor I had once who was really in to meetings. Even when there really wasn't any information to convey. The night shift has no staff aside from Puck, who reports to Oberon. Despite this, the first time we see Oberon he is giving a meeting to an empty conference room. He's referring to power points, taking questions from the floor - the whole nine yards. When Puck interrupts him, he gets cross with him.

I think I'd like to make Titania an absurd teamwork fanatic - something like this.

Incidentally, Moss from the IT Crowd would be my choice for Puck.

I'm unsure how the conflict would work between Oberon and Titania off hand, obviously the lovers (err team leaders) get seconded to night shift and the comedy of errors begins when Puck gets ahold of them.

I'll admit, that this version makes a lot of changes from the original play, and you certainly could run the play as normal - I just like my take on it. What do you think?

Walking on the Moon

I only have a week to go before my critical analysis paper is due and I'm panicing a bit. I want to do a story from Sex and Violence in Zero G, but I'm not sure which one. I'm now leaning towards the first "Captain Future" story. First, let's take a look at the Near Space saga as a whole:

- Influenced by Robert A. Heinlein

The Near Space stories are a tribute to Heinlein's Future History stories. The first story in Near Space is "Walking on the Moon", a homage to Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon" an early tale in Future History. Like Future History, Near Space is told from precommercialized space travel in Walking in 2010 to "Mister Chicago" which is near the end of the timeline in 2093.

Heinlein is featured in the wall of photos at Diamond Back Jack's, with Jack Baker the proprietor of the bar at a science fiction convention when he was a kid.

- Not A Randroid Stroke Book

Heinlein's characters were often two dimensional. Harriman in "The Man Who Sold the Moon" was typical, a coiled spring of "Can Do" and all the positives of big "C" Capitalism in action. While I think an argument could be made that this was the gold standard of science fiction pulp writing at the time, you can see that Ayn Rand used this style as a model for her characters.

Steele is clearly a Heinlein fan, but takes the opposite tack. The big space companies as a group are portrayed as being obnoxious, meddlesome, clueless and occasionally sinister. Skycorp (later ConSpace), the first space company is the most directly portrayed throughout the series. Whereas Harriman himself is a focus throughout Future History, McGuiness the CEO of Skycorp never gets any screen time and is only referred to in a few stories.

Our first view of Skycorp is in "Free Beer and The William Casey Society." This story shows Skycorp (and NASA) as stodgy by enforcing a "no booze" regimen in space.

Later, in "The Return of Weird Frank" (my favorite Diamond Back Jack story, for the record) when the author describes the boredom of working in space ("People often compared the wild nightlife on Skycan to that of Deadhorse, Alaska.") and when discussing The Sex Monster. "Skycan was a small, closed environment, and the company frowned on sexual congress in space ('insurance problems' was the catch-all phrase, as was for almost everything else which was fun.)"

In "Sugar's Blues" another corporation with operations in space is portrayed as sinister. The story compares the spacers who hang out at Diamond Back Jack's with company men "They were company men. Any company; pick one, they all look alike." Attired from JC Pennys, flat top haircuts and used car dealer mustaches - that is more or less how the author describes them. Versus the workers who are in jeans, Skycorp caps and cowboy shirts.

The company, Spectrum-Mellencamp a biological firm, frames Sugar ('because everything I do comes out sweet') Saltzman and his crew for drug use after they destroy a space station module containing the company's plans for the first street legal recreational drug. After Saltzman allows the narrator (a journalist on the space beat) to publish what happened, the company gets revenge by burning down Diamond Back Jack's.

In the novel Orbital Decay, we see Skycorp collude with the National Security Agency to place a satellite in orbit that will act as a tap on every line of communication in the world. It is tested on American citizens.

- A Paen to the Working Man

Steele's Near Space stories take blue collar workers and put them in the role that test pilots and astronauts filled in Wolfe's The Right Stuff. His characters are bawdy and weird where test pilots and the early astronauts are seen as the figurehead of America.

This contrast is particularly sharp in Orbital Decay and Clarke County Space. Decay has its protagonists many of the spacers mentioned in the Diamond Back Jack stories:

- "Virgin" Bruce Neiman, a former biker on the run from the law.

- Lisa Barnhart, a shuttle pilot.

It also adds

- Popeye Hooker, a depressed former shrimper, believes he is on the run from the law.

- Jack Hamilton, a botanist who is more than he seems, and the narrator of the story.

Their antagonist is Captain H. G. Wallace, the project supervisor of Skycan, Skycorp and the National Security Agency.

Captain Wallace is a deliberate twisting of a sci-fi trope. When Hamilton first meets Wallace, he recalls seeing him in interviews. He looks like someone who just walked out of The Right Stuff. Crew cut. Rugged build. Lots of talk about man's destiny in space.

Upon meeting him, he has crazy eyes, sallow, sunken features - he seems a shadow of his former self. Note Wallace's initials H. G. W. - it is a reference to Herbert George Wells, an early science fiction author, and the first author to write a fictional account of a trip to the Moon. Wallace could easily be compared to Captain Queeg from the Caine Mutiny, or General Ripper from Doctor Strangelove. It isn't simply that all three of these characters go insane, but the way they go insane - they live in a particular reality, informed by their prejudices and enforced by their role as commander.

Wallace believes that those who settle in outer space are the next step in mankind's evolution. They must be morally and physically superior to average men. This is similar to Wolfe's The Right Stuff, in that Wolfe suggests that test pilots and astronauts are a breed apart, that they possess a special quality that most men and women do not have. His crew are mostly blue collar workers, odd ones at that, who have been driven nuts by isolation and boredom. The clear difference between what should be and what is drives Wallace around the bend.

This is apparent in a number of places in the novel, and as the story winds up Wallace begins to isolate himself from the crew. He has a Queegesque moment at the end of the novel when he claims that the crew's demands to keep the offspring of two cats brought up for research purposes is the beginning of the mutiny.

In Clarke County Space, the conflict is between the New Ark - a sort of hippie commune and Clarke County Corporation, the company which built the Clarke County Space Station. There is also a conflict between a mafia hitman (the Golem) and the Sheriff of Clarke County that intertwines with the main plot - the struggle between the farmers (New Ark) and the tourism board (3C).

This story is an homage to the Heinlein novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In both stories we have a revolutionary struggle. In Mistress, the average Lunar citizen is a prisoner - either criminal or political. New Ark party members can be readily compared to them, Clarke County was written during the Reagan years when being referred to as a "hippy" was an insult and the political left was on the wane. In both novels, the colonists use weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent force - in Mistress the colonists actually use the weapons. In the case of Mistress, this weapons takes the form of large chunks of the regolith hurled from the lunar surface by catapult at the Earth - these catapults were formerly used to send raw materials to Earth orbit for processing. In Clarke County, the weapon is an illegal 100 megaton nuke that was secretly placed in Earth orbit. In both revolutions help is given from an unexpected quarter. In the case of Mistress it is given by the Moon's central computer which has been sentient for some time, though this is not known by society at large. In Clarke County also has a secret artificially intelligent computer who styles itself "Blind Boy Grunt" after Bob Dylan, because he wishes he was Dylan. Of the two, Blind Boy Grunt has a more developed personality and a very hackish sense of humor. Both end with the founding of the first off world nation, in Heinlein's work it is just the Moon, in Steele's it is an alliance between Clarke County, Descartes Station on the Moon and Arisia Station on Mars called the Pax Ad Astra. The actual formation of the Pax is not shown in the novels, but Steele shows us a seen from the later independence struggle in The War Memorial. The War Memorial is a stark contrast with the scenes of combat in Mistress. Death is swift, horrifying and impersonal in The War Memorial. The memorial referenced in the title is a person whose combat space suit malfunctions after a nearby artillery strike renders his suit immobile. He watches as the invading force he is a part of is slaughtered by the Pax Militia's long range guns, helpless to save his comrades or himself. He dies in his suit, which except for a piece of piping in the CPU housing of the suit (shrapnel from the artillery strike), is completely untouched by the ravages of war. When a Pax Militia patrol finds him, they leave him untouched except for a small circle of stones at his feet to remember the fallen.

Heinlein was a product of World War II, combat in Moon and all his novels is idealized as a righteous struggle. Action sequences are always a matter of good versus evil. Steele is a product of the baby boom, and Vietnam - the first televised war. In "The War Memorial," the conflict of Pax versus Earth is not shown in this way, but through the eyes of the protagonist - full of fear and the knowledge that death can strike at any moment before his suit malfunctions; afterwards is the knowledge that he will die, and very soon.

The main character of Clarke County, Jenny Schorr (later Jenny Pell) bears examination. While she is one of several protagonists, Schorr is the one who changes the most, and moves the plot forward. She cuckolds her husband with Sheriff Bigthorn whom she is in love with. Her husband Neil Schorr, is both distant and unfaithful to her - both with his female admirers and the New Ark Party itself. She pushes forward the idea of independence for Clarke County when she sees that there can be no compromise with the Clarke County Corporation and that her husband is content to fruitlessly debate with them. She declares her independence from him and 3C. While Heinlein is noted as one of the few pulp era authors who had strong female characters in the leading role, they often resembled his male characters - coiled springs of can do and resourcefulness, often unemotional or critical of emotion. They were essentially his male characters with a sex change. Schorr is convincing as a female character. While she has moments where she is confident, she is also uncertain, emotional and even self-criticizing. I am not saying these are feminine attributes, they are human attributes. Jenny Pell is more believable as a person than Heinlein's protagonists.

- The Palace Coup

This isn't directly covered in a story, but is treated as history after a certain point, we see it discussed in "Zwarte Piet's Tale." Pell's Pax Ad Astra falls to a palace coup. Pell's party attempts to rule by consensus, which is nigh impossible considering the distances involved between Clarke County, the Moon and Mars. Her former husband Neil Schorr and a number of conservative elements within the Pax form a Monarchist party, supporting a constitutional monarchy. There is a coup. Mars and the Jovian moons declare their independence from the new Pax. The constitutional part is a sham, after Queen Macedonia is crowned, the government of Pax shows an active disregard for the rights and happiness of its citizens.

This is seen in "Zwarte Piet's Tale," the Pax tells would-be defectors to Mars that the Martian government will shoot down any Pax lander in their air space.

In "Kronos," neither the crew of the Intrepid nor the Royal Rapid Response Militia sent to Titan are trusted with the particulars of their mission. The crew is felt to be untrusted because they are "superiors" (humans bred with adaptions for space travel) and many superiors sided with the Jovians when they declared independence. The Royal Militia is deemed untrustworthy because it is made up of common citizens, drafted into national service.

Later in the Captain Future saga, Pax Naval Intelligence blackmails the protagonists into a kidnap attempt on Jenny Pell. They want to bring her back to the Pax to face treason charges and to interrogate her for information regarding the Earth facility on Mercury - the only colony owned by an Earth company in the inner Solar System. This also appears to be an attempt at revenge by Neil Schorr, her former husband who is now Prime Minister of the Pax Ad Astra.

If the original Pax represented the political left, the new Pax represents the American right. While they are more efficient at accomplishing their objectives due to the authoritarian structure of the government, they are also seen to be petty, corrupt and indifferent to the needs of the citizenry. Their primary goal is the perpetuation of the monarchy and the extension of its power by any means necessary.

This part of the Near Space saga is more in agreement with Heinlein's work. Heinlein was also anti-authoritarian, though the views presented in his novels come closer to small "l" libertarianism than the traditional left. Both author's used their series to decry prejudice. This can be seen in Heinlein's work in Stranger in a Strange Land; in Steele's work it can be seen in both The Pink Triangle and in the Captain Future saga. In particular, Steele highlights that it is okay to be different, and even to be uneasy at the differences in others, but that you are ultimately responsible for your actions.

Okay, game off - I know this is talky, but I wanted to get some of this out there so I could figure out how I want to approach this. I'm still not one hundred percent sure of which Near Space tale I'd like to do, or even if I'll be allowed to do it. There really isn't anything in the literature text that excites me. Ursula K. Guinn? Yuck.

Loot Runs

I was thinking of computer role-playing games in terms of my future paper while I was playing Fallout 3 the other day. The progression curve seems backwards to me. When I talk about "progression" here, I mean it in the sense of the difficulty curve, but that affects story progression too.

Most CRPGs start the players out as level one schlubs. Rats and wild boars are a major cause of death among level one characters. As they defeat these rather modest enemies and advance the story they gain in levels; they get new equipment that adds to their stats. By end game they are a walking engine of destruction, almost invincible save for the end boss or falling asleep at the keyboard. Measuring progression by level is part of the problem.

CRPGs are the descendants of tabletop RPGs and those trace their roots back to Dungeons and Dragons. Early D&D had its own roots in tabletop wargaming. D&D used level based progression, and thus CRPGs use it today. But there are some serious mathematical issues that can come from this scheme. I recall two games of Robotech back when I used to play tabletop games regularly. One gamemaster followed the developer's advice of parcelling out experience points, which are used to determine the player's level, very sparingly. In his game it took six months to a year of regular weekly play to hit the next level. The other gamemaster handed them out like candy on Halloween. His players quickly passed the level that the designers recommended for character retirement (the player character becomes a non-player character used to introduce adventures by the GM) and on to the level cap. Characters in Robotech really weren't designed to be played at that level. A single five player party would take on whole alien armadas - by themselves. This is roughly the equivalent of five soldiers winning World War II. My Fallout 3 game on the PS3 has reached this point. There really aren't any enemies that are a threat to me anymore, and that kills a story dead.

I think there might be a better way of handling progression in computer games. Imagine if we turned this equation upside down. The player begins as a major hero - at the "level cap," they are well skilled and equipped - we can skip killing 1,000 boars for experience. The game designer uses this period of nigh invulnerability to teach the player how the game works. Over time though, the player gets progressively weaker. His stats and skills don't go down, but his equipment starts to wear out, in a modern game ammunition might become scarce. This reverse progression means that enemies don't have to scale upwards as dramatically as they have to using a more conventional progression scheme. Players have to make choices about when they want to use their equipment - they're less likely to pull out the +12 Sword of Awesome or the Man Portable Nuke Cannon against the diseased rat if they know it might not be available against a more threatening monster. I think this system allows more freedom for the writer - players out leveling content is less of a concern.

Goodbye, Research Paper. Hello Critical Analysis

My research paper is done, I have no regrets.

The class has moved on to critical analysis now. We started out looking at poetry, and how you should read it. Now, we have the option of doing a paper on either a short story or a poem.

As poetry is for the most part not my thing (my sense of rhythm is 404), I'm looking at short stories. Vonnegut's "Welcome to the Monkey House" is my current front runner, but I'm tearing through my library and the web. I've also considered doing it on the Zen story "Trading Dialogue for Lodging" which is a favorite of mine. I think the guy who wrote that should be resurrected and given a staff position on Saturday Night Live.