A Treatise on the Plausibility of Hyperspace Ramming

Certainly not a visual metaphor for Star Wars fandom.

I haven't written for this blog in a while, so I thought I would start with something easy and uncontentious: the believability of hyperspace ramming in The Last Jedi, of course.

P.S. Spoilers for TLJ!

P.P.S. Usually I try to write about nerdy stuff in a way that is accessible to lay persons. A little more background knowledge is assumed here, since the people I am trying to persuade are mostly people who have higher-than-average familiarity with the Star Wars fictional universe.


Preamble

I was surprised by the intensity with which many Star Wars viewers disliked the hyperspace ramming sequence. Personally, I found it a great visual and emotional crescendo for the film. The scene is inscribed, awesomely, on my memory.

As I watched I also wondered to myself, briefly, “Does this make sense?” Pretty quickly, I thought of a few ways in which hyperspace collisions might be fit into Star Wars lore, and I moved on. I wasn't sure that in a protracted debate with an avid Star Wars nerd (I myself am a relatively casual Star Wars nerd) I could prove that this mechanic perfectly fit into the Star Wars universe, but I was able to generate a couple of explanations easily enough to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

So, my goal here isn't to prove that if this sequence did break your suspension of disbelief that you are wrong. What I do want to show is that people who enjoyed The Last Jedi, or indeed enjoyed this scene, are also not wrong to have enjoyed it. It is not necessary to turn one's brain off, or to have total disregard for the continuity of the Star Wars universe, to like The Last Jedi.

I could accept the criticism that Holdo’s ramming attack should have been prefigured earlier in the film, in the manner of Chekov’s gun, though I was not myself especially bothered by the lack of setup. But it is another thing to say that the scene absolutely and transparently violates Star Wars lore.

And I'm still not claiming that in protracted debate with someone who knows more about Star Wars lore than I do, I wouldn't be convinced that hyperspace ramming doesn't make sense. But I don't think that movies have to absolutely, irrefutably make sense in order to function as works of art or entertainment; they only have to make enough sense to feel so plausible as not to shatter the viewer's suspension of disbelief, and I do think that plausible reasons can be given to support the occurrence of a hyperspace collision in The Last Jedi.


Two Arguments

I take it that there are, broadly, two reasons why fans of Star Wars didn't find the ramming scene to be believable. (1) If hyperspace ramming worked, we would have seen a lot more of it in the previous Star Wars films, because it would have been a useful tactical technique. (2) Hyperspace ramming is not possible, because the mechanics of hyperspace do not permit collisions between spaceships. I'll tackle these in the order I just presented them. What I'll argue is that: (1) It is possible to think of reasons why we wouldn't have seen much hyperspace ramming previously; (2) There are some reasons to believe that hyperspace ramming is possible, given how hyperspace seems to works in Star Wars.


1. Why Didn't We See Hyperspace Ramming in the Previous Films?

(A) Off-Screen Action – The first point I'd like to make is that there could have been hyperspace collisions, deliberate or otherwise, occurring concurrent with the plots of the original trilogy and prequels, with that action simply happening off camera. This makes sense from a film-making perspective, because space battles generally focus on the actions of the protagonists, who are unlikely to commit kamikaze mid-film. It could also be relevant that depicting ships shooting at each other in the background of battles is probably easier than clearly depicting ships make hyperspace jumps into each other. If a ship in the background of the battle for Naboo had done what Holdo did with the Raddus in The Last Jedi it might have been hard to tell why several ships exploded. On the other hand, Stars Wars viewers are used to seeing ships shoot at each other and can easily apprehend what is happening. So, hyperspace ramming isn't generally something a protagonist does, while it also isn't the easiest thing to depict in the background of a space battle with ancillary characters.

Nothing forces us, then, to believe that hyperspace ramming didn't occur off-screen during the space battles shown in Star Wars. For that matter, entire strategic actions could have occurred centered around hyperspace-ramming that simply weren't part of the main plot. For all we know, the Rebel Alliance did hyper-jump a captured Lucrehulk into an Executor dreadnaught at some point. Just because something isn't explicitly mentioned or depicted in a narrative doesn't mean it never happens in that fictional universe.

However, there are further reasons to think, not just that ramming might have occurred without our seeing it, but that it would have been rare, perhaps to the point of negligibility, which further explains why it did not show up in the earlier movies.

(B) Poor Use of Resources – Obviously, hyperspace-ramming as depicted in The Last Jedi can be very effective. But you're paying for it not just in the cost of the spaceship sacrificed, but it in the cost of its replacement ships, or with all the future utility you lose if you do not replace it.

For the Empire, it would not normally have made sense to sacrifice a ship to achieve the destructive potential of hyperspace-ramming, since the Empire usually possessed overwhelming firepower anyway. Why pay the cost of a lost ship when you can just use the ship's normal combat-systems and keep the vessel to use again?

For the rebel alliance, it would be reasonable to assume that each ship was precious. Given that they were underfunded compared to their enemy, the Galactic Empire, paying to replace a ship would have cost them a greater percentage of their resources and would put them at a further disadvantage in the long run.

That's not to say that it would never happen, but under most circumstances it would be markedly more economical to use the ship in its intended combat capacity for many years than to spend its whole cost at once for short-term gains.

(C) Personnel Loss – An additional cost to FTL (faster-than-light) kamikaze is that, if it were used spontaneously during normal combat, the entire crew complement would be lost along with their ship. If the hyperspace ram were planned in advance, the crew could be evacuated, but if the decision were made mid-battle, it would result in the loss of the whole crew. Ramming might still be used if it became clear that the ship would be destroyed in combat regardless. However, there would probably be limited time between the direness of the situation becoming apparent and the ship's actual destruction, leaving limited opportunity to make the decision to sacrifice all of its personnel and hardware. The ship might well be lost more quickly than that decision could be finalized.

(D) People Don't Like to Die – It would be challenging to order somebody who doesn't want to sacrifice themself to perform a hyperspace ram, especially if they are left alone in a ship to do it (thereby minimizing personnel loss). After all, the normal purpose of a hyperdrive is to take the pilot instantly wherever they want to go. It would be easy for the pilot to warp away into the farthest reaches of space, rather than fulfill their mission. At the same time, threatening the pilot with death for dereliction would be hollow, given the nature of the command. A pilot could be threatened with torture or imprisonment if they are caught after going AWOL, but I suspect that many people would still take possible torture over certain death.

That's not to say it would be impossible to find volunteers, especially in organizations like the Rebel Alliance, whose participants are motivated more by ideology than by fear or material reward. However, the Alliance would also have strong countervailing reasons to make minimal use of hyperspace-ramming because of its relatively limited resources and personnel, as discussed above.

We might imagine that a fighter pilot in mortal danger would decide that if death were inevitable, they might as well go out on their own terms and do more damage to their enemy, rather than be shot down. I suspect, though, that in many cases it would be hard to convince somebody that there really is no way out of death. Most people, even in dire situations, seem hard-wired by evolution to keep searching for a way out until the very point of destruction, and a space battle is probably not the easiest place to have a philosophical discussion about the inevitability of death.

(E) Mass Ratios – Here I'm getting (more) speculative, but it makes sense that only certain rammer-rammee combinations would be strategically sensible. My assumption is that hyperspace-ramming doesn't work fundamentally differently from sub-light ramming. Basically, it involves the transfer of kinetic energy, just like a bullet or cannonball. In fact, I suspect this would be even more so with FTL ramming than normal ramming, because such a high percentage of the destructive energy of hyperspace-ramming would come from the velocity of the ramming vessel rather than the ignition of explosive materials stored on the ramming vessel.

Smaller objects, traveling at similar velocities, carry less kinetic energy. For example, if a cannonball and a bullet strike an object at the same velocity, the cannonball will do more damage. So, if you crashed an A-wing into the First Order's Supremacy at lightspeed, it would presumably do some damage, but not nearly as much as a large capital ship like the Raddus. You could crash a fleet of A-wings into it, and maybe do significant damage, but then you've lost a fleet of A-wings. This reinforces the above point that hyperspace-ramming is inefficient economically, since you either have to sacrifice a large ship, or a large number of small ships, in order to take down a sizable target.

Yet, the target has to be a powerful enough threat that it cannot be eliminated by the same large asset(s) using conventional means. For example, If you wanted to take out an Imperial-class star destroyer, you would only ram if your ship were sizable enough to transfer adequate kinetic energy through ramming, but not large or powerful enough to survive a conventional firefight.

So, hyperspace-ramming would usually make sense only when it involves a moderately smaller ship jumping into a moderately larger ship. You wouldn't see an X-wing hyper-ram the Death Star, because it wouldn't do enough damage to be worth the resources lost. You wouldn't see a Mon Calamari cruiser jump into a Star Destroyer, because the two are relatively evenly matched in conventional firepower. So, another reason we could expect hyperspace-ramming to be rare is that there is a limited range of ship-to-ship matchups where it really makes sense.

(F) Range and Vulnerability – It may be that hyperspace-ramming must be initiated from, cosmologically speaking, fairly short distances. The only time we see the maneuver being executed, by Holdo with the Raddus, the ship enters hyperspace within conventional turbo-laser range, and it strikes its target just as it is entering hyperspace.

This fits with other events in Star Wars; in The Force Awakens, it is regarded as risky for Han Solo to make a precise jump with the Millenium Falcon, exiting hyperspace between Starkiller's shields and its planetary surface. And this may not actually be a tiny target. If Rogue One is any indicator, planetary shields sit high above the surface, probably above the atmosphere. In fact, we could reasonably expect this to be the case, since it would be problematic to put a planet-wide force field in the middle of the atmosphere, where it could interfere with the planet's weather and ecology by blocking the passage of atmospheric particles.

So, if precise hyperspace exits are very difficult to pull off, this means that it would be difficult to aim a hyper-ramming ship from a great distance. It might be easier, on the other hand, to line up the shot so that the target is struck just as the rammer enters hyperspace. This means that ramming attacks would normally be initiated from a zone in which the target is able to fire on the rammer as it lines up its shot, or where the target's supporting fleet is able to do so. In fact, in The Last Jedi, it is explicitly a matter of the General Hux's arrogance that Holdo is able to enter hyperspace. Hux dismisses the threat of the Raddus, smirks, and tells his crew to ignore it. If Hux and his crew had responded properly, the threat posed by Holdo's ramming attack might have been neutralized before it began.

With that in mind, hyperspace ramming could have been very rare because it was easy for a competent crew to defend itself against this kind of assault. If ramming ships needed to be within range of conventional weapons, and if it would only be used against a target that conventionally outclassed the ramming vessel, then the target of the ramming maneuver would actually have a decent chance of destroying its attacker.

(G) The Death Star – We might wonder specifically why the Rebel Alliance didn't use a large ship, such as a Mon Calamari cruiser, to hyper-ram the Death Star when it threatened their base on Yavin. This seems like an ideal ramming scenario. Since the Rebel Alliance was facing extinction, sacrificing one capital ship, or even several capital ships, to protect itself doesn't seem unreasonable.

One possible explanation is that the Death Star was too massive to be destroyed by a Mon Calamari cruiser. The radius of the Death Star was approximately 114 times the length of the larger Mon Calamari cruisers. This is roughly the same scale of difference as between an X-wing and an Imperial II star destroyer.[1] But, in fact, because volume and mass increase exponentially with the dimensions of an object,[2] the difference in mass between an X-wing and an Imperial II would be far less than the difference between a Mon Calamari MC80 and the Death Star. If we made the assumption that the X-wing is too small to be used effectively as an FTL-rammer against a star destroyer, then it would certainly follow than an MC80 would be ineffective against the Death Star.

It's also worth mentioning that, if my speculation about the need to make a close approach for hyperspace-ramming turned out to be correct, the Death Star would have had an opportunity to destroy any approaching ship with its superlaser long before the rebels lined up their attack; this doesn't even take into account the support fleet of star destroyers around the battle station. This is another reason that hyper-ramming the Death Star might not have been the preferred tactic.

And, integrally to the plot of A New Hope, the Rebel Alliance did have another option...the one they successfully executed when Luke destroyed the Death Star by firing down its exhaust shaft. As far as we know, the alliance had a cadre of Mon Calamari cruisers lined up to make a Light Brigade-esque suicide run against the Death Star if the first plan failed. However, the protagonist was successful.

(H) The Raddus's Support Fleet – Maybe it's a little harder to explain why the smaller ships in the Resistance fleet, which accompanied the Raddus in The Last Jedi, and which were destroyed one by one, did not turn around and ram the Supremacy much earlier in the film. This seems like another optimal time to implement hyperspace ramming, since the captains of those vessels were certainly going to die anyway. Moreover, the destruction of the support ships was not sudden and would have allowed time to prepare materially and psychologically, and the size difference between the support frigates and the Supremacy might not have been so great as to prevent significant damage being done by a hyperspace ram.

I think there are a few reasonable possibilities. One is that the ships were not in fact massive enough to do serious damage. Another is that it was assumed they would fail, since the First Order would have had time to fire on them as they were preparing to jump to lightspeed; after all, it was only the arrogance and incompetence of the First Order commanders that allowed Holdo's ramming attack to be successful.

Still why not try? If the ships were going to be obliterated anyway, they might as well have attempted a ramming run, even with a very low chance of success. The last plausible reason I'll suggest is that nobody thought of it...because it was a very unusual maneuver for all of the reasons I've discussed above, and everyone involved was under great duress. I think we could even reasonably infer that Holdo didn't really know whether her attack would work; it was a last-ditch move, thought of under desperate circumstances.

(I) Forward and In Review – What I've argued so far is that hyperspace ramming could have occurred in the Star Wars universe previous to the destruction of the Raddus, but that it would not necessarily have occurred frequently enough to show up in the narratives of the previous films. This doesn't strike me as a particularly odd argument. Lots of things presumably happen in fictional universes that don't crop up during the associated narratives. Usually there are extra-fictional reasons why certain things don't show up in the narratives proper. Why don't we ever see the hobbits use the bathroom in The Lord of the Rings? The author decided it wasn't relevant to the plot. Why don't we see Darth Vader force-throw objects at Obi-Wan when they duel in A New Hope? Presumably because the filmmakers hadn't thought of that force power yet. Some of this can be retroactively explained; we might say that Obi-Wan would have been able to deflect thrown objects, while Luke lacked the skill to do so, and Vader knew it. But it just isn't that unusual for a series of books or films to gradually incorporate new in-universe mechanics and possibilities with the assumption that they did occur in-universe before, but did not occur on-page or on-screen.

The argument I'll be approaching in the next section concerns the possibility of hyperspace ramming. It could be argued, not just that hyperspace ramming is unprecedented in the Star Wars, but that it would be impossible given how FTL travel is supposed to work in that universe. I will try to reply to this kind of argument, showing that we could reasonably accept hyperspace ramming as possible in Star Wars.


2. Is Hyperspace Ramming Possible?

(A) Concerning Material from Non-Film Sources – In this half, I will be drawing more on information from Wookiepedia, which is itself drawn from sources other than the full-length movies. I think it's worth pointing out that in the novelization of The Last Jedi, Holdo's ramming attack is explained by the Raddus's special experimental shields. Most of the arguments for the impossibility of hyperspace ramming are likewise based on material outside of the Star Wars feature films. I could easily accept that the film The Last Jedi should not depend on its novelization for its plot to make sense, but then by the same standard, evidence from outside the films against the possibility of hyperspace ramming should not seriously be considered. That is, if we start arguing against the possibility of hyperspace ramming based on outside texts, the use of external texts is a two-way street, and we would also need to accept the relevance of The Last Jedi's novelization.

Still, although I'm not sure it is necessary to do this, I will try to show that hyperspace ramming makes sense canonically, in terms of information available outside of the films, even aside from the novelization.[3]

(B) Evidence for Hyperspace Collisions – The first piece of evidence, however, comes from A New Hope. It is quite clear that ships traveling through hyperspace can collide with other objects in space. During Luke and Kenobi's escape from Tatooine, Luke complains to Solo about how long it is taking to calculate their lightspeed route. Han replies, “Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy. Without precise calculations, we'd fly right through a star, or bounce to close to a supernova, and that would end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?” (As seen in the escape from tatooine, 2:25-2:33)

If a ship in hyperspace can be acted on (can be destroyed) by a collision with other objects in normal space, we can reasonably assume that objects in normal space can also be acted on (destroyed) by ships traveling through hyperspace in the same collisions. To say otherwise, it seems to me, would violate the principle of conservation of momentum. Presumably, the Millenium Falcon has a lot more to worry about than a Supernova does, because a star or supernova is much more massive than the Falcon. So, although the effect of a hyperspace collision on a large celestial body would be negligible given the difference in mass, there would still be an effect however minor.

The possibility of hyperspace collisions, moreover, is backed up by the presence of hyperlanes in Star Wars lore. The Wookieepedia entry for hyperspace routes reads, “Those routes were regarded as safe, allowing starships to travel without colliding with a celestial body in realspace.” Given that hyperlanes are a major feature of Star Wars' extended lore, the possibility of collisions between objects in hyperspace and normal space is actually quite baked into the fictional universe.

And if there can be collisions between celestial bodies and ships in hyperspace, then in principle it should also be possible for a ship in hyperspace to collide with another ship in normal space. Of course, spaceships are much smaller targets than stars or planets, so it's likely that a collision of this kind would occur rarely. This jives well, however, with my earlier point that hyperspace ramming would have been rare because it would be difficult to aim at very small targets over great distances.

(C) Mass Shadows – It could be asked, though, how these collisions are possible at all? If hyperspace is not the same space as normal space, how can objects which do not share space collide? According to Wookieepedia, “A mass shadow was the gravitational signature of a large object in normal space. Since those shadows were potentially lethal to any starship traveling too near, it was necessary to avoid colliding with them.” How this affects the possibility of hyperspace ramming really depends on how we understand hyperspace shadows in the current canon, and there is relatively little information to go on.[4] If mass shadows are a byproduct emanated by massive bodies into hyperspace, like smoke from a volcano, then hyperspace ramming is not possible. If mass shadows are, instead, extensions of normal objects into hyperspace, like the sunken part of an iceberg, then it makes sense that a collision with the part of the entity in hyperspace would also affect the object in normal space.

I don't really think that this issue can be settled decisively; there is too little information available about a construct that is, at the end of the day, fictional. It would make some sense though, for there to be a two-way effect during a hyperspace collision. If the mass shadow, with which a ship would collide in hyperspace, is part of the gravitational field of the struck object, then the object itself could conceivably be affected by the violent modification of part of its gravitational field.[5] If earth, for instance, were suddenly subject to modified gravitational force, because of the disruption of its own gravity, different pieces of the planet could accelerate differentially, causing damage.

This is all rather disputable, but what I aim to show is not that hyperspace ramming would definitely work, but that an intelligent person could find it plausible enough that the presence of hyperspace ramming in The Last Jedi would not break the spell of the narrative.

A final possibility, to skirt the question of whether collisions in hyperspace could affect objects in normal space, is that Holdo hadn't actually entered hyperspace at the point of striking the Supremacy. Rather, she was still accelerating toward lightspeed at a relativistic speed, and that this was enough to destroy Snoke's dreadnaught. This is not really what is implied by the film, but it's at least worth considering that the film never explicitly states that the Raddus contacted the Supremacy at lightspeed.

(D) Interdiction Fields – Assuming that ramming at hyperspeed is generally possible, one might still object that it would be impossible in practice because starships in combat would raise interdiction fields to prevent other ships from traveling through hyperspace in proximity to them. According to Wookieepedia, “An interdiction field was an artificial gravity well capable of disrupting hyperspace maneuvers.” So, how could Holdo have rammed the Supremacy if it was capable of projecting an interdiction field?

Well, we don't really know how common interdiction fields were, we don't know if they were kept on by default, and we don't know how long it took to power them up. And, in the context of the film, the First Order had been allowing the Resistance ships to flee via hyperspace to make them waste fuel. So, even if the First Order possessed an interdiction field generator, it would fit acceptably with the events of the film if the field were not active.

But, that's not all! I think the existence of interdiction fields in Star Wars lore supports my argument in the first half of this essay, since it would provide another reason why hyperspace ramming did not appear in other Star Wars stories and would have been rare in that fictional universe.


3. Closing Thoughts

I've argued that hyperspace ramming can fit plausibly into Star Wars canon. Again, I'm not trying to convince anyone that they are objectively wrong if it didn't feel plausible, or if they thought of reasons while watching the film why it might not work and lost immersion. What I'm objecting to are the voices who took more extreme positions such as: (a) Hyperspace ramming is obviously and objectively impossible in Star Wars; (b) only an unthinking idiot could maintain suspension of disbelief; (c) the filmmakers must have been either stupid or apathetic to Star Wars lore.

Against these positions, I think I have made a reasonable case. It is evidently possible for an intelligent person, if I may be so bold about my own capacities, to think rather exhaustively about the possibility of hyperspace ramming and to come up in support of it. Perhaps there is some evidence I have not considered or some logical error I have committed, but it would be wrong to say that I went about this with no appreciation for Star Wars lore, or that I went about it idiotically. And so the same should be said for the filmmakers and other fans of The Last Jedi. While I don't think those who came to a different conclusion than I or who felt differently are idiots, I do think they are incorrect if they take the stronger stance that they are decisively right and that everyone else is stupid.

“But!” You may say, “But!”...If a movie requires a 5,000-word essay to explain howit makes sense, or to feel plausible, isn't that kind of a problem? Well, I would agree, and that's rather how I felt about Ridley Scott's Prometheus, for example. But I don't think that's really what's going on here.


When I first saw the ramming scene in The Last Jedi, I had the following set of thoughts:
– Oooooo! Pretty.
– Is hyperspace ramming possible, since it's in separate space, and we’ve never seen it before?
– Well, Han talks about hyperspace collisions in the first movie, so it should be possible.
– And it could be rare because it's wasteful and possibly hard to aim.

All this passed through my mind in a second or two. Then I went back to enjoying the movie. What I've attempted in the body of this essay was not to replicate the exact thoughts I had during the film. What I've done here, at some extended length, was to show that the brief thoughts I had during my viewing, which supported my suspension of disbelief, were neither obviously absurd nor in deep conflict with Star Wars lore. My feeling of the film's plausibility was maintained with a few brief reflections, which are after all reasonably consistent with a sincere interest in the intelligibility of the fictional universe that captured my imagination.


______________________________

1. The star destroyer is about 123 times longer than an X-wing, figures from Wookieepedia.
2. This is why a two foot long dog would actually be more than twice the weight of a one foot long dog.
3. Admittedly, I am choosing this approach in part because it seems that many readers did not find the explanation in the novelization very satisfying, and I can at least see why they would think that.
4. According to the Legends entry for mass shadows, the mass shadows are not collided with directly, but pull the ship out of hyperspace so that they collide with the celestial body in normal space. This would make it more obvious how hyperspace ramming works, since the ramming vessel would be pulled out of hyperspace and strike its target at a high relativistic speed.
5. And to reiterate – The mass shadow, at least, should be affected by the collision if momentum is properly conserved.

Game Mechanics: Sometimes Realism is Unrealistic

Huh? – I think that, in some cases, trying to make game mechanics more realistic actually makes them less realistic, and that many ostensibly unrealistic mechanics of video games actually enhance a game's over all realism. This is because games are fundamentally imperfect approximations of reality. Perhaps unblemished virtual reality will be possible in the future, but it is not currently possible. Consequently, just like other art and entertainment, video games must work within the limits of their medium to simulate reality in a way that is specifically suitable to those limits. I do not think this is radically different from painting, for example. Many paintings seek to display three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional canvas. This is accomplished through a variety of perspectival tricks, including the placement of distant objects closer together to simulate distance. It is, in a certain sense, not realistic to do this. After all, distant objects are not really closer together, but this is the best way in which a two-dimensional representation can capture distance. Similarly, I think that games can sometimes compensate for the unrealism inherent in their medium by including mechanics which, taken in isolation, seem unrealistic.

What are Game Mechanics? – They are not, as might be thought, clever folk who tinker with the under-bellies of video games. Those are game developers or perhaps coders. “Game mechanics” are the rules of a video game. More precisely, the mechanics are the ways in which the game's simulated reality responds to the player's input. It is a common game mechanic that when you press 'a,' your character will jump. It is a mechanic in Halo that when a player positions her character near a number of moving enemies, those enemies show up as dots in a 'radar' image on the heads-up display. When a player casts as a spell in Guild Wars, a certain period of time must elapse before another spell is cast; this is also a game mechanic.

“Mechanics” refers specifically to the functional ways in which the game responds to input, which lead the player to execute commands in one way or another in order to more effectively manipulate the simulated reality. So, the appearance of a shadow cast by the character when the player jumps would normally not be considered a mechanic, but an aspect of the game's graphics. Other aspects of a game are the story, dialogue, themes, world, and so on. The distinctions may sometimes be blurry. If the appearance of the player's jumping shadow indicated something about the player-character's functional status, then the shadow would be part of both mechanics and graphics. However, I think the definition of “game mechanics” I have given is sufficiently serviceable to continue with.

Realism – Some mechanics will lead a game to resemble the real world, while others will not. If your character jumps up a foot when you press 'a,' that is an ostensibly realistic game mechanic. If your character jumps five hundred yards, it is unrealistic. If, as is rather common, eating food causes your character to instantly  recover from injuries, this is also not realistic. Conversely, if the game requires you to feed your character regularly lest the character die, this is realistic.

I am not discussing, in the main, whether it is good or bad for a game to be realistic. There are obvious reasons why most games are not realistic with regard to food. It would be boring to spend an hour cooking dinner for your character, making sure the meal contains an adequate balance of calories, fiber, fats, and protein. Perhaps if your character ate too much cheese and steak, she would suffer indigestion. This is not fun, or at least it is not the kind of fun most players are looking for when they play a video game. But I am not primarily interested in whether it is fun to play realistic games. I am interested in what makes them realistic.

Unrealism mitigates Unrealism – I think there are some cases in video games where ostensibly unrealistic mechanics actually enhance the realism of the game by accounting for problems of realism that inhere in the medium. Again, I do not find this dissimilar to perspectival techniques used in painting, such as the simulation of distance. For another example from the traditional arts, when a stage-actor is struck with a blunt sword, the stage actor simulates death. In a certain sense, this response is unrealistic, since a blunt sword cannot cause death (at least not in the same way as a real sword). Yet, given the conventions and limitations of stage-acting, the realism of the scene is maintained by the actor's response to the blunt sword as if it were sharp.

Let me examine a couple of examples in detail. I contend that both enhanced jumping and the possession of HUD radar ultimately enhances, rather than detracts from, the realism of some games in which they appear.

Mario Jumpman Master Chief – In many games the characters' jumping ability far exceeds that of a normal human. In Mario platformers, the titular red plumber is able to vault many time his own height. Of course, the Mario series is is not particularly striving for realism. Halo's Master Chief, while not as impressive a jumper as Mario, can jump a good deal higher than you or I. However, Master Chief's enhanced strength and agility are explained in the plot; he is a super-soldier in cyborgized armor.

But there are other games which do not explain the ludicrous leaping laurels earned by their characters. Borderlands and its sequels are like this. All of player-characters are able to jump Olympic distances. This might be explained by the gonzo and cartoonish style of the series. But I think that the enhanced jumping mechanics actually contribute more to the games' realism than to the games' (deliberate) absurdity.

This is because, as with numerous other titles, Borderlands's characters can be blocked by fairly modest physical barriers and are unable to climb. It is possible for a shin-high rock or a waist-high fence to block one's path, and the obstacles cannot be scaled. There are, I think, at least two good reasons why such obstacles are not climbable.

(1) I gather that it is fairly difficult and time-intensive to program a simulated environment to make climbing possible. The majority of games that include climbing at all allow it only in very specific, controlled circumstances. Games which include many climbable surfaces, such as Assassin's Creed, usually make climbing and maneuvering in three dimensions into a major component of gameplay. Developers for games that do not require climbing as a central aspect of gameplay simply do not put in the resources to develop a climbing system. They presumably have more important systems to fine-tune for realism and entertainment, given their limited timed and budget. 

(2) Another reason why climbing mechanics are often not included, I suspect, is to allow the game-designers to control the environment. If the player could climb anywhere, it would be possible to climb out of the levels and areas created by the game developers, so the designers would then be obligated to introduce some other game mechanic which would allow the player to climb most places but which would prevent her from climbing out of the intended play-areas.

For these reasons, and perhaps for others, most games do not enable the player to surmount obstacles by climbing them. This has the potential to become quite silly, immersion-breaking, and unrealistic. If a three foot fence or medium-sized boulder can stop your character in her tracks, you are reminded suddenly that you are in a simulation which differs from reality in some fairly basic ways. I think this is why so many games include enhanced jumping abilities for player-characters. Other normal actions, such as climbing, scrambling, and gently hopping, which would otherwise have to be laboriously programmed, can be folded into this one action (jumping). The player is not forced into silly scenarios where she is trapped by a two-foot fence. It is true that a normal person would have difficulty jumping over a fence from a standstill, but video game characters are not normal people and currently cannot be, given the practical limitations of the medium.

Hunt for the Red Lekgolo – I think that radar, which alerts the player to the approximate location of nearby enemies, also enhances the realism of the games it appears in, all things considered. If you are unfamiliar with “radar” in combat-oriented games, you can take a look at this footage from the Halo series; the circle in the bottom left, dotted with red and yellow, is the player's HUD radar. It indicates the relative locations of both enemies and allies.

Human beings do not have radar (in case you were unaware). Halo's radar-system, like it's super-jumping, is explained via sci-fi macguffins. Other games, however, do not attempt to explain why the player possesses radar. (N64's GoldenEye comes to mind.) I am not bothered, however, by this lack of explanation. In the same way as enhanced jumping compensates for the inability to climb, HUD radar compensates for normal human abilities that are more difficult to simulate in contemporary video games. I'll focus on two abilities that most people possess when they navigate their daily lives, but not when they play games.

(1) We can detect nearby objects and movements using senses other than sight. If a monstrous alien walked up behind you in real life, you might well hear it or smell it. It's tromping might shake the floor. At present, video games do not simulate smell, and they simulate tactile and audio information only to a degree. Rumble packs built into controllers convey certain information, but not all platforms use controllers like this, and the information conveyed by the controller's vibrations isn't always clear. There have been cases where an enemy was standing behind my character hitting her, and it wasn't clear that this was happening. This seemed quite silly, and it was an immersion-breaking way to have my character die. It's true that, if a game has very good sound design and the player has a very good stereo or surround-sound system, some audio information will be available. But even if both of these criteria are met, the amount of information will still be limited when compared with real life.

(2) Real people also have an intuitive sense of the direction in which they are facing and of the motions of their body. This is called kinesthesis, and from what I understand of the relevant science, it is not reducible to the five senses. If you were to cover your eyes thoroughly and spin in a circle, it would take quite a lot of spinning before you could no longer tell which direction you were facing. (If you don't believe me, go try it. Don't fall over.) This extra sense is absent completely in video games. Relative to real life, it is quite easy to become disoriented when turning your character. Now, this may be a desirable challenge; it may be a mark of skill at a particular game if one is able to avoid such disorientation. But I am not talking about whether the feature is fun, challenging, or desirable. My point is that this added challenge subtracts from the game's realism.

Adding some kind of radar to a game fixes both of these realism problems. The information normally garnered through one's senses of hearing, smell, touch, and kinesthesis is simulated with visual information. Although it would be unrealistic for a work in some other medium (such as painting or film) to display radar, radar often adds to the realism of a video game by allowing the player to respond to the interactive, simulated world in a way that better resembles how the player interacts with the real world.

Wrapping Up – So, I think what actually enhances realism is particular to the medium of video games, and may indeed be peculiar to specific games. This is why I am skeptical of some games which claim to feature realistic gameplay. I am not convinced that the absence of radar and high-jumping in, for example, Call of Duty adds to the realism of the game. Playing without these features may make for a worthwhile challenge, but I'm not sure it is correct to call the game more realistic on this basis.

Mount and Blade also touts its own realism. It provides an option, when you start a new game, to make it impossible to quite the game without saving. This feature prevents the player from saving before a battle, then re-loading and replaying if the fight doesn't go well. I don't dislike M&B; in fact, it's one of my favorite games, but I have found that this particular feature often generates results that strike me as unrealistic. I have seen my character captured or my army wiped out for reasons including: clicked the wrong part of the map; cat jumped on my keyboard; clicked the wrong menu option. These kinds of results are not realistic. It is not possible to accidentally sneak into a hostile castle because you hit the wrong button. Being able to re-load the game after losing because of that kind of silliness strikes me as preserving realism, over all. 

With all this in mind, I think it is worth considering not just whether realism is an especially important feature in games, but also what mechanics actually function to enhance realism, because it is not a simple as imposing on the player-character the same limitations that nature imposes on human bodies.  

Euron Greyjoy is Captain Jack Sparrow, Mate? [Spoilers]

In which I gripe about Season 7, Episode 2, on the World Wide Web, rather than talking off my friends' and family's ear about it. This is for the greater good.

How did Euron Get Here and Why Should I Care?  – There were a number of things that struck me as ill-conceived about last night's episode of Game of Thrones: Most of the dramatic tension in the North stems from Jon and Sansa's inexplicably terrible communication skills. It was never previously established that Arya was unaware of the Bolton's defeat, nor that her belief to the contrary was a driving motivation for her revenge spree. Allying Randal Tarly with the Lannisters puts all of the most dislikable characters on one side, which further erodes the moral grayness and nuance that the show at least pretended to in the past.

However, it was the sea battle at the end of the episode that struck me as the most preposterous cluster of shark-jumping. The first question, which passed through my mind as soon as the battle began, was how did Euron's fleet find Yara's ships on the open ocean, in the middle of the night, without being seen themselves? The most plausible answer I can think of is that Yara was using a standard sea-route toward Dorne, and Euron knew where to wait for her. But this doesn't really make sense, since Euron had no established way of knowing Daenery's plan. It's not impossible that he had a spy, or that he split his enormous fleet to cover the various routes that Yara might take from Dragonstone, but no such thing is established.

This continues a general problem with Euron Greyjoy – The writers have him show up to advance the plot without establishing anything about him or his abilities, and without placing any realistic limits on him. How did Euron build the greatest armada in Westeros in the time it took Yara to cross the Narrow Sea? Presumably he made the sails out of human hair, from his back. How did he find Yara's fleet? He has a compass that doesn't point north. How did he become so good at fighting that he handily defeated the Sand Snakes, who at least drew even with Bronn and Jamie? He's Captain Euron Greyjoy, mate. The difference is that the Pirates films know Jack Sparrow is absurd.

With Euron functioning as a MacGuffin, it's hard to build dramatic tension around him, because it's not clear what constrains or guides his actions; the audience cannot worry meaningfully about what he will do next and whether he will succeed, because his actions abide by no identified logic. This brings us to the next problem. It's not clear what motivates Euron, if anything, except the desire for power and revenge. Although this character choice is not an inherent travesty, it also doesn't make for a terribly interesting villain, especially since we don't know why he has these malign desires. Compare Euron to Cersei, who similarly covets power and revenge, but whose underlying motivations have been established over several seasons. Cersei wants power and revenge, because the power to guarantee her own safety, autonomy, and dignity have been dangled just out of her reach since she was married to Robert Baratheon.

Euron's motivation, an ill-defined lust for power and vengeance, is especially a problem in the context of the sea battle, because this motivation doesn't really contrast with Yara or Ellaria's motivation in any interesting way. Yara wants power, and Ellaria wants revenge. Yara probably wants revenge too, come to think of it. These motivations aren't developed enough to differ in their nuances, and since both sets of combatants want the same basically amoral thing, there's no moral contest at stake in this battle either.

It doesn't help that all of the characters present are essentially B-characters at this point. We haven't seen much of Yara or gotten to know her outside of her relationship to Theon. Ellaria and the Sand Snakes are notably unpopular and lack individual characterization. In fact, when two of the Sand Snakes died, I couldn't remember their names, never mind anything else about them, which somewhat blunted the emotional impact. If, just for instance, Bronn had been involved in this battle, even though he is also amoral and fairly one-dimensional, at least the dramatic stakes would have been raised because he's a familiar and likable character. The only reasonably well developed character present was Theon, and he had his own problems.

Specifically, I found it unclear whether Theon's escape was supposed to be an act of cowardice or an act of prudence. The episode seemed to imply that Theon's escape fit into the ongoing question “Has Theon recovered his manhood?”¹ and this question was answered in the negative, setting up a further manhood-recovery arc for Theon. This is a problem for me for two reasons (1) This particular narrative has already been played out with his escape from Winterfell. If they wanted to reignite or further develop Theon's recovery narrative, it needed more set up than it received. (2) Running away struck me as the obviously prudent thing to do, rather than as cowardly. He had no chance whatsoever of rescuing Yara or reversing the battle. Attacking Euron would have been suicide and/or Euron would have killed Yara, whom he was holding hostage. His decision seems no more cowardly than Yara's retreat after her abortive attempt to rescue Theon from Ramsay.

So, what we are left with is a battle between two groups of underdeveloped characters, set up by a MacGuffin, in which both sides just want to acquire power for themselves, where they fight in the dark, and in which it is often unclear which ships and figures are fighting for which side. The show clearly intended the battle to provide a strong emotional cadence for the episode and to establish a sense of real peril for other beloved characters. Instead, it incapacitated a number of characters that nobody cares about, and it signaled that Captain MacGuffin Greyjoy can strike anyone, at any time, regardless of whether it makes sense.

That is not the same thing as establishing peril, because the audience has no parameters according to which they can worry about the characters. When Rob Stark married inappropriately and then returned to the Twins, that established peril for a major character, because the viewers had a specific reason to worry that Rob might be betrayed at that specific time, leaving them on the edge of their seats. When Stannis attacked King's Landing, a battle which was set up over the course of a season, there was specific peril for well liked characters, such as Tyrion, because it was established that Stannis was a self-righteous ideologue receiving most of his advice from a religious zealot who burned people alive. If Stannis won, he would surely have killed Tyrion, who at that point in the series was colored with shades of gray that would have been imperceptible to someone like Stannis.

If a Euron can ride the Black Pearl over the horizon at any time, seems to possess godlike durability and combat skills, and doesn't have a clear set of motivations, this doesn't put any particular character in peril; it puts every protagonist in vague danger, and you can't be on the edge of your seat all the time for a whole season.

Some thoughts on the episode from a feminist standpoint – I don't think it would be quite right to say that the end of the episode was outright sexist, but it struck me as somewhat tone-deaf on matters of gender-politics. The episode's finale featured a notably vile male character (Euron), whom a number of viewers have identified as an analogue for Donald Trump, killing or capturing four of the show's combat-oriented female characters in under 10 minutes. Euron personally overpowered two Sand Snakes and captured Yara, and was party to the capture of a third Sand Snake. So far as I can recall, that leaves Arya and Brienne as the only two women in Westeros who are established as able to use a sword. I understand, of course, that Westeros is a feudal society. The problem isn't that there are few combat-trained women. What's uncanny is that the writers just had Euron incapacitate two thirds of them at once.

I also understand why the writers might have wanted to do away with some of these characters, especially the Sand Snakes. One would wish to avoid a television show full of Sand Snakes for the same reason one would wish to avoid a movie populated by 13 dwarves. They are underdeveloped, interchangeable, and (in the case of the former) widely disliked. I am not convinced, however, it was an unavoidable that these female, martially skilled characters were underdeveloped. It was, at some point, a conscious choice by the show writers to give the hound an interesting story-arc well after he dies (or retires) in the books, but to have Obara and Nymeria pout while Tyene whispers to Bronn about his need for “bad pussy.” So, I'm not saying that it was sexist for the writers of Season 7, Episode 2, to kill off Obara and Nymeria. I'm skeptical, however, that the factors which led them to be disposable, unpopular characters were nothing but random accident.

Finally, the writers seemed to have obliviously repeated one of the most uncomfortable features of the scene from Season 5 in which Sansa is raped by Ramsay Bolton. Arguably, the most objectionable aspect of that scene was that Sansa's brutalization turned around suddenly to feed into Theon's character development. The scene's cadence wasn't about Sansa's trauma, but Theon's emasculation as he stood by and failed to intervene. By all accounts, Theon's current importance to the “great game” is ancillary at best. Yara describes him as an adviser and protector, though we've seen him doing neither of these things. Nevertheless, as Daenery's fleet is lost, and two significant political leaders (Ellaria and Yara) are captured, the scene ends with an emphasis on Theon failing to fulfill his potential. This doesn't seem like the right water for the series to retread.

1I don't think this is a bad way to describe his character arc. Theon starts out as a deliberately macho character, then is is literally, physically emasculated, and then he needs to find himself again.   

Maybe Han is Not an Idiot.

"Kid, I've been flown one side of this galaxy to the other; I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all powerful force controlling everything."

-Han Solo

I saw The Force Awakens earlier this week, and noticed that the new film borrowed a trope (well, several tropes) from the original. Specifically, as in A New Hope, it seems common for inhabitants of the Force Awakens galaxy not to believe in the Jedi or the Force. After the release of the prequels, it was pointed out by many fans (as in this Cracked video) that Han Solo's reluctance to believe in the force is a little weird, given that the prequels featured (a) a Jedi Order that was quite public and integrated into the Republic's governance, and (b) midi-chlorians, which provide a "scientific" explanation for Jedi abilities.

Whereas in the original trilogy, as far as we knew, the Jedi were a small group of mystic-hermits with conventionally inexplicable powers, in the prequels the Jedi were widely known, and their powers were scientifically explicable. So, it seems that either Han is a dolt for doubting the Jedi (as, perhaps, is Rey in The Force Awakens), or that the writers of the prequels did a botch job of making those films cohere with the original trilogy.

The trouble is that "bad writing" is rarely a satisfying in-universe explanation for anything, while thinking of Han as an idiot also doesn't fit very well with the character. At any rate, flying starships, and repairing them on the fly, both seem like activities that involve a modicum of intelligence. So perhaps we can muster some sensible in-universe justification for Han's skepticism about the force.

One thing to note is that I'm keeping my argument to evidence presented in the films themselves, for two reasons. Firstly, I just don't know the expanded universe very well. Secondly, from what I understand, the expanded universe is no longer considered part of the primary Star Wars canon.

The key to making sense of Han's doubt, I think, is to separate different degrees of skepticism about the Jedi. We could probably cut the cake differently, but I'll identify three degrees: (1) Complete disbelief in the Jedi; one doesn't believe that the Jedi, the Jedi order, or the force ever existed. (2) The Jedi existed, but their powers were exaggerated; one might believe that a bunch of warrior-monks with energy-swords were running around the galaxy, but not that they had superhuman powers such as telekinesis or force-lightning. (3) The Jedi and their powers were both real, but the Force was not; in this version, one thinks that the Jedi did exhibit unusual powers, like telekinesis, but doesn't accept the religious/metaphysical claims by which the Jedi explained their own powers.

Now, let's take a closer look at what Han says in A New Hope. So, glance back to the quotation at the top of this article. Han really only explicitly commits himself to the third of the options I've just presented. A little later, Han attributes Luke's deflection of laser-bolts to "luck." So, maybe he's also doubtful about the superhuman powers attributed to Jedi, which would place him in the second camp. I think it's implausible that Han takes the first position, that the Jedi never existed. If so, he might exhibit a little more surprise at the presence of Luke's light saber. Add to this that he never expresses doubt that Obi Wan was a Jedi. Han simply says nothing to indicate that he doesn't believe the Jedi Order existed.

So, Han probably accepts that the Jedi were real people, but may think that some of their feats were exaggerated, and definitely thinks that the Force doesn't exist. Is this so unreasonable? As my rhetorical question suggests...I don't think so. We may, after all, believe that Tim Tebow has accomplished some remarkable athletic feats, while doubting his attribution of those feats to the will of God. But that's sort of a silly analogy. The point is that, because the Force is invisible and seems to work exclusively through the actions of other beings, by some version of Ockham's razor, it's easy to attribute the actions and powers of Jedi to their own inborn traits, rather than to the Force. As far as we know, too, Han has never actually witnessed any of the Jedi's most remarkable powers. So, aside from hearsay, he has very little reason to think that the Jedi were more than warrior-monks with special swords.

"But what about the midi-chlorians?" you ask.  Don't they provide scientific evidence that the Force is real, so that you'd have to be either foolish or uneducated in order to doubt the reality of the Force?

Well, we might reply in a few ways:

(a) It's not clear how widespread knowledge of midi-chlorians was. Force-science may have been something everyone learned in middle school galactic biology. Alternatively, knowledge of midi-chlorians may have been kept mostly within the Jedi order, and this would make some sense: If there's an underlying physical property possessed by Jedi that allows them to use their powers, then they wouldn't want that knowledge to proliferate, since knowing how to neutralize a Jedi's midi-chlorians would enable someone to neutralize a Jedi's powers.

(b) It's also not clear how widely accepted the science behind midi-chlorians was outside of the Jedi order. We don't really know whether measuring midi-chlorians was more like measuring white blood cells or measuring thetans.

(c) Finally, one might accept that a high midi-chlorian count correlates with strong supernatural powers, but we could still doubt the religious meaning attributed by the Jedi to their powers. It doesn't seem unreasonable to think that the midi-chlorians themselves were the cause of the Jedi's abilities, rather than intermediaries between the Force and the Jedi. Just as white blood cells protect us from disease without channeling a mystical force, so might midi-chlorians give the Jedi unusual abilities without channeling anything outside themselves. The force, as far as we know in the beginning of A New Hope, could just have been a layer of mystical hokum super-added to solid science by the Jedi. Alternatively, the Jedi could have believed in the force as part of their religion before the science behind their powers was understood. When the midi-chlorians were eventually discovered, then the Jedi may have said, "Ah well, but it's really the force behind the midi-chlorians," in the same way religious believers in our own world still see the Will of God behind phenomena for which we now have conventional physical explanations. (I.e. Many theists now accept that the big bang began our universe, but keep God in the picture by placing it unverifiably behind the big bang). Admittedly, this kind of force-denial becomes harder to maintain by Return of the Jedi, when we've seen force ghosts and the like, but Han's remarks preceded those events.

If any one of these replies is plausible, then the discussion of midi-chlorians from the prequels may not, in fact, make it absurd for Han to doubt the existence of the Force. Midi-chlorians may not have been part of his education, Midi-chlorians may have been psuedo-science, or Midi-chlorians may have provided a sufficient explanation of Jedi's powers without any discussion of the Force. With this in mind, I think Han actually displays a sensible level of skepticism about the mystical components of Jedi doctrine. (This is not to say that Han was right, only that his belief was reasonable).

Have a magic sword, kid.

I'd note, too, that it makes sense for Rey, from the new movie, to doubt the reality of the Jedi and the Force. As far as we know, she has grown up on a remote desert planet without any formal education, and was born decades after the destruction of the Jedi order. She would have never seen a Jedi, probably never met anyone who had seen a Jedi, and would never have been taught about either the Jedi Order or about midi-chlorians.

...Over-thinking complete. 

Vlog: My Courses in Mario Maker

My most recent addiction has been Super Mario Maker, the Wii U title that regularly has thousands of viewers on Twitch and has allowed gamers worldwide, whether talented or not, to exercise their creative muscles and show everyone how great (or horrible) their Mario-making skills really are.

I am not going to claim to be perfect at this whole endeavor, but I am having fun creating my own courses. The trouble? You need people to give your courses stars to be able to upload more and more courses. My limit is currently 10, and I have uploaded 6 courses, which means I am quickly running out of uploads.

So, here is my attempt to get my courses out there for people to discover and try. I have included videos of these courses (only successful play-throughs, mind you) as well as codes for each of them so that those of you out there that are lucky enough to have this game in your library can search for these courses and play them. I will eagerly follow anyone that decides to play and star my courses, of course, because we are all supportive in our Mario-making endeavors.

So, here they are - enjoy!

Wartime Waterway - 829D-0000-006D-3383

The Airship Shuffle - 7252-0000-0085-1E0A

Castle Climb 'n' Fall - 6819-0000-0072-691F

A Boo-tiful Mansion - B333-0000-00A0-9DEA

Can't Stop ... But I Gotta! - 9FD2-0000-005E-CF0F

The Ride of Doom - 871D-0000-0096-E438

Somebody Make This: An Interesting Take on Harry Potter

Sometime in the middle of reading this, you are going to think to yourself, "This just sounds like some sort of stupid Harry Potter fan fiction." When you think that, please keep reading. I promise - it is all worth it, and the idea is an incredibly sound one (fraught with copyright problems, of course). Please, whatever you do, do not turn away, especially if you are an incredibly talented writer.

Here's how it starts: the story focuses on a Harry Potter super nerd, one that knows the books front to back and how it is all connected. This character could be a male, but would be better suited as a female, because we need for strong female protagonists. For the sake of simplicity, however, I will name this person Jason.

Jason wakes up one morning to find that he has left his bed behind and somehow ended up lying next to a lake. More specifically, Jason is lying next to the lake on the Hogwarts grounds. He is wearing wizard robes and finds a wand in his pocket. Just as he attempts to get his bearings, several Hogwarts teachers run outside to figure out where this man came from and why he thinks he has transported from the "real world" into "the world of Harry Potter." Naturally, the only one that believes his story is Dumbledore.

Upon trying to bring Jason back into the muggle world, they find that some sort of magic has bound him within the Hogwarts grounds. He can pass into Hogsmeade, and into parts of the Forbidden Forest (although maybe we'll find that out later), but overall, Jason is trapped. He doesn't really mind being trapped - he soon finds enjoyment in teaching himself magic while the students at Hogwarts are away for the summer holidays. Some of the teachers help (Flitwick, McGonagall), but some steer clear (Snape ... duh).

At the end of August, a house elf (let's call him Snorky) shows up to tell Jason that he has been brought into this world to help keep the timeline consistent with how it has been told. A force is at play that wishes to change the timeline, wishes to make the world come crumbling down, and Jason is the only one that can keep it the same, given his knowledge of how things ought to play out. This seems odd to Jason, considering he has probably already completely messed with the timeline by talking to the Hogwarts teachers and wandering around the castle doing magic, but he more or less accepts this mission because it's the only explanation he has received for why he is there. He promises to keep people in the castle at a distance and not let them know what he is doing.

Harry Potter shows up at Hogwarts, and Jason keeps his distance, watching how things play out. Dumbledore asks him to help manage the students while he is trapped there, and Jason agrees. He quickly finds a small group of Ravenclaw first years that seem to take to his personality, and he ends up helping them practice their magic and do their homework, learning along with them but always catching on much more quickly, having spent so much time learning things over the summer. He periodically comes into contact with Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, but he keeps it short. He knows they are trying to figure things out about the Sorcerer's Stone and he wants to let them do so on their own, without interference.

Well, Jason doesn't interfere, but odd things start happening that start to derail the timeline. Quirrell almost doesn't succeed in letting the troll in on Halloween, so Jason needs to do it so that Harry and Ron finally befriend Hermione. Malfoy doesn't challenge Harry to a midnight duel so Jason needs to find a way to get the three of them to discover Fluffy. Jason needs to follow Harry into the Forbidden Forest to make sure things go according to plan there, and later, Jason gets wind of a plot to keep Dumbledore away from Hogwarts on the night the three of them go down the trapdoor. He then needs to make sure Dumbledore returns to save Harry, and after that mess gets taken care of, Dumbledore then questions Jason about what he knows and what he is doing, forcing Jason to keep his mission on the down-low but insist that Dumbledore trust him.

By the way, readers: this is the first of seven books that follow Jason in his mission to keep the storyline unaltered.

I haven't thought the details of the next one out yet, but somewhere along the line, he meets Dobby and begins to wonder more about what motivates Snorky in his mission to keep the timeline unaltered. Jason starts getting wind of the force that is trying to derail the timeline, discovering parts of the castle that Harry doesn't discover in the books, all while keeping Harry, Ron and Hermione on their mission to catch the Heir of Slytherin. It slowly begins to build on how and why things are happening the way they are without giving too much away.

The third book is where things get real, because Jason has started to care about these three and knows what he must do: he needs to let Wormtail escape so he can return to Voldemort and bring him back to power. At some point in the book, he lets something happen that shouldn't and pays for it later when Snorky tells him he is going to be "punished" for not trying to fix things. Jason does end up being accused of letting Sirius Black into the castle (Snorky somehow makes this happen) and needs to regain the trust of those around him, all while trying to fix the mistake he made early on.

The fourth book is when he finally derails things in a significant way. He knows Harry will come back alive from the graveyard at the end of the story, but throughout the book, feels compelled to help Cedric survive the encounter. Knowing, though, that Snorky is keeping a closer eye on him than before, he needs to put a complicated plan in action to make it look like he hasn't changed anything, and that this change was completely out of his control. He slowly talks to Cedric and plants ideas in his head, making sure that he does not get to the Triwizard Cup even if he wants to do so. Jason succeeds - Cedric survives, Snorky suspects that he did it on purpose but watches him try to keep things consistent all the while, and Voldemort still comes back to power. Dumbledore is getting very curious about what Jason is up to at this point and hints at the fact that he has figured out that Jason kept Cedric alive.

Jason keeps a close eye on the timeline in the fifth book, knowing he has altered it significantly. He realizes quickly that Harry will not have the same relationship with Cho Chang and attempts to break her and Cedric up. Cedric has graduated from Hogwarts, so this isn't as tough as he thinks it is, but it is still difficult, especially since the DA isn't taking off as well as he thought it might. Cho doesn't get interested in it, and that doesn't seem to give Harry the motivation he needs. This is when things begin to fall apart for Jason keeping the timeline accurate - he ends up changing a whole bunch of things throughout the story to keep Harry on track to end up in the department of mysteries at the end, but because the DA is not as effective, the students are not as well prepared. Jason secretly follows the students when they head off to the ministry, hoping to help them out. He is, however, unable to help them out from the shadows, must reveal himself, and then cannot keep them on track.

Jason, if you remember, cannot leave the Hogwarts grounds, but manages to do so here. He doesn't even think about it until later, when talking with a rather angry Dumbledore.

Several things happen now: knowing that Sirius is going to die, Jason makes the mistake of trying to save him. In his haste to help out in that regard, Ron dies. Yes, you heard it - Ron Weasley dies. Harry's best friend gets killed in the action, and Jason knows that he has irreparably altered everything that follows. They all escape (after Dumbledore has his epic battle with Voldemort), but Dumbledore has had enough afterwards. After his talk with Harry, he calls Jason into his office and demands an explanation, cursing himself for not getting involved in Jason's mission sooner. Jason comes clean, and the book ends with an argument with Snorky. Jason tells Snorky that he will simply try and stop Voldemort, but Snorky hints that he still must not alter the timeline any further. It is then that Jason realizes that Snorky is in charge of whether or not he leaves Hogwarts, when Snorky lets slip that he is the one that let Jason leave and go to the ministry. Racked with guilt, Jason sends Snorky away, lost in his misery and he attempts to figure out hat to do next - work with Dumbledore or cooperate with Snorky.

The sixth book begins with Jason seeing things play out predictably - Voldemort is out in the open, the ministry axes Fudge and brings in Scrimgeour (who still wants Harry as the poster child for the ministry), and the school year seems ready to begin. The big difference - Harry spends the remainder of the summer after recruiting Slughorn with Sirius because, finally, he has been cleared of all charges. He still needs to go back to Privet Drive once more - Dumbledore insists - but he sees more of Sirius and gets his guidance. They can relate to each other on another level now - both of them have lost their best friend and need to work through it, although Harry must work through it while learning how to kill Voldemort.

Jason is still grappling with how much he should change - Snorky insists that many things must remain the same or else Voldemort will win the battle. Jason starts to doubt Snorky at this time, knowing that working with Dumbledore is the best move. He opts to be rather distant to both of them,  however, telling Snorky and Dumbledore only what they need to know to go forward. Both put immense pressure on him to do what the other does not wish them to do, but Jason starts to forge his own path - one that involves helping destroy the horcruxes to avoid any more unnecessary loss of life.

The force that was once trying to derail Jason has long since stopped what it was doing, something Jason really only truly notices at this stage of the game. The force returns, however, when he begins hunting for the Room of Requirement (which he oddly cannot find) so that he can destroy the diadem and make it so that Harry and Hermione do not need to return there later. Late in the story, when Dumbledore is getting ready to take Harry with him to the cave by the ocean (no, Jason still hasn't helped out there because he knows it's a path that will eventually lead them to the correct horcrux), Dumbledore asks Jason one more time to confide in him details about the future, if they can save lives. In a moment of weakness, Jason simply tells Dumbledore not to return to Hogwarts, and to keep himself and Harry safe until the school year has ended.

This leaves Jason (still unable to locate the diadem) to help defend the castle, which he can do now. He has spent every summer training and learning magic, practicing and making sure he can combat fully-grown wizards. And he does this well, along with the Order and the DA. Unfortunately, Dumbledore returns with Harry, as he was supposed to do, and still gets killed. Jason feels responsible for not preventing this and tells Snorky he will no longer work to keep the timeline normal. He will simply work to help Harry and Hermione stop Voldemort by finding the diadem and help keep order at Hogwarts. Snorky laughs at this, knowing that he cannot possibly work from the shadows with what will happen to Hogwarts in the seventh book. Unable to figure out Snorky's motivation, he prepares to be trapped at Hogwarts with the changing of the guard, wondering what Snape will do with him.

Unbeknownst to Jason, Dumbledore has already told Snape about Jason, so Snape is ready to keep him safe. He does it throughout the seventh book very carefully, only helping when he can get away with it and never openly revealing his motivations to Jason. Halfway through the book, things change quickly: the Carrows try to kill Jason, Snorky defends him and falls in the battle, and the DA comes together to defeat the Carrows and help Jason get the diadem. This leaves Jason free to leave the Hogwarts grounds, even free to maybe go home to his own world if he wants to figure it out. He opts to find Harry and Hermione and help them find the remaining Horcruxes, now able to tell them whatever they need to know.

That's when the force that had once tried to derail him, the same one that tried to defend the diadem, finally shows itself. It says it can get Jason home to his own world, but only if he chooses to leave immediately. After some thought, Jason declines, knowing he has made it nearly impossible for Harry and Hermione to kill Voldemort on their own. Losing his only chance to get home, he seeks out Harry and Hermione to help them out.

And help them he does - they manage to destroy every horcrux except for Voldemort himself and the one inside Harry. This is when things get real, because the force that brought him to this world is the same one that tried to derail him for so long - it's the horcrux inside Harry. This horcrux has grown so powerful it managed to pull Jason out of the real world and into the story in the hopes of having him alter the story line and allow Voldemort to succeed. However, Snorky got to Jason before he could do any irreparable damage. The force, the horcrux, does not know to whom Snorky reported, but Jason manages to help get Harry to Voldemort for Voldemort to kill him (and kill the horcrux) despite the work of the mysterious force.

But then the worst happens: Voldemort refuses to kill Harry, finding out from this force that Harry is a horcrux. So Jason must do it, prompting Voldemort to kill Jason. Jason then visits a type of place like Harry does, greeted by none other than Dumbledore himself. This version of Dumbledore has been dead a long time - he died in the original, unaltered storyline and, sensing the awareness of the part of Voldemort within Harry, decides to communicate with a house elf to have Jason fight to keep the storyline intact. He is only able to communicate with this elf once, which explains why the elf became so misguided later on and insisted on keeping the storyline intact after it had become irreparably harmed. Jason has the option of going home to his world or helping Harry fight and defeat Voldemort, because Harry will wake up alone with Death Eaters. Jason, after a painful internal struggle, decides to help Harry.

He ends up helping Harry defeat Voldemort (I haven't worked out whether this is again because of the Elder Wand or not), and the world is saved. Jason is trapped but makes the most of it, marrying another wizard in the epilogue. Harry marries Hermione (to please an incredibly vocal part of the Harry Potter fanbase), the Weasleys are a god-family to their kids, and they all live happily ever after.

Alright, so this all seems kind of strange, but really, a horcrux becoming so powerful it can breach the book and come into the real world? That is probably one of my best ideas ever.

There are still a lot of details to hash out - the whole Deathly Hallows business, how Harry and Hermione continue without Ron, how the rest of the castle perceives and interacts with Jason - but really, this could be amazing. I know there must be some writer out there ready to dedicate the next decade of his or her life filling in the details of this epic saga. I just hope that person somehow stumbles across this blog.

Nerdy Month in Review: August 2015

This August was perhaps the craziest month ever in my life. Between taking care of two kids, preparing for the school year, and taking the family out to Chicago and back, I had little time for my usual nerdy endeavors. I did fit a few things in, though, and I'll sum them up here.

TV
I cannot remember the last time the little lady and I watched Avengers, but the last episode we saw was from the aftermath of the Skull invasion. It was a really fun episode in which we are introduced to Spiderman and the "web" of lies concocted by J. Jonah Jameson at his expense. Spiderman and Captain America were able to relate for most of the episode, since most of the world has no idea that Captain America was being impersonated by a Skull and did not actually want the entire population of the Earth to bow down to them. The headline for The Daily Bugle at the end of the episode, though, as read by Spiderman, really put the episode over the top: "Captain America defeats Spiderman and the Serpent Society!?!?" Comic gold.

I have continued to watch Dexter, but I am still on season 2. Getting in Dexter is tough because there are two young 'uns that cannot watch it, or even walk through the same room while I watch it. So, I need to tuck myself into our breakfast nook in the kitchen with my headphones and laptop while they are playing outside or off doing something else. I had forgotten how great the relationship between Dexter and Doakes is in that season - the writers really did a great job of building up that tension throughout the entire season. I am about to watch the episode in which (spoiler alert!) Doakes ends up discovering Dexter for what he really is, and the episode that follows that is, if I remember correctly, one of the best. I am looking forward to it, but not looking forward to seeing more of Lila at the end of the season.

Season 2 is not my favorite season, but seasons 3 through 5 mark what I believe is the best ark in the entire series, and I bet I'll get some writing in on that.

Video Games
Remember last time, when I said I would play more Legend of Zelda, and more Mario, and more games in general? Yeah, no.

The only game I play regularly is Candy Crush Saga because it's the only game I have time to play, in between being a dad. It's a fun game, and only recently have I found that there is actually a little bit of skill required to get the three star rank for which I always aim. I mean, you don't need much skill - it's still mostly luck - but I have started to develop strategy for levels instead of just mindlessly playing it and hoping for some of the good pieces.

I did sit down and play a depressingly bad game called Chicken Shoot. Seriously, it's bad, and racist, and not well tested, and racist. I would say it's so bad it's good, but it's also racist. Like, really racist, and pointless. I think I might start a series of posts titled "Game You Never Knew Existed," and Chicken Shoot will face my wrath in a much more extended entry, perhaps with some video!

Movies
I spent a rather lengthy blog post on it, so I won't elaborate here, but we did watch Return of the Jedi with the little lady. Please reference my incredibly long rant about the movie from the previous blog post if you are curious as to how I feel about the experience.

We have also been watching the Marvel movies with the little lady, making sure to have good conversations about the violence in them so that we continue to be good parents as well. We watched Iron Man, which continues to age better than I thought it might. Robert Downey Jr. has the role down so well from the get-go that I can't help but feel like it was written for him in the first place. I also constantly forget that Terrence Howard played Rhodes in the first movie. I always get annoyed at switched like that in the middle of a franchise, but really, Don Cheadle has way more fun being a superhero than Howard would have had.

We also watched The Incredible Hulk, the forgotten Marvel movie that, as far as I know, remains canon even though most people pretend like it never happened. I believe there is a Marvel One-Shot that takes care of the loose ends (the fate of Abomination, the tease about The Leader), but I haven't read much because I want to see it, but I also haven't gotten a chance to see it. They should just put them all out on one DVD, or put them on Netflix.

Anyway, that movie isn't great, but it isn't bad. The humor seems ill-placed in it for some reason that I cannot quite identify, even though I feel like each moment succeeds in and of itself. I am glad Edward Norton was recast - Mark Ruffalo plays The Hulk perfectly, with his mannerisms and attitude. I am looking forward to the return of General Ross in Captain America: Civil War - he seemed like such a caricature in this movie that it wasted William Hurt's talents. I hope he's got some good things to work with in the new film.

Books
Reading is tough, since it takes me considerable mental energy to do it and do it well. I enjoy reading, though, and have managed to work my way through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and am almost done (I think) with The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I really hate that there is hardly any narrative thread - I like stories that are clever, not clever (and, I will admit, often humorous) little tidbits that are attempted to be thrown together into a story. It's the same sort of problem I had with Stephen King's It - make a collection of short stories and lose the need to connect it all, since the connection kind of sucks. I am enjoying the books, to a certain extent, but after reading It and Faithful and now this, I am really longing for a story.

(Hopefully) Coming Up in September...
Well, there will be more Dexter, damn it. I will have to wait until at least the little one goes to bed, and even then still sit somewhere all on my own to get through it without interruption, but it will happen. I think getting all of the way through season 3 is an overly-ambitious goal, but getting into season 3 should be doable.

The little lady and I should also continue getting through Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. She'll want to do it - I just need to remember to remind her.

I will read more - I have consistently read every night before going to sleep for about a week and it will continue. I hope to start Stephen King's Joyland by the end of the month.

Video games? Look for a post that describes a regular Twitch playing time, hopefully every Saturday morning (since it's the only uninterrupted time I can get the TV). Also, as I mentioned, I want to start the new series of posts called Games You Never Knew Existed. I hope I can make it happen, at least once a month, as well as continue going through My Collection of Unfinished Games.