Moe Lane's Blog, page 28
June 12, 2025
SPACEBALLS the Cheeky Sequel Reveal! (Wait, no, THINK about it for a second.)
Looks like this is a thing that will happen. And before you scowl, or shake your head, or sigh, let me say two words: Rick Moranis. I miss Rick. I understand why he dropped out of Hollywood, and I fully support that, but I still miss the guy. If a SPACEBALLS sequel is what it takes, well…
I told you we’d be back pic.twitter.com/RnoklPqBX6
— Mel Brooks (@MelBrooks) June 12, 2025
Assuming Mel gets him for the part, obviously.
Via @CrownMaybe.
My mini-review of THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME.
Short version: it is, indeed, a Wes Anderson movie. Also: I guess I am now a Wes Anderson Movies Guy. I go see Wes Anderson Movies. …I’m also a Guy Ritchie Movies Guy, so I’m not exactly sure how that’s all gonna integrate itself in the future.
Slightly longer version: it’s a Wes Anderson movie, and I enjoyed it. I get the impression that big-name actors do his films to hang out with each other on the production set and shoot the breeze for a few weeks and, oh, hey, let’s put a movie together while we’re here. Maybe that’s why I like Wes Anderson flicks. They’re all visibly having a good time, and that can come through on the screen.
That being said, not everybody likes Wes Anderson movies, and that’s okay. Nobody has to like everything. But if you like his stuff, you’ll like THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME.
June 11, 2025
The ‘Here We Go Again’ THE INSTITUTE series trailer.
Oh, boy. Yet another exploration of a very stupid operating methodology. Eight episodes of watching your tax money turning into screaming, burning rubble, folks! Doesn’t the Shadow Government have auditors?
Look, if you have kids with superpowers, the last thing you want to do is isolate them away from their families and put them in a gray institutional facility where they associate authority figures with needles, pain, and repression. You take them to a happy place. One where they are given individualized instruction, and allowed to actually go visit the outside when they like. You make your Institute the place they want to run to, and not run from.
I swear to God, if multiverse theory is real at least one version of me is out there making serious bank on troubleshooting failing secret research facilities. All I’d need to do would be to walk the premises while asking myself the question, What problems here would be obvious to an eight-year-old? I would be a legend.
Moe Lane
A Slow Fall Into Madness, Part 4. (Unfiltered)
A delicate touch is needed, here.
…
Faith, Shaken
The only saving grace of the Consolidation Wars were that they were not religious conflicts. It took time for humanity to confront the ominous implications of Galactic mass xenocide, let alone come to terms with it. A worldwide crusade or jihad might have resulted in billions of casualties, rather than hundreds of millions.
This in no way implies that Earth properly handled the spiritual implications of Zeroth Contact. Entire worlds had been eliminated ruthlessly, even cruelly, and without exception. None were spared. Worse, many of those species had faith systems that human beings could understand, and appreciate. Indeed, the most common religion among the species closest to humanity was a hauntingly familiar, fundamentally decent monotheistic faith (see below). Why were they still slaughtered? What sins justify xenocide?
Most human faiths survived, although ironically the technically atheist ones finally collapsed in the twenty years before the Consolidation Wars. Humans could ultimately come to terms with the idea of a God that permitted horrible, species-ending suffering, for His own reasons; but there was ultimately no place in the dialectic or secular ethics for literal apocalypses. Those faiths that accepted the existence of actual, supernatural demons had a much easier time grappling with the implications of Zeroth Content; but all of them suffered crises of faith, and most took refuge in encouraging stronger faith in their congregations. Fortunately, they also all shied away from encouraging yet more armed, sectarian conflict. There were enough corpses in the Galaxy as it was.
The Rise of Iluvatarism
The largest repository of information about the Amalgamation ever found by human beings was… a children’s library, half-burned. The books were written in a version of the Amalgamation language that humanity would have used, and covered a wide variety of topics about Galactic culture and society (albeit at a child’s level of understanding). Best of all, they were actual books, instead of now forever-lost electronic data.
One of the books found was a beginner’s primer of what humans call Iluvatarism. The faith is a straightforward monotheism, with an omnipotent and benevolent god (named ‘Iluvatar’ by humans; the best guess of the pronunciation of the original name is ‘Hazmar’). He is opposed by the Enemy, a rebel creation that was once the most powerful of His servants, but not omnipotent itself. Aiding Illuvatar are a host of angelic beings, with fourteen of the most powerful elevated above the others as the Exalted. Iluvatarism has a recognizable version of the Golden Rule, and strong prohibitions against murder, theft, adultery, and covetousness.
It is also uncomfortably like the pantheon used by a legendary Twentieth Century fantasy author (called by Iluvitarians the ‘Chronicler’) for his extremely popular epic fantasy series, down to the roles of each Exalted, and his or her habits and personal attributes. It’s not a complete correspondence: while some of the adventures of the Exalted do show up in the Chronicler’s fiction, it was only incidentally. Also, none of the tongues found in his major works have any correspondence to any known Amalgamation language. Certainly the Chronicler himself remained a Roman Catholic until his death, and there is nothing in his surviving papers that would shed light on the mystery.
Iluvatarians had and still have lively debates over whether all of this represents a divine revelation, or whether the Chronicler simply somehow found a copy (or was told) of the relevant scriptures. Non-Iluvatarians typically assume the latter, when they allow themselves to think about it at all.
Patreon!
06/11/2025 Snippet, CALL OF THE MOON-BEASTS.
This is gonna need some revising, but it’s almost there!
…
And maybe it was enough this time, too, because it ended with Lillian leaning against a table, gray-faced and clutching one arm, Tobias and Wilcox pushed back — and Emi with a knife at her throat that did not look improvised. “Enough!” howled Grabinski, as Tobias tensed to spring at him. “Is this your chosen sacrifice?” he asked, and twitched his hand slightly. The slightest trickle of blood ran down her throat. “For she would do nicely.”
Commander. Asenath’s voice was the smallest whisper, barely audible over the sudden blackboard-scratching hum that was filling the room. Whatever you do, please do not look at the alcove. It will only distress you.
Wilcox’s face was mottled fury, but he controlled it quickly. “Don’t bluff, Grabinski. You want to kill me, not her. That’s how you want to end this.”
“It is of no matter to me.”
Wilcox laughed. “I wasn’t talking to you, parasite. You don’t know much about Grabinski, do you? He wanted her. Wants her still, which is why you’re straining to cut. He won’t cut Emi, if he can help it. He’ll cut me like nobody’s business, though, so why don’t you take the damned hint?”
“This is certainly something we will cull later,” muttered Grabinski, and shoved Emi to one side. “Very well. Willing sacrifices have more power anyway.”
Patreon!
Tweet of the Day, …My God edition.
My God.
Grilled Cheese Hot Dogs
— Retro Highway (@RetroHighway) June 11, 2025
would you try them? pic.twitter.com/aR75daL8W5
Why was I not notified of this?
(Via @alexthechick)
June 10, 2025
Tweet-Thread of the Day, Just Enough Talk edition.
Some people sleep on CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Some people, mind you. Not anybody reading this. But some.
CONAN THE BARBARIAN is my go-to Christmas movie, and some new things really stood out to me at this year's viewing.
— David Hines (@hradzka) January 6, 2023
I want to talk about THIS moment and THIS guy.
This is the story of Red Hair. pic.twitter.com/R6GqDZpkGl
A Slow Fall Into Madness, Part 3 (Unfiltered)
Still on this.
…
Science, Dethroned
Earth’s physicists in 2047 were still trying to reconcile the obvious existence of faster-than-light travel with its impossibility. Some of them feverishly worked on coming up with a viable theory, for their own pride’s sake; the rest developed a certain passivity, since clearly they would be educated in the new physics anyway. The other scientific disciplines were likewise grappling with the idea that humanity was on the cusp of simply being told what the mysteries of the universe were, instead of laboriously working it out for itself. Even the ‘soft’ scientists were certain that the Amalgamation must have developed sociology or communications to heights not yet reached by humans. The existence of a peaceful, enlightened, multi-species galactic civilization would require such things.
The horrid news from the Enrico Fermi was a blow to Earth’s scientific community that it still has not yet entirely recovered from. It was a perfect combination of incomprehensibility, terror, and futility. The Amalgamation was far more advanced than Earth, but there was nobody left to explain their technology or science. Worse: what use was any of that, anyway? It obviously hadn’t saved them from their fate.
The Process is not programmed to be helpful in this matter, but it estimated once that Amalgamation technology was about three conceptual leaps above humanity’s, at the time of Zeroth Contact. To use an analogy, trying to analyze galactic tech at that time was like Sir Isaac Newton trying to comprehend quantum computing. Not only would he have no referent for things like electromagnetic theory, what he observed would call into question the accuracy of Newtonian physics itself. Progress would also slow to a crawl without teachers to explain the seeming contradictions. It would be enough to drive a man mad.
Which is what happened. The rate of scientific progress dropped tremendously over the next three decades, aided by the skyrocketing suicide rate of scientists. An entire generation of humanity grew up associating science with aimlessness and frustration, because that’s how all the scientists themselves acted. There was still plenty of funding, because the first ones to crack Amalgamation science would reap incalculable rewards. Unfortunately, with that funding came a plethora of pseudoscience (and outright fakery). It seemed that anyone with a theory could get money for research, and keep getting it. And why not? Nobody else was getting results, either.
Ironically, it took the Consolidation Wars to put science back on a proper footing again, and only then because governments were insistent that scientific research had to have practical results.
Patreon!
The SINNERS Honest Trailers.
This was the kind of Honest Trailer where they had to sit and think for a second to come up with something imperfect to say about SINNERS. The worst they could do was “It wasn’t perfect, but…” High praise, but deserved.
#commissionearned
