I'm still here.

Speculation and Reaction (S01E03)

The Danger of Ret-cons

The idea of ret-con is the single most dangerous concept set forth in the series and it’s not because of zombies. I was surprised to see that Zebulon Pike was the one behind the Zombie ret-con from 80s? I wasn't expecting tha type of reveal this this early in the series.

However, I’m expecting the ret-con idea to form an even stronger connection with the mysterious Mr. Inns.  Swords says that he discovers ret-cons relevant to missions based on intel from Mr. Inns. This is really screwed up when you think about it. Mr. Inns could say absolutely anything could have happened in the past and no one remembers it, but you should trust him anyways. This is just an appeal to authority that has been masked by this sci-fi concept.  Swords has been represented to this point in the series as a competent leader. But I still think Zebulon Pike is 100% correct in saying that Swords and The 33 are all just his puppets that blindly obey his orders.

Mr. Inns

Who is he? This is bugging me so much because I really don’t feel any sense of trust about this guy. Knack is sort of acting like a proxy for the reader at this point because he’s new to this world as well.  Even if Knack were to suddenly feel like he trusted Swords and The 33 hierarchy, I don’t know if I would.  I don’t trust Swords and, therefore, I do no not trust Mr. Inns.  I can’t help but notice the similarities between the supposed villain, Zebulon Pike, and The 33. Both are implanting advance technology into the heads of their employees for communication purposes. One side used audio, the other uses audio/visual.  This can be used by either side to really screw with someone’s mind.  We actually saw it happen with both sides in this episode.

Knack

I look at knack’s ability as the type of super-power that most people would choose to have in heartbeat.  Every high-school and college student uses the cramming method to their advantage at some point in their academic and personal life, but those that live off this technique tend not to be the ones that retain much information and don’t really learn.  So I love the analogy put forth for cramming for the final to make a statement about this ability. It’s talent, but its also frustrating.  I can completely sympathize with Knack as he tries to recall some to the Japanese culture, but can’t because he never truly learned that information. As a teacher, I have the most difficult time trying to explain to students the difference between learning information and temporarily memorizing information and how this relates to study habits. I think this type of super-power would be an awesome thing to explore in even mundane activities, so I hope it’s explored on more on other 33 missions.

John Smith

In any other story a reference to John Smith would just be a filler name. It’s used because it’s so common that no one would be inclined to sue the author due to likeness.  I might be stretching this, and it might just be the wishful thinking of an obsessed fan, but it could be a reference to 7th Son. What are the chances given that he referred to him being “not dead, but long gone”. Something tells me this might be a certain musician that cut off all ties from friends other than his girlfriend, Sarah, and his pet cat, for the sake of protection.

Science vs. Magic

I simultaneously love and cringe at the description of the difference between science and magic. Every SF/F author seems to place a slightly different slant on the distinction and I appreciate J.C.'s blunt delineation, while still leaving the door open for speculation. As a science teacher in a catholic school I am more familiar with the argument between the supernatural and science than I would like. I find the conversations tend to either describe incompatibility in a very antagonistic way or make a comparison that is overly simplistic. I appreciate I J.C.'s lamp-shading of the trope and attempt to expand upon it rather than just pulling an the Arthur C. Clarke quote and leaving there.

"'Magic, as in any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from…, or as in, like, ‘magic’ magic?' she asked. Bliss looked back and smirked. 'Yes.' Mad_Ana stopped walking. 'That’s not an answer.' 'Well,' Swords called, 'what do you believe it was? How do you explain it? ... The universe is a tapestry of weird, wily stuff that we—people— are still getting our heads around. That’s the point of science, to understand the grand tapestry...So, magic is a thread in all that. It’s part of the tapestry.' 'That doesn't make sense.' 'It doesn't have to,' Swords replied. 'It just is.' Creel and Mad_Ana looked at each other, mystified. 'Cuckoo,' Creel said. 'Belief is big medicine,' Swords said. 'Belief is the glue that keeps the universe together.' 'You mean gravity,' Mad_Ana said. 'I meant precisely what I said,' Swords replied."

So magic and science may be the same thing, but they may also be completely different entities/laws/universes/principles that perform similar functions. Clearly the main characters have no idea and Swords is giving the impression that the answer is somewhere in-between. I'd love to see this played out further, much later in the series. Hopefully from the perspective of a character who will change their previously help belief structure (or scientific understanding). For example, a random character questioning whether clones have souls is just another trope, but if the character in question was a priest who just found out he was a clone, that dynamic now becomes an internal struggle.

After seeing this idea being questioned again in episode three, I have high hopes that this will be explored in further installments.  As a reader I can suspend disbelief that magic works in a piece of fiction if there is a reason for magic to work to further the plot.  If the characters figure out how magic works, then that is simply science fiction.  Until that day comes I'll just ask the same question: How does that work?

Speculation and Reaction (S01E02)

Driver
Of all the questions from my "33 Questions" post, I think my favorite one was "What or who is Driver?" Nice. Driver is the car... duh! That makes my predictions for Garage and Booster easier. Although I can't say this is unoriginal: first time I've heard a story with a transsexual sentient car. I really like this idea so I hope people won't take it too seriously. If any human character used gender bias as reasoning for gender reassignment that might be perceived as politically incorrect. I found the situation funny because what else would AI do, but make a calculated rational decision for itself based on irrational bias from humans.

Angels
I really like the description of angels and I want to see what the non-fallen angles are like in comparison to Azial. Maybe we'll hear the back-story of what happened during the great insurrection. It would be neat to hear a "His Dark Materials" type epic.

Zebulon Pike
Distinctive black shirt with blue jeans. Hmm, okay, I think I figured out the equation:

Zebulon Pike = Steve Job's fashion sense and showmanship + Bill Gate's wealth + Amazon's services + Google's influence and glasses + A.U. Rookman's sinister plan.

The Flask
Mentioned again 3 more times. Just sayin'.

Retcon and Time Travel
It was alluded that the computer from Mr. Inns came from the future. Is time travel a thing in this universe? If it is, the series took the widest universe possible and just expanded it to another dimension. I'm hoping it wasn't that straightforward because it would be so easy to use time-travel as the easy magic solution to every single mission tasked to The 33.

That being said, we were just introduced to a concept 100 times more intriguing than time travel: retcons.

“Retcons are rare— or at least we think they are,”

What a great plot device! The characters have no way of knowing if they are rare. Retroactively changing the consciousness of all humans would even allow for some literal retconning of the actual series and still keep a consistent cannon. I think this idea is much more clever and holds so much more potential than time travel. This might be my favorite concept from this universe so far.

Episode 3
These two episodes have been great setup to the universe. I feel like the Pramantha story has been a little overshadowed by the same stuff every pilot episode has to establish. That's okay because I expect episodes 3 and 4 will probably cover the topic thoroughly.

Tropes Galore

J.C. recently wrote about about recognizing tropes in your writing and why you shouldn't be turned off by them.  I couldn't agree more with his statements. It reminds me of the definition provided on the homepage of tvtropes.org:

"Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means 'stereotyped and trite.' In other words, dull and uninteresting."

This is a wiki that catalogs tropes for tv, movies, books, comics, radio, and other entertainment.  It's extremely comprehensive and will be the single biggest time suck you will ever find on the internet.

There are currently three short pages for J.C. Hutchins's work:

• 7th Son
• Personal Effects
• Personal Effects: Dark Art

This was my favorite trope listed on these pages:

Creating a page for The 33 would be fun to do at some point in the future.  These are the first few that instantly come to mind:

• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits (The 33)
• Founder of the Kingdom (Mr. Inns)
• Mass Teleportation (The Farmhouse)
• Myth Arc (one story-telling structure for this series)
• Monster of the Week (another structure J.C. plans to use for this series)

Clearly, The 33 is not in any way original.  I would even advise against reading The 33 if you want something original, but if that was your criteria for not liking something, then I would recommend locking yourself in room and never read, watch, or listen to anything ever again.  TV Tropes clearly shows everything is interrelated, whether intentional or not.  This is why I hate it when people crap all over James Cameron's Avatar based on trope recognition alone.  I liked Dances with Wolves, I also liked Fern Gully, I also liked Pocahontas.  Okay, so as an environmentalist maybe I'm not the most objective of critics for those types of movies, so I'd recommend reading  J.C.'s review of Avatar.

I think part of the reason I enjoyed 7th Son on a different level than some of my friends was that I had not seen these tropes so much in other literature.  Now that I have expanded my experience in SF/F genre the connections are far more clear.  This doesn't negate that sense of awe, but enhances it.

I first found tvtropes.org when looking deeper into the content of the Harry Potter series.  That book series appears to have absolutely no original content whatsoever.  That being said, I have enjoyed that series even more since learning about some of JKR's influences and I can truly marvel at what made that story so spectacular.  Individual components made it a page-turner, but was how everything came together as a collective whole, that made it a masterpiece.  I still feel like not enough attention has been given to the masterful way JKR has composed the series with ring composition or the shear magnitude of blatant and subtle foreshadowing of every major and minor plot element.

I think that while both 7th Son and The 33 are in some ways unoriginal, the way the stories are crafted and the way characters interact with each other are just unique enough to really make it enjoyable. The medium in how its being told also adds a point towards originality.   

I know that fans of J.C. also tend to enjoy podcasts and ARGs.  If the TV Tropes website is at all intriguing I'd recommend checking out the podcast for this website: On the Tropes.  They also had this brilliant web-series and ARG that has since ended.  It's a show within a show called Echo Chamber:

First Episode in and Spin-offs are Already Setup

J.C. mention in an interview that he hopes to have spin-off series written by some of his other author friends.  This would be rad, even though I’d prefer the content by J.C., I’d still consume anything that had at least his partial involvement.

I was little bit surprised with all the opportunities this first episode opened up for possible spin-offs.  There were obvious lines about Five-by-Five and the other sub-branches of The 33, but then there were unexpected references to gods and martians; this story will go anywhere.  Well, I guess that’s good for universe you hope to expand, but it also feels a bit overwhelming to have this massive info dump of info in the first episode.

“'We’re not for hire, and we don’t answer to anybody.' Creel snickered.'Right. Because that’d be inconvenient. So. Being above the law and all, does the government know you exist?' 'The U.S. government? Sure, some of it does.' 'Yeah? Does it approve of your world-saving?'  'Some of it does.'”

Here I feel there is one of the great opportunities for a spin-off into neat, murky, political series. It was relieved that J.C. didn't pigeonhole The 33’s political situation into a solid position.  It seems like everyone wants to have clear-cut delineations in politics.  Ambiguity, in this instance, is great.  I really hope this story can utilize themes of both straightforward good vs evil, while also containing stories of hard decisions and ethically ambiguous characters.

“'Actually,' Bliss said, 'we’re up to World War VII now.' 'Eh?'”

Yep, that’s another prequel side series waiting to happen.

33 Questions (S01E01)

“'Any questions?' 'Like, a million,' Creel said. 'Great. Make a list. You've got thirty more weeks to ask ’em.'”

The following is my list of thirty-three questions I have now that I want to see answered by end of the series and I will check them off as I go along. (My personal speculation in parentheses.)

1. Who is Mr. Ins (Is he a character we will be introduced to as someone else?) 
2. What is Mr. Ins’s true motive behind The 33? 
3. Where can the Farmhouse travel? (Mars, underwater, space?) 
4. What is Adison Creel’s back-story? 
5. What makes the recruits so unique? 
6. How good is Cookies’s cooking? 
7. What is Bliss’s back-story? (Was she a hipster before it was cool?) 
8. What’s the deal with Adison Creel’s flask? 
9. Is the farmhouse truly secure in a cornfield? (Will a random farmer come across it, do they know, will google maps take a picture, will the evil villains find it?)
10. Will Adison Creel finish his duty after 33 weeks? (Die, relieved, or stay on?) 
11. Who are the gods? (Is like a Marvel universe type understanding of gods or a Mur Lafferty-type situation?) 
12. What are all the sub-branches of The 33? 
13. What is with the mismatched random plate-where? (are they just thrifty?) 
14. “It’s stitched into your bone marrow. That’s what the nanorgtech injection was. You know, after your recruitment? From the doctor? The Swede? The stuff self-replicated. It’s embedded in every bone in your body. You’re now a walking, talking GPS and p-radio transmitter-receiver.”         Am I missing something? Does this refer to nanotechnology or something more specific? Why does it have an extra “r” and “g”. This shouldn't distract me this much. but it does. 
15. What are the martians like?
16. Is there life on any other planets besides Earth and Mars?
17. Are there other bases like The Farmhouse?

    

    Current Base Location

18. Who is the Swedish doctor? (Does she have a DNAC computer?)
19. Will we see politics come into play?
20. How was Azael able to transport?
21. Where does the money come from for the resources for The 33?
22. Why does the idea of a mismatched team seem like a tactical advantage? (Obviously it’s an important literary advantage.)
23. What is GIO up to? (This must be just the main plot for this arc of Pramantha.)
24. Did the swingers at the beginning of the story have any idea what they were doing when they killed themselves? (Does the reader?)
25. What is the survival rate of the volunteers at The 33?
26. Why Nebraska?
27. Is Nebraska the semi-permanent location of The Farmhouse when not on missions?
    
28. Have any civilians noticed any strange phenomena surround The 33 and their missions?
29. Will we get new cover art for each installment of every part of the story?
30. How old is Mr. Ins? What constitutes "really old"?
31. What or who is Driver, Garage, and Booster?
32. Will we see Mad_Ana's kid?
33. Why the name “The 33”?