Yesterday, being a Sunday without a feature film for me and my sweetie-wife was a day to go to the zoo. I had expected it to be quite busy on account of Father’s Day, but when we arrived at 9:15 am the crowds were quite spare.

The Snow Leopard was posing for the guests, and I am very happy with this photo.

The Grizzly bears had been fed and the cool morning had them unusually active.

Like the Grizzlies, the Mountain Lions were also very active. As we watched them a small side door opened and one mountain lion exited immediately while the other in true cat fashion came to the door and then paused for a lengthy period torn between going through the door or staying put.

We ended our visit with a trip to the burrowing owls, one of my sweetie-wife’s favorite spots.

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It has been said that Trump can never lose he can only be cheated, and that is his operating method, he wins every election and contest and when it is declared he did not then that is fraud.

Since 2020 presidential contest where Trump was thankfully thrown out on a slim margin of some 40,000 in just the right places, the Trump cult has been focused on taking over local election boards and altering election laws to allow them to cheat the next contest. It is not only an existential threat of American democracy but to the Republican Party itself.

The GOP, standing aside, too cowardly to confront the monster that they have crafted, seem to believe that this terrible fraud will only be utilized against the Democratic Party, an idiotic short-sighted perspective.

There is talk is this or that GOP pol can beat Trump in the primaries and take the nomination. Trump can never lose be can only be cheated. Any and every primary ‘loss’ will be proof of the ‘Establishment’ and ‘RINOs’ conspiring against Trump. that could be nothing but bitching and complaining but for those local election boards and seats now firmly in the Cult’s control.

I do not know if they hold the power to unquestionably throw the nomination to Trump, but I do know that they will try. The fanatics willing to storm the capitol will have no reservations about the RNC. Even if they cannot by legal means manipulate the results, they will spark a floor fight at the national convention unseen in modern times. If the future of our democracy were not hanging in this balance it would be a time for popcorn. Everyone one of us must vote against every Republican political until the party is burned to the ground, the ground salted, and a new party, undoubtedly with the same name, is constructed.

Actor Robert DeNiro, 79, has fathered a child in an act that strikes me as narcissistically irresponsible. Undoubtedly DeNiro is thrilled and proud to be a father again with a 7th child. There is no question that he possesses the wealth and resources to provide for another kid. But at such an advanced age DeNiro is unlikely to see his offspring mature and it is the child’s emotional health and mental well-being that I find myself thinking on.

Now, it is entirely possible that the emotional scars of losing my own father when I was young has made it difficult or impossible to be dispassionate about such matters, but it is also possible that it has given me a viewpoint thankfully not shared by the majority.

I do not think that DeNiro is showing a great deal of concern for this child. Losing a parent, particularly when one is old enough to grasp the concept of death but still too young to deal with the crushing reality of death is a very hard road to travel. My father dying when I was 10 has impacted me in so many ways and so shaped my emotional relationship with death and dying. Everyone dies is a truth but to have it be an emotional truth at age 10 or so is impactful on ways that are difficult to comprehend. To inflict that on a child as a probable outcome is self-centered to a Trumpian degree.

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Recently speculative fiction author Charlie Jane Anders posted an essay on tor.com about character agency in fiction, interrogating the wisdom that characters, principally protagonists, are required to have agency. Anders presented Arthur Dent from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as an example case but confessed difficulty in presenting more examples but remained certain that they existed.

This got me thinking on such examples and what agency means for a fictional character. First off when we speak of a character’s agency, I think primarily we are pondering ‘plot authorship.’ The influence the character can exert to shape, direct, or stop the story’s plot. Certainly, Arthur Dent has very little plot authorship, he bounces, nearly always without his intention or proactive action, from crisis to crisis. Dent is far from the first or even most famous character trapped by their circumstance.

Alice from Alice in Wonderland is another such character. While she initiated the plot by following the rabbit from there on, she is on a ride that is mostly beyond her control. Lemuel Gulliver from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is also a character swept by circumstance with limited plot authority. For a more recent example you could consider Sarah Conner from the film The Terminator. Sara in that film is simultaneously the protagonist, the point of view character, and the plot’s Macguffin. Until the final sequences of the story, she is pulled along by other characters, her life in their hands with very little input as to what happens to her.

Clearly, a protagonist does not require a great deal of plot authorship for a story to be meaningful, memorable, or lasting. That said it would appear, at least to me, that the absence of plot authorship is an element in certain types of characters or stories.

Arthur Dent is the ‘straight man’ in Hitchhiker’s farcical, fantastic comedy. He has no agency because he is there to heighten the absurdity to deliver the comedy. Give him too much ability to shape the events and the farce would turn into mediocre adventure.

Alice and Gulliver as reader surrogates, for one as a person to give voice to the reader’s questions as the wonder of the setting spills out and the other to be the subject of the satire and to perhaps see their own reality and its insanity from a new perspective.

Sarah Conner lacks plot authorship because the story, not the plot mind you, is about her gaining it. By the film’s finale she has gained the ability to shape and direct not only her life but the future as well, but to gain it she, and we the audience, must first be made aware of it absence.

Charlie Jane Anders is correct you can obsess too much over if this character or that character have agency, but the lack of agency is also a specific trait that, like everything else in the tale, much serve a purpose delivering the author’s desired effect.

Not much to say this morning that I haven’t already said, so here are 3 pictures from our trip to the San Diego Zoo on April 2nd.

First a Jaguar presenting the most dangerous position know to many a cat lover, on his back with a belly exposed for rubs.

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The rains have returned to San Diego and with the fluctuations in barometric pressure so have my headaches. Not with the force that would require me to stay at home and endure the stink of painting as the contractors continue to reconstruct our condominium but enough pain that conjuring a subject for an essay seems to be an impossible task. So, once again, here a few bits and bops on my mind without any particular theme or connection.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns for season 2 on June 15, 2023. Yay. I am an old fart and for me when someone mentions Star Trek my mind flies instantly to Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. I watched most of TNG and very little of the other series offerings, but SNW seems to scratch that ich quite well and I am happy to have it back.

A new short story idea. For the first time in a few years a short story idea has popped into my head. It is mystical supernatural horror. Inspiration struck while I was giving a rewatch to The Last Wave an arthouse horror movie from down under.

I am annoyed that Disney+ has released no behind the scenes/making of documentaries for the Star Wars series Andor. Andor is the best thing to happen to the franchise in The Empire Strike Backand I desperately want that bonus material. I suspect, without evidence, that since the decision has already been made that there will be only two season they are going to hold off on that stuff until the series is finished.