Saw the new Superman movie, and honestly I was ready for it to be over-hyped. I was kind of expecting to walk out of the theater disappointed, but I didn't.
It was a great movie.
Obviously it wasn't without a few flaws, but those are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things if you ask me. Honestly though, the best part of the movie was it's messaging on the world right now. Like yes, billionaires are this level of corrupt, and everyone is human despite where they came from.
I think my favorite part of this movie, however, was the fact that it wasn't necessarily a story about Superman, the god amongst men, the strongest metahuman. Instead, it was a movie about Clark Kent, a man who, above all else, just wants to do good and make the world a better place.
It was about his struggles in a world that isn't always kind, and that views compassion as a privilege. The entire movie, he's just doing what he believes to be the right thing, because that's all he knows how to do. He stops a country from invading another, he fights against the rich guy trying to take over the world, he rescues the person who was (involuntarily) helping to keep him imprisoned, and he saves his cousin's annoying, destructive dog. Because Clark Kent, at heart, is good.
In the beginning, he thought that was what he had to be. Because that's what he thought his parents sent Kal-el to Earth to do. And then it gets revealed that he wasn't hearing their full message, which contradicts everything he knew. Superman was good because that was what the world expected of him. But then that backfires because he got involved in things that "weren't his business."
In the end, Clark Kent is good because that's just who he is, not because it's what others wanted him to be.
I think that this point really gets driven home by two of the main speeches of this movie.
Clark's speech about what it means to be human, and how he's no less of a person than anyone else just because he's not from Earth. Biologically he may not be a part of the human species, but he's still a person in every other sense of the word. Because he has gone through and experienced life on Earth for thirty years. He loves and he feels pain and gets beaten down and yet he still keeps going, and if that doesn't make him a person then what does?
And his Pa's speech about the role of parents in a person's life, along with what he says about the massage Clark's biological parents left him.
“Parents aren’t for telling their children who they’re supposed to be. We’re here to give you the tools to make fools of yourselves all on your own.”
"What you wanted that message to mean is more important than what it actually said."
Clark is his own person, and he shouldn't be good just because it's what others tell him to be. He should be good because that's who he wants to be.
I think this quote from Peter Safran sums it up nicely; “He is kindness in a world that thinks that kindness is old-fashioned.”
This entire movie was just a story about a man doing his best to be a good person. At the end of it all, he is still good, but now it's because that's the kind of man that he wants to be. For everyone, and for himself.
(This is gonna be a pretty thick info dump so I'll put it below a break so I'm not clogging up anyone's feed).
All this mostly started with my attempt at trying to figure out some odd aspects of how Architects are represented in the game, and it spiraled into me imagining hypotheticals and putting way too much thought into things that don't need it/will probably never be explained.
I know that Architect society is presented as this whole, cohesive unit in the game, but I've always wondered if it's more than that. And while we have no idea how Architect society is divided up, or if it even is, we do know that Al-An is in a position of high importance. He states as much, and considering he was given the very important task of finding a cure for the bacterium outbreak, it's likely he was pretty high up.
Which makes me start thinking about how status is represented in Architect society. If it's something physically represented (like how royalty wears crowns, or military wears uniforms) or if it's something built into the 'code' that uniquely identifies each individual 'component' or Architect in the Network
I think both, and like to imagine they use their horns as symbols of status and add adornments to them - it's almost archaic tradition but since metals like gold, silver and platinum are rare in space because of their density, having more of them symbolized importance and longevity of "usefulness", i.e., how long you've been alive and contributing to the Network
(Idk I just want to see Al-An wearing platinum jewelry with pearls or amber, because cosmically they're far rarer than emeralds or diamonds, reflecting his incredibly important status.)
Which brings me to some things never explained in game. There are statues that get made of Architects you can find in the Koppa mining site, as well as a whole ass garden that gets made as a "place to reflect". Why? What purpose does it serve, unless Architect's value art in some way? I keep thinking about that one Architect that died there. Why did they go there, and choose to die there, if they didn't find comfort in the place?
People, myself included, characterize Architect's as being solely invested in scientific study alone, but they have to value art somehow. Otherwise, why would those statues be made on 4546b? Why would all of those objects, some with purely subjective value, be displayed in the primary containment facility and the quarantine enforcement platform? Maybe not valuing it to the extent of study, but still regarding it as serving some sort of purpose.
And now, what if there's an almost outlier section of society that, rather than studying the sciences, are more interested in studying the humanities? Valuing philosophy, art and even their language, placing it in high regard? What if the number that study those has been dwindling for hundreds of years, largely looked down upon by the majority of Architect society for their study into what might not be considered important to progress? Sort of like nowadays - where people consider getting a degree in the arts secondary to a degree in the sciences. But they value that study regardless, and have their own complex of buildings atop a mountain like we see at the end of the game, in some separate location.
And even further - what if there were even Architects that found themselves discontent with being in the Network and left? Regarded with disappointment and shamed by the society they left behind, deemed crazy and defective, but finding individualism more valuable. Forming a sect somewhere either among the mountains, or below the cloud layer, away from 99% of all other Architects.
What if they alone survived the outbreak? Not deliberately, but just because the infection never had the opportunity to spread to them. They might not even know what happened to the rest, to those that remained in Network. They were told to never come back to the mountain peaks, so they never did. Never cared to. They just know that at one point the progress stopped, and the ships stopped flying overhead.
What if, when Al-An comes home, Architects he once deemed lesser, flawed and defective, are all that's left of the people he loves? Robin not understanding the differences, and is relieved and happy that there are some of his people left. But Al-An's just conflicted because they aren't his people. Not really. It'll leave Al-An with his race still technically alive, but his people are well and truly gone. There's no place for him among them, unless he can accept that sole individualism as his new reality. Having to come to terms with the fact that the society he was searching to restore can never come back to be, but the Architect's are not truly gone.
I'll likely have many more thoughts to add, but I found myself caught up thinking about the evolution of the Architect's as a species - from their birth of sentience to the cybernetically enhanced, interstellar traveling people we know in the game. About the scraped beta dialogue between Robin and Al-An about how they had to work hard to survive the threats of evolutionary and technological advancement, and all that meant for them and their society.
I could probably go on forever about what those evolutionary hurdles must have looked like and the sacrifices needed to be made to continue on, since that's just my cup of overthinking biologist tea. But I think I'll leave it here, for now.
Wrote just about six chapters of the human AU before realizing I wanted to change a bunch of things that were plot related. Started to rewrite, and now I'm coming to the realization that I do actually know how to do slow burn.
And by slow burn I mean that they're probably not even going to like each other until about halfway through
Having friends/family that support and use Generative AI despite me telling them how harmful it is to the environment, how it's diminishing the intelligence and critical reasoning skills of the children/adults who use it, and how it's a fucking slap to the face of anyone who values the creative process because it makes it easier to write a fucking grocery list or do their homework is pathetic.
