Any World (That I'm Welcome To)

I managed to see the first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Wow, starting with an angry young man and a bunch of guys with guns slaughtering children is a bit much right now, Disney. I know they couldn't predict specific events, but it's not like a lot of real people weren't already all too familiar with such tragedies. If you're going to open with something like that, maybe make it clearer how it's relevant to the actual plot some time during the first two episodes to justify it instead of just plonking it in to let us know that the show is dark, man, dark? I saw one suggestion that we should have gotten some obvious signs that Reva and the Jedi youth Obi-Wan doesn't help were both in that group of kids that escapes, and they should have recognized each other. That would have been a start.

Tiny Leia and her tiny shoes sure are adorable though.

Also, Obi-Wan has a job butchering a...sand whale? Giant sand tuna? What the heck is that thing, and does it actually swim through sand? Why are they apparently only butchering it during day shifts instead of working round the clock to finish the job before the meat spoils in the devastating Tatooine heat? Or is there a night shift too, and they don't Gonk-clock in until a few minutes after the day shift Gonk-clocks out? Do they really expect us to concentrate on the plot when we're wondering these things?

And if there's a sand whale, why aren't they singing sand shanties while they butcher it? We know Ewan McGregor can sing! So far this show appears to be designed to deliver maximum id vortex indulgence: shiploads of Prequel Trilogy actors pressed back into service, a bunch of expanded universe stuff, cute kiddos, scruffy emo Ben, badass evil people in black leather, Darth Vader, a comedy Jawa, Alderaan, painfully ironic comments about what it will be like when Leia rules Alderaan someday, a cyberpunk Crime Planet, a marketable baby droid, you name it. Why not toss in a few Tatooine sand shanties? (For the record, I also thought Law & Order criminally wasted the opportunity to come up with an excuse for a musical episode when they had Jerry Orbach and Jesse L. Martin playing buddy cops together.)

Come on, Disney! It's not like anyone believes you're devoted to making quality Star Wars content anymore, so you wouldn't be losing any dignity or anything. Let's have a Special Musical Edition!

Until that happy day, I will accept your sand shanty lyrics.

I haven't read any Frog and Toad since I was about six year old. Based on this short (under four minutes) claymation adaptation of one of their stories, I've been missing out. Look how perfectly they capture the eternal struggle not to binge on cookies in just three lines:

FROG: *puts cookies in box* There. Now we will not eat any more cookies.
TOAD: But we can open the box.
FROG: That is true.

What was that willpower thing you mentioned again, Frog?

Seriously, though, it does an amazing job of introducing a relatable character dilemma, showing the struggle, and resolving it (for a certain value of resolving, anyway) in a way which is very concise but also clear and puts you right in the moment with them. It probably helps that we've all been there, whether it's with cookies or some other food or activity which will have negative effects if we over-indulge, but still. I feel like I should be taking notes on writing technique.

…and sheep and cows.

This is entirely frivolous, because I felt like being a bit silly.

Hogwarts students write on parchment. Parchment, as we know, is made from the skins of goats, sheep, or cows. Between all the essays, star charts, and notes they take, the average Hogwarts student probably goes through five to ten feet of parchment per week at minimum (Hermione no doubt goes through twenty or thirty). There are perhaps 300 to 600 students, or maybe 200 or 1,000, because oh dear maths. If we take the 300 number, then Hogwarts students probably go through 1,500 to 3,000 feet of parchment per week.

Now, I don’t know how many feet of parchment you can get out of the average goat or cow, but I’m guessing that means at least a few hundred animals per week must die for these essays. Do the cows go into shepherd’s pie for Hogwarts dinners, I wonder? The remainder into a Hogsmeade butcher shop?

But there’s another factor to consider: what are their books made out of? Paper did quickly take over as the primary material in the early days of printing, true, but some of the Gutenberg Bibles were printed on parchment. Do wizards make children write on parchment for tradition and print on paper (maybe with the exception of important official documents like Ministry decrees; Parliament still prints acts on parchment)? One hopes so. Because even with a lively used book trade, a fair number of students still seem to buy new books, and Flourish & Blott’s obviously sells a fair number of new books (some of their stock may be used, but who knows). We know new books get added to the Hogwarts curriculum every so often, and it’s unlikely that Flourish & Blott’s had a hundred or more used copies of The Monster Book of Monsters just lying around. We also know that Lockhart’s books are best sellers, which means that each book probably sold at least a few hundred copies before three hundred or so Hogwarts students got assigned seven of his books each. Unless every adult witch and wizard sold their copies back, that means a couple thousand more books printed. We don’t know the page count of any of the books, but it must be at least a couple dozen animal skins per book. Lockhart’s books alone would probably account for enough dead cows and goats to feed wizarding Britain for a year.

So where are all these goats and cows grazing? Do they rustle them from Muggle herds? That sounds like a lot of work, not to mention risky to keep up long term. Are they filling the next ten valleys over from Hogwarts, tended by House Elf cowboys and goatherds? When there is leftover meat, do they Vanish it? Put it in stasis for emergencies? Send it to Romania for the dragons? What do they feed them during the winter - grass made by multiplying the last summer grass for months on end? (If the first principal exception to Gamp's law of elemental transfiguration applies to materials any animal could eat rather than just human food, then you can't create animal feed from nothing. Or thistles, tin cans, or three red shirts right off the line, for that matter.)

And is Aberforth a secret animal rights activist, saving goats from being made into copies of Magical Me?