#and marty can never get any one of those previous docs back. hes still doc but how much of his friend is still there

[ursaspecter]

what i say: i'm fine

what i mean: in the back to the future telltale game in episode 1 doc was talking about how jules and verne were already getting ready to go to college. and its just not brought up again. what the fuck. at that point marty hadnt seen him since october 1985 and it's may 1986 now. and this was before the idw comics so there was nothing to fill that gap yet. marty's best friend has been gone for so long his own kids are around marty's age now. i love the game and it's my favorite extension to bttf but holy shit why did they do that. i know in the end the timeline gets so changed around that the browns have been living in hill valley since the end of part 3 but marty wasnt around for that. this is another whole new doc he has to get to know now. how many times must marty lose his best friend to time travel

[aion-rsa]

Back to the Future Not Being Planned as a Trilogy Is What Makes It Great

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In the last decade, it’s become a common refrain among fans and industry players alike: the filmmakers should’ve “planned it better.” This trilogy could’ve been mapped out; those five sequels needed to be outlined first. Perhaps this is inevitable in an era where “shared universe” is part of the everyday vernacular, yet I cannot help but be amused when folks grow wistful over sequels with allegedly concrete roadmaps: franchises like Star Wars, Godfather… and the Back to the Future trilogy.

Whenever social media discussions about sequels or franchises that most smoothly told their sagas rear, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s little trio of time traveling adventures always spring to the forefront. With their economy of storytelling and strong fixation on characters, particularly lovable Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and eccentric Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), the three movies’ narrative is as stainless as the steel doors on the DeLorean. Even innocuous, seemingly throwaway details in the first movie turn out to have unexpectedly delightful payoffs in the sequels, such as the Doc’s interest in discovering who will win the next 25 years’ worth of World Series games.

Of course the irony in this is that Back to the Future was not planned as a trilogy; this was a “universe” structured around only one story, with its sequels acting as mere expansions on those initial foundations. Even the “cliffhanger” ending of the first movie, with Marty, Doc, and the original Jennifer Parker (Claudia Wells) piling into a now flying DeLorean to “do something about your kids,” was never meant to be more than a gag.

“We never designed the first Back to the Future to have a sequel,” director Zemeckis confirmed on the 2002 DVD release of Back to the Future Part II. “The flying car at the end was a joke, and it worked as a great joke and a great payoff. Everyone assumed we had this grand design like George Lucas did about Star Wars and had all these sequels. My only hope for Back to the Future ever was that it would make its money back.”

He goes on to say that if he had planned on doing a sequel, he would’ve never put Jennifer in the final scene—hence why in the sequel, the character (recast with Elisabeth Shue) spends most of the film asleep on a front porch.

Said Zemeckis, “I would’ve had only the Doc and Marty be in the car, and then I could’ve put them on any adventure. But what happens when you make a movie this successful is it becomes a piece of real estate, it becomes a franchise. And the reality comes at you very quickly, which is ‘we’re making a sequel. You can either help us or not, but the sequel is going to be made.’”

Fortunately, that sequel was made with most of the key players who turned the 1985 film into an enduring classic still in place, including Zemeckis and his co-writer/producer, Bob Gale, at the top of that list. Indeed, it’s even fair to look at the success of the trilogy and conclude that world-building is overrated. What makes Back to the Future shine all these decades later, both as a singular film and an appealing trilogy, is it was always about developing an intriguing story, as opposed to an open-ended milieu of content.

The first movie was originally conceived of by Gale based on a simple epiphany. While going through his father’s old high school yearbook, he came across a photograph of the old man that revealed he’d been elected class president.

“I had no idea,” Gale told Den of Geek last year. “And I’m looking at this picture of my dad, and he’s very proper and straight. And I’m thinking about the president of my graduating class who was just somebody I would have nothing to do with. We were just in completely different circles.”

This raised a million-dollar question: Would he have been friends with his dad in high school?

The dawning realization every young person must come upon, when they realize their parents and authority figures really were young folks like themselves once upon a time, had never been captured on screen before, much less in a mainstream movie through the prism of science fiction. But that’s what the original Back to the Future script did with its yarn about an ‘80s teenager inadvertently traveling 30 years into the past to spend the week with his mother and father in high school.

Granted, it’s more than the premise that makes Back to the Future so winsome. While the movie unquestionably benefits from the striking social distance between 1950s teenagers and their ‘80s counterparts—with the sexual revolution, Vietnam, civil rights, and second wave feminism between the two eras—it still plays to kids another 30-plus years later because of its intelligence and timeless universality. Taking the concept of “Chekhov’s gun” to its breaking point, there is not a single element, character, or detail set up in the first act in 1985 that isn’t paid off once Marty travels back to 1955, and then paid off again when he returns home in the denouement.

Marty’s mom, Lorraine (Lea Thompson), attempting to micromanage her children’s love lives with apparent 1950s social values? Well, in the actual ‘50s, she was smoking, drinking, and had no problem “parking” in cars with boys. Mayor Goldie Wilson running for reelection in 1985? He’s a young ambitious man on the make in ’55 (and with a keen eye for a good campaign slogan). The clock tower that hasn’t worked since it was struck by lightning 30 years ago? It becomes the gosh darn centerpiece of Back to the Future’s climax.

Everything flowed together with the precision of an actual, working clock tower, and it worked in service to the self-awareness which springs from young people seeing their parents in a different light. Plus, Alan Silvestri’s musical score just made everything Marty and Doc did seem to have the import of charging across the frontlines.

Read more

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Why Fan Response to the Back to the Future Sequels Changed

By Chris Cummins

So this proverbial little ‘80s teen comedy overperformed at the box office after ending on a teasing note that left viewers hanging. Zemeckis and Gale did not write Back to the Future to lead anywhere but the line “where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” but audiences (and the studio) wanted to see what was at the end of that skyway.

Thus Back to the Future Part II and Part III came into existence—but with the ambition of its creators to make them every bit as narratively complex as the first film they were borne out from. While the sequels were very much designed on the conventional wisdom that audiences want to see their favorite characters get up to the same shenanigans, Back to the Future Part II particularly subverts this. The sequences of the film set in the future of 2015 plays into “the same but different” by bringing nearly every actor from the first film back to play their same character at a more advanced age—or younger in the unnerving case of Fox being asked to play all of Marty and Jennifer’s children—but that sequence is then quickly jettisoned for something closer to It’s a Wonderful Life than Back to the Future.

Even when Gale first began conceiving of the sequels, he imagined Marty and Doc winding up in 1967 to “correct” the future. There Marty would again see his parents, George and Lorraine McFly, in shocking ways: George would be a college professor while Lorraine would’ve become a flower child, joining the hippie movement.

However, it was Zemeckis’ input that had the story fold into itself. Instead of just playing with different time periods and doing the same setup again, the director suggested using the third act of the sequel to enter the first movie from a different vantage point. He actually did what mainstream audiences supposedly want—basically remakes of the same story—but with a much more skewed sensibility with two Martys and two Docs running around, and all of them converging on a plot that involves further cliffhangers and switchbacks on the first movie, like an ending where the sequel’s Marty surprises 1955’s Doc Brown moments after Doc had sent Marty home. Now the Marty we’ve followed for the whole second film runs up behind the Doc to say, “I’m back from the future.”

Also in a quaint departure from how sequels are conceived today, the absence of Crispin Glover as George McFly in Part II and Part III stemmed from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment failing to lock actors into sequel clauses. Back then, it was assumed movies were a one-off experience, and when Glover decided he didn’t want to appear in a sequel… well, there’s a reason George McFly had to die in the alternative 1985 ruled over by a Trumpian Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson).

All of these concessions and choices made on the fly were not preordained or sketched out, but the talent involved was so keen on connecting their limitations to previous successes that they made a satisfying three-part whole out of a one-off, and without getting bogged down by fan service or further world-building. Nearly every choice made in the Back to the Future sequels—with exception to the inexplicable development of Marty being unable to withstand the insult of “chicken”—organically built off character traits or story concepts in the first one, flowing into a self-perpetuating circle.

Sure, there are inconsistencies. Consider the way the third movie is seeded into the second; it betrays a looseness to the world-building when Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen’s photo in Part II looks nothing like the character design in Part III. But it doesn’t ultimately matter. The elements that really determine the films’ quality, such as character, structure, and dialogue, are airtight across all three pictures.

Strangely though, this connective tissue was hidden at the time of release. As Gale told Den of Geek last year, there was a resistance at Universal to let general audiences know a third movie was on the way until after they’d seen the second one. There was even a fight to exclude the trailer of scenes from the third film at the end of Part II (at Gale’s suggestion).

“The biggest fight that I had with the president of Universal when we were planning the release of Part II is that I was adamant that I wanted to advertise this as part two of the three-part Back to the Future series, part two of the trilogy, and he didn’t want to do that,” Gale said. “He just wanted to say, ‘This is part two. Let them find out about part three later.’”

Gale is convinced that lack of understanding that Part II was setting up Part III led to both films being somewhat underappreciated during their releases. Now their legacy is as tightly woven with the first film, as well, those early Star Wars movies are. To the point where Back to the Future is often singled out as this rare thing—a near perfect film trilogy. That might be true, but it wasn’t set up that way. There’s a lesson in that.

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The post Back to the Future Not Being Planned as a Trilogy Is What Makes It Great appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[charliejrogers]

TENET (2020) - Review & Analysis

It’s hard to write about this movie without spoilers… so… fair warning… spoilers ahead. Though they don’t start til like halfway through the review.

One of my friends recently asked, “So how was TENET.” My answer: “When I read about the plot after I watched it, my mind was blown.” Therein lies the problem. This is a classic, “It’s better the second time” kind of movie, something Christopher Nolan isn’t a stranger to (I lovingly saw Inception twice in theaters and The Dark Knight a whopping three times in theaters… and both countless times since). The difference is, both of those movies were great the first time around too. They just got even better with subsequent viewings.

My personal problem too is that with rare exception (and especially as I’ve gotten older), I don’t like watching movies more than once. While there’s too much out there that I know I’ll never see, I still want to do my best and see as much as I can. Therefore, I don’t put too much credence into “It’s better the second time.” If it’s not good the first time around, I don’t care if might be better the second time.

TENET continues Christopher Nolan’s fascination with toying with time. It’s a theme and gimmick that’s been a staple since his ground-breaking major debut with 2001’s Memento, but featured heavily in both 2014’s black-hole-time-warping space opera Interstellar and 2017’s timeline jumping war epic Dunkirk. In some ways, this is Nolan’s most straightforward manipulation of time, it’s just time travel. Here, the central conceit of TENET is that scientists at some point in the distant future have figured out a way to get objects (and people) to travel backwards in time, and to do so in real time. In other words, whereas in Back to the Future, Marty and Doc flash back from 1985 to 1955 in a millisecond, in the world of TENET that time-travelling would occur only after Marty and Doc wandered about Earth for the equivalent of 30 years’ time. And, importantly, during those thirty years, Marty and Doc would exist in the same plane and realm as all other “forward-time” people. They can even interact with the world like anyone else… just the interaction would be… interesting to say the least. The backwards-time person would appear to be moving in reverse from the perspective of the forwards-time person, and vice versa.

This idea leads to the most interesting part of the movie: the visuals and effects. Characters in the movie hold guns that don’t shoot out bullets so much as just absorb bullets from environments which travel with the same momentum as if they had been shot out of a gun. Bombs that blow up a building in the world of the forwards-in-time people, are experienced as fallen buildings that spontaneously reassemble from the perspective of the backwards-in-time people. The result is a movie in which the director clearly relished the opportunity to create little clever puzzle boxes of scenes. I’m sure there are countless of YouTube videos that will happily show you why this movie is a masterpiece, and I agree from a design and plotting perspective, it was satisfying to watch many of the same sequences (a car chase, a vault heist) from two perspectives (one forward-in-time and one backward-in-time) and to notice all the little details about how actions in one timeline ultimately affected the other.

That said, my head legitimately hurt as I watched this movie. As Clémence Poésy puts it in perhaps the movie’s most famous line, “Don’t try to understand it; just feel it.” I wish I could. The temptation to try to wrap your mind around what is happening on screen is too large.

Perhaps what most threw me off (and both impressed and annoyed me) is how it deals with the central paradox of time travel. Namely, what happens when you change the past… and can you even do that? To put it briefly, it tackles this subject head-on without trying to cut corners or introduce alternate universes.  Other films, like Avengers: Endgame address this issue by just explaining that each time characters go back in time and mess with the past, they are creating an alternate and parallel universe. This makes sense to me… as much as time travel can make sense that is. But the parallel universe solution means that truly whatever happened happened. The Avengers can go back in time and stop Thanos, but there will always exist a timeline where he wins.

This movie doesn’t subscribe to the parallel universe theory. It outright rejects my linear understanding of time and seems to subscribe to the same circular notion of time that was (not introduced but) made popular by the 2016 film Arrival. In this view of time travel, someone can go back in time and influence the exact same reality the live in. AND furthermore, the fact that one has traveled back in time makes it so that it has always been like this. In other words, traveling back in time erases any previous universe where one hadn’t traveled back in time. I think of it this way. Imagine someone poisons my Mom’s box of Cheerios. She dies. I manage to go back in time and throw away her poisoned Cheerios before she could eat them. In the Avengers view of things, my mom would still be dead in the original timeline, but I created a new parallel universe where she’s now alive, having never been able to encounter the poisoned Cheerios. In the TENET view of the world, by travelling back in time to throw away the Cheerios, I effectively undo the fact that my Mom was ever in danger. Though I as a time-traveller may remember my harrowing Cheerios journey, she has no memory of the experience since I went back and prevented that reality from ever happening. What this does mean though is that as soon as I time-travel far back enough to get rid of the Cheerios, there are now two of me in the world. There is one who time-travelled and one who is unaware that his Mom was ever in danger. Time-traveller-me now cannot simply return to his home and normal life… as the other-me is living his life unaware that time travel was ever necessary (creating a Prestige-like scenario where maybe the time-traveller is better off just offing themselves, and honestly I wouldn’t have minded Nolan retreading themes from that superb movie).

It’s that last part about the time traveller being unable to return to his old life that marks the biggest difference from time travel in the vein of Back to the Future. In the Back to the Future model, after throwing away my Mom’s poisoned Cheerios, I can zap back to the moment in time I initially decided to time travel, and insert myself back in the correct time (technically there could still be two of me... but we’ll ignore that for now). However, in the TENET model, you cannot “zap” back to the future. The only to go back to the point when you first went backwards is just to live that amount of time. That’s why two of the same person will have to essentially co-exist. And since the movie stipulates that two of the same person cannot come into contact, the time-traveller is likely to live a life of exile.

It’s the sort of head-scratcher that makes sense on paper (and hopefully I clarified something for someone), but when watching this stuff play out on screen it made for a very unsatisfying movie. WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD! We as the viewer are used to seeing things as they unfold in real time. What this movie doesn’t allow us to see are the countless times various characters fail to do something and going back to undo their mistakes. Instead, we are experiencing the new reality created by past timetravellers, unaware (til the end of the movie) that they were previously realities that were erased (or prevented from coming into existence). We learn at the end of the movie that our Protagonist (John David Washington who’s cleverly named just The Protagonist… ugh) is actually the founder of the elite, global para-military force called TENET which is designed to thwart efforts by the future to erase the past. Setting aside how illogical the future’s plan is (something which the movie acknowledges… which doesn’t necessarily help matters), the reveal that The Protagonist is the original founder of TENET means that there’s a whole lot more to the plot we don’t see in the movie. The original Protagonist clearly had a long life with life events that were very different from what we see in this movie. Namely and most importantly, he at one time lived in a world without TENET. Presumably, the initial Protagonist discovers the future’s scheme and fails to stop it. In order to undo his failure he goes back in time to form TENET. In doing so, he completely erases the TENET-less reality he had actually experienced. And interestingly, the Protagonist involves his younger self in his plan for the eventual of TENET. So as I said, the Protagonist we follow in this movie is NOT the original Protagonist, but instead one who lives a reality that was manufactured by an older version himself.

What I think is crucial, (and maybe I’m dead wrong here, who knows?) but at the end of the movie when it is revealed that the Protagonistis the founder of TENET, it is implied that our Protagonist (the one we follow in the movie) will go on to do the same acts as his prior self (namely, as an old man, he will travel back in time and found TENET again). But I don’t think this is true, and it’s here I think the movie approaches time travel in a unique way. A figure has already founded TENET, so there’s no need to do that again. What’s happened, happened. In essence, the Protagonist we see at the end of the movie is free to do whatever he wants. What’s happened has already happened and the TENET-founding Protagonist has already done his thing.

What I like about that is that it avoids the weird, paradox circular shit that infects time travel fiction. Take the third Harry Potter, for example. Harry is about to get destroyed by Dementors until a Patronus spell is fired. As we discover later in the movie, it was actually Harry who cast that spell. But how is that possible? If a future Harry is the only way to save Harry… then how does he get saved the first time? Maybe there’s an alternate reality we don’t see where Ron saves Harry last second and Ron dies so Harry goes back in time to prevent that reality from happening and we just never see that. Regardless, it’s a large plot hole that is unexplainable. What I give credit to Nolan and co. for is crafting an incredibly complex time travel tale that avoids any obvious plot holes and time paradoxes. We are left with a fairly intelligent piece of science fiction. Also it doesn’t chalk it all up to, “aliens think and speak in circles so time is circular”… you know that bullshit that Arrival pulled.

That’s more than I intended to write about the plot. The point is, as I said at the beginning, reading about and discussing the plot is superbly interesting and hats off to Nolan and crew for putting it together.

Watching the plot is a different story. Nolan is needlessly confusing in this picture. The fact that reading about the story offers a great deal of clarity should be a red flag. Not that every movie needs to or should be clearly understandable immediately… but it shouldn’t be so confusing that your head hurts.

I think the most disappointing thing is that I would be willing to set aside the confusing story for the pleasure of some well-choreographed, mind-bending action sequences. While the previously mentioned car chase is one such sequence, the grand finale invasion/battle was (for me) incredibly hard to follow. Shot to show two simultaneous operations, one team moving forward, one moving backward, I had no fucking clue what was happening.

And then once we start to actually think about the characters and humans who make up this story… it’s clear more work went into designing the action/set pieces than in developing the characters. I hated… HATED John David Washington’s performance as the Protagonist. He was written to sound like a quick-quipped, witty, charming Bond-like hero, and this just isn’t the movie for that. Though a former CIA agent, he’s not in a spy-thriller. And when the dialogue isn’t a showcase to show off how witty our hero is, it is just an excuse to explain boatloads and boatloads of exposition. I’ve become a real stickler as of late for how films do this. Classically, films use a newbie character as a stand-in for the audience as an excuse for other characters to explain the particulars of the world to them. It’s a little trite, but it’s perfectly functional. What isn’t functional is what this movie does. Half of the dialogue is the The Protagonist meeting someone and them asking him a question like, “What do you know about this Russian base?” and the Protagonist responding, “That Russian base? Well it’s… blah blah blah” and proceeds to talk for a minute answering the person’s question exactly. They reply, “Correct.” And the movie proceeds. It just doesn’t do much to make me care about any characters.

And then, yes, we have to talk about it, the way Nolan’s film deals with its lone female character, Kat Barton (Elizabeth Debicki). She’s the wife of the film’s villain, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Brannagh, doing his best impression of a Eastern European maniac since the last time he did this for 2014’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit… which admittedly he does a good job of). The men in this film just don’t give a shit about this woman. But that would be OK if the movie was honest about this, or in particular made the Protagonist feel guilty about how he uses Kat, discards her, and gets her unnecessarily involved in her husband’s affairs. If you can’t tell, I hated the Protagonist, which is never a good sign when watching a movie. I didn’t much like Washington in BlacKkKlansmen either, so maybe he’s just not my guy. In both movies, he seems to have a confident swagger about him that doesn’t match the characters he plays.

Robert Pattinson is in this movie too. He’s good. I don’t know. Nothing special here from him. He doesn’t detract from anything, but he’s not a great addition. Same goes for the performance from Debicki. Branagh as the villain is good. He’s a good actor even if his beard/facial hair just looked off the whole time. Maybe a larger make-up budget would have helped? At least he was an interesting character, even if deeply flawed and the movie goes a bit too far to make him sympathetic.

So it’s not the complete mess that some people say it is online, and while I understand and appreciate and really like the complexity of the plot and time travel mechanics on paper… they are certainly not a joy to watch. If you do watching, then be prepared to do boatloads of mental gymnastics or just resign one’s self to not understanding what’s happening. While I’m happy to hand-waive some shady plot points or time paradoxes from a movie, when the whole movie is a time paradox, that becomes hard to do. Alas, this is still the best Nolan film for me since Inception, but still a far cry from the highs of his 2000s run of The Prestige, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and Inception. If some of the character moments were better developed, this would have been a better film. Instead, really, don’t try to understand and just be awash in this time-loopy, messy, but clever film.

**/ (Two and a half out of four stars)

[wondrousworldbuilding]

What is a magic system?

When writing speculative fiction, one of the writer’s most important jobs is to establish the new rules for their world. In many branches of speculative fiction, especially fantasy and even horror, this is magic, though it can also be technology and alternate scientific rules for science fiction. Whatever alternate fact(s) or reality you utilize to make your fictional world possible, that qualifies as a “magic system.” Your magic system is most often defined by what it can’t do rather than by what it can.

Why do I need a magic system?

When writing speculative fiction, it’s usually assumed that something about your world is different than ours. That can be a small tweak or it can be a complete dismantle-and-reassembly of physics as we understand it. Whatever system you choose to implement, it needs to have internally consistent rules. If, throughout the course of your book, magics begin to contradict each other, then it will disturb your readers suspension of disbelief. You don’t want your awesome magic to yank your readers from the believability of the story. But…most important of all…you have to establish some sort of rules and limits in order to prevent yourself from pulling a deus ex machina. No one likes a poorly executed deus ex machina. Few people like a well executed one (is there such a thing?). If you have rules, limits, cost, built into the magic or technology of your world, then you establish something that is not only nuanced and interesting, but believable.

But…but…it’s magic!!!

Why write speculative fiction if I have to create and follow all of these tedious rules?! The real world has rules enough.

It’s true. But following your own rules and following real worlds aren’t the same thing. Lots of you have probably heard the little saying, “Give your world a Flux Capacitor.” If you think about it, Back to the Future’s Flux Capacitor doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s not explained. But we accept it because it’s magic. And when Doc says, “Here’s this thing. It makes time travel possible.” We accept it because it’s a simple alteration. He doesn’t try to use it to do more than what is initially established. It never breaks that rule. It’s not used to get Marty out of an impossible situation, defying any previous understanding of the technology. That’s why it works.

So where you do start?

First, you need to probably choose what type of magic you will use. Will be elements based? Or energy based? Spirit? Physical? Time and Space? What things is your magic summoning/manipulating/drawing from?

Now you’ll want to focus on the parts that make your magic yours. Sure, elemental magic has been used half a zillion times, but it can still be interesting if you do something new with it. The best way to do something new is to alter its limits, change the cost, give it a new spin that makes your regular ol’ fire magic something intriguing.

You can do a little bit of research into ancient forms of magic, into other literary uses of magic. See what those before you have done and use it as an inspiration.

If you’re having trouble knowing where to start, I’m here to provide you some thoughts concerning the skeletal-assembly of your magic system! Use these prompts as you see fit!

What does magic use/alter/manipulate?

visible energies

gravity

laws of physics

light

thought

water, only, in all of its forms

fabric of space

elementary particles

items of specific color or texture

perception

plant life

the dead

blood

magnetic forces

demons

vibrations

earth

emotions

Who possesses magic?

scholars

children

random lucky people

anyone

everyone

the elderly

anyone who’s ever petted a dog

specific animals

deities

How is it acquired?

at birth

intense study and training

gifted

through random action

through a ritual

as one ages

stolen

From where is power drawn?

internal mana

heat energy

alignment of the stars

physical contact with _____ (the earth, another life force, a drawing or rune)

kinetic or potential energy

the moon(s)

other realms

movement of tectonic plates

spiritual energy of those nearby

consumption of specific foods/drinks/elements

Check out the rest of the Brainstorming Series! Magic Systems, Part Two New Species New Worlds Cultures Civilizations Map Making Politics and Government Belief Systems & Religion Guilds, Factions, & Groups War & Conflict Science & Technology Wildlife & Ecosystems History & Lore

[radioactivedelorean]

Tagged By @witete

*Sorry if anyone has tagged me in any of these sorts of question things and I haven’t responded to them - I’ve had such a full activity feed that those posts are now long gone!*

Do This: List all the things you’re currently working on in as much or as little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they are working on. This can be anything!

Oh sweet God, I’ve got a TON of things in the works, so get ready for a long post. And don’t judge me for how much angst there is!

1: I’ve got an Adoption! AU in the works for Back to the Future - The premise is that instead of Doc and Marty meeting by however they met, Doc (still living in his old house - which never burned down) adopts Marty when Marty is like eight or nine years old. Marty’s a fairly bright kid (at least, more so than the trilogy, games and comic books make him out to be), and he catches Doc’s eye at the kids’ home when Doc finds a remote control car Marty modified himself to not only be more powerful, but to have better handling/steering controls, etc. The two get chatting and Doc signs the adoption papers, making Marty legally his son.  Doc insists that Marty calls him ‘Doc’ or ‘Emmett’, but never “dad”, since they both know Doc is not Marty’s biological father and shouldn’t therefore be addressed as such. I’ve got a few rather long one-shots for this, but no consistent plot just yet:

Doc and Marty first meeting in the children’s home

Marty getting into a fight at school when some kid makes a comment about Doc and Marty sticks up for him, ending up with Marty receiving a black eye and a bloody nose. Doc picks him up from school and isn’t impressed

Marty and Doc have a fight (about what, I don’t yet know) and Marty storms out of the house into the woods nearby. Marty ends up stepping on an illegal bear trap which gets stuck around his leg. Doc comes looking for him when it starts to rain and takes Marty home, before calling an ambulance. Marty is rushed into hospital and ends up having his leg amputated (Hey, I said there’d be angst!)

2: A post-finale Gravity Falls fic where Bill returns (wow, such an original idea!) - Stan and Ford are out on the Stan O War somewhere in the North Pacific when Ford starts hearing his brother calling him nicknames only Bill called him (IQ). Ford brushes it off as lingering paranoia, until later when they call the twins via Skype and Mabel calls Stan ‘Fez’. That’s actually as far as I’ve got with writing but I have got a few more ideas floating around for this.

3: I’ve got a few random RickFord one-shots that are sort-of finished:

One with Ford having a bit of PTSD regarding the scars he’s picked up over the years. Rick sits with him on the couch in their apartment and calms him down

One where Ford and Rick go to the Smiths’ place for dinner and Ford ends up getting salmonella (they went to a restaurant the previous day where Ford had chicken), but the symptoms only show up as Ford is eating the casserole Jerry had cooked. Rick takes care of him at the Smiths’ place (he turned the basement into a living space for him and Ford) but ends up contracting the disease from his boyfriend. In turn, Ford takes care of him

A few less-than-500-words one-shots based off random one-line prompts from various topics

A few very short snippets of an AU where Ford is a college professor

A one-shot from the same AU where Ford ends up in a car crash

4: A crossover AU in which there is a glitch with the DeLorean and Marty ends up landing in the middle of Gravity Falls, a year after Weirdmageddon. Ford finds him and takes him and the DeLorean back to the Mystery Shack to try and get it fixed up. Doc wasn’t with Marty at the time, so he isn’t present in the crossover

5: A few one-off Back to the Future one-shots from both my own ideas and one based off an episode of the 1991 cartoon (I wouldn’t recommend watching it - it’s very cringe-worthy and Michael J Fox is nowhere to be found. They make Marty very much a side character and focus on developing characteristics/personalities for Doc’s kids, Jules and Verne. I’d be all for that, if it wasn’t so obnoxiously animated or poorly voiced. Plus the plotlines of some of the episodes are ridiculous! There’s a Biff replica in most, if not all, of the episodes from both seasons! Alas, starved for content, I ended up watching the lot of them).

Doc, Marty and the kids are making a quick escape in the train (no idea from what) when an anti-aircraft cannon knocks them out of the sky and they get stranded

Marty is accused of being a witch and is damn near burned to death at the stake during 1600s America. He ends up with severe burns on his legs, but Doc manages to rescue him before he gets killed (from the cartoon - s1e4 “witchcraft”)

A very old fic that I’m probably going to abandon involving Marty being unable to cope with the new timeline - everything he knows has changed and even Doc can’t help him

Plus a bunch of others that I don’t feel are worth mentioning (mainly just alternative endings to an old fic of mine)

6: A few incredibly old Rayman fics that I have no intention of doing anything with any more (I had inspiration for a full two weeks and then it died)

7: A couple of Antisepticeye fics that I don’t think will be going anywhere. Things like Jack getting kicked out of his body in a Bill Cipher like fashion, generic things like that.

8: A few MEGA old fics/ideas for Team Fortress 2. I actually love that game a lot and the comics are super good. The fics are basically me being a cruel person and using my writing to abuse the characters, so I don’t think I’ll go into detail with these ones

9: A few one-off Gravity Falls one-shots that won’t be going anywhere (considering I was writing some of these when I was halfway through season 1, so with no knowledge of Ford’s existence)

Dipper is left to guard the Shack while Stan goes out and Mabel’s at a sleepover. The Shack gets robbed and Dipper ends up seriously hurt (I wrote this before Ford came into the picture)

A fic exploring what happened to Ford while he was in the Fearamid (basically pure torture for my sick amusement)

An idea where getting Bill out of Dipper’s body during Sock Opera is a little harder than they first thought, and Bipper ends up locked away. Stan works extra hard to get Ford back in the hope that he can help.

A few little one-off ideas for the Guilty Ford AU

10: A few odd rick and Morty one-shots that just exist as ideas and/or notes

11: And finally, last but not least, a fic called Dēbĭlĭto, which is my full-length fic for the Brain Trauma AU. I don’t think I need to go into detail with this one!

Phew! I scanned all of the archives over on my Google Docs account and that’s everything I’ve dug up!

 Not taggin’ anyone :P

[ootb-posts]

On the Road to BeeCon 2017: Interview with Thomas DeMeo

Thomas DeMeo is Alfresco's Vice President of Product Management. He was already with us in BeeCon 2016, and he is ready to join us for a new BeeCon this year. We are very glad he wanted to spend part of his time to answer our questions. Do you want to know more about his role at Alfresco? In this interview, he talks about bicycles on the road, priorities on the roadmap, his favourite books, rock music and Spinal Tap.

In the three years that you have been the VP of Product at Alfresco, what are you most proud of accomplishing? What has been the most fun?

First of all, the 3 years have gone by in a flash! I think what I am most proud of is taking the great work that came before me and elevating that to the next level for the community, partners and customers. Prioritizing the build out of the platform with richer capabilities, integrations, UX, mobile, and developer and architect-centric items like APIs, developer environment, tools, benchmarks, richer docs have all made it easier to get value from the broader Alfresco platform. Extending the integrations into adjacent systems, leveraging IaaS and providing the right tools to reduce what we call "Time to Value" are all very important to me. While there is still much to do, and we always want to do more, the fun part of this is working with others in the ecosystem who are equally passionate about the product to make an impact which touches so many around the world. It's fascinating to see how many people use the overall Alfresco platform for everything from exploring the universe, making people healthy, to everyday client interactions in banks and retail. This is very satisfying.

What is the most difficult part of defining a product roadmap?

As in life, it's about priorities and what to focus on with limited time and resources. It's keeping your eye outwards in the market to see the macro trends, while dealing with micro decisions day to day. It's connecting the higher level vision and objectives for where we want to be, and translating that into the meaningful steps along the way to get there. It's listening a lot more than talking, but having a point of view, being comfortable with the unknown, and asking "why" many times to get to the root problem. It's always a balancing act between what you want to do and what you can afford, while trying to keep multiple constituents happy, each with different goals. The roadmap itself is just an artefact of all these competing priorities, values and decisions. I honestly believe that a good PM is both a blessing (we get to help people!) and a curse by never being satisfied as we always want to do more and know where our short comings are. That said, It's also a role where you can make a difference, be creative, and have a "seat at the table" for making meaningful impact. I would rather be at the head of the table than have others do it for me so it's also the best job in the world!

What are the best channels for Alfresco to get feedback from its users, partners, and community? How does that feedback influence the product roadmap? What other things influence the roadmap?

The quick answer is to engage in all communication methods (community forums, UX research, early access programs, events like BeeCon, developer days, meetups, etc.) as each provides a different level of conversation. As I mentioned before, a good PM has to use their ratio of ears to mouth wisely. It's 2x!. Modern product management today is a lot more fluid, agile, inclusive and scientific. You don't need to be the "smartest person in the room" or own a magic crystal ball, you need to be good at listening, observing, asking the right questions, challenging assumptions and balancing your point of view with input from all sides. This input from all of constituents (partners, community, customer, end users, etc.) and personas (end users, admins, developers, architects, partners, CIO, etc.) is needed to test a hypothesis, iterate, learn and build evidence to support a point of view. But as the market is dynamic and users' needs change, it's a constant dialog and like any good relationship, it's built on communication and conversations like this.

Why is it so hard to upgrade Alfresco? What is Alfresco planning to make it easier?

Being open is a benefit, but also a responsibility on all sides. While it's great one can do anything on top of Alfresco, without the proper guidance, we see situations where environments are either not optimally set up or extended, and this could make an upgrade challenging. We have invested in both technology and training to make this easier. First, each release of Alfresco and Activiti have provided more APIs than the previous and the guidance in items like the SDK, api-explorer.alfresco.com, docs.alfresco.com, reference architectures (etc.) are intended to make it easier to have a maintainable environment. Second, we have both certification and training that Alfresco offers to everyone that covers being a Alfresco Certified Engineer, Alfresco Certified Administrator, Alfresco Activiti Certified Administrator and Alfresco Process Services Certified Engineer. There are many options at https://university.alfresco.com/ It's come a long way in my 3 years.

We were pleased that you attended BeeCon 2016. What were your expectations attending that conference, and what surprised you? What are you looking forward to this year?

As I mentioned previously, conversations with members of the extended community are always rewarding. I love hearing different experiences and points of view about this shared passion of building a great product that makes an impact in our world. The range of use cases, configurations, integrations and extensions is always great to see. I'm looking forward to the unexpected this year, seeing something new and different that perhaps we didn't even know was possible built on the new capabilities provided in the last few versions. If you see me, don't be shy, I'd love to see what you are working on.

We are aware that you love music. Do you play any instrument? What kind of music do you enjoy the most?

Yes indeed, I started playing guitar when I was an early teenager and have played, on and off, ever since. I like the creative part of it, it's a good "right brain / left brain" activity. Even after a long day, after ~ 15 minutes of playing, my energy level jumps back up and I am refreshed. Having grown up in the Boston area in the 80's, it was all about classic American and British rock, and I leaned more towards the heavy side of the spectrum. Good riffs, heavy groove, interesting arrangement, melody and tone, that's what it's all about for me. That's the style I like to play too.

If you could play music with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?

Jimmy Page, he was a big influence growing up. The variety of style, depth, alternate tunings and good ol' rock & roll never gets old. Even as a person, he leads a good life, glad he is still with us and still doing his thing. A very close second would be Eddie Van Halen, or Angus Young, Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Ray Vaughan, dang, I can't decide. Don't get me started...

You have worked in product management in a number of high profile software companies. If software product management was not a career choice for you, what else do you think you would have done?

Similar to Nigel Tufnel, I'd work in a shop of some kind, maybe in a haberdashery, or maybe like a chapeau shop. You will have to google Spinal Tap quotes to get the joke, or better yet, see the movie.

What is one dream project you have thought about pursuing apart from your professional life?

My passions are family, technology, music, cycling and travel. To paraphrase Elon Musk's approach, who advises to look at the overlap of two or more areas where you are an expert to explore opportunities, it would be in those domains. The landscape changes quickly and there are always areas to innovate and find new ways of adding value.

What books have influenced you such that you would recommend them to the Alfresco community? We are interested in both professional and non-technical books.

There are so many books that I have enjoyed, but here are just a few of the more product related titles I recommend to those I work with. As a PM, of course this list is in order of priority :-)

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change"

"The Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank

"The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses" by Eric Ries

"Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love" by Marty Cagan

"The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change)" by Clayton M. Christensen

"Consumption Economics: The New Rules of Tech" by J. B. Wood

Thomas DeMeo will be giving his keynote "Power of the Platform" at BeeCon 2017 on Thursday 27th of April, at 09:00, in the Auditorium. Don't miss it!

[knickynoo]

Any thoughts™️ or headcanons about Marty and his ADHD and executive disfunction Bc I heard you bring it up before?

ehgivjkfnwofhlekj YES. Also, you have opened such a can of worms in giving me free rein to talk about this. I have many thoughts about ADHD Marty and love talking about this and ADHD in general Because Of Reasons so.... *dumps out contents of head onto blog post*

• So yeah, Marty has ADHD because I mean...have you seen the kid? I think he’d probably be the “combined” type since he seems to definitely have features of hyperactivity and can also be inattentive and easily distracted. 

• Obviously, this doesn’t bode well for him school-wise. Strickland seems to just dislike the McFly family in general, but I can imagine Marty might be considered a bit of a slacker by the rest of his teachers too, due to his difficulty focusing/ sitting still / keeping track of assignments. Also, this is the 80s. There is a very little chance of anyone realizing he’s got ADHD and making any moves to address it or accommodate him. So Marty’s probably one of those kids who can’t stand school and is always barely treading water as he tries to navigate all that’s expected of him in an environment totally not built for anyone who isn’t neurotypical. 

• There’s just...a lot of executive dysfunction going on here. Marty strikes me as the type to be so focused on his own thoughts/ what he’s going to say next, that he tunes out the person speaking to him or interrupts them. (There’s a little bit of this in the movies, esp that scene in the mall lot where Marty starts asking questions about the DeLorean & the suit Doc is wearing and Doc is all Stay focused, I’ll answer your questions eventually. Plus the scene in part II where Marty is just like, wandering away, about to explore the future and Doc has to drag him back, all the while Marty is just talking about being a rockstar).

• He’s super impulsive. For examples, see, um...the entirety of the trilogy.

• Timeblindness. Which isn’t helped at all by the fact that his watch is broken, lol. See: Marty being late for school the previous 3 days, deciding to change his entire outfit when there’s literally no room for error in getting to the clock tower, setting the DeLorean to only 10 minutes earlier in an attempt to save Doc, etc.

• Dave’s “You sleep in your clothes again?” line tells us Marty has done this before, probably because he just can't be bothered to/bring himself to get changed at night. So, he just crashes in whatever he’s wearing at the moment and his family has to remind him to change into new clothes. 

• Has problems with rejection and reacts to things in extremes. One rejection at the audition sends him straight to I’m never gonna be good enough, why even bother, I’m gonna give up music FOREVER. And I can imagine that Marty is that way with most things. Like, as soon as he’s unsure of himself or doesn’t do well at something, he spirals and shuts down, which is why Doc has to constantly remind him to put his mind to things. 

• Speaking of Doc...he totally knows Marty’s got ADHD (known only as ADD in the 80s). He saw an article about it one day while reading through scientific/medical journals, and a lightbulb went off above his head as he connected the dots. He even speaks to Marty about it one day in the hopes that understanding what’s going on will help Marty figure out strategies to help in day-to-day life. Doc is super supportive, allowing Marty the freedom to be who he is and do whatever he needs in order to feel focused/calm. He’s sure to explain things in a variety of ways when they work so that Marty understands, he recognizes when Marty needs air and will send him out on a walk with Einie, and he’s completely unfazed when Marty is doing circles in the lab, chatting a mile a minute and fiddling with things he finds laying around. 

• I have this lovely little headcanon (that makes an appearance in a couple of BTTF fics that may never see the light of day) where Doc uses tools and fasteners around the lab to make fidget toys for Marty. You know those nuts and bolts pencil toppers? Like, it’s literally a colorful bolt with a wing nut? He makes those, and Marty holds onto and uses them while they work/ at home/ even discretely at school sometimes. 

• Doc also makes the connection that weighted items keep Marty grounded and help with a lot of sensory issues. One day, Marty is like, even more all over the place than usual. Just a blur of energy and anxiety and chaos. Doc is like, Um...are u ok? Maybe you should lie down ??? or something?? So Marty does, and Einstein goes right ahead and jumps on the bed and plops himself right on top of Marty, who becomes completely calm and falls asleep. And so, while Marty cannot walk around wearing a dog at all times, Doc is like, L A Y E R S?? and we all know how Marty dresses so....  

• Last thing! Original timeline McFlys aren’t understanding at all of Marty’s various quirks and just don’t understand him at all. He’s constantly stifled in that house, told to sit still, be quiet, calm down, etc. He’s always getting yelled at for forgotten chores or bad grades or whatever, so he kind of learns to just repress his energy and emotions to avoid getting into trouble. (See dinner scene where our normally exuberant and talkative Marty sits completely still and says three entire words)

• Improved timeline McFlys are much more aware and in-tune to Marty. They’re understanding and supportive, doing whatever they can to help Marty be happy and successful in school and life in general. 

And...I will stop myself there. Thanks for the ask! This was a lot of fun to think/write about. I saw the ask this morning and was like !!!!!!!!! all day, lol.