Ralph Bakshi's Wizards (1977) - A Theatrically Released Saturday Morning Cartoon Fever Dream of Violence

The 1977 film Wizards is a film of contrasts. The story is about twin brothers, the titular Wizards, one good and one evil. Armies of elves and fairies vs the armies of mutants and monsters. Nature vs Science and Technology. 

But it's also a film of contrasts not just in it's story and themes, but in it's quality too.

  

A weirdly large amount of the film is shown in still frames like this. It opens with backstory and exposition about the world getting destoryed by nuclear war, and the birth of the twin Wizards, Avatar on the right and Blackwolf on the left in that above screenshot. But this technique isn't reserved for backstory. Later in the movie plenty of things are quickly covered by still frames and narration. A cost saving measure, certainly. It doesn't ruin the film, but it does somewhat detract from the parts that are good.

 

And there is good in Wizards. It is, occasionally, quite wonderful to look at. Here's just a few examples from within the first ten minutes.

And yet for as great to view as the few minutes of film these shots come from are, that contrast is also extremely apparent. Necron 99, that red robot character above and sort of mascot for the film, clashes greatly with the otherwise mostly-realistically drawn background art of the land of Scortch, where the evil wizard Blackwolf reigns. It's dark, harsh, and twisted, but depicted as if trying for photo-realism, or at least pseudo-realism. As Necron 99 and the other assassins venture out of Scortch on their mission of death, the landscape becomes a bit more surreal, almost impressionistic at times.

Necron 99 and the other assassins, and indeed all the characters, look more like they fit in a Saturday morning cartoon. It's hard to portray in stills here, but they squish and stretch like you'd expect a cartoon to look. Yet the world they inhabit is dark, harsh, or sometimes impressionistic, soft, and barely there at all.

But look at this sequence. This is genuinely beautiful.

One will keep watching the film to get more glimpses of scenes like all those I've screenshoted and shown you above. And you will get them. There is beautiful art, but it's interspersed with those bits of still images, and worse, Bakshi's signature bad rotoscoping. More on that in a bit.

I have to mention some of the character art. Neron 99 above is a simple but compelling design, and it works because of the cartoony nature of the characters, his distinct silhouette, and most importantly the hidden face. We never see his face, if there is one deep into that shadow with a yellow glow for eyes.

But some of the character designs are, while maybe no less memorable, kind of off-putting to look at.

Weehawk, the elf, one of our main characters. And below him, the princess Elinore, wizard Avatar, and the President of the Elves.

Sure, you can say I cherry picked a particularly bad frame of Weehawk. Cut him some slack, he's in the middle of a chase sequence through a forest, robo-assassin with a gun at his back. He doesn't look quite so much like a horrible gremlin all the time, right?

Well, he kinda does. And Elinore there, well she doesn't seem to like clothes. Saturday morning cartoon designs, but in a fever dream. Quick note, that fairy in the foreground there was voiced by Mark Hamill, his film debut. He took a break from filming Star Wars to voice his approximately three lines of dialog in Wizards before the character is shot and killed.

I don't mean to say any of this was a shock, by the way. The violence, the skimpy outfit, the dark tone. I knew going into Wizards what it was, who made it. A character wearing mostly skimpy clothing is a step towards modesty compared to the last Bakshi film I watched, Fritz the Cat, the first X-Rated animated film. A film which features full frontal cartoon cat nudity, multiple sex scenes, heavy drug use, and brief but extreme cartoon violence. Fritz was rated X. Wizards was rated PG (in the pre-PG-13 days, of course, but still not even an R). I don't mean to imply that Wizards is or was an entirely shocking movie, nor is it necessarily especially inappropriate. I just want to highlight that contrast. Cute fairy Mark Hamil: He gets blown away almost immediately. Saturday morning cartoon character designs, except for the skimpy clothes.

Ralph Bakshi is an interesting guy. He set out specifically to make art, not products. To make animated films that were aimed at adults, not children. He grew up poor in Brooklyn in the 1940s and 50s. Bakshi had an edge to him. He wanted animation to portray the world he knew, the things he grew up with, the life he and people around him lived, and the things he grew up loving. A lot of that portrayal of the life of a poor Jewish kid came out in his earlier movies like Fritz and Heavy Traffic. Wizards took that independent edge, animation for adults, but turned it back to the fantasy stories that Bakshi grew up reading and watching.

Contrasts. A fairy tale about magic and wizards and the purity of nature. A war film with brutal (cartoon) violence. 

A major plot point is that the armies of the evil wizard Blackwolf aren't motivated to do battle, in previous wars they got distracted or bored and give up easily. But Blackwolf found a secret weapon. Ancient film reels showing Nazi propaganda. Then the armies of evil are motivated to keep fighting, and they start to overcome the elves and fairies and other fair creatures.

And yes, the film does actually show clips of the Nazi propaganda. Bakshi doesn't shy away from, well, anything, but definitely not what appears to be one of the major themes he wanted to address. Indeed, the evil Blackwolf's throne is situated in the middle of a giant red swastika.

Yes, that is cartoon mutants and freaks watching footage of Adolf Hitler.

A film of contrasts. A weird film. Almost a trip, or a fever dream. And despite the late 70s weirdness, it's message is more than a bit on the nose. Bakshi was intentionally trying to make a Good vs Evil Saturday morning cartoon type of movie... just with typical Bakshi edge.

Who would I be to deny a Jewish boy a bit of on-the-nose commentary about Hitler and Nazis? But then again, historical context, creator intent, and a (supposed to be) good message don't make up for sub-par film making. Is Wizards sub par? Do the extended narration sequences, janky rotoscoping, weird designs, etc, take away from the good that is there in Wizards? Another pertinent question is what good is there, aside from the aforementioned occasionally very good art.

Is the writing excellent in Wizards? Maybe not. Maybe it lacks subtlety. It's serviceable enough. But it's at it's best when it isn't talking, I think. When it lets you soak in the atmosphere, like those screenshots above.

I gotta talk about the rotoscoping, though. Rotoscoping is when animators take footage that was previously shot, usually live-action footage, and draw or paint over the top of it, basically copying the movement but creating an animated image or video. The technique had been in use for decades by this point, but the way Bakshi does it is strange, though he had reasons for it.

Basically, Bakshi took live action footage from various war movies previous (I've seen Alexander Nevsky cited most, but also Zulu and El Cid, others) and in his rotoscoping seems to have just painted the vague shapes and outlines of characters and objects, as opposed to actually tracing details, as was the usual use.

You end up with stuff like this, where we have blobs moving around on the screen, but at times it's hard to even tell what you're supposed to be looking at.

Wizards now has at least four distinct art styles. The clash, the contrast. This time, not intentional.

Bakshi was deep into production on the film, but he was running out of money. He had a meeting with Fox executives. George Lucas was also in attendance, making Star Wars at the time as previously mentioned. Bakshi and Lucas both asked for fifty thousand dollars. Fox said no to both. Lucas still made Star Wars. Bakshi used a photocopier to copy film from old movies and then painted over it. A lot cheaper than hand animating the final battle.

Here's Bakshi from the audio commentary: "I thought that if we dropped all the detail, it would look very artistic, and very beautiful, and I felt, why bother animating all of this? I'm looking for a way to get realism into my film and get real emotion."

Did it work? Does it add realism? Does seeing blocks of color vaguely shaped like riders on horseback bring real emotion to the film? Of course it doesn't. It was a cheap way to finish the movie, like the still-frames with narration. I don't fault Bakshi for it, I applaud that he went out and found a way. Like Lucas, Bakshi still made his film. But it clashes. It kind of takes away from the charm of the cartoony bits.

The final battle, where the rotoscoping is most heavily featured, does luckily feature hand-drawn parts as well. And it's pretty brutal. It goes on for minutes, elves and mutants fighting, tearing each other apart.

I have to show you at least one sequence.

The elf then picks up the cyclops's gun and blows away another demon.

Both sides suffer heavy casualties, and we see it. Boy do we see it.

There are dozens of quick shots of action like this. Both sides brutally hacking or shooting away at each other. There are almost no backgrounds, it's character animation in front of rotoscoped blobs, or even raw footage of a storm, or pulsing lights.

Shortly after this brutal death of a character that looks like he belongs in a kid's show, the rotoscoping really takes off. Footage of tanks and airplanes come to dominate the battle, and wait. Is that a shot of elves getting blown away on top of real tank footage?

Ah, yes. Yes it is. I'm trying to give Bakshi and the film the benefit of the doubt here. I'm trying to get into the movie, to feel the I believe intended feelings. That is, sadness at the elves getting blown away, horror at the violence and war in general. A hope that the good guys can prevail and beat this sick twisted reincarnation of the Nazi regime. But I keep getting sucked out of it for a second by weird rotoscoping and now seeing live-action footage.

I've skipped so much of the exact whats and whys here, I'm not writing a summary after all, so I don't know if it's worth getting into detail about how the showdown between the two brother wizards goes. There is an element here that's worth preserving for anyone that wants to watch the film themselves, so I don't want to take that away from you. Leave a comment or otherwise message me if you wanna know specifically what I'm talking about, and will never watch the movie yourself.

But suffice it to say, good triumphs over evil. Blackwolf is killed, his projector of propaganda is destroyed. To quote the film "Hitler was dead again." 

The forces of darkness fade away.

 

And then you're left pondering. Hoping that that's true. Wishing that it were as simple as a good Wizard defeating a bad Wizard.

As a film, Wizards is interesting. It's a curiosity. It's not amazing as a film. If you're a fan of animation history it is interesting enough to watch. It's better as a film than Fritz the Cat, IMO. But if you're just a casual movie-goer, should you see Wizards? You don't need to.

But I do keep thinking about it. No one was clamoring for my thoughts, no one is demanding I write this. Nothing compels me, except that I keep thinking about the movie. And so, despite just saying that the movie ultimately isn't that great and you probably don't need to see it... I can't help but think maybe it's better than I seem to want to give it credit for. It is flawed, it is janky, it is a fever dream but not in the best ways. Maybe it's more interesting because of all that.

Whatever the case, it is, occasionally, very nice to look at, and in a way you just don't see in feature films anymore, so that has to be worth something too.

The Endless Stairs

I huddle in a corner, back against the hard, cold cement walls, exhausted from another day of climbing the stairs. There are others all around, fellow climbers, covering this small landing between sets of stairs, those closest to me butting up against my legs which I hold close to my chest. I do not know what floor we're on, if such a concept even exists here.

It's hard to remember what life was like before this. Conceptually I remember life. I remember driving a car. I remember home. I remember working in an office, and a retail store before that, and going to school before that. I remember that those things must have happened. But those things don't exist here.

There is up. There is down. There are places like this, landings between flights, places where one, if they desire to sit and rest, can sit on a smooth floor instead of the edge of a step. There are metal railings along the edge of the stairs and the landing. There is a gap, large enough for someone to leap to their death, an event I've not seen, but have heard others speak of. I've stuck my head into the gap and looked down, down from whence I came. I could see nothing but stairs until I couldn't see anything at all. I looked up, and it was the same.

I awaken. My body is stiff. I must have drifted off. I was not assaulted in my sleep. I was not hauled away and my corner taken. I was not shoved down a flight of stairs. I was not beaten and left to bleed. Not this night. Not most nights, anymore. Once things were worse, people more desperate for answers, people less accepting that this was their reality. Down on the lower floors people are more savage. I started climbing in large part to try to escape the violence. Now I climb because that's what we all must do.

What is night? Conceptually, I know. When the Earth is facing away from the Sun, the surroundings darken. Most man and beast grow tired, sleep. The Earth continues to rotate, we face the Sun again, and light awakens man and beast once again.

But here there are no windows. There is no sun. I don't even know if there is an Earth. There is light, everywhere there is light. I sleep when I can't walk anymore. Most of us seem to lay down for sleep and arise to continue walking at roughly the same time. It's consistent enough that I wonder how much of it is just the suggestion of stopping that makes everyone else want to stop too. That can't be it, not entirely, since some people stop for rests during the "day" and the rest of us keep walking onward.

Now I'm awake, and though my body is sore, my mind is slow, and it hurts to move, I still get up. Most of the people around me stir, though many stay where they are. Whether they're just slow to get up or if they've given up entirely, I couldn't say. I'm not going to wait around to find out. The longer I wait here, the less time I have to climb.

So I climb.

The first step of the day feels like most. Lift my foot, place it on the step, push, continue lifting the other foot and place it on the next step, and push. Up and up I climb. Soon I reach the next landing. There are people here too, of course. I have to step over one person, but most people are awakening too, and even if they haven't begun their climb they're at least getting up and out of the way.

I keep walking. Keep taking steps. It's slow going at first, but soon I get into a rhythm. Step, step, step. Up the stairs. The longer I go the more people join me. Some are familiar faces. We've walked together before. But everyone has their own pace, people come and go. Most of these people are not familiar to me.

We don't talk. People talk, sometimes. I've heard stories. Some people talk about their life before, things they accomplished, dreams they once had. Some people talk about what's at the top. Some people doubt there is a top. Some people talk about others they've met. There are stories told. Some have religious fervor. I've heard about God and Christ and Allah and others. I find it hard to really grasp these concepts anymore. I think I once knew about these things. But here, on the stairs, on the climb, it's hard to let these ideas into my mind. They don't seem... real. I don't remember if I ever thought they were real, but here, they aren't.

Some people talk of hell. Of eternal punishment. This idea... something about this is easier to understand. I don't think I am -- or was -- a bad person. Maybe I was. Maybe I am a sinner. Maybe God is punishing me. My body aches. Sleep is never all that restful. Maybe the monotony, the pain, is punishment. Yet still I walk, still I climb the stairs.

I understand what they mean when they say we're in hell. But I don't believe it. If I thought this was hell, why do I still climb? Why even try?

People give up. Oh yes, they give up. I reach another landing and look at the bodies here. There's an old man sitting in the corner. He's got wispy white hair and an unkempt beard to match. He looks me in the eyes and I can see in him the same despair that I feel in my heart. He's had enough. He hurts. He's tired. He's an old man, he's frail. I feel how he feels, but I'm not frail. So I leave him, I keep moving, I climb another set of stairs.

I don't remember if a day has passed or not. Things bleed together. When did I last sleep? I keep walking, keep climbing, step after step.

There are people who talk of other things. Not of the religions of the place before. There are new thoughts, new ideas, a new spirituality. I hesitate to call it a new religion, as I don't think any of these beliefs are all that formal. There is no Pope of the staircase. But there are those who preach of what the top is. A paradise. Rest, true rest. Not sleeping on cement floors or stairs. Being allowed to stop, and not feeling guilty about it. It's a nice idea, but I don't really buy into it. I climb because... because I have to. If there is a paradise, great. But I don't think there is. I'm not even sure there is a top.

I reach the next landing and there is a woman here I recognize. We walked together, climbed together for a while, long ago. I had a problem. I had to stop, wait to heal, which took some time. She continued on without me. Seeing her now reminds me how I felt then, when she left. She had to keep moving, I had to stop. I couldn't hate her, I couldn't blame her. I knew I would have done the same. But it still hurt.

Seeing her again, after so long, made my heart jump, just a little. This surprised me. We climbed together, yes. We held each other when we slept. We were stronger together, back when we needed strength to resist others. But she left me behind. I thought I'd let her go. I think about just continuing on, ignoring her. I must continue climbing, after all.

I'm shoved out of the way by someone coming up from behind. A rusher. He doesn't say anything, he just runs on up the stairs. I don't understand these types. He won't get anywhere faster. He won't get anywhere at all. He's just going to tire himself out, or worse injure himself. He is just a fool.

But in the slight commotion, she looks up. She sees me. Our eyes meet. I see shame in her eyes. It's too late to flee, too late to keep climbing. And so I step over to her, I sit down. I put my arm around her.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. I pull her close and she rests her head on my shoulder. It feels good to feel someone next to me again, not just a body shoved up against me in a pile as we all sleep, but a real human actually leaning on me.

"It's alright," I whisper back. "You needed to keep climbing. We all do."

"I don't know if I can anymore."

It hurts to hear her say that. The thought has crossed my mind, sure, but I always keep climbing. I have to. I can't become one of those people who sit and let the day waste. One must continue climbing. That's the way of things.

In fact, that thought tugs at my mind as we sit. It's only been a minute or two, but I start to get restless. I feel it, I feel the need to keep moving.

I turn and look at her. She looks at me. I see that same agony in her eyes. I know I feel it too, but I can't give into it. Not yet.

"I have to keep moving. You should come with me."

Tears well up in her eyes, and a few slip out and roll down her cheek. She isn't coming. She can't. I don't know why. I don't know if she doesn't feel the need anymore, or if she denies it. Maybe she's decided that this is hell and she won't participate anymore. I'll never know why if she doesn't tell me.

I close my eyes and touch my forehead to hers. She cries silently. I kiss her forehead and then I rise. She holds my hand, tries to keep me there. She doesn't want to let me go.

One last time I invite her to come, but she just closes her eyes and lets go of my hand.

So I continue to climb.

I hope she can find peace.

I hope I can find peace. 

Is anything waiting for us at the top of the stairs? Is there even a top of the stairs? Conceptually, according to the rules of reality, there has to be. But I don't know if this is reality anymore or not. Others debate this. I stopped trying to philosophize a long time ago. This is where I am. The stairs. There was a bottom. There might be a top, there might not. Either way... I have to keep going.

I climb.

Eventually I tire, but I push myself a little further on. People around me start to try to find spaces to lay down and sleep. Like most nights (or whatever it is) there are some fights over locations. Usually they don't get too violent, not anymore. This far up even a shout and a shove is rare.

I keep moving though. I want to make up for the lost time of sitting with my old friend. It wasn't long, but I need to keep moving. A part of me wonders if I fight through the tiredness if I'd eventually catch a second wind. Something about this feels like a bad idea, but regardless I keep moving.

I want to stop, I want to rest. But the greater need propels me. Making up for lost time is a convenient lie to tell myself, but it isn't the real reason I keep moving, is it? Seeing her again, seeing how she stopped climbing scared me.

I move faster. A part of me remembers how I silently ridiculed the man who shoved me. The thought of rushing up the stairs was silly then, but now I do it. Now I'm compelled, not the normal compelling of life in the endless stairs, but by my own fears. I don't want to stop. Or worse, maybe I wish I did want to stop.

Maybe we could have rested. So now, I cannot rest. 

I step over people. I leap over people. I stumble into people and they curse at me and tell me to stop moving. "It's time to sleep," the voices echo behind me.

But I don't. I keep moving.

I reach a landing that's empty. That's rare enough to give me pause. I'm breathing heavy, so I stop to catch my breath. I look down. There is one person at the bottom of these steps, laying across them, I leapt over them to get up here. There are people on that landing, laying down, sleeping. Looking up, there are no people on these stairs.

I start to climb again, slowly this time. One step at a time. My breath has mostly returned to normal, but still my body is tired from climbing all day, all week, all... year? How long have I been here?

The next landing is also empty. I almost panic. I almost scream. I haven't seen two empty landings in a row, ever. Seeing a landing with less than three people on it is rare enough that seeing two in a row would create a panic.

This is... unprecedented.

Mind reeling, I grasp the railing and look down. The stairs wind down, ever down, a squared off spiral deep into nothingness. I slowly turn my head to look up. The same endless spiral... or is it? Is there an end in the black up there? 

Do I see the hint of an ending up there? Is my mind playing tricks on me, or does the endless black feel a little less endless than usual?

My first thought is of her, actually. I want to go find her. Sure, I'd lose a day's progress going all the way back to her, and then back up to here. But if there's an end? If she's but days away from it, I have to go get her, right?

Maybe I should confirm that there is an end first though. If there is a top, if those who preach of paradise at the top of the stairs are correct, then spending a few days going up to confirm is better, right? Then I can come back and look for her, take her to the top knowing what's to come.

So I head back to the stairs. I climb another set, reach another empty landing. I'm tired. I'm so tired. I force myself up the next set of stairs.

I stop. I lay down in the middle of the landing, I stretch myself out, taking up more space than I think I ever have. A laugh escapes my lips, but I stiffle it. I don't want others to hear me and then come up and see what someone could be laughing about, and then beat me for the audacity of taking up a whole landing. I don't think anyone this far up would be so violent, but it's not a risk worth taking.

Soon I find myself curled up into a ball in a corner anyway. It's comfortable, or as comfortable as it's even been, and better now to not have a throng of bodies all around.

My eyelids are heavy, my mind begins to slow. Sleep has nearly overtaken me. I hope to awake early, get a head start on the climb. 

I awake. I hear sounds below. I get up and stretch as quickly as I can, and then... I begin again. I must climb the stairs. I climb.

Step after step 

after step 

after step

after step

after step

after step

after step

after

Kindle - and some issues I have with it.

What feels like ages ago (probably was over ten years), I bought myself a Kindle. I believe it was the third generation Paperwhite, and it was a dream, a revelation. I'd had some limited experience with e-books before, mostly via browsing old public domain books on Project Gutenberg (which, side note, is a great resource. I first read a number of classics due to Gutenberg, such as Dorian Gray and Walden).

But having a device dedicated to ebooks, with e-ink, with a shop where I could buy modern books,  not just public domain classics, often for significantly less than a retail paper book, and have it instantly downloaded. It was awesome. 

 

I'm also a fan of it keeping track of what I've read, and when, and Kindle's "Reading Insights" does this. I can set a goal of how many books I want to read in a given year, and it'll keep track of that for me. I can quickly scroll through and see what books I've read for any given year (since the feature was introduced, at least). On a similar note, it also tracks how many days and weeks in a row I've read. This may be a silly little thing, but it ends up being good motivation to keep up on my reading, especially if I'm otherwise in a bit of a slump. Maybe I'm reading something that's a bit slow, or maybe life has gotten me down. But I've been reading for 237 weeks in a row, and 78 days in a row, so I better keep these numbers up. If life gets in the way and I miss a day (which those real numbers attest, does happen), that's okay. I can build up a new streak. But it's nice to have these tracking features.

In the time since I've actually mostly stopped using the physical Kindle device itself, though it was a worthy companion for many years. No real complaints about the device. I'd gathered quite a collection of books in my Kindle Library, but it became somewhat cumbersome to bring the actual Kindle device along with me whenever I guessed that I might have time to read something. It was good for reading at home. It was good if I knew I was going to be in a specific place for an extended period of time and I was already going to have some sort of bag to put it back into.

But for day to day reading, reading when waiting in line at the grocery store, waiting for a doctor's visit or whatever, it just became easier to read on my phone. And then soon using the Kindle app on my phone became my primary method for reading. No cool e-ink display, sadly, but every other benefit of the Kindle pretty much still existed when using the Kindle app. Same large library of books, but now on the device I was already going to be carrying around with me, already keeping charged, and was smaller than the actual Kindle device anyway. (There is something to be said for having a dedicated device for a thing, for dedicating time to the activity without distractions, but for this activity, this device, the convenience of almost always having a book in my pocket was well worth the minimal issue that presents to me. Though sometimes I do hate getting a text while I'm reading, so if I don't respond to you right away, know that I may actually not be on Earth in 202X, but could be on Roshar or in the future or the past.)

All of this is a preamble, really. But this is where the issues really start to come up, however, but allow me to continue setting the stage just a little bit more. 

 

I previously shouted out Project Gutenberg, and they are a great resource. However, anyone who has used them knows that they provide the texts they do in a slightly less than ideal format for reading, especially as ebooks. That is, they provide the text of the books, without any formatting into an ebook. This is still a public good, their archival efforts are laudable and I absolutely appreciate what they do. There just is a difference between raw text and a proper formatted ebook. And occasionally, OCR mis-reads or other errors can crop into these text.

There is another resource, however, a wonderful site called Standard Ebooks. They take public domain texts, like the ones on Gutenberg, but then proofread, format, and adjust them into a professional-grade modern ebook. They are absolutely wonderful. They, like Gutenberg, are not for profit. They are volunteer led and all the labor involved is done by volunteers. You don't have to pay for these books, and that is 100% a public good.

So, lets say you want to read a classic Golden Age of Detective Fiction novel, so you think why not start at the start of said age? Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the first of the Poirot novels (you may know Poirot from all the famous books he's the central detective character in, or the film adaptations of those, such as Murder on the Orient Express). Hop on over there and you can download it and read it for free! What a wonderful thing!

Ah, look, they've got it in Kindle format. AZW3, Amazon's proprietary ebook format. Well, that raises some questions of course, like why does an ebook need a proprietary format, but whatever. You can see that there are other formats, like the widely considered standard format of epub, but I have a Kindle. I should use the Kindle file type, yeah? Now, how does one get this AZW3 that one just downloaded onto one's Kindle? The file is here on my computer. The app is on my phone. If I was using the Kindle device itself I know I can plug it in and copy the file over and it'll be stored locally, but if I want to read the same book perhaps both on the device AND on my phone, that doesn't work. It's local only, not saved to the Kindle Library. Oh okay, I know, I'll just go to the Standard Ebooks site on my phone and download the ebook again, then I should be able to open the file like any other file opens with any other app that uses a specific file type on my phone (ie. you download a picture, you tap the picture, it opens in your picture viewing app).

Wait, what's this? I tapped on the file, but I can't open it? My phone suggests searching in it's app store to find an app that can open AZW3 files? That's weird. I have the Kindle app. It should open Kindle formatted files, yeah?

So let me see. Well, there is another way to add files to your Kindle library. Each Kindle is assigned it's own email address, and in your amazon settings you can whitelist email addresses that are allowed to email files to said address, thus sending the attached files to your Kindle library. I've used this a number of times, to add books purchased through Humble Bundle or from that one Brandon Sanderson kickstarter. So let me just email this Amazon Proprietary Kindle Ebook Format file to my Amazon Kindle Library.

Aaaaand, nope. Can't do that. Not allowed. A return email reads, in part:
"Dear Customer,

A document, sent at (time and date), could not be delivered.

Send to Kindle can convert and deliver the following types of documents:

• EPUB (.epub)
• Adobe PDF (.pdf)
• Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
• Rich Text Format (.rtf)
• HTML (.htm, .html)
• Text (.txt) documents
• Compressed documents (.zip, .xzip)
• JPEG (.jpg), GIF (.gif), Bitmap (.bmp), and PNG (.png) images.

If the format of the document that failed is supported (listed above), please ensure the document is not password protected or encrypted, and try sending it again."

 

So, I can draw a picture in Microsoft Paint, save it as a .bmp file, and email THAT to my Kindle library. But I can't email a KINDLE FILE to my KINDLE LIBRARY.

 

But Bryce, you say. Look again at Standard Ebooks! There are other file formats available! Including EPUB, which is on the above list! 

 

Yes indeed, it is. Amazon says that Kindle supports EPUB files, which if you don't know is kind of the general standard format for ebooks, a file format which Amazon specifically did not support on Kindles for a long time. While most every other ebook reader and ebook maker was supporting the standard, epub, Amazon had to go and specifically not support it, because then you could buy an ebook somewhere else and read it on your Kindle, thus not buying it on Kindle, which means you're giving less money to Amazon. So no no no, not allowed. They did allow Mobi files, which is an older and less robust format, but have since dropped support for mobi files since it's a pretty outdated standard.

 

So, sure. I could download the epub version of whatever book, and then email it to myself. BUT there is a reason that I might not want that. And that's because, in fact, Kindles still do not actually display the epub files that you have sent it. When you email an epub file to your Kindle library, Amazon grabs that file, and does an automatic conversion into a Kindle supported file-type. You may think "okay so what's the problem then?" Indeed, this may be where I lose you. But automatic conversions of something that is highly dependent on formatting doesn't always turn out so great. Especially when it's an epub, a still supported but older format, into the black box of whatever Amazon does to it behind the scenes.

And especially when I already have a perfectly fine AZW3 version of that file available! Again, just to clarify, AZW3 is the latest version of Amazon's own "Kindle File Format." It was created by Amazon for their Kindles. But I cannot send a Kindle File Format file to my Kindle.

In accepting the Epub email solution, I am relying on Amazon's automatic conversion to not mangle the format of the text, formatting which is the whole point of the ebook (as opposed to raw text... think of it like printing out the text of a book on stacks and stacks of unbound printer paper VS a book that has text on both sides of a page and is bound in a conveniently portable format). It should be largely passable, but since ebooks are actually slightly more complicated than just text, there is space for the conversion to mess some things up, perhaps even remove any images or special formatting that the book has.

I should note that there are cases where the conversion is perfectly fine. Indeed, AZW3 seems to mostly be an epub but with that proprietary Amazon branding slapped over top of it. However, there are some technical differences, and sometimes there are cases where some technical details in the epub are not properly read by Amazon's conversion, and can thus mangle the epub and give you a messed up result.

There is, actually, a workaround! But it comes with it's own drawback, which we shall get to later.

Indeed, it may seem simple and silly, but you can take that AZW3 file which you downloaded on your phone, copy it, move it into the "Kindle" folder on your phone's internal hard drive, open the Kindle app, and the book will appear! How easy could that be?! Bryce, are you an idiot for not just doing that in the first place? Ah, dear reader, were it that simple. 

This method does, indeed, work, in that you can open the file and read it on the Kindle, which does fulfill the basic premise of reading an ebook. In that aspect, I do not complain.

BUT there is a downside. And that downside is that the Kindle app doesn't actually believe that these are books! For some unholy reason that only the twisted minds deep inside Amazon could ever possibly comprehend, the Kindle app does not count these books as books that you have read. You can read the entire text and get to the end, but the Kindle app will never count it as "read". The Mysterious Affair at Style is stuck eternally at 98% on my Kindle despite having reached the final page of the book, and the book tracking feature does not consider it a finished book. So that's pretty annoying too. I've already beat my reading goal for the year, and this is all just silly superfluous stuff anyway. The book reads fine, all the usual reading parts are still readable, the formatting is intact.

I just don't understand why amazon would make it more difficult to get the files you want onto your Kindle, or why they don't recognize a book as a book, even in their own proprietary format. Why must I choose which downside I want to deal with in order to read a classic book? Or a book I purchased from another location? Is it only about being just annoying enough to drive people to only ever purchase from themselves? Is it that petty? Do they not already have something like 80% of the e-reader market??

It's baffling and they do not explain their reasoning anywhere. 

For most people these may be minor complaints. I assume most people won't care or may not even notice if the automatic conversion changes the formatting somewhat, as long as the text is still there and readable. I assume most people will be relatively okay with just having to remember to add +1 to the book number that Kindle tells them. Then again, there are quite a few good books available from Standard Ebooks. Once could easily read a large number of them per year, and then the book tracking and reading goals features become less and less relevant and useful for each book you read that way.

A number of years ago decided I wanted to read more classics, to expand my literary horizons, to broaden my knowledge of literature. And I have done that, and I intend to continue doing that, in addition to reading the bunch of fantasy and sci-fi books I tend to read. I have a number of other books from Standard Ebooks that I want to read, but these issues with Kindle are annoying. I may have to resort to re-downloading them all in epub and emailing them to my Kindle library and just accepting the potential format problems, rather than deal with the not-potential problem of not tracking the books.

In doing the research I have done to ensure I didn't tell you any lies, I have actually found another solution to the epub email conversion problem. There is a site, https://kindle-epub-fix.netlify.app/ that will check and convert your epubs into Amazon-acceptable epubs, so that you can email them to your Kindle library without fear of mangling the formatting. This is great, and I'm glad someone with more technical know-how than me has created this solution. However, it's still ridiculous that Amazon can't just fix this themselves. I shouldn't HAVE to go to a third-party website and add this extra step to my process in order to get a book onto my Kindle app where the Kindle features actually work and the formatting is correct. I am very glad this exists, and I will be using it going forward. I shouldn't have to though, Amazon, you should automatically do what this does.

I'd be remiss to not mention that there is another issue with Kindle, and that's the big issue with supporting Amazon financially in general, and all the moral quandaries that that comes with. I don't really want to get into that here though, but I did want to mention that, yeah I know. I understand. I'm not covering that here.

This is, clearly, not the biggest problem facing the world today. It's not even the biggest problem I've faced since I started writing this post. But it's annoying, and I needed to vent about it. Thank you for reading my rant.

Hey, a blog! aka the Return of Me

Yeah, here I am, posting on my BLAG again.

Life has been kind of wild the last few years, for everyone what with that global pandemic and everything. But also, personally, golly jeez things have been rough.

Yet I persist. Here I am!

I like writing. I haven't done enough external writing lately, or like... for a long time. Facebook used to be my main choice for shouting into the void, at least in little snippets, but ever since they unceremoniously locked my account and refused to give it back to me despite multiple proofs that I was indeed the account holder, I haven't even had those brief intermittent shouts. And by external writing, I mean writing that is meant to go out, and in relatively short order. Sure, I've written notes on things. I've brainstormed ideas. I've worked on things here and there. I've even journaled, some. But all of that remains inside, most of it is just for me. Theoretically some day some of those may turn into novels or screenplays or whatevers that get released. But most of it, no.

So I just wanted to express myself somehow again. Previously this spot has been mostly a place for me to share my views on various media. I've talked about movies mostly, but some music, at least one book, and even the In-Flight Entertainment version of Tetris. This sort of thing, critiques and comments on media I consume, may indeed continue.

BUT it shant be all. Oh no, I have more in mind for this place. I am going to create. Fiction, non-fiction. Musings. Stories. I dunno, it could be all of that or none of that. Or, well, it will be at least one of those things, considering that as I write this I have a draft of a fiction short story already written. I even edited it some. I have misgivings about posting it in it's current state. I worry that people will assume it is auto-biographical in some sense, particularly since it's written in a first-person present tense POV (though the identity of the narrator, and even their gender, are not really revealed in any real way). But eh, whatever. I shall let the people read into it what they shall, and if they make assumptions, that's their right as a person. Just as I, as the author, have the right to not clarify my intent if I don't want to.

I also think there's more to this idea, to the concept of the short story, that could be explored, and I don't know if I've really explored it in the amount of depth that I want to in just what I've written there. So I will revisit. I will see if I should expand it. Maybe I'll write another short in the same "universe" and see where that takes me. Anyway... if you somehow see this post before that one is published, I won't keep you waiting long. I promise! 

Edit to add: It's here! I posted that short story I was mentioning!

That's another thing I want to get out of this. I want an external motivation, I want something to keep me... honest is the wrong word but it's the first that comes to mind. I need a deadline. I need a specific goal. If I am un-goaled, if I have no specific target to aim for, I tend to meander. I tend not to actually finish things. Sometimes I don't even start the things that I want to start. In dedicating myself to writing posts here, I hope that I can force myself to actually focus and work on something. To that end, my goal is post once a week, perhaps once a month if things get crazy and I'm busy. I won't post boring nothings just to say "well I hit my goal." They have to be real posts. Either a short story, an excerpt of another story, a critique, something. I need a goal to keep me moving. So my goal is to write, to post here, and see whatever comes of it.

Anyway, here I am rambling again. That seems to be my way, at times. I'll stop here, for now. Maybe I'll re-read that short story and decide if it needs to be explored more in that story, in another story, or whatever. 

But yeah, more is coming. I'm back, baybee!