tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20182652470362378612024-03-26T13:55:12.549-07:00DIY & dragonsAnnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.comBlogger285125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-92154625892670566892024-03-13T13:12:00.000-07:002024-03-13T13:12:03.890-07:00My 2023 in Review<div style="text-align: left;">This is my third annual Year in Review post, so I think I can officially consider it a tradition! Here are my favorite things from 2023.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Best Things I Read</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LDG1ltEJSmcjJDeYhSDAYsSsi6lLzxgJUuDxrJxKec29tpb2nMwE9G-vzfT0GXSOCnuW9AseOrEzm1X4ZbLmBiLQqZ-GGb682F_k_m3RJ3lfSQYi4BIRGOP6C8d-7tpfgfrblLwK-4-vG7exXvWLJC75X8kYvNXTxO8QuacH7dcapDseSuNm-lXj/s2560/Tomorrow%20and%20Tomorrow%20and%20Tomorrow%20Zevin.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1687" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LDG1ltEJSmcjJDeYhSDAYsSsi6lLzxgJUuDxrJxKec29tpb2nMwE9G-vzfT0GXSOCnuW9AseOrEzm1X4ZbLmBiLQqZ-GGb682F_k_m3RJ3lfSQYi4BIRGOP6C8d-7tpfgfrblLwK-4-vG7exXvWLJC75X8kYvNXTxO8QuacH7dcapDseSuNm-lXj/w264-h400/Tomorrow%20and%20Tomorrow%20and%20Tomorrow%20Zevin.jpg" width="264" /></a></div> <br /></div><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Fiction - Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow</span></b><br /><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">My favorite novel last year was <b><a href="https://lunarflaneur.blogspot.com/2023/04/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow.html" target="_blank">Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow</a></b> by Gabrielle Zevin, a work of literary fiction about two childhood friends who grow up to become video game designers together. The pair are very close friends as kids, then have a falling out and lose contact. They reconnect in college and begin making video games, first as class projects, later starting their own company and growing it into a major studio. They grow apart, then have another falling out. And then, tentatively, they begin to reconnect again. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Parts of this book are very sad. The characters struggle with poor health and damaging romantic relationships, even as they find artistic and commercial success. The saddest part though, I think, is simply the very real pain of growing apart from someone you care about, or having a fight that means you don't talk to one another for years. Zevin did her homework on the video games too. The fictional games she describes sound realistic, and would be appropriate to each era. And impressively, the structure of each section of the book mirrors the game the friends are working on at the time. It was inspiring and encouraging to read.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My runners up this year are Corienne Hoex's <b><a href="https://lunarflaneur.blogspot.com/2023/01/gentlemen-callers.html" target="_blank">Gentlemen Callers</a></b>, which is like <i>Invisible Cities</i>, but for sex, literary and playful and phantasmic; and <b><a href="https://lunarflaneur.blogspot.com/2023/05/important-artifacts-and-personal.html" target="_blank">Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris</a></b> by Leanne Shapton, which tells the story of a couple getting together and then breaking up entirely through objects, presented in the style of an auction catalog with photos and descriptive captions. Shapton accomplishes what every museum curator and dungeon designer hopes to, creating a narrative entirely through <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcLQMJkhhT5nbGn5MyNY354bxM-xKY9JBIFncm68bMHfOYQB8t26FzSecbIqNfz3eZGu8Gaq2wQIcrsO5RVxsdzXI1MqHHOALyGBb_EQvFxywKh2KIa3qZ9M1VoHIVoe3V9HI7zRaFq0ZkQ3pCLHoagG-wMaG8rWvYyWqLxwrF8Wl_DRdbiD3siHtl/s1500/Islands%20of%20Abandonment%20Flyn.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="993" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcLQMJkhhT5nbGn5MyNY354bxM-xKY9JBIFncm68bMHfOYQB8t26FzSecbIqNfz3eZGu8Gaq2wQIcrsO5RVxsdzXI1MqHHOALyGBb_EQvFxywKh2KIa3qZ9M1VoHIVoe3V9HI7zRaFq0ZkQ3pCLHoagG-wMaG8rWvYyWqLxwrF8Wl_DRdbiD3siHtl/w265-h400/Islands%20of%20Abandonment%20Flyn.jpg" width="265" /></a></div> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="color: #0b5394;">Nonfiction - Islands of Abandonment </b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">My favorite nonfiction book in 2023 was <b><a href="https://lunarflaneur.blogspot.com/2023/11/islands-of-abandonment.html" target="_blank">Islands of Abandonment</a> </b>by journalist Cal Flyn. Flyn visits and writes about places that humans no longer use, and looks at how the ecosystem has regrown and recovered there. In a few cases, the abandonment is for political or economic reasons, but mostly it's because of pollution or poison - these are places we've made so toxic that we can no longer work or live there. A recurring theme is that the simple fact of human occupation is worse for the local ecosystem than anything else we can do to it - worse even than tons of unexploded ordinance, buried neurotoxins, or radiation. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The ecosystems that grow back represent a kind of <i>feral nature</i>, different from what was there before, or in any of the few remaining places we've never touched. Flyn shows places that were abandoned for many possible reasons, and that have recovered in different ways. If the future involves fewer people, or even just more efficient land-use, there will probably be more abandonment, and Flyn helps us imagine what that might look like. This is probably the most <i><b>D&D</b>-able</i> book I read all year.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">My runners up are <b><a href="https://lunarflaneur.blogspot.com/2023/02/ace.html" target="_blank">Ace</a></b> by Angela Chen, which offers a look at asexual identity, its complexities, and what it illuminates about other sexualities that we might otherwise not see; and Adam Nicolson's <b><a href="https://lunarflaneur.blogspot.com/2023/06/life-between-tides.html" target="_blank">Life Between the Tides</a></b>. Nicolson builds his own tidal pools and reports on the ecosystems in miniature that spring up inside, talks about the biology of some of the most common tidal species, and gives a history of the Irish coastal region where he's working. It felt like a unique and very holistic view of both the niche and the system that contains it.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixyaw9eQBLxxLA4vaPbcYEE2e1tjcZliOolhjbRcZ6shgX-SCFIZltLVH7cR9BlPWByVqLMtkQu-O_NG4edTTyEMDLIZOlDmOKx5sUm5MycDu4q6suF8CSfOQZ-1Ub2ypH-FWkOZMs3Tc_sFW7uYKfEEpb3aaXVaVN_WyZ8zyUPQRZV7lK_nCx_X2S/s2153/Supergirl%20Woman%20of%20Tomorrow%20King%20Evely.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2153" data-original-width="1400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixyaw9eQBLxxLA4vaPbcYEE2e1tjcZliOolhjbRcZ6shgX-SCFIZltLVH7cR9BlPWByVqLMtkQu-O_NG4edTTyEMDLIZOlDmOKx5sUm5MycDu4q6suF8CSfOQZ-1Ub2ypH-FWkOZMs3Tc_sFW7uYKfEEpb3aaXVaVN_WyZ8zyUPQRZV7lK_nCx_X2S/w260-h400/Supergirl%20Woman%20of%20Tomorrow%20King%20Evely.jpg" width="260" /></a></div> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB3NgJg2pcZi52k76qmNFvEpj7JLqbQj-BywheC214Nav4kgRWxsx8xWlXjVgP9MbpIsVVYLItZcPlHbzo9hnin4VO8eq28ynzrWq3eLAM5-wnK3KK08A_DQhsG2w7UUJ61LgTeca6L4e0FrclQ41Jz3cp8nZgONbzxWeVll0eYbkunXV9nZhoxLN7/s2560/Ducks%20Beaton.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="2000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB3NgJg2pcZi52k76qmNFvEpj7JLqbQj-BywheC214Nav4kgRWxsx8xWlXjVgP9MbpIsVVYLItZcPlHbzo9hnin4VO8eq28ynzrWq3eLAM5-wnK3KK08A_DQhsG2w7UUJ61LgTeca6L4e0FrclQ41Jz3cp8nZgONbzxWeVll0eYbkunXV9nZhoxLN7/w313-h400/Ducks%20Beaton.jpg" width="313" /></a></div> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="color: #0b5394;">Comics - Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and Ducks (tie)<br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My favorite graphic novel this year collected the <b><a href="https://lunarflaneur.blogspot.com/2023/04/supergirl-woman-of-tomorrow.html" target="_blank">Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow</a></b> miniseries, written by Tom King and illustrated by Bilquis Evely. It seems like DC might be giving each of their heroes a chance at standalone superhero adventures out in space, and if so, I am fully in support of this project. A young Supergirl goes to a planet with a red sun so she can get drunk when she celebrates her 21st birthday, and ends up on a star-hopping adventure with a young farm girl, who narrates the series, in tow. This is science fantasy at its finest, real sword-and-planet stuff, and I liked the contrast between the physically-powerful but emotionally immature Supergirl, and the politically-empowered criminal she pursues.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My favorite graphic nonfiction was Kate Beaton's <b><a href="https://lunarflaneur.blogspot.com/2023/08/ducks.html" target="_blank">Ducks</a></b>. Beaton is best known for her whimsical <i>Hark! A Vagrant</i> comics, but her memoir of her two years working in the oil industry to pay off her student loans is a serious and mature work. Beaton's experiences with sexual harassment were harrowing and persistent; any counterbalance within the piece comes less from humor and more from the awe of nature and her briefer encounters with human kindness.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My runners up are the <b><a href="https://lunarflaneur.blogspot.com/2023/08/forest-hills-bootleg-society.html" target="_blank">Forest Hills Bootleg Society</a></b> in fiction, and <b><a href="https://lunarflaneur.blogspot.com/2023/03/flung-out-of-space.html" target="_blank">Flung Out of Space</a></b>, which is technically fiction but grounded in biography. In <b>Forest Hills</b>, Dave Baker and Nicole Goux give us a story about four girls at a Christian high school who try selling bootleg hentai movies to boys so they can buy cool jackets and hopefully the approval of their peers. You just know it can't end well. <b>Space</b> is about the author Patricia Highsmith, by Grace Ellis and illustrated by Hannah Templer, covering the period where Highsmith was working in comics, beginning to experience success from <i>Strangers on a Train</i>, trying to sell <i>Carol</i>, and struggling with her own lesbianism and the self-hatred from her internalized homophobia.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Best Things I Watched</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQWTFF05JYlmmz4pXUFG5opS3qNpYMa5wsoJqVghUG2vupQ6qzWL915d7JVc72A3ZUt2RrjY-u-4jrFSowrg5AfItrxQgowMeqo-YaU_xT8xZQhH1JeJgOZJ5ijDqiJ6dUYNHHEg89O_JDpn5bKEp6hcRDjrihzy2fIdhbG9e3Hkix3V1aD784jH2C/s3800/Kleo.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2280" data-original-width="3800" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQWTFF05JYlmmz4pXUFG5opS3qNpYMa5wsoJqVghUG2vupQ6qzWL915d7JVc72A3ZUt2RrjY-u-4jrFSowrg5AfItrxQgowMeqo-YaU_xT8xZQhH1JeJgOZJ5ijDqiJ6dUYNHHEg89O_JDpn5bKEp6hcRDjrihzy2fIdhbG9e3Hkix3V1aD784jH2C/w400-h240/Kleo.png" width="400" /></a></div> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Live-Action Television - Kleo</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">My favorite live-action show in 2023 was the German revenge thriller <b><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81216677" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Kleo</a></b>. I'm beginning to realize that I might have a soft spot for revenge stories. Show me a righteously angry person willing to suffer unlimited punishment for the chance to murder their way up the org chart until they can confront and kill the boss who wronged them, and I am on the edge of my seat the whole time. <a href="https://www.gawkerarchives.com/culture/against-revenge" target="_blank">In real life I'm a pacifist</a>, but on film, the more brutal and morally complex the revenger is, the more I'm enthralled. And Kleo, the character, is <i>enthralling</i>. She's an East German spy, who got burned and sent to prison. Then, when the Wall comes down, she's released into the rapidly reunifying German, with exactly one goal - to find out who in her own government framed and imprisoned her, and <i>make them pay.</i> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Kleo is delightfully unhinged, with tactics that made me wince even as I couldn't look away from them. It helps that the show itself is very aesthetically pleasing, with bright colors, excellent action sequences, and a soundtrack that mixes synths with 80s New Wave and actual Red Army patriotic music. And actress Jella Haase plays the role with the kind of manic enthusiasm we usually associate with Nicholas Hoult or Nick Cage - absolutely committed to a character who is sometimes terrifying, sometimes sympathetic, and always compelling.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">My live-action runners up is <a href="https://www.max.com/shows/irma-vep/10491659-4d1c-45af-8ab2-2774fbd3f48e" rel="nofollow" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">Irma Vep</a>, which is much more high-concept. It's a prestige miniseries about the making of a fictional prestige miniseries. The fictional miniseries is a remake of the 1915 French film serial <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Vampires" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Les Vampires</a></i>, and the real show, <b>Irma Vep</b>, is also a kind of remake or sequel and expansion of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irma_Vep" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">an earlier film with the same name</a> and same concept by the same director. But if you can sort of set all that real-life complexity aside, then <b>Irma Vep</b> is a behind-the-scenes look at how prestige tv gets made today, the way the artistic and creative ambitions of some of the people involved can use, be used by, or simply clash with the purely financial motivations of others, and a kind of surreal exploration of the lead actress - played by Alicia Vikander - getting back in touch with her identities as an artistic and romantic person after an ugly breakup and an unfulfilling starring role in a superhero blockbuster.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuYihLV5jnn2CH0p4sgPDyJhIl32GeV7p4AMl3gk72g1aVngK18JrE8QtbG6_GEVq_Pn0bEgblNgOBY1EJwxVg3BvEAWaD7G-txB8nBTIS9lPlIldMAkbUVCLy4J0jmjiEsYaL_LyEu8zVnoqDPp0VgoQDt1mhiFNPrlD-hgHPRkAPIuCO-5MlUnAo/s1920/Keep%20Your%20Hands%20Off%20Eizouken.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuYihLV5jnn2CH0p4sgPDyJhIl32GeV7p4AMl3gk72g1aVngK18JrE8QtbG6_GEVq_Pn0bEgblNgOBY1EJwxVg3BvEAWaD7G-txB8nBTIS9lPlIldMAkbUVCLy4J0jmjiEsYaL_LyEu8zVnoqDPp0VgoQDt1mhiFNPrlD-hgHPRkAPIuCO-5MlUnAo/w400-h225/Keep%20Your%20Hands%20Off%20Eizouken.png" width="400" /></a></div> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieMepPErYH42gD80xbDRE5ODnD_ptbONyg8PDPQXrC5cHeYjggSBn0RJZNsUm4Ya8o7FzFyK1Xw7kC-NRVJBVhalkil2XWYzBSJj49MNK2fIOJ__Qndx6-jiigGueQwrJG7eVKJG_0KW9xRsoK0Y5q1k6S5rgFLrakWAHsL04om0VtxeQwG1dBv9hC/s1080/Sailor%20Moon%20Mercury%20Mars.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="821" data-original-width="1080" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieMepPErYH42gD80xbDRE5ODnD_ptbONyg8PDPQXrC5cHeYjggSBn0RJZNsUm4Ya8o7FzFyK1Xw7kC-NRVJBVhalkil2XWYzBSJj49MNK2fIOJ__Qndx6-jiigGueQwrJG7eVKJG_0KW9xRsoK0Y5q1k6S5rgFLrakWAHsL04om0VtxeQwG1dBv9hC/w400-h304/Sailor%20Moon%20Mercury%20Mars.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="color: #0b5394;">Anime - Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! and Sailor Moon (tie)</b><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">I only started consistently watching anime again in the last few years, and I feel like I'm embarrassed by the riches laid out before me as I sample some of the treasures from the past that I missed when they first came out. <b><a href="https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GY0X54Q96/keep-your-hands-off-eizouken" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!</a></b> is at least from this century, and like <i>Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,</i> it's about people making something they love. In this case, we follow three high school girls who form their own tiny animation studio as a club. Across the brief series, we see them make and screen three short films, and learn about each step of the process along the way. The characters dream of feature films and international success, but the show is realistic about how much work they have to do, and what kind of results they can produce.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">What makes <b>Eizouken</b> really enjoyable is the absolutely irrepressible enthusiasm of the lead character, the bucket-hat-wearing Midori. She has an unstoppable imagination, looking at the real world and imagining it filled with robots and hovercrafts, and filling notebooks with drawings of her ideas. Midori imagines the kind of things I used to daydream about when I was a kid, and the way the show depicts them really captures the <i>feeling</i> of that childhood excitement; I've never seen it portrayed so accurately before, in any medium. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-91y7BJ8QA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The theme song is also a banger</a>, and sets the mood with its infectious energy.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Eizouken has a somewhat non-traditional animation style, especially for anime, and it makes me want to shout out a few other short series I watched that used unconventional visuals, all of which I really enjoyed, including <i><a href="https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/G6P50M4G6/kaiba" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Kayba</a></i>, <i><a href="https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GQWH0M1MK/mononoke" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mononoke</a></i>, and <i><a href="https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GJ0H7Q5X9/the-fire-hunter" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Fire Hunter</a></i>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My other favorite season 1 of the original <b><a href="https://www.hulu.com/series/sailor-moon-4e1c9108-f973-48fb-8824-a69280ca0438" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sailor Moon</a></b> anime, the one that first aired in America television in the 90s, where I watched it sporadically after school. It turns out that my clearest memories are from the plant alien arc at the start of season 2, but my heart belongs to the first and best season, which in my opinion did the best job sharing the spotlight across the ensemble, and doesn't include Sailor Moon's difficult daughter from the future. An ordinary, imperfect high school girl discovers that she is also the superhero Sailor Moon, the guardian of an ancient Moon Princess, and defender of Earth against aliens who want to steal the life energy human teenagers, usually Sailor Moon's friends from school. As the show progresses, she meets a team of other guardians, and they become real friends out of costume too.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Yes, this is absolutely a formulaic, monster-of-the-week action show, but within that framework, there's a great deal of creativity and love that went into the series. The combat sequences, for example, often use a series of splashy still-frame images in lieu of full animation. This was almost certainly a cost-saving measure, but it's also an artistic choice, one that amplifies key moments in each fight, and the splash images are always really good. The show also deploys exaggerated, <i>Looney Tunes</i> style expressions to convey strong emotion; a deep knowledge of the art form and its history really shows through in those moments.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My runners up are <b><a href="https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GYXJJJ806/princess-jellyfish" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Princess Jellyfish</a></b> (for slice of life) and <b><a href="https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/G79H2307W/mobile-suit-gundam-the-witch-from-mercury" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury</a></b> (for action).<i> </i><b>Princess Jellyfish</b> follows a group of nerdy girls who live together in an all-women apartment building. When the city starts threatening to tear it down to revitalize the district, the girls are forced to confront their shyness and social awkwardness to advocate for the building at government meetings. One of the girls also makes friend with a crossdresser <i>(someone who, I wonder, might be portrayed as a trans girl if the show were made today)</i> who helps her practice acting confident and assertive, even when she just wants to hide. That crossdresser reminds me a lot of myself when I was that age.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Witch from Mercury</b> is not in continuity with any other <i>Gundam</i> series, although it uses the same giant robots and the same conflict between humans who live on Earth versus humans who live in space. This series focuses on the students at an elite academy, mostly the children of the richest and most powerful government and corporate leaders in the solar system. A cold-war conflict among the adults is acted out among their kids in the form of ritualized dueling <i>(with mechas, of course)</i> and high school romances. The stakes continue to ratchet up throughout the series, until the system is right at the brink of a real hot war. And I really liked the central relationship between Suletta and Miorine.<br /></div> <br /><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigMZMSh1SMZNu2FHfrRc4pMUe9d7iBpKWTjbnthzgD0JCp3Zr18WSStJSlTvRirM4aiOC3DdAoMs-3x-IcnMq6tgTP1_QCxUgmUL71KXrJfx1NzP0Q0iLzJxTEk__2aZc6aQkoZS8rJSVQCyKTjnAqwFlZ1OA_J58zIbdagkg2aC2w5BOdyIgKuWby/s1920/The%20Creator.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigMZMSh1SMZNu2FHfrRc4pMUe9d7iBpKWTjbnthzgD0JCp3Zr18WSStJSlTvRirM4aiOC3DdAoMs-3x-IcnMq6tgTP1_QCxUgmUL71KXrJfx1NzP0Q0iLzJxTEk__2aZc6aQkoZS8rJSVQCyKTjnAqwFlZ1OA_J58zIbdagkg2aC2w5BOdyIgKuWby/w400-h225/The%20Creator.jpg" width="400" /></a></div> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="color: #0b5394;">Films - The Creator</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Probably my favorite film of the year was <b><a href="https://www.hulu.com/movie/the-creator-1f7c85b7-8614-404e-aa58-5af8702c1c89" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Creator</a></b>, which is exactly the kind of scifi film I hope they'll make more of. It's an original story, but in conversation with other works about robots and AI; it's visually stunning, seamlessly mixing CGI with practical techniques to make something that looks much better than either could produce alone; and it has something relevant to say about the contemporary world that's not simplistic, trite, or nihilistic.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">At the end of an alt-history 20th century, where sentient robots became citizens of every country in the world over the course of the 60s and 70s, America suffers a terrorist attack, an atomic detonation in LA that kills a million people, and responds by outlawing robotics, and waging a global war on robots and any country that harbors them. Visually, the scenes of combat in Southeast Asia are reminiscent of the Vietnam War, but everything else about the war is obviously inspired by the War On Terror. What <b>The Creator</b> makes you feel, viscerally, is that even after an incident as severe as <i>that, </i>America's reaction is a catastrophic <i>over</i>-reaction, and that killing civilians abroad will never make anyone any safer at home. I watched this film over the summer, but its portrayals of racism and unconstrained military violence are even more relevant now, as the Israeli military is engaged in mass killing in Gaza.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My runner up is <b><a href="https://www.hulu.com/movie/vesper-6ec59c6c-2e2a-4d9e-8e3e-89821ec9f523" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Vesper</a></b>, which has like, all the same good qualities as <i>The Creator</i>, just on a smaller scale. In the climate and genetic engineering post-apocalyse, the self-contained cities known as Citadels control the supply of seeds to anyone living outside, and they only sell crops whose own grains will be sterile, forcing the hinterlands to purchase new seeds every year. Vesper is an ambitious girl on the cusp of puberty. She wants to be a scientist and move into the city; her uncle who owns the farm next door wants to ensnare her in debt and take ownership of her body. Then a small personal airship leaving the nearest Citadel crashes within sight of the farms, and Vesper suddenly has a new opportunity, and new dangers. After <i>Islands of Abandonment</i>, this might be the second-most <i><b>D&D</b>-able</i> thing I enjoyed this year! It's actually very easy to imagine a version of this film that's just a Western, albeit one that center's women's experiences on the frontier, but I think the science fictional elements are improvements, they make the film better, certainly better-looking, and more impactful.<br /></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-20541682123203711642024-01-31T18:19:00.000-08:002024-01-31T18:19:50.164-08:00An Update on Jaquaysing<div style="text-align: left;">Since I wrote <a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2024/01/xandering-is-slandering.html" target="_blank">my previous post</a>, my friend <a href="https://permacrandam.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Ava Islam</a> reached out to <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/?p=50588" rel="" target="_blank">Justin Alexander</a> and engaged him in a productive conversation. Once the two of them arrived at a place of understanding, Ava also reached out to me to mediate a conversation between me and Justin. The purpose of this conversation was for each of us to understand where the other was coming from, to see if we could find any common ground, and to reach a willingness to agree to disagree on the rest. I'm grateful to Ava for helping to facilitate this conversation.<br /><br />You can read Justin's post that came out of this conversation here: <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/?p=50588" rel="" target="_blank"><b>A Second Note on Xandering</b></a>. I encourage you to read it first, then come back here.<br /><br />In brief, here's how we arrived at this point. In 1979, Jennell Jaquays wrote an early dungeon called <b><i>Caverns of Thracia</i></b> that people admired for its interesting nonlinear maps. In 2010, Justin Alexander wrote a series of essays praising Jennell's designs and describing the techniques others could use to draw similar ones. In those essays, Justin named the nonlinearity in those maps after Jennell. Last year, for a variety of reasons, including wanting to draw attention to his authorship of those essays, Justin announced that he'd like the process of drawing nonlinear dungeon maps to be named for himself rather than for Jennell, and he published a book collecting his writing where he used that new name. Earlier this year, Jennell died. And last week, I wrote the post below this note, condemning him for the renaming.<br /><br />I think it's fair to say that Justin's announcement was broadly understood to mean that Jennell didn't want her name used to describe nonlinear dungeon mapping anymore, and that she either suggested Justin name it after himself, or endorsed his plan to do so. What Justin has said to Ava, and through her to me, is that this is a misunderstanding, and it wasn't his intention that people would take that meaning from what he wrote. His new post offers a much clearer recounting of events.<br /><br />Jennell was okay with people using her name to describe nonlinear dungeons, as long as the process of drawing these maps was spelled correctly, as <i>Jaquaysing</i>, with an <i>S</i>. She did not want the term to be used with her name spelled incorrectly, without one.<br /><br />Each person writing about these nonlinear dungeons can decide for themselves whether they want to call the process of drawing them <i>Jaquaysing</i> or <i>Xandering</i>. Justin will not be changing what he calls them, in his book, on his blog, or I guess whenever he talks about them. But if you want to call this process <i>Jaquaysing</i>, as I still do, you can use that term knowing that Jennell Jaquays was okay with you doing that. Whichever term you choose, I encourage you to make your case by setting a good example and being the sort of person others want to emulate, and not by picking fights with people who've made the other choice.<br /><br />I appreciate that Justin has acknowledged that his initial announcement was misunderstood by many readers, and that he was willing to offer a clarification. It was misleading because people were misled; that does not mean it was <i>intentionally</i> misleading, or that he was trying to deceive.<br /><br />My post was written in anger and came from a place of pain. After Jennell died, I had conversations with younger trans women in the scene who said they wanted to still use Jennell's name when talking about nonlinear dungeons. But they thought, based on reading Justin's announcement, that they couldn't, because they'd be disrespecting Jennell's wishes, some of her last wishes before she died, by doing so. These conversations were why I chose to write the post. I was afraid that Jennell might be forgotten, because the people who wanted to honor her mistakenly thought that meant they shouldn't talk about her. I didn't want that to happen. I was afraid, and angry, and I lashed out. I wanted to help protect Jennell's memory and legacy, because that's the only part of her that we in the roleplaying scene have left.<br /><br />I phrased my arguments in my post very harshly. I thought that I was dealing with someone unreasonable, someone who would never listen to me or update what he'd written. I thought the only way people would continue using Jennell's name to describe drawing dungeons would be if I convinced them to. Because of Justin's willingness to engage in a dialogue with Ava, and through her to reach an understanding with me, because of his willingness to clarify what Jennell said, I now think that I misjudged him, and that some of what I said was unfair to him.<br /><br />Justin has been in the online roleplaying scene for a long time. For years before I had a blog of my own, I followed other old-school bloggers, including him. The first time I ran a game that wasn't <b><i>Hero Quest</i></b>, I used Justin's one-page MC Escher dungeon as the adventure site. The first place I learned about Jennell Jaquays was reading about <b><i>Caverns of Thracia's</i></b> maps on Justin's blog, either just because I was reading it regularly, or because I saw a reference and a link somewhere else, and followed it back to Justin's essays.<br /><br />Justin has not plagiarized Jennell. He has not stolen from her. He does not deserve to lose his job or have his book withdrawn from publication. Someone who sees the word <i>Xandering</i> somewhere online and wonders what it means will likely end up at Justin's blog, and at his essays where he holds up Jennell's nonlinear dungeon maps as exemplars. Although he edited those posts to change the name of the term to Xandering, all other references to Jennell remain intact. In these essays, he credits her as the originator of the style he's describing. And since he is the author of the essays, I agree that he deserves to be acknowledged for his analysis. Readers of Justin’s book will also see Jennell mentioned in the acknowledgments.<br /><br />Justin also, obviously, finished writing his book before Jennell got sick. The timing of her illness meant that she wasn't able to comment on Justin's announcement or to clarify her position herself. That means that the responsibility to clarify falls on Justin, and in his most recent post, he has fulfilled that responsibility. The timing reflects an unfortunate coincidence, but he picked the date of the announcement based on the publication schedule, not with the intention of taking advantage of her.<br /><br />In my post, I also described Jennell's illness inaccurately. She was not in a coma at the time of Justin's announcement, as I said. She was very ill then, and my understanding of what it means that she was previously on a ventilator is that she was in a medically-induced coma while she was on it. She was not able to keep up with or comment on anyone's <b>D&D</b> blog at that time. But at the time of Justin's announcement, Jennell was healthier than I said, and I want to correct that now.<br /><br />Again, I appreciate that Justin has written a clearer account of events, and has helped to ensure that people know that she continued to be alright with people using her name, and calling drawing nonlinear dungeon maps <i>Jaquaysing</i>. That account, that assurance, is what I wanted most, and I thank Justin for providing it. I know this past week has been difficult for him. I also thank Ava for reaching out to me, and helping to at least partially resolve the conflict.</div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-52034289960865245802024-01-22T07:41:00.000-08:002024-01-31T18:16:27.509-08:00Xandering is Slandering<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>AUTHOR'S NOTE:</b> Since I wrote this post, my friend <a href="https://permacrandam.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Ava Islam</a> reached out to <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/?p=50588" rel="" target="_blank">Justin Alexander</a> and engaged him in a productive conversation. Once the two of them arrived at a place of understanding, Ava also reached out to me to mediate a conversation between me and Justin. The purpose of this conversation was for each of us to understand where the other was coming from, to see if we could find any common ground, and to reach a willingness to agree to disagree on the rest. I'm grateful to Ava for helping to facilitate this conversation.<br /><br />You can read Justin's post that came out of this conversation here: <b><a href="https://thealexandrian.net/?p=50588" rel="" target="_blank">A Second Note on Xandering</a></b>. I encourage you to read it first, then come back here.<br /><br />In brief, here's how we arrived at this point. In 1979, Jennell Jaquays wrote an early dungeon called <b><i>Caverns of Thracia</i></b> that people admired for its interesting nonlinear maps. In 2010, Justin Alexander wrote a series of essays praising Jennell's designs and describing the techniques others could use to draw similar ones. In those essays, Justin named the nonlinearity in those maps after Jennell. Last year, for a variety of reasons, including wanting to draw attention to his authorship of those essays, Justin announced that he'd like the process of drawing nonlinear dungeon maps to be named for himself rather than for Jennell, and he published a book collecting his writing where he used that new name. Earlier this year, Jennell died. And last week, I wrote the post below this note, condemning him for the renaming.<br /><br />I think it's fair to say that Justin's announcement was broadly understood to mean that Jennell didn't want her name used to describe nonlinear dungeon mapping anymore, and that she either suggested Justin name it after himself, or endorsed his plan to do so. What Justin has said to Ava, and through her to me, is that this is a misunderstanding, and it wasn't his intention that people would take that meaning from what he wrote. His new post offers a much clearer recounting of events.<br /><br />Jennell was okay with people using her name to describe nonlinear dungeons, as long as the process of drawing these maps was spelled correctly, as <i>Jaquaysing</i>, with an <i>S</i>. She did not want the term to be used with her name spelled incorrectly, without one.<br /><br />Each person writing about these nonlinear dungeons can decide for themselves whether they want to call the process of drawing them <i>Jaquaysing</i> or <i>Xandering</i>. Justin will not be changing what he calls them, in his book, on his blog, or I guess whenever he talks about them. But if you want to call this process Jaquaysing, as I still do, you can use that term knowing that Jennell Jaquays was okay with you doing that. Whichever term you choose, I encourage you to make your case by setting a good example and being the sort of person others want to emulate, and not by picking fights with people who've made the other choice.<br /><br />I appreciate that Justin has acknowledged that his initial announcement was misunderstood by many readers, and that he was willing to offer a clarification. It was misleading because people were misled; that does not mean it was intentionally misleading, or that he was trying to deceive.<br /> <br />The post below was written in anger and came from a place of pain. After Jennell died, I had conversations with younger trans women in the scene who said they wanted to still use Jennell's name when talking about nonlinear dungeons. But they thought, based on reading Justin's announcement, that they couldn't, because they'd be disrespecting Jennell's wishes, some of her last wishes before she died, by doing so. These conversations were why I chose to write the post. I was afraid that Jennell might be forgotten, because the people who wanted to honor her mistakenly thought that meant they shouldn't talk about her. I didn't want that to happen. I was afraid, and angry, and I lashed out. I wanted to help protect Jennell's memory and legacy, because that's the only part of her that we in the roleplaying scene have left.<br /><br />I phrased my arguments in this post very harshly. I thought that I was dealing with someone unreasonable, someone who would never listen to me or update what he'd written. I thought the only way people would continue using Jennell's name to describe drawing dungeons would be if I convinced them to. Because of Justin's willingness to engage in a dialogue with Ava, and through her to reach an understanding with me, because of his willingness to clarify what Jennell said, I now think that I misjudged him, and that some of what I said below was unfair to him.<br /><br />Justin has been in the online roleplaying scene for a long time. For years before I had a blog of my own, I followed other old-school bloggers, including him. The first time I ran a game that wasn't <b><i>Hero Quest</i></b>, I used Justin's one-page MC Escher dungeon as the adventure site. The first place I learned about Jennell Jaquays was reading about <b><i>Caverns of Thracia's</i></b> maps on Justin's blog, either just because I was reading it regularly, or because I saw a reference and a link somewhere else, and followed it back to Justin's essays.<br /><br />Justin has not plagiarized Jennell. He has not stolen from her. He does not deserve to lose his job or have his book withdrawn from publication. Someone who sees the word <i>Xandering</i> somewhere online and wonders what it means will likely end up at Justin's blog, and at his essays where he holds up Jennell's nonlinear dungeon maps as exemplars. Although he edited those posts to change the name of the term to <i>Xandering</i>, all other references to Jennell remain intact. In these essays, he credits her as the originator of the style he's describing. And since he is the author of the essays, I agree that he deserves to be acknowledged for his analysis. Readers of Justin’s book will also see Jennell mentioned in the acknowledgments.<br /><br />Justin also, obviously, finished writing his book before Jennell got sick. The timing of her illness meant that she wasn't able to comment on Justin's announcement or to clarify her position herself. That means that the responsibility to clarify falls on Justin, and in his most recent post, he has fulfilled that responsibility. The timing reflects an unfortunate coincidence, but he picked the date of the announcement based on the publication schedule, not with the intention of taking advantage of her.<br /><br />In my post, I also described Jennell's illness inaccurately. She was not in a coma at the time of Justin's announcement, as I said. She was very ill then, and my understanding of what it means that she was previously on a ventilator is that she was in a medically-induced coma while she was on it. She was not able to keep up with or comment on anyone's <b>D&D</b> blog at that time. But at the time of Justin's announcement, Jennell was healthier than I said, and I want to correct that now.<br /><br />Again, I appreciate that Justin has written a clearer account of events, and has helped to ensure that people know that she continued to be alright with people using her name, and calling drawing nonlinear dungeon maps <i>Jaquaysing</i>. That account, that assurance, is what I wanted most, and I thank Justin for providing it. I know this past week has been difficult for him. I also thank Ava for reaching out to me, and helping to at least partially resolve the conflict. <b>END AUTHOR'S NOTE.</b></span> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizrk1roRMWR3LuQxDf9JBzT1Je39efoLv0BlTSnubT4zdqFakGjZXwU2SLZTtyovRY2HcoZfmI-OYXKXYsTDoMBaHuuVSfO-2gPv6y9JtOUKrLw0xG2N1ih57ATLQrWXJDfwviCHVueXdz2kghf3foMYjHKMAHR-49bUmzdxMrRwM2-Hp83c6LJBrQ/s650/jennell-jaquays-dallas-tx-obituary.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="340" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizrk1roRMWR3LuQxDf9JBzT1Je39efoLv0BlTSnubT4zdqFakGjZXwU2SLZTtyovRY2HcoZfmI-OYXKXYsTDoMBaHuuVSfO-2gPv6y9JtOUKrLw0xG2N1ih57ATLQrWXJDfwviCHVueXdz2kghf3foMYjHKMAHR-49bUmzdxMrRwM2-Hp83c6LJBrQ/w209-h400/jennell-jaquays-dallas-tx-obituary.jpg" width="209" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Jennell Jaquays - <a href="https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/dallas-tx/jennell-jaquays-11623534" target="_blank">image source</a></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On January 10, 2024, the game designer Jennell Jaquays died. She was a
woman of many accomplishments, who published one of the earliest and
most highly regarded fantasy roleplaying adventures, <b><i>The Caverns of Thracia</i></b>. Jennell's loss is a great sadness to those who knew her personally.<br /> </div><div style="text-align: left;">It's also a loss to trans women in gaming, people like me, for whom Jennell's example of how to be out, successful, and admired served as an inspiration, and as a reminder that we have a place, we <i>belong</i>, in a hobby and an industry that can sometimes seem quite hostile to our existence. Even those of us who didn't know her <i>knew of her</i>, and we could look to her as an exemplar, and as someone whose presence cultivated a safer space.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Every trans woman I know in gaming has been affected by her loss. But in addition to being sad, I'm also angry, because there's someone in the old-school roleplaying scene who's been trying to minimize Jennell's accomplishments and to claim credit for some of her ideas and her work. At a time when Jennell Jaquays should be remembered and celebrated, he's trying to erase her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">That person is Justin Alexander, author of the blog <b><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231217024103/https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50264/roleplaying-games/so-you-want-to-be-a-game-master-2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Alexandrian</a></b>, and the recently published book <b><i>So You Want to be a Gamemaster</i></b>.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">You might be surprised to hear this, because you might be familiar with Justin's earlier article praising Jennell for her dungeon design, and naming the process of introducing non-linearity into game maps after her. That article is available at this link: <b><a href="http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/jaquaying-the-dungeon">http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/jaquaying-the-dungeon</a></b>. Before you continue, I encourage you to click on that link, so that you'll understand what I'm talking about.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwO3aqysrCcIT9szjRM5VThURvGQcOVJLHXcuvlDCzRMwhdEVV6WmxZKDBiwa5goJSamaaP8tklbB8H_7AU0iDm2UTMijrMwnkA-VeCqLqCKSQ2ZNP0x3SXI8H2RXxNgLtdISpNzYf5S4Ptmb2AhNtTQeNMbfQh2ERuEBHCofnPkaSvOU06BwnGzkM/s751/Xandering%20Screencap.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="444" data-original-width="751" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwO3aqysrCcIT9szjRM5VThURvGQcOVJLHXcuvlDCzRMwhdEVV6WmxZKDBiwa5goJSamaaP8tklbB8H_7AU0iDm2UTMijrMwnkA-VeCqLqCKSQ2ZNP0x3SXI8H2RXxNgLtdISpNzYf5S4Ptmb2AhNtTQeNMbfQh2ERuEBHCofnPkaSvOU06BwnGzkM/w400-h236/Xandering%20Screencap.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"Xandering the Dungeon" - <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231127172353/https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/xandering-the-dungeon" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">image source</a></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />You may be wondering why a post that's supposedly about a trans woman's contributions to gaming is now named for the cisgender man who wrote the post. I find myself wondering that as well. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Unfortunately, despite sometimes celebrating Jennell's ideas, Justin has a mixed history when it comes to dealing with her as a person. Both the supposed <i>reasoning</i> and the <i>timing</i> behind the of rebranding Jennell's designs as things Justin credits himself for are particularly galling. But he has a history of attempting to put himself ahead of her that I want to review first, before I explain more of why this latest incident is so upsetting.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>A Brief Timeline of "Jaquaysing the Dungeon"</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">In 2010, Justin Alexander published what would become one of the most famous posts on his blog, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231003031011/http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/jaquaying-the-dungeon" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b>"Jaquaying the Dungeon"</b></a> <i>[sic]</i>. It was the first post in a six-part series, and it arguably helped to establish Justin's reputation among bloggers in the old-school roleplaying scene. Because people like the way Jennell draws her dungeons, the term caught on, and drove innumerable clicks, links, and citations in Justin's direction. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In my view, Justin's fame relies on Jennell far more than Jennell's fame relies on Justin. As a co-founder of the first <b>D&D</b> fanzine, as the creator of the second ever published adventure, as an author of several of Judge's Guild's most popular projects, Jennell was essentially guaranteed to be admired by people looking into the early history of <b>Dungeons & Dragons</b>. Justin was not the only, or even the first, person to talk up the quality of her designs. Justin started out blogging about <b>3e</b> and Monte Cook's <b>Ptolus</b> dungeon. He probably would have found success in the old-school scene when he turned his attention toward it, but writing about Jennell, and coining the terms "jaquaying" <i>[sic]</i>, lent Justin credibility within the scene beyond what his his own work so far had accomplished. <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">It's also worth noting, Jennell's last name is spelled Jaquays, with an <i>S</i>, and so the correct spelling of any term named after her should have that <i>S</i> as well, whether you say <i>to Jaquays</i> as a verb, <i>Jaquaysing</i> as a gerund, or <i>Jaquaysian</i>
as an adjective. Which means that even though he might have been the
first to coin the term, Justin also misspelled it. Yes, that's possible.
You can be the first and still be wrong. <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">At the time Justin wrote this first blog post, Jennell had not publicly come out as trans or adopted the name Jennell. By her own account, Jennell first came out to her followers on Facebook in December 2011, and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120905001737/http://jaquays.com/jennell/index.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">on her professional website</a> in March 2012. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I don't know exactly when Justin found out about Jennell's gender transition or her new name, although I'll note that he links to her site, where she made the announcement, in the first paragraph of his blog post, and that a comment mentioning Jennell's correct name shows up as early as September 2014. Over the next couple years, Justin must have become aware of Jennell's transition and, rather than editing his post to correct it, he became defensive about his decision <i>not to</i> make the correction. In October 2016, he published <b><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200131035559/http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38883/politics/thought-of-the-day-deadnames" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"Thought of the Day - Deadnames"</a></b>, where he laid out a six-part defense for his refusal to update the original post to include Jennell's correct name.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I find Justin's arguments here to be made in bad faith. He relies on a variety of hypotheticals and counterfactuals to justify his ongoing refusal to go into a handful of blog posts and hit CTRL H to find and replace the few instances of a single word with another. He says that it would be prohibitively difficult to make such a change to a video, that he'd be unable to make the change if he was already dead, incorrectly compares Jennell's name to a performer's stage name, says that since no one can find every copy of Jennell's published works and put stickers over her old name in them there's no point in making <i>any</i> changes anywhere, and then notes that if she were living stealth he'd be unnecessarily outing her by editing his post. This last claim is particularly dishonest, since Jennell came out as publicly as she was able, and yet he framed his refusal to honor her identity as some kind of favor he was doing for her, as though he was helping her keep a secret, instead of hiding information she wanted shared.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In February 2018, Jennell commented on this blog post to request that Justin update her first name and correct the spelling of the term to match her last name. Sometime later that year, Justin <i>did</i> edit his original post to use Jennell's correct first name. He did not, <i>ever,</i> honor her request to spell <i>Jaquaysing</i> correctly.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/s748/Jaquays%20Comment.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="748" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzu8m1C219AYtIjwxY4BhVLNiy1CBLIYL2LsH8YxIHr5pd4BJOl1GhyQJ5hG-mRUIjIPdZwvj_ySTkqcsOQ043bWVGn6c9b2QrpHGJx9lXdZ4JwXaWOl66uTPmxnuR8Vv9Hu-2ghxwsCV6oz1SfSMEaNmSyMOv0jTXRC6s6rGHb2WGs1oaIsGSbQdo/w400-h340/Jaquays%20Comment.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Jennell's 2018 comment - <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200131035559/http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38883/politics/thought-of-the-day-deadnames" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">image source</a></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Historical Revisionism of Xandering</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">In May 2023, Justin <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230510004949/https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/49416/roleplaying-games/so-you-want-to-be-a-game-master" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">announced that he had a book deal</a> to republish some of his old blog posts, along with new content, as the book <b><i>So You Want to be a Dungeon Master?</i></b> His announcement includes information about some of the bookstores that will be offering his work, and it's clear that he's hit the big time. Instead of self-publishing or having his work only available on gaming websites, it'll be online and on the shelves of all the major chains. Justin could reasonably expect the success of this book to boost his profile and introduce him to new audiences.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the process of shepherding this project to completion, it appears that Justin also decided to do some reputational management. At some point, the <b>"Thought of the Day - Deadnames"</b> post disappears from his blog. <b>The Wayback Machine's</b> most recent capture is from January 2020; <a href="https://rolesrules.blogspot.com/2024/01/jennell-jaquays-gone-too-soon.html" target="_blank">Roger SG Sorrolla</a> references it in an essay written in December 2021 that was published in <b><i><a href="https://www.themerrymushmen.com/product/knock-3-tmm/" target="_blank">Knock 3</a></i></b>. I assume Justin took down the post because he realized he appears in an unflattering light in it, and wanted to hide what he'd done.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">He went further than that though. In November 2023, Justin put out a new post called <b><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231102145816/https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50123/roleplaying-games/a-historical-note-on-xandering" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"A Historical Note on Xandering"</a></b> stating his intention to rename <i>Jaquaysing</i> after himself and to start calling it "Xandering". Going further, he republished the original post from 2010 with a new URL and a new title, as <b><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231127172353/https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/xandering-the-dungeon" target="_blank">"Xandering the Dungeon"</a></b>. He deleted his original post about <i>Jaquaysing</i>, and set his blog to redirect the original link to the new post with his name on it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">In both these posts, Justin mentions Jennell and admits that he was looking at and thinking about her dungeon designs when he wrote them. And anyone who is already familiar with Jennell will remember the truth. But Justin's attempt to claim credit for himself is clear. If someone has only read his book, or seen "Xandering" referenced in conversation online, those new audience members aren't going to know about Jennell Jaquays, and they're no longer going to have an easy window into finding out more about her. Instead, they'll just known Justin Alexander. <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyo-jwl9QEOZxLWdIGSqtOMv_je9NmWSgeLC6Ww-JTBjvsm_dL93SVDrhF1IYdcfICcdqhBJ_s2e3gCyqHkUatpoBpSLvTP2dqzkkFPoHfh5bfTLzQvdeEJEWXUciz6zHn9ARqdRxkvAaZ02NREOHJEgQ5XG_XHPGlmY-ervx98O5R2QZ3eOn22ULl/s1745/Nedroid%20-%20The%20Internet.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1745" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyo-jwl9QEOZxLWdIGSqtOMv_je9NmWSgeLC6Ww-JTBjvsm_dL93SVDrhF1IYdcfICcdqhBJ_s2e3gCyqHkUatpoBpSLvTP2dqzkkFPoHfh5bfTLzQvdeEJEWXUciz6zHn9ARqdRxkvAaZ02NREOHJEgQ5XG_XHPGlmY-ervx98O5R2QZ3eOn22ULl/w184-h400/Nedroid%20-%20The%20Internet.png" width="184" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"The Internet" by Nedroid - <a href="https://nedroidcomics.tumblr.com/post/41879001445/the-internet" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">image source</a></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /><b>Jaquaysing is the Correct Term </b> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <div style="text-align: left;">If we want to talk about designing non-linear dungeon maps, maps that resemble those drawn by Jennell Jaquays, we can call that <i>Jaquaysian</i> dungeon design, in the same way we might talk about <i>Vancian</i> magic, <a href="https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/gygaxian-naturalism.html" target="_blank"><i>Gygaxian</i> naturalism</a>, <i>Dickensian</i> characterization, <i>Euclidean</i> geometry, or <i>Kafkaesque</i>
bureaucratic strangeness. Someone was the first person to make each of
those stylistic comparisons, and in a fair world, each of those people
would get some kind of credit for noting those characteristics. But what
we would never do is name the style for <i>that</i> person.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">If you wanted to talk about this kind of dungeon design without naming Jennell directly, you might refer to it as <i><a href="https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/2021/09/spectral-interrogatories-iii-caverns-of.html" target="_blank">Thracian</a></i>,
after the name Jennell chose for her most famous dungeon that used it.
It's the same way that we refer to certain detectives as <i>Holmesian</i> without directly mentioning Arthur Conan Doyle, or describe a monster as <i>Cthulhuesque</i>
without saying the name Lovecraft. But no matter how many books ST
Joshi writes describing the characteristics of HPL's writing, we'll
still never refer to cosmic horror fiction as <i>Joshian</i> instead of <i>Lovecraftian</i>. And that's the crucial difference here.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So if you want to talk about nonlinear dungeons in a way that honors a <i>person</i> instead of just the <i>idea</i> of nonlinearity, you should call them <i>Jaquaysian</i>, or the process of making them <i>Jaquaysing</i>. If you say "Jaquaying" <i>[sic]</i>, you're acknowledging the right person, but spelling her name and the term wrong. There is no reason to ever say <b><i>Xandering</i></b>, unless you want it to mean something like, <i>trying to take credit for someone else's ideas while simultaneously X-ing them out of history and slandering their memory</i>. But you could probably simply call that plagiarism, appropriation, vainglory, or just dishonesty.</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigxS7u_3BUHnG0rd37i5T9X0Yp0Bd_uwczFDm9U5h-vLk_9KDMzQXgKmCw-owLa06FOA97KbqkXls5z2zEslNEFRkUQWacSW10p0gzjdKWteo1t_l4WYjCwMjvm5xUGeVv3-MhraEoe_xYqWBWDZzhhtO_tqkZAxAfxe1ipUiYyXnaX_Kdsbxwk0GL/s906/Caverns%20of%20Thracia%20level%201.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="906" data-original-width="700" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigxS7u_3BUHnG0rd37i5T9X0Yp0Bd_uwczFDm9U5h-vLk_9KDMzQXgKmCw-owLa06FOA97KbqkXls5z2zEslNEFRkUQWacSW10p0gzjdKWteo1t_l4WYjCwMjvm5xUGeVv3-MhraEoe_xYqWBWDZzhhtO_tqkZAxAfxe1ipUiYyXnaX_Kdsbxwk0GL/w309-h400/Caverns%20of%20Thracia%20level%201.jpg" width="309" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Caverns of Thracia, level 1 by Jennell Jaquays - <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/devillich/judges-guild-deluxe-dark-tower-caverns-of-thracia-and-more/posts/2959336" target="_blank">image source</a></i></td></tr></tbody></table> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /><b>Justin Alexander's Bad Faith Arguments</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">As with his stated reasons for not removing Jennell's old name from his original post, I find Justin's explanations for trying to credit himself by using the term "Xandering" to be in bad faith. The truth, I think, is simply that he wants credit and praise. He expects to reach a new audience of people who won't know this history, and he hopes they'll think only of him. He's no longer satisfied for people to link to his blog while using Jennell's name; now he wants his name to be the only one people use. But those are base motives, and he would look bad if he admitted to them, so instead, he again tries to frame his self-serving as something high-minded.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">First, note that he falsely declaims his own responsibility for this decision. <i><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231102145816/https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50123/roleplaying-games/a-historical-note-on-xandering" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"In 2023, for better or for worse, this term was changed to xandering."</a></i> It was changed by him; he changed it. But he doesn't say that. He uses the passive voice. Not that he did it, but that it was done. By whom? Unstated. And look, he seems to empathize, maybe it wasn't even a good change. Of course he thinks it was good, or he wouldn't have done it. But twice in one sentence he minimizes his responsibility for doing it. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Later he has other fall guys to put the blame onto. The internet mob, they forced his hand, what else could he do? His lawyer's advice, how could he go against it? It's telling that in any scenario where the reader might think the change was for the worse, Justin fobs responsibility off onto others. He tries to forestall disagreement by presenting this as a <i>fait accompli</i>, a thing that has already happened and can't be reversed or undone. This is nonsense, since at the time that he wrote this, literally no one else had used the term "Xandering" yet at all. And anyway, that's not how culture works. It's always contentious, always changeable.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There's one more reason Justin states for the change, and only here does he paint himself as the agent of his own actions. <i><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231102145816/https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50123/roleplaying-games/a-historical-note-on-xandering" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"Jennell Jaquays wanted a change. She didn’t like that the term dropped the 's' from her name. Her name is very important to her. This wasn’t a problem. In fact, Jennell had previously requested some sweeping changes to the article for similar reasons, and I’d made those changes."</a> </i>The sweeping change he mentions was finally replacing the 3-4 places where he'd used her old name. He's sure to let us know how arduous this was, to press CTRL F and then type in seven new letters. He assures us that adding the <i>S</i> was even more difficult. <i>(So much harder than using a totally different word!)</i> But, he says, she asked, so he did it. Except he <i>didn't</i>. He never edited his blog to spell <i>Jaquaysing</i> correctly. For god's sake, he doesn't even spell it that way in this very post where he's claiming he did! </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But Justin's point here is that he's doing something Jennell wanted, something she asked for. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231102145816/https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50123/roleplaying-games/a-historical-note-on-xandering" target="_blank"><i>"I spoke with Jennell earlier this year. We both agreed that the name should be changed, and I said it would be a large project to do it, but I’d make sure it happened by the end of the year."</i></a> Now here he commits a bit of sleight of hand. Remember that what Jennell asked for was for "Jaquaying" <i>[sic]</i> to be spelled <i>Jaquaysing</i>. But in this sentence, Justin doesn't actually say what the change was that they agreed on. Then he mentions talking to his publisher, and to his lawyer. Then he says <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20231102145816/https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/50123/roleplaying-games/a-historical-note-on-xandering" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>"After a bunch of back-and-forth, we finally settled on the term 'xandering.' "</i></a>, and in this sentence, he doesn't clarify which of the three parties he's been talking to the <i>"we"</i> refers to. So this is Justin's magic trick. Jennell asks him to spell her name correctly. His publisher agrees to his request to call the term "Xandering." But without directly stating it - and thus without explicitly lying - he manages to imply that it was Jennell who asked him to replace Jaquaying <i>[sic]</i> with "Xandering". It was her idea, he says, he's doing it for her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Xandering is Slandering</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Part of why Justin was able to get away with this, with putting his name on Jennell's idea and then claiming she wanted him to do it, because at the time that he wrote that, Jennell was no longer able to contradict him. Justin posted <b>"A Historical Note on Xandering"</b> on November 1, 2023. But at that time Jennell was in a coma, because she had Guillain Barre Syndrome, which her wife announced on <b><a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/jennell-jaquays-has-a-long-road-back" target="_blank">GoFundMe</a></b>. This fact was reported in the gaming news, and widely reshared on social media. Justin knew this; he included the link in his post. On November 21, 2023, <b><i>So You Want to be a Dungeon Master?</i></b> went on sale in bookstores across the country. And on January 10, 2024, Jennell Jaquays died.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">I'm sure that Justin had been planning to introduce the term "Xandering" since before Jennell got sick. I'm sure he would have gone forward with his plan even if Jennell had publicly asked him not to. But because of Jennell's illness, Justin was now free to claim more or less anything he wanted, and the public would have to take his word for it, because he was the only witness to these events able to speak up. I think this is ghoulish. I think it's grotesque.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I don't know what Jennell thought in private. I have no personal communication with her to relay. But I know what she said in public, over and over again. She wanted <i>Jaquaysing</i> to be spelled correctly, with the <i>S</i>, and she continued making this request, even as Justin Alexander continued ignoring it. There was no principled reason for him to do that then, just stubbornness and a refusal to admit he was wrong. There's no principled reason for him to do what he's doing now. Self-aggrandizement isn't a principle.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We've seen what Jennell said in her comment on Justin's blog about him using her old name. She's said the same thing on Facebook and Twitter, really in any public forum where she's had a voice. <i>(Thank you to <a href="https://lotbieth.blogspot.com/2024/01/ave-atque-vale-jennell.html" target="_blank">Humza K</a> for helping me to find so many of the times Jennell spoke about this.)</i><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_MddGkADEzrlznsxAXPlxEwZlMaE331vQ3nQBD0jGaoCdLWZfPThW4NuXHmy7uVbLv5pNkyeDuojvsAR2-_NGE-kjz0EBgvGmSded4nJM0ebIAlaS750u1o7lo_rcZwCogPDlqu9xnTJ6I0E4S3HLC3U_X5VLmdHYCdCs1VyHJsxjARy9iNxUnUW0/s650/Jennell_Quote.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="650" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_MddGkADEzrlznsxAXPlxEwZlMaE331vQ3nQBD0jGaoCdLWZfPThW4NuXHmy7uVbLv5pNkyeDuojvsAR2-_NGE-kjz0EBgvGmSded4nJM0ebIAlaS750u1o7lo_rcZwCogPDlqu9xnTJ6I0E4S3HLC3U_X5VLmdHYCdCs1VyHJsxjARy9iNxUnUW0/w400-h253/Jennell_Quote.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"Was watching a random Youtube video about adventure design last night <br />when the youtuber mentioned 'Jaquaying the Dungeon' as part of the process.<br />I've been aware I'm a verb for about the last 10 years,<br />and I appreciate that reference from Justin Alexander.<br />But it still annoys the crap out of me that it's not 'Jaquaysing the Dungeon.'<br /><br />Dammit people, that 'S' has been there all my life. It's definitely been part of my family's<br />surname for over 250 years. Please, I expect misproununciations,<br />but can you just respect the original spelling when referring to me?<br /> <br />It's not too late to correct it... EVERYWHERE."</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHIvRXkfuM7IFtTvZMLCTZj1UuAQnQUkcNfPmRo2WG074q501c-Y5vZhM07ifUsLYyl-x3-F5gvUVvcIoqutynrMAvRqlv_ZSi2aCaa__H5BxF1J7AbSwJIjOnSQUYT_svvvja5we19weA3HAwH-nh11YG8o-lmN13WZN5m7NAr7bh7GCP4SW-56T9/s795/Jaquays%20FB%20Comment.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="795" data-original-width="634" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHIvRXkfuM7IFtTvZMLCTZj1UuAQnQUkcNfPmRo2WG074q501c-Y5vZhM07ifUsLYyl-x3-F5gvUVvcIoqutynrMAvRqlv_ZSi2aCaa__H5BxF1J7AbSwJIjOnSQUYT_svvvja5we19weA3HAwH-nh11YG8o-lmN13WZN5m7NAr7bh7GCP4SW-56T9/w319-h400/Jaquays%20FB%20Comment.png" width="319" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"Did you know that your last name has become a verb Jennell Jaquays?"<br />"Yes, I did know this. Bumped into it about 8 years ago. <br />Though by rights it should be 'Jaquaysing' the dungeon."<br /> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hal.burdick/posts/pfbid04SpNNnxscKmmL32eKNCSF4cWQuVHpC3q1aWzzw7fZyzfkKh8MyaRg8uTr1ejmGPLl?comment_id=10157768835784279" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">image source</a></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_i_Ijp_-TPQg5ChQnBr3P68RTRY9qh7qChkisZkobO6U4Q1SUXRdE9QSyrP8ozSEnhik0B9tXWtdXC4mSVtWo5q4vGa5iqjf-c30qVZrQvCAu3cD-Styipq3__t2vXX7qqhTVqjIaOhM9JQL0rKew7wpm1s_CrRWmAn3xlj5e4GlQdJUKj8Qxjz60/s749/Jaquays%20Tweet.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="749" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_i_Ijp_-TPQg5ChQnBr3P68RTRY9qh7qChkisZkobO6U4Q1SUXRdE9QSyrP8ozSEnhik0B9tXWtdXC4mSVtWo5q4vGa5iqjf-c30qVZrQvCAu3cD-Styipq3__t2vXX7qqhTVqjIaOhM9JQL0rKew7wpm1s_CrRWmAn3xlj5e4GlQdJUKj8Qxjz60/w400-h193/Jaquays%20Tweet.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"Though I kinda wish they would revise it to 'Jaquaysing the Dungeon' <br />because you know, correct spelling? I may use the editorial 'We' at times, <br />but that doesn't mean I am plural." <br /><a href="https://twitter.com/JennellAllyn/status/1092607642818699264" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">image source</a></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table> <br />There is a world of difference between what Jennell has said, which is that she was fine with the term but wanted it to be spelled properly, and what Justin is trying to claim, which is that she didn't like the term, and that therefore, for her sake, he's gallantly renamed it after himself.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>What Now?</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">I don't expect that Justin will respond to me about this, or even acknowledge that he's seen what I've written. I don't expect writing this to have any effect on his book sales or his reputation with audiences who are new to <b>D&D</b> and have never heard of Jennell Jaquays before.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Justin, if you are reading this, you did a basically good thing in 2010 when you drew people's attention to something that someone else had done well. And then you've progressively shit all over that one kind action over the years. I wish you'd stop. Right now you're behaving like an actual grave robber. I hope you'll have a change of heart. And if your book is fortunate enough to have a second printing, I hope you'll go back to talking about <i>Jaquaysing</i>. And that you'll spell it correctly from now on.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I ask that anyone who's reading this refrain from harassing Justin on social media. It's wrong, and it won't accomplish anything. He already claims to feel persecuted and to feel justified in his actions because of that persecution. More will only further entrench his decision.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If you want to take actions that might benefit Jennell's family, you can contribute to the <b><a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/jennell-jaquays-has-a-long-road-back" target="_blank">GoFundMe</a></b> that will help pay for her medical and funeral costs. If you knew Jennell personally, you can <a href="https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/dallas-tx/jennell-jaquays-11623534" target="_blank">share a memory on her obituary page</a>. If you feel inclined, you can volunteer to participate in the <b><a href="https://itch.io/jam/jennell-jaquays-memorial-game-jam" target="_blank">Jennell Jaquays Memorial Game Jam</a></b>, and after the jam is completed, you can purchase <i><b>Return to Perinthos</b></i>, which will initially support Jennell's family, and later donate its proceeds to the charity <b><a href="https://translifeline.org/" target="_blank">Trans Lifeline</a></b>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">You can carry on Jennell's gaming legacy, and help prevent her erasure, by continuing to talk about <i>Jaquaysian</i> and <i>Thracian</i> dungeon designs. Again, harassing people who say "Jaquaying" <i>[sic]</i> or "Xandering" would be wrong, and wouldn't honor Jennell's memory. But you can set a good example, tell the truth, play the game she loved, draw the kind of nonlinear maps like she was famous for, and help make sure that people remember her name.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">And if you know a trans woman, whether as part of your gaming hobby, or in any other part of you life, be kind to her. The loss of one of our foremothers is very far from being the only problem that we, collectively, are facing right now.<br /></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-85762286159996332023-11-14T13:57:00.000-08:002023-11-14T13:57:35.603-08:00Peter Ward & Alexis Rockman's Monsters I Want to Fight - The Zeppelinoids<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2018/07/peter-ward-alexis-rockman-future.html" target="_blank">The last time I talked about the book <b>Future Evolution</b></a>, I mentioned that author Peter Ward and illustrator Alexis Rockman mostly <i>did not</i> engage in the kind of biological speculation that the title of their book seems to imply. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But there is one exception, when Ward asks what could possibly come after the Age of Mammals, in the same way that our rise came after the Age of Dinosaurs. What currently living animal could serve as the starting point for a new set of adaptive radiation? And what new body plan would these dominant creatures take on? In basically his sole flight of fancy in the book, Ward imagines frogs developing the ability to separate liquid water into gaseous oxygen and hydrogen, giving rise to a whole new variety of life...</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgloaYpazChIjwWVJsefXoly-Gz0kY5PZwraFC5OhDnQDorNWbaiL0pz48jFclA5enuvWoO9ROjh2hA0u1aW8KX3WFoqflavuxZE-UCZPU0CsoarG-8XPmChvY_rnG65AKURZ3F7fVrOFDuSkg8ikdHdqc9SyYdSDioxbtbLhHt05YCk3_81Bxya6z0/s680/Michael%20Whelan%20Jellyblimps.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="670" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgloaYpazChIjwWVJsefXoly-Gz0kY5PZwraFC5OhDnQDorNWbaiL0pz48jFclA5enuvWoO9ROjh2hA0u1aW8KX3WFoqflavuxZE-UCZPU0CsoarG-8XPmChvY_rnG65AKURZ3F7fVrOFDuSkg8ikdHdqc9SyYdSDioxbtbLhHt05YCk3_81Bxya6z0/w394-h400/Michael%20Whelan%20Jellyblimps.jpg" width="394" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Jellyblimp illustration by Michael Whelan for <b>Our Universe<br /></b></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13;">"Can we imagine an entirely new type of animal that could replace the current evolutionary dominants, the large mammals? This new class would have to have evolved from some currently existing creature, but it could have characteristics and a body plan vastly different from those of the preceding dominants. Such a new body type could exploit some entirely new food type or habitat. Let us imagine such a breakthrough - the conquest of the lower atmosphere by floating organisms called Zeppelinoids."<br /><br />"After the extinction of most mammals (and humanity), Zeppelinoids evolve (let's say from some species of toad, whose large gullet can swell outward and become a large gasbag). The great breakthrough comes when the toad evolves a biological mechanism inducing electrolysis of hydrogen from water. Gradually the toad evolves a way to store this light gas in its gullet, thus producing a gasbag. Sooner or later small toads are floating off into the sky for short hops (but longer hops than their ancestors were used to). More refinements and a set of wings give a modicum of directionality. Legs become tentacles, trailing down from the now thoroughly flight-adapted creatures, which can no longer be called toad: they have evolved a new body plan establishing them as a class of vertebrates, the Class Zeppelinoida. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #274e13;">"Like so many newly evolving creatures, the Zeps rapidly increase in size: when small they are sitting ducks (flying toads?) for faster-flying predatory birds. Because their gasbag is not size-limiting, they soon become large. Eventually they are the largest animals ever evolved on Earth, so large that terrestrial and avian predators no longer threaten them, reaching dimensions greater than the blue whale. Their only threat comes from lightning strikes, which result in spectacular, fatal explosions visible for miles. The Zeps can never get around this inherent flaw, for there is no biological means of producing the inflammable, inert gas helium and thus avoiding instant death from lightning. But then, life is never perfect, and the Zeps still do well, especially in areas with little lightning."<br /> <br />"Now the dominant animals of the world, the Zeps float above the ground like great overgrown jellyfish, snagging with their dragging tentacles the few species of deer (and other herbivorous vertebrates) still extant and stuffing them into a Jabba-the-Hutt-sized mouth. Because Zeps evolved from amphibians and are still cold-blooded, they have a very low metabolic rate, and thus need to feed only sparingly. Their design is so successful that they quickly diverge into many different types. Soon herbivorous forms are common, floating above the forests, eating the tops of trees, while others evolve into zep-eating Zeps. Still others become like whales, sieving insects out of the skies; in so doing, they soon drive many bird species to extinction. The world changes as more and more Zeps prowl the air, floating serenely above the treetops, filling the skies with their numbers, their shadows dominating the landscape. It is the Age of Zeppelinoids."<br /> <br />"A fairy tale - but there is a glimmer of reality in this fable. Evolution in the past has produced vast numbers of new species following some new morphological breakthrough that allows some lucky winner to colonize previously unexploited habitat. The first flying organisms, the first swimming organisms, the first floating organisms, all followed these breakthroughs with huge numbers of new species quickly radiating from the ancestral body type, all improving some aspects of the design or changing styles to allow variations on the original theme."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRWOW2yvR3DV6TVCnop4Y-UA4-uFfAqpqDEPG32WN4xOHzCSZl28RkAPYOWHdfD9JNvAOQ9Tri7a89hohzFdQcQnRobK3y-ZF3E0NESa-dRnJ1930Kv_4TKjr4_whaISH4SDJw359N-HoHGY1Xd71dw1k7EMktLsPRNmMfYGtAOhztyYEgHTHX8utW/s448/Netflix%20Alien%20Worlds%20Atlas.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="252" data-original-width="448" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRWOW2yvR3DV6TVCnop4Y-UA4-uFfAqpqDEPG32WN4xOHzCSZl28RkAPYOWHdfD9JNvAOQ9Tri7a89hohzFdQcQnRobK3y-ZF3E0NESa-dRnJ1930Kv_4TKjr4_whaISH4SDJw359N-HoHGY1Xd71dw1k7EMktLsPRNmMfYGtAOhztyYEgHTHX8utW/w400-h225/Netflix%20Alien%20Worlds%20Atlas.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>the skies above Atlas on <b>Alien Worlds<br /></b></i></td></tr></tbody></table> </div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">The idea of floating animals shows up in a couple other places. In my childhood favorite, National Geographic's <b>Our Universe<i> </i></b>book, <a href="https://twitter.com/whelanmichael/status/1568606680992079872" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">illustrator Michael Whelan imagined Jellyblimp</a>s and predatory Swordtails in the endless skies of Jupiter.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Netflix's <b><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80221410 " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Alien Worlds</a></b> documentary miniseries, <a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2022/02/my-2021-in-review.html" target="_blank">which I've recommended before</a>, includes the speculative planet Atlas, which has a higher mass than Earth, and thus a denser, more buoyant atmosphere. The show's creators also thought of floating animals filling the skies.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On both Jupiter and Atlas, the stronger gravity creates much stronger atmospheric pressure, so that, ironically, floating is easier there than it is on Earth. <i>(Think of how much easier it is to float in water than in air!)</i> The Zeppelinoids are unique among these floating species because their specific lighter-than-air gas is hydrogen. This creates a special peril for them, as Ward mentioned in the quote, but also creates a special opportunity. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">The ability to separate hydrogen gas out of water might only evolve a single time, but once it does, the lifeform that evolved it might diverge into a number of new species that use it in different ways. In other words, the Zeppelinoids could be cousins to hydrogen-fueled fire-breathing dragons.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPFuDd4MfzoxTJWXqDGMxTlOE6QPsFnbNzBdnQVHBVoAqUOiRE67BGAe9hm2kfFGv0HzoPhRHXhbaNUShb1yUzK3rAAXvVK2BWmCwKrtLQU86hJdw-XeeCp9bwQkKQ7wyGGknciC3Byq8dzZ2qUymv3EhD7QwqtQ13i0u0qYOt_ieykzQ35tBoYlmW/s625/Zeppelinoid%20sketch.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="625" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPFuDd4MfzoxTJWXqDGMxTlOE6QPsFnbNzBdnQVHBVoAqUOiRE67BGAe9hm2kfFGv0HzoPhRHXhbaNUShb1yUzK3rAAXvVK2BWmCwKrtLQU86hJdw-XeeCp9bwQkKQ7wyGGknciC3Byq8dzZ2qUymv3EhD7QwqtQ13i0u0qYOt_ieykzQ35tBoYlmW/w320-h400/Zeppelinoid%20sketch.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Zeppelinoid sketch, by me<br /></i></td></tr></tbody></table> <br />Above is my own, very rough, sketch of a Zeppelinoid. <i>(Possibly one still at an intermediate stage of evolution, not even its final form.)</i> We see the base frog's throat pouch and belly monstrously distended into a spherical hydrogen bag. The Zep's spine is at the bottom of its body and its head, from the perspective of terrestrial beings, is upside down. Its fore-limbs have become bat-like wings, with the fingers of the frog's front feet becoming the spars of the wings, and the webbed skin between those fingers forming the membrane. Its hind-limbs have become masses of tentacles, with the toes of the frog's back feet becoming grossly elongated to allow the Zep to wrap them around its prey.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">A fully evolved Zeppelinoid might have an even more specialized body, one that looks more like an octopus or jellyfish, whose original species might be much less evident.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In an adventure setting, relatively stationary Zeppelinoids might serve as a landmark by floating above a particular lake or body of water. Or their migratory routes might bob along a north-south or east-west axis, aiding navigation. They might even fly directly over a specific important trade route, showing the way from one city to another.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">A setting that has Zeppelinoids could easily have airships. People might use a Zep as a draft animal, using it to pull a carriage through the sky. Or Zep hide might be used as the bag for an airship. Or the sight of them might simply serve as inspiration, letting humanity know that lighter-than-air flight is possible. Large enough Zeps might serve as a navigational hazard, like living icebergs. Predatory Zeps might attack airships, whether to eat the cargo, or the passengers and crew, or just to defend their territory against intruders. And of course, an airship might attempt to camouflage itself and hide from other human pilots by steering a course among a population of Zeppelinoids.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As a monster, a Zeppelinoid is a challenging foe. It likely hovers outside of missile range, untouchable until it's ready to engage in combat. It could pluck an adventurer from the ground or off of horseback, crushing them with its tentacle, biting them with its mouth, or most frighteningly, simply dropping them from a great height. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">The Zeps' weakness is that they'll die instantly if they take any damage from lightning or fire. An exploding Zeppelinoid <i>might</i> threaten adventurers if it's floating low enough at the time it combusts. There's also a chance that one exploding Zep could ignite any others nearby.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-34096694274039411482023-10-07T15:16:00.001-07:002024-01-26T20:28:28.418-08:00Bon Mots - How I was Caught by Columbo<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><b>COLUMBO:</b> So, Miss Anna, you own many books! And many gimmick books, I think?</span><br /> <br /><b>ANNA:</b> Just so, Columbo.<br /> <br /><span style="color: #783f04;"><b>C:</b> And who do you 'stan' most, do you think?</span><br /> <br /><b>A:</b> Obviously <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Perec" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">G--</a> <i>(I stop.)</i> But no, I'm afraid I couldn't say.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><b>C:</b> I'm just an old man. I only buy pulps and comics. <b>Uncanny</b>, <b>Batman</b>, and so on. But my gal, Mrs Columbo, Kathy, my gal is young and smart like you. Kathy cannot stop buying ... how do you say ... <i>ooo-li-pooo?</i></span><br /> <br /><b>A:</b> <i>(Feeling smug.)</i> It's '<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">oulipo</a></i>,' Columbo. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><b>C:</b> Ah! <i>Oulipo</i>, right, that's what my gal calls it. I should go now.</span><br /> <br /><b>A:</b> You know how to find my door.</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgSRfkrMTXOpuF7nemIkynXMDGadpau2kCZjk_f9ah2cUzgEUG08xismgce6RHg7D8jaEOwN2PtP-digGzHwM1TZPBzwyCEkmHFpjebtZJCAFxsBboJe41ntaBoIT8BkgicmFDfbyDhxTRZwF5IO_v_4oX_OWEDs3fLLhs6OFrZ0I6iHTaMDoTsOAw/s640/Columbo%20Thinking.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="358" data-original-width="640" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgSRfkrMTXOpuF7nemIkynXMDGadpau2kCZjk_f9ah2cUzgEUG08xismgce6RHg7D8jaEOwN2PtP-digGzHwM1TZPBzwyCEkmHFpjebtZJCAFxsBboJe41ntaBoIT8BkgicmFDfbyDhxTRZwF5IO_v_4oX_OWEDs3fLLhs6OFrZ0I6iHTaMDoTsOAw/w400-h224/Columbo%20Thinking.gif" width="400" /></a></div> <br /><span style="color: #783f04;"><b>C:</b> But alas, a final parting thought! Miss Anna, do you, hmm, parlay in <i>francais</i>?</span><br /> <br /><b>A:</b> No, only translations.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><b>C:</b> But look! Why do you own <b>La Disparition</b> only as an original?</span><br /> <br /><i>(Columbo points to a spot with a missing book. It's a spot for <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A Void</a></b>, which I hit my victim with to kill him. I'm caught! My alibi is moot. My hands bloody, my gun smoking. My infraction found out by Columbo!)</i><br /></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-59231962996975379672023-09-04T07:30:00.001-07:002023-09-04T07:30:00.143-07:00The Forest Takes Everything<div style="text-align: left;">Over at <b><a href="http://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-woods-are-dark-and-deep.html" target="_blank">From the Sorcerer's Skull</a></b>, Trey has an idea for a spooky season campaign setting that really intrigues me.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Trey wrote: <span style="color: #38761d;">"the world that the players' would know and explore is a sort of mythic forest, a dark fairytale sort of woodland with no apparent beginning or end.</span><span style="color: #274e13;">"</span> Rather than being heroes or conquerors, the <span style="color: #38761d;">"adventurers are wanderers in the wood, dealing with the things the forest brings them."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But the detail that stood out to me most was this - the forest-dwellers cannot remember the past. They don't know the history of the forest, they don't even necessarily remember the history of themselves. <span style="color: #38761d;">"Memory, like everything else, gets swallowed by the forest."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"> <br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf0zQ3Z5ZBcXAfpl134dPe7QKkUtMPoMMhczRSTESXr4D9F8Cj5lGGp6Yi9UHSHT0YqHa3zT4dzyuv7deBzjBElcHc3XTqB98uoTQOVCFZL-obOa4UhUH8lxL3cvlehc9sVdrFbkt7PdTl3RcYc_oKhUHlycVrDUL-6147d1tPk6SViVGOGlQZFGAc/s1024/Over%20the%20Garden%20Wall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf0zQ3Z5ZBcXAfpl134dPe7QKkUtMPoMMhczRSTESXr4D9F8Cj5lGGp6Yi9UHSHT0YqHa3zT4dzyuv7deBzjBElcHc3XTqB98uoTQOVCFZL-obOa4UhUH8lxL3cvlehc9sVdrFbkt7PdTl3RcYc_oKhUHlycVrDUL-6147d1tPk6SViVGOGlQZFGAc/w400-h266/Over%20the%20Garden%20Wall.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666;">from <i>Over the Garden Wall</i></span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Imagine you have a certain number of lines of backstory on your character sheet. Simple, declarative sentences.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Maybe they have a mechanical benefit, like you can invoke them for advantage or inspiration. They could represent skills or contacts, life history events that grant you abilities. Or maybe they just define who you are, who you were, before the forest.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">And then, as you play, they start to vanish. Maybe at the start of each session one goes away? You wake up, as though from a dream, no clear memory of how you got here. Just a sense that you chose this, even if it was a mistake. Perhaps a sense that you'd like to leave, that you have unfinished business somewhere else, even though the forest is everywhere. Definitely whenever you're at some sort of low point, the forest steals from you while you're down. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">You could cross them out - your backstory, your memories. Or literally paste new strips of paper over them to cover them up.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">You can add new memories as you play. Meet new people, learn new things, accomplish noteworthy deeds on your adventures. But those aren't safe either. Eventually, the forest takes everything. <i>Everything. </i>Unless you can find a way out...</div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-60415919683213953382023-08-16T07:30:00.004-07:002023-08-16T07:30:00.148-07:00And the Gold Ennie for Best Supplement Goes To...<div style="text-align: left;">By now you've probably heard the good news, but just in case you haven't...</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i><a href="https://plusoneexp.com/products/barkeep-on-the-borderlands-by-wf-smith" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Barkeep on the Borderland</a></i></b> won the <a href="https://ennie-awards.com/2023-nominees/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gold Ennie for Best Supplement in 2023</a>! </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Video of the awards ceremony is below. The Best Supplement segment starts at 2h 50m 20s, and the announcement of the gold winner starts at 3h 00m 36s.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i7t6LHAg1rM" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Congratulations first of Charles Ferguson-Avery and Alex Coggon at <a href="https://www.wetinkgames.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wet Ink Games</a> for winning the Silver Ennie with <b><i><a href="https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Into-the-Cess-and-Citadel-Print-PDF.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Into the Cess & Citadel</a></i></b>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">I also wanted to thank and congratulate everyone else who worked on <b><i>Barkeep</i></b>. This was a very large project, and I contributed a small part of it. I'm proud and honored to have been on this team.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Once again, big thanks to WFS of <b><a href="https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/blog/barkeep-wins-an-ennie" target="_blank">Prismatic Wasteland</a></b> for originating the project and including me on the team.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Thank you and congratulations to the other co-authors - Ava Islam of <b><a href="https://permacrandam.blogspot.com/" rel="" target="_blank">Permanent Cranial Damage</a></b>, Ben L of <b><a href="https://maziriansgarden.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Mazirian's Garden</a></b>, Chris McDowall of <b><a href="https://www.bastionland.com/" rel="" target="_blank">Bastionland</a></b>, emmy verte of <b><a href="https://spooky.blot.im/" rel="" target="_blank">Spooky Action at a Distance</a></b>, Gus L of <b><a href="https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/" rel="" target="_blank">All Dead Generations</a></b>, Luka Rejec of <b><a href="https://www.wizardthieffighter.com/" rel="" target="_blank">Wizard Thief Fighter</a></b>, Marcia B of <b><a href="https://traversefantasy.blogspot.com/" rel="" target="_blank">Traverse Fantasy</a></b>, Nick LS Whelan of <b><a href="https://www.paperspencils.com/" target="_blank">Papers & Pencils</a></b>, Ty Pitre of <b><a href="https://www.mindstormpress.com/" target="_blank">Mindstorm</a></b>, and <b><a href="https://zedecksiew.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Zedeck Siew</a></b>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Ava, Nick, and Ty also helped edit. Gus and Luka also provided art. KT Nguyen proofread and did layout.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Thank you and congrats as well to all the other artists who worked contributed to the book - <b><a href="https://acidlich.bigcartel.com/" target="_blank">Acid Lich</a></b>, <b><a href="https://amandahoart.com/" target="_blank">Amanda Ho</a></b>, Artie Esquire, <b><a href="https://bertdrawsstuff.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">bertdrawsstuff</a></b>, <b><a href="https://www.artstation.com/inkeater" target="_blank">Caleb Nelson</a></b>, Conor Ricks of <b><a href="https://connorricks.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Mighty Spark!</a></b>, <b><a href="https://demidevilqueen.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">DemiDevilQueen</a></b>, Emiel Boven of <b><a href="https://emielboven.substack.com/" target="_blank">Lizard Mail</a></b>, <b><a href="https://pradaldi.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Guy Pradel</a></b>, Hodag of <b><a href="https://nofoesnotraps.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">No Foes No Traps</a></b>, <a href="http://www.kenywid.com/illus.php" target="_blank"><b>Keny Widjaja</b></a>, <b><a href="https://norn-noszka.com/" target="_blank">Norn Noszka</a></b>, Sam Mameli of <b><a href="https://betterlegends.com/" target="_blank">Better Legends</a></b>, Sam Miller of <b><a href="https://savevsworm.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Save vs Worm</a></b>, and <b><a href="https://torthevic.itch.io/" target="_blank">torthevic</a></b>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Hurray for us all!<br /></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-16288404769244258562023-07-17T10:30:00.015-07:002023-08-16T04:54:35.065-07:00Barkeep on the Borderlands & the Brazen Boulevardier<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2022/02/my-brilliant-friends-conversation-with.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The last time I wrote about <b>Barkeep on the Borderlands</b></a>, it was but a young Kickstarter with dreams of fully funding, and my own involvement was merely the future promise of an as-yet unmet stretch goal.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">But since then, <b>Barkeep</b> has been released! It's available <a href="https://plusoneexp.com/collections/1-games/products/barkeep-on-the-borderlands-by-wf-smith" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">in print</a>, and <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/429877/Barkeep-on-the-Borderlands" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">pdf</a>, and it has <a href="https://plusoneexp.com/collections/1-games/products/pubcrawl-poster-map-barkeep-on-the-borderlands" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a map</a>! And <a href="https://plusoneexp.com/products/pubcrawl-coaster-set-barkeep-on-the-borderlands" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">coasters</a>!</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And even more exciting, it's been nominated for <a href="https://ennie-awards.com/2023-nominees/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">an Ennie award for Best Supplement</a>!</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">That means that you can help <b>Barkeep</b> win an Ennie, by <a href="https://vote.ennie-awards.com/vote/2023/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">voting before the election closes</a> on July 23rd. <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4TfIS_h7xWM3KdjYG2PfmW-PB2e1xhU7-DtZvhP1AWq6CtzBP3ABQpBdCwK2ouk-Sba1XNhRk3qXzPW8rW1vufVeYpkAZYC0IMlLGhK3DWhGye9JxXJ0gwMHfqkY80Zp8YvKnqU03JN8E5NvB6HcYwKxx2Psy0nYzbfs3jUf0EC3_SzedCMYzbZfI/s684/Brazen%20Boulevardier%20logo.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="639" data-original-width="684" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4TfIS_h7xWM3KdjYG2PfmW-PB2e1xhU7-DtZvhP1AWq6CtzBP3ABQpBdCwK2ouk-Sba1XNhRk3qXzPW8rW1vufVeYpkAZYC0IMlLGhK3DWhGye9JxXJ0gwMHfqkY80Zp8YvKnqU03JN8E5NvB6HcYwKxx2Psy0nYzbfs3jUf0EC3_SzedCMYzbZfI/w400-h374/Brazen%20Boulevardier%20logo.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Brazen Boulevardier logo</i> by Caleb Nelson<i><br /></i></td></tr></tbody></table> <br />My own contribution is a single pub for <b>Barkeep's</b> pubcrawl - <i>The Brazen Boulevardier</i>. The Boulevardier is a refuge for emigres from the Elemental Plane of Fire, who fled to the Material Plane to escape the Tyrant of Ashes and Tears, whose anhedonic regime forbids happiness and pleasure generally, and specifically alcohol, meat, and sex. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Tyrant is based somewhat on the laws and aspirations of various real-world theocrats, though it's not modeled closely on any particular regime. It's also based on my own struggles with depression, especially when I was younger.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As you might imagine, visits to the Boulevardier can get pretty spicy! If you play <b>Barkeep</b> on the Borderland, I hope you'll stop by. Just watch out for those phoenix-women!<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I want to thank WFS from <b><a href="https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/" target="_blank">Prismatic Wasteland</a></b> for involving me in this endeavor, Ty Pitre from <b><a href="https://mindstorm.blot.im/" target="_blank">Mindstorm</a></b> for his editing and project management, and all the artists, especially Caleb Nelson, who designed the Brazen Boulevardier logo, and illustrated one of my favorite possible encounters.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">And if you're reading this before July 23rd, please <a href="https://vote.ennie-awards.com/vote/2023/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">remember to go vote</a> for <b>Barkeep on the Borderlands</b> for <a href="https://vote.ennie-awards.com/vote/2023/" target="_blank">Best Supplement</a>!<br /></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-23661062569455311352023-06-12T07:51:00.001-07:002023-06-12T07:51:12.167-07:00My Book Review Blog - The Lunar Flaneur<div style="text-align: left;">Over the past year and a half, I've been writing reviews of all the books I finish and posting them to a private social media feed. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As part of my ongoing attempt to get myself back into blogging regularly, I've copied all my reviews so far over to a public blog. I'll be updating it regularly as I continue to read and review.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhthFVHXgV6nNc4SYWiS3pCBLJ4xSy_KUylqFVLK5tTWRkwjpR7XdvO_u1xBjwOpDKNkax9m2dv8uPzWdbhu8B2OjUn5EGY4bkLvNyAKlXY5Lspj7NG3Gp5xb7_iP1NAKoqzOYql92shqRHNRyqCWg52N5KkjqFapz52juPNJdWbkp3ImdHaBJhLw/s781/LF%20Header.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="781" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhthFVHXgV6nNc4SYWiS3pCBLJ4xSy_KUylqFVLK5tTWRkwjpR7XdvO_u1xBjwOpDKNkax9m2dv8uPzWdbhu8B2OjUn5EGY4bkLvNyAKlXY5Lspj7NG3Gp5xb7_iP1NAKoqzOYql92shqRHNRyqCWg52N5KkjqFapz52juPNJdWbkp3ImdHaBJhLw/w400-h123/LF%20Header.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /> Please enjoy! <b><a href="https://lunarflaneur.blogspot.com" target="_blank">The Lunar Flaneur</a></b><br /></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-87923360533054292972023-02-20T14:15:00.002-08:002023-10-18T11:17:06.009-07:00My 2022 in Review<div style="text-align: left;">Last year I started what I hope will be an annual tradition, and posted reviews of <a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2022/02/my-2021-in-review.html" target="_blank">my favorite things I read and watched in 2021</a>. It's time again, so here are my favorites from 2022! </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #666666;">(Please note, the categories are somewhat different this year, and might be different again next year, depending on what particularly interests me each time around.)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Best Things I Read</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYAdvnQKc250MM8LeOHQxd1V14mU6snFcGrIF3fOAaZ5833qrt-9OqO7rW1WWVBgwtjKFrqVZ9BSYMKb9r5TKvuRGTgZzMvDjX1smPxR4XYxmoUcjdtYPYyihxy1eju5SDt8g7OZMjTM0VbZAY8xT-YU6MXCht4M4ecCWtN84BTy_TLciieJE-ow/s1200/Black%20Water%20Lilies.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="914" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYAdvnQKc250MM8LeOHQxd1V14mU6snFcGrIF3fOAaZ5833qrt-9OqO7rW1WWVBgwtjKFrqVZ9BSYMKb9r5TKvuRGTgZzMvDjX1smPxR4XYxmoUcjdtYPYyihxy1eju5SDt8g7OZMjTM0VbZAY8xT-YU6MXCht4M4ecCWtN84BTy_TLciieJE-ow/w305-h400/Black%20Water%20Lilies.jpg" width="305" /></a></div><br /><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Graphic Novels - <i>Black Water Lilies</i> by Fred Duval and Didier Cassegrain</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i><a href="https://www.magnetic-press.com/blackwaterlilies/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Black Water Lilies</a></i></b> is a murder mystery set in the French village of Giverny, where Monet lived and painted for the latter part of his life. Police quickly determine that the murdered man was interested in acquiring Monet paintings by deceiving owners who didn't know the value of what they had, that he had numerous affairs, and that he might have a child. Three women emerge as suspects within the narrative - an old woman who secretly owns a Monet painting that is only rumored to even exist, a schoolteacher who has been seen with the dead man and might have had an affair with him, and a little girl who wants to be a painter and might be the right age to be the dead man's daughter. The police focus on the teacher and her husband, but that might be because the lead detective has fallen in love with her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The investigation turns up a lot of information, but seemingly no conclusions, until the very end. The end of the story is perfect, and makes everything you've read so far even better in retrospect. I found myself immediately flipping back through to consider it all again. The art is also a absolutely gorgeous, which I think you can tell from the cover. The pastel colors, the profusion of flowers and large panels that show off the landscape - reading this book is like investigating a mystery set inside a Monet painting. The text and art work really well together, with the beautiful surroundings contrasting with the darkness of the story.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My runners up are <i><a href="https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/berlin-paperback/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b>Berlin</b> by Jason Lutes</a></i>, and <a href="https://www.magnetic-press.com/giantess/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b><i>Giantess</i></b> by JC Deveny and Nuria Tamarit</a>, which was published by the same press as <i>Black Water Lilies</i>. Berlin is an absolute masterpiece, with a large cast of characters who embody the major events of Germany in the 1930s and black and white art that resembles the striking graphics of posters of that era, and of course Lutes' name <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/7199/Lampblack--Brimstone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">should be familiar</a> to RPG fans. <i>Giantess</i> is a fantasy comic about a giant girl who is adopted by humans, then sets out to find her way in the world, along the way encountering politics, war, dogmatism, asceticism, witchcraft, and feminism, all while trying to decide what sort of person she wants to be.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_aljlP4wleNH6rec_bNbuO6vHvLkxwZG91T4zno58oRzbNBT3pT2-33bDWpWB3nGbHviSSIUWdJLMvctEwPv-bkZ8iFXK45xE9IEiOb_psh0rc8rt3pPkIWM1ALSB9qc1HbEpfwxN8Ahkor56R0jE44LhEnVr0TxRsEObJ3Hm8d1R4SvXq_r4gA/s2560/Detransition%20Baby.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1683" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_aljlP4wleNH6rec_bNbuO6vHvLkxwZG91T4zno58oRzbNBT3pT2-33bDWpWB3nGbHviSSIUWdJLMvctEwPv-bkZ8iFXK45xE9IEiOb_psh0rc8rt3pPkIWM1ALSB9qc1HbEpfwxN8Ahkor56R0jE44LhEnVr0TxRsEObJ3Hm8d1R4SvXq_r4gA/w263-h400/Detransition%20Baby.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><br /><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Literary Fiction - <i>Destransition, Baby</i> by Torrey Peters</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>I'm always a bit nervous to read fiction about trans people, having been burned a bit by some of the novels by non-trans authors I read when I was first coming out. But I'm very glad I read <b><i><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/621886/detransition-baby-by-torrey-peters/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Detransition, Baby</a></i></b>, which is by a trans author, and filled with the sort of true-to-life details that let you know she really knows what she's talking about. I recognized myself in this, was reminded of other trans women I've known, and felt like I maybe learned some things about the community that I hadn't known before. Peters treats all her characters with empathy; she understands them and expresses their sometimes difficult-to-explain interior states with deceptive ease. Consider, for a moment, the beautiful ambiguity of the title. Is it a loving request, a bullying taunt, or simply an ordered list?</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Detransition, Baby</i> follows a trio of characters. Ames is currently living as a man, but he used to live as a trans woman, and may choose to again, sometime in the future, beyond the end of the book. Reese is Ames's ex-girlfriend, and another trans woman. Katrina is Ames's boss and current girlfriend, and she is accidentally pregnant with Ames's child. Ames suggests an unconventional arrangement - that the three of them co-parent the child together. As this plot unfolds in the present day, we get flashbacks to Ames's and Reese's closeted girlhoods, the early days of their transitions, how they met, and why their relationship ended. Ultimately, the three of them will have to decide whether to commit to Ames's plan or not, but the novel doesn't end with a decision; it ends when they have each finally confronted enough of their past mistakes to actually make a real decision.</div><div><br /></div><div>My runner up is <a href="https://coffeehousepress.org/products/temporary" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b><i>Temporary</i></b> by Hillary Leichter</a>, although <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-very-nice-box-eve-gleichmanlaura-blackett" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b><i>The Very Nice Box</i></b> by Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman</a> probably deserves a shout-out as well. <i>Temporary</i> follows a member of the precariat through a series of temporary jobs, where she deals with loneliness, low-pay, mistreatment by her coworkers, and the moral injury of being asked to do someone else's dirty work, all while longing for "the steadiness" of a job of her own. What's unique here is that her temporary positions are all fanciful and surreal - a pirate, a barnacle, a ghost, a hitman's assistant, a witch's assistant, a temporary mom. <i>The Very Nice Box</i> is a subversive romance novel that follows a queer woman working for an IKEA stand-in, designing the titular object for her company, and maybe re-opening her heart to a bro-ish young man whose affable masculinity is a <i>little</i> more toxic than it initially appears.<br /></div><div> </div><div> </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhilh4nSKCuJ5VH50H1dNAb6Wf0S7f_HaViB0zOTXf1MrIXAkGsCAmJNqA7Yp5yDLrGsltPLnaQ1BeaCkQCfDpRVXJsSgt8uS2JWtbYT2tJVK_9E5NaFBHjMjNwXRj1xfzQu5FZWmxRbh0WzeDFNBpJjZOrH3b96woXKdad3M0pTJAbSsD3ZzTw0g/s500/Senlin%20Ascends.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhilh4nSKCuJ5VH50H1dNAb6Wf0S7f_HaViB0zOTXf1MrIXAkGsCAmJNqA7Yp5yDLrGsltPLnaQ1BeaCkQCfDpRVXJsSgt8uS2JWtbYT2tJVK_9E5NaFBHjMjNwXRj1xfzQu5FZWmxRbh0WzeDFNBpJjZOrH3b96woXKdad3M0pTJAbSsD3ZzTw0g/w266-h400/Senlin%20Ascends.jpg" width="266" /></a></div> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Genre Fiction - <i>Senlin Ascends</i> by Josiah Bancroft</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i><a href="https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/senlin-ascends/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Senlin Ascends</a></i></b> is a fantasy novel, set in a world that resembles rural England, or maybe New England, with the Tower standing in for London or New York. Thomas Senlin, a small-town school teacher and latter day Ichabod Crane figure, takes his new wife to the Tower for their honeymoon and <i>immediately</i> gets separated from her. We follow him as he searches, gradually working his way up the levels of the interior. The bottom floors of the Tower are tourist attractions, gaining expense and exclusivity as they rise. Senlin is a flawed protagonist, at once too fussy and too certain of himself, but he survives to continue his search because he grows and learns from his mistakes.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Although the idea of the Tower, and its early displays of steampunk technology, are indeed fantastical, Bancroft grounds his story in a great deal more social realism than you might expect. He's especially attuned to issues of class and gender. The Tower is a machine, and it runs on the exploitation of labor. Where I think Bancroft excels is, at each stage of his story, recognizing what's the most obvious thing that could happen next, and then trying to outdo himself. By the time I reached the final set-piece, where a half dozen factions and conflicts all exploded into one another, I was seriously impressed by his skill. <i>Senlin</i> is the first book of a quartet. It stands alone well enough if you're not sure you want to commit to the series, but I'm glad I kept going.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My runner up is <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/209798/angelmaker-by-nick-harkaway/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b><i>Angelmaker</i></b> by Nick Harkaway</a>. Harkaway gives us a James Bond type spy villain with a doomsday device and a plan to freeze the world in a state of perpetual quantum certainty, an aging lady spy forced out of retirement to stop him one last time, and a hapless watchmaker, son of a famous dead gangster, who assembles the greatest underworld vigilante team this side of <i>M</i> to pull one last heist and save the world from a state unbearable epistemic oversaturation. The whole caper is an awful lot of fun, at least as rollicking, madcap, and sexy as it is philosophical, but the elevated stakes, and the ideas behind them, only added to my enjoyment.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Best Things I Listened To</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-KACt6YhOyY" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Pop Music - "Expert in a Dying Field" by the Beths</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">With lyrics that seem to simultaneously describe the feeling of loving vintage and retro things, the grief of a failing relationship, and the pervasive anxiety of working in academia in time of budget cuts and shrinking college-age populations, guitars that progressively shift from pop to rock, and a video that was seemingly decorated by someone who wanted to make me sick with jealousy, the Beths score a very easy win here. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For my runners up, I recommend <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbTZ_YbIoQQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"I'm Not Where You Are" by Marika Hackman</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkRNgwlA5NE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"None of My Friends" by Liz Lawrence</a>, which are both about wanting to be alone, in their own ways, and both have excellent videos. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zb5Ja6V4OeY" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Rock Music - "Hertz" by Amyl & the Sniffers</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Amyl and her band are an honest-to-god punk rock phenomenon, with fast guitars, punchy lyrics, firecracker energy that rages without ever seeming to run out, and a name that genuinely offends at least half the people I try to recommend them to. <span style="color: #666666;">(Just what <i>are</i> they sniffing, everyone seems to wonder. Is it glue, or the <i>only</i> other obvious alternative?)</span> Here, she sings about wanting to go on a beach holiday, and I find her mood irresistibly infectious.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My runner up is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd9jeJk2UHQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"Chaise Lounge" by Wet Leg</a>, which got much more attention this year. Despite their equally salacious name and even-more-explicit lyrics, no one ever seems as put out by this duo as they do by the Sniffers. The guitars here are probably a bit more danceable for most folks too.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Best Things I Watched</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5JOhs9LvXLA" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Television - <i>Dirty Pair</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I never saw <b><i><a href="https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GKEH2G8ZJ/dirty-pair" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dirty Pair</a></i></b> when it was originally on in the 1980s - in fact, I only found it because of <a href="https://www.cbr.com/dirty-pair-best-trans-representation-in-anime/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a recent CBR article praising it</a> shortly after it reappeared on Crunchyroll - but I'd like to think that if I'd had a cool older sister, this is the sort of show she'd have taken me under her wing and forced me to watch with her for my own benefit.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Dirty Pair follows a couple of teenage girl heroes-for-hire as they solve problems and restore justice in the most chaotic ways possible across a wild and dangerous scifi future. The girls <i>feel </i>like real teenagers. They quarrel with each other constantly. They'd rather go on dates with cute boys that save the world, but they <i>will</i>, though they'd like bonus pay or extra vacation days if they have to go above and beyond their original contract. In a galaxy where there seemingly is no "letter of the law" to follow, they consistently try to do the right thing and to stand up for people with less power who're being oppressed, no matter who's doing it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And yes, their costumes are basically just fancy swimsuits. Yes, we sometimes see them wrapped in towels after showering at their apartment. But unlike more recent anime, we don't get any leering fanservice close-ups of their bodies. Their outfits just seem like an expression of self-confidence; their time "backstage" is shown naturalistically. The camera treats the audience as a peer rather than a voyeur. This is a series that was made <i>for</i> girls first and foremost. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Plus, listen to that theme song! It's immediately jumped to the top of my favorites list, right beside "Cruel Angel's Thesis".</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Honestly this was a good year for animation, and I watched a lot of it, but my runner-up is <b><i><a href="https://www.disneyplus.com/series/star-wars-andor/3xsQKWG00GL5" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Andor</a></i></b>, which would be first place in its own category if I was splitting television any further this year. It's a show about a Rebellion and an Empire that is thematically all about, you know, the ideas of <i>rebellion</i> and <i>empire</i>. Other reviews of the show tend to emphasize the price we see the rebels paying; I want to draw attention to <i>Andor's</i> representation of imperialism. All the cops we meet are bastards, the prison we see deserves to be abolished, and one of the most powerful scenes asks us to cheer for rioters throwing bricks at the police. <span style="color: #666666;">(You might be briefly tempted, as I was, to feel some empathy for the girlboss character, until you're reminded that, <i>oh right,</i> she works for a government that tortures and kills with impunity, and the more competent she is at her job, the worse things are for the people she's targeting.)</span> <i>Andor</i> is by far the most anti-authoritarian show I've watched recently. It also has excellent pacing into 3-episode arcs that inevitably culminate in perfectly choreographed action scenes, actors who are good at acting, and really excellent attention to detail in terms of the sets, costumes, and music.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBj7smLTB3VG3W1-2kYDfZx14Pv6zZIaP6Tw60XjIipwoB8XkFUZB3NBK7jbU7yZun2AgjV1cEj3d-EcQXhUnzi2QMRIczb_Fvj5Zwztba3Iz_MWYKUTWMDWkGCs7pe_Rw-Td_srUl0Z9GF0L7JxjtZ_zyy3F4Sl-I42n5raS_dWOgInS5KihXZw/s800/BLBoLP.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBj7smLTB3VG3W1-2kYDfZx14Pv6zZIaP6Tw60XjIipwoB8XkFUZB3NBK7jbU7yZun2AgjV1cEj3d-EcQXhUnzi2QMRIczb_Fvj5Zwztba3Iz_MWYKUTWMDWkGCs7pe_Rw-Td_srUl0Z9GF0L7JxjtZ_zyy3F4Sl-I42n5raS_dWOgInS5KihXZw/w270-h400/BLBoLP.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><br /> <br /><div><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Arthouse Films - <i>Bad Luck Banging, or Loony Porn</i></span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZMAAYy7GQY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bad Luck Banging</a></i></b> tells the story of a teacher who made a short porn video with her husband, and has to attend a meeting with the school's principal and a group of concerned parents to determine whether or not she'll be allowed to keep her job. In the first act, she crosses Bucharest on foot, walking from her apartment to the school, with a couple errands along the way. The movie was filmed in spring or summer 2020, so the masks, and the weird tension that suffused every face-to-face encounter during that time, are presented as a matter-of-fact part of the story. There's an interlude where the director criticizes what he sees as the sexual hypocrisy and growing fascism of Romanian society. His complaints about his country sound a lot like my complaints about mine; the differences are matters of degree, not kind. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the second act, the teacher attends the meeting, outdoors, because of the pandemic. If the first part was her Gethsemane, this is her Golgotha. The crowd of parents all want her fired. They insist on screening the porn video. <span style="color: #666666;">(It was taken down from the internet, but one mother "helpfully" downloaded a copy for the meeting.)</span> The parents all watch the video while the fathers make lewd comments. And the teacher <i>does not flinch</i>. She doesn't apologize. She doesn't offer to resign. She defends her right to exist as a human outside of her job, and she defends her ability to do her job well. I was in awe of her, transfixed by her courage and her strength. I only hope I can be half as brave if a conservative mob ever comes after me.</div><div><br /></div><div>One thing I sometimes think about when watching or reading, is whether the depiction of sexuality is appropriate - was it necessary? was it authentic to the characters? should there have been less of it? or more? The show <i>My Dress-Up Darling</i> stands out to me for its inauthentic portrayal - when Marin looks at Gojo, we see him through her eyes, and understand what she feels, but when Gojo looks at Marin, we get generic anime fanservice, not a faithful representation of why he's so flustered by his sexy friend. <i>The City in the Middle of the Night</i>, which I otherwise really enjoyed, is notable for having characters who, seriously, should have just fucked at some point, where it feels false that literally none of them did, ever.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Bad Luck Banging</i> absolutely passes this test. If a point of this film is that the teacher and her husband had the right to make a porn video, that she did nothing wrong either in her actions or by filming them, then yes, I really think the movie really <i>does</i> need to show you that video. It's not just acceptable; it's necessary. It would be self-defeating for the film to insist that this was completely fine but also refuse to allow the audience to glimpse it. And the film makes it clear, she hasn't done anything immoral - the people who keep re-uploading the video after it's taken down, and the people who watch it when she asks them not to, have.</div><div><br /></div>My runner up is <b><i><a href=" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-fQPTwma9o" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Portrait of a Lady on Fire</a></i></b>, which again, is probably the more famous of the two on my list. It's kind of a slow burn of a movie, but not only did it keep growing on me as I watched it, but I found my enjoyment of it increasing even more in retrospect after I finished. It's a historical lesbian romance that does <i>right</i> a lot of things that other films in that niche are often criticized for doing wrong. And as a bit of storytelling technique, I especially appreciate the character of the maid and her problem, which forces the two main women to get out of their own heads, interact with other people, and help someone who needs it. Her being younger also emphasizes the lead characters' relative maturity. It's a very well-made film.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkMxivJYJYotZPistNrYsS8h2BOx-3tI1xViyodd7_hVUVmwWeNThH0TSuHJvuNROV89djmVloeIsCvt3InGCugJ3go-ATDP-fxBn-71xQzJtJeAUOPmSGoHPE2jtS6K9zI0XjxzoH9sLUCKBv-SZ3Le__lfK2C7jNmllHdsXYJQsSZ8RWc40wLw/s879/Everything%20Everywhere%20All%20at%20Once.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="879" data-original-width="607" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkMxivJYJYotZPistNrYsS8h2BOx-3tI1xViyodd7_hVUVmwWeNThH0TSuHJvuNROV89djmVloeIsCvt3InGCugJ3go-ATDP-fxBn-71xQzJtJeAUOPmSGoHPE2jtS6K9zI0XjxzoH9sLUCKBv-SZ3Le__lfK2C7jNmllHdsXYJQsSZ8RWc40wLw/w276-h400/Everything%20Everywhere%20All%20at%20Once.jpg" width="276" /></a></div><br /> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Genre Films - <i>Everything Everywhere All At Once</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Speaking of well-made movies, can we talk about just how good <b><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxN1T1uxQ2g" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Everything Everywhere All at Once</a></i></b> is? At a time when multiverse movies are all the rage, it is easily the best multiverse movie, and likely to stay that way for awhile. We get a quick, understandable explanation for how the multiverse works, and how people can contact their multiversal variants, and the payoff from visiting the multiverse isn't <i>just</i> cool costumes, incredible fight scenes, and an excuse for each actor to play multiple roles - though we get all those things too. The payoff is a surprisingly moving discussion of the regret we all sometimes feel over the decisions we didn't make, expressed by characters who are not idealized or perfect, but are realistically, at times frustratingly, flawed, imperfect, <i>human</i>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And as I said, it's a <i>really</i> well-made film. From Chekov's Gun in drama to a whole host of ideas about the role of repetition in comedy, we know that there are times in any work to bring something back from earlier rather than introduce something new. And part of the beauty of <i>EEAAO</i> is that <i>everything</i> comes back, usually two or three times. Nothing is one-off, nothing is just for effect. Everything comes back, and gains humor and poignancy from its reuse. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">The film editing also deserves a special shout-out here. Most of the time, I feel like awards for editing are mostly a way to lavish even more praise onto already successful films, or to ensure that a particular prestige pic doesn't get completely boxed out by someone else's winning streak - but seriously, <i>EEAAO</i> is a well-edited film. From the cuts between realities, to the super-rapid flashbacks, to the main villain's mutating mulitversal costumes and weaponry, to the really touching scene where two unmoving rocks talk to each other with the help the best shot-countershot since Alligator Loki, this is a movie that simply would not work if it weren't edited so well, and among the many things worth noticing as you watch it, that's definitely one.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My runner up is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MysGjRS9jFU" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Netflix's <b><i>Kate</i></b></a>, featuring Mary Kate Winstead on a furious and doomed mission to get revenge on the people who poisoned her before the poison finishes its job. Absolutely brutal fight scenes, plot and dialogue that manage to not romanticize her remorseless killing spree, and the kind of neon-drenched visuals that I'm always excited to see more of. Watching <i>Kate</i> back-to-back with <i>Gunpowder Milkshake</i> made the latter seem even more garbo by comparison than it would have if I'd watched it alone. I'm ready for a change of pace from the formula of making your anti-heroic character more sympathetic by giving them a kid to defend, but considering that the radiation-poisoned protagonist goes back at least to <i>D.O.A.</i>, it's not originality that matters here, but how well the film uses the pieces it's assembled from.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-25560607910288852782022-12-28T11:50:00.005-08:002024-01-18T16:00:30.131-08:00Roadside Picnic Basket Book Club - 2 - Blindsight<div style="text-align: left;">For the second meeting of the Roadside Picnic Basket Book Club, Trey from <b><a href="http://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">From the Sorcerer's Skull</a></b> played host, and invited me to discuss the dungeoneering aspects of Peter Watts' novel <b><a href="https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Blindsight</a></b>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ahicSJSaFDZPYF2nUwRBCTVEHn7WqJzOXQULx4cJqPQ6dTvuu2NgbWrDIUueXKS3b_VoArJhJd_zYJMEhmUv3py-1imITr_RPLepy5L51ASrAxBjRjE59Y0Hz_DnaYmUxEKi6teqvdo-lLTvyNO9CUWD6M2FbtQNNiEbGPiOqrq9CMk7zsaVXQ/s2101/Blindsight.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2101" data-original-width="1400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ahicSJSaFDZPYF2nUwRBCTVEHn7WqJzOXQULx4cJqPQ6dTvuu2NgbWrDIUueXKS3b_VoArJhJd_zYJMEhmUv3py-1imITr_RPLepy5L51ASrAxBjRjE59Y0Hz_DnaYmUxEKi6teqvdo-lLTvyNO9CUWD6M2FbtQNNiEbGPiOqrq9CMk7zsaVXQ/s320/Blindsight.jpg" width="213" /></a></div> <br /><div style="text-align: left;">So despite the cold, pull up a blanket, pour a cup of hot tea from your thermos, and enjoy the club. You can read <a href="http://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/2022/12/book-club-dungeon-hiding-in-blindsight.html" target="_blank">the first half of our conversation <b>here</b></a>, and <a href="http://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/2022/12/book-club-dungeon-hiding-in-blindsight_0479870487.html" target="_blank">the second half <b>here</b></a>.</div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-24500972862064555602022-11-07T15:37:00.002-08:002024-01-18T16:00:15.515-08:00Blog5 on Tape - Type5 of Re5ource5 <div style="text-align: left;">The fifth season of <a href="https://www.paperspencils.com/" target="_blank">Nick LS Whelan's</a> excellent <b><a href="http://blogsontape.paperspencils.com/" target="_blank">Blogs on Tape</a></b> project is well underway, and I've been fortunate enough to be included again this year!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Big thanks to Nick for his ongoing curation, preservation, and publication efforts, and for including me in his vision of the best of the blogosphere!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV0Aabr3YsRJTI1RlK5QTz4wW4ih_WDtRXW7t7Sd2dZj_2elg9EmSfcn0FqhM2TKLEGn1pp7OnE0nrJPPVYCyVve7X9fmqzN4wlcfh3xJr7iaK48dY-G4XDRUXLyDawIbQXjGnbeJnEFrWrd717cW4erU7drWgIJfu_qK39hT0HVvCZFR2xE9wcw/s1200/Blogs%20On%20Tape%20header.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="279" data-original-width="1200" height="93" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV0Aabr3YsRJTI1RlK5QTz4wW4ih_WDtRXW7t7Sd2dZj_2elg9EmSfcn0FqhM2TKLEGn1pp7OnE0nrJPPVYCyVve7X9fmqzN4wlcfh3xJr7iaK48dY-G4XDRUXLyDawIbQXjGnbeJnEFrWrd717cW4erU7drWgIJfu_qK39hT0HVvCZFR2xE9wcw/w400-h93/Blogs%20On%20Tape%20header.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;">You can listen to the episode at <a href="http://blogsontape.paperspencils.com/2022/11/07/episode-121-mechanics-for-resource-management-part-3-types-of-resources-by-anne-hunter/" target="_blank">Episode 121 - Mechanics for Resource Management Part 3: Types of Resources</a>, and you can read <a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/04/mechanics-for-resource-management-part.html" target="_blank">my original post</a> here.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And remember to check in on Nick's work at <b><a href="https://www.paperspencils.com/" target="_blank">Papers & Pencils</a></b> and <b><a href="http://blogsontape.paperspencils.com/" target="_blank">Blogs on Tape</a></b>.</div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-84762827042987296062022-10-18T16:07:00.000-07:002024-01-18T16:00:06.579-08:00How I Spent My Summer Vacation<div style="text-align: left;">Over the summer, I got really depressed. I've had major depressive disorder for more or less my entire life, and I mostly have it well-managed, but sometimes it grows out of my control. Summers are often worse, for whatever reason. And of course, the general state of the world has worsened, downgrading from <a href="http://gunshowcomic.com/648" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b>this-is-fine-dot-png</b></a> to <a href="https://media4.giphy.com/media/7yoAIR7CdWOUE/giphy.gif" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b>not-great-bob-dot-gif</b></a>, in ways too numerous to mention, which isn't the <i>cause</i> of my depression, but certainly doesn't <i>help</i> either.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">While I was depressed, I took a hiatus from blogging. I'm feeling better now, but it's been difficult to restart all the things I stopped doing during the most difficult time.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In March, shortly before my absence, Josep Torra of the <b><a href="https://tirantlodau.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Tirant lo Dau</a></b> blog contacted me about translating my essay <a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/10/landmark-hidden-secret.html" target="_blank"><i>Landmark, Hidden, Secret</i></a> into Catalan and publishing it in a zine. This easily makes <i>LHS</i> the most famous thing I've ever written. The zine is available on <b><a href="https://tirant-lo-dau.itch.io/tirant-lo-drac-2022" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">itch.io </a></b>as a free pdf, and there's an inexpensive print option on <b><a href="https://www.lulu.com/shop/tirant-lo-dau-/tirant-lo-drac-2022-tinta-superior/paperback/product-pzpddg.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lulu</a></b>. Josep's translation of my writing is on pages 81-86.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicvUE4qlhhJtq_j80FoV8HXBQYWp5xri0X9yJdh5zYaQkSRfaRf4BYFk5exVWIR85EeyErCFPEAYnYHY9NbvtTeg6jcGLquIg3fGMiKWnyA03KbN7NddM0BqeN0cZaPKrGFGMMGnYZ8svrn4qDp4uYDPPLtSrZfmGWNeHzYGzy8KEvvQB-PI4Itg/s490/Tirant%20lo%20Drac%202022.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="490" data-original-width="347" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicvUE4qlhhJtq_j80FoV8HXBQYWp5xri0X9yJdh5zYaQkSRfaRf4BYFk5exVWIR85EeyErCFPEAYnYHY9NbvtTeg6jcGLquIg3fGMiKWnyA03KbN7NddM0BqeN0cZaPKrGFGMMGnYZ8svrn4qDp4uYDPPLtSrZfmGWNeHzYGzy8KEvvQB-PI4Itg/w284-h400/Tirant%20lo%20Drac%202022.png" width="284" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Tirat lo Drac 2022</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Then in June, Chris McDowell <i>also</i> promoted <i><a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/10/landmark-hidden-secret.html" target="_blank">Landmark, Hidden, Secret</a></i>. It was tip #2 in his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/Bastionland/videos" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b>Bastionland Broadcasting</b></a> episode <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUSnedoQmQg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"Preparing for an RPG Session - 3 Small Tips</a>"</i>. The section that mentions me starts at around the 23 minute, 30 second mark.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CUSnedoQmQg" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Over the summer, my regular online gaming group met somewhat sporadically. Peter from <b><a href="https://fantasyheartbreak.blogspot.com/search/label/Owl%20Light" target="_blank">Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop</a></b> acted as the dungeon master, and ran us through <b><a href="https://tsojcanth.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/hypothesis-69-redux-axos-dungeon-for-one-page-dungeon-competition-2012/" target="_blank">Axo's Dungeon</a></b> - which turns out to be quite a work of OSR collaboration, put together and keyed by Paolo Greco from <b><a href="https://tsojcanth.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/hypothesis-69-redux-axos-dungeon-for-one-page-dungeon-competition-2012/" target="_blank">Lost Pages</a></b>, using geomorphs hosted on <b><a href="https://dysonlogos.blog/maps/geomorph-mapping-project/" target="_blank">Dyson's Dodecahedron</a></b> and <b><a href="https://stonewerks.wordpress.com/category/geomorphs/" target="_blank">Stonewerks</a></b>, with updated art provided by <b><a href="http://quibish.blogspot.com/2011/06/populate-this-dungeon.html" target="_blank">Of Dice and Djinn</a></b>. We used Peter's <b><a href="https://fantasyheartbreak.blogspot.com/2020/04/skrop-standard-kobold-rules-of-play.html" target="_blank">SKROP</a></b> rules, which is his house ruled mashup of the <b>GLOG</b> and <b>D&D 5e</b>, and the game took place in his <i><a href="https://fantasyheartbreak.blogspot.com/search/label/Owl%20Light" target="_blank">Owl Light</a></i> setting, a science fantasy moon orbiting a Jupiter-like gas giant.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We started the campaign looking for human Reavers who'd been kidnapping villagers in a remote lake district, and found the dungeon on an island in lake. Inside we met an affable and nervous priest of Cthulhu, who wished to promote moderate worship of the Great Old One, but not <i>so much</i> worship that it might trigger madness in the worshippers or risk disturbing Cthulhu from his eternal slumber in any way. We also found a whole hoard of Reavers in a tenuous alliance with the Squid King and his Cephalopod army.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The dungeon has <i>a lot </i>of corridors and passageways, giving us an almost <b>Metroid</b>-like experience of rapid exploration. We rescued the Slug Witch from the Slug King, provoked a war between the Reavers and the Cephalopods that decimated both factions, and rescued the imprisoned villagers. Peter was amazed that we managed to navigate the dungeon so effectively to find the things we were looking for. <i>I</i> was amazed that our various disguises and stratagems actually worked and got the two armies to nearly wipe each other out. It was maybe my most efficacious campaign ever, in terms of accomplishing my character's goals during the game.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLX17zZFFUM8XrM7fcCEdBSLUEPaI59JR85RjYzK-y0lgV5CaZIs7w6ROoeTKPKQiB8uho79THepSMfYeYJbuDW0K7GXJgEaQiArLkc4h97AKjMJdXeBUrT6ei_d6oTlwk5XxLBdAMj1bZp2ZoPvrn36CNgvNqEzmYH_IQiTIRQ4O3PabkrtMpOg/s821/Lost%20Pages%20-%20Axos%20Dungeon.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="821" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLX17zZFFUM8XrM7fcCEdBSLUEPaI59JR85RjYzK-y0lgV5CaZIs7w6ROoeTKPKQiB8uho79THepSMfYeYJbuDW0K7GXJgEaQiArLkc4h97AKjMJdXeBUrT6ei_d6oTlwk5XxLBdAMj1bZp2ZoPvrn36CNgvNqEzmYH_IQiTIRQ4O3PabkrtMpOg/w374-h400/Lost%20Pages%20-%20Axos%20Dungeon.png" width="374" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Axos Dungeon</i> by <a href="https://tsojcanth.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/hypothesis-69-redux-axos-dungeon-for-one-page-dungeon-competition-2012/" target="_blank">Lost Pages</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table> <div> </div><div> </div><div>Recently we've started a new campaign with me as the referee. Ever since the <a href="https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/store/?collection_id=398071529730" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">new edition of <b>Into the Odd</b></a> came out, I've been wanting to run someone through the expanded version of the <i>"Iron Coral"</i> dungeon. Originally only a single level, it now has three! I actually ran the original as a <b>DCC</b> weird western adventure site, which I called <a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/04/session-report-shootout-at-irontown.html" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">"The Irontown Corral"</a>, but this is my first time running it using <b>I2TO</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Peter and Leighton have just found an entrance to the second level, so I'm excited to see what happens next! So far Peter's Prize Breeder and Leighton's Sky Trooper have found 6 jars of "Dr Bronzeworthy's Fantabulous Frictionless Ball Bearings" and a very valuable crystalline sphere, thanks in part to some help from a couple of assistants that I rolled up using the Burnboss and Courier failed careers from <b><a href="http://benignbrownbeast.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-pair-of-failed-careers.html" target="_blank">Benign Brown Beast</a></b>. <i>(In the likely event of character death, the assistants will get promoted up to full player character status.) </i>In the next section, I'm hoping they'll delve into territory none of us has seen yet.<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2N0WxpN4Ic--Q3DxvyTaAiek_EKmwc1mB_2ImShLyX-g-DS_5btfUGuWUHaHsKWbVy_c0EyvXF9MxyGElhJqOnWYpFI2Nbg-CU4YBJqR-rmNnAOkNNRtWFzoy5_ruuDLAQHwsIgPec8-CZQXs4cavn18glMHgpb_dmzwm-bADX7VZU_FbAQi8w/s1169/I2TO%20-%20The%20Iron%20Coral.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="877" data-original-width="1169" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2N0WxpN4Ic--Q3DxvyTaAiek_EKmwc1mB_2ImShLyX-g-DS_5btfUGuWUHaHsKWbVy_c0EyvXF9MxyGElhJqOnWYpFI2Nbg-CU4YBJqR-rmNnAOkNNRtWFzoy5_ruuDLAQHwsIgPec8-CZQXs4cavn18glMHgpb_dmzwm-bADX7VZU_FbAQi8w/w400-h300/I2TO%20-%20The%20Iron%20Coral.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Iron Coral</i> frontispiece by Johan Nohr</td></tr></tbody></table> </div><div><br /></div><div>So that's how I spent my summer. Feel free to share what you've been up to in the comments!</div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-49171944123107997562022-04-29T06:48:00.002-07:002024-01-18T15:59:47.173-08:00Bon Mots - A Phone Call from the Joker<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>BATPHONE</b> - <i>Ring ring!</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><b>BATMAN</b> - Hello?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JOKER</b> - <i>Ha ha!</i> Greetings, Batman! It's me, your old pal, the Joker!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>BATMAN</b> - This is an unlisted number.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JOKER</b> - Just calling to let you know I've broken out of Arkham again! <i>Ha ha!</i> Next time you should try locking me up in a wet paper bag! By the way, I hope none of those guards had families! <i>Ha ha!</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>BATMAN</b> - Dammit, Joker, they <i>all</i> had families.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JOKER</b> - Oh good! You see I dosed each of them with a time-delayed chemical, coordinated to the time of my breakout and the length of their shifts! Right about now, each of them should be murdering their spouses and children! <i>Ha ha!</i> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Don't worry, none of them have control over their actions, and here I am, a known criminal, confessing to poisoning them in a recorded call with a sworn officer of the court! I'm sure the prosecutor won't hold them responsible! Of course nothing will save them from the guilt, or the drug-induced PTSD flashbacks! <i>Ha ha!</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>BAT</b><b>MAN</b> - What makes you think I'm recording this call?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiszNRMIpNsRQBxPktnNvP6fd8a7lhD61nSzb2zCM852T-voChpSS9yQ6VE9i8Ggut_iDCq6DYcUfzhHptFGnKKeUV9m1W3M5_MdffO-c6v-U-kXZ5U10mIgjVW4WtnXBTZPV6Xe2_Xc5s5siFfDRjTBSK6fi6Kl7YQ-FV-JwlqPcBwSH70tjO2TQ/s785/Joker%2066.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="785" data-original-width="578" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiszNRMIpNsRQBxPktnNvP6fd8a7lhD61nSzb2zCM852T-voChpSS9yQ6VE9i8Ggut_iDCq6DYcUfzhHptFGnKKeUV9m1W3M5_MdffO-c6v-U-kXZ5U10mIgjVW4WtnXBTZPV6Xe2_Xc5s5siFfDRjTBSK6fi6Kl7YQ-FV-JwlqPcBwSH70tjO2TQ/w295-h400/Joker%2066.jpg" width="295" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666;"><i>art by Jonathan Case for <b>Batman 66</b> #1</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="color: #38761d;">JOKER</b><span style="color: #38761d;"> - By now you're probably wondering why I've phoned you! I wanted to let you know that I've decided to play a little game with your sworn oath to never kill anyone under any circumstances ever! </span><i style="color: #38761d;">Ha ha!</i><span style="color: #38761d;"> My recent flooding of the entire Gotham subway system with poison gas during rush hour, killing thousands, apparently didn't provide you with enough motivation!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>BATMAN</b> - I won't stoop to your level, Joker.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JOKER</b> - That's too bad for the people of Bludhaven, Batman! I've stolen a nuclear bomb, and I'm going to detonate it downtown! Millions will die! <i>Ha ha!</i></span><br /><br /><br /><b>BATMAN</b> - I'll never let that happen, Joker. I'll find you before the bomb goes off. I'm the world's greatest detective, don't you think I can find you in time?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JOKER</b> - Perhaps you plan to find me by tracing this phone call? Let me save you the trouble! This phone is the detonator to a bomb vest I'm wearing! <i>Ha ha!</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">As soon as I hang up, all you have to do is call me back, the phone will ring, and I'll die in a fiery explosion! The bomb vest only has a single stick of dynamite and I'm nowhere near any other people! The bomb will kill me and me alone and won't cause any structural damage to any bridges, roads, or buildings! There'll be no collateral damage of any kind! <i>Ha ha!</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Of course that means if you <i>don't</i> want to kill me then you can't risk calling me back after I hang up!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>BATMAN</b> - I don't need to find you, Joker, I just need to find the bomb.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JOKER</b> - The bomb? The nuclear bomb? The nuclear bomb hidden somewhere in the heart of downtown Bludhaven? A city of millions? Millions who will die by being blown up by the nuclear bomb hidden by me, the Joker?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>BATMAN</b> - Yes, <i>that</i> bomb.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JOKER</b> - You should know, Batman, that there's no way to disable the bomb on-site! <i>Ha ha!</i> It's connected to a remote detonator, and if you disable or remove it, it'll blow up immediately, which, I'll remind you again, will result in the deaths of millions! </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>BATMAN</b> - I understand the threat, Joker.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JOKER</b> - What's the remote detonator you ask? Why it's a simple countdown timer, but instead of being linked to a clock, it's connected directly to my heartbeat! <i>Ha ha!</i> The only way to stop the countdown is to stop my heart!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">By the way Batman, I hope I haven't given you the impression that you're going to have enough time to stop me any other way! <i>Ha ha!</i> After I hang up the phone you'll have about 3 minutes before the nuclear bomb detonates, <i>less</i> if I get excited and my heart starts racing while we talk!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>BATMAN</b> - . . .</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JOKER</b> - So what's it going to be, Batman? Lift one little finger to kill me? Or by your inaction allow millions to die and suffer? There's no other way to solve this!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">You're trapped in a no-win situation specifically designed to show off the limits of your never kill anyone no matter how much they deserve it policy! A better, or at least more unified team of writers and editors would either allow you to kill or avoid putting you in situations like this one that make you look foolish! </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">No one minds a Batman who doesn't kill as long as he only fights bank robbers with silly costumes! But try explaining why you won't execute a war criminal who has wiped out whole neighborhoods, entire cities, and will keep doing so again and again until you put him in the <i>only</i> place he can't escape!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>BATMAN</b> - . . . </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JOKER</b> - What will you do? Police can't arrest me, prisons can't hold me! If you capture me, my next crime will make this one pale in comparison! How many lives are you willing to sacrifice just to prevent me from committing suicide?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">You can't get to Bludhaven, and couldn't stop the detonation there if you tried! You don't have time to drive or fly here! You don't even know where I am! </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Even your <i>other</i> old pal Superman can't help you! Metropolis is basically Manhattan, Gotham is Brooklyn, and Bludhaven is essentially Queens! And everyone knows Superman never crosses the East River!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>BATMAN</b> - Actually, Gotham is canonically in New Jersey.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JOKER</b> - <i>Ha ha!</i> You're almost out of time, Batman! </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">By the way, if the millions of lives at stake aren't enough to sufficiently motivate you to take decisive action, let me remind you that your son and heir Robin, under his new <i>nom de guerre</i> Nighwing is in Bludhaven, and will certainly perish along with the others! I don't know your real name or his, but I know he's there, along with his adorable little pet dog Bitewing! <i>Ha ha!</i> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">You have less than 3 minutes, Batman, and then everyone in Bludhaven dies in a nuclear holocaust, including your protege!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>BATMAN</b> - No, not Robin!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>BATPHONE</b> - Dial tone.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS5uSH8gFsKoLcmBEDezP95zTzvWIKYXk14kB9DHXuVNv-cO3nvtnHBGwGNP4w30SHlsRaxHUbn9CHohjc7yhBPfH7xf_5Q29dlT7vQim1wJHu_211gac3FfmedsPo-fgiPdlVZCZpbPY1L9xd_ZYlEv0B4xxSbVrFEE29brIA8xnZJoC-uATh7g/s1280/Gotham%20City%20NJ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="1280" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS5uSH8gFsKoLcmBEDezP95zTzvWIKYXk14kB9DHXuVNv-cO3nvtnHBGwGNP4w30SHlsRaxHUbn9CHohjc7yhBPfH7xf_5Q29dlT7vQim1wJHu_211gac3FfmedsPo-fgiPdlVZCZpbPY1L9xd_ZYlEv0B4xxSbVrFEE29brIA8xnZJoC-uATh7g/w400-h270/Gotham%20City%20NJ.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="color: #666666;">art by Dick Dillin for <b>Amazing World of DC Comics</b> #14</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-76836698868131355352022-04-15T10:52:00.003-07:002024-01-18T15:59:36.506-08:00Science Fiction Remix - Baron Harkonnen<div><div>My first introduction to the world of <b>Dune</b> happened years before I read the book, when I saw Wayne Barlowe's illustration of a navigator who was mutated by consuming Spice in the quantities needed to allow interstellar faster-than-light travel without the benefit of computers.</div><div><br /></div><div>The illustration is colorful, and seemed to promise a setting filled with post-human beings, descendants of Old Earth who had gone so far, adapted so much, and been apart so long that they were effectively aliens. </div><div><br /></div></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtrsbDocC7Dy4-vRaAH5B7lLQ6HhNAHk15Lug74llLamDd6NBXX0NvXuU21yFhv1bqpwQRmbwyHkacPAwRdKsoXo_b2xUR1y9W7v4hKVOtizXVqB1Kfso0_KpycLyYcU9zc-v4fmmUCbKHtimLwvnfWMSZPn0gLT2btdo6GRcWfBrCrj1i8zbOCA/s1451/Barlowes%20Guide%20to%20Extraterrestrials%20Guide%20Steersman.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1451" data-original-width="892" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtrsbDocC7Dy4-vRaAH5B7lLQ6HhNAHk15Lug74llLamDd6NBXX0NvXuU21yFhv1bqpwQRmbwyHkacPAwRdKsoXo_b2xUR1y9W7v4hKVOtizXVqB1Kfso0_KpycLyYcU9zc-v4fmmUCbKHtimLwvnfWMSZPn0gLT2btdo6GRcWfBrCrj1i8zbOCA/w246-h400/Barlowes%20Guide%20to%20Extraterrestrials%20Guide%20Steersman.jpg" width="246" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>image from <b>Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials</b></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><div>Frank Herbert offers us just the barest glimpse of this. Spice consumption allows the Steersmen to navigate between the stars, the Mentats to remember and calculate at a level akin to the real world computers of 1965, and grants the leaders of the royal houses a superhuman longevity. </div><div><br /></div><div>The text also gives us an interstellar society that's halfway between the Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch East India Company - great houses, supposedly peers within the Landsraad beneath an elected emperor who is like the first among equals, all squabbling and jockeying for position and control and a larger cut of land and money and power and influence and Spice, the most valuable resource in human space, Spice, the whale oil or petroleum of its day, the source of the best medicines, the fuel for all travel, the thing that the shared economy cannot function without.</div><div><br /></div><div>I imagined the costumes in <b>Dune</b> as being modeled after 18th and 19th century European military and nobility, <i>Ruritania</i> in space, and to a greater or lesser extent, both the David Lynch film and the Sci Fi Channel miniseries gave me back some of what I'd imagined, with costumes inspired by Moebius and HR Geiger and probably <b>Star Wars</b>, whose look was allegedly inspired by Moebius and Geiger anyway by way of the unproduced Alejandro Jodorosky version.</div><div><br /></div></div><div>The recent Denis Villeneuve <b>Dune</b> film certainly plays up the militarism of the houses, but it also might as well have been filmed in black and white for all the color that Villeneuve allows to appear onscreen. The recent Apple TV version of <b>Foundation</b> probably <i>looks</i> more like my dream vision of <b>Dune</b> than any of the adaptations that actually exist. (<i>The plot modifications probably make Apple's <b>Foundation</b> closer to <b>Dune</b> than to Isaac Asimov's <b>Foundation</b> anyway.)</i></div><div><br /></div><div>I'll admit that I might like the world of <b>Dune</b>, with its psychics and mutants, its Great Powers competition<b> </b>that's equal parts espionage and economics, better than the story of Paul Atreides gradually accumulating various Chosen One statuses until he is the Duke of House Atreides, <i>and</i> a trained Mentat, <i>and</i> a trained Voice user, <i>and </i>the culmination of the Bene Gesserit eugenics program, <i>and </i>the leader by marriage of the Fremen of Arakis, <i>and</i> the fiancé of the daughter of the Emperor of Space, and<i> and AND! </i>Paul is the ultimate of what C Wright Mills calls the "power elite," combining military, political, and economic power; he accumulates every possible type of what Max Weber calls "the sources of legitimate domination," hereditary, charismatic, meritorious in every way.</div></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLyScuy1J2yuMXHxMztJfXbzODqHXVEdZyGOd22zXcgmOSFvoSyrmWvBRfBzJPpBu9g_Q9-Q_oH8pEVwTrdt7RUa3IwHloochmuWqJb0XQMr368Ca2jAkfE1G_MDB-NjXMUsliXxTIuhEjIMhvOgKzYJdHPXUAsLgAj7NKw_PWbUtLMqnMhm--lg/s600/Foundation%20Ambassadors.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLyScuy1J2yuMXHxMztJfXbzODqHXVEdZyGOd22zXcgmOSFvoSyrmWvBRfBzJPpBu9g_Q9-Q_oH8pEVwTrdt7RUa3IwHloochmuWqJb0XQMr368Ca2jAkfE1G_MDB-NjXMUsliXxTIuhEjIMhvOgKzYJdHPXUAsLgAj7NKw_PWbUtLMqnMhm--lg/w400-h225/Foundation%20Ambassadors.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Look - color! Look - costumes that visually distinguish the different factions!<br />image from <b>Foundation</b></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div><div>In contrast to Paul's over-determined heroism, Herbert poured a super-abundance of "villainous" traits onto his chief antagonist, Baron Harkonnen. It's not enough for him simply to be the enemy of House Atreides, or for him to be a sore loser about being forced off Arrakis and away from the most lucrative part of the Spice business. No, Herbert <i>REALLY</i> wants you to know that he's a bad person, so the Baron is fat, so fat he can't support his own bodyweight without antigravity devices, <i>and</i> he's gay, <i>and</i> he's a rapist of adults, <i>and</i> pedophile, <i>AND,</i> because this somehow wasn't enough, the Lynch film also covers him in scars and boils and other skin ailments. </div><div><br /></div><div>There's <i>maybe</i> some message in Baron Harkonnen's traits about how unchecked autocratic power allows a person to indulge and over-indulge in every possible kind of appetite, and how people who derive pleasure from pushing past limits and boundaries need to keep escalating, keep doing more and more extreme versions of whatever it is they enjoy if they want to keep one-upping the severity and outlandishness of their own past endeavors. There's <i>maybe</i> a warning about what happens to a person when no one else <i>can</i> say no to them for fear for their lives.</div><div><br /></div><div>Okay. But like, real talk, it certainly <i>seems like</i> Frank Herbert wrote the Baron as fat and gay <i>because</i> he's the villain.</div><div><br /></div><div>Apparently one of the prequel novels claims that Harkonnen isn't fat because of overindulgence, but because the Bene Gesserit give him a venereal disease that causes obesity and muscle wasting. This is a retcon that I actually think is worse than the original interpretation.</div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiysv0-nmn_BTGBVSAvLNFW_lvvWrraRBtBcr0G10l3nVCyNvpEk9w9a5FJLgZw1zF_bj7CEX0GoLdgJN0P_r1hljYORCEcW5gUHPkGhoRP73t6ogOkvducGoXQ_zGkIVTiZrdQ7j85MfaDqNE7sHwwSIaQxeABHpxSw0v5AvDqsQQ_XKG6Nv1tg/s1434/National%20Geographic%20Our%20Universe%20Venusians.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1434" data-original-width="1280" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiysv0-nmn_BTGBVSAvLNFW_lvvWrraRBtBcr0G10l3nVCyNvpEk9w9a5FJLgZw1zF_bj7CEX0GoLdgJN0P_r1hljYORCEcW5gUHPkGhoRP73t6ogOkvducGoXQ_zGkIVTiZrdQ7j85MfaDqNE7sHwwSIaQxeABHpxSw0v5AvDqsQQ_XKG6Nv1tg/w358-h400/National%20Geographic%20Our%20Universe%20Venusians.jpg" width="358" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>image from <b>National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our Universe</b></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /></div><div>The thing is, the larger setting of <b>Dune</b> is one where, kind of, <i>everyone</i> is a villain. Everyone the audience is likely to meet, anyway. The emperor assigns each great house a planet to govern; the locals have no say in who governs them or how often new regimes are rotated through. The houses themselves are absolutist monarchies with a single, superannuated hereditary ruler. The economy is colonial and feudal, with the resources of entire worlds getting funneled inward to purchase of Spice and other luxuries, which the houses use to keep their members young and healthy, and to allow themselves the interstellar travel that makes the whole system possible. This is a morally abhorrent society, which means its leaders can be interesting, compelling, captivating characters, but they can't really be <i>good</i> in any meaningful sense.</div><div><br /></div><div>And while the elite of this society may designate certain of their members as being on the margins of acceptability, its more likely to be for violations of etiquette and decorum as it is for anything the rest of us would consider <i>wrong</i> or <i>cruel</i>. The leaders inherently cannot be criminals, both because they make the laws for everyone else, and because they themselves are explicitly above them. Baron Harkonnen is more interesting to me when he's not <i>THE</i> singular villain, laden down with so many cartoonishly evil characteristics that he needs his antigrav harness just to support the weight of all those tropes, he's more interesting when he is both flawed and, in some small ways, admirable or sympathetic, when he's <i>A</i> bad person in a setting full of bad people. A Harkonnen who's not pure evil is also less likely to make his enemies seem <i>good</i> just by virtue of opposing him.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's start with Baron Harkonnen's sexuality, because I'm intrigued by the idea of the head of one of the planetary governments being an out, proud gay man. While I'm sure he has as many consorts, courtesans, and flings as any other house leader, I would prefer to avoid any implication that his homosexuality gives him a special taste for nonconsensual encounters.</div><div><br /></div><div>In <b>Dune</b>, in addition to the Emperor and his house, and the other great houses that make up the Landsraad, and whatever indigenous political structures exist on the planets underneath the colonial rule of the houses, you have a few major non-governmental power centers. You've got the Guild of navigators who control space travel, CHOAM, which in my limited understanding serves as the equivalent of both the stock market and the marketplace for the sale and trade of Spice and manufactured goods, and the Bene Gesserit, an all-female organization of geneticists and eugenecists devoted to increasing human psychic potential by selective breeding, who hide their scientific prowess beneath a religious mystique, and who have enough social power to insist that every house leader take a Gesserit consort and participate in their breeding program.</div><div><br /></div><div>Arranged marriages, obligatory consummations, tracking "matings" and "pairings" with the obsessive attention of a zookeeper trying to revive a near-extinct species, and really the whole idea of mandatory "breeding" of human beings are already incompatible with the idea of <i>consent</i> as we understand it. None of the other parts of the history of eugenics are any more palatable. The Bene Gesserit have unlocked humanity's latent psychic potential, but those born with powers just become the psychic bureaucrats so necessary to keep the imperial system running, and the Gesserit themselves are a secondary source of tyranny, alongside the empire. </div><div><br /></div><div>Remix Harkonnen has no interest in "doing his duty" to the species, "lying on his back and thinking of the empire," or any of the rest of it. He is an open critic of the Bene Gesserit and their eugenics program, opposes their attempts to arrange marriages and breedings, <i>not just for himself, but for everyone, </i>and he will eventually pass rulership of his house down to a protégé rather than a child. Remix Baron Harkonnen might still be a reprehensible bastard on other issues, but let's let him be <i>right</i> about this one thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Next, the Baron's size and weight. The detail I keep thinking about is his antigravity device. What if Remix Harkonnen isn't simply a fat man, but truly someone who can't move around, or perhaps even survive, under Earth-normal conditions? I imagine that he's basically spherical, and looks like the illustration of hypothetical Venusians from the old <b>Our Universe</b> book, seen above. His body has been adapted to survive in an atmosphere that is incredibly thick, heavy, and crushing, and simultaneously very buoyant, like the deep ocean. The inside of any House Harkonnen building recreates this atmosphere, and requires pressure suits for anyone who looks like the humans of Old Earth to survive inside. But when the Baron travels to other houses, he needs a forcefield bubble to protect himself from the same effects you or I would feel in a vacuum.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why do the members of House Harkonnen look like that? I think that an earlier era of space exploration relied on direct genetic engineering to produce durable, post-human bodies, rather than the combination of Gesserit eugenics, Spice, and high technology that are used in the current age. <i>(As an aside, maybe the natives of each planet have been engineered to survive their specific conditions. This permits them to live openly and in poverty on the surface, rather than requiring specialized and luxurious habitats like the great houses. It also means they can never leave, unlike the comparatively hyper-mobile ruling class, who jet from planet to planet as the Emperor demands. The Fremen would likely be another example of this type of engineering.)</i></div><div><br /></div><div>As the product of this prior regime of human improvement, Remix Harkonnen has yet another reason to oppose the Gesserit and their way of doing things. His body is visibly different from the Old Earth phenotype that <i>most</i> of the other ruling houses wear - although perhaps the Harkonnens are <i>not</i> the only ones who have been engineered rather than bred. I imagine he comes from a trash planet that falls outside the empire's <i>direct </i>sphere of influence, meaning that no great house is ever required to relocate there. </div><div><br /></div><div>Like some ambitious combination of Kingpin and Jabba the Hutt, Remix Baron Harkonnen started out as one gangster among many, became the don of dons through a combination of smarts and ruthlessness, and graduated to the interplanetary and interstellar big leagues, forcing his way into great house status and a seat on the Landsraad. The other house leaders dislike him for his disreputable origin, post-human appearance, and perhaps for refusing to hide his thuggishness behind the veneer of respectability the rest of them maintain. </div><div><br /></div><div>I suppose I ought to consider what sort of economic resource the Baron brings to the table that requires the others to offer him a seat. Perhaps a metal that can only be mined on his planet, or technology from before the AI wars that can no longer be replicated, or knowledge of genetic engineering that can produce results that the Gesserits can't reproduce in the short term. Or maybe he's <i>just that good</i> at bribery, coercion, extortion, etc. Or maybe his knowledge of the above makes his house ideal for rooting out local corruption and slapping the hand of any other great house that sticks their wrist too deep into the cookie jar. </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>My remix version of Baron Harkonnen is more like Magneto or Killmonger - a man with a sympathetic origin and understandable agenda, who is nonetheless still deserving of condemnation for his actions. If your <i>Remix Dune</i> coexists in the same setting as a <i>Remix Legion of Superheroes</i>, then I have to assume that Bouncing Boy is a do-gooder outcast from House Harkonnen. If your <i>Remix Dune</i> is also a <i>Solar Dune</i>, then Harkonnen might come from Venus, or perhaps from a cloud city on Jupiter that's deep enough beneath the "surface" to require his distinctive body modifications to survive.</div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-18559878828329666422022-03-29T13:45:00.000-07:002024-01-18T15:58:19.138-08:00Meta Critical Miscellany - Literary, Intellectual, Enjoyable, Forgotten, Fragile<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjzCNR_waNNqQCe5bJ_NnPJB4cD9ev8RLhM-d0r6YtjdM5H40EFhkbiCP-z7hTleSaUJH4lBVCxNfFpdlEQPE9JEc-quPHG4npIhoyfLQV0UVsPqH60PvsV0WvDjzQT8QrWQbQE-yQnGoUumjqPvK9aIkgvtiur-3kNEOecDpSPaUWPflyeMg0zJQ=s800" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjzCNR_waNNqQCe5bJ_NnPJB4cD9ev8RLhM-d0r6YtjdM5H40EFhkbiCP-z7hTleSaUJH4lBVCxNfFpdlEQPE9JEc-quPHG4npIhoyfLQV0UVsPqH60PvsV0WvDjzQT8QrWQbQE-yQnGoUumjqPvK9aIkgvtiur-3kNEOecDpSPaUWPflyeMg0zJQ=w400-h180" width="400" /></a></div> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><b>Actually, Criticism <i>is </i>Literature</b></div><div><i>Writing about the art of writing is an art unto itself.</i></div><div>Jonathan Russell Clark</div><div><b><a href="https://lithub.com/actually-criticism-is-literature/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Literary Hub</a></b></div><div><br /></div><div>"Every once in a while, a critic will feel it necessary to define what they think of as their role in the larger literary community. Now as a critic I love these essays; many of these writers have brought brilliant insights into what can often be a dismissed vocation. But while I appreciate the efforts of my fellow critics, there is one aspect to nearly all of these defenses that I disagree with, deeply, and that is the implication that criticism is separate from the literature it describes, as if novelists, poets, playwrights, and nonfiction writers were the players in the game and we critics merely the referees. What’s intimated in many defenses of criticism is this gap between observer and observed, between artist and non-artist."</div><div><br /></div><div>"This is bullshit. Criticism is also literature. The word 'also' there insists on criticism's inclusion as a genre of literature, and not as a subject that stands outside of it. When viewed as a separate entity, criticism becomes this Big Brother-like authority ready to pop up and take down any unsuspecting artist; it turns criticism into a practical evil that published authors must suffer through; and it devalues the work of those who became critics because they love literature and they love to write."</div><div><br /></div><div>"A critic is an artist; I am an artist. I write because I love language and because I love using language to depict the various complexities of my life. Some people use their family and friends as inspiration, while others mine history for theirs. Still others find muses in the calm of nature, some in the chaos of the city. I’ve found it in books - it is through them that I’m able to express not merely what I think of literature, but what I believe about life."</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEidRWvhDbH5_-aEgKR_eF0tatxSWrRNo0amk34RgRIiZDLiVHYHxPgysUOXVXDxAkUTOkKZAf3_3vWHhKF-Weqjea2ic7EEkRmFKg8-NY06Xh_2cPx4IVroAROX9xt5JJQpNkFN3HPkGR99PZd5fzfthFTk5WC5CPUW_gCNDXKdSUNAdZuCuTVJZw=s734" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="446" data-original-width="734" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEidRWvhDbH5_-aEgKR_eF0tatxSWrRNo0amk34RgRIiZDLiVHYHxPgysUOXVXDxAkUTOkKZAf3_3vWHhKF-Weqjea2ic7EEkRmFKg8-NY06Xh_2cPx4IVroAROX9xt5JJQpNkFN3HPkGR99PZd5fzfthFTk5WC5CPUW_gCNDXKdSUNAdZuCuTVJZw=w400-h243" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Intellectuals are Having a Situation</b><br /><i>Reviewing the n+1 review of reviews.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">Christian Lorentzen</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><a href="https://www.gawker.com/media/the-intellectuals-are-having-a-situation" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gawker</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>"I am not the most famous book reviewer in America, but I've been reviewing books on and off for 21 years, and it is how I make my living, such as it is. Why do I do this? I enjoy writing criticism, performing literary analysis, and reading and thinking about books. One of my friends once justified our activities by saying you have to help create the literary culture you want to be part of."</div><div><br /></div><div>"n+1 ran an essay called 'Critical Attrition: What’s the Matter with Book Reviews?' Let's begin with 'the earnest reader.' This reader pays attention to jacket copy on books, uses the website Goodreads, searches Twitter for literary opinions, and doesn't know very much about the literature business. I'll be honest, I have no respect for this fictional character or anyone in real life who resembles him. He's buying books, presumably books that he's going to spend many hours of his life reading. Yet when he has read a book he doesn’t like, he feels misled by its marketing. This reader is simply bad at being a consumer. He doesn’t know how to spend his money on products that will please him. He is not in touch with his own taste and ways of satisfying it."</div><div><br /></div><div>"A sorry situation, as n+1 paints it. Readers who don’t know how to find the books they like and reviewers writing pieces that are tepid and compromised, secretly driven by their misplaced hopes for minor advancement (n+1 is too sympathetic to their plight to call them grifters, but that's the idea). I think these problems are irrelevant because they constitute the sort of mediocrity endemic to any endeavor." </div><div><br /></div><div>"The picture n+1 paints of criticism is a joyless one. If there is a problem with book reviewing the problem is that those of us who are good at it aren’t good enough, there aren’t enough of us, and we aren’t doing a good enough job of expanding the scope of literary discourse, to put it in touch with tradition and open it wide to new writing. We have the duty of helping to create the culture we want to live in, and that world should be full of infinitely various delights. The imperatives are to be stylish, to be thorough, to be funny, to be generous, and occasionally to be cruel."</div><div><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiSxB6BRmrLDTXolcaVtJhKtAcvOds_qogdLRHPEqbUi4k_UwVqgue9JNg1YshnNcXZcskkoy03bGSt_RfcHyyNoSIaX-D7YuTMJ8pU8G02tOvlk0WvfTKrAez0If5y6vmt59eTPaCJGl_fVObOfjagwIjrWwdw3y5B0Izmqya3JmqHD4sLCGBAbA=s1700" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1428" data-original-width="1700" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiSxB6BRmrLDTXolcaVtJhKtAcvOds_qogdLRHPEqbUi4k_UwVqgue9JNg1YshnNcXZcskkoy03bGSt_RfcHyyNoSIaX-D7YuTMJ8pU8G02tOvlk0WvfTKrAez0If5y6vmt59eTPaCJGl_fVObOfjagwIjrWwdw3y5B0Izmqya3JmqHD4sLCGBAbA=w200-h168" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: right;"> <b style="text-align: right;">Critical Attrition</b></div></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>What's the matter with book reviews?</i></div><div style="text-align: right;">The Editors</div><div style="text-align: right;"><b><a href="https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-40/the-intellectual-situation/critical-attrition/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">n+1</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgCJ-SRLYKrrTyuS7f_CC6ZoeQXjuyfl4rjYTNw4BNSBqPeaNKgAl9b11ou6WroFylYW3LYr_NBMFfh8oVz6VFhaMCgrr5RZcyx-M5Z1YGznf8A9_gII_1RVYHTRoxq31cveGAtD6ybdEk104l5kxVSdjJoV7mTMFXcMe5ltTch9PQ-djowY3Ut2A=s1122" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1122" data-original-width="825" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgCJ-SRLYKrrTyuS7f_CC6ZoeQXjuyfl4rjYTNw4BNSBqPeaNKgAl9b11ou6WroFylYW3LYr_NBMFfh8oVz6VFhaMCgrr5RZcyx-M5Z1YGznf8A9_gII_1RVYHTRoxq31cveGAtD6ybdEk104l5kxVSdjJoV7mTMFXcMe5ltTch9PQ-djowY3Ut2A=w147-h200" width="147" /></a></div><div style="text-align: right;"><b>Like This or Die</b></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>The fate of the book review in the age of the algorithm.</i></div><div style="text-align: right;">Christian Lorentzen</div><div style="text-align: right;"><b><a href="https://harpers.org/archive/2019/04/like-this-or-die/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Harper's Magazine</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhikZZlY93bfG2qgWmlhMKej8g-kuIW8S7a_UFS0I05ZASCwkbpxmvIXIE18otdN8-5vHnpCdhWuit0eU2zy5o2RMSFQRHYmHX2Nt-Gf9GPMRobX-TrZiwbT8Ndopn6FfDqt3x6ZYUbOyywvSw0MiIww7ijvYxATuyyaUQKcmGAF2h24dicvDwy9g=s800" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhikZZlY93bfG2qgWmlhMKej8g-kuIW8S7a_UFS0I05ZASCwkbpxmvIXIE18otdN8-5vHnpCdhWuit0eU2zy5o2RMSFQRHYmHX2Nt-Gf9GPMRobX-TrZiwbT8Ndopn6FfDqt3x6ZYUbOyywvSw0MiIww7ijvYxATuyyaUQKcmGAF2h24dicvDwy9g=w400-h400" width="400" /></a></div><br /><b>Let People Enjoy This Essay</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>How the mindset of an irritating web comic infected criticism.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">BD McClay</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><a href="https://www.gawker.com/culture/let-people-enjoy-this-essay" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gawker</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>"If we were using one of those little pain-measurement scales to log how annoying this comic is, 'shhh' in its original form ranks, at the very worst, two out of ten. It’s a little smug. But it’s basically fine. In a happier world it would have slid down into the great content void and that would be the end of it. Instead, some world-historical monster cropped out the last two panels, which in turn became a standalone reaction image. Let people enjoy things went from one piece of an, again, only mildly annoying comic, to a manifesto for a certain type of fan that gets very, very angry if somebody out there isn't enjoying things."</div><div><br /></div><div>"'Let people enjoy things' is, partly, just about figuring out when it is and isn’t appropriate to get into a disagreement, which, for conflict-enjoying people, is a lifelong process. There’s a right time and a right place and, maybe most importantly, the right companions for me out there. The problem is this: For a small but vocal number of people online, any opinion they dislike is, essentially, being expressed by somebody in their home. 'Let people enjoy things,' as a way of saying 'learn basic conversational dynamics,' is a banal but true statement. But in practice, 'let people enjoy things' means something else: it is rude or inappropriate to dislike something."</div><div><br /></div><div>"The 'let people enjoy things' problem is a pathological aversion, on a wide cultural level, to disagreement, discomfort, or being judged by others. I don’t want to move 'let people enjoy things' one tier up so that now we are all fiercely demanding to be allowed to enjoy cultural criticism. Negative criticism can be just as tedious, misguided, and fan-service-driven as positive criticism. But the paradox of a wide-open digital publishing field is that it has tended more and more toward consensus, with its two modes being the rave and the takedown, instead of diversity; even in terms of subject matter, culture verticals focus on the same things, instead of branching out."</div><div><br /></div><div>"People are as interested in conversation over pieces of art and entertainment they like as they have ever been. But all of these take place within a context where interest and fandom are already established, which is part of why a harsh review can provoke such an angry reaction. A recap isn’t really meant to be evaluative. Much like evangelicals created their own parallel version of everything, from music to magazines, fan culture has its own alternatives. Negative reactions - up to a point - can live comfortably in this world. Negativity is just another brand. Even so, many kinds of negative criticism, particularly of a vaguely political bent, come down to trope recognition: women in refrigerators, Bechdel tests, who dies first in horror movies."</div><div><br /></div><div>"But criticism - by which I mean something that demands maintaining distance between the critic and the subject, not a negative or positive viewpoint - is, in a fandom world, an obsolete exercise. The growth area in culture writing is culture coverage - interviews and profiles - not criticism."</div><div> </div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjMIl08SAGYnfyANSpXGx3sEhdEt2h0qTMNrKRJnsQyZlIvKataDOsel6mk2C2u_OaeL-qPUnuKRjEpo47M69MKe4PSqfTowVgwSaIXQMMqhdUzIgGxt2G14EgF2Ltg3A3fQ4igW3j7fHaQUFF07QZxCZSMtiU6Hmx6QHeFEhUgMa0fKx_s7CD2og=s1200" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="530" data-original-width="1200" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjMIl08SAGYnfyANSpXGx3sEhdEt2h0qTMNrKRJnsQyZlIvKataDOsel6mk2C2u_OaeL-qPUnuKRjEpo47M69MKe4PSqfTowVgwSaIXQMMqhdUzIgGxt2G14EgF2Ltg3A3fQ4igW3j7fHaQUFF07QZxCZSMtiU6Hmx6QHeFEhUgMa0fKx_s7CD2og=w400-h176" width="400" /></a></div> </div><div><b>Have We Forgotten How to Read Critically?</b><br /><i>Since the internet has made the entire world a library with no exits or supervisors, many readers treat every published piece of writing as a conversation opener, demanding a bespoke response.</i></div><div>Kate Harding</div><div><b><a href="https://www.damemagazine.com/2022/01/07/have-we-forgotten-how-to-read-critically/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dame Magazine</a></b></div><div><br /></div><div><div>"Not every piece of short nonfiction writing is an opinion piece, crafted to advance a particular argument. This is the first thing we all need to understand. I love the essay form because it’s an opportunity to watch someone - including yourself, if you write them - think deeply, out loud." </div><div><br /></div><div>"We used to understand this, I think. But social media has tilted things so that books by contemporary authors - let alone essays - are no longer portable worlds that awaken when a reader enters and slumber when one leaves. Today, the author is not dead until the author is actually dead. In the meantime, every published piece of writing is treated as the beginning of a conversation - or worse, a workshop piece - by some readers, each of whom feels entitled to a bespoke response."</div><div><br /></div><div>"There is no apparent awareness that, in writing a piece and publishing it, the author has said what they meant to say and turned the project of thinking about it over to the reader. Today’s reader will simply not accept the baton being passed. If something is unclear, the author must expand; if something offends, the author must account and atone. Simple disagreement triggers some cousin of cognitive dissonance, where the reader’s brain scrambles to forcibly reconcile beliefs that don’t actually contradict each other."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Reading can make you feel close to someone without actually knowing them, a precious gift in a lonely world. But if the pleasure of reading is feeling connected to a distant stranger, then the pain of watching people read badly is its opposite: a severing of shared humanity. A cold, demoralizing reminder that we never can look inside each other’s minds, no matter how we try."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Books once kept the boundaries between writer and reader distinct. Unless you met an author under the controlled circumstances of a public event, you’d never get a chance to say hello, much less insult their intelligence and demand they go to therapy. Now, you and 300 other furious strangers can tell an author to kill herself before she’s finished her first coffee. Technology is a miracle."</div></div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi4e3aeBkM8K70QRxlw4WLU-Z7Dek2WqcHULqe8kBqmvlAiEE-y-Qq970JZqUGjlOlE_NzvjiQG-ASUzz7Qc9q4kERxrOPEEms4oA2FYwC-BWfbVScRAtP5nKabUF7Mnjy-LBLi_ujn1SezMm3r2uPqN8QsVteOIH7S_A6ELYLpU-BCz8KD7H4eBg=s822" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="581" data-original-width="822" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi4e3aeBkM8K70QRxlw4WLU-Z7Dek2WqcHULqe8kBqmvlAiEE-y-Qq970JZqUGjlOlE_NzvjiQG-ASUzz7Qc9q4kERxrOPEEms4oA2FYwC-BWfbVScRAtP5nKabUF7Mnjy-LBLi_ujn1SezMm3r2uPqN8QsVteOIH7S_A6ELYLpU-BCz8KD7H4eBg=w400-h283" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Authorial Fragility and the Limits of Poptimism</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>It's good when critics dislike things.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">Christian Lorentzen</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><a href="https://www.gawker.com/culture/authorial-fragility-the-enemies-of-poptimism" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gawker</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>"It seems strange to me that people have to invent ulterior motives for critics who don't lavish every new novel, film, television program, or art exhibition with slobbering praise. Disliking most of what you see and hear seems to me the natural way of things. All the more pleasure when you find something that grips your attention. Reading novels and watching films and looking at paintings and sculptures are hedonistic activities. Negative reviews are simply the expression of displeasure. The critics who write them don’t tend to be normal people because if they were their reviews would be boring and either nobody would print them or nobody would read them. In any case evaluation isn’t the ultimate point of criticism, though in the crude slipstream of social media it's usually taken to be."</div><div><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhttUDmnNNHgxyOt07kJotKQf8xcW3Faphw1TcZGaP_OT2xjZGxfUxtAvdWNITe8gk903sjaGlpINGKgf5iKtqQRYpdsK98uPve3gDfpE6F2nrA1jEL6edwydX_5ahtAIR2apYauUPMAYO6lGj6KeEzV-qRQfhOrId7MBxYdSyWVwcIcjLWP08B7Q=s1280" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="1280" height="109" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhttUDmnNNHgxyOt07kJotKQf8xcW3Faphw1TcZGaP_OT2xjZGxfUxtAvdWNITe8gk903sjaGlpINGKgf5iKtqQRYpdsK98uPve3gDfpE6F2nrA1jEL6edwydX_5ahtAIR2apYauUPMAYO6lGj6KeEzV-qRQfhOrId7MBxYdSyWVwcIcjLWP08B7Q=w200-h109" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: right;"><b>Everyone's a Critic</b></div><div style="text-align: right;">Richard Joseph</div><div style="text-align: right;"><b><a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/everyones-a-critic/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Los Angeles Review of Books</a></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdNG44klCYb-tgwLiQQ_I-ZSmp6AkWV7eOUsdIzgLaN9Q7Z5TjmzW5CzuzfM5H0_rb8GSdok5qBViwd5KW4I55GWeD074vqJxTAI9oS2hJ1k8eqMNM3L1u4bmVjgkWj75p0c9VNJVpvUu4bQuUg_792IobvdQxnOv8g9l_yBC_AEPE3MA1WvSpFw=s1000" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjdNG44klCYb-tgwLiQQ_I-ZSmp6AkWV7eOUsdIzgLaN9Q7Z5TjmzW5CzuzfM5H0_rb8GSdok5qBViwd5KW4I55GWeD074vqJxTAI9oS2hJ1k8eqMNM3L1u4bmVjgkWj75p0c9VNJVpvUu4bQuUg_792IobvdQxnOv8g9l_yBC_AEPE3MA1WvSpFw=w200-h133" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: right;"><b>Your Bubble is Not the Culture</b></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>From Hamilton to Harry Potter, critics keep misreading popular culture </i></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>and writing off things that their audiences love. Why?</i></div><div style="text-align: right;">Yair Rosenberg</div><div style="text-align: right;"><b><a href="https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61e06b2c55e52500217add01/your-bubble-is-not-the-culture-lin-manuel-miranda-harry-potter/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Atlantic Newsletters</a></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-390440855575604962022-03-17T11:24:00.000-07:002024-01-18T15:58:11.363-08:00Avant-Gardes, Scenes, Industries, and Traditions in Jennifer Lena's "Banding Together"<div style="text-align: left;">I recently read Jennifer Lena's <b><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691163383/banding-together" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music</a></b>, and although Lena is writing solely about music, it's not hard to think that her model might do a pretty good job describing other kinds of creative communities, potentially including tabletop rpgs.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Lena is a sociologist of culture, and a lot of her research focuses on popular music, especially rap. In Banding Together, she looked at the histories of 60 <i><b>styles</b></i> of music and looked for similarities in the ways the styles changed over time. Style here refers to a pretty specific community of musicians and fans; when many related styles coexist and follow after each other in a kind of family, they form what Lena calls a <b><i>stream</i></b>. So like, <i>rock music</i> would be considered a stream, while things like <i>grunge</i>, <i>glam</i>, <i>garage</i>, <i>punk</i>, and <i>emo</i> would be considered styles. <i>Style</i> and <i>stream</i> are categories that describe things that exist in the real world, but they have no existence of their own except as useful descriptors.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Lena observes that musical styles change over time in ways that are related to their popularity and access to resources, such as money, access to practice and performance space, and attention from fans, journalists, and academics. Her model suggests four main <b><i>genre types</i></b> that music styles can fit into - <i>avant-garde</i>, <i>scene-based</i>, <i>industry-based</i>, and <i>traditional</i>. Genre types are also descriptive categories, and she classifies each <i>style</i> as belonging to a single <i>type</i> at any given point in its history, and as I said, this classification is based on access to resources. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A successful style might begin as an avant-garde, grow to become a scene, find commercial success in the industry, get taken up as a tradition, and eventually birth new avant-garde styles to either form a new stream or join an existing one. Less successful styles stop short of that in some way, and there are doubtless countless avant-garde styles that never become successful enough to form a scene.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">What I find most interesting about Lena's model is her finding that each genre style has not only a predictable set of material conditions that go together - <i>the size style, how it's organized, where its members can meet to practice and perform, how much attention it receives, what sources of money are available</i> - but also a predictable set of cultural conditions - <i>how codified the conventional ways of performing the style are, how style members use technology, how codified the ways of dressing and acting are, even <b>what kinds of debates style members have with each other</b>,</i> a finding that was particularly interesting to me. Lena stops short of saying that the <i>material</i> causes the <i>cultural</i>, but she does observe that they tend to go together in predictable enough bundles that it was easy for her to identify four common bundles and call them genre types.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Really interested readers might enjoy Lena's whole book, but if you just want the primary model where she lays out the four genre types, that's in chapter 2, which I want to quote from some below. Lena's words appear in blue. I've removed all of her examples where she talks about rap, bluegrass, and bebop. But if you're like me, you'll be filling in rpg examples in your head as you read.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhyQPoUXlwUG37zxVVHA2IyyP1asJj7XykymcuHz8taSVOE26C0K4indQJq55obZc0jqdv-Vf3By6dbdKVj4sBNw4El-Sn-AuDDmOlxXKB4f3ml6Qgl7CpiTJtxyKT969Dk9Sb3qvQY_llpy2KoszZ9a9njszE5kY4FzIpbIAD5hatMhmMPpRyAyg=s2560" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1684" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhyQPoUXlwUG37zxVVHA2IyyP1asJj7XykymcuHz8taSVOE26C0K4indQJq55obZc0jqdv-Vf3By6dbdKVj4sBNw4El-Sn-AuDDmOlxXKB4f3ml6Qgl7CpiTJtxyKT969Dk9Sb3qvQY_llpy2KoszZ9a9njszE5kY4FzIpbIAD5hatMhmMPpRyAyg=s320" width="211" /></a></div><div><br /></div><b><i><span style="color: #0b5394;">Avant-garde Genres</span></i></b><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Music, like other forms of taste, changes slowly and incrementally. Nonetheless there are junctures when performers, fans, and commenters point to cumulative changes significant enough to distinguish it from earlier forms of music. Music performers always have some dissatisfaction with contemporary music or their place in it, and fans are looking for novelty, so there is a consistent, in inchoate, desire for change. Avant-garde genres are formed when music practitioners come together and share their concern over the state of music in their field of action and reinforce each other's desire to do something about it. Avant-garde genres are quite small, having no more than a dozen or so active participants who meet informally and irregularly, and are often conceived in spaces like coffee shops and basements. They attract virtually no press attention, performance conventions are not codified, and there is typically little consensus over how members should dress, talk, or describe themselves as a group.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Avant-garde circles are leaderless and fractious and consequently typically unravel in a matter of months from lack of recognition, or because a subset of the circle participants gain wider recognition. The objective of Avant-garde genres is to play informally together, share recorded music, and air complaints about the hegemonic music in the relevant stream of music. </span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">The genre ideal, and specifically the musical ideas that are central to it, may emerge from members taking lessons, carefully listening to records, and playing with different kinds of musicians. Alternatively, Avant-gardists may assert that prevailing musical styles have become predictable and emotionless and, flaunting the fact that they are not able to play instruments in conventional ways, make what others see as loud and hash sounds. In crafting music that is "new," Avant-gardists may combine elements of musics that have been treated as distinct. The desire to produce a new music drives the group to engage in experimental practices, including playing standard instruments in unconventional ways, creating new musical instruments, and modifying objects that heretofore have not been employed in the production of music. </span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Such circles typically meet face-to-face, but this may be changing in the era of the Internet. Circle members need spaces to meet where they can freely discuss and cement their shared investment in musical innovation.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">The experimental ethos of Avant-garde circles is often expressed through the idiosyncratic grooming, dress, demeanor, and argot of members, but these are not (yet) consolidated into a distinctive style.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">In Avant-garde genres, circle members contribute resources, and they also get resources from others attracted to the musical experimentation. Partners contribute nurturance, financial support, and a home; other musicians and music industry people act as informal advisors and critics; buy supporting a new music, bar owners get customers on off nights. As a rule, Avant-garde members do not receive remuneration for their participation in music-related activities. They earn money for performing conventional styles of music and from nonperformance employment. Thus many Avant-gardists live with little recognition and many privations. These harsh conditions may retrospectively be romanticized as bohemian, but they contribute to the demise of many Avant-garde genres. The privations are exacerbated by the tendency of some Avant-garde musicians to consume quantities of drugs and alcohol.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">The music and the people making it receive virtually no press coverage, which makes it exceedingly difficult for us to find accounts of Avant-garde genres that failed to progress to another genre form. Numerous appellations are given to the new music, which also contributes to the difficulty in identifying musics that do not survive the Avant-garde period.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Musics can remain in the Avant-garde period for a long time or may quickly transition into Scene-based genres. The key features of this transition are these: relatively stable aural and visible identifiers of the group emerge; artists begin to seek resources that allow them to perform their music for a larger public; and the group identifies a set of goals for action - actions or ideas that are seen to be solutions to the complaints the group has about status quo music.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><b><i><span style="color: #0b5394;">Scene-based Genres</span></i></b></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">It appears that most Avant-garde genres wither or merge with other musical styles early on, and only a few begin to draw more substantial resources and a larger cluster of devotees and evolve into Scene-based genres. Scene-based genres are characterized by an intensely active, but moderately sized group of artists, audience members, and supporting organizations. For more than a decade the concept of "scene" has been used by scholars to refer to a community of spatially situated artists, fans, scene-focused record companies, and supporting small business people. Such local scenes may also be in communication with like scenes in distant locales whose members enjoy the same kind of music and lifestyle. In recent years, we have acknowledged the importance of virtual scenes composed of devotees who interact via the Internet. </span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Scene-based genre members earn money from activities within the community, including music making, especially once they attract the attention of the local or specialty press. Much attention is paid to codifying performance conventions, and the dress, adornment, drugs, and argot of group members. Members are also concerned with distinguishing themselves from rival musics, especially those that share the same performance space or fans. Most Scene-based genres acquire a name for their group that is invented or announced in the Scene-based media.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Scene-based genres have a loose organizational form characterized by nested rings of groups characterized by varying levels of commitment to the community. At the center are clusters of those most responsible for the distinctive characteristics of the music, including many members of the Avant-garde genre. Then there is the ring of committed activists whose identity, and sometimes means of employment, are tied to the scene. Outside of this is the ring of fans that participate in the scene more or less regularly. The outer ring is made up of "tourists" who enjoy activities within the scene without identifying with it.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Stylistic innovations and charismatic leaders who promote them play a key role in developing the consensus around genre ideal. The consensus marks the transition from the Avant-garde to the Scene-based genre. Technological innovations can also change the balance among elements of the music during the Scene-based genre. The transition between Avant-garde and Scene-based genres marks the introduction of both technological and live performance conventions that in turn affect conventions in the recording studio later on. Social conventions, including styles of clothes and adornment, body type, argot, and "attitude," are codified in Scene-based genres. These allow fellow travelers to identify scene members.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Scenes, musical and otherwise, commonly emerge in so-called bohemian neighborhoods where rents are low, police supervision is lax, multiple opportunities for low-skill labor exist, concentrations of other artists are found, and residents tolerate diversity of all kinds. Such neighborhoods nurture the scene, and the lifestyle growing around it, by fostering constant interaction among scenesters without attracting unwanted attention from the wider community.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">These neighborhoods include local businesses that support the Scene-based genre, including coffee shops, clubs, dance halls, record stores, churches, small recording studios, and independent record labels. Business entrepreneurs, often drawn from the ranks of scene participants, become music promoters, club owners, and band managers. Some found independent record companies, Scene-based fanzines, and Internet sites, while local newspapers, radio stations, and criminal elements arrive in the area to support the scene and to derive profits from it. </span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Scene musicians and ancillary creative people are often not able to support themselves entirely from the music. They typically take low-skill service jobs in the community and also depend on money and other support from partners, family, and friends. As scenes develop, these neighborhoods draw both more casual scenesters and merchandisers of elements of the genre lifestyle, hastening the end of the intensely local genre form.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Genre-based media begin to develop in Scene-based genres. The strong and relatively coherent complaints of genre members against the status quo often attract attention from niche media, who provide the clearest, most nuanced and positive portrayals of the scene. These include fanzines, Internet sites, blogs, small-circulation magazines, and often the local free weekly entertainment guide. Collectively they serve to define, explain, promote, and critique the music and its associated lifestyle. Because these writers try to talk about the coalescing style, they have to find a name to describe its musical aesthetics. Thus begins the formulation of the collective memory about the history and founding heroes of the music.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">In Scene-based genres stakeholders have only a few contacts with the world outside the scene, but those they do have are important in building the solidarity within the community. First, there is usually bitter antagonism between proponents of the new music and representatives of the status quo in the relevant field. Fighting against a shared antagonist often builds solidarity within Scene-based genres. Second, the operation of the scene in marginal facilities with opportunistic promoters means that scene participants are regularly exposed to what they identify as dangerous conditions, and they may be liable to arrest for violating ordinances concerning dancing, noise abatement, fire, and decency, as well as laws controlling liquor and drug use. Finally, symbols of inclusion/exclusion also serve to identify scene members to outsiders who may be alarmed, upset, or simply bemused. These three sources of censure all serve to build scene solidarity. As importantly, they typically lend the genre an oppositional political cast.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">In addition to their musical complaints, Scene-based genre members will often critique large social injustices, although they may target their critique within the local environment. Lyrical content often incorporates aspects of this oppositional stance. Insertion of politics into the scene's identity is an indicator that the music has entered the mature phase of the Scene-based genre. An additional aspect of scene members' political identity project is that they begin to defend the borders of the group and differentiate between what are acceptable lifestyle choices and what are not.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Many Scene-based musics wither or merge into streams. For those styles that transition into an Industry-based genre, the key ingredient is that the scene attracts the attention of major music producers seeking to develop new music and new markets.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><b><i><span style="color: #0b5394;">Industry-based Genres</span></i></b></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Industry-based genres are so-named because their primary organizational form is the industrial corporation. Some of these are multinational in scope, but others are independent companies organized to compete directly with the multinationals. Along with industrial firms, the prime actors in these genres include singers and musicians who contract for their services, targeted audiences, and a wide array of ancillary service providers from song publishers to radio stations and retail outlets. Artists generate income from sales, licensing, merchandise, and product endorsements, and this often drives aesthetic decisions. Performance conventions are highly codified, driven by industry categories and the production tools that standardize sounds. The attire of performers is adapted for the mass market, and made widely available to fans, along with argot, adornment, or features of lifestyle that can be monetized.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">The goal for members of Industry-based genres is to produce revenue by selling musical products to as many consumers as possible. There are several means employed to increase sales. Efforts are directed toward codifying, simplifying, and teaching the genre conventions. Tablature for guitars and other instruments and transcriptions of the lyrics are widely available, and musical teachers and mentors are in plentiful supply in most places. Firms train new artists to work within highly codified performance conventions, and record producers regularly coach songwriters and artists to make music that is simple and clearly within the style so it will appeal to the mass audience. </span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Over the past century, technological innovations have also served to standardize and simplify the production of music in order to satisfy the needs of mass production. "Contact men" working for the firm conscript music critics and disc jockeys into promoting new works and new artists. Trade magazine-produced weekly charts of song sales help to guide industry decisions about the relative success of individual songs and whole musical styles. The otherwise highly competitive multinational conglomerates collectively fight the unauthorized use and distribution of their copyrighted music, and do whatever they can to frustrate the development of spin-off styles.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">A common feature of the transition from the Scene-based to the Industry-based genre is the assertion of market dominance by major record corporations that gain control from the independent labels that had dominated the Scene-based genre. Enterprising independent label heads understandably seek to increase the visibility of their artists and the sales of their records, but insofar as they are successful, the major companies may buy out artist and label contracts. Sales success is a strong indicator of the presence of an Industry-based genre. Sales success is gauged according to codified performance conventions that are governed by industry categories, although they may sometimes be recognized as novel and added as a shelving designation, a type of sales chart, a division of a record company, and so forth.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Artists working in Industry-based genres earn their income exclusively from work performed for large organizations. However, it is a common misunderstanding that sales revenue is sufficient to provide artists with an extravagant lifestyle, or that record sales are the major source of income for artists working in such genres. In fact, industry-based genre artists profit more from merchandise sales, concert ticket sales, and performance royalties (from live and recorded performances of their songs).</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">In the process of absorption into multinational corporations and mass production systems, genre names become more clearly fixed. If a name emerged in the Scene-based period, producers and journalists may continue its use. Like the music, elements of dress, adornment, and lifestyle are exaggerated and mass-marketed to new fans of Industry-based genres. </span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">The financial resources and promotional expertise of major companies will often propel Industry-based genres into the national media. In most cases, national media coverage of the genre will be ill informed about the music, and will depict the musicians as the Pied Pipers of deviance. The danger of Industry-based genres is framed in three contradictory ways. Journalists may portray the genre lifestyle as innocent fun and feature its colorful surface aspects; they may spin the lifestyle as a danger to its fans; or they may claim a danger is posed to society by its "lawless, anti-social, and hedonistic fans." The media may also ignite a "moral panic" in which genre spokespeople, police, political authorities, religious leaders, parent groups, teachers, and moral pundits of all sorts provide the willing press with lurid quotes. Press coverage of these moral panics often highlights racist, classist, or sexist tropes. The added attention to the genre is likely to draw even more fans.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Despite the level of conflict that often accompanies the Industry-based genre, hard-core scene members often spend this period complaining that the sense of being oppositional and hip has been lost. The threat posed by the popularity of music created in the Industry-based genre encourages the hard-core scenesters to cleave to a reductionist notion of the genre ideal. Supporters of the Scene-based phase of the music are especially put off by the large number of "tourists" joining the ranks of the music's fan base in the Industry-based phase. New recruits argue over what constitutes authenticity in music, musicians, and signs of group affiliation, and committed older, longer-term fans and performers engage in a discourse about authenticity lost. This tension is sometimes divisive enough to propel some genre members into forming an Avant-garde genre, while the others create a Traditionalist genre.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><b><i><span style="color: #0b5394;">Traditionalist Genres</span></i></b></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Musical styles that have experienced the explosive Industry-based phase of development tend to suffer a crisis as their many casual fans find a new distraction, and a style's mass popularity wanes. Major record companies looking for "the next big thing" no longer promote the music, and the media see it as music to review rather than as a lifestyle that is the source of news. Resources shrink as players, performance space owners, and fans move on to other music interests. The massification of musical styles and growing friction between hard-core musicians and scenesters against outsiders fuels the fracturing of music into numerous distinct styles.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Traditionalist genres emerge when committed players, fans, and genre-supporting business people decry what they identify as the adulterating consequences of the commercial exploitation of the music in the Industry-based genre. They focus on purifying the music by eradicating the excesses of the Industry-based genre and reenacting a version of what the music was like in its Scene-based period. They seek to preserve the community's musical heritage and inculcate in a rising generation of devotees the performance techniques, history, and rituals of the style. Fans and organizations dedicated to perpetuating the music put great effort into constructing its history and highlighting exemplary performers who embody the collective memory of the genre they construct.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Traditionalist genres are discussed in academic or lay treatments of music, are performed at conferences and festivals, and rely on small-scale or non-profit organizations. The genre-oriented press publishes schedules of events, recounts recent events, prints articles on performance techniques, profiles both venerated and rising artists and groups, and review new and remastered records. Many archival music compilations are released, and a small industry is devoted to remastering and rereleasing old albums.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">At the start of the Traditionalist genre, a scholarly literature emerges that strives to preserve, codify, and organize the field. Scholars and lay historians are often preoccupied with the quest for the true or authentic, complete history of a musical style, and this preservationist spirit is precisely what differentiates Traditionalist genres from other genre types. Musicians and promoters often play a key role in defining the field, particularly if they were active during the Scene-based form. The codification of a musical style's history and significance is the core activity of Traditionalist genre members.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Members of Traditionalist genres meet in clubs and at gatherings of musical associations, academic conferences, and festivals; they communicate at a distance through newsletters, academic journals, trade magazines, and discussion sites on the Internet. Traditionalist genres are populated by dedicated fans, semiprofessional and experienced musicians, and academics from a variety of disciplines. Academic classes in the music and its history often become available, but much instruction in musical techniques and genre lore is received via one-on-one interaction with established performers and other aficionados.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Performers and promoters commonly rely on employment outside the musical community. Festivals and tours often provide the greatest percentage of music-related income to Traditionalist performers, in combination with income from selling records, musical instruments, and music-related ephemera. Many fans sing, play an instrument, or act as promoters of events, so there is a less distinct division of labor among fan, artist, and industry than in Industry-based or fully developed Scene-based genres.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Members regularly travel to conferences and festivals, collect and display records and memorabilia, raise money for ailing artists, and build organizations dedicated to perpetuating the music. Festivals are extremely common among Traditionalist genres, and are critical to their momentum and cohesion. Festivals play a key role in codifying and legitimating a single genre ideal.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Members of Traditionalist genres tend to resemble one another in dress, adornment, and argot. They wear muted, somewhat stereotypic styles of the aging artist or academic and may often use verbal expressions seen by others as out-of-date. They may also resemble stereotypes of a Scene-based performer.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Committed Traditionalists expend a great deal of energy fighting with each other about the models they construct to represent their music and the canon of its iconic performers. They argue over which instruments and vocal stylings are appropriate, and they may even battle over the place and time when the music originated. The test of authenticity is often taken to be the race, class, educational attainment, and regional origins of performers. Even journalistic and academic accounts of Traditionalist genres engage in such demographic profiling. These outsiders often conflate stories of a musical style's origin with its present Traditionalist form, and these stereotypes influence tourists who want to know something about the musical style.</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><b><i><span style="color: #0b5394;">After the Tradition</span></i></b></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Industry-based communities often disband with the drift of casual fans to new musical distractions and the consequent twilight of mass popularity. The crisis within the community is focused on the debate between the nascent Traditionalists, who seek to preserve the music performed in the Scene-based phase, and those who focus on continuing the aesthetic development characteristic of the Scene-based period and living out the creative spirit of the music through innovation and hybridization. This second group often forms a new Avant-garde genre. </span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">Avant-gardists revolt against the popularizing tendencies of the Industry-based genre, and those who write about them begin to use the evaluative discourse of art, evoking images of genius and creative quest. Some find inspiration in unusual meldings of music in cooperation with other creative artists working in other musical styles. The discourse of creative genius helps musicians to distance themselves from the demands of fans of the style from which they have hived off. Like all Avant-gardists, they must rely on sympathetic independent record companies, promoters, and venue owners. Avant-gardists also tend to distance themselves from Traditionalist artists and fans.</span></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-67663173883992477132022-03-10T09:55:00.002-08:002024-01-18T15:58:04.337-08:00Lighthouse at Shipbreaker Shoals<div style="text-align: left;">An adventure I wrote, <b><a href="http://www.thickskulladventures.com/products/lighthouse-at-shipbreaker-shoals/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lighthouse at Shipbreaker Shoals</a></b>, has just recently been published! The pdf is available now at <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/388424/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b>DriveThruRPG</b></a>, and a print edition will be available soon at the <b><a href="https://goodman-games.com/store/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Goodman Games</a></b> webstore. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Earlier this week, I appeared on the <b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QycM5ZR0A80" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Maw of Mike</a></b> podcast to promote the adventure. I thought I should also take the opportunity to talk here about my design process. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QycM5ZR0A80" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Before the pandemic, in a time that now feels like it belongs to a different era of history, <i><a href="https://www.thickskulladventures.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Stephen Newton</a></i>, author of a half-dozen <b>DCC</b> modules and publisher of <b><a href="https://www.thickskulladventures.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Thick Skull Adventures</a></b>, reached out to me to write an adventure for him. This was my first time being commissioned to write an entire adventure.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Stephen's pitch was that this new adventure would take place in the same setting as <b><a href="http://www.thickskulladventures.com/products/attack-of-the-frawgs/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Attack of the Frawgs</a></b> and <b><a href="http://www.thickskulladventures.com/products/haunting-of-larvik-island-dccrpg/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Haunting of Larvik Island</a></b>, and should serve as an optional bridge between the two. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I agreed that I was interested, and started brainstorming possible ideas. I read <b>Fawgs</b> and <b>Larvik</b>, as well as several reviews of them, both positive and critical. I noted a few things that ended up being relevant to the final form of the adventure. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The <i>first</i> was that Stephen's other two adventures were set in a fairly realistic medieval environment with most of the weirdness coming from the monsters who were invading it. So I decided that whatever I wrote should be grounded in an interesting, but essentially ordinary structure that could exist in the real world. I initially thought of the brewery that gets introduced in <b>Frawgs</b>, but decided against that because of the <i>second</i> thing I noted, which was that the first adventure is set in the characters' hometown, and the second takes place on a distant island. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So I thought that whatever I wrote should give the newly ascended 1st level characters, who'd just survived a Zero Level Funnel, a reason to leave home and a reason to go onward to the islands. This led me to decide on a coastal adventure, with the beach as a kind of juncture point between the landlocked village and islands surrounded by sea. Thinking about things that happen right on the coastline that might motivate people to travel outside their hometown for the first time, I hit upon the idea of a lighthouse in trouble. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjFwKA8fsVOBnyT8BvkOWsKNJJizioX6GJlHB3CI5blKUIQklf5Lcvel1R9vMXBIoHPIDJh7AHaPU_Z0ebukp-AnTDnNyAGUpN6zfoBoSV29V32eH2YwRVr_6xZdN06BVK12_BuAgPEcG0buSpobGEaP_Vrqfqqx0BdmuvAyh1XXYA54ZiGzb6XNA=s1345" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1345" data-original-width="1042" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjFwKA8fsVOBnyT8BvkOWsKNJJizioX6GJlHB3CI5blKUIQklf5Lcvel1R9vMXBIoHPIDJh7AHaPU_Z0ebukp-AnTDnNyAGUpN6zfoBoSV29V32eH2YwRVr_6xZdN06BVK12_BuAgPEcG0buSpobGEaP_Vrqfqqx0BdmuvAyh1XXYA54ZiGzb6XNA=w310-h400" width="310" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>cover art by FRK Pyron</i></td></tr></tbody></table> </div><div style="text-align: left;">What should be the source of the trouble? Well, <b>Larvik</b> begins to introduce the cosmology of Stephen's gameworld, which, without spoiling the details, involves a elderly sea god and some sibling rivalries between his children. Making one of the children a spiritual protector of the lighthouse, and the other two the source of the monsters, turning the battle for the site into a kind of proxy war in the squabblings of childish divinities, sounded promising to me. I also double-checked with Stephen to make sure I'd gotten my understanding of his gameworld's theology right. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In retrospect, by this point, the adventure was shaping up to be much more of a prequel to <b>Larvik</b> than a sequel to <b>Frawgs</b>. So I had my site, and I had my source of danger. Now it was time to decide how they were interrelated. In keeping with the setup of the other two adventures, I decided that the lighthouse had gone dark because of an incursion of weird monsters. That would be a worthy reason for newly forged heroes to come investigate, and if the trouble at the lighthouse is being caused by gods who are also related to the problems on Larvik Island, then the players both have a reason to go off and learn more about them, and <b>Larvik</b> is slightly enriched by providing more background on the gods of its setting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">At this point, I free associated a bit. One episode of the show <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_documentary)" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Connections</a></b>, which I'd watched recently at the time, talks about the history of lighting technology. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limelight" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Limelight</a> was was on the first really bright lights that people figured out during the Industrial Revolution. It was never widely used in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">lighthouses</a>, but it theoretically could have been. Limelight is named that because chemical compounds containing calcium are often called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_(material)" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">lime-something</a>, for example, limestone. A form of limestone is what makes the famous White Cliffs of Dover so white. Now, it turns out that limelight works by burning something called <i>quicklime</i> rather than limestone - but it was easy enough to set aside the inconvenience of that detail and imagine a lighthouse set on some white limestone cliffs, and to imagine that the lighthouse uses a magical lantern that burns limestone as fuel to make an impossibly bright signal beam. All this was inspired by reality, but since no one who's not a chemist or construction worker has heard of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_oxide" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">quicklime</a>, it's slightly easier to understand than the truth.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Also in the news around the same time, for whatever reason, was something about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagfish" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">hagfish</a> and their fascinating slime. I can't remember why hagfish were considered newsworthy at the time, but what matters for the adventure is that (a) hagfish vaguely look like worms, or even more vaguely, like dragons, and (b) hagfish slime looks just like water until you try to touch it. The idea of a giant hagfish as the climactic encounter for the adventure appealed to me very quickly. You can see the beast up there on the cover. The fact that the effect of the hagfish might be invisible until you investigate it closely appealed to me as a possible source of mystery to investigate.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And so the adventure I ended up writing is structured as a kind of mystery. It's a crime scene, and as you explore it, you find out information about the victim, and you discover evidence in the form of signs and portents that show you what kinds of monsters the gods sent to commit their crime. Because the perpetrators are godlings, and because it's <b>D&D</b>, some of that evidence is quite dangerous to the investigators. Since there are two gods, there are two kinds of incursion, and although the Barnacle Bear is inspired more by the appearance of the character <i>Doomsday</i> from <b>DC Comics</b> than it is by actual barnacles. It functions as a mini-boss of the site, and you can see it in the art below.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As I built the adventure site, I thought about making a fairly realistic map of a lighthouse and lighthouse keeper's house and estate, and I thought about how to make each "clue" different and interesting. What might happen in the well? The kitchen? How would these monsters be affected if the lighthouse keeper had a sauna? Both the big monsters have vulnerabilities that you can learn about by investigating the estate. I added a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_dog" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">turnspit dog</a> to the kitchen, both because it was another interesting thing I'd learned about on <b>Connections</b>, and because it tells you something interesting about how the lighthouse functions. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The climactic encounter is something I'm proud of, and involved a lot of back-and-forth with Stephen to get right. But if you've been wondering for the past couple paragraphs how a party of 1st level characters stands any chance of defeating a dragon, the answer is that there are clues about its weaknesses in the adventure, and I wrote explicit GM advice about what to do if the players try to act on those clues. You definitely won't win just by swinging your sword at it - it's much too big and powerful. But there are ways to hurt it badly, to maybe defeat it, or at least drive it away. But if you don't learn enough from the investigation - or think quickly on your feet during the battle - then your 1st level characters probably <i>will</i> die. And since they were fighting a seemingly overwhelming opponent, I hope those deaths will feel appropriate. Victory is possible, but it's not guaranteed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpLxS7Qz91q41Ix8sNE4i_sF602lETyBVZcoLolYXIMdwt1v37XJoGt2fXJJv9hn1HsMOGG0lLCf4AOrHZ2dqAHEAigHuuZuSpma1tqMLRa3hf5iHGP9p6QbIuKfwhTbPb2zSPeCEWzJzUZlCYicgBSgSRlaOVvoIiafmE_b8vmSj1xKDHKMLeAw=s2550" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1650" data-original-width="2550" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpLxS7Qz91q41Ix8sNE4i_sF602lETyBVZcoLolYXIMdwt1v37XJoGt2fXJJv9hn1HsMOGG0lLCf4AOrHZ2dqAHEAigHuuZuSpma1tqMLRa3hf5iHGP9p6QbIuKfwhTbPb2zSPeCEWzJzUZlCYicgBSgSRlaOVvoIiafmE_b8vmSj1xKDHKMLeAw=w400-h259" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>interior art by FRK Pyron</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One last thing I want to note is the reason that Stephen is listed as doing "additional writing" and not just "editing" or "publishing" on the cover. Stephen's editing <i>was</i> invaluable. This was the first of a couple projects where I've really, <i>REALLY</i> benefited from having an editor with a keen eye for quality who has noticed my weakest areas and pushed me to do better. But in Stephen's case, he also stepped up and added some of his own writing to a couple places that most needed it. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">At the beginning of the adventure, I'd written a table of interactions between the party and the townspeople of Sagewood. It was essentially just a rumor table with a bit of advice and an extra piece of equipment for each standard character class. Stephen expanded it into more of a roleplaying opportunity. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My idea for the magic lantern was <i>- aside from the fact that it could burn rocks as fuel -</i> a little lacking in terms of seeming all that magical, and it didn't particularly have a role to play in the final fight, except that ideally you'd want to keep it from getting destroyed in the fracas. Stephen rewrote it to be a real artifact, something truly important and precious. Both those inclusions make the overall adventure stronger and better, and I'm glad that it looks the way it does now, instead of how I wrote it.</div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-81609015162366798402022-02-28T08:26:00.003-08:002024-01-18T15:57:55.671-08:00Let's Write an Adventure Site (part 2) - What Went Wrong Before?<div style="text-align: left;">In <a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2021/11/nanowrimo-nagademon-lets-write.html" target="_blank">my first post in this series</a>, I introduced an adventure that I tried and failed to write a few years ago - <b style="font-style: italic;">"The Night Garden at the Vanishing Oasis" </b>- and I talked about some of the materials that provided me with inspiration the first time around.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This time I want to talk about what went wrong the first time I tried writing this adventure. Part of what went wrong, of course, were various personal failings on my part - procrastination, distraction, <a href="https://twitter.com/openacademics/status/1394630255080579083" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">moving on to a new thing before the old thing is finished</a>, etc, etc. But I also think I was stymied by some of the decisions I made early on about how to go about structuring an adventure, decisions that made the design process harder than it needed to be and possibly contributed to me feeling like I didn't know how to finish it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When I sat down to try to write this adventure the first time, I was drawing on the models I had available then for what an adventure in old-school <b>D&D</b> should look like. <span style="color: #999999;">(Remember, I wasn't trying to invent a totally new thing. I was trying to make a new example of an existing type of thing. So it still makes sense that I would look to other examples to see what that kind of thing is supposed to look like.)</span> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">While I was probably drawing on the collective teachings of the OSR blogosphere of the time, I know that I was also intentionally basing the structure on the 10 minute outdoor hexcrawl from <b><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/88764/Lesserton--Mor" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lesserton & Mor</a></b>, the advice about strict time records and strict movement records from <b>The God That Crawls</b>, and some of the ideas about what "weirdness" in an adventure looks like from <b>The Monolith Beyond Space and Time</b>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One reason that I feel more better able to attempt this project again today is that I now have a lot more models, a lot more existing examples, to draw from when deciding what an outdoor adventure site ought to look like. Instead of hoping that the handful of things I know about are the best or only way to do things, I can think about my goals, compare several options, and decide what I think will work best for my purposes.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>Today, I don't think the models I picked back then were really the right choice. I still like <b>Lesserton & Mor</b>, but it's meant to involve pretty open-ended ruin crawling over the course of multiple expeditions. It's way too big and way too sparse compared to what a superbloom oasis should probably be like. The other two titles I was critical of even at the time, but it's obvious to me now that back then I was influenced by their claims about the "right" way to measure space and time in a game, and the techniques available to show that a place is both unreal and dangerous.</div><div><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #999999;">(Something interesting can happen when people, perhaps especially kids, try to create something by following a model when they don't actually have enough information about the model. Most often, you get something incomplete, what you might call a <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">cargo cult game</a></i> if you were feeling uncharitable. But presumably, you sometimes get something innovative, if the game maker can recognize the gaps in their existing knowledge and fill them in with invention and creativity, something like <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes#Calvinball" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Calvinball</a></i>, except, you know, real.)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #999999;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #999999;">(As a kid, I knew that <b>D&D</b> and other games like it existed and had combat, but I had no idea how it should work. I assumed combatants should have roughly 60 to 100 hit points - in retrospect, I'd guess my kid self unconsciously picked a number range that was familiar from the grades you get at school. I also thought combat should somehow involve hit locations. Beyond that I didn't know what to do though, so I was left with something partial and nonfunctional.)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEigSMx7UYoAIr6f8fQrxE1pPuktWf2ut2HukVjRBFCVMNe-JZ5wlvja4pRpAN0E-P5QmqGAr2ScUmsmda2w0U2GlQfarWc4Zeon1aVSEJx3qvn3y5HqszUlSG0EWG0rScVeVRg9OBcavcWkadpE70MRSocTLAGmPLzcDwJBe7KIlPfAFRwNahwVCw=s4032" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEigSMx7UYoAIr6f8fQrxE1pPuktWf2ut2HukVjRBFCVMNe-JZ5wlvja4pRpAN0E-P5QmqGAr2ScUmsmda2w0U2GlQfarWc4Zeon1aVSEJx3qvn3y5HqszUlSG0EWG0rScVeVRg9OBcavcWkadpE70MRSocTLAGmPLzcDwJBe7KIlPfAFRwNahwVCw=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div><br /><i>Here was the adventure I'd planned -</i> a giant team of zero-level characters is assigned to go pick flowers that only appear at a certain oasis after a super heavy rainfall, and only bloom at night. You have three set encounters on the road to the oasis, then run into bandits waiting to ambush you just as you arrive, then finally get to an oasis made up of 120-yard hexes <span style="color: #999999;">(aka, 10-minute hexes)</span>. You arrive at noon, unless you spent too long on the earlier encounters, and have until 9pm to explore until nightfall. The flowers bloom at midnight and can be harvested until 6am. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Also the very first encounter is a different garden with a big <i>"Do Not Enter"</i> sign out front, where magical gun-flowers are growing, and if you take them, the GM should track everything you kill, because their ghosts will come back to haunt and attack you at 1am, the <i>"Witching Hour"</i>. The GM is also of course tracking the time in 10-minute increments from, at a minimum, noon on the first day to 6am on the second. Also the GM should track and impose penalties for lack of sleep and dehydration. <i>Also</i> also, you <i>have</i> to harvest the flowers, because the guy back in town who "assigned" you to go pick them "knows" how many to expect you to bring back, lest you get tempted to do something between midnight and 6am besides say <i>"I harvest a flower"</i> over and over whenever you're not fighting something that's ambushed you.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The oasis is divided into four main sections, plus the Central Basin. You enter via the Wildflower Garden. To one side is the Succulent Garden, which has friendly plants but more dangerous wildlife, and the other side has the Cactus Garden, with dangerous plants but basically harmless animals. The back, which is more optional, since you don't need to pass through it to get to any of your goals, has the Rock Garden.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I was aiming for a mix of prosaic reality and outrageous unreality, but in terms of what I actually wrote, there was probably a bit too much of the mundane, and not enough variation in tone. Worse, the "unreal" things I wrote seem less like real interactive encounters and more like exercises in frustration. There's the giant unkillable sandworm. The unkillable and ever-multiplying puppy snails. The unkillable ghost who wants to steal your stuff. The mirage that lets you find whatever you want, but it vanishes as soon as you leave the hex. Plus the mandatory ambush by bandits, and the likely overwhelming mandatory ambush by ghosts if you were foolish enough to dare kill anything with the super cool magic guns in a game whose goal is to kill things and take their stuff.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMgKfxHyYy9GvE3FHzZYu2kWZpz1ot7BDckEUlgUbZrGGC-WL7ufgMzk7DArzu0LGUYivlE6DM2dBb8SscmMUBLzXGCf5_EdI0J46xhKZWfFZXyibDVtgdh_OJDbuWNTiZxkveANe4Q_lVvnBxDXgpDgfUyHasE6mMPyPOyIvad487KSaYwU09sw=s4032" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMgKfxHyYy9GvE3FHzZYu2kWZpz1ot7BDckEUlgUbZrGGC-WL7ufgMzk7DArzu0LGUYivlE6DM2dBb8SscmMUBLzXGCf5_EdI0J46xhKZWfFZXyibDVtgdh_OJDbuWNTiZxkveANe4Q_lVvnBxDXgpDgfUyHasE6mMPyPOyIvad487KSaYwU09sw=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /><b><i>Too Much Simulationism, Not Enough Gameism</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">At the risk of oversimplifying <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a rather elaborate of game design preferences</a>, let me loosely define <b>simulationsim</b> as a preference for game mechanics that at least <i>appear</i> to recreate real-world conditions within the game world. <b>Gameism</b> is a preference for mechanics that are more abstracted. So measuring distance in feet or miles, counting time in minutes and hours is more <i>simulationy</i>, measuring distance in hexes or point-crawl-nodes, counting time in turns or "watches" is more <i>gamey</i>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We can imagine two archetypal endpoints, and a continuum of mechanics between them. I tend to think of mechanics that are more <i>"zoomed-out"</i> and more <i>indivisible,</i> that is, focused on bigger distances and longer units of time, without allowing for incomplete travel or partial distances, as being more g<i>ame-like.</i> Mechanics that measure things on a smaller scale, that break out the rulers and the pocket calculators for partial measurements, that are more <i>"zoomed in"</i> and more <i>granular,</i> I think of those as being more <i>simulation-like</i>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Importantly, I would say that Gygaxian strict records, for time or anything else, are more simulationy. My own preference, personally, is for things to be more gamey. So when I look back on my previous plan, to track time of day in 10-minute turns, with specific weather effects at specific hour markers, that now strikes me as being too simulationist. I want to unshackle the adventure from a strict one-day time frame, allow more fictional time to pass, and reinforce the desired dreamlike or hallucinatory aesthetic by making the passage of time more abstract and less tied to a precise clock.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Likewise, my map with its hundred-plus hexes, most of which were empty, both because I hadn't finished keying them, and because I think I thought each interesting hex ought to have a buffer around it, now seems to me like it would benefit from becoming more gameist. A point crawl map would allow for the desired "travel time" between each site, <i>it would allow each site to be interesting,</i> and it would almost certainly reduce the total number of sites that need to be numbered and keyed. And again, by zooming out from strict, <i>small</i> hexes to larger, indeterminately sized point-crawl-nodes, I can allow the fictional space to expand a bit, rather than feeling so cramped and claustrophobic. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Too Much Railroad, Not Enough Sandbox</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">While my original plan for this adventure was not strictly linear, there were some major guardrails thrown up to keep players "on track." There <i>was</i> a small linear section leading to the oasis, and a couple unavoidable encounters at the beginning and end of that section. But the biggest obstacle to player freedom was framing the whole thing as a <i>mission</i> on a very tight time schedule. Because the characters came to the oasis with a specific objective that they could only achieve at a specific time, the whole adventure was set up so that there was a "right" thing for the players to do <i>- namely to go straight to the flowers they were after and camp out until nightfall -</i> and plenty of punishments if they chose to do the "wrong" thing and actually explore the big, interesting environment surrounding the one little patch of ground they were "supposed" to care about.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So like, obviously actually playing the game of <b>D&D</b> in a way that's any fun whatsoever requires the players to act with less than military precision and discipline. March in, secure the perimeter of the site, gather the resources, march out - tactically smart, I guess, but deadly boring, <i>and</i> it provides no real opportunity for players to make meaningful choices, except to follow orders like a soldier and succeed, or act like you're playing a game and get punished for it. I'll say more about this in the next section, but for whatever reason, at the time, I felt like I was following a zeitgeist that said that adventuring should be a choice, and it should be the <i>wrong </i>choice, because it's dangerous and irrational, and therefore adventures should be set up to reinforce to players that they're making a mistake by adventuring.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">To my mind, one of the best ways to make <i>meaningful </i>choices is when there's no obviously right answer. There are alternatives, each with benefits and drawbacks. But if there's one option that's just objectively better than the others, selecting that option is a choice, maybe, but it's not a meaningful choice. Recognizing that option for what it is might require skill and good judgement, but once you know it and see it, doing the thing that's right and easy is more like a foregone conclusion than an actual decision. <span style="color: #999999;">(Note that I think this is as true of character "building" options as it is of the choices you make once the game begins.)</span><span style="color: #666666;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So in revising the adventure, I want to give the players more choices to make, <i>and </i>I want the those choices to be about <i>how</i> to explore the site, not <i>whether</i> to explore it or stay on-mission. Instead of set pathway leading to the entrance, there will just be an entrance, and there will be no high-stakes mandatory encounters at that entrance. I might still like to have some effects that are tied to the weather and time of day - but those can be random encounters rather than something the GM needs to devote a lot of effort to tracking. There will still be a special garden at the heart of the oasis, but no extremely strict schedule the players need to follow in order to reach it without arriving too early or too late. And the garden will only be one reason, out <i>several</i> to explore the site. There should be plenty more to see.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Too Much Negadungeon, Not Enough Fun Dungeon</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There's a strain of Foucauldian <i>discipline</i> to the way that a lot of mid-OSR scenesters talked about "the right way to play" on their blogs and on Google Plus. It was all about going slow and steady, always checking for traps, always pausing to listen at doors, always searching for secret passages and hidden treasures, constantly checking and re-checking for any sign of danger, producing a map at least as accurate as the GM's while eking a slow path through the dungeon. I don't know how often people actually played like that, but enough people were vocal enough to make it sound like it was an expectation. This was dungeoneering as a <i>player skill</i>, and the apotheosis of this mindset, I think, is the so-called <b><i>negadungeon</i></b>, the dungeon that forces you to play in the preferred style, because if you don't, it will kill your character.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I don't think I was consciously trying to make this adventure site into a negadungeon when I first started writing it, but I was consciously influenced by the conversation around negadungeons and the way that they <span style="color: #999999;">(according to some people, anyway)</span> represented the absolute pinnacle of correct design for an adventure meant to challenge the players rather than the characters. I've made a small reading list of my favorite posts on the topic, which I'm not going to individually summarize, but you can read if you'd like. Essentially a negadungeon is a place that's <i>not for you</i> - everything is dangerous, the rewards aren't worth it, and every mistake you make compounds to make the further sections even harder than the previous.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="http://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/2013/03/negadungeon.html" target="_blank"><b>Rotten Pulp</b> <i>"Negadungeon"</i></a></li><li><a href="http://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-insidious-theory-at-heart-of-games.html" target="_blank"><b>Rotten Pulp</b> <i>"The Insidious Theory at the Heart of Games"</i></a></li><li><a href="http://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/2013/09/some-negadungeons.html" target="_blank"><b>Rotten Pulp</b> <i>"Some Negadungeons"</i></a></li><li><a href="http://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/2014/06/negadungeons.html" target="_blank"><b>Rotten Pulp</b> <i>"Negadungeons"</i></a></li><li><a href="http://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-miserycrawl-negadungeons-and-killer.html" target="_blank"><b>Dungeon of Signs</b> <i>"The Miserycrawl, Negadungeons, and Killer GMing"</i></a></li></ul></div><div style="text-align: left;">There can potentially be interesting choices between something that's <i>right and difficult</i> and something that's <i>wrong and easy</i>, but usually only if you're talking about a moral dilemma. It might be better to call those options <i>good and difficult</i> and <i>bad and easy</i>, instead. That dilemma is a great motivator in literature, everything from <b><a href="https://www.americangirl.com/shop/felicity-learns-lesson-pb-bk-d0878" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Felicity Learns a Lesson</a></b> to <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omalas"</a></i>. But stripped of its moral dimension, I would say that this dilemma becomes less compelling as the basis for making decisions in a roleplaying game. <i>Right and difficult</i> has its place even when <i>right</i> just means <i>correct</i> and not <i>virtuous</i> - we admire artists, athletes, and craftspeople who can do things well that are difficult to do at all, and games like chess have <i>correct</i> strategies that are hard to learn but result in winning the game because you've played it well.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If you as the GM adopt a strict, mid-OSR mindset that players should choose between playing the game in a way that's <i>right and boring</i> or <i>wrong and fun</i>, first, you can expect your players to dispute your definitions of right and wrong in this context, <span style="color: #999999;">(roleplaying is not <i>that</i> kind of game, or at least not indisputably so)</span> and second, you can expect almost everyone involved to get very frustrated very quickly. <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/45020/roleplaying-games/rulings-in-practice-traps" target="_blank">Even Gary hated how Gary's GMing taught Gary's players to play.</a> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There's a reason why Old School authors beg you to bring along as many mercenaries and baggage carriers as you can afford, why <b>Dungeon Crawl Classics</b> sends you in with three back-up characters trailing behind you, and why every official edition since <b>2e</b> has given starting characters the maximum hit point from their starting Hit Dice - it's because people want to play the game in a way that's <i>fun</i> without having to stop to make up new characters every 15 minutes. They're different solutions, but they all accept the same basic premise, people want to have <i>fun</i> more than they want to be painstakingly cautious.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Here's the thing. When I was talking about decision-making, earlier, I noted that if there's just one obviously right choice and a bunch of obviously wrong ones, then it's not a very meaningful decision at all. It doesn't actually require a lot of skill to run through a rote laundry list of standard precautions before taking each new 10' movement - just a willingness to endure hours of tedium. And if <i>everything</i> in the dungeon is a deadly trap, if <i>everything</i> you interact with punishes you for interacting with it, then it doesn't take much skill to just not touch anything - again, just a willingness to hear a lot of room descriptions and never ask for more detail or engage with the environment except to wander through it like a museum where everything is protected by velvet ropes.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So when I remake this adventure, I want it to be less negadungeony. I <i>want</i> players to explore the oasis, and I want them to be <i>glad</i> they explored it. In addition to not having a "script" of instructions from a patron, exhorting them to go straight to the MacGuffin Garden without poking around off the beaten path, I don't want the rest of the oasis to <i>so</i> dangerous and so unrewarding that you <i>wish</i> you hadn't bothered investigating anything. Obviously it's a balancing act, because there need to be monsters, hazards, and other dangers, but there should be worthwhile treasures and rewards as well, and the mix needs to be weighted enough toward the good stuff that the players want to continue trying to figure things out, even though their characters sometimes suffer for it. The gardens should be full of wonders, and while those should sometimes be deadly too, they should remain enticing rather than forbidding.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">The point of all this critique isn't to beat myself up about what I wrote before, it's to take stock of my mistakes so that I can do a better job the next time. So next time, in part 3, let's start writing!</div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-80134273738045414462022-02-22T14:22:00.041-08:002024-01-18T15:57:44.813-08:00American Power Elite Factions in CRAWL-thulhu<div style="text-align: left;">My vision for the world of <b>CRAWL-thulhu</b>, is that it resembles our world in the 1920s and 30s, though obviously with some more menacing elements.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I imagine a world that never had a Great War, but is still roiled by factionalism and the looming threat of mass violence. There are sensitive people, I think, who can detect psychic vibrations or spiritual echoes or astral resonances, who know that their world is overdue for catastrophe and rebirth. This is a world of <i>dreamers,</i> and everyone's dream is to remake the world with their philosophy, their ideology ascendant, and all their competitors ground to dust. A thousand dystopian futures wait just beyond the horizon. Too few people want peace, too few appreciate the benefits of stability. Everyone wants the apocalypse to happen so that their preferred post-apocalyptic scenario can be the one to become reality.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Factions in <b>CRAWL-thulhu</b> serve two purposes, one pragmatic, the other thematic. At a practical level, I want adventures in <b>CRAWL-thulhu</b> to revolve around solving mysteries, and factions provide a gameable way to supply suspects. Each suspect represents a group, a faction, and it is their membership in the faction that makes them suspicious. I'm not interested <i>- in this game at least -</i> in mysteries that revolve around family relationships or inheritance or romantic infidelity. I don't want mysteries that are solved by blood or love or money. I want mysteries that revolve around a conflict between irreconcilable <i>ideas</i> and incompatible <i>goals</i>, and factions provide a way to make those conflicts larger than just the individual combatants. If everyone is a representative, everyone is an agent, then the personal becomes political, and solving the mystery, resolving the conflict, becomes a way to influence the future of the setting. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>That</i> is the thematic purpose of factions, as I see it. They provide a bridge that links the grandiose ideas, the apocalyptic plans, the dystopian ambitions that define the setting, on the one hand, and the player characters as individuals who are mostly interacting with a handful of NPCs in a relatively constrained space, on the other. Factions mean that the suspects are suspicious because of what they think, what they want to do, what they would do if they could, and catching the culprit means pushing doomsday a few minutes further off into the future.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The guilty faction in <b>CRAWL-thulhu</b> mysteries should, I think, be chosen randomly. A lot of people are both players and referees, and I want them to be able to have fun too. If I picked a single guilty party and wrote that down, then it would be possible to spoil the mystery. Either someone played this one before, or someone saw it when they were leafing through their copy of the zine, or some reviewer gave the solution away on the blog, or whatever. If I picked the answer, it would be possible for the players to know it without actually solving the mystery. But if the answer is selected at random from a list of possibilities, then it <i>must</i> be a surprise, and something that <i>has</i> to be solved.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One mystery I'm working on involves a series of lavish, luxurious house parties that span America. I know I want one in Gotham <i>(my stand-in for Chicago)</i> and another in Metropolis <i>(my replacement for New York)</i>. I'm still deciding on some of the others. The house parties are mostly full of the rich, the famous, the people who control America's military and political and cultural power.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There should be obvious factions among them. Hollywood, Wall Street, the Ivory Tower. I also want there to be secret societies. These aren't announced. To recognize them, you have to talk to people, hear about the terrible, beautiful things they would do to the world if their faction were ascendant over all the others, and recognize an eerie sense of deja vu that tells you that in addition to whoever they say they're working for, they also serve another master. That seems more difficult for me to accomplish as a writer, and more difficult for the players to determine as part of their investigation, but hopefully more rewarding as well.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As an example, imagine a spy organization, mirroring the real world CIA, who has successfully bought the loyalties of Abstract Expressionist painters and Literary Fiction writers, who have a plan remake the ideology of the middle and upper classes by smuggling it to them via their most vaunted and elite artists and authors. <i>That</i> would be quite a thing to uncover, if you could recognize what you were seeing, if you could remember where you heard that turn of phrase before, if you could sus out the true loyalty of the people who say they belong to one group, but really owe their allegiance to another.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-62709771759142422892022-02-17T06:32:00.001-08:002024-01-18T15:57:33.976-08:00My Brilliant Friends - A Conversation with WFS of Prismatic Wastelands and Barkeep on the Borderlands<div style="text-align: left;">My friend and <b><a href="https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Bones of Contention</a></b> coauthor <a href="https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/" target="_blank">WFS</a> is kickstarting a pointcrawl adventure called <b><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/prismaticwasteland/barkeep-on-the-borderlands" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Barkeep on the Borderlands</a></b>. I got added as a coauthor thanks to a successful stretch goal, and most of the Skeleton Crew will also be writing bars for the crawl, along with OSR luminaries like <a href="https://www.bastionland.com/" target="_blank">Chris McDowall</a> and <i>(potentially!)</i> <a href="https://www.wizardthieffighter.com/posts/" target="_blank">Luka Rejec</a>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As the final weekend of crowdfunding approaches, I chatted with WFS to ask him some of his inspirations and his feelings about real-world barcrawling.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="420" scrolling="no" src="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/prismaticwasteland/barkeep-on-the-borderlands/widget/card.html?v=2" width="220"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Anne</i></b> - So <b>Barkeep on the Borderlands</b> and the <i>Raves of Chaos</i> are obviously inspired by the widely owned, widely played, and widely criticized <b>D&D</b> adventure, <b>The Keep on the Borderlands</b>, and the <i>Caves of Chaos</i> adventure site. There have been a couple of interesting responses to the original Keep in the last few years. <a href="https://gnarledmonster.itch.io/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Alex Damaceno's</a> <a href="https://shop.swordfishislands.com/beyond-the-borderlands-issue-1/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><b>Beyond the Borderlands</b> zine</a> and <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/218157/The-Forbidden-Caverns-of-Archaia" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Greg Gillespie's <b>Forbidden Caverns of Archaia</b></a> spring to mind immediately.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div>You've actually written before about <a href="https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/blog/the-keep-on-the-borderlands-is-full-of-lies" target="_blank">your thoughts on Keep</a>, but if you'll indulge me, why did you decide to make your barcrawling adventure a kind of response to this classic?</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><b><i>WFS</i></b> - Many of my best ideas begin their lives as puns, which was the case with <b>Barkeep on the Borderlands</b>. I typically have a few score ideas swirling around in my head at any given time, and in this instance two of those combined. On the one hand, I had been rereading some classic modules and found <b>The Keep on the Borderlands</b> very interesting - as evidenced by my blog post you referenced. On the other, I was nostalgic for a simple pre-pandemic pleasure that I had taken for granted, which is hopping from bar to bar with a band of friends. Somehow the two ideas slammed into each other and I thought of two puns, both the title <i>“Barkeep on the Borderlands”</i> and the more descriptive subtitle <i>“a Pubcrawl Pointcrawl.”</i> From the title alone, I felt like I had a lot to work with. </span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;">I think combining two disparate elements into a cohesive whole is a really helpful creative exercise. It’s why the spark tables in <b>Electric Bastionland</b> are so genius. You have to figure out how the two ideas fit together and come up with something totally unique. For <b>Barkeep</b>, I had to figure out how a pubcrawl fit into the world presented by <b>Keep on the Borderlands</b>.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Anne</i></b> - And why do you think it's such a popular adventure for people to respond to? Is it just that it was included in Holmes' <b>Basic Set</b> at a key time? Or is there more to it than that?</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><b><i>WFS</i></b> - I don’t think one can discount its inclusion in the <b>Basic Set</b>, the gateway for so many into the hobby, but there does seem to be something special about the adventure itself. After all, they replaced <b>In Search of the Unknown</b> with <b>The Keep on the Borderlands</b> for a reason. And I think it is because the adventure is itself so basic that made it so useful to early gamemasters and so beloved. It has all you need for the core game loops of D&D: a starting town, a surrounding wilderness and a dungeon filled with monsters. </span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;">But just as important as what it includes is what it doesn’t include. There are no proper names in the module: people are just called the Priest, the Castellan or the Taverner. The political environment is just a sketch: the Keep exists on the border of some civilized land to the west and untamed wilderness to the east <i>(which sounds like the classic West Marches in reverse)</i>, but there are no details you might get in later products that tied themselves to <b>Greyhawk</b>, <b>Forgotten Realms</b>, etc. The motivations of the monsters and cultists in the module are also hazy at best. And all of this blank space allows for the gamemaster and player to project their own ideas onto it! After I wrote that post on the module, I heard back from a lot of people how they interpreted it differently, like viewing the chaotic bandits as a scouting party of some evil human empire to the east, or deciding to raid the Keep instead of the Caves of Chaos, or playing the adventure straight as Gygax seems to have intended. <b>The Keep on the Borderlands’</b> flexibility to contain all of these competing narratives and motivations is its abiding strength.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Anne</i></b> - I'm curious to know your thoughts on a recent drinking trend. How do you feel about amaro? I know that Brad Thomas Parsons is not single-handedly responsible for the rise of bitter Italian liqueurs, but he is more or less single-handedly responsible for getting me into them. I read his books, <b><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/202678/bitters-by-brad-thomas-parsons/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bitters</a></b> and <b><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/241404/amaro-by-brad-thomas-parsons/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Amaro</a></b>, and that convinced me to try them, and from there I've just kept trying new bitter flavors.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><b><i>WFS</i></b> - I am really not up on any of the latest drinking trends; I prefer to stick more to the classics, old fashioneds, negronis, whiskey sours and the like. I have had a few amaro spritzes, but didn't find them particularly revolutionary. </span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;">In terms of trends, I am of course aware of seemingly every brand <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBpgqRbEFVg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">getting into the hard seltzer business</a>, but I'm not too keen on them. Something in that vein that I have enjoyed, however, are the <i>Finnish Long Drinks</i>, which to my understanding actually contains gin. It's no gin & tonic with a splash of <i>St. Germain</i>, but if I'm at a tailgate and everyone is chugging beers, it's probably my canned drink of choice. Any amaro drinks you'd recommend?</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Anne</i></b> - I actually would say the negroni is a good starting point! It's pretty easy to experiment with y swapping out one ingredient to see how you like the taste with a different spirit, or another liqueur instead of vermouth. <i>Campari</i> was my first amaro, then <i>Aperol</i>, then I discovered you can mix them, and by now, I've tried maybe a half dozen others.</div><div><br /></div><div>I actually thought of <i>White Claw</i> and its cousins as a trend, but I almost never drink them, myself. Somehow almost all the ones I've tried have had a metallic aftertaste. That might just be a quirk of my palette though.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><b><i>WFS</i></b> - That’s exposes my ignorance - I didn’t know <i>Campari</i> was a type of amaro. I need to get on your level.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Anne</i></b> - Admittedly, until I read the <b>Amaro</b> book, I didn't know the word, let alone any examples! I think bitter flavors have become more enjoyable for me as I've gotten older.</div><div><br /></div><div>Okay, last question. Looking beyond Barkeep on the Borderlands, you named <a href="https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/" target="_blank">your blog</a> for a campaign setting, the <i>Prismatic Wasteland</i>. You've mentioned before that <a href="https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/products/the-ultra-violet-grasslands-and-the-black-city" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Luka Rejec's <b>Ultraviolet Grasslands</b></a> was one of your inspirations. But could I ask you to pop the hood for a moment, and ask you to talk about another inspiration? What's something I could read or watch or listen to that would help me understand a part of the <i>Prismatic Wasteland</i>? And how does the source relate to the final product?</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><b><i>WFS</i></b> - I’ll give you three, one being a science fantasy book old enough to be on the original <i>Appendix N,</i> the second being a children’s TV show, and the third is another classic <b>D&D</b> module - I have range. </span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;">So the first <i>(and potentially somewhat obvious)</i> answer is <b>Dying Earth</b> by Jack Vance. The stories of the <b>Dying Earth</b> take place amidst the decay of an untold number of decadent civilizations but the stories are about wizards, and monsters and magic. However, what is understood as magic is really the ritual tinkering with ancient sciences and technologies that are no longer understood. This all rings true for the Prismatic Wasteland setting as well.</span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;">But the <i>Prismatic Wasteland</i> is bit less dark than the <b>Dying Earth</b>, which while light at times is not always so. I describe the <i>Prismatic Wasteland</i> as whimsical post-post-apocalyptic in genre, which aligns more with my second influence, <b>Adventure Time</b>. <b>Adventure Time</b> was a show that ran on Cartoon Network but garnered a following of adults due to its sense of humor. While it can read as just pure gonzo fantasy at first <i>(with talking animals and a kingdom full of candy people)</i>, over the course of the series, it is revealed that the world is the way it is due to a series of apocalypses, and the remnants of the older civilizations, humanity included, are scattered and scarce.</span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;">For the third inspiration, we’ll move away from science fantasy and the <i>Dying Earth genre</i> entirely. The <b>Isle of Dread</b> is an adventure for <b>B/X D&D</b> and is only a few years younger than <b>The Keep on the Borderlands</b>. It is also one of the first adventures I ever ran. I have always preferred its flora and fauna <i>(which includes dinosaurs)</i> to the typical pseudo-medieval stock in most <b>D&D</b> settings and adventures. The <i>Prismatic Wasteland</i> setting is similar, but with a more science fiction spin: it takes place across an entire continent, which was terraformed by an advanced civilization to be the ideal vacation resort for an intergalactic populace. But now the island’s many spas, mega-malls, amusement parks, high-end dining and other amenities are unrecognizable, derelict versions of their former selves. And the AI-enabled robotic animals that were designed to be capable of reproduction run wild from the amusement parks in which they were once contained. I call these creatures “animaltronics” and they do include dinosaurs. So I guess I would be remiss in not also listing a fourth inspiration: <b>Jurassic Park</b>.</span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #674ea7;">A book, a TV show, a TTRPG adventure and a movie. How’s that for a variety of sources!</span></div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgqIkTPP4kqiPUXuCeL9TakZSwUTKQaKls16IHH8tir2sfF_LvCzWE4SuPI8wG4xgK6O9hC6Pyw8CytyFnIw_X8pNx9mkDrEghjQ-tXmHPhkoz7kZcAh3oNgSJKNB-XslLhXHnEHFg4XpH3dLc5klZscT_yfDlPTzpwWzzNkNWYmbndoUY_HYjgyg=s680" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="680" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgqIkTPP4kqiPUXuCeL9TakZSwUTKQaKls16IHH8tir2sfF_LvCzWE4SuPI8wG4xgK6O9hC6Pyw8CytyFnIw_X8pNx9mkDrEghjQ-tXmHPhkoz7kZcAh3oNgSJKNB-XslLhXHnEHFg4XpH3dLc5klZscT_yfDlPTzpwWzzNkNWYmbndoUY_HYjgyg=w400-h309" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/prismaticwasteland/barkeep-on-the-borderlands" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">cover art</a> by Sam Mameli</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-83244571492488738712022-02-10T21:33:00.003-08:002024-01-18T15:57:20.470-08:00My 2021 in Review<div style="text-align: left;">I've decided to "borrow" another idea from Jack Shear and write about my favorite things I read, watched, and listened to in 2021. Every month, Jack writes a <i>T<a href="http://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.com/search/label/total%20skull" target="_blank">otal Skull</a></i><a href="http://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.com/search/label/total%20skull" target="_blank"> post on <b>Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque</b></a>, and every year, he and Tenebrous Kate records a <a href="https://badbooksbadpeople.com/episode-52-best-of-2021" target="_blank"><i>Best Of</i> episode of <b>Bad Books for Bad People</b></a>. <span style="color: #666666;">(Readers with photographic memories may recall that <a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/09/lost-world-miscellany-greater-adria.html" target="_blank">I previously copied Jack's <i>Unholy Misc</i> format</a> for my own <a href="https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/search/label/miscellany" target="_blank"><i>Miscellany</i> series</a>.)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Best Things I Read</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpDbjKyj58W7KaNr8CG3yt3bK2rAkFsiQhGqXZPL4y2pu1B9-vkDF3luT9iE2nPws71O5Ns80Y2V6yDtV4ulVyIqSjChldb6qJgwNUdoha1F8t-d9tRaL2KFnvHucroR3tErlE62utM0EP6MONR1tR8oe_U61YC_-RfUGhmjx84Zb-4OvhJqjC8g=s2560" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1684" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgpDbjKyj58W7KaNr8CG3yt3bK2rAkFsiQhGqXZPL4y2pu1B9-vkDF3luT9iE2nPws71O5Ns80Y2V6yDtV4ulVyIqSjChldb6qJgwNUdoha1F8t-d9tRaL2KFnvHucroR3tErlE62utM0EP6MONR1tR8oe_U61YC_-RfUGhmjx84Zb-4OvhJqjC8g=w211-h320" width="211" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-Pp9MrXzQJRAKFv6Ti3WUn5l0jnC4tydN2s6OIJOAu_C5d1vtsC3Uakai-bKzho3VJM4qZeTLFhA_iD9dJi2V8YFn5Nbsm3wTRmo7jvMVXzQE0m5zIQDdqV1a6Txm4GHsIvxPjwLbCkQXvu-oQaizA3q5zFJPZbbVjtgTvJ3HVVZn5ObAHJAh2g=s540" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="338" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-Pp9MrXzQJRAKFv6Ti3WUn5l0jnC4tydN2s6OIJOAu_C5d1vtsC3Uakai-bKzho3VJM4qZeTLFhA_iD9dJi2V8YFn5Nbsm3wTRmo7jvMVXzQE0m5zIQDdqV1a6Txm4GHsIvxPjwLbCkQXvu-oQaizA3q5zFJPZbbVjtgTvJ3HVVZn5ObAHJAh2g=s320" width="200" /></a></div> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Genre Fiction (tie) - <i>The City in the Middle of the Night</i> by Charlie Jane Anders & <i>Fire Time</i> by Poul Anderson</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I really love the worldbuilding in <b><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765379962/thecityinthemiddleofthenight" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">City in the Middle of the Night</a></b>. We're on a small, tidally locked alien world with human two cities built at the cusp of Day and Night, Xiosphant, the clockwork city, and Argelo, the city that never sleeps. Anders describes their cultures and languages in a way that makes them feel distinctive, real, and alive. The world is hostile. Whatever star they're orbiting is deadly bright, so the Day side of the planet is utterly off-limits. The Night side is dangerous, but human tech can function there briefly, and there are some interesting aliens living in the dark. The early history of the human colonies are very gameable, with the mothership sending "treasure asteroids" to crash on the surface, where teams of explorers, kitted out in environmental suits and snow-crawlers raced into the Night to recover the mineral wealth.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>City</b> must be, I think, an example of <a href="https://kittysneezes.com/a-guide-to-squeecore/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">what critics derisively refer to as <i>"squeecore"</i></a>. There are two protagonists. One is a working class girl, Sophie, with an obvious crush on her upper class friend. They play at political revolution, and Sophie ends up taking the fall when the police come looking for someone to execute. She only survives because she discovers how to communicate with some of the Night side aliens. The experience is traumatic, and for the rest of the book that trauma is never far from the surface. The other protagonist, mouth, is the lone survivor of tribe of nomadic people who traveled the entire length of the small globe. Now she runs with some daring black market traders who sell contraband back and forth between the feuding cities. Sophie and mouth start only peripherally connected, but the actions of one inevitable affect the other. None of the book's tentative romances are ever consummated, but several characters go to rather <i>extreme</i> extremes to enact their political beliefs, or empower themselves, or just do what they think is right.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Time" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Fire Time</a></b> has another weird ecology. The planet Ishtar is in a trinary system, with one star like our sun, one inconsequential dwarf, and one red giant on an extreme elliptical orbit that exposes Ishtar to a century of much hotter weather once every millennium. Humans have a small colony on Ishtar and are trying to use their technology to help the native civilization survive the titular <i>"fire time"</i> - in every previous era, nomadic peoples from the planet's hottest regions migrate and sack the cities, which alongside predictable flooding and agricultural failures has always led to the collapse of the sedentary governments. At the outset of the book, the humans on Ishtar are forbidden by Earth to continue their plan so they can make ready in case they get pulled into a conflict started by humans on <i>another</i> alien planet, one with no indigenous life, where the human colony's conflict with the colony belonging to a second alien species has metastasized to the point where both homeworlds are involved, in what feels like an analogy to the actual Cold War. The plot is essentially a tragedy - a conflict on Ishtar that could be averted <i>isn't</i> because of politics on Earth.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I'm impressed by how many ideas Anderson manages to pack into a 200-ish page novel <span style="color: #666666;">(compared to the 300-400 that's standard today)</span>. We get at least two factions of humans, two of the Soviet-analog aliens, two very well developed groups of Ishtarans, a half-dozen viewpoint characters, great worldbuilding around the ecological and cultural effects of the trinary stars, and especially great worldbuilding around the biology and ecology of Ishtar. The handfuls of Terran crops are the <i>only</i> food on Ishtar the humans can eat, and soil that grows one planet's native plants <i>can't </i>grow the other's. The most common Ishtaran plant is called <i>"lia"</i>, which I imagine looking like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sansevieria" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sansevieria</a>. There's also a third type of life on Ishtar, one that only lives in the otherwise uninhabitable regions, except during the fire time. Tauran life originally came from a planet that orbited the red giant before it got too big and too hot. Their astronauts came to Ishtar a billion years earlier and all died out. But their gut bacteria survived, and from those evolved new multicellular life, and eventually new sentience. The Tauran's are essentially made up of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(chemistry)" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"left handed"</a> molecules compared to both humans and Ishtarans; what nourishes one is basically indigestible to the others. Anderson's world is mind-expanding to imagine.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjAxGfT0dv7VwIP6o_fgJvAy_tGmAEcGlNX9ENG9Majt1pe72YFSaXkLAWswWcMB6rrCbbICxCA31u4CTDZ6SjohuV9-p0fgluwsWz4Twlzit3WKeJzD-7TsGJUagasTXAzM-buJxpY-5qYAS0CoVLmzscy9k5jcXzRf7u3PiwDoxt_shUxe6J8Ag=s1855" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1855" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjAxGfT0dv7VwIP6o_fgJvAy_tGmAEcGlNX9ENG9Majt1pe72YFSaXkLAWswWcMB6rrCbbICxCA31u4CTDZ6SjohuV9-p0fgluwsWz4Twlzit3WKeJzD-7TsGJUagasTXAzM-buJxpY-5qYAS0CoVLmzscy9k5jcXzRf7u3PiwDoxt_shUxe6J8Ag=s320" width="207" /></a></div> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Literary Fiction - <i>Famous Men Who Never Lived</i> by K Chess</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I mentioned before that I wanted to read this one, and last year I finally did. <b><a href="https://tinhouse.com/book/famous-men-who-never-lived/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Famous Men Who Never Lived</a></b> tells about the 100,000 refugees who come to our world from a parallel Earth that diverged around 1910 and experienced a different 20th century. We closely follow Hel, short for Helen, and some of her friends. Hel is obsessed with the science fiction novel <i>The Pyronauts</i>, which tells a story like a reversed <b>War of the Worlds</b> mixed with <b>Fahrenheit 451</b>. In it, Martians come to Earth in peace, bearing gifts of wonderous technology, but by accident, they also bring infectious microorganisms that lay waste to our plantlife, including our crops. The titular pyronauts, of this book within a book, are men dressed in environment suits, armed with flamethrowers, who burn away the infected plants to prevent the alien spores from spreading. Chess gives us Hel's summaries, rather than raw text from the fictional Pyronauts, but she's invented a book that feels like it <i>should</i> exist, and <i>could</i> have been written in a slightly different 1920.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">While trying to find support to build a museum to the lost culture of the dead world the refugees escaped from, Hel either loses the book or it's stolen from her, and the lost book becomes a symbol of everything she left behind and had to give up. The perspectives of the other characters help to fill out the strangeness of the other 20th century, and the magnitude of the loss of an entire world. This was one I read knowing that it would confront me with my own grief about the pandemic.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhvOhYLShwb3aMzZkQmmnfJPPIBbA80fh8PC3Lxv8cWboKCpW6qTD9FWnUbkE1Gg4DIhNigi738RdpgWAWVVsulvQtNgiPdDa4D4EH6vXWjWZMaPNn7UfaLj_ccEZ_Wwm8Hznfdc7lBwiG1DYGtpgDapRSR1mE89nMt9AMqVVyNWEPyfuR9dcDIFA=s1016" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1016" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhvOhYLShwb3aMzZkQmmnfJPPIBbA80fh8PC3Lxv8cWboKCpW6qTD9FWnUbkE1Gg4DIhNigi738RdpgWAWVVsulvQtNgiPdDa4D4EH6vXWjWZMaPNn7UfaLj_ccEZ_Wwm8Hznfdc7lBwiG1DYGtpgDapRSR1mE89nMt9AMqVVyNWEPyfuR9dcDIFA=s320" width="189" /></a></div> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Poetry - <i>Eunoia</i> by Christian Bok</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The heart of <b><a href="https://chbooks.com/Books/E/Eunoia3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Eunoia</a></b> is a series of five prose poems, each written using only words that contain only a single vowel. So there's an A poem, an E poem, etc. Each poem is packed with as much assonance and alliteration as Bok could fit into them, and each includes, among other things, a feast, a drug trip, and a sex scene. Even moreso than other poems, these deserve to be read aloud, and I found the entire exercise to be a real delight.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Here's the merest sample: <i>"Hassan gnaws at a calf flank and chaws at a lamb shank, as a charman chars a black bass and salts a bland carp. Hassan scarfs back gravlax and sprats, crawdads and prawns, balks at a Parma ham, and has, as a snack, canard a l'ananas sans safran."</i> So good!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjE37JFqEBpSOH6H2TvefeqNPzsfJHiZWpdXqgMUvXpzxRmoXkQkNMNYRE0yownBx0yRU_iDNodqrAWKtO2VCmd-m9IFHuv_TDtWSI21H5pQfEomb6oLXbTfH2UvO32gN0XWa0yv5FgoqS6BXHWOKWdOy1Dc7JKdTXSpBAgzqhUwLGXMl0Ah7V-Rw=s1458" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1458" data-original-width="1431" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjE37JFqEBpSOH6H2TvefeqNPzsfJHiZWpdXqgMUvXpzxRmoXkQkNMNYRE0yownBx0yRU_iDNodqrAWKtO2VCmd-m9IFHuv_TDtWSI21H5pQfEomb6oLXbTfH2UvO32gN0XWa0yv5FgoqS6BXHWOKWdOy1Dc7JKdTXSpBAgzqhUwLGXMl0Ah7V-Rw=s320" width="314" /></a></div><br /><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Nonfiction - <i>A Game of Birds and Wolves</i> by Simon Parkin</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A book about the secret history and forgotten contributions of women doing classified work during WWII, somewhat akin to <b>Hidden Figures</b>, <b><a href="https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/simon-parkin/a-game-of-birds-and-wolves/9780316492089/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Game of Birds and Wolves</a> </b>tells the story of the women in the British navy who got recruited to design and run a wargame that would first discover tactics to prevent the German U-boats from sinking so many cargo ships, and second teach those tactics to the commanders of the British fleet. You learn an awful lot about the navy, women in the navy, and submarine combat along the way. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One pleasurable discovery for me was realizing that the somewhat arcane rules followed by Romulan Warbirds and Klingon Birds of Prey in the original <b>Star Trek</b> series, when they use their cloaking devices, rules that don't really make sense if there's just a forcefield that turns them invisible, are the rules that govern how submarines engage in combat. Underwater they're invisible and too deep for torpedoes to touch, but move incredibly slowly, can't fire their own weapons, and are vulnerable to correctly aimed depth charges.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Best Things I Watched</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiivg8n37FlSbE0jaa6RWDgsTHNWU0ssfekz6I5NOkmhlUdsTwdFsZc5KHx5EDywzNwIw4eKhIlK0nOrMzl-GIWO4fGm3H8bxC9ftZ7Hk2JPzCtO_DFLMMqznNJzhoKALyNIQI2EKiP13He60sU0qrWeBUV7nwxzuZ54RQAgV8WLzMXKScBPwdOmA=s1251" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1251" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiivg8n37FlSbE0jaa6RWDgsTHNWU0ssfekz6I5NOkmhlUdsTwdFsZc5KHx5EDywzNwIw4eKhIlK0nOrMzl-GIWO4fGm3H8bxC9ftZ7Hk2JPzCtO_DFLMMqznNJzhoKALyNIQI2EKiP13He60sU0qrWeBUV7nwxzuZ54RQAgV8WLzMXKScBPwdOmA=w256-h320" width="256" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWAxcIakhD_hyZLd_Z4Js-nf0LxJPnGrjhv46XtG0BtGXLQwNrgPADeDxFhPyW00FfbZpjaiiuqfwYnv107D-8msxSSjjTbBWbZ0ixxbuATfGgF8LiQ8-8Ib8fDxENb9VuR4i72lanZuGFLQxq2b3pDF6b7JyKgzOoven7Fgdqbdop4pOyN3bpqQ=s2560" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1707" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWAxcIakhD_hyZLd_Z4Js-nf0LxJPnGrjhv46XtG0BtGXLQwNrgPADeDxFhPyW00FfbZpjaiiuqfwYnv107D-8msxSSjjTbBWbZ0ixxbuATfGgF8LiQ8-8Ib8fDxENb9VuR4i72lanZuGFLQxq2b3pDF6b7JyKgzOoven7Fgdqbdop4pOyN3bpqQ=w213-h320" width="213" /></a></div><br /><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Animated Television (tie) - <i>My Hero Academia</i> & <i>Avatar: The Last Airbender</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I started watching more anime this year primarily because it fits neatly into my lunchbreak at work, but I've enjoyed the opportunity. <b><a href="https://www.crunchyroll.com/my-hero-academia" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">My Hero Academia</a></b> is basically a Harry Potter story with superheroes instead of wizards. It's also a lot of fun. It's set in a world where about ¾ of the population has some kind of superpower, or "quirk". These range from classic superhero powers to some real oddities, like having tape dispenser elbows or headphone jack earlobes. The main character, Deku, is born without a quirk, but wants to be a hero, and idolizes All Might, who's a Superman / Dumbeldore figure in this story. He gets a power, gets into school, and begins his journey, and by the end of season 5 the story has nearly reached the second year of high school. <span style="color: #666666;">(The first year is, uh, eventful!)</span> I especially like the way the world outside the school has started to open up in the last couple seasons, and am looking forward to catching season 6 in the fall.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">After finishing <b>My Hero Academia</b>, one of my coworkers recommended I try <b><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/70142405" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Avatar</a></b>, and I'm glad she did! If I had known how much I'd like <b>Avatar</b> earlier, I too might have contributed to <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/magpiegames/avatar-legends-the-roleplaying-game" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the wildly successful Kickstarter</a>. The world here is divided into a continent that's home to the Earth Kingdom, a major archipelago that houses the Fire Nation, the north and south poles where the Water Tribes live, and assorted mountainous islands that used to be occupied by the Air Nomads. Oh yeah, and each society has a significant and elite minority of "benders" who can control one of the elements.<br /><br />The story opens after a century of war waged by the Fire Nation on all the others. Water Tribe siblings Katara and Sokka discover an magic iceberg, containing Aang, the current reincarnation of the Avatar, who disappeared just before the war started. They travel the world learning magic, initially pursued just by the disgraced Fire Nation prince, Zuko, and later by other agents of the Fire Nation. As our heroes travel, we see the cost of war, but also the reasons one might fight to retain autonomy, the importance of a peace based on coexistence rather than conquest. There are a lot of likable characters, but to my mind, Zuko is the most compelling. He's a deeply flawed person, but also the one who I cared most about what he did, and who I knew least whether he would do what I hoped. I also have to mention how much I love the animals on this show. They're all combinations, bat-lemurs and vulture-wasps and turtle-ducks and the like. They're really delightful!</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c3Bu2DOM66g" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Live Action Television Television - <i>Counterpart</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My only ambition in watching <b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Counterpart/dp/B077MVJ553" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Counterpart</a></b> was to watch a scifi spy thriller, and to see JK Simmons playing two characters in the same show. It's fair to say I got more than I bargained for! In this show, there are two Earths, one essentially like ours, and one harsher and more mysterious, for reasons that are initially unclear. The two worlds are connected by a single doorway in East Berlin, with an embassy on either side, with very tightly controlled travel and communication between the two worlds. The existence of the doorway is a secret, and so there are lots of spies on both sides trying to learn about one another and steal technology.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The show opens because someone hired an assassin on the other side to come to our world and kill certain people. Simmons' character, Howard, a minor bureaucrat who doesn't even know the nature of the secretive organization he works for, gets recruited to help out because his comatose wife is one of the targets. The assassin, Baldwin, was the first element to draw me deeper into the show than I expected. I found I couldn't take my eyes off of her; the actress's performance is electric. The other element I couldn't resist was learning more about the secrets of the two worlds, how they came to be connected, and the global flu pandemic in the 1990s that made the other world so harsh and cruel in its dealings with ours. I didn't expect how important that fictional pandemic would be to the show, or how much it would engage my emotions.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2YTYleNFaPE" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Documentary Television - <i>Alien Worlds</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If I were to add a couple more to this category, I'd recommend the glass arts competition <b>Blown Away</b>, or the ceramic competition <b>The Great Pottery Throw Down</b>, but the show that really exceeded my expectations was <b><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80221410" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Alien Worlds</a></b>. I'm a big fan of speculative biology, and this show doesn't disappoint, but what I especially liked was how much it was all grounded in extrapolating from the biology of Earth. The very first interview in the first episode is with the man who discovered the first exoplanet! I was also deeply impressed by the tour of the Danakil Depression.<br /><br />There are only four episodes, but we see the airborne life that thrives in the thick atmosphere of a planet with twice the mass of Earth, the adaptive radiation of the same genus into different species on the night and day sides of a tidally locked world, the overflowing fecundity and complexity of the food chain on a world with a binary star, and the possible long-term future of an intelligent species on an Earth-like planet around about to become a red giant.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x4IROrwsR-Q" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">Film - <i>The Night is Short, Walk on Girl</i></span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I probably watched more television than movies last year, but <b><a href="https://www.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GX_OSgQ6rwMLDwwEAAAAQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Night is Short, Walk on Girl</a></b> leapt to the front of my mind when I thought of things I'd enjoyed. We follow an unnamed and very charismatic young woman, a college student, as she enjoys a very long night of drinking, book fairs, and street theater. She quickly collects a group of fellow bon vivants, and a luckless grad student with an unrequited crush on her. This film really captures the joy of the night life, and reminded me how much I miss it, how much fun it used to be to go out on the town.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I have two reservations worth mentioning. First is that in the final act, a rather nasty common cold spreads among all the revelers in the film, sending all of them home to bed, and leaving the streets eerily empty in a way that looked too much like the first lockdown. One character even rhapsodizes about the rapid spread of communicable diseases as a manifestation of human camaraderie. It was impossible for me to watch that and not think about the possibility of people spreading something worse than a simple cold. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My second reservation is that I don't really like stories about men pursuing romance with women who don't know them; the chases always feel sinister to me and the happy endings almost always feel false. By the end, the grad student guy learns how to stop acting like a stalker and start acting like a friend, and the "end" of his chase is simply that they make a tentative start at dating. But neither set of qualms is enough to knock this from its spot as my favorite movie I watched last year.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-4094711679967672272022-01-31T06:58:00.002-08:002024-01-18T15:57:10.250-08:00Roadside Picnic Basket Book Club - 1 - Roadside Picnic<div style="text-align: left;">Welcome to the first in what I hope will be a series of conversations between me and Trey Causey from <b><a href="http://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">From the Sorcerer's Skull</a></b> about dungeon crawling science fiction. Our first conversation, and the club namer, is about one of the most famous works of Russian science fiction - <i>Roadside Picnic</i>. So pull up a picnic basket, and enjoy our chat!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhF9ZUUfuALqaeCl8NlrMlKVFsLUFbu3dhc0BOMUn8T_sKe1Nq3lVCOWEAzxpA2LhetFkmO5XJ6xuRFcGhaJfndE2I2YQ5lwaNbTYTHfGNocJ0NsfUDEongzd0Esrs8TOFs0kKO_1hqZMjiL6IafY_fm2XwVNC6ttEekSOy3IkUxDCk-xOHqBVWTQ=s500" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="326" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhF9ZUUfuALqaeCl8NlrMlKVFsLUFbu3dhc0BOMUn8T_sKe1Nq3lVCOWEAzxpA2LhetFkmO5XJ6xuRFcGhaJfndE2I2YQ5lwaNbTYTHfGNocJ0NsfUDEongzd0Esrs8TOFs0kKO_1hqZMjiL6IafY_fm2XwVNC6ttEekSOy3IkUxDCk-xOHqBVWTQ=s320" width="209" /></a></div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Anne -</b> I wanted to chat with you, because I know you're putting together a sort of Appendix N for some adventures in space, and I saw you mention <i>Roadside Picnic</i> as a source to draw from.</div><div><br /></div><div>I really enjoy <i>Roadside Picnic</i> but it also occurs to me that it's kind of "having a moment" right now. I feel like I see a lot of people mentioning it as a potential inspiration.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> It comes up a lot. It's <a href="https://lotbieth.blogspot.com/2018/10/legacy-of-bieth-appendix-n-revisited.html" target="_blank">one of Humza's favorites</a>, for instance. </span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> It's very versatile in that sense, because if I recall correctly, <a href="https://lotbieth.blogspot.com/2018/10/legacy-of-bieth-appendix-n-revisited.html" target="_blank">Humza's setting</a> is a pre-colonial fantasy North Africa, while you're talking about off-world adventures in a spacefaring future. But I can see the appeal in both cases.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> Besides being a good book, I think it appeals to folks interested in games of treasure-seekers exploring weird and dangerous places is because that's exactly what it does!</span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;">I think it's probably a better inspiration for the "classic play" style of <i>D&D</i> than say <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> because the protagonists aren't particularly heroic types and the dangers are weirder and more fantastical. It has scenes that are perhaps the modern equivalent of poking around with 10 foot poles. </span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> In a way it almost surprises me that it's not the textual basis for classic <i>D&D</i> adventures. </div><div><br /></div><div>But it occurs to me that maybe we should each take a turn summarizing the book, in case anyone reading this is wondering what we're talking about. I assume there are a few people who didn't <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">rush off to <i>Wikipedia</i></a> the moment they saw a book title they hadn't read.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> Sure, let me respond to that point about inspiring <i>D&D</i> first, if you don't mind. I think <i>D&D</i> is how <i>D&D</i> is by accident. It's like <i>Star Trek Monopoly</i>, in a sense. They used only the trappings and widgets of things they liked but repurposed them to something their wargamer minds knew how to handle. I think classical play is an ahistorical attempt to make these accidents of history make sense. </span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> I think what we now call "classic play" is as much a creation of the OSR scene in the early 2010s as it is a revival of any way that people actually used to play in the 1970s. From what I can tell, there were a lot of different playstyles back then, because people who didn't learn the game directly from Gygax or Arenson had to figure it out for themselves, and what they came up with was usually different from one another. So the OSR style of inching through a trap filled deathmaze is more like the canonization of one version of the past than a recognition of a single best or most common experience.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> I think that's correct. It has antecedents, but it was one choice of many.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> I feel like some OSR people disclaim any personal creativity and try to say that Gary invented it all, but to me it seems obvious that they invented new things and made choices about what to carry forward from the past. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> That's true.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> I want to come back to your <i>Star Trek Monopoly</i> metaphor in a second, but we probably should describe the book first.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> So <i>Roadside Picnic</i> is a Soviet-era Russian science fiction novel by the Strugatsky brothers that deals with the aftermath of a strange, presumably extraterrestrial "Visitation" at 6 locations across the globe. These locations are left altered in weird ways. There are anomalous artifacts and weird substances. As the governments try to keep a lid on these "zones" and exploit what they can technologically, a culture of stalkers arises that sneak into zones and take things to sell on the black market.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> I like how much of the Strugatsky's invented language you managed to work your summary! I see it as a story about poor criminals with no other options for a decent living going into a bizarre environment, filled with deadly traps, to seek magic treasures, in a world where everyone is shockingly blasé to the wonders and the horrors of the Zone / dungeon. Even the treasures they find, which should inspire awe, get called "swag," and some types are common enough that they aren't even particularly valuable. </div><div><br /></div><div>The <i>D&D</i> attitude is there, alongside a plot structure that mirrors the classic dungeon delve.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> I think the "poor criminals" part is interesting. Red is initially working for the government. Does the government exploration end? Or is it just Red finds the idea of making more money off the risk's he's taking more enticing?</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> There's even a guy who's infamous for bringing in hirelings to get killed on his behalf.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> Yep. He's got a nickname, as I recall - The Buzzard!</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> Yes! It's been a couple years since I read it, but I think he's also the guy who loses all the bones in his legs to an encounter with Witch's Jelly.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> Yeah. But I think it isn't so much they have no other options, but that these blue collar guys see this as a quicker way to wealth. It's dangerous, but there's a hint some of them are sort of thrillseekers, too, as I recall. What they do is seductive.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> There are really two kinds of Stalkers, right? There are the blue collar workers who are doing it for the government, and the black market criminals who just want to sell swag to the highest bidder. Plus the occasional scientific tourist who wants to actually learn more about the weirdness of the Zone.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> And of course, we learn the governments are benefiting from the black market trade, too.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> Thrillseeking is a good way of describing it. These guys are looking for adventure as well as money. They're adventurers.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> Back to <i>D&D</i> again!</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> Okay, so a minute ago, you compared <i>D&D</i> to <i>Star Trek Monopoly</i>. Could you say more about what you mean by that?</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> Sure. It's my shorthand for the trappings of one thing, but the substance of another. <i>Star Trek Monopoly</i> pays lip service to <i>Star Trek</i>, but is really just monopoly. A game that purports to be about Conan, or Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, or Gandalf, but is instead about dying in holes in the ground, has a similar sort of disconnect. I hasten to add, this does not mean it’s bad.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> That's worth pointing out! But right, Conan doesn't work in a team, Gandalf never got eaten by a Gelatinous Cube while trying to steal Smaug's gold, etc.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey - </b>Neither carry 10 foot poles!</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> I think that's also what I mean when I say I'm surprised <i>Roadside Picnic</i> wasn't a conscious influence. Because <i>D&D</i> is kind of like the plot <i>Roadside Picnic</i>, but with the cast of <i>The Hobbit</i> swapped in to replace the Russian lumpen-proletariat. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> I think that's right. It also makes me think how it might be interesting to think about a version of <i>The Hobbit</i> where the desolation of Smaug was a Zone!</span></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Anne -</b> True, we could all certainly lean in harder to the weirdness of the dungeon!</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Trey -</b> I do think there are ways in which <i>D&D</i> isn't like <i>Roadside Picnic</i>, of course, besides the modern setting. One, dungeon environments are mostly new spaces to adventurers with unknown dangers. The zones (mostly) seem known to the stalkers we follow, it's just a matter of if they can avoid the dangers. Two, they never haul about large amounts of valuables. No hordes of coins for them. Three, there aren't really monsters in the zones: just "traps" and "hazards." I think you could do a "rationalized D&D" that was more like a medieval-ish RP, but as it stands <i>D&D</i> is a little bit <i>Roadside Picnic</i> and a little bit <i>The Hobbit</i>. Awkwardly.</span></div><div><br /></div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-90332225965769018782022-01-24T10:11:00.003-08:002024-01-18T15:57:02.099-08:00My Weird & Wonderful Interview with maxcan7<div style="text-align: left;">At the start of the year, or maybe it was the end of the last one, <i>maxcan7</i> of <b><a href="http://weirdwonderfulworlds.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Weird & Wonderful Worlds</a></b> messaged me to ask if I'd like to participate in <a href="http://weirdwonderfulworlds.blogspot.com/search/label/interview" target="_blank">his ongoing interview series</a>. I agreed, and in the last couple weeks we found a time to sit down for a chat.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgghTKBZZYmW8s2QVxySA4BtP13w81ixFPy6nJrJNYmSjuRvb59sUEnF7onE2WWktSNkwyxnbkN_oth2BxUsM8Mv6_sQHH6OyEVeQvUfQP5tdLegWUi1p-HH0Y43LILnYEotHHEEKKC0D0lNRGgLvyLQFRlWSXyBM_cfxg0I_5h--iJwrOft3UiuQ=s640" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="391" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgghTKBZZYmW8s2QVxySA4BtP13w81ixFPy6nJrJNYmSjuRvb59sUEnF7onE2WWktSNkwyxnbkN_oth2BxUsM8Mv6_sQHH6OyEVeQvUfQP5tdLegWUi1p-HH0Y43LILnYEotHHEEKKC0D0lNRGgLvyLQFRlWSXyBM_cfxg0I_5h--iJwrOft3UiuQ=s320" width="196" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://weirdwonderfulworlds.blogspot.com/2022/01/diy-dragons-weird-wonderful-interviews.html" target="_blank">That interview has now been released!</a>, and you can read it <b><a href="http://weirdwonderfulworlds.blogspot.com/2022/01/diy-dragons-weird-wonderful-interviews.html" target="_blank">here</a></b>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Thank you to <i>maxcan7</i> for the opportunity to participate in this project, and for the chance to talk about myself and my views on the online RPG scene.</div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2018265247036237861.post-48216432920364189252021-12-30T15:54:00.000-08:002024-01-18T15:56:53.014-08:00My First 6 Months with Bones of Contention<div style="text-align: left;">About six months ago, I announced that I was joining the <b><a href="https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Bones of Contention</a></b> blog. Although this has been one of my least productive blogging years, I did manage to get a few posts in.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjkUe3kjGXAvpnr7mnTt3MZcDscft48Yc3pOJ_mO4nOWR0tnH-IYDXwGAzo-WScYbgjcAzwUOUdktw0_26cB_1h1smlKaq2udWDcfln-zXvADwlWKeSXjfHIt-KwM4DAO9h9HWcZuKaaOc4UmZdyplRsJ2353pFk1XMSi2d4650Ag6WE4acifSynA=s910" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="207" data-original-width="910" height="91" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjkUe3kjGXAvpnr7mnTt3MZcDscft48Yc3pOJ_mO4nOWR0tnH-IYDXwGAzo-WScYbgjcAzwUOUdktw0_26cB_1h1smlKaq2udWDcfln-zXvADwlWKeSXjfHIt-KwM4DAO9h9HWcZuKaaOc4UmZdyplRsJ2353pFk1XMSi2d4650Ag6WE4acifSynA=w400-h91" width="400" /></a></div> <br /> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/2021/06/dungeon-dioramas-in-light-of-ghost-star.html" target="_blank"><b>Dungeon Dioramas - In the Light of a Ghost Star & Earth Expedition One</b></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">For my first post, I decided to review one of the first adventures put out by the prolific minimalist Nate Treme. In addition to a careful reading of the gamebook, I was able to base my review on some actual play experience with my regular Friday night game group. This one also features something that I hope I can still make a somewhat regular feature of the column, a section where I put the procedural adventure generators in the book to work and run them through their paces by generating an entire setting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/2021/08/cryptic-signals-mausritter-anomalous.html" target="_blank"><b>Cryptic Signals - Mausritter, Anomalous Subsurface Environment, Honey in the Rafters, Doodle Champion Island Games</b></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">One of the interesting things about <b>Bones</b> as a blog is that we have multiple authors. The <i>Cryptic Signals</i> series of posts tries to use that to offer a series of short vignette reviews of several different game books. I went ahead and organized this one, and wrote two of the reviews, including for the Pokemon-like browser game Google released to celebrate the 2020 Summer Olympics. My review of <b>Mausritter</b> included another test of adventure generation procedures.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/2021/09/dungeon-dioramas-night-land.html" target="_blank"><b>Dungeon Dioramas - Night Land</b></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">When I wrote my <b>Ghost Star</b> review, I mentioned that I had been hoping for a setting like William Hope Hodgson's <b>Night Land</b>, which led Trey from <b><a href="http://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">From the Sorcerer's Skull</a></b> to recommend <i>this</i> <b>Night Land</b> to me. Aside from the name and the basic premise of a weird, futuristic land stuck in eternal darkness, this adventure doesn't borrow much from Hodgson, but I'm still glad I read it. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I feel like mentioning the book in my first two columns makes it seem like I'm obsessed with <b>Night Land</b>, and I'm sure I'll review more science fantasy in the future, but I promise that <i>every</i> column won't be about how <i>another</i> game designer has failed to sufficiently remind me of Hodgson.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/2021/10/cryptic-signals-dissident-whispers.html" target="_blank"><b>Cryptic Signals - Dissident Whispers</b></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This was our most thematic <i>Cryptic Signals</i> so far, and to be honest, I liked that so much I hope more of them will have some sort of unifying theme. I picked my second favorite review from the book. I didn't review my favorite - yet - because I don't want to pigeonhole myself as only writing about <b>Mausritter</b>. I'm hopeful that we'll do another batch of reviews from <b>Dissident Whispers</b> though, and if we do, I'll be sure to review it then. The process of writing my three "mini reviews" so far makes me wonder if I'm constitutionally incapable of writing an actually short review, but it is good practice reining in my tendency to wordiness.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/2021/11/dungeon-dioramas-root-quickstart.html" target="_blank"><b>Dungeon Dioramas - Root Quickstart & Pellenicky Glade</b></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My last review of the year looks at the free, public materials for the upcoming <b>Root</b> roleplaying game. I backed the Kickstarter, so I have the pdfs for the full game, but I wanted to base what I wrote on the parts that people can actually play. I wished I could have included this year's <b>Free RPG Day</b> adventure, but I didn't pick it up in person, and the pdf still isn't publicly available. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I'm glad there was an adventure to review though. It could be tempting to fall into a trap of just reviewing rulesets, but I think the most interesting part of this project is looking at the more actionable advice that shows up in adventures. I want to note that <b>Root</b> actually has a small system for procedurally generating the campaign area, but I didn't bother testing it out, precisely because the availability of pre-written villages makes the random generator to create them less important.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://bonesofcontention.blogspot.com/p/index-of-reviews-by-title.html" target="_blank"><b>Index of Reviews by Title</b></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My final contribution to <b>Bones</b> for the year was to make an index of the reviews so far. For next year, I hope to use my <i>Cryptic Signals</i> entries to highlight some zines that I think have done something interesting, but that maybe don't rise to full review status. I also hope to try out the <i>Folie a Deux</i> format that Gus and WFS pioneered. I think they're another good way to use our numbers, and I have a couple already tentatively lined up. I just need to come out of my shell enough to get them written.</div>Annehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15493700749333105771noreply@blogger.com6