Peter Ward & Alexis Rockman's Monsters I Want to Fight - The Zeppelinoids

The last time I talked about the book Future Evolution, I mentioned that author Peter Ward and illustrator Alexis Rockman mostly did not engage in the kind of biological speculation that the title of their book seems to imply. 

 

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...

 

Jellyblimp illustration by Michael Whelan for Our Universe

"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."

"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. 

 

"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."
 
"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."
 
"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."

 

the skies above Atlas on Alien Worlds

 

The idea of floating animals shows up in a couple other places. In my childhood favorite, National Geographic's Our Universe book, illustrator Michael Whelan imagined Jellyblimps and predatory Swordtails in the endless skies of Jupiter.

Netflix's Alien Worlds documentary miniseries, which I've recommended before, 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.

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. (Think of how much easier it is to float in water than in air!) 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. 

 

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.

 

Zeppelinoid sketch, by me

 
Above is my own, very rough, sketch of a Zeppelinoid. (Possibly one still at an intermediate stage of evolution, not even its final form.) 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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

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. 

 

The Zeps' weakness is that they'll die instantly if they take any damage from lightning or fire. An exploding Zeppelinoid might 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.

Bon Mots - How I was Caught by Columbo

COLUMBO: So, Miss Anna, you own many books! And many gimmick books, I think?
 
ANNA: Just so, Columbo.
 
C: And who do you 'stan' most, do you think?
 
A: Obviously G-- (I stop.) But no, I'm afraid I couldn't say.

 

C: I'm just an old man. I only buy pulps and comics. Uncanny, Batman, 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 ... ooo-lee-pooo?
 
A: (Feeling smug.) It's 'oulipo,' Columbo. 

 

C: Ah! Oulipo, right, that's what my gal calls it. I should go now.
 
A: You know how to find my door.

 

 
C: But alas, a final parting thought! Miss Anna, do you, hmm, parlay in francais?
 
A: No, only translations.

 

C: But look! Why do you own La Disparition only as an original?
 
(Columbo points to a spot with a missing book. It's a spot for A Void, 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!)

The Forest Takes Everything

Over at From the Sorcerer's Skull, Trey has an idea for a spooky season campaign setting that really intrigues me.

 

Trey wrote: "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." Rather than being heroes or conquerors, the "adventurers are wanderers in the wood, dealing with the things the forest brings them."

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. "Memory, like everything else, gets swallowed by the forest."

 

 

from Over the Garden Wall

 

Imagine you have a certain number of lines of backstory on your character sheet. Simple, declarative sentences.

 

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.

 

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. 

 

You could cross them out - your backstory, your memories. Or literally paste new strips of paper over them to cover them up.

 

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. Everything. Unless you can find a way out...

And the Gold Ennie for Best Supplement Goes To...

By now you've probably heard the good news, but just in case you haven't...

 

Barkeep on the Borderland won the Gold Ennie for Best Supplement in 2023! 

 

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.

 

 

Congratulations first of Charles Ferguson-Avery and Alex Coggon at Wet Ink Games for winning the Silver Ennie with Into the Cess & Citadel. 

 

I also wanted to thank and congratulate everyone else who worked on Barkeep. 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.

 

Once again, big thanks to WFS of Prismatic Wasteland for originating the project and including me on the team.

Thank you and congratulations to the other co-authors - Ava Islam of Permanent Cranial Damage, Ben L of Mazirian's Garden, Chris McDowall of Bastionland, emmy verte of Spooky Action at a Distance, Gus L of All Dead Generations, Luka Rejec of Wizard Thief Fighter, Marcia B of Traverse Fantasy, Nick LS Whelan of Papers & Pencils, Ty Pitre of Mindstorm, and Zedeck Siew. 

 

Ava, Nick, and Ty also helped edit. Gus and Luka also provided art. KT Nguyen proofread and did layout.

Thank you and congrats as well to all the other artists who worked contributed to the book - Acid Lich, Amanda Ho, Artie Esquire, bertdrawsstuff, Caleb Nelson, Conor Ricks of Mighty Spark!, DemiDevilQueen, Emiel Boven of Lizard Mail, Guy Pradel, Hodag of No Foes No Traps, Keny Widjaja, Norn Noszka, Sam Mameli of Better Legends, Sam Miller of Save vs Worm, and torthevic.

Hurray for us all!

Barkeep on the Borderlands & the Brazen Boulevardier

The last time I wrote about Barkeep on the Borderlands, 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.

 

But since then, Barkeep has been released! It's available in print, and pdf, and it has a map! And coasters!

 

And even more exciting, it's been nominated for an Ennie award for Best Supplement!

 

That means that you can help Barkeep win an Ennie, by voting before the election closes on July 23rd.

 

 

Brazen Boulevardier logo by Caleb Nelson

 
My own contribution is a single pub for Barkeep's pubcrawl - The Brazen Boulevardier. 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. 

 

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.

 

As you might imagine, visits to the Boulevardier can get pretty spicy! If you play Barkeep on the Borderland, I hope you'll stop by. Just watch out for those phoenix-women!

 

I want to thank WFS from Prismatic Wasteland for involving me in this endeavor, Ty Pitre from Mindstorm 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.

 

 

And if you're reading this before July 23rd, please remember to go vote for Barkeep on the Borderlands for Best Supplement!

My Book Review Blog - The Lunar Flaneur

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. 

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.

 Please enjoy! The Lunar Flaneur

My 2022 in Review

Last year I started what I hope will be an annual tradition, and posted reviews of my favorite things I read and watched in 2021. It's time again, so here are my favorites from 2022! 

(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.)

 

The Best Things I Read

Graphic Novels - Black Water Lilies by Fred Duval and Didier Cassegrain

Black Water Lilies 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.

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.

My runners up are Berlin by Jason Lutes, and Giantess by JC Deveny and Nuria Tamarit, which was published by the same press as Black Water Lilies. 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 should be familiar to RPG fans. Giantess 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.

 

 

Literary Fiction - Destransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

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 Detransition, Baby, 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?

Detransition, Baby 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.

My runner up is Temporary by Hillary Leichter, although The Very Nice Box by Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman probably deserves a shout-out as well. Temporary 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. The Very Nice Box 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 little more toxic than it initially appears.

 

 

 

Genre Fiction - Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft

Senlin Ascends 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 immediately 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.

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. Senlin 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.

My runner up is Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. 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 M 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.

 

 

The Best Things I Listened To

Pop Music - "Expert in a Dying Field" by the Beths

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. 

For my runners up, I recommend "I'm Not Where You Are" by Marika Hackman and "None of My Friends" by Liz Lawrence, which are both about wanting to be alone, in their own ways, and both have excellent videos. 

 

 

Rock Music - "Hertz" by Amyl & the Sniffers

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. (Just what are they sniffing, everyone seems to wonder. Is it glue, or the only other obvious alternative?) Here, she sings about wanting to go on a beach holiday, and I find her mood irresistibly infectious.

My runner up is "Chaise Lounge" by Wet Leg, 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.

 

 

The Best Things I Watched

 

 

Television - Dirty Pair

I never saw Dirty Pair when it was originally on in the 1980s -  in fact, I only found it because of a recent CBR article praising it 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.

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 feel like real teenagers. They quarrel with each other constantly. They'd rather go on dates with cute boys that save the world, but they will, 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.

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 for girls first and foremost. 

 

Plus, listen to that theme song! It's immediately jumped to the top of my favorites list, right beside "Cruel Angel's Thesis".

Honestly this was a good year for animation, and I watched a lot of it, but my runner-up is Andor, 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 rebellion and empire. Other reviews of the show tend to emphasize the price we see the rebels paying; I want to draw attention to Andor's 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. (You might be briefly tempted, as I was, to feel some empathy for the girlboss character, until you're reminded that, oh right, 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.) Andor 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.

 

Arthouse Films - Bad Luck Banging, or Loony Porn

Bad Luck Banging 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. 

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. (It was taken down from the internet, but one mother "helpfully" downloaded a copy for the meeting.) The parents all watch the video while the fathers make lewd comments. And the teacher does not flinch. 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.

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 My Dress-Up Darling 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. The City in the Middle of the Night, 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.

Bad Luck Banging 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 does 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.

My runner up is Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 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 right 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.

 

Genre Films - Everything Everywhere All At Once

Speaking of well-made movies, can we talk about just how good Everything Everywhere All at Once 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 just 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, human.

And as I said, it's a really 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 EEAAO is that everything 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. 

 

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, EEAAO 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.

My runner up is Netflix's Kate, 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 Kate back-to-back with Gunpowder Milkshake 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 D.O.A., it's not originality that matters here, but how well the film uses the pieces it's assembled from.