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.
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.
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.
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.
For the second meeting of the Roadside Picnic Basket Book Club, Trey from From the Sorcerer's Skull played host, and invited me to discuss the dungeoneering aspects of Peter Watts' novel Blindsight.
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 this-is-fine-dot-png to not-great-bob-dot-gif, in ways too numerous to mention, which isn't the cause of my depression, but certainly doesn't help either.
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.
In March, shortly before my absence, Josep Torra of the Tirant lo Dau blog contacted me about translating my essay Landmark, Hidden, Secret into Catalan and publishing it in a zine. This easily makes LHS the most famous thing I've ever written. The zine is available on itch.io as a free pdf, and there's an inexpensive print option on Lulu. Josep's translation of my writing is on pages 81-86.
Over the summer, my regular online gaming group met somewhat sporadically. Peter from Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop acted as the dungeon master, and ran us through Axo's Dungeon - which turns out to be quite a work of OSR collaboration, put together and keyed by Paolo Greco from Lost Pages, using geomorphs hosted on Dyson's Dodecahedron and Stonewerks, with updated art provided by Of Dice and Djinn. We used Peter's SKROP rules, which is his house ruled mashup of the GLOG and D&D 5e, and the game took place in his Owl Light setting, a science fantasy moon orbiting a Jupiter-like gas giant.
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 so much 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.
The dungeon has a lot of corridors and passageways, giving us an almost Metroid-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 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.
Recently we've started a new campaign with me as the referee. Ever since the new edition of Into the Odd came out, I've been wanting to run someone through the expanded version of the "Iron Coral" dungeon. Originally only a single level, it now has three! I actually ran the original as a DCC weird western adventure site, which I called "The Irontown Corral", but this is my first time running it using I2TO.
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 Benign Brown Beast. (In the likely event of character death, the assistants will get promoted up to full player character status.) In the next section, I'm hoping they'll delve into territory none of us has seen yet.
The Iron Coral frontispiece by Johan Nohr
So that's how I spent my summer. Feel free to share what you've been up to in the comments!
JOKER - Ha ha! Greetings, Batman! It's me, your old pal, the Joker!
BATMAN - This is an unlisted number.
JOKER - Just calling to let you know I've broken out of Arkham again! Ha ha! Next time you should try locking me up in a wet paper bag! By the way, I hope none of those guards had families! Ha ha!
BATMAN - Dammit, Joker, they all had families.
JOKER - 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! Ha ha!
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! Ha ha!
BATMAN - What makes you think I'm recording this call?
art by Jonathan Case for Batman 66 #1
JOKER - 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! Ha ha! 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!
BATMAN - I won't stoop to your level, Joker.
JOKER - 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! Ha ha!
BATMAN - 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?
JOKER - 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! Ha ha!
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! Ha ha!
Of course that means if you don't want to kill me then you can't risk calling me back after I hang up!
BATMAN - I don't need to find you, Joker, I just need to find the bomb.
JOKER - 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?
BATMAN - Yes, that bomb.
JOKER - You should know, Batman, that there's no way to disable the bomb on-site! Ha ha! 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!
BATMAN - I understand the threat, Joker.
JOKER - 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! Ha ha! The only way to stop the countdown is to stop my heart!
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! Ha ha! After I hang up the phone you'll have about 3 minutes before the nuclear bomb detonates, less if I get excited and my heart starts racing while we talk!
BATMAN - . . .
JOKER - 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!
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!
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 only place he can't escape!
BATMAN - . . .
JOKER - 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?
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!
Even your other 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!
BATMAN - Actually, Gotham is canonically in New Jersey.
JOKER - Ha ha! You're almost out of time, Batman!
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 nom de guerre 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! Ha ha!
You have less than 3 minutes, Batman, and then everyone in Bludhaven dies in a nuclear holocaust, including your protege!
BATMAN - No, not Robin!
BATPHONE - Dial tone.
art by Dick Dillin for Amazing World of DC Comics #14
