If you somehow were able to climb into my head, and dug with your hands (or a shovel, if you somehow managed to have the presence of mind to bring one), you would find layers of my mind that are pure sonic energy. I do not listen to a wide variety of music, so you'll find a lot of repetitive sounds, but you'll figure out very quickly that I use music the way anyone else uses a hammer and a nail. I'm lousy with hammers and nails, but use music like only a master carpenter ever could. Music is a tool, an instrument for building the mental landscape. If you kept going, lower and lower, you'd eventually find a point where there is no further to dig: all would be random chaos, the type of raw and powerful feelings that are impossible to communicate, possibly even feel directly.
The sonic foundation of every last thing I've ever come to believe is the Switchfoot album Nothing is Sound. There is very little before that point, and most of that's adrift in the chaos, waiting for reclamation. Everything after that rests upon the foundation that is Nothing is Sound.
Like all music that one loves, this came at a particular time in my life. I was a senior in highschool. My best friend had gone off the deep end due to his parent's nasty divorce. My own parents were in grave danger of having the same thing happening to them. Most of my other friends were a year older than I, and had graduated. And I'd relapsed into lyme's disease, which this time brought along extreme exhaustion and a brain fog so intense that I could barely think, nevermind see the oncoming car until it was honking right at me. My friend would show up at random hours of the night, awaken me from a sleep that did no good, and beg for help through the fog of pain and confusion. He'd then vanish back into the night, and I'd collapse back into a fugue state that had as much to do with sleep as a cat does with a dog. I literally didn't have the energy to fight or run from a mental breakdown so profound I am still putting the pieces back together, seventeen years later. I couldn't rationalize what was going on: it was Hell. Everywhere I looked, inside and out, was Hell.
And this is the album that I learned how to deal with it.
We Are One Tonight particularly struck me, although at the time I'd have no idea why. I wasn't in a relationship, and was missing my wife (although I didn't know it), and I had no reason to really feel so attached, at least from what I could tell. It's pretty easy to tell now that I was hoping my parents would make it (they did!), and that that hope came out in the song. I also wanted, somehow, to have hope for msyelf, that somehow the wreckage that was me could somehow be mended, somehow I'd make it, somehow I would not die. Against all hopes, against all reason, against everything I could comprehend, I wanted to live. So I'd just drive or put on headphones and just sing, at the top of my lungs. I'd scream to this song so loudly people outside the car would hear me. At some point it became an anthem, a declaration that I would not go down so easy, a stubborn defiance against the powers that had cut me out of a reality anyone would have recognized.
Even now, sixteen years later, I feel a fire in my gut as something I thought was dead roars to life, screaming "NO NOT YET, DON'T YOU COLLAPSE ON ME". It spits and fights and scratches and screeches its defiance of the gods, of reality, of every living creature, that I am still alive and you can take my life out of my cold dead fingers. It takes the lyrics and changes the feeling from "I'm dying" to a statement of faith: a creed that is roared at full blast.
More than a refusal.
More than a denial of death.
More than even "I wish to live": that's still too abstract.
It is a full and roaring primal fire, one that will consume all in its path, bursting open seeds of hope that could never have been cracked open otherwise. It becomes the loud anthem of a man who cannot return to what he was, and does not wish to. It becomes the battle cry of someone who wishes to reconcile the irreconcilable, to fight to mend, even at the cost mine own self. If you are going to live you must be okay with living killing you. Listening to this song reminds me of this fact. And so I grab the bitter cup and drain to the dregs in one gulp.
There's a lot of bandied words about "deconstruction' these days. "These aren't archetypes, they're people!" screams one camp.... as then Spider-Man sells his marriage to the Devil. Wait, back that up. That's a cartoonish thing to have Peter Parker do, right? Somehow people just sell their marriages? To the Devil? That's a thing? I've seen a lot of weird shit in my life, but I've never heard of that one. "They're supposed to be inspiring" screams the other camp, and hold up figures who they were confused about what that character was actually inspiring in the first place. I've put a lot of keystrokes towards the most egregious example of that hypocrisy on this blog.
So what happens when someone manages to do the virtuous thing and find the middle ground?
Ooh, that's a chef's kiss.
Enter T Bird, a superhero who has washed out. He hit hard times, and while he didn't give up he certainly faded. He's also powerless, which doesn't help. When the corporation who had formerly backed T Bird gives him a chance to redeem himself, he finds he has no choice but to go with this chance. Even if it's probably a lie.
Josh Howard mans the whole show here. And it is a cohesive job. This is what happens when you get a good writer/artist on a comic: you can't tell that either of the jobs was prioritized, and it happens to feel more coherent than two people working together. Howard puts it together really well, treating each part of the job with equal care. It's nice to see someone take the craft as a whole so seriously.
Now, what makes this story the golden mean is the absolute dedication of Howard to showing T Bird's strengths and weaknesses, equally. Mitch has a fantastic sense of duty... and is a terrible husband. He knows he's a terrible husband. He tries to not be. He fails. He's good at being a hero, but only if he's got powers, and only if he's got his family. And the first issue is about how he accidentally damages it almost beyond compare. It's a fantastically put together beginning.
It's not too often that I find something that gets how to legitimately treat heroes. None of the characters in this book are pathetic, but none of them feel like they belong in a preschooler's coloring book. The production is top-notch. And I felt like I was having a ton of fun the whole time. You don't usually get fun and introspection, so that's something.
The word hero gets thrown around a lot. In fact I’d venture it’s the center of the sham we call the culture war. From the left’s decrying of “hero worship” to the right’s senseless heroic lionization, the word is used a ton. In fact it’s used in so many contexts that the word barely has meaning.
So let’s back up.
What’s a hero?
A hero is a scapegoat. If it’s a nice story he does it willingly. If he doesn’t it’s a tragedy.
Yes, it’s that simple.
Oh, right, scapegoats. A scapegoat is a creature who carries the sins of its people. It acts out the greater drama of its setting, and pays the ultimate price of death. Without a scapegoat societies don’t function. The anger and rage has to go somewhere! Folks like Rene Girard have explored this concept of the scapegoat being the basis for all societies, and we're not going to get into it more here. It is my basis for how I think heroes work. I base my thoughts on this from reading The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad and Odyssey, and Arthurian lore in general, nevermind sources like the Book of Judges in the Bible.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest myth we have; we don't have a complete copy, just extracts. The general arc of the myth appears to be about a Nephilim mass rapist king, Gilgamesh, learning humility by coping with the prophesied death of his best friend, Enkidu, a man specifically made to become friends with Gilgamesh and then die. Gilgamesh manages to find a way to possibly bring Enkidu back... and fails because he's an ass. He comes back and becomes the king his people need him to be, humbled by his sorrow. Just like the rest of his people.
The Iliad is 500 some odd pages of a bunch of cool people being killed Mortal Kombat style because Achilles is a whiny bitch, who accepts at the end that he will not be able to avoid his death and makes peace with his enemies. Just like the rest of his people. No seriously, that's the Iliad. Powerful book, but pretty easy to sum up.
The Odyssey is about Odysseus trying to make his way home, only to be hindered because of his honorable actions during The Iliad; Odysseus is explicitly paying for the Achaen's victory over the Trojans. Odysseus has to walk many paths to come back home, finally ending in him bedding his wife, Penelope. Given that orgasm is usually classed as a similar experience to death in most pre-modern thought I've encountered.... yeah. Still fits. Like a glove.
The Book of Judges is filled with people who do not fit the modern "Christian" ideal of a good person, at all. And yet, because of their position within the whole (generally outcasts) they are used to keep Israel going a bit longer. And each story ends with the hero dying and "becoming a part of their people". That's a different thing for a different point in this series of blog posts, but that verbiage is important. Put a pin in it for now.
Arthurian lore is filled with statements like "If you keep doing what you're doing it's all gonna collapse" and "I know, but this is what I am". Whether it be Arthur demanding to marry Guinevere, even if it ruins his kingdom, or Lancelot bedding Guinevere despite knowing it was to destroy everything, or any number of such warnings and disregardings thereof, there's a demand to remain what you are, even if it's disastrous. To be you is best, even if that's tragic.
Star Wars is filled with heroes of this older tradition, with the ones who knew they were playing a part in a much larger thing, and were willing to play that part to the max. The difficulty of Anakin, Luke, and Ben was not in being a part of something, but in figuring where they fit and why. The journey each of these characters goes on is not simply who they are, but to whom they belong and what price they're willing to pay to do so.
Anakin Skywalker's arc is the entirety of The Skywalker Saga. From hopeful child to failed hero to villain to ascended being, Anakin runs the gamut of possibilities in The Skywalker Saga. If there is one story that is tracked all the way through, its Anakin's. That may surprise more than a few of you, but the sequels are actually the key to what being the Chosen One really is. Anakin is the one who brings balance between the living and the dead; Anakin defeats death itself, by eliminating the loss of individuality in the dead. Anakin's journey is essentially a cosmic one: he takes all the paths that all could take, and is therefore capable of going to everyone on the other side of the Force.
Luke, Anakin's son, is the beating heart of Star Wars. It is he that convinces Anakin to return to righteousness, it is he that shows Rey the importance of serving the Force, and who gives the Resistance the hope they need to fight Ben and the First Order. Luke's arc is in deciding to being the beacon of hope. In battling his cynicism and doubt Luke helps the galaxy come to grips with their own doubts and fears in resisting the darkness of the galaxy.
Ben Solo, Luke's nephew and Anakin's grandson, struggles with how to inherit the legacy passed down to him by Anakin and Luke. Half of the Force Dyad with Rey, Ben initially he rejects his destiny, killing his way up the fascistic First Order. Thanks to Rey and his parents, Leia and Han, Ben is redeemed from Palpatine's lifetime corruption. He saves Rey from death, fulfilling Anakin's goals of saving a person from dying in the first place. And, in so doing, Ben conquers the real enemy of Star Wars: death. The closest character Ben is similar to is Gilgamesh, but we'll get back to that.
A lot of ink has been wasted on the modern conception of the hero. The idea of the hero as this nice, clean, doesn't kill people, has no historical reference at all. In fact, the further back I go the more I find heroes seem to resemble more of what we think of as anti-heroes of today: people who had their goals and were going to get them, come hell or highwater. The heroes of Star Wars more resemble this older archetype, not the modern demand that heroes be "good people".
Okay, to be fair, this concept isn’t a good one. Unit 44's first four issues are a complete story told in four parts. I put the mega issue down and genuinely did not want more, in the best way possible. So when I found out that that more Unit 44 had been released I was... cautious. Skeptical. How do you follow up something that I think is this close to objectively perfect? By the description it didn't sound like they were continuing the major storylines from the first four issues, but I could be wrong? So I bought, hoping that lightning would get into the bottle again.
It didn't.
But it's still damn good.
Issue Five follows our favorite numbnuts as they try to pick apart what's going on with what's obviously a cult. There's some great hijinks, a stubborn persistence in not spoiling exactly how the cult is being mind-controlled (no, it's not what they're saying in the book, and props to the writer and artist on showing that), and some of the funniest pie humor I'll ever read.
I mean, has anyone actually ever had a raisin pie? Let me know if you have.
First off, the art duties switched to a new guy. I don't hate him. I don't particularly love him, either. He's got a good sense of composition, some of his facial expressions are absolutely hilarious, and he's got a good sense of who and what the characters are. He manages to copy what made them so distinctive to begin with, and puts his own spin on it all. I respect that. I just don't think he's as good as Jimenez, the original artist.
Locher's script is where this all hinges on, and it just doesn't hit the same high notes as the original run. The story is funny, and there's some great gags thrown in there that definitely made me laugh, but it's just not as side-splittingly hilarious as the original run. I find that regrettable, but again, it's hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice. This was still a good comic, I still liked the story, but the downshift is really hard to ignore.
That being said, the last two to three pages of the main story is worth the price of the comic alone.
Will I get more Unit 44. Absolutely! This stuff still makes me laugh and it's nice to be able to do that. But it's simply not the same to me. The art, the writing, it's all competent, and gets the job done. But this isn't practically divinely inspired, like the first four issues. Still worth my money, but I'm not going to pretend that this is anywhere near the original run.
One of my oldest friends is the survivor of a child rape gang. I didn't know until well after I'd grown up, and when I did I was incredibly surprised: he'd been married for years and, while being an incredible source of wisdom and empathy, was otherwise just... well.. a normal guy. He was not the person you'd imagine when you think "former child rape gang victim", at all. As a survivor of childhood rape myself I had the barest inkling of knowledge of what this poor person had been through. And I've not handled it half as well, I assure you! Go ahead, read this blog: there's some weird stuff on here. So when I asked him how he managed to not go crazy, my friend, using sadness to smile, told me "All of life is grieving."
I dedicate this entire thing to him. I don't know if he'll ever read it. I doubt it. But I hope he does.
Now, my friend didn't mean that you had to be sad all the time. That's not really what he meant by grieving. What he meant was more along the lines of "Life will always disappoint you, and if you don't accept the disappointments and tragedies as they are you'll not last long. You'll always live if you accept what is, pleasant or not." But All of Life is Grieving is a more poignant and poetic statement, don't you think?
What this has to do with Star Wars really should be obvious, but I'll spell it out: anyone who grew up with Star Wars has an image of it in their heads. I know I do. I was terrified of Vader as a child. That breathing creeped me out. Watching Luke process that the genocidal murderer he'd been fighting was actually his father and still had something in him worth saving was something I attached to. I just so happened to be living in the wake of my own tragedies and Luke's problem was my problem: someone was not who I thought they were, and I had to figure out what to do with it all. At six. Luke maintaining the humanity (and thus goodness) of his father helped me realize I had options in how to deal with my rapist. I did not have to hate her, I could control how I responded to the tragedy. A large part of my personality was formed in the experience of watching Luke pull the helmet off of Vader, to find an old, infirm, and pathetic man underneath. The monster was pathetic. To be a villain was to be pathetic.
I wish I could tell you that I've lived up to this ideal. I've tried. And tried. And tried. And tried. And I have failed. The resentment was just too much for me to deal with. Over the years I have become known by family and friends as a fusion reactor of rage. That is not what I ever wanted. I wanted to live up to this:
And I have not. I can't. The older I get the more I have realized I was never going to. With the return of my childhood memories at twenty-six I've realized that time was never on my side: eventually, no matter how hard I tried, I would not forgive, I would resent, I would do the thing that everyone else did before that wretched mask came off. And then one day I realized that even if the mask had come off I'd still not have done what Luke had done.
The Last Jedi dropped not even a month after that realization.
If it had come any later I shudder to think what could have happened to me. Because there was Luke, failing himself. Folks:
Time.
Wears.
People.
Out.
It is an actively destructive force on us all, and nobody survives it. The forgiveness Luke had to show himself for being mortal became another model for me. No, I'd not done what Luke had done. But I could try again. I needed to try again. Time, that nice word for death, be damned, I had to try again. I could not change what I had failed to do, but I could change what I was doing... provided that I accepted (grieved!) what I had been up until that point. The story opened up what I thought were my options.
Hey look, the Star Wars fandom!
Everyone who has grown up with Star Wars has some version of that in their head. It may not be filled with as much darkness and angst, but they have it. That's what art does: it open us up and helps us understand the world and ourselves in a different way. That is a reason why art exists. So when someone adds to a story it produces whiplash! And it's going to be intense! And it's going to get ugly! Really ugly!
And for me, initially? It wasn't. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were exactly what I expected of an actually serious look at the world of Star Wars post-OT.
No, I never really considered the EU a serious look at it.
No, I'm not a Disney shill. Remember what I just wrote about Luke. If you think that's got the hint of someone who hasn't spent a great deal of time thinking about Star Wars and what it means to him then I genuinely don't know what to tell you. And I have no idea how to else to communicate what it does mean than the above vulnerabilities.
For everyone else, no, I didn't consider the EU serious. Lucas didn't, as the below clip discusses very frankly.
And, really, why should he?
And no, if Lucas sells his property to someone they're not obligated to do what he wants with it. That's how selling something works. If you don't like that, I'm sorry.
All that out of the way I'll be frank: The Rise of Skywalker threw me for a loop. I like what it did, and we'll get to that as we go, but for the first time I felt that sting: it wasn't how I understood Star Wars. The lessons I'd learned from everything up till that point, the things they'd helped me process, were moved around and recontextualized. And that hurt. I didn't like (and still don't like) that feeling. The Rise of Skywalker changed things. For me, it really changed things. And for the first time I felt the whiplash, the burning resentment. The more I think on it the hotter it burns. There's nothing rational about it, at all. I could use rationality to justify it, but that's hardly the same thing as something being coherent in and of itself.
I do not know if that's what all the people hating on the sequels feel. In the final reckoning I doubt people will be found to be so different from each other, once all the shadows are stripped away. So, I have to assume on some level that what I have always perceived as fan-boi "You took my childhood" rage I encounter in all (yes, all, please own up to it) sequel haters has at least a passing similarity to what I feel.
But you what helps that?
Facts.
And introspection.
Let's try that out, shall we?
I guess I'll take a look at what TROS has actually turned the Skywalker Saga into. We'll go full Death of the Author, take a look at this thing as a totality, and see what happened.
There's probably a subsection of anyone reading this who will go "But why? It's a show about space wizards and lazer swords". To those people I say the following:
1. It is the silly things that are the most important and broadest ranging: utterly hilarious concepts such as love are much more important than gravity, which is much sillier than serious things like politics. I mean, really, standing on a ball that's spinning so fast that I'm effectively glued to its surface, unless I get far away enough? Don't tell me that doesn't sound absurd.
2. The exercise of a mind is more important than what it is the mind is focusing upon, by and large. I've frequently found that the skills developed in understanding and integrating fictional and recreative elements bring a measurable and obvious increase to my own ability to see the world as it is. I am more important than your idea of what is a serious matter.
3. At the end of the day the urge to understand is objectively better than the decision to be angry.
4. Criminy's sake, if it makes you mad then it obviously means a great deal to you, and if you think I'm not going to call out that obvious bad-faith argument then you've not been paying attention.
I thought long and hard about backing this project while it was on Kickstarter.It looked interesting, sure, and I liked the fact that they had gone back to Tome of Battle over giving everyone their own powers (a move I'll get back to later). But the books were expensive, and they'd gone with the three book model, and I just didn't want to shell out a bunch of money for something I didn't know I'd be using or not. So I wished them well in their development of a game system and moved on.
Six months passed and I forgot about Level Up.
And then one day Marty contacted me completely out of the blue. "CHECK OUT THIS GAME SYSTEM, IT'S ACTUALLY REALLY GOOD."
Three guesses as to what the game was.
Now, Marty is stupidly picky with his games. Like, really really picky. He has the one thing he wants a game to do, and will GM the hell out of that one thing. And he really GMs the hell out of it. Marty could pick a bad game and I'd play in that campaign, because he'd do such amazing things with that game that I'd not care otherwise. But that doesn't mean I don't have to call the system good, right?
Spoiler: this is a really good game.
Now, let's get this out of the way: this is not a "light" game. It's quite crunchy. There's bits and bobs and crazy things in here. You could pull 5e characters into this campaign in the same way you could attach a tricycle to a car and go on the freeway with your child. Sure, you could do it, and sure the child may be able to hang on and maybe even have a good time... but you know where it's going, at the end. On this count I think Level Up fails: while you technically can bring in 5e stuff, I don't think you should.
But what Level Up does I’ve not really seen another game do: the modern combat system known as DnD WELL. There is nary an original idea in this whole game. I can find the progenitors for all these ideas in not just DnD but several systems. So Level Up isn’t an original game by a very long stretch. You won’t find any flashy new ideas in here. What you will find is that each and every idea adapted to perfection and integrated into a holistic engine. It all flows. It works. My herald (paladin) feels just right: part spellcaster, warrior, Charisma skill monster… and none of it feels like anything got shafted to do it. I’m not super specialized but I didn’t want to be, that’s why I picked herald! Instead I can flit betwixt the tricks in my bag with ease. Taking a look at the rest of the book the same level of care is everywhere. Everything is tweaked just on this side of right. Even the fighter (my least favorite class) has been made into something with care and love in it. Heck, I’d venture that you’d find more love and care in the first level of a level one Level Up fighter than the entirety of 5e’s Player’s Handbook.
Not that that’s a terribly high bar.
Running the game is easy: if you need to set up a fight there’s a chart that literally tells you exactly how it all breaks down. That… technically makes it easier to run than 4e? I feel grumpy about admitting that. But I mean, there’s the chart folks! What else am I going to do? Lie and pretend they didn’t make the system the simplest it’s ever been???
I wish.
Oh well.
Look folks, I don’t particularly care if Level Up is compatible to one of the most underwhelming games ever made. The game itself is amazing. Character creation and options are legion. Setting up encounters is literally not going to get easier. Yeah it’s crunchy but that really works in its favor here. I’ve been having fun since I opened the PDF.
Red Koi’s concept is very simple: a woman realizes her family is evil and runs away to find a new way of life. It’s a concept that’s simple, hard to get right, and heartbreakingly hard to get wrong. This is the sort of story that has to be sharpened just right.
Red Koi is more than sharp enough.
A good writer/artist in comics is a rare treat. Most of the time the writer has to communicate to the artist what he sees in his head when he looks at the imaginary page, and the artist then has to imagine that page in his head and then has to be good enough to produce the page as a single unit; comic books are really hard work! A good writer and artist learn how to communicate what they want and need to each other over time, and usually once that pairing has been established it's absolute magic. Now, in theory if the writer and artist are the same person this problem would go away, right? You'd think. Actually the opposite is usually true, because most people are not actually writer/artists, they're a writer who can draw or an artist who can plot. That means that such works usually become overindulgent one way or another, because there's nobody to check the writer/artist from screwing up; a writer can't tell the artist that the page simply isn't what he had in mind, nor can an artist tell the writer that a page simply isn't feasible. So they usually err on one side or the other. And, to make things worse, there isn't a guarantee that the writer/artist will stay perfectly balanced all the time! Like I said before, rare treat.
Tyler Wentland almost perfect lands the balance. Almost. The thing that jumps out at me is the atmosphere. The air is charged. Potent. The writing is slow in the best way possible, letting you stew in the forlorn atmosphere just long enough before dropping you into a whirlwind of violence and regret. Most of the non-action pages are jaw-droppingly good. It's moody and hand painted,; the colors more than make up for some of the seeming limitations of the art’s line work. And let's not beat about the bush on that point: the line work is middling. But the atmosphere Wentland achieves despite this failing is masterful. It's like looking into someone else's dream. I used the word charged before, and I'll reiterate: holy crap the atmosphere is charged! One of the ending scenes you can practically feel the wind on your face and in your hair. Well, if you have hair.
The problem starts whenever action is required. The storytelling of the art, at best, becomes serviceable. While I didn't really lose the plot throughout it always took me at least a glance or two to really get what was going on in the panel, action-wise. Remember, folks: the page, not the panel, is the standard unit of measurement in a comic book. Panels have to add up to readable pages. And a lot of the action scenes suffer from not adding up to more. There's good motion and if I only focus on the panel I can figure out what's going on, but that then breaks the flow and I have to get my bearings. But keep in mind that this is a relatively small gripe, considering just how amazing the rest of the art really can be.
So the writing itself is masterfully done, and this is where Wentland really shines. The writing feels like a landscape: characters are presented as they are Not a single character in here is wholly good or bad, but a heartbreaking combination of both, leading to conversations entirely human. There's a sympathy for the characters that I pretty much live and breathe off of in stories, and it hangs in the air with the already-powerful artistic atmosphere. The feelings are so powerful that they practically merge with the colors. It's in these conversations where the distinction between writer and artist vanishes. The story is the art. The art is the story. That it happens at all is special. That it happens as often as it does in this book is really cool.
Red Koi is the sorta premise I’d run for a Burning Wheel campaign, and I mean that as an absolute compliment. Its darkness and emotion meld really well with its dreamy art. Some of the pages just stick in my brain, and they won’t leave. There's a beauty and mysticism to A Samurai Reborn that's only really absorbed by looking at the page.
Which, like I said before, is now stuck in my brain.
It’s certainly not the worst problem in the world to have.
The Greek word for repentance is metanoia: to change the eyes of your soul. To repent means to change your perceiving instrument.
There's a legend that a man came to Mt. Athos, the most famous island in Eastern Christianity. He wanted to be a monk, so they put him under the tutelage of an elder. The elder grabbed a copy of Les Miserables and handed it to the man. Surprised, the man balked, but the elder insisted: "Before you become divine you must be fully human first!"
The man got to reading.
Damnit folks I can't seem to read enough.
With my social media presence limited I've found the thirst for data has not stopped. And I don't mean noise, I mean actual information. I've been finding myself listening to as many YouTube essays as I can, while reading books as fast and thoroughly as I can get through them. Part of it is that I suspect that someday I won't be able to read as much, so get it in now! But I don't think that's the primary reason. I feel like someone who had been in starvation conditions for years and had forgotten what it what was like to be full. I wouldn't even call social media junk food, more like eating shoe leather. It's not training for what is to come.
My stack of books I need to read, which sits on an upstairs table, is now in the double digits, notwithstanding my yearly rereads of Wolfe, Tolkien, and Lewis. Each page reveals just how little I've been exposed to, increases the thirst to experience more. The gulf gets larger and larger. I wouldn't be able to stand it if I wasn't having so much fun! Even the books that make me uncomfortable, like The Proud Tower, I find expands my ability to understand people and empathize. And God, oh God, I cannot empathize with people enough.
Now, granted, there was a lot of people writing interesting things online. We'll get back to that via YouTube. But most social media and blogs are not worth the time I have to spend on them. It's not that I think the content garbage; the quality control of the past is a lot higher than the internet. There's also the key problem that what's being written today is inside of our current box of consciousness. It's hard to get any real thought going on if the box you operate in isn't being consistently challenged, if not outright broken. And social media is the box, if there ever was one.
Time. It's a persistent opponent. My challenger. The implacable one that is only defeated by a good death. And make no mistake, that's the only thing that works: using time to prep so you can meet Sister Death head on. To be blunt, I find myself more ready for that encounter after reading something that stretches me. Because Death doesn't care about whether I can make people laugh, or how happy I was in life. She doesn't care about life at all. One must be ready to lose to Death and see what you have after that.
The thing is I feel so far behind already. Death won't take everything, but it'll be easy to think she will. I've wasted so much time. The world is so large, there's so much to challenge inside of myself, and only so much time before I'll look up and see Death. She won't be an old crone, or someone with a sickle, but the littlest of sisters, barely seeable, even at the end. It will take so much not to demonize her, to let her do what she is there for. I know she is beautiful beyond compare. I've seen her before. And I know why she's there.
To make me be able to see what's coming next.
One cannot prepare for that change of perspective too much.
I was writing this post on my phone, outside at night. When I got done I found myself looking into the light-polluted sky. A single star shone through our bright defilement. I found myself trembling, looking at this lone prophet. "I'm not ready, not yet," I found myself begging. "Please, not yet".
The silence of the world held an answer. I only just barely made out.
4e DnD had the most realistic take on combat in all its editions. Yes, really. Same with spellcasting. I didn’t say it did it well; it didn’t. But 4e’s basic ideas were best by a country mile.
Don’t believe me?
Ask a boxer to punch someone and see his irritation. “What type of punch?” he’ll ask. “You want me to give him a good warning shot or do you want me to knock him out and how do you want me to do it?”
If the same boxer gets into a fight you may see a variety of approaches with a variety of punches. Everything thrown is done with a different effect in mind. Some of it is designed to give him a breather, to open up the opponent, to give spacing for a power shot… and that’s just one boxer. Grab someone from the same gym and you’ll get a very different usage of the same style. Go to another boxing gym and you’ll find something different again. And that's before you ask "But what if I want to kick?" or "Punching isn't going to kill very quickly, what if I want to use a weapon?"
There is no “I attack” option in combat.
4e’s menu of powers is actually a pretty decent take on an actual combat paradigm. Notice I didn't say it was good, just that it was better than about 99% of the games out there.
Well, today I'm going to break down what should probably be done if you actually want something that feels like a real fight. Guess what, folks? We've already got a really good starting point: skills. I'll break down the skills I'd use to simulate an actual combat.
I'm assuming D20 as a base. Get rid of the attack roll entirely, and just have it be a situationally based skill roll. With each roll ask: what are you trying to accomplish for this roll?
Rush: Get in the shot before the opponent does!
Jump: Change your elevation to get extra power into your shot, as well as surprise them.
Leverage: What most people think of as power is actually just leveraging your weight correctly.
Coordination: Your general ability to pull a complicated move off. Useful for spins and other stuff that keeps you from falling on your face.
Toughness: Taking hits so you can get your move in.
Insight: Duh.
Perception: Um, duh.
Deception: Also, duh.
Intimidate: Also also duh.
I'd have each player narrate their action, and then check that narration against the above list: the player gets +1 to their roll for each skill they're trained that they referenced. If they weren't trained? -4 per. If you happen to have range advantage (dagger while inside the reach of a sword, a spear in pretty much anything but grappling range) you get a +5... and -5 if not.
Then the GM picks a Stat, which represents his primary approach:
Strength: Using your physical power to overpower an opponent's defenses
Dexterity: Overwhelmingly out speeding your target
Constitution: Trying to wear out your opponent by just. Not. Stopping.
Intelligence: Laying in intelligent combinations or outplay the opponent.
Wisdom: Getting a read on your opponent and looking for tells.
Charisma: Forcing your opponent into accepting you as the alpha.
The GM then tells you what type of damage dice to roll, should you hit:
Advantage: D12
Normal: D8
Disadvantage: D4
Does this take more time? Yup. But why does it take more time? Because players have to roleplay. They have to take a second, think, and narrate. They're rewarded for how they engage with the fiction and their character's capabilities.
GIBSON: Wait a sec.. we still have an off-site storage unit?
HATCH: You mean the one that holds the cosmos cannons, the Roswell corpses, and one hundred other government secrets that wouldn't fit into one of our underground bunkers? YES. You have been paying the rent bill, right?
GIBSON: HRM. Well... you see... Hatch...
AUCTIONEER: Going once... going twice... SOLD!!!
If that doesn't make you chuckle there's something wrong.
And yes, a common storage shed.
Yes, Area 51 put over a hundred top secret things into common. Freaking. Storage. Shed.
Okay, look, I belly laughed at that exchange. A tear may have been shed. Nobody, ever, in any part of the government, has ever had that type of conversation. Ever. Nope. Never happened. The sheer incompetence here is so normal in a real government setting, I wouldn't have batted an eyelash without the "Area 51" in there. I hope they don't actually have those kinds of discussions there but... well... they probably do.
And yes, the comic only gets better from there. Special agents Gibson and Hatch then bumble their way through a plot decades in the making, as old grievances come to light. And I laughed my ass off at practically every page of this 96 page craziness. For five bucks I laughed and laughed and laughed. This is well written, really freaking clever. It's subversive without being disrespectful and cruel without being perversely so. It takes work to be this simple when writing. There's parts of this story where I could almost viscerally feel the restraint on display: tell the story, tell the joke, and that's it. Wes Locher, the writer, probably was up to his eyeballs in jokes that he removed from the script because they just would have distracted. My hat's off to him.
The art normally wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but I REALLY liked the story-telling chops. Everything is more than clear, more than easy to read: in some cases the layouts are just absolutely inspired. Yes, I used that word. Yes I meant it. @ me. Go ahead. The layouts are really well done. I can absolutely read every page of this without even needing to squint to check it.
Okay I lied, there's one page in the ninety-six I found confusing. One. Sorry about that. So 95 of the 96 pages I found to be pristinely laid out. Not absolutely all of them.
I think the thing that really sold me, though, was that both Locher and Jimenez actually gave a crap about the characters themselves. This would have been a really easy premise to screw up. Something this simple would have been easy to phone in; the utmost care is necessary to make sure each character feels right. And that happens here. Gibson and Hatch are just the right amounts of zany and serious, thoughtful and dumb. Again, I feel like there's just whole reams of character work sitting in Locher's writing room, with Jimenez having an equal amount of character sketches. I don't know if that's the case, but I sure can sense mastery of craft.
Unit 44’s first Giant collection is flat out hilarious and well-drawn. This is one of those rare acts of restraint that can only be done by someone who has done the work. Each part is deliberately placed. It's not too much, at any point, but just right. There's very few things I just outright recommend, but this one it's easy to do so. Unit 44 is absolutely worth your time. It certainly was mine.
If you don't think Western civilization is in trouble you've not been paying attention. Birthrates in America have been below replacement rate for some time now, youth suicide is up, mental health continues to drop, even with SSRIs... it ain't goin' well. Now, like all humanity has ever done, we're not really trying to fix the problem. It's much more fun to point fingers and blame each other for creating the mess. And I'll admit I do this as much as the next dude; pointing fingers is fun, especially with the flaming wreckage of civilization in the background! This post is about an episode of my life, ended not too long ago, where I did a hell of a lot of flirting with neo-reactionary thought.
It's also about why I am not a neo-reactionary.
My first encounter with neo-reactionary thought was The Distributist. Dave is a thoughtful individual, generally fair to his opponents, and filled with a Catholic hope that probably confounds him as much as it inspires me. The world will be a darker place when he quits YouTube. The Distributist, like all the reactionaries I've watched so far, has an unflinching approach to addressing what humanity's like. I have a particularly sharp sense of how brutish mankind really can be, so it's always comforting to hear that others acknowledge just how vile our race can get. But, again, there's a hope and an openness in Dave's work that I find therapeutic to experience. Hell, there's a video series he did on geekdom that inspired a lot of my approach to Crescendo, which I've talked about recently on this blog. To say that Dave the Distrubutist was an overwhelming influence on my design philosophy would be a criminal understatement. It borders on perjury.
I mean, c'mon, this video is perfection:
Yes, listen to the whole thing. I find it thoroughly worth it.
From The Distributist I found Curtis Yarvin, Mensius Moldbug. Having actually listened to the entirety of Unqualified Reservations and seen Yarvin in more than a few interviews I thought I'd hit jackpot; Yarvin has been more than a little slandered, and his poor communication style has not helped what is a very purposefully malicious popular misreading. Unless someone can bring me evidence otherwise that's my takeaway. Even with that caveat it's easy to see why an entire movement has sprung up around Yarvin: he's got a lot of good data that he tries to treat with respect. His work on the theory of The Cathedral has single-handedly helped me understand how our world actually works better than anything I learned before.
Oh, you don't know what The Cathedral is?
Buckle up.
Yarvin's theory is that all cultures have an instrument of consensus, which says what's okay to discuss. The one who can tell you what can be talked about is the one who holds power, real power. Sometimes this instrument is explicit and centralized, like the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Yarvin argues (and I agree) that an explicit Cathedral is much better than a hidden one; power gets nasty if you can't hold it accountable. Cultures need a Cathedral. Man will always make one, somehow. Our Cathedral is not explicit or centralized. It's spread across the top universities, who seed into the government bureaucracies and Hollywood. This particular arrangement, put explicitly into place by FDR and carrying on until the Korean War, just... carried on. It stopped being formal and no one is at its head, but Pandora opened the box and now we have a zombie remnant of a technocratic oligarchic organization. Combine this with the sudden rise of truly big money in American politics at the beginning of the 20th century and you have a shadow (and unconscious!!) oligarchy who can convince the American public that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are valid choices for an election. Oh, and who can then take the time to convince us that Sleepy Joe would be a better choice than Trump (an argument I found so repulsive I refused to vote). And all of this was accomplished without nearly as much planning as we would like to think. All these folks were part of the same cultural institutions, it's not something you can accuse them of masterminding.
There's no one at the wheel folks.
Which means it's gonna crash.
Auron Macintyre breaks it down really nicely here:
Once I saw it I just couldn't unsee it. What I've always felt to be progressive condescension became much easier to understand; you were either pushing the narrative as a part of the Cathedral or you had swallowed the lead and followed like a sheep. It doesn't take more than a few minutes on Facebook and Twitter to notice this. I'd already left Facebook because I'd felt this manufactured consent, that people were not themselves and couldn't know they weren't. And now I have a concept for why.
This whole time an uneasiness had begun to build in the back of my mind. I agreed with these two on a lot of things, and still do! I've never seen such a frank willingness to work with humanity as it is, not as one wished it to be. That's a rare virtue these days; classical liberalism is a white-washed tomb on a good day, I know that far too well at this point. And wouldn't it be nice to have a tribe? It's such a tempting prospect. I could stop wandering. Maybe I could shelve the fact that, as a Christian, I am not to feel like I belong on this planet. Period. This world cares about power, and thus rebels against God. To belong is to betray.
I cannot do the same.
I must not.
....
Oh, how I wish I could! It'd be so comfortable!! Give me the Ring back! Now!
The cold water hit when I bumped into Morgoth's Review, a neo-reactionary from Britain. Now, Morgoth's Review can be thoughtful in his own right, but he showed the flaw of the reactionaries I'd successfully blocked out up until this point: they weren't genuine enough. To me, a genuine person can approach people or art, or anything, as it is, and take it with a spirit of total openness. Like or dislike my views on The Last Jedi, Midnight Mass, or The Green Knight, those come right out of my soul, that's my honest interaction with them. I'm glad I watched them. They may not have impacted me the way they have others, but that is what I think, with all the messy contradictions (and thus powerlessness) of that level of honesty. The big difference between the reviews I've written and those espoused by The Distributist and Morgoth's Review was that they either frequently (in The Distributist's case) or excitedly (Morgoth's Review) approached the world through an ideological lens, losing an essential part of what it means to be human. And they didn't seem to have a problem with it.
But I do.
Oh sure, I have an ideology, of course! But I find it frequently gets in the way of truth, and am constantly trying to purge it. People are people. It is a people thing to look through ideology first. It's vile. I mourn it. And try not to do it. I fail, but there is a basic striving to just be open to truth, as much as I can. Ideology lets you put up a filter, which lends the illusion of power, and power is not for humanity to take. Like all things, it is a gift. You either accept truth as it is or you reach for power. The first leads to relationship, and thus suffering, but eventually peace. The second leads to isolation, and thus Hell.
Dem's your choices kids!
The ultimate moment of rejection was to be found in one of neo-reaction’s greatest sources of inspiration, Oswald Spengler. Spengler, a former German math teacher, published his landmark Decline of the West in 1918 (aka as Germany was losing WWI). In it Spengler argued that there is no “continuum of history” as we understand it today; humans are not progressing acrost time to a gentler and kinder time. On the contrary, each high culture (Greco-Roman, Middle Eastern, and modern Western) lived in its own cyclic evolution, with a culture wrapped around a single set of ideas, identifiable in its art, architecture, and math. Once this one idea played out (Spengler posits a thousand years) the society that was created by this idea would slowly divorce itself from its culture, and die out. Most modern reactionaries are charmed by Spengler’s predictions of the 20th and 21st centuries (which are eerily correct), but they seem to miss the basis of what gave Spengler such insight: his belief in primal life over morals. To Spengler there was no universal abstracted truth to be found, only what allowed us to live and propagate our species. The only truly universal truths were those that supported the primal and spiritual continuance of humanity; you're either helping humanity get along or you're not. Now, I’ve not finished Decline of the West, but Spengler’s refusal of all abstract systems that don’t directly lead to life and its preservation is blindingly obvious... and something I find the neo-reactionaries pay only the barest of lip services to.
And no, by life Spengler doesn’t mean “having your best life”, he means very directly having babies and preserving the culture to help that baby find goodness and truth and then to make more babies. There is absolutely nothing subtle in what Spengler means.
Spengler also points out that the will to impose your morals upon others, to make them think as you do, the drive to transform your culture, is inherently a part of our day and age, that of the Western (“Faustian”, yes that Faust) culture. The scale in which we have enacted this is specially Faustian. Not Christian. Not Muslim. Not American. We are inside of a much larger movement that is slowly dying out. The culture wars as we conceive of them today are just that: today. They cannot last.
All is well and good up until this last point, wherein Spengler says we cannot escape our modern culture. Spengler does not comment upon the central mystery of apostolic Christianity: theosis, the adoption of man by God. “God became man so man could become god” quoth St Athanasius. Spengler, for all his reading, does not seem to know or understand theosis. And who can blame him? The Cross is a stumbling block. It doesn’t make sense, it should not be. Christ promised the renewal of the nous, our spiritual organ of perceiving (which is stupidly translated as “mind” in English). To be Christian is to put on the spiritual perception of Christ, which leads to the forgiveness of sins, which are the failure to be like God.
Not winning a culture war.
Not engaging in the will to power that all of us are swept up in on a cultural level.
But the forgiveness of sins, and life everlasting.
Refusing to let myself be brainwashed by the Progressive Cathedral does not excuse me to go and be a neo-reactionary groupie. Christ is King, Christ is everything, Christ is supreme. In all senses of all those words, He is the Truth. Repentance means to let your perceptions be those of Christ's, not those of any political party or ideal or anything else. Nothing. Else.
But this jaunt wasn't for nothing. I’m certainly not done listening to neo-reactionary content for the same reason I’m not done listening to progressives: they all offer truth, somehow. I've got a better idea of power dynamics, of how much one can really be shaped by the culture around them, and a renewed determination to approach people as people first. And I will fail. Over and over. But someday I hope to be able to look at someone and just see them. Not my baggage around whatever tribe they're a part of. Not burdened with any history I may have with them.
Just them. Like Christ.
I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that is the way forward.
That's the real accomplishment. And failing in the attempt is an amazing experience. It's better than succeeding at just about anything else.
I hope. Man, that apple just looks so good! Seems good for the development of knowledge, doesn't it?
I will always maintain that the journey is the most important part of a fantasy story because it’s the way the reader gets to know the setting. Immersion is king in fantasy, and what gets you immersed better than seeing the countryside and how it operates? I’d put a journey mechanic above just about everything else in a fantasy, and that arguably includes even a basic resolution mechanic!
So yes, Crescendo has a Journey mechanic. But in order to understand why it works so well we have to cover several unique mechanics in Crescendo and how the Journey utilizes them.
First off there’s the Locale. A Locale is a discrete chunk of the setting. Some power dynamics and the basic concept of the place are part of a Locale, but the most important part of the Locale is its History: the significant events that have happened there.
And then there’s the journaling: everyone in a game of Crescendo has a journal they are responsible for. There’s various prompts for writing in it, and there’s times you’re expected to reference it: open to a page you know has writing, close your eyes, and put your finger down on the page. You read that aloud. So does everyone else. The GM then assembles the prompts into whatever he needs for that moment. Others can make you write their actions into your journal, and there’s a bunch of mechanics where lore is made up and then written in too.
The next piece of the puzzle is The Black Swan. A Black Swan looks like a twist, but is really someone else’s story coming out of the blue and smacking into yours; you get a chance to change the Black Swan, in an intense series of rolls that can truly change things, forever. Black Swans are always based off the History of the Locale you’re in, and are generated by Hitting the Books. So basically the world butts its head in on your situation and you have to respond or lose something of yours. It’s an intense mechanic. And most of the time it can be avoided.
Excerpt during journeys. Then that crap finds you. A lot. And all you can really do is navigate it the best you can.
What comes out isn’t a series of random encounters, but an organic evolution of the setting. Because the events generated are from the journals y’all have put so much into the Black Swans are always an evolution of what came before. It feels like there are multiple stories happenings around you that you’re only JUST privy to. The world feels alive, like it has its own purpose… which you just interrupted. And, since the journals get updated with these events, it means they’ll come back, and almost never where and when you expect them to. This takes a tremendous amount of work off the GM’s shoulders, allowing him to find out what happens at the same time the players do!
Crescendo has a unique Journey mechanic. It allows the stories of the word to really come to the forefront, impacting the players’ characters in unexpected ways… which then makes the story richer. All without having to occupy the GM’s brain. Because of how coherent the journals make twists it’s east for the GM to generate situations that not only challenge the players, but do so in a way that makes the world feel alive.
The Clone Wars show was MASSIVE. From what I understand there were many more seasons beyond the seven that we got, with even some going into rough animatic form. Other stories, like Dark Disciple, were made into novels. The transformation of Darth Maul was made into a comic book, with an eye for the trades. It’s set between Maul’s capture by Palpatine and his reemergence in season seven of The Clone Wars. On the one hand I’m delighted by the story, which is excellent. On the other I’m peeved by the format and the fact that I incredibly important elements of lore were relegated to this comic… which I only recently discovered.
The story begins almost immediately after Maul was captured by Palpatine. Maul’s association of Mandalorians break out Maul easily… too easily. And Maul knows it. Instead of hiding he decides to take the fight to Palpatine immediately. It’s a game of cat and mouse where Maul thinks he’s the cat.
He’s not.
I love how Star Wars treats the problem of competing inner and cultural narratives.
It’s strange coming to this comic post-TROS. Palpatine’s plan for immortality reads back into this book PERFECTLY. This book, along with the slaughter of the Nightsisters, forms a key part of the lore that made TROS inevitable. I get tired of the idiocy against that movie, and this book just makes that irritation all the stronger. I won’t go further into it than that, because I think folks should read the comic… but at least to me this link is incredibly clear.
Given how little I hear about Son of Dathomir, I’m surprised by not just its quality but importance to the lore of Star Wars. Maul makes a compelling journey, the plot is tight, and Sidious just becomes that much more of an asshole. And that can only benefit the story.
Reading Book of the Short Sun for me is like being talked out of suicide. There’s always this jolt, and then this burning resentment: what if I wanted to die, Gene Wolfe??? What business is it of yours if I live? How dare you talk me out of the only action that makes sense? At the beginning of my RPG Crescendo I had written the following dedication to Gene Wolfe:
In eternal memory of Gene:
I’m still a coward.
This is the best I can do, for now.
I know you’d understand.
A few friends of mine have quibbled with me over this dedication. They don’t see me as a coward! Not at all! No, they see the horrors I’ve survived and assume courage got me through them. They don’t see that a part of me still hasn’t made up its mind. It stands on the ledge, it still holds the knife at my thigh, the gun is in its mouth, and it cannot make up its mind. It’s too afraid to jump, to cut and bleed out, to blow its brains out… but the alternative scares it just as much. I’ve seen much in my life, why would I try and live through more? How could I be so crazy??? Why the hell make such a choice? So here I sit. Not making up my mind. I am the worst coward of them all. And it wasn’t until Short Sun that I knew it. I could practically hear Wolfe chuckling from beyond the grave, as step by wretched step he showed me my true colors.
Book of the Short Sun takes place decades after Book of the Long Sun. Without Silk’s leadership the new colonists of Blue and Green, as well as those still aboard the colonizing worldship called the Whorl, have stagnated. Devolved into war and barbarism. The blood-drinking inhumi treat the new inhabitants like livestock. Horn, Silk’s closest student, resolves to find Silk and bring him back to save everyone from moral and physical death.
It is the saddest book I’ve ever read. It is also the only book that made me cry harder on a reread. I don’t mean pretty little tears; I howled as something in me finally died, gently and quietly. There’s a complexity to rereading Short Sun that I’ve not found in the rest of the Solar Cycle. I’m not saying that there isn’t complexity in the others, but for my money so far Short Sun’s layers have made the reread more tragic than anything I’ve ever read. Horn and Silk are both on the ledge, they both have a knife to the thigh, the gun’s ready to go… and so they’re kind. Almost as a matter of course: a dying man wants his last acts to be something he can live with in those last few moments, after all. And everyone mistakes it for courage. For normative kindness. Horn and Silk know the truth of course, you can’t convince someone whose soul you just accidentally saved that the only reason you were any good at all was because you knew exactly how they felt.
You were only a step behind them is all, and not because you were later in your decision.
There are more than a few who do not see Book of the Short Sun as properly part of The Solar Cycle, but instead choose to see it as this retcon that has little to do with its supposedly finer entries, Book of the New Sun and Urth of the New Sun. After the second reading I not only declare that manifestly and obviously wrong, but I ask those who disagree a question: who are Tzadkiel and where does his ship come from? Not to mention Father Inire?
Short Sun actually answers those questions, whether you like it or not.
I will leave you with yet another biographical note. Once not so long ago that undecided part of me was about to make up its mind. Again. I could not argue; the decision was made. I was so worn out. I begged for mercy. I’d not come so far and fought so hard to lose here! But it was no use. I could feel my body go cold. It was over.
I was, in my mind’s eye, suddenly holding a young woman’s face in my hands, which tingled with her tears. I found myself saying over and over “Hold the course. Just hold the course”. Her streaming eyes widened and she whispered “It’s YOU”. I’ve prayed for this girl ever since. The part of me that hasn’t made up its mind now has something to do. And so it does it. I don’t know why that’s enough for now. But I’m not going to argue.
A few weeks later my long estranged Mei-Mei, the first woman I ever loved fully platonically, died. I was devastated; we’d had a nasty falling out and had never really been reconciled. I also happened to be on a med that had the side effect of making managing emotions practically impossible. So that made for a uniquely hellish cocktail. I went into a grocery store, praying for Mei-Mei.Choking back tears I could normally handle… but with the drugs? No way in Hell.
Hello. I’m scared.
I stopped. Dead in my tracks. The female voice that reverberated in my skull was just shy of audible. And familiar.
I’m scared, she said.
“Not on my account,” I whispered.
There was a sigh of relief. And I was alone with the water, pumping shoulders, and the raggedy gasps of someone who knows he will have to see his friend at another time. A very long time.
The next day one of my best friends seemed on the verge of giving up on himself. I don’t know how true that was, given how addled I was by grief and the side effects of the drug. So I put my foot down. I stamped. I may have screamed at my friend. By the end of it he was only getting more and more angry and something inside of me began to wear out. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, give up. The conversation ended and I was convinced I hadn’t just failed, but had made it worse.
The next morning I found myself hardly able to move. I could feel my soul had had enough. I was so weary as I sat in the bathroom I was genuinely afraid I was going to die. My body felt wearier and wearier, the type of tired I couldn’t possibly feel upon waking up more than a few minutes ago. I found myself lying on the cold tile. I couldn’t not close my eyes. I couldn’t hold the dark away with my eyelids , not anymore.
No, something said. It was firm, but gentle. No. You stuck it out with your friend. You don’t die today. You have so much more to do yet.
And I was back with that strange black-haired girl, holding her face as she wept. “Hold the course” I heard myself say. And I knew then the words weren’t just for her. Somehow I’d spoken those words to myself too. And that past hers could hear it too
Life coursed back into my veins like an electric blanket someone had just turned on. I could move again, somehow. So I got up and moved about my day. I made it to the end of the day and collapsed into my bed, and passed out immediately. The little death is such a mercy, is it not?
If you think that has nothing to do with this masterpiece of a book you’ve either not read Short Sun (which, while sad, is forgivable) or you have and quite possibly thought Green is Luna, Urth's moon, a bunch of years in the future. Or that the Neighbors are just aliens.
Neither of which is true.
I changed the dedication to Gene in Crescendo. Here’s what it says now:
In memory of Gene:
I couldn’t remember.
Try as I might, I couldn’t do it
So I sat in the dark.
I’d not seen light in so long.
But I heard you.
You reminded me I was not a creature of light. But I could be, once again.
I could return.
And so now I wander, stumbling through it all. I do not do so without hope.
I will see you someday, at the Gate, where Eve awaits all her children. Adam will be just beyond, beckoning.
This post won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s okay. Not everyone wants a game where morality gets murky and complicated, where the least worst option is hard to figure out. But some of us really like that stuff. I’m one of them. I’ve been doing it for years. Here’s how I create situations where the players look at each other and throw up their hands, because good decisions simply aren’t possible.
First off, we have to establish a baseline of what’s necessary in your setting. There are basic needs that individuals have: meaning, relationships, food, a home. Those aren’t in a particular order because each person is different, and will prioritize their needs differently. But without meaning, relationships, food, and a home individuals suffer, and may even die.
Societies have different, but related, needs: mythology (a common story, includes culture), stability, resources, and leadership. Without societies possessing these four things individuals will suffer and die, even if their own needs are met. These are not “nice things to have”, but essentials. You can’t not have these. At least one of these societal needs are at the center of any conflict I make. In fact I usually like to threaten three of the four, but almost never with people. Droughts, plagues, post-war, natural disasters, big monsters like Godzilla, can put the setting off-balance in a way that removes an obvious bad guy. You can’t punch a plague. Nor can you find an obvious solution to the wreckage of a post-war economy.
At this point you don’t need obvious bad guys. You really don’t need bad guys! You just need sincere people who are trying to fix a problem in a way that your players find objectionable. You can’t play the guy as a bad guy. That might cheapen the conflict. Instead, make it something that the NPC himself may find reprehensible, but necessary. Most importantly? You may be able to change the NPC’s mind. In one of my playtest games of Crescendo one of the NPCs took over the hub town, killing anyone who stood in his way. The players wanted to stop him, but the town was already embroiled in a riot (which the players had a hand in starting, however accidentally) and the current leadership was incompetent to the point of criminality. This particular NPC, Keliva, had shown himself to be a somewhat noble and competent, if dangerous, individual. The players knew Keliva could calm down the riot they had started. They had watched Keliva lead people more than competently before, so they trusted that he could turn it around…if they helped him negotiate with their own friends, who were fighting Keliva tooth and nail. Doing so would reduce the casualties. And it had already been established that the players’ friends weren’t half as competent at ruling as Keliva. So they held their noses and betrayed their own friends and family for the sake of the city. The people regarded them as heroes. But the players had lost the respect of the people they cared for most. But at least their former friends were alive! That was something! Right?
That wince?
Where you can see why the players came to their decision but man it was ugly?
That’s the point.
There is no good answer to that situation, just the answer you hate the least. If that situation was handed to someone else they’d have come to a completely different solution. Maybe the way a group comes to power is so important to you you’d rather let the town burn, helping to sort out the wreckage later. Or maybe you would try to take over yourself. Or maybe you’d shake your head in disgust and walk away. None of those answers are good. Someone’s going to get hurt, and badly. You will be responsible. But you can’t not make a choice! You have to ask “What do I really value most? Really”
And then you make sure the consequences of the players’ hit home. How does the setting react? People are generally happy with any regime, so long as their individual and societal needs are met, or if there are enough bread and circuses to distract them. But there will always be some idealists out there, who demand these needs are met in a way they think legit. How do they counter and criticize the players’ decisions? I do not suggest you have the NPCs ignore individual and societal needs. Not only does that make them harder to deal with, but practically speaking they can’t get a mass movement out of their efforts if the mass’s basic needs aren’t met or “medicated” away.
If you’ve done your job right there’s one question your situations come down to: what do the players value the most? What’s the one thing they’re willing to sacrifice everything for?
Okay look folks the name ain’t rocket science. Hunter. Ninja. Bear. It’s a thoroughly ridiculous concept. It’s PERFECT. What’s in the 360 page book far exceeded my expectations, giving a gripping tale about taboos, spirituality, and vengeance.
And it all begins with something that seems totally ridiculous on its face:
This tale offers a fair warning from the people past, built upon these simple rules:
Hunter beats bear
Ninja beats hunter
Bear beats ninja
To understand the hunter is to witness true love slaughtered and brothers brutally slain.
To fully understand the ninja is to watch a legacy of honor systematically destroyed and shamed.
To fully understand the bear is to hear the primal scream’s last breath, choking on its own blood.
My first thought was "Dixon, lay off whatever you're smoking. I just want to see hunters, ninjas, and bears kill each other, not whatever this nonsese is". Not gonna lie, that really puzzled me. I mean that’s practically incomprehensible. What in the hell was Dixon talking about, and why would he put it at the beginning of a story so manifestly ridiculous??? And to be clear, I still roll my eyes at the title. Yeah, I’m a grouch. Sue me.
Put a pin that a moment, willya?
The set up’s simple: a group of Japanese villagers defile a shrine to a bear spirit. Bears appear out of nowhere and slaughter the village… except for one ninja, who swears an oath of vengeance to a god. He then leaves to recruit a team to help him take down the monstrous bears.
Yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but Hunter Ninja Bear takes the premise straight and MAKES you do it too. The bears are terrifying forces of nature, and I lost all sympathy for them almost immediately. I’d hesitate to call the bears evil, but they sure are a legit threat. I never thought I’d be happy to see bear cubs die, but man, this book REALLY pushes the menace hard. Children and women are torn apart on the page. It’s grim.
Yes, there’s another G word I could have used.
If you didn’t chuckle sit with it a minute.
The backdrop is the era of the Gold Rush. Americans are flocking west in hopes of a quick buck. Japan is modernizing. Chinese are flocking to California. The mythic may still be real… but hardly anyone cares anymore. Thematically there’s a lot of grieving over the creeping loss of spirit in the world. Not necessarily a nostalgia, but an admission that modernizing didn’t fix any of humanity’s problems. Obviously this isn’t a foremost quality of the work, but this low-key grief is part of what makes the story work! Chuck Dixon finds his moments as often as he can and I think he gets the balance between brooding and bloody just right. I’ll be reverse engineering Dixon’s methods into my games, cause they really work!
All that’s well and good, but this sorta story lives and dies because of the characters; if they don’t take the premise seriously there’s absolutely no reason for the reader to. And on this front Hunter Ninja Bear absolutely delivers. All the stakes are personal, intimate. Every last panel is used to economical effect, always commenting on the characters at play. Dixon is a master at his craft, and the characters is where he shines the brightest. I really don’t want to spoil it for you: Dixon really does a phenomenal job, particularly with Little Heart, who could have been done wrong really easily.
And how could anyone ignore the art??? It’s gorgeous! The coloring doesn’t feel tacked on here, like it does to me in a lot of comics, but was made with color truly in mind. The page composition flows really nicely; I never once got lost, and all my squint tests revealed good storytelling. It’s not Eisner, by any stretch, but it gets the job done and well. I didn't get lost and it's pretty.
I’m spending my penultimate paragraph to write more about that weird spiel Dixon put at the front of this book. The rest of this review has attempted to indicate that Dixon lives up to the front page. I’ve been letting that page sit with me awhile now, and it keeps making me come back to this comic to see where I can find more of it. Dixon’s discussion on grief not being solved by “progress” has left me with a lot to think on about pre-modern concepts of morality and religion. One cannot cut out the brutality of the world, merely misplace and lie about it. And that’s it.
I originally backed this comic because of Dixon’s name and the cheap price: 30 bucks for 12 issues is a steal these days! I got a lot more than that. Yeah I got ridiculously awesome battles and gore, but I got the things that make that sorta thing actually great: theme, characters, and story. I’ve no idea when volume two is coming out, but I am definitely watching for it, as well as Fenom Comics, just in general. If this is representative of their work in general I am so in.
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.
In a previous post I had made the statement that nihilism is the proper attitude of any true Christian. I didn't say this ironically, and I mean it all the way down. A friend of mine read the post and said "Um, WUT". This is my defense of my statement. Because yes, I really do mean it.
Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy.
If there is anything that sums up my view of the world, it's the above. There's only one way to the universe, and that's down, to dissolution. Progress is disintegration, the utter ruin that is the end. What most view as a bad end and unfortunate I view as the inevitable death and destruction of all things. If everything falls apart then falling apart is not a bug, it's a feature. You cannot escape, and anyone who claims otherwise is lying, to themselves first of all. There is an inherent hollowness to the world and to ourselves that most would have you believe is this unfortunate thing that must be fought. The prevailing philosophy of any age is a noble lie, designed to prevent you from realizing that you never truly communicate anyone to anything in this world, ever, and that this world is not just worse than shit, it's a trap to make that makes you think it matters.
Funny, that sounds familiar.
Oh yeah, the Book of Ecclesiastes, which rips apart everything in the world with a sorrow one would call crazed if not for the utter sobriety of the author.
Ecclesiastes 1:2
A shadow’s shadow, he tells us, a shadow’s shadow; a world of shadows!
Shadow as in trick, shadow as in deception, shadow as in it'll be gone in a second. Qoheleth the author spends the rest of the book taking each and every little thing that we think of as having worth and destroys it. Wisdom, power, money, kindness, goodness, evil, everything is worthless. Well, except for God, but we'll get there.
But this is a post-modern catechism: none of you give a flying fuck about what the Bible says and we all know it. You want to know what the experience of the writer, in this case me, is. And I have seen much that proves that Ecclesiastes is a gentle letdown of a book. I have watched every single possible relationship in my life has been defiled, sometimes (a lot) by mine own hand. The notion that there is something invincibly sacred is a bad joke, and if you deny that simple fact of the universe that's your mental illness talking, not mine. The void will get us all.
Yes, you.
Deny it if you like.
Run.
Be a coward, which is an all an optimist is: gibbering cowardice against a universe that genuinely doesn't give two shits about you.
I don't care. You will succumb, and may be doing it right this minute for all I know. Go ahead, tell me that somehow you will find a way to defeat the rot in your soul. Go ahead. Say it louder, damnit! Try and make yourself believe it! Lie lie lie, whatever you gotta do to ignore the truth for another five minutes so you don't have a mental breakdown. Go ahead. It's encoded in your very DNA, to fight and scratch and lie and cheat and whatever you have to, just for another five stolen minutes of not having to face the empty hole that is your soul. If you think it'll help go ahead. Fight. Believe that somehow my nihilism is "pessimism", that simply believing that you will conquer the downward pull will make it so.
Go ahead.
But I'll never believe you.
And you don't either. You shouldn't.
Here's the thing that keeps tripping me up, though. Every time I have collapsed, every time I have fallen apart and watched as the illusion that is my soul begins to ebb out of body, as I feel the relief of knowing that i am nothing and to nothing I will go back, if I just had a bit more courage, I keep running into this... presence. I don't know what else to call it. It's this calm, beautiful, thing, that's solid in a way that I am not. People run into this thing and lie to themselves, saying it's their true self.
You don't have a true self.
You don't have anything at all. You're a trick of the light.
You are nothing.
So whatever it is, it's not me. It just isn't. And then, as I realize that whatever nothing I am is resting on this... whatever it is, it talks. It's this small gentle voice that hurts to hear; when It talks it rocks the very core of whatever is left of me. I am utterly helpless, because It is real and I. Am. Not. And whatever this thing is It cradles the broken pieces and puts them back together, just as I had them. It won't change anything, because I had things a certain way that I like, and it's not my fault that that configuration of shadows hurts, because that's all shadows can do: hurt. And It comforts me as the convulsions take over my body, which stores the falsities of being something deep in the infinite lie that is my DNA.
I have no idea what to make of the above. Whatever that Thing is, It's real, and to say otherwise is a lie only because It exists to give any credence to falsity at all. Without It lies are not possible because there would be no truth, no nothing even. Even nothing is something to It.
Now, from what I can tell, the Christians have a word for this Something: God. The Thing that always exists. And actual pre-modern Christians teach that everything else rots and burns. All of it. There's no exception. It all goes the way of the dodo folks. And it's very simple to check this: if you've ever experienced what I have, all you have to do is go read the Old Testament and see all the spots where God talks about Himself: when people ask Him Who He is, He responds that He is the Existing One.
The Bible is a collection of books about people who bumped into this thing, and had to write the experience down somehow. That's it. It comes out of the encounter of nothing with Something.
I don't know how else to put it.
Shadows need a light source. They need sunlight. Shadows are only cold if there's a warmth. And don't tell me the garbage that darkness can exist without light, and cold without heat. Absolute zero is a physical impossibility.
