Pokemon Masters (TCG Hack)

I Want to Like the Official Rules

I grew up with the Pokemon TCG, when it was this enormous juggernaut. I played with my friends constantly, and enjoyed every second of it. There was something so great about buying booster packs, opening them up, and using the weird things you found to make quirky decks.

Wait, there's a Pokemon League? COOOOOOOOOL LET'S GO!!!

Wait, why is my really enjoyable deck getting creamed? Oh, there's a meta that ignores all these great cards and just focuses on the least interesting but numerically most potent cards? You're telling me that I need to rethink from wonder and interesting play to ruthlessly monotonous grind-fests?

Sure!

I junked my interesting decks and went full-on Beatdown, which was the most cookie-cutter and boring deck of the time. It was relentlessly efficient. I gloried in the dopamine of Numbers Go Up Fast, I Get My Cards Out Quickly, and Things Seem to Happen. I did that for years. And years.

And then one day the dopamine stopped. And I realized just how much of an idiot I had been. Did I realize that there were systemic problems, and that nobody could stop me from just.. making up something different and doing that instead? Nope. Not at all. I just put my cards in a box, bitterly, and moved on to Magic. And had fun! That is, until I met players who valued efficiency over fun... and saw a type of degeneracy that made the Pokemon League look principled in comparison. This time I thought it was the people who were the problem. I wanted nothing to do with such degeneracy. So I just stopped playing at all.

Enter my brother-in-law, Kyle. Kyle has an allergy to bullshit that is almost absolute, without being too much of a misanthrope. I say this, because he somehow maintained the wisdom to know the difference between the masses being wrong and whether or not the thing they're wrong about is redeemable. I have no idea how he maintained this wisdom, but it has saved me many a time.

And Kyle had refused to give up on the Pokemon TCG.

I smiled, politely accepted gifts of cards, and tried it again with my kids. Nope, it still did what it did. I would play with my kids out of some sense of duty. The cards were bright and colorful, with interesting tricks... that couldn't stand up to my Charizard EX. I, of course, hadn't really thought it through. And it wrecked deckbuilding for me and my kids. They became obsessed with just trying to beat this one card. I wasn't able to get myself to give up the only good Charizard card I knew of. It was an impasse.

This was something I was pretty vocal about with Kyle. I knew my own degeneracy, my own addiction to the dopamine, and knew I had passed it on to my kids. I wanted a way out. I knew there was another way, and couldn't think it through, and said as much.

Kyle, being Kyle, listened to my rants and ravings. He did nothing more than chuckle and agreed that the Pokemon TCG had foundational problems.

About a year later, Kyle would come over for a visit. Standard stuff and all that. Nothing special... until he mentioned, casually, that he had come up with a new casual format for the Pokemon TCG. He hadn't playtested it yet, and he wanted me to try it out with him. Kyle has an eye for systemic patterns that is unparalled. I immediately said yes.

Kyle, my kids, and I played easily two dozen games in 72 hours. We tweaked a few things. Played some more. Had even more of a blast. Tweaked some more. It just got better and better and better.

General Rules of Pokemon Masters

This is intended for casual play. Kyle won't be running tournaments, and no one affiliated with us and Die Young Games will ever run tournaments. Anyone claiming to represent us to run a tournament doesn't. This will never be for sale, and is not intended to compete with the official structure.

This has been playtested, but it is assumed we missed things. If you find loopholes or feel that something is incoherent to the experience, comment on this blog post or come onto the Die Young Games Discord server and put your concerns up there!

The rules below are meant to replace specific parts of the Official Rules. If something isn't mentioned here, refer to the Official Rules!

Deck Construction

Your Deck is 40 Cards.

Only one copy of any non-Basic Energy Card is allowed.

Select six Basic Pokemon Cards. They must be different colors. 

• If your Basic Pokemon have Evolution forms, you must include one copy of each evolution, to the best of your ability.
• If there are multiple Evolutions of a Pokemon (like Evee evolutions) or multiple versions of an evolved Pokemon (Charizard, Charizard EX/GX), you only need to include one variant.
• If you do not own all the Evolutions on the chain (say, you want to play Charmander, but you only one a Charmeleon, no Charizards) you may include the Pokemon you do have (so you'd include Charmander and Charmeleon).
• You get three Basic Energy per Basic Pokemon. They must be of the same color.
• If one of your Basic Pokemon is Colorless, you must select three Basic Energy of another color from the other five.
• You may include as many additional Energy as you like, in addition to the Energy above.

You may only have one Trainer Supporter Card. This Card must be announced before the game starts.

No non-Supporter Trainer Cards or Energy Cards that search any Deck are allowed.

Only one Rule Box Pokemon Card is allowed. If your Rule Box Pokemon is Knocked Out, you lose the game. 

• If you wish to use a V MAX, V STAR, or any Rule Box Pokemon Card that evolves from a Basic Rule Box Pokemon, it uses your Supporter slot, and must be declared as if it was a Supporter Card.

Playing One on One

Set Up

Basic Pokemon

All Basic Pokemon are placed in Play: one in the Active Area and the other five on the Bench.

• You may not start with a Basic Colorless Pokemon in the Active Area.
• You may not start with a Basic Rule Box Pokemon in the Active Area.

Benched Basic Pokemon are played face down, and do not flip face up unless Evolved or moved into the Active Area.

Opening Hand

Draw four Cards. Do not show them to your Opponent.

Prize Cards

Draw one Card, and place it face up to the left of the Play Area. Take four Cards, and place them, face up, on top of the bottom Prize Card, as shown in the picture. 

Whenever your Opponent knocks out one of your Pokemon, you draw one of your Prize Cards. You must take all the top Prize Cards before you grab the fifth Prize, on the bottom.

If you can't take a Prize Card, you lose the match. Whenever a Card refers to your Prize Cards, check the number of your Opponent's Prize Cards instead.

Playing

The First Turn

The player who goes first may Attack and/or play a Supporter Card, but not Draw.

Drawing

At the start of every turn after the first, Draw one Card. 

• If it's an Energy, continue your turn.
• If it's not an Energy, you may show it to your Opponent(s). If you do, draw another Card. Do not show this Card to your Opponent.

Energy

Once during your Turn, you may either Attach an Energy from your hand, or Move an Energy from one of your Pokemon to another.

Gameplay for Three Players

As One on One play, with the following modifications.

Two Fronts

Each Player has two Active Areas,  one for the Player on their right and on their left. You still can only Attach or Move one Energy a turn.

The Law of Aggression

A Player must Attach or Move an Energy, if able. A Player must Attack all eligible targets, if able.

What Do These Rules Do?

Pokemon Masters feels like an Elite Four battle in card game form. Every game has been a tactical head-to-head. I've had to think more in one match of Pokemon Masters than I've ever had to think in any TCG I've personally played. I've also had to consider what my opponent is up to in a way that I didn't know most TCGs could do. And I think that's worth sharing with people.

You have to weigh the health of your Pokemon against the unknown nature of your deck. Do you sacrifice one of your Basics so you can get your big guy charged? Once your big guy is out, how are you developing your backup? All your Pokemon are going to fight, almost certainly. What order are you going to try to send them out? How flexible are they in the inevitability of the deck not cooperating? These are the kinds of decisions you're making in a Pokemon match. You are playing with time and chance. And it is a blast.

The Pokemon TCG has always had interesting cards, especially their Pokemon cards... and usually you don't look at them twice. Why would you? The Rule Box Pokemon hit your lizard brain in the worst way possible. You don't particularly want to look at them twice. The numbers hit your lizard brain. Those are the things that matter in the standard format. Once you make Rules Box Pokemon rare, you have to figure out these weirdo abilities on the normal Pokemon, of which you have to have an epic spread. Given that you can't control the deck all that much, this means you have these wild abilities with a deck that can't be controlled without using Pokemon attacks. So gameplay automatically becomes more varied, as a lot of the heavy lifting has to go through Pokemon attacks.

Adding the "you lose if your Rule Box Pokemon dies" rule does... things. Very very worrisome things. I can come out with my lovely Charizard EX, swinging with tons of damage... and then all of a sudden have to protect my flying lizard boi, because as it turns out normal Pokemon can do quite a bit of damage, if you're under the right kinds of pressure. So, after a kill or two, my lovely flying lizard boi has to go back to the bench, because he has about 60 HP. And now I have to worry about whether or not someone is going to pull out a Boss's Orders, or a Pokemon Catcher that flips heads, or someone has a Pokemon that will drag him back out. Using a Rule Box Pokemon is now a choice. You have to do it on purpose, and find ways to keep your Pokemon from dying. It's a type of tension that is your choice.

What These Rules Won't Do

Pokemon TCG is a broken game. Not all the cards are going to be useful in this format. I miss some of those cards. Some cards that "should" be usable (like those that reward having multiple copies of a card) aren't.  It's not particularly fair.  But this format isn't about making everything usable. It's about taking what's really a large mess and doing something fun with it. And I think it succeeds admirably well. You go from not even glancing at 90% of the cards to having about 75% of them being a viable option.

And that's pretty dang awesome.

This Isn't the End

I do not labor under the delusion that this is the last word on this format. If we can get people to try it, there will be a lot of questions and possible issues that we do not foresee. I welcome this. This is a genuinely exciting format, providing some of the most varied gameplay I've ever seen in a TCG.

Please try it. Go over to the Die Young Games Discord or comment here. Let's make this a thing. 

Reflections on The Menu

 

“When you painted on earth—at least in your earlier days—it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too. But here you are having the thing itself. It is from here that the messages came..."

-C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce 

All art, all true art, is always prophecy. Always. And prophecy helps you see the world as it truly is... which may include some element of being able to see the future. The function of prophecy is that the future may help you see the whole picture.

Art of any kind is soul-crushingly difficult. Through some remarkably fallible sense perception you stumble across something. Something good, pure, beautiful, untouchable, incorruptible. It is hard to communicate the experience if you haven't had it. Something explodes in your heart, quietly devasting. Light gently breaks in, and you realize you've been in the dark your whole life and in fact you never saw anything before this moment. And, so long as you keep doing your art, really do it, you can bathe in that light.

But there's a trick. The material you have to work with is fallen. The people who interact with your art are even more fallen than the materials you work with. Some level of mastery of people and your materials is required. The media is a pain, but the people. The people are the worst part. People aren't just fallen passively, but have actively lied to themselves all their lives, to the point of actual blindness of soul. So when they look at your work are they going to see what you tried to put there?

By default the answer is no. At best you'll typically get indifference or a mild reaction. It didn't touch them because they weren't looking. That's to be expected. Humans don't look at the world around them, and those that claim they do are very good at self-deception.

You want to know how I know?

Because to perceive, to truly perceive, is to be changed. 

So if someone goes "Oh cool! That's neat." By default they couldn't have actually looked. And yes, that's demoralizing.

The second worst is a sycophant. "Oh I love your work!" Instead, they made the mistake of seeing you as a necessary part of The Vision. The vision is what matters. Can you develop a predilection of engaging with a specific artist's way of channeling The Vision? Absolutely! We do this all the time! I love Ivanka Demchuk's iconography. I see this icon of Christ being betrayed to Pontius Pilate and I can feel The Vision of it. She saw something about this scene with the eyes of her heart, and was faithful to that vision. I love her craft so much I am going to learn how to do it for myself. Ivanka's work has inspired me to do something for myself. I want to learn for myself.

So, I am not talking about a fondness. I am talking about obsession with the artist. You are not on this planet to turn off your own spiritual vision and worship someone, but to find your way Home. That's hard enough without degenerating into fandom. And it is degeneration. There's a reason why the "fan" hangs himself in this movie. He has made nothing of himself and has become such a bootlicker that death really may be the most merciful option. Certainly not the soul-crushing that happens in the film.

That's not the worst reaction to your work, however.

The worst reaction is one of the fully neutered expert. Remember how I said that the materials of this world, whether they be paint or a damnably thick tome on theology, are inherently rotten, if not actively rotting? What could be grosser than someone who wants to get into that mess? To get covered in the rotting feces that is this world and go "I am very familiar with the smell and viscosity of feces, and so therefore I know you didn't use it right"?

All of this world, at best, is straw.

This isn't to say that technical mastery can't help you point people back to The Vision more reliably. But there is a difference between saying "This is what I think got in the way of helping me escape the fallen world for a minute" and "You failed the fallen materials you were working with", when in reality the materials failed you.

The sycophant and the neutered expert can kill an artist's soul so quickly. Listening to the sycophants will get you pride. Listening to the neutered expert will kill your ability to see The Vision at all. And once those two things happen, you're stuck. You either burn out and collapse in on yourself or take it out on everyone else.

And if you're especially dramatic you'll take all those idiots and kill them all in especially earnestly vulnerable, if not sometimes predictable, movie. And yeah, the movie isn't perfect. I saw the twist coming a mile away. But you know what? So what? it showed me something I needed to see, helped me reflect, and helped me process something that I've been unable to work out for myself for years. The movie did its job. It got me to see something I needed to. I changed, watching it. I saw it.

And isn't that the point of art?

The True Narrative

“There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.” 

GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy

It's been a really rough year. Some really nasty stuff went down with my old landlord. It kept going on and on and on into what felt like an infinity of a stupidity so incredibly overwrought that its difference from malice was impossible to determine. Laws were broken and there was very little I could do about it at the time. It. Didn't. Stop. And then other stuff came up, some of it really good, some of it really bad, but it was all intense. I do not hold up under that kind of stress well. I can do one incident. Maybe five. But if it's just thing after thing a ding a ling ring ring, I get more than pessimistic. Nihilistic.

There's an interesting piece of advice that I've read across the Church Fathers. I can't really pinpoint which one said it right now. But I've seen it across the centuries and places compressed into pages between multiple softcovers. Enough for it to stick in my head. To burrow in. To marinate.

"Learn your own story of salvation, of how God is saving you."

And they all give the same broad explanation. God is acting in your life. He reaches across the eons and pushes Old Father Time out of the way. It doesn't look like it does for others, because He knows you. It is the only truly unique experience you'll ever have. And yet, if you share it with others, you'll notice the least important parts match up. 

The Quiet. 

The Peace. 

Sometimes The Terror. 

Everyone has these little moments, even if they only last a millisecond. The advice from between the softcovers is to let these moments and the moments between them form a narrative-- The True Narrative -- of your life.  Once The True Narrative is constructed, it's yours. You are meant to hold it in your heart. Think on it. Come back to it. Prioritize it over the massive absurdity that is your life. You're supposed to say "I know the rest of this doesn't make sense but this is what God has done for me so far."  The True Narrative isn't going to answer the absurdities. The questions. The pain. Faith is not the pillow placed on your face so you don't feel pain anymore. Your doubts are a part of you, and any attempt to shut those things down is a quiet suicide.

The thing is that, when under stress, it's easy to forget that the light that's inside of you is of paramount importance. This light gives you an ability to find ways and paths that would be otherwise impossible. Without this light there is no hope in the human soul.  And without hope all is lost. This light is arational. It can use rationality, but it is not rational itself. Its job isn't to argue, but to shine. Humans are supposed to navigate by the light that shines from within them.

The human, under stress, tries to figure out why they aren't comfortable. This is a rational process. Stress pushes you to find a solution quickly. And if you can't find a solution to a problem quickly? You just stay under stress! And you keep trying to figure out why. And this is good. You should try to figure out why you're in pain, or under stress, or whatever else is going on. Humans don't just have pure light, but an ability and duty to relate to the world in a coherent manner. 

But what if you can't right now? What if you can't figure it out... for a long time? The stress doesn't stop. It piles up on top of other stresses atop more stresses and before you know it... when was the last time you were relaxed? You're just exhausted now. How do you come back to normal? Is there a normal? 

And then the thought comes. That light was what put you here. Maybe you're better off without it. 

There's the endgame.

That thought is the deadly one. This one thought will kill everything within you. And it is so quiet, you may not even hear it on a conscious level.

The problem is, of course, by now you're tired. And you really need to focus on something else. Which takes energy, right? You have to construct an argument, right then and there. I hope you can argue well, because the type of wretchedness I'm talking about is so thoroughly exhausting, so overwhelming, that it would take a miracle to come up with something convincing to yourself.

This is where The True Narrative is meant to intervene. You pull up this history of mercy, of grace, and try to sit in these memories as strongly as you can. It is literally only yours. No one else has it. Go back to those moments, drink in their particularity.

Bask.

If you're still being asked to betray yourself, just go back. And wait. Throwing out that spot of life within yourself is never the answer. I'm not saying there's any good answers. I'm not claiming to solve the problem that put you there in the first place. I am claiming that a better solution will present itself if you bide your time and hold onto hope.

But that ambiguity is pure Hell, isn't it? It's not something humans do very well. We want to be able to relate to everything. Ambiguity doesn't relate to us in a way that we like. We want to be able to control it. To put our power over it. Ambiguity refuses that kind of relationship. It gives pain and darkness, and humanity's form of relationship to it is to endure it until it leaves. But your mind doesn't like doing that. 

So give it something to chew on in the interim.

The mark of a mature person is the ability to endure ambiguity by embracing what one knows. Give it something to chew on while enduring. Give it a True Narrative.

Examining Fandoms through Spider-Man and Luke Skywalker

I had written an introduction for this piece... and then deleted it. And then rewrote it. And then deleted it again.

Look, folks, at the above image. I know it's kinda painful to look at, because the art's mostly cringe, but read that dialogue. Peter, badly done hair and all, is saying something that is so basic, so fundamental, that only low art could pull it off: perfect love drives out all fear. No, I don't know the rest of the context of this comic. I've not read it before. I don't really need to, and frankly I'm not sure I want to! Love and fear cannot coexist. This a basic fact of the universe. Love makes us less and less like animals, and more and more people. A person who has love will see the way of the animal, the way of instinct, know it is an option, but ultimately reject it... because they are not an animal. And cannot be. Now, the trick is that no one's love is perfect. There is always a line all human beings have. And that line is unique to them. But even in failure that person is still far more noble than someone who never had love to begin with.

Let us examine two things the fandoms hate and critique them with this lens, shall we? We'll do One More Day and The Last Jedi.

For those of you who are blessed to not know what One More Day is... well, I'm sorry. You're going to find out if you keep reading. I almost recommend you not read on. For the rest of you who are cursed with the knowledge that is One More Day.. well I'm sorry. For those blissfully ignorant, who wish to lose their innocence: One More Day is the story where Peter Parker and Mary-Jane sell their marriage to Mephisto, a second-rate demonic figure in Marvel lore, because he claims he can save Aunt May, when somehow no one else in the Marvel Universe can.

No, I'm not making that up.

Yes, that's stupid. Just at its base, that may be one of the dumbest things a mortal mind can conceive.

But it happened.

How did that happen? Well, in order to start, I have to introduce you to the beginning of the end of Marvel: the Civil War event. See, One More Day really starts there. The story of Civil War begins when a villain by the name of Nitro blows up an entire school of kids. In the wake of a tragedy that has assuredly never happened in Marvel history before, the mob supposedly screams out for the registration, training, and subjugation of all super-powered beings.

Let us stop, for just one second, and think about how stupid an idea this is.

You are trying to tell people who are smarter, faster, stronger, better than the normal population that somehow, some strange way hitherto not done, they're going to be contained? And that somehow it doesn't go dystopian from there? Look, we've been seeing this sorta thing talked about in X-Men comics for decades. We know where this goes. All the Marvel heroes knows where this goes. This shouldn't be a line any Marvel hero crosses, just to begin with. But somehow Iron Man, the one guy who doesn't do governmental overreach, is the one who decides that he's going to step up and be the bad guy? I could go on about Civil War and how it's actually the character assassination of every single Marvel hero, ever, particularly Bishop, who somehow is pro-registration??? That one really made no sense.

But we're not here for Iron Man and Bishop, are we? We're here for Spider-Man. See, Spider-Man went pro-registration at first. Which is a... weird... move for the guy who historically has wanted to live in the shadows and not really be noticed by anyone, if he can help it. In the main Civil War event Spider-Man publicly unmasked in support of the new totalitarian regime. It's this sudden shock move that has no substantial explanation and is barely talked about in the event itself, until suddenly Spider-Man changes his mind mid-way through with the most paper thin of explanations.

However, in the Spidey comics themselves, I personally think this move was built up to really well. J. Michael Straczynski, the writer of Amazing Spider-Man, really took his time here. He first showed Spider-Man transitioning to becoming a team player, an Avenger. Then Tony Stark helps Peter out when his house is destroyed. He takes him in. Gives him a new suit. Helps the Parkers get through the... wretchedness... that is The Other storyline. A lot of people complain/ed that Peter throwing in with Tony came out of nowhere. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tony Stark was stepping up as a mentor in Peter's life. I actually really liked it. This was actually a really good match, one that I wish Marvel had allowed Straczynski to take years to explore more. Iron Man and Spider-Man's books could have bled together a bit, with Peter having a real impact on Tony's life. It's actually a really cool idea. 

So, when Tony Stark decides to become a totalitarian asshole, it is in Peter's character to at least consider it. Peter's actually a pretty simple character in this regard. He has always wanted to support his family and friends, and Tony had more than earned that much from Peter. So, Peter unmasking was an evolution of the concept of Spider-Man. Peter Parker resolved to stop hiding from people. Encouraged by Aunt May and Mary-Jane that he, himself, is someone worthy of being loved, Peter Parker takes the final step. The fundamental formula of Peter Parker as Spider-Man had changed. And it should have. While this isn't a perfect writing decision but pretending that Peter wasn't coming from a place of love, something that Straczynski had taken most of his arc to build, is just raging stupidity. And pretending that this wasn't a part of Peter Parker becoming the Uncle Ben of the Marvel Universe is just as stupid.

Well, this had predictable results, once Spider-Man decided that totalitarianism, surprise of surprises, wasn't something to back.

Peter handles that well.

Yes, he's throwing a Jeep at the sniper. A whole Jeep. Man, I miss competent Spider-Man writing that's not the current Ultimate Spider-Man run.

Peter goes on a rampage. Sure, this part makes sense. Putting on the black costume is stupid, sure, but the concept of Peter Parker having enough and burning the whole world down because Aunt May was shot is... well... yes. Peter, like all of us, gets tired and eventually the animal is going to win out. Fine with that. So far Peter is acting like someone for whom love has transformed, but not all the way. Because nobody ever is totally transformed by love, not in this life.

And then One More Day. Where somehow in a land of mysticism and tech that's so advanced that it is magic, no one can save Aunt May. Except Mephisto, a second-rate demon that has been knocked around by more than a few heroes in the Marvel Universe. Somehow this dude is able to save Aunt May... if Peter Parker and Mary Jane sell their marriage. Suddenly, the man who has been slowly transformed by the love of his wife and aunt is afraid. Going on a revenge tour for Aunt May getting shot is one thing, but to undo the thing that she created because of her love?  There's a whole host of problems with this decision, but the biggest one is simply that it wouldn't occur to Peter or Mary-Jane as an option. It's almost like there's a totally different writer here!

Oh wait!

See, Quesada, the editor-in-chief of Marvel at the time, basically wrote this issue, using Straczynski's far greater talent to at least attempt profundity. But... I mean... the shift is so profound that everyone caught it. Immediately. Because low art has only one thing going for it: heart. That's what makes it work. It's not technically proficient the way high art is, but it hits something so true so fervently and honestly that you can't help but love it anyways. And One More Day reeks of a total lack of sincerity, in only the way an editor-in-chief hijacking and crapping on a writer's story can stink.

Now, here's where we get to where it gets complicated. Because the public, the mob, is always wrong. Always. The mob doesn't think in terms of truth, but in terms of comfort and power, which are the eternal enemies of truth. Even when they are right, they are right for the worst reasons. In fact, one of the best ways to see if your own thoughts are wrong is to ask what the popular opinion is. And if your opinion matches up to what seems to be popularly said you are in deep trouble and need to change your mind as quickly as possible. The quickest way to figure out if someone who is popular is a charlatan or not is to ask if they repeat the mob's lines back at them and profit from it. 

So, folks who hated One More Day (and there are still a lot of them) couldn't articulate it well, for the most part. Most of the outcry at the time was "Peter wouldn't do that!" or "Mephisto couldn't even provide that sort of thing!" and all sorts of things that are correct but are not right. One More Day's storyline was deeply uncomfortable, so the mob was never going to like it. That's not a guarantee of the story's worth or lack of worth. The mob was ruffled and had some good scapegoats for why it was ruffled. Quesada had invalidated the fundamental law of love, which is that it drives out fear. But mobs don't think, they react. 

Now we're going to get to the really offensive spot: The Last Jedi.

See, Lucasfilm had made a fundamental mistake, way back in the day: they allowed books to be published in the Star Wars universe that could be construed as being in the same continuity as the movies. Nevermind that some of the media released was pure excrement and shouldn't be anywhere near Star Wars. Some of it was more than good enough to be considered in the same canon as the movies. Lucasfilm then made another mistake: they kept doing it. Even though some of it is outright character assassination. Then George Lucas made another mistake: he decided he wanted to make the sequel trilogy. And we know, from the plans that have been discussed, that he had every intention on throwing out pretty much all the previously established work in the books, comics, and videogames. Lucas, realizing that his rabid mob of a fandom would eat him alive, but still wanting the sequels made, sold Lucasfilm to Disney.

So now Disney is facing the same problem Lucas did: most of the EU is crap. The good does not outweigh the bad. They don't want to be weighed down by something that's the definition of a mixed bag. Nothing Disney was ever going to do was going to placate the mob, not if they wanted Lucasfilm to actually make something of some notable quality. And, regardless of how cutthroat Disney is, some of them do actually care about making good content, if not art. So, they wiped the EU out, definitively and openly. It had already been done, more or less, by Lucas, but Disney did what Lucas didn't have the courage to do and openly pulled the plug. They then released the safest thing they could in the form of The Force Awakens. And sure, this kept the mob off them for a little while.

But eventually Lucasfilm had to actually do something fully consonant with what Star Wars has always been about. Which meant something doing something both child-like in its fantasy and uncompromising in its examination of human nature. And they found the director to do it, Rian Johnson. They handed him the reigns, and it went about as well as one could expect: the backlash of the mob, who were still clutching their pearls, wasn't actually as hard as it could have been.

Because, surprise of surprises, Johnson actually made a really good movie!

See, the thing is that Johnson had correctly identified who Luke was. Luke, at his core, has always been a man who wants to run away. From the Tosche station joke, to running away from Obi-Wan to find the burning corpses of his aunt and uncle, to just up and leaving to go find Yoda, to running away from Yoda to help his friends, to isolating Jabba so he could take him out more easily, to leaving his friends in the middle of a freaking stealth infiltration mission so he could face Vader (and then giving up midway in the mission and just resolving to die while taking out the Emperor as quickly as possible)...  just that there's a pattern here, folks. Luke is also deeply concerned about the welfare of others. Luke is also easily prone to rage. 

All three of these are true. 

So, Johnson had Luke do the one thing an older Luke would do: almost fly off the handle at his nephew but then stop himself. Luke almost went back from person to animal, stopped himself, and resolved to try better. And he did it much more quickly than he did as a younger man. That's because Luke has grown as a person, but the line back to animal never goes away. It's just something you learn how to handle. And Luke handled it as well as anyone could.

And then his thirteen foster-children were either burned alive or betrayed him.

Now, I don't know if any of you have had the misfortune of watching a woman go through a miscarriage. Something inside the mother dies with the child. But what most people do not track is that the same thing happens to the father too. When the child dies something happens in both parents. Something in them dries up. They can't quite summon the same energy they did before. A great weight is placed on their shoulders. It never leaves. 

Ever. 

And if this senseless tragedy happens multiple times, you get the exquisitely awful "privilege" of watching someone basically collapse under their own weight. No matter what happens afterwards, no matter how happy they get, their smile is dulled. It will never come back, and you will have the wonderfully terrible experience of remembering that their smile used to be so much brighter before all this. Each of these deaths can take months, years, maybe decades, to accept. It takes everything to do this. I have watched it five times. Each of them piled up on top of the last, until the person was almost unrecognizable due to a back log of the worst tragedy imaginable: the death of five little microcosms that you wanted to protect with all your might but couldn't.

Now imagine if over a dozen of those happens to you, at once, and it was your fault. Directly. How far away from suicide are you? Answer honestly now.

That is a deeply uncomfortable scenario. Anyone who thinks that the mob is going to react to such a thing with compassion has never met people. Or they forgot about 2020. Or they just didn't pay attention. Everyone's going to go "That doesn't make me feel good!" And they shouldn't feel good. But because they're a part of a mob, they're not going to reflect on why they may actually feel badly. They're just going to find the cheapest and quickest explanation to justify why they don't feel good.

Oh, wait, Lucasfilm finally disavowed the EU? Where Luke somehow gets married and has a kid, in the most unlikely and idiotic series of events ever written?

Yup, let's pin it on that.

It's certainly easier than realizing that the death of multiple children under your charge would break you too, isn't it? That requires thinking for yourself. And trying to actually think through things, which means automatically rejecting whatever the mob says, while trying to figure out why the mob is wrong.

Or, you know, you could be one of these charlatans that just feeds whatever the mob spews back at them and call it "reporting" or "commentary".

There are so many ways I could close out this blog that would be less messy. I don't claim, and I don't hope I have never claimed, to be correct in anything. I do claim to be some level of genuine. One could argue that my misanthropy is all that's on display in my blog. As of late I've wondered about that myself. I have never not claimed to be a misanthrope. But, as I continue to go along in my life, I have begun to notice that whatever you may mistake for misanthropy is rooted in something actually quite sane. I have made very wrong decisions with those thoughts. But I am not wrong.

I don't know if anyone reading this agrees or not. I know barely anyone does read. But if you are reading and still see something, thank you.

Eating Crow: FFG Star Wars

 

I have never pretended that any opinion of mine is correct. I have considered writing things that will get more than a dozen reads on this blog and experimented with branding. I have always decided not to, coz I ultimately don’t want this blog to be a brand. I just want people to find someone saying exactly what he thinks, no matter how flawed and sometimes outright outrageous it is. Over the years I’ve occasionally written Eating Crow posts coz I changed my mind on something and think it’s good people read about that on the internet, where everyone is right all the time!

I was wrong about FFG Star Wars. Here's why.

The basics of the game revolve around a set of six dice: the ability, proficiency, boost, difficulty, challenge, and setback dice, pictured below:

Each of these dice share a number of symbols on them that help generate differing types of results. There's a lot of openness in interpretation. While there's a general slowdown from having to sort through the dice, I've found that the amount of richness that can come out of a single roll more than makes up for it. Could you go and have normal dice do this? You can! The core books actually include a conversion chart... and it's a nightmare to use. I wouldn't do it.

The problem?

The dice are about 20 bucks for a package, and in typical FFG fashion there's not enough. You'll need at least two sets of these at the beginning, and you will probably want to just keep getting them until you've got six or seven packs. That's 140 bucks, all told. On just dice.

The core books are also a bit of a money sink. There's three of them, covering the three "types" of Star Wars stories: criminals, military, and Jedi. There's a lot of overlap between them of course, but there's just as much that's unique to that particular book. And they're fun to read! They really are! The FFG folks did a good job making them coffee table books.

About ten years ago I bought all the core books and two sets of dice, over the course of about a year or two, and then went on deployment, got a group together… and hated the game. I was playing with former DnD min maxers in a game that resembled DnD in format… and didn’t play anything like it. Please understand I’d sunk quite a bit of money into this game, was in a place where adapting to a new system was a bad idea (and I didn't really know that) and was criminally short on sleep. I was pretty bummed out, came home, put the books up on my shelf, lost the dice... and then forgot about the game.

The years went by, and then a buddy of mine told me that he really liked the Genesys system and was more than willing to defend it against detractors. I just sorta sat and watched as people came at him about the absurd cost of the system and even its practicality. My buddy went and defended the practicality of the system but made no efforts to defend its cost. I jurst sorta filed it away, while making my own complaints about a system I'd seen not work too terribly well. I respected him for standing up for his beliefs, and resolved to eventually give the games another chance.

Yanno.

Whenever that was gonna be!

And then my kids watched The Skywalker Saga. 

And found those books. And started begging to play. I shrugged, told them sure, and made characters with them. They went acrost the three books, grabbing options and gear relatively evenly. I've not really thought about gear lists in a long time, but boy did I get a new appreciation for them as I watched my kids. For them the gear lists were a direct portal into the setting of Star Wars itself, one that they did everything they could to leverage for their own enjoyment. They just wanted me to read every last item and asked how it worked. And the long prose really helped there, let me tell you! It was actually a lot more fun than I expected, overriding my experiences with the former DnD-heads bitching about they wanted more gear, coz they wanted more options to blow people up with.

But character creation being fun is a nice bonus. I want the game to be good. So I got a set of dice and we went to planet Ord Mantell, where a gigantic kaiju had dropped from the orbiting moon to attack the Imperial base there. And every. Single. Second. Of that session was sheer gold. The kids leaned into the dice, oohing and ahhing over them, asking how they could get more yellows and blues, changing narration accordingly. They understood what the dice were for: crafting an exciting narrative. And they leveraged them as thoroughly as they could.

You really need more than one set of dice to run this game. I'm sorry, but you do. That's about 35 to 40 bucks, just right there. Buy yourself a book and that's a hundred bucks. That. Is. A. Problem. And it's pretty ubiquitous to FFG's money decisions. So, if you don't like FFG, this isn't going to change your mind, and I can hardly blame you.

But.

But.

These two sets of dice solve more problems than most RPG books of the same price. They just do. I'm not gonna pretend to you they don't. And if I can just pick up a set of dice instead of reading yet another blowhard telling me how to fix RPGs I'm gonna do it. Maybe you won't. That's cool. That's on you.The book is really secondary to the dice. All the systems they present work, and they work well, and the books themselves are worth the money you spend on them. 

Together?

Yeah, that smarts.

But honestly, folks have spent hundreds of dollars trying to do what FFG is offering for a fraction of that. And I find that worth my time. And cash.

Star Wars Unlimited: Starter Decks

 

Someone really freaking knew what they were doing here!

I kinda chuckled when I saw this game was coming out. I mean, c'mon folks, Star Wars has had a lot of card games over the years. Some of them are amazing, some of them not so much. They all seem to die ignoble deaths. Heck, the Star Wars CCG has continued for years, with people creating custom cards for the game, as people refused to let it die. I've looked through some of these rulesets and just... I never saw anything I found truly special. I know, I know, that's probably a really heretical thing to say or whatever, but I just couldn't bring myself to really care about anything of the things that I read.

I bought a starter set for Unlimited off reading the rules.

Why?

The base structure fixed two fundamental problems I have with most card games: resource management and the turn order. In Unlimited, Resources aren't a specialized card type, but "normal" cards that you choose to dedicate to that task each round. So instead of just having a specialized card for the task you, the player, must make a conscious choice as to what to give up. Dunno about you, but I think of that as good game design. I like having to make that choice. It gives weight to a part of the process I've usually found annoying. I found later that sacrificing cards to make Resources made the later rounds peculiarly satisfying, as there was a history of what I had sacrificed right in front of me, on the board, reminding me of what had been given up for my victory or defeat.

And then there's the actual round structure: you each take a turn, doing one action at a time. This means that most T/CCG stupidity is fixed immediately. You can't just start making combos and building without someone having the opportunity to stop you. There's more interaction and chances to figure out what your opponent is up to. I actually found myself leaning a bit more into real-life sparring tactics, finding cards that could be built upon multiple ways to try and disguise what I was doing. Sure, that was limited coz preconstructed deck, but there's some bluffing games hiding just under the surface that I really want to get into more.

I'm good with just these Starter Decks, because the basic game flow itself is so fundamentally good. You start off somewhat slowly, playing one, maybe two cards. The choices, few as they are, are extremely important. You don't have a big hand of cards and the ones you dedicate to be resources feel consequential. It hurts to lose them. Every time. You hope you chose wisely. Hope. There's a logic to it, with higher costing stuff probably getting dedicated so that cheaper stuff can be played. And it needs to be played. The ramp up in complexity and intensity is incredible. 

The leader mechanic, where a big damn hero shows up for just the cost of an action after a certain number of turns, creates an additional layer of excitement and tension, as Luke comes out the turn before Vader and can be ready for him, not to mention he can heal himself by equipping his lightsaber, so he can tank a whole hit from Vader. Vader, for his part, might be able to get out a turn before Luke and make sure there's nothing for Luke to defend. 

And meanwhile the engine of war builds into this furious crescendo of death and fury. Because playing a card as a resource is an option, it means that at about round eight you'll probably stop playing resources and play more cards, leading to a much faster experience. The moment we figured out that we didn't have to play the resources was when the game naturally went nuts. It was a really good feeling.

I've played this game about a dozen times per deck, with two other people cycling out and playing as well. All the games have been different, the strategies and mindgames were very different each time. I won't pretend to be a master of this game. I'm sure there's people who are better already. I haven't gotten any more cards yet. I'm going to, but not to patch the system. I'm gonna get it coz I wanna see what happens when I get different leaders and new decks onto the field! Even if you just changed out the leader a lot would change.

Obviously, your mileage may vary. You may not like the constant back and forth or find giving up cards to play others too stressful or whatever. But, for my part? I like games that reward my choices. And Star Wars Unlimited's Starter Decks do that in spades. The game ramps up to a roaring finish that is a lot more than "keep swinging until the game is done". The nature of the choices themselves change. 

And that's why I play games.

Playing the Pokemon TCG As An Adult

This is all Kyle's fault.

I had played the card game as a kid, preferring it to the video games. Not much has changed on that front in the decades, but I'd dropped off as I got older and encountered the inevitable conservatism of teenagers. I always kept my finger somewhat on the game, until my brother-in-law Kyle got me a couple of decks, coz he's Kyle and he's always trying to get my grump self to do stuff. I found that the game worked very differently from when I was a kid... which actually changes the way I remember the game in a really weird way. And it's interesting to see my children play it and what they get out of it.

So for those of you who don't know: in Pokemon you build a 60 card deck. Six of those cards become Prize Cards, which are put to the side. Whenever you knock a Pokemon out by doing enough damage to it you take 1-3 prize cards. Whoever takes all their Prize Cards, takes out all the opposing Pokemon (so that way there's no one to fight), or the opponent has no cards to draw, wins! However, in order to deal damage to a Pokemon you have to have energy cards... which do nothing but attach to your Pokemon, usually once a turn. The inherent problem of the game then becomes getting the energy out of your deck onto your Pokemon in a timely, orderly, and constant fashion, before your opponent does it faster and better. Fortunately the designers realized the inherent limitation of this issue and have provided a lot of really good ways to get through the deck quickly and to find the cards you need to.

The biggest thing about the game is that it is deterministic: with the exception of some attacks, damage is a static and known quantity. You know how much energy they need to pull off an attack, even if you don't know if they have enough energy in their hand. But you do know what they need, and how often they should be able to get energy onto their Pokemon. Because of this you're able to somewhat reliably guess the flow of battle and plan accordingly. This is of course means that the hand is the ultimate resource. Since it is mostly unknown to the opponent, one should keep it as secret as one can. "Cheat" cards like Switch (retreat a Pokemon for free) or Welder (see right), or Boss's Orders (which forces out a Pokemon that your opponent doesn't want now) are the actual game: tricks that you use to outsmart your opponent by controlling the tempo of the game. You are trying very hard to get around that tempo as much as you can, and your ability to do it in a way that surprises your opponent seems to be the core of the game.

Which comes as a surprise to me as an adult. See, as a kid I had sensed that there was a deeper game going on, didn't know what it was, and so I went with the deck archetype that let me cut out the unknowns as much as possible: the Beatdown deck, which always sported powerful basics who, with a little bit of help, could one-shot other Pokemon before they evolved. A good Beatdown deck could clean out an opponent in six turns, right about the point when most "normal" decks had finally gotten going. It was a wildly successful format at the time. The Pokemon folks decided that wasn't how they wanted the game to be played, so they upped the HP on most Basic Pokemon, making one-shots a lot harder to outright impossible, while upping the damage of evolved Pokemon a ton, meaning that even a Stage 1 Pokemon could reliably kill most Basics very quickly. These are good changes, and I'm finding that I'm enjoy the deeper game of Pokemon a lot, not to mention teaching it to my kids. There's this "Look three or four turns ahead" going on, where I'm realizing that killing a Pokemon right now may end the game for me in a few turns, and so I'm having to tiptoe and set up the game so that way when I do move it's going to stick.

The thing that didn't change, however, is the creativity that Pokemon engenders. So many cards, so many ways to combine them, and so many ways for people to express themselves! It's been amazing tinkering with my Charizard deck and helping my kids tinker with theirs. I'm always getting surprised by the things they decide will work that I think obviously shouldn't... only to find that actually? It works out just fine. Ya just gotta be adventurous and see what combines.

Is there a problem of the constantly revolving sets and updating the library so people can keep building? Sure. I'm gonna hafta figure that part out. But I have no intention of competitively playing, or even suggesting it to my kids. At least yet. 

I didn't expect to come back to this game. I'm glad I did. They rebalanced the game, forcing people to actually play the game that was intended in the first place. It's fun making decks, testing them, and recalibrating them. Once I accepted the limitations of the game, I found that I had a fast and furious race to the finish.

But don't think I'm letting this card out of any of my decks, ever.

The Marvels

Okay, I'm about to get really really harsh. And, before that I do that, I wanna say something that literally everybody I have read or watched that has criticized this movie has said, and this includes those supposedly racist conservatives:

Iman Vellani is a pure joy to watch. I have never seen someone enjoy being a superhero so much as her. I wish her all the luck with her career in the world.

This movie is pure shit. My God, it hurt to watch this one. It's not as bad as Thor: Love and Thunder, which I couldn't even get through. But it's shit. The script is dumb, a good villain is wasted, the action is boring as hell, Brie Larson needs to get out of the MCU, and obvious fanbait to keep me watching has become actively resented, and just... Marvel can you please just stop?

So, the script is dumb. Captain Marvel, who murdered billions of people, hasn't been locked up for war crimes, nor does she turn herself in for having committed one of the greatest acts of manslaughter ever recorded... like you lost me right there. Right there I'm done. Why does the rest of the universe trust her? Why the hell does she have a singing husband on a silly planet of singing people? Why is the elephant in the room not acknowledged by anyone but the villain???

Oh, Captain Marvel feels bad about it? Her poor feelings are hurt??

Tough.

People have been imprisoned for life for a lot less.

And that's not where the script keeps being stupid. Why is our villainess, Dar-Benn, a villain??? There's this completely unnecessary mustache-twirling element added to a character who frankly didn't need it. Her planet, her people, are dying. There is absolutely no reason for her to go evil to be the antagonist. Quite the opposite! She's the only one with a sane complaint in the cast! Her going "I'll steal a sun and doom another planet and put someone else through what my people have been" makes no sense at all. If she cares about her people then, on some level, Dar-Benn cares. It would have been far more interesting to see her trying to take out Captain Marvel (RIGHTFULLY), only to relent when she realized that the destroyer of her planet could restore it. A lot could have been done with Dar-Benn to make her a more potent and interesting antagonist and just the sheer lack of imagination hurts.

The action is boring. No, it's not fun. Or even moderately interesting. This movie was clearly designed for a phone-addicted audience. And that's the most effort the action is getting from me, coz clearly it doesn't deserve more.

Brie Larson can be a fantastic actress. I've seen her try. I've seen her care about projects. When Brie Larson gets going in a role she can really dial in and turn her energy way up. And that is nowhere near this role. I can't even call it a character. Modern Captain Marvel is boring as hell, and required the Iron Man level of rehabilitation that the MCU originally gave him. And she didn't get it. She's just comic book Captain Marvel, which is... um.

Okay, quiet part out loud, most of the earlier MCU projects were improvements over what's honestly crap source material. Age of Ultron as a comic book event is awful. Just awful. Civil War is when the comics made character assassination cool. Secret Invasion is just shit.

NOTICE HOW MOST OF THIS IS TIED TO BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS????

Point is.

A lot of the MCU works coz they took good basic ideas from half-wit writers (don't balk, I'm complimenting Bendis's recent stuff by calling him a half-wit) and applied actual effort to them. Are these revolutionary or even vaguely high art ideas? Absolutely not, but they were fun, and popcorn cinema is a legit way to go. But in order to do popcorn cinema right you have to get good actors who care about the source material to play the hell out of the roles, stupidly competent writers who have to scrub the shit stains off diamond-quality ideas, and directors who love the source material enough to be critical of it and know they can do better.

And Brie Larson ain't got it.

The only soul in this production who does is Iman Vellani, and God she deserves so much better than this nonsense.

Also, I'm done with these post-credit scenes. Vellani's was fun coz it's two people who clearly like the source material just riffing off each other, but the alternate universe stuff... it's not working. It's just not. This is exactly where Marvel falls flat on its face, Exiles excepted, and Marvel needs to cut it out. 

Please hire good writers and directors who truly love the source material and give Iman a story worth being so damned adorable over. Junk this phase crap, and just let us see Ms. Marvel scout out talent, have fun doing it, and go back to our fun popcorn flicks.

I know they're not going to do it.

But in my last screams of protest over a franchise that has clearly lost its soul I will not go out quietly.

Oh, there's one bright spot to this. Just one. I can see who the shills are now. Coz anyone who claims to like this trash is most definitely a shill. More and more the conservative right's critiques are looking downright prescient: the supposedly compassionate left reveals their true colors of pro-corporatist and totalitarian zombies, with the most they're able to summon being "this was fun!"...

Seriously? That's the best you can do? "It was fun" is the best you can do???

Dude, Iron Man was a lot more than fun. I'm not claiming it was the best movie ever, but it had heart. It had soul. Tony was driven to do what he thought was right, and to hell with everyone else. Everyone knew they had watched something special. The deniers were met with just raw joy. So they had to shut up. I've learned, slowly but surely, but that such joy is the key to defending controversial things. I used to argue with a lot of people about the merits of The Last Jedi. It doesn't go anywhere, coz people can find any reason to dislike something. So I just tell them that I found the movie so beautiful that it stunned me to silence. I tell them about my friend who called me in tears, because she found the whole movie deeply cathartic. That the movie had communicated something transcendent to the both of us, and it was that simple. The same with The Rise of Skywalker. I got a lot out of the movie, and part of the trick is to meet the angry with the very simple statement: "But it changed me. I'm sorry it didn't you" and to drop it from there. It's not something I'm terribly good at doing, but it is what needs to happen.

There's no joy in the defense of The Marvels. It's just an annoyed "shut up racists", said with no oomph. Coz... well... there's nothing in this movie that's actually fun! Or cathartic! Nothing! It's just hollow nonsense. Defending this movie doesn't make you a good person, or anti-racist, or anything. It just betrays a lack of depth, on your part. I mean, c'mon folks, The Marvels could have been one of those fake movies in The Boys... well that's not quite true, is it? It would have to not have poor Iman in it. 

I hope they do right by her. She should be the new face of the MCU, backed by competent writers and directors, allowed to do what Doudney Jr. did. If there was any justice here that's what would happen. But that would be way too optimistic. 

And "optimism is cowardice", as Spengler so correctly points out.

Toy Story 4

Let's get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first.

There is such a thing as woke. Okay? I don't deny it. It's Marxism in artistic form. And, contrary to what many leftists will tell you, Marxism is evil, flat out. By cutting out the person and just reducing them to where they happen to be in society you create something just utterly... well it's not art. It simply isn't. Anyone who pretends that a character like Riri Williams and Kamala Khan (from the comics, calm down!) aren't woke is lying to themselves. 

So.

Woke is real. Woke is bad. It just is. Go cry if you disagree.

Toy Story 4 ain't woke.

"But- but Bo Peep-". Bo Peep ain't woke. She's got a really unfortunate change of voice actor, yes. But she's got seven years of being on her own, after being shunted around and abandoned. Woody's loyalty to Andy, and thus to Bonnie, is unique to him. It's why the other toys follow him. We've known that for awhile now. There is no reason to think that Bo is just as loyal to a child, so it's not exactly a character change. Bo doesn't have much of a personality in the first two films and if you disagree, you're wrong. Bo's love of Woody's loyalty, one of the few things we do know about Bo from the first two films, is intact here and it's actually one of the reasons why everything works out! She clearly misses having a child to love and the movie shows that, really really openly. It's not subtle, and if you missed it you need to stop watching movies while looking at your phone.

The other big elephant in the room is that nobody saw a need for this movie. Now, to be fair, this has been the general reaction to every single Toy Story movie since the first. Now someone who is actually reasonable is going to say that Toy Story 3 should be an exception. I mean, Andy gives up Woody! It should be over! I mean, sure, in theory, but here's the dirty truth about these movies: they make more of them coz they make money off of 'em. And it has always been that way. That's not a new thing. You can either accept that or not.

I suggest you do, coz this is a really really good movie and well worth its time.

Toy Story 4 picks up a little while after Bonnie gets Woody and Co. from Andy. Woody isn't being played with, which he finds disheartening. But he's a kind soul, so he tries to help out Bonnie, even if he's not wanted. This has... consequences. A lot of consequences. Like, damn, the sheer number of consequences. This, right here, may be my favorite part of the movie: the plot never stops juking left. I was constantly being surprised, as entire characters, situations, ecosystems, are developed right on the spot. They make sense. They're coherent. They add to the world of Toy Story. And I love every step of the way. It takes a lot for me to prefer plot to characters, and here boy howdy do they weave a good plot.

That's not to say the characters are bad. This movie has an embarrassment of riches, character-wise. Bo's voice actor replacement is as unfortunate as the character is well-written. Gabby Gabby is a compelling antagonist, who gets the only redemption arc in the series so far. And even the new stuffed animals, who I would normally cringe so freaking hard at, I find charming, coz somehow Pixar got it just right. 

Ultimately, this wouldn't make a bit of difference if the movie isn't coherent, something that Pixar is well-known for. And the theme this time around is extremely coherent, even moreso than the previous entries: you have to have someone to reciprocate love with. It is not enough to love. You have to be loved back too. And it is worth getting hurt for, over and over and over and over and over again, to find someone who will share love with you. The twisty plot, the character work, it all says this one message, that love is worth it, as consistently as you can ever get.

Is Toy Story 4 a bridge too far? It certainly looks that way, popularly. Reception seems to be mixed to negative. But I think that's a shame. There's some really heartfelt and amazing stuff in this movie. I feel like a better person for having watched it. And, I mean... that's starting to feel more and more like a rarity these days? I don't know, I know that's not just me feeling it. I miss feeling that way more often about movies.

And it does here.

I'm gonna enjoy it.

You do you.

Eternals

What the heck, folks? Just, what the heck?

I ignored this when it first came out. The reviews looked mixed, at best. I hate the less grounded Marvel comics, early Fantastic Four excepted for reasons that don't really matter here. Point is most cosmic Marvel stuff is boring. It removes half the formula that makes Marvel comics actually good (epic powers with grounded and relatable stakes) and chucks it out the window... thus making it DC-Lite. There is nothing wrong with DC. But it is not Marvel, it is something different, and Marvel's constant attempts to do something bigger usually falls flat. Marvel doing cosmic stuff means the stakes have to be really grounded in human emotion, really based in something that's easy to figure out and understand. Guardians of the Galaxy works because the emotions are big, easy to read, and sympathetic. Going big epic mythic heroes doesn't work for Marvel normally.

Had they cut the first forty-five minutes off of Eternals they would have proven me wrong.

After the first forty-five or so minutes this movie is awesome. Yeah, sure, there's a lot of standing around and talking but I like movies like that. Sorry, but I do. I like that most of this movie is just fancy suits and people sitting around and talking about how to handle a problem so freaking that large that nobody can adequately address it. I like that. I like that the issue is a truly no-win. It's about time for Marvel to actually do one of these. I love the ending conflict and its complexity. I love that it's not really a fight, not really. It's family trying to figure things out. For the first time in a Marvel movie since Civil War I actually really like the third act of the movie! I actually felt like it built well! 

Okay, maybe Infinity War, but you get my point. It's been awhile.

But you know what wasn't necessary? About 90% of the flashbacks. Kit Harrington is totally wasted. The very worst of the MCU's tendencies in not making self-sufficient stories are indulged here. The bad habit of putting the actual ending of the movie post-credits continues. It frankly ruins the very end of the movie. I was actually happy with everything up until those last ten minutes. 

I just...

Look. 

Can we finally just agree that what we want is a collective mythology? A real, actual, collective mythology? A summation of collective experiences, organically grown and checked against each other? Can we finally admit that these corporations are trying to control a very real collective need, and that they can't fulfill this need? Can we please, please, please admit that pluralism just doesn't really work? People have never been able to find meaning without others, and that "finding your own truth" is only possible with base assumptions that are given to you. It' a need that Disney has tried to control, over and over again.  I think this gaping hole of a need and Disney's attempts to control it is far more cringe than this movie.

And the first forty-five minutes is almost unbearable.

Kiri-Ai: The Duel

 As of recently I've reviewed stuff that will hit you for a hundred plus bucks. It fit with my usual MO, but it still felt really weird to tell people that it was okay to sink two hundred plus bucks for two boxes.

This one is easy.

Kiri-Ai is 15 bucks. It's about two samurai dueling on a cliff. You have to get into a proper stance, judge your ranges, and read your opponent better than your opponent can read you. It's fast, intense, and psychological.

And it's amazing.

First off, the cards. They're really high quality and felt great in my hands. They're quite sturdy. I can't imagine needing (or wanting) to sleeve them. Yes, I think they're that good.

Second off, look at this carrying case:

This is so much more impressive in my hands than it is as a picture. It feels so freaking good. Someone really did their homework here. When Blake originally handed me the whole thing I actually gasped, coz normally something this small feels cheap. This don't feel cheap. At all.

Okay, so the production's nice. What about the rules? The rules are just as good as the presentation. They are clearly laid out and it didn't take much to figure them out. Look at the picture at the top of the post: there are range "diamonds". You start at opposite sides of the "battleground" card. You have two sets of five functionally identical cards, in red and blue varieties. These five cards are combined with a simple "stance" system, telling you when and how you can use the cards. You put down two cards, face-down, at the same time as your opponent, and then flip them up in order, simultaneously. The second card you played is left out on the table, and the other cards are brought back to your hand. This means that you don't always have all the resources that you used and puts you into all sorts of sticky situations. That card you had to leave on the table? Your opponent can see it. And you can see what they can't play either. Since you both have the same cards, you have a general idea of what they're capable of now and can figure out more or less what your opponent might do. I've played enough of this game to tell you that what your opponent is like as a person becomes very important. The options are just open enough to where reading your opponent becomes paramount.

"But Nathan," the astute will say. "Rock paper scissors only allows for a limited number of combinations. This is rock paper scissors with more combinations, sure, but that means that you've got a closed system. It's possible to figure that kind of system out. Even with leaving that card on the table, face-up." And you're right! And the game agrees with you! There's three special cards. They're very powerful, but they always have consequences in the game and they're gone when you use them. So not only do you have to be careful when trying to read your opponent, you have to be mindful of these two super-powerful cards, one of which you have no knowledge of, and the other one is yours but when you spend it is gone.

I cannot begin to tell you how much this screws things up.

The matches are fast, psychological, and intuitive, with consequences every time you act. The longest I've ever seen a match go is twenty minutes, and that is as long as you will ever get. Most of the matches are five minutes long and they play out like a samurai film. The tension just builds and builds and then washes over you as a blow gets through and everyone goes "OOH MAN!" coz you got hit once...

But what a story of you getting hit!

Get this. It's a steal for 15 bucks.

Dune

SPOILERS. You have been warned.

There are a lot of ways to interpret Dune. It is an expansive and complex work, requiring (what I imagine to be) an honest reader to say “This is what I got out of it”, rather than “Here’s what Dune is about!” Should that consideration be given all books? No. Works of fiction are special in this regard. You may genuinely be your own Pope, even if you are encouraged to change your mind later, although you can say "While I may sometimes not be right, I am never wrong" with a lot less consequences, can't you? And the thing is that unlike Wolfe, who intentionally tells you he's showing you a puzzle and winks and chuckles at your guesses, Herbert is very deliberately not telling you the thing he's showing you is a puzzle. This leads to people attempting to moralize a thing that is not intended to be moralized. Dune leans into the older style, where something simply is, without telling you exactly what it is.

But the fact that Frank Herbert ended Dune thusly:

"... that princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine-never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine—history will call us wives."

That really jumped out at me. The last words in the book are always important, and in them I found a cypher to understand one aspect of what Herbert may have been trying to say: what is is far more important than what you call it.

Paul Atreides is a boy turned man by this knowledge. Sent to Arrakis, his father Duke Leto is betrayed by the one man everyone thought would be loyal to him: a doctor who (in theory) has been deemed unturnable. But turned he was. And nobody suspected it, declaring positively it could not be so. Leto's cold corpse and the doctor's written confession disagree. Nobody double-checked and so Duke Leto dies. So one must be in the present.

The problem that Herbert presents is that the present is not static, but a flowing from past to any number of futures. To accept what is means to understand that everything has consequences… and since you can’t track all the present variables you can’t predict what’s coming. Paul can't control what's given to him, he can't control what he has to work with. And, as it turns out, the people who created the situation Paul has to work with are evil fucks. The Bene Gesserit spent hundreds of years cooking a place and time that Paul can't not blow up, just by existing. The popular reception of this book seems to miss that literally nothing Paul does can go well. It is obvious why such a thing is missed: to admit that Paul, no matter what he does, is going to fuck something up is to think that you are similarly fucked.

And, to be clear, that's true of everyone.

We are all but inheritors of a situation previously fucked up by others.

And admitting that would give us empathy for Paul. And it is not fun to admit empathy for Paul.

So Paul recognizing this, realizing that he cannot make decisions that ultimately go right, no matter what he tries, is a realization that most of us cannot handle. So to recognize reality is to realize that you have no control over the circumstances you are in, coz not only do you not control your circumstances, but it is impossible for you to fully ascertain them. Nor do you really control the consequences. At all. 

Paul's realization, his idea, is that if he cannot control the consequences of his actions he will at the very least come out on top. And he does this by recognizing that others do not like to look reality: they prefer nominal power (what everyone else says is power, even when it's not) to real power. So he hatches his plan, taking advantage of everyone else's willing blindness to reality. So therefore he wins.

But is that a good thing? The death of Stilgar's friendship, as he cannot understand what Paul is doing and therefore worships it, throws some serious doubts on what Paul has done. 

I'm going to end this blog post by asking a question that is seemingly unrelated: have you read the more detailed accounts of Christian martyrdom? I have, and they're not what you expect them to be. The people doing the killing are actually shown rather sympathetically. They recognize that the saint is a saint. They recognize the goodness of the person they're about to kill. They know it's wrong.

And in more than a few of the accounts they beg the martyr to apostatize, coz they realize they're in the service of a monstrous regime. But they don't think they can get free. So they beg the martyr to back down on his belief. The martyr usually winds up patiently explaining that they cannot back down on the very belief that makes them so good to begin with. The martyr is what he is, and if others must kill him for it that's on them. Not him. What most people do not get out of these scenes is that the martyr, by dying, wins. But he doesn't win coz of some idiotic "cause" or "belief in a God". He wins because he has called out the system for what it is and is willing to let it kill him. He can't win. He knows it. So he dies in the only way that he has true control: by insisting on his own worth, his own experiences, to a degree that is actually divine. And in so doing he points out the absurdity that is going on around him, forces everyone to acknowledge that they are monsters, and renders all their lies apparent. There is a very good reason why Christianity beat the Roman Empire, and it is in the stories of the martyrs.

Paul fails to fulfill that most powerful of actions in this volume.

Will he in Dune: Messiah?