Skew

I am not pretending that Skew is a great film, or even a good film. I certainly don't like the characters. The idea behind the film is trite, at first blush. It's yet another found footage film about a story that normally wouldn't have found its way onto a camera. The characters are the usual unlikeable jerks we find in the spotted history of found footage films. The camera work's intentionally spotty with the crucial information "accidentally" finding its way into the frame. The artificiality of the genre is such that I found myself falling into the old rut. I was in "the trance".

And then ice-cold water was dumped on my head.

And then the movie ended.

What just happened??? This didn't go the way I thought it was going to go.

So, I started over. And found this, right at the front, waiting for me.

"All physical bodies are made entirely of an infinite number of ghostlike skins, one on top of another. Photography has the power to peel away the topmost of these layers. Exposure to the camera actually diminishes the self."

 And then, halfway through the film, the following monologue:

" If my parents are going to rob me of my memories then I'm going to make up my own, and I can shoot what I want, and then I can pick and choose, and I can take it home, AND I CAN PLAY WITH THE FOOTAGE. The trick that I've learned is that you just gotta keep shooting. Just let it roll. CAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU'RE GONNA GET THAT RIGHT SHOT..." (emphasis MINE)

 So, a few things were just established.

1. This tape isn't "raw". It has been manipulated.
2. There is an editor, who doesn't intend anyone else to see this film.
3. The footage is out of sequence, deliberately.
4. Something is deeply wrong with Simon.

On point the first, the footage has been manipulated. We're shown that Simon never stopped filming, with Richard going through the tapes and making fun of Simon for constantly filming. Given that the movie is 80 minutes long and that dozens of tapes were recorded. This gets all the more disconcerting one realizes that the footage from the police station was probably stolen. This means it's likely that someone added the "dead" people, the ghosts, in post. Did the dead people actually show up? You can't see them on rewind, according to the editor, and large portions of the movie have been rewound over. The movie is consistent with its own "rules", so the question now becomes how the "ghosts" wound back up on the footage. Or it could just be that the editor is making something to assuage their own guilt. Normally I wouldn't go in for such a thing, but the text of the movie openly says the filmer will go back and change the footage later.

The editor doesn't intend doesn't anyone to see this film. Richard and Eva are clearly being shown in the worst possible light they can be, with the fun/vulnerable scenes showing nasty/petty sides to both of them, while trying to show Simon in the best possible light. Simon is always the nice guy, always the goofy one, always the victim. It almost starts to resemble the natural process of memory... except this has VFX and music edited in. It's artificially made to look natural, like the genre!

The footage is most definitely out of sequence. There are interspersed cuts of the world's largest chairs, bowls, knives, and don't forget the forks! Certain scenes don't make linear sense. They'll jump back and forth between different lights, soundscapes, at the drop of a dime. The footage is pieced together to make something linear, make something that resembles a normal existence... by chopping apart a few key scenes and peppering them throughout the movie.

Now, at this point it should be obvious that, if Simon is the editor, there's something psychologically off about him. But when I say wrong, I don't mean like that, I mean there's something existentially wrong with him. His parents wouldn't take pictures of him. The movie ends with the only picture of Simon known. He has manufactured his version of terrible events and put his name and face to it. Whatever actually happened, whatever it was, Simon wanted the first picture of him to be associated with this series of horrifying events.

What kind of person would want to do that?

And that's why I can't stop thinking about this movie.

The movie asked me a question, which I find compelling.

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.

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?

The Flash

As I finished watching this movie, I felt something in my soul crack. Unhinge. Look, folks, regardless of your belief in God or whatever, real art is sacred. Absolutely sacred. You don't get to fuck with real art. That moment when some idiot put a crucifix in a jar? Yeah, fuck that guy. It wasn't deep or edgy, it was desecration. 

If you disagree go fuck yourself. 

Yes, I mean, it. I should. Here's why.

See, the problem is that people have this idea that all things should be rationally examined. Rationality, the process of making a thing make sense, is meant to ask whether or not a thing aligns with your principles, your assumptions. Your assumptions cannot, by definition, be rationally picked apart. They are based in your experiences and what you have reflexively learned to value. And that process is not actually a rational one. If your values are actually contradicted there should be disgust, revulsion, and anger. Because, as it turns out, the need for the sacred is higher than the rational process and actually should greatly supersede it.

I am not claiming that the following scene is on the same plane as sticking a crucifix in a piss jar. That would be silly. A crucifix is art that's so sacred that it is called sacred art as a redundancy. True art is always sacred, there's just some art that is so overloaded with the numinous that the communal response is to babble at it as the rational mind is forcefully reminded it is only a tool. I am making the distinction here coz this one scene really. Really. Really. Hit me hard. And I am angry at its desecration, and I think we should all be angry that such a thing was desecrated.

 

For those of you who have not seen this movie (and I do not recommend you see it at all), the lines "I love you more, I love you most, I loved you first" are the exchange between Barry and his mother from when he was a child. This monstrosity of a movie is about Barry trying to save his mother and accidentally breaking reality. The movie is very much about Barry coming to grips with the fact that he cannot track the variables that his mother living has on the universe, and by the end of his movie he can't justify saving her. The damage is too great, too complex, too unknowable. Barry cannot kill billions of people simply because he wants his mother to live. It goes against what his own mother taught him.

So the above scene is Barry undoing his mistake and saying goodbye. His mother, who clearly thinks he's just a crazy dude (and I mean, Ezra Miller, so) still reaches out in compassion to his pain. She's just being herself, and it turns out that Barry's memories of her don't actually do her justice. She is a legitimately good person, one who should have gotten better than being a random murder victim. And Barry has to let her die. She is being more than the person that Barry remembers, so much more! And Barry is realizing that heroism is a lot more than saving babies in a microwave. 

Yes, that happens.

No, it is not funny. 

There's two stories going on in this one objectively beautiful scene: one of the mother always being what she was, and one of the son finally growing up. The scene is so well done that I actually find myself crying as I'm writing this blog post. It is two people living two completely different stories, intersecting in their own subjectivity, and making something far greater than either of them. I live for this kinda stuff in a story. This is my jam. And I got quite a bit out of it. And I should have.

And the fact that this scene of pure love is buried in two and a half hours of some of the purest corporate excrement makes me very angry. The CGI is so bad. Laughably. Obviously. Horrifically. Bad. The acting is so wildly inconsistent. The music fails in every which way as a soundtrack, and frequently broke me out of the illusion. The rest of this movie is so horrible that I couldn't stop watching and when I had to stop I started watching it the next day coz I just wanted to see where the trainwreck would wind up.

Turns out I needed to stop, coz I didn't know it was going to shit over something I find sacred. It wasn't high art, sure, I'm not claiming this scene is the best thing ever made, but I am claiming that this one scene deserved a real movie. Actually deserved it. Everyone, even Ezra Miller, did too well in this one scene to deserve everything around it. It's not the first time I've seen WB desecrate one of their DC movies, as Batman vs Superman Ultimate Cut shows. But watching this scene? Get shoved in a jar of piss?

WB deserved to lose money on this one. I'm glad they did. I hope they lose more on it. A whole fuckton more. A very vengeful part of me hopes that WB legitimately dies for this kind of desecration. And it doesn't stop there, at least for me. I am so tired of this corporate interference. I am so tired of whatever process goes on behind the scenes that makes monsters like this movie. I'm tired of good movies becoming badly-paced streaming shows, of jokes blaspheming scenes, of jaded audiences who can't even tell what the real thing is anymore. It tires me. Wears me out. Fills me with spite. 

I know art in this world requires money. I'm neck deep in developing three TTRPGs and am hitting the bottleneck of needing money for art and graphic design. I am not unsympathetic to "This isn't free to make", and if someone ran up to me and said "A big corporation is willing to drop buckets and buckets and buckets of money on you coz it likes what you're doing, just make a few small concessions for our bottom line" I'd fucking sign, and I have no moral qualms about saying it and doing it. In order to get things done you must make compromises, and I care too much about actually getting things done to pretend that my idealism would poison that. So I am not bemoaning Big Money. It has its uses.

But it is a means. Not... whatever the fuck I just saw.

And sometimes such acts of desecration should have consequences. Like the (un)fortunate passing of a gigantic corporation as it's abandoned. I very rarely actively wish for the death of a corporation as a moral necessity. But whatever desecrated this scene? It needs to die. It cannot die fast enough.

Animon Story

 

An action RPG has to have a few things in place for me to consider playing it: a good general system, a combat system that isn't too different from the non-combat one, and tools for making fun combat encounters on the fly. You have no idea how many times I've been disappointed on getting all three of these essential points. Pretending that systems that do not provide these three points aren't flawed is a special kind of silliness, but We here at All the Things Under Heaven and Earth try not to engage in spurious self-deception; only truly foundational self-deceptions allowed on this blog, and only for irony's sake!

So the premises of Animon Story is absolutely irresitible to me: it's essentially a digimon/pokemon nostalgia grab, with a promise of a working system for kid and creature creation, evolution system, and a working combat system. Does it live up to these promises?

Eh.

This may have finished off a fundamental love of storygames as most people understand them in my soul.

The book is attractive, feeling good in my hands. The art is appropriately cartoony without being simplistic. The visual design and flow of my eye is unobstructed. It's not the most incredible book I've ever held, but it's a darn nice one.

The character creation is really nicely done, well-organized for running with kids. I was able to help both children make interesting choices about their animon and their kids in a timely manner. My kids were super excited to make animon, and they were a bit weirded out at the thought of having as much detail on the kids as they did, but they quickly warmed up to it after I reassured them it was a good idea to have the kids be cool too. They're here for the monsters, I'm here to see if a game works! All should be well and good, right?

Well, sorta.

One of the problems of a storygame is that it asks players to hurt their characters in favor of the drama. Some players, like myself, are more than happy to do such things. There's a fundamental disassociation in my soul that lets me look at such mechanics with a more detached eye. The character is not me. I want a good story. I better allow the character to get hurt. Even as a child I understood this.

Try telling that to most children.

Go ahead.

Didn't work, did it?

These mechanics are built around the players hurting the bond between kid and animon, and then mending it. Children don't inherently want to do this. Adults don't, either. They want to think they're the kid, they want to have friendships with their creatures, they don't want to sit outside the construct and watch dispassionately. And so the kids bounce off. And I suspect more than just the kids will. Combat has similar things in it, where the pain of getting a good combat is pushed onto the players to create it. It's a bit jarring to see the philosophy for what it is and that I actually do hate it. The loop is too long to allow one to store up a bit of pain and then unleash it quickly.

All of this typical nonsense in storygames, but the real bullshit is that the game does not decide if its combat is sport or war. Combat as sport requires game balance, requires good tools for building encounters on the fly. Combat as war who cares??? Just try to kill the players and let them figure it out. But both require a good stable of opponents and even better adlib mechanics. And Animon Story has neither. The game just has levels and doesn't tell you how they factor in, as if combat was war, but there's a huge dissonance in that Digimon and Pokemon treat combat as sport. 

Oh, and you can't evolve in your first session. That's kind a staple of Digimon. Why is it slowed down here?

I really wanted to like this game. Zak Barouh seems like a nice dude and has a lot of passion for his game. I really appreciate that level of passion from anyone, even if I don't like their stuff. That doesn't make my distaste for the game any better, but instead makes it less palatable. This is a guy who clearly wanted to design something joyful. And maybe it does for other people!

But all I got out of this was disappointment.

Such a shame.

Marvel Dice Throne

So this happened on Christmas.

Like I've said before, Dice Throne is what I call a treadmill game: the goal of the designers is to get you to keep buying more stuff from them to keep kitting out your modular experience. If it’s done poorly you got something like Marvel Champions: just ooooone mooore expansion and then the game will be more than acceptable! And given how much money that means, it’s never acceptable!!! EVER. From my Season One review you’ll know I already found that set much more than acceptable: I used it almost every day for a year before wanting another box. I wanted to get Season Two, but I got outvoted for the Marvel box by certain smaller compatriots.

Last note: I am a weary Marvel fan. I began as a precocious child who called Marvel editors to chat (see here for more on that) to a jaded post-One More Day bitter man. I do not like most of Marvel’s modern comics, buy Rippaverse and Alterna, and at this point I await the day Marvel’s stupid decisions catch up with them and they decide they want to compete with manga, which is currently stomping the shit out of them, and good riddance. 

Really the last note: I know Marvel is a jerk to work with. They have a rep in the TTRPG community as divas. So the Dice Throne people, should they read this, need to understand who the vitriol is really aimed at. The Dice Throne folks, in my opinion, aren’t trying to get us to buy again so much as let the incredibly stuck up and arrogant pricks at Marvel know they’ll play ball. Some will rankle hard at me saying it, but Marvel’s arrogance in licensing is a poorly kept secret.

So we’re going to get the man-bitching out of the way: the character selection is… unfortunate. No Peter Parker, Steve Rogers, or Tony Stark is a “we don’t want to make money!” move, flat. With the glaring exception of Captain Marvel I do not mind the rest of the choices. But Captain Marvel being in the box hurts my already jaded soul. Obviously the gambit paid off, coz these incredibly talented people got to make the X-Men box! But man the gambit, while necessary, is painful.

The graphic design feels weird to me this time around. There is so much freaking purple everywhere, which for whatever reason bothers me. The design of the symbols can also be really busy, particularly on Scarlet Witch and Loki. Mileage (and taste) may vary, of course, but this is my blog, so the graphic design isn’t as much to my taste as the cleaner, less purple, Season One box. 

All that’s (not) well and probably a bit grating to read. What do I think of the one thing anyone who reads this blog knows I actually care about: the design? Is this treadmill treating me well? Will I buy more? Yes, yes, and definitely yes! Allow me to elucidate, oh you who put up with my bitching. 

I love the character designs for this box, for two reasons. As a singular box these characters are really fun to play, especially Captain Marvel! Anyone picking up this box is going to get a truly varied set of characters. From “punch me, I dare you” Black Panther, to Loki, who made my brother CACKLE in glee as he played him, there isn’t a dud in the box. It’s not there. If anything I am clicking with these characters faster than Season One! Now, granted, this ain’t my first rodeo with the game, but several characters (I’m looking at you, Moon Elf and Treant) from Season One I totally bounced off for the first six months. That simply didn’t happen here. Make of that what you will. I will write more the characters in follow up posts, but for now I happily can say I love all of them.

As a TTRPG designer who has made a whole ten bucks (literally), I found myself a better designer after playing this box. I didn’t comment all that much on the particular characters in Season One coz I honestly didn’t have much to say, beyond the characters worked extremely well! Playing this box, however, I found myself in an entirely different world. I actually felt disoriented after the first game, coz the style was so different. CP ramping was almost non-existent, defensive abilities weren’t as powerful, and base damage was a lot higher. The games were faster, much faster than I was used to. After a few games I found myself leaning into the new style, learning to appreciate that I couldn't lean on my defense and making the most of the main roll phase. There's an urgency, a demand to focus on the right now, that isn't in the season one box. What you prefer does actually come down to taste, not an objective standard: I've played with people who hate the Marvel box for the very reasons that make it good, and who would love Season One for the same reasons they hate the Marvel box.

That.

Is.

A. Fantatstic.

Success!!!!

I've had more conversations with people about their tastes between these two boxes than you'd expect. What's more it's not even "Oh such and such box is better, I prefer the design style of such and such box." Good game design drives you straight into the subjective, far far away from whether or not the game itself has any merit. You talk with your friends coz the objective reality has been handled for you.

As far as balance between the season one and Marvel box I got, on a casual level they hold up really well. Ninja's two outings against Thor was so inhumanly painful for him I was shooting Blake inappropriate jokes for awhile, laughing about how Ninja clearly wanted a... piece... of  Thor. Yeah, a piece. We'll just say that. It was hilariously awful for Thor. But at the same time Scarlet Witch can tear into everyone, and there's no general feeling that anyone is actually outmatched here. Are there characters who are objectively better than others? Sure. Can I leverage a viable strategy to get around it? Definitely. That's not a small thing to achieve.

So, let's sum this up. Not only did the Dice Throne folks manage to make a product with Marvel (who not only don't actually care about their characters but also are notoriously picky and unrealistic in their goals), not only did they make a fantastic box that I find to be a triumph of design, not only is it balanced with the box I already had, but they get to do it again with the upcoming X-Men box. I hope the designers patted themselves on the back, coz man they deserved it.

Dice Throne Remixed Season One

 

Look, folks,  this not a game box that passed any of my prejudices. Not only is it expensive and bulky, but it's what I call a treadmill game: the game wants you to buy more of it, over and over, as you get more and more tricks and gimmicks to add onto your ever-growing collection. Bad treadmills are explicitly about getting the next thing and experiencing the next dopamine hit. Good treadmills are actually good games, with the dopamine hit. I don't have the space, so I put a pause on my buying of Heroes of the Grid. I'm sure as hell not going to go buy another treadmill game. Welp, a friend of mine gave it to me as a gift. A year ago. You don't turn down gifts. I've played it almost every day, sometimes up to five times a day. I've played it with a variety of ages, from young kids to grannies. And I can say this, pretty definitively: I'm still learning these eight characters in the box. There's a depth going on in this 99 dollar box that I did not expect.

Let's get down to brass tacks: Dice Throne's center is "just" Yahtzee. Pick up the five pretty dice, roll 'em three times, keeping whatever you like, all to get a result from on the board, which has special abilities and attacks. 

This means that, in order to successfully pull anything off, you aren't rolling against another player, per se, but instead against your own luck. And this has a real effect for the table environment: it doesn't feel as personal. In fact, sometimes you feel bad when they don't pull off an attack, or at least I do! If they do pull off an attack, that's fine, you usually get a defensive roll, which is unique to your character. And these defensive rolls aren't just "cancel the hit", but can sometimes get the defender real advantages that shift the game in their favor. There isn't a moment when everything is shifting around. If you pick up the dice it matters. I've never, not even once, seen a dead turn, where not a thing happens.

Of note are the myriad conditions that are part of every character. Some of them are extremely simple, and some are incredibly complex, requiring a good and solid reading. The designers were extremely good at ensuring that conditions of similar complexity are grouped appropriately with characters. None of the conditions are useless, and none of them are too powerful. All of them require some skill to use, even if the character is simple enough. It's all in the Goldilocks zone, folks: just right. 

The last bits are the cards.The cards cost Combat Points (CP), usually up to 4 at a time. The effects are appropriately grouped to the complexity of the character, with very few of them being actually expensive. There's four  types of cards: main phase, upgrades, roll phase cards, and instants. Main phase cards have all kinds of different effects, grouped around the theme of the character. Upgrades let you shift up the abilities on your board, and can even add new abilities for you to roll. Roll phase cards let you muck about with your dice rolls, and this is honestly where some of the biggest "Oohs!" and "Ahs!" of the game really come about; there's nothing like mucking about the with the dice and they still freaking get their roll. Instants can be played at any time, and can turn the game on its head. All of this is clearly explained by the rules and expertly laid out: I handed this to my “I can’t play games like that” mom, and she had it within moments, nevermind enjoying herself as she began cooking up strategies on her own!

None of this would make a difference if the character design wasn't any good. I'd have chucked the box, gift or not, if the character theming wasn't good. This kind of game needs strong vision for all the characters, as well as allowing the characters to be played in a myriad of ways. It is not an easy thing to design for. The character is where all the previous parts are assembled together, and either are more than the sum of said parts or far less. And the game really delivers here! Everyone, and I do mean everyone, plays differently and well. I’ve got my favorite (paladin, to the shock of no one), but I enjoy all the others and can win with them, should someone take my vengefully armored baby. They all come in a range of complication levels, from the “I hit you and you can’t hit me back” barbarian to the treant, who commands a small army of spirits, all of whom require a great deal of finesse to use correctly. None of them feel unbalanced against each other: if two players of equal skill did a barbarian (the simplest) vs treant (the most complex) battle it would be a damn close game. 

The only real issue with this box is its price, but only in the abstract. 99 bucks plus shipping sounds expensive, but I’ve put the hours in on this game, folks. I can tell you that I got way more than a 99 buck value for this game. If this sounds like fun to you, I can promise that actually investing in this particular box is more than worth the effort and cash. But if you're wanting to get something a bit more casual, something that you wouldn't actually use all that often, I wouldn't recommend something of this scope. Maybe I'm wrong, but I certainly wouldn't buy this box if I wasn't going to use it as often as I do. If someone really got through my prejudices hard enough to get me to consider trying it, but I wasn't sold, I would get me the "little" two character packs and give it a shot first. And then, if I liked it, I'd save up.

It's hard to say "Yeah, sure, get this!" when a box like this is so much, up front. That's a thing I don't think is ethical to say. I will, however, say that I have gotten alot more joy, drama, and outright surprises out of this one box than anything with this level of difficulty has any right to provide. I am getting another box, I am putting more money into this. It's worth my time. It might be worth your time as well. 

Alphacore #1

Many have accused the Rippaverse of being a stunt. They have gotten at July’s writing with a level of bad faith that isn’t surprising, but still annoying. And frankly there’s some basis for this: July’s dialogue is awful and he chose to start the Rippaverse with a slow burn world-building arc. July has said repeatedly that he did this on purpose. After all these repetitions you can either believe him or be an idiot. But with the hiring of Chuck Dixon to write Alphacore, the Soska Sisters hired full-time, and Mike Barron to write Goodying, the picture changed. July backed up his declaration that he was in for the long haul.

Welp, here’s the first non-July project, Alphacore #1! It’s next to me as I write. It’s quite pretty, as per the Rippaverse standards. This is a premium product. It’s pretty obvious where a lot of the money went. I could go on, but it’s repetitive at this point. Point is: this is a really well put together book, especially for 28 bucks.

The pencilling by Joe Bennett is amazing, front to back. There's a reason why he was a front-line penciller before being blacklisted for not being on the side of the cancel pigs. His storytelling particulary is on point, something that has been pretty standard for the Rippaverse so far. But there are not one, not two, not three, but FIVE fucking inkers on this book. FIVE. What the hell is this? Why are there five inkers on the project? There is no way they can maintain visual continuity with five of them, no matter how much they may talk, email, or cuddle after their orgy. And it shows in the product, trust me. There's moments where characters radically change appearance and you can tell it's coz that inker didn't stick to the other four freaking inker's styles hard enough. One of the characters, a cop called Wilkins, suffers more than any of the others, in some spots looking like something out of a redneck satire. I would have been okay with waiting a bit longer for the book, even swapping its debut out with Yaira #1 if that was a thing that needed to happen. But it wasn't, and that leads me to believe that we may see more crap like this. It is because Joe Bennett is so good that the book doesn't look like a total travesty, as opposed to just janky. The instant you hand a lesser penciller to five inkers there are gonna be problems.

Oh, and there's two colorists, and they really didn't freak talking to each other. They clearly didn't even try. One of the strongest moments in the whole book almost falls part coz I can't tell if the guy is supposed to be a red-head or a fucking blonde.

The fact that all of this adds up to "okay" art is a miracle. It's just janky at times. This could have gone a hell of a lot worse. Hand this to any lesser artists and it would have been a complete laughingstock.

Fortunately the story is awesome. Oh my God I love the story in this issue. Chuck takes the 96 page format and makes it sing. The beleagured and harrassed Alphacore, comprising the idealistic-but-dumb Bryan Solari, smart-but-temperamental Ingrid Valdez, and the silent cypher Braxten, stumble acrost the machinations of the shadowy Michael Copper and Lilian Ronashi. The book opens with Solari stopping a bombing attempt at a bank... only for the bomber to be legitimately surprised when his bomb goes off. It's one hell of an opening. And it just rolls from here. The story builds and builds and builds and then doesn't explode (literally), in the best way possible. The Alphacore are beautifully rendered in their frustrated-and-flawed glory. See, they want to be "regular" cops, but they're not regular, they're Excepts, and they're only wanted for whenever other Excepts are screwing around! This isn't a totally unreasonable request. Alphacore are justifiably frustrated, coz they want to be cops. And they can't just be cops. So they get more and more frustrated and start making mistakes. These are people just being people, with the epic consequences of their mistakes and frustrations being front and center. It's to the credit of Chuck that every beat of the way makes sense, but isn't defended or glorified. I love that every single second of these flawed characters is fun. Heck, my pulse started going up! It was fun! I had a great time! And the ending felt so damn good to read. I mean it. This is why I buy superhero comics. This. Right here.

I'm going to address Chuck Dixon's ending note now. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the mainstream U.S. comic book industry is falling apart at the seams. Sales are horrible, the books are worse, and frankly if I was an artist having to draw one of these new books I'd cry, coz they're so boring. Dixon's ending note, and the fact that 1 million bucks (so far) has been spent to glory in this end note, not to mention the incredible comic book before it... that should be very disconcerting. Change is here. If change keeps looking like stories like this the mainstream needs to get with the program, and quickly. But they won't. The note will go unheeded.

Alphacore has a lot of problems, and I spent most of the review bitching about them. All the things I said are true, but they are potentionally misleading. 

This book is so much more than the sum of its parts.

A lot more.

And it is a failure of me, as a writer, that I cannot adequately explain that. This comic builds on itself in a way that very few outside of Chuck Dixon can adequately do these days, nevermind hit it out the part like he does. The ending of this comic feels good. This comic feels amazing to read. There are so many problems with it, but everything clicks together so fucking well that it's honestly a bit breathtaking to witness. This is a great comic. Buy it. Yeah, there's problems, but man that last double page spread is so fucking cool. 

I love it.

It really is that simple.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3

 

There are spoilers. If you've not seen it don't read it.

Please understand the following: from the moment I saw the first Guardians of the Galaxy I knew there was something special going on. There was a spark to the first movie that I could feel, all the way down in my soul, that came from Gunn's heart. The dude wanted to say something, and he had found the perfect way to say it: The Guardians of the Galaxy. There are certainly problems with the first movie, but I crave sincerity in art, and can forgive many a problem simply because the filmmaker meant whatever it is he's saying, from all the way down. Art is meant to convey person to whomever consumes it, artifice is a means to say something true. If the truth gets delivered the rest can be forgiven. I got that with Guardians 1. Guardians 2 hit me a whole hell of a lot harder, but I noticed it said volume two. They aren't separate stories, it's one story. You're meant to watch them as one thing, and to read as if they were a book, with future events impacting how you view past events and all that. So it's not that I'm looking at Guardians volume 3 as a standalone, but the end, with one thematic arc throughout. That seems to be what James Gunn wants us to do, so I'm gonna do that.

Now, if I'm going to look at this movie on its own, I'm disappointed. It's not that I wanted things to have a syrupy-sweet happy ending, it's that the ending we got doesn't make much sense to me! Peter goes the whole movie trying to save Rocket and he doesn't take him to see his grandfather? Like, why? That doesn't make any sense. I get that Peter wants to finish grieving and see his grandpa, but there's not even a moment's hesitation on him deciding to go see his grandpa alone. There's multiple alien invasions of Earth and the Snap and all this other crazy stuff going on... nobody would be surprised to see Peter with Rocket. Sorry. They wouldn't. The fact that Rocket, the heart and soul of this movie, is relegated to a dance number at the end while being the captain of a now mostly defunct group is... that doesn't feel good. Or make sense. He'd go with Peter. He just would.  I get that he's helping all these animals and other victims and whatnot, but that doesn't seem like a thing of agency for Rocket; he goes through this huge arc where he actually comes back to life for Peter and the gang and then they split up and he just stays there.

Yup. Doesn't feel right to me. Sorry.

Mantis's ending also doesn't feel very well set-up. She clearly loves Drax... and decides to go and find herself? After years? This one makes even less sense to me. You don't find yourself by leaving people you love, that's literally why Peter is going back to see his grandpa. Especially now that Drax is back to being a foster-dad, that seems to be something an empath would want to stick around to see! Again, I don't see the sense in that. There's no moment where Mantis is going "Hey, maybe I should try things truly on my own". There's no real set up to this moment, and is flat out wrong. If Gunn wanted Mantis to start having "I need to do this on my own" vibes... please set them up? Pretty please?

That being said, there's some real brilliant moments in GOTGVOL3. Anything to do with Rocket works, and it hits every time and my God the tears I cried at the death's door scene. Gunn has always had Rocket Racoon as the heart of this epic three-part movie and this is the movie where he finally comes out the door swinging with Rocket and I loved every second of it. The scenes with the High Evolutionary are the closest thing to perfection in a villain that I've seen in the MCU (no, sorry, the dude whose name I can't even care to remember from Black Panther- oh wait it's Killmonger I still don't care he's not a good villain). The characters are always well-acted and their dialogue is about the clostest thing to perfect I can expect from an MCU movie. The music is gorgeously picked, although it could have had some quiet moments at certain emotional climaxes to make it punch harder.

So that's the movie on its own: brilliant parts that aren't put together well.

As a part of a larger story what do I think of it? Endings should clarify what the overarching story is about, and provide a good capstone to everything so that way you are okay with no longer journeying with the characters, while elevating the whole experience. Endings. Are. Hard. To do. Even if you get it right others may be upset that you didn't address what they thought the story was about (see the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy!), or any other of a million objective and subjective reasons. So I'm not here to rag on Gunn. While I feel like this final part clarified very competently what the whole story is about... it doesn't elevate the whole for me. I get that you need  to see Infinity War and Endgame, yadda yadda yadda, but honestly this is the closest we've gotten to a coherent single story in the MCU... and it was hamstrung because it was a part of the MCU. Gunn has gone on record as saying that he disagreed with Peter being the reason why everything went to Hell in Infinity War, and frankly I agree with him. So Gunn had to write a character that he had made his own that was more or less hijacked and make it make sense, years later. It's an impossible task, in all fairness. I don't think he pulls it off, but I don't think that's Gunn's fault, but the fault of Feige (who is increasingly looking less and less competent) and the Russo Brothers, who should have stopped and asked for input and respected what he would have told them.

This feels like the end of an era for me. I don't know if I can tell everyone in this blog post just how loud I screamed in the theatre at the end of Iron Man. I was a total madman, an unabashed fanboi practcially on the word go. This scene?

I cannot begin to tell you how excited I was, nor can I tell you how red my sister and friend’s faces were when I was shouting horrible things like “GEEKASM!!! Oh the ECSTACY!!!” when The Incredible Hulk dropped its Captain America references. This was it, people, this was the dream!!! And I was that obnoxious fan about it all, so very openly and self-aware. Avengers came out and I about cried, because everyone was seeing it, they were finally seeing what this form of storytelling could accomplish.

Oh how much has changed in fifteen years! 

My disappointment with Phase 4, with the marked exception of WandaVision, hasn’t been subtle. But on some level I couldn’t help but hope in GOTGVOL3. I wanted to believe Gunn would beat the system once again. He didn’t; with the exception of No Way Home (I always watch Spidey movies with my wife) I’m done. The MCU has failed, far as I’m concerned. What was supposed to be an interconnected universe of stories and art is now merely, only, a means of getting ticket sales and merch whores. And it didn’t have to be that way.

But it is now.

Thank you for all you did, Mr. Gunn. You swung for the fences on all these movies and I couldn’t be more grateful. 

Here’s to Rocket Raccoon. What a run.

"Sky is forever"

Trophy Gold: The Book (Sans Megadungeon)

 

I already considered the zine version of Trophy Gold and Dark to be the tightest designed games in my library. Nothing felt out of place; Jesse Ross had codified a vision. Reading the zine version impacted me and my designs in a powerful but subtle way.

The book only increases my respect.

What do I think of it so far? I say so far, because I haven't tried the megadungeon, although I'm curious. The wording of the rules has been vastly improved, making the core loop the clearest storygame mechanic I've ever read or used at the table. But the book goes further, adding town and journey rules. They're not super involved, but add context to the characters and the world. You may not want to use them, sure, and the core gameplay would not suffer for it. But there's a lot added by these mechanics.

The gist of Trophy Gold is thus: when the GM tolds you to roll, gather as many d6s as you can (usually between 2-4) , and look at what the highest die is: 6 and you get what you want, 4 and 5 you get what you want with trouble, 1-3 you don't get what you want and it all goes wrong. There's three different kinds of rolls that interface with this base concept: Hunt, Combat, and Risk (the catch-all for doing something risky, including casting spells), and they all have different effects based off of what you're trying to do. You may take a Devil's Bargain (a bad thing that happens no matter what) for an additional die... and these are meant to be group activities; you're supposed to goad each other into greater and greater heights of stupidity. The amount of laughter this one mechanic has generated at my table is hard to overstate, folks.As dark as this game gets, as horrifying as it frequently is, it is hilarious. I've not laughed so hard at a game in years.

The Hunt roll is one of the smoothest  systems I've ever run into, provided your players know that to ask a question is to roll dice. The GM then tells them if they get an extra die to throw in or not, usually basd off a skill or some story advantage.  Everything, and I do mean everything, funnels through the Hunt roll. The GM need do nothing except go off of the results of that one roll. If you are an OSR player you know this as someone taking a turn and the GM making a roll for a random encounter. In Trophy Gold it's just the one roll. It's elegant. The Hunt roll will kick back tons of wrinkles, all the time, and will keep everything moving on a constant basis, either because the player knows where to go or because something will interrupt them. The players are just rolling dice and you're jumping in to tell them what dice to roll and how many, and everyone's throwing in ideas of how badly it can go and the GM is just sitting in the back, laughing, taking notes. It's fantastic. The Hunt roll is the type of mechanic that every single game should aspire to imitate in spirit, if not outright.

The Combat roll is fantastic because of the ecosystem that it's hooked into more than the actual roll itself. Which isn't to say the roll isn't bad!  Combat is dangerous, with lots of chances to get hurt, especially if your teammates chicken out; the more people that drop out of a combat due to wounds the worse it is for everyone else. When you do the kill the monsters you can get Gold off them in the form of body parts that can be sold, as well as examine the creature for creatures, name it, and enter it into the shared journal bestiary the group is supposed to maintain. As time goes on combat will turn from "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING" to "Oh yeah, take its knees out!" It's a fun little advancement technique that cuts out one of the most problematic parts of RPGs, numbers. Whenever a game finds ways to do advancement that qualitatively change the experience, rather than just up numbers, you should pay attention: it's a sign someone has a clear vision of their piece.

The Risk Roll is the most "normal" part of this game, with the least implications on it. And that's fine; not everything can be this huge groundbreak innovation in a game, you've gotta have something to just do the hard work. The Risk Roll does this.. .although its expansion into spells is extremely cool. Spells are just a name with a short description, and you and the GM figure out if it applies best to the situation or not. Given the consequences for casting a spell can be extremely nasty.. be wary if the GM just keeps saying "yes". The balancing factor of spells in this game are that you may succeed and not like what you get. And that is going to be a lot more common than you think.

There are Journey and Town mechanics in the book version of Trophy Gold. They're not meant to be anything more than a small narrative beat between dungeons, something to contextualize why your (possibly not so) lovable losers are out doing what they're doing. It's simple, to the point, and poignant stuff. These are a great upgrade from the zine.

My favorite addition, however, is the versus and helping rules. The original zine didn't have anything for those situtations, and if there was ever a game I have run into where you will want to help or hinder your fellow players Trophy proper is that game. You could kinda hack something in, but Ross has clearly done a lot more testing and thinking on the subject and has crafted rules that are hilariously awful to deal with, cementing the mood of dark humor and despair that is a Trophy game.

I've run a few of the sample dungeons in the book and have found myself really impressed by what happens with these barebones outlines when you throw the Hunt roll at them. If there's anything that I resent about these sample dungeons, it's that you technically don't need them; you could just draw up a general structure and use the Hunt rolls to figure out the rest. Hell, probably could grab a bunch of OSR tables and throw them at the GM to answer questions. If anything, the game and how it's written at this point obfuscates the reality of what a GM would actually need to prep for the game and why. 

Ultimately, Trophy Gold in book form is an absolutely fantastic time. I've not heard people laugh this hard in a very long time at just some of the absolute worst situations one can orchestrate. The mechanics are simple but extremely deep when people decide to play with them. The book is a marvellous and dark beauty. The guidance could be clearer, sure, but that's usually a problem in most RPG systems. This is an amazing time. It's worth figuring out.

John Wick

 

I usually don't care very much for the action genre. Heck, I mostly don't care for movies anymore. But there is one movie series that so far has done absolutely no wrong, and that's the John Wick series. Two and three took a really simple story and asked "How can we play out these consequences and make it interesting?", pushing the story into wilder and wilder places as John tries harder and harder to get out, only making it all worse and worse. But it all had to start somewhere, and for my money the first is still the best of a very good bunch.

Look, y'all probably all know the story by now: man's dog is killed and his car is stolen... and it turns out he's a former Russian assassin. He also recently lost his wife,  so he was emotionally devastated to begin with. Man then burns it all down in a fit of vengeance that rivals Homer. The simplicity is unparalleled. The beauty of the story isn't how simple it is, but that it only does that. We do not attempt to get into John's psyche. We know how he's feeling, and why, there is absolutely no need to get into it any more than they do. We don't ask where he is at the end of the story psychologically, because John Wick does not care. He did what he set out to do, you know how he's doing.

The action has a purity to it that you can't fake. You know that everyone who was in this movie trained and did their utmost to make as authentic a movie as possible, because you can see all the little things that they get right. Keanu's skills as an actor have been frequently laughed at, but his physicality is undeniable. He does what he does with a casualness that can only be arrived at from years of mastery. It's really sweet to see.

The acting itself is a lot better than it has any right to be. Everyone owns the parts, everyone's into it. Maybe that helps me with Keanu's performance as well? Dunno, but I feel like they wrote the movie around his personality. And that's probably what happened and all, but I feel like they gave Keanu a range that he knew he could do, he knew it, and didn't attempt to stray even a little bit out of it. And isn't that enough? The action's amazing, you don't really need fantastic acting, even if some of these actors are clearly class talent, all on their own.

This is a movie that is no muss, no fuss. It knows what it is, has no bones about only being what it is, and goes to great lengths to do what it should as perfectly as it can. The action is perfect, the acting gets the job done, the writing doesn't reach for anything its not, and it was all wrapped up with a pretty little bow. Every once in a while someone does a job so competently it's art. John Wick is one of those movies that, in the hands of lesser mortals, would just be another movie.

It's not.

There, a no fuss no muss review for a no fuss no muss movie!

T Bird and Throttle #1

 

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.