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.

All of Life Is Grieving: What is a Hero?

The word hero gets thrown around a lot. In fact I’d venture it’s the center of the sham we call the culture war. From the left’s decrying of “hero worship” to the right’s senseless heroic lionization, the word is used a ton. In fact it’s used in so many contexts that the word barely has meaning.

So let’s back up. 

What’s a hero?

A hero is a scapegoat. If it’s a nice story he does it willingly. If he doesn’t it’s a tragedy. 

Yes, it’s that simple. 

Oh, right, scapegoats. A scapegoat is a creature who carries the sins of its people. It acts out the greater drama of its setting, and pays the ultimate price of death. Without a scapegoat societies don’t function. The anger and rage has to go somewhere! Folks like Rene Girard have explored this concept of the scapegoat being the basis for all societies, and we're not going to get into it more here. It is my basis for how I think heroes work. I base my thoughts on this from reading The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad and Odyssey, and Arthurian lore in general, nevermind sources like the Book of Judges in the Bible.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest myth we have; we don't have a complete copy, just extracts. The general arc of the myth appears to be about a Nephilim mass rapist king, Gilgamesh, learning humility by coping with the prophesied death of his best friend, Enkidu, a man specifically made to become friends with Gilgamesh and then die. Gilgamesh manages to find a way to possibly bring Enkidu back... and fails because he's an ass. He comes back and becomes the king his people need him to be, humbled by his sorrow. Just like the rest of his people.

The Iliad is 500 some odd pages of a bunch of cool people being killed Mortal Kombat style because Achilles is a whiny bitch, who accepts at the end that he will not be able to avoid his death and makes peace with his enemies. Just like the rest of his people. No seriously, that's the Iliad. Powerful book, but pretty easy to sum up.

The Odyssey is about Odysseus trying to make his way home, only to be hindered because of his honorable actions during The Iliad; Odysseus is explicitly paying for the Achaen's victory over the Trojans. Odysseus has to walk many paths to come back home, finally ending in him bedding his wife, Penelope. Given that orgasm is usually classed as a similar experience to death in most pre-modern thought I've encountered.... yeah. Still fits. Like a glove.

The Book of Judges is filled with people who do not fit the modern "Christian" ideal of a good person, at all. And yet, because of their position within the whole (generally outcasts) they are used to keep Israel going a bit longer. And each story ends with the hero dying and "becoming a part of their people". That's a different thing for a different point in this series of blog posts, but that verbiage is important. Put a pin in it for now.

Arthurian lore is filled with statements like "If you keep doing what you're doing it's all gonna collapse" and "I know, but this is what I am". Whether it be Arthur demanding to marry Guinevere, even if it ruins his kingdom, or Lancelot bedding Guinevere despite knowing it was to destroy everything, or any number of such warnings and disregardings thereof, there's a demand to remain what you are, even if it's disastrous. To be you is best, even if that's tragic.

Star Wars is filled with heroes of this older tradition, with the ones who knew they were playing a part in a much larger thing, and were willing to play that part to the max. The difficulty of Anakin, Luke, and Ben was not in being a part of something, but in figuring where they fit and why. The journey each of these characters goes on is not simply who they are, but to whom they belong and what price they're willing to pay to do so.

Anakin Skywalker's arc is the entirety of The Skywalker Saga. From hopeful child to failed hero to villain to ascended being, Anakin runs the gamut of possibilities in The Skywalker Saga. If there is one story that is tracked all the way through, its Anakin's. That may surprise more than a few of you, but the sequels are actually the key to what being the Chosen One really is. Anakin is the one who brings balance between the living and the dead; Anakin defeats death itself, by eliminating the loss of individuality in the dead. Anakin's journey is essentially a cosmic one: he takes all the paths that all could take, and is therefore capable of going to everyone on the other side of the Force.

Luke, Anakin's son, is the beating heart of Star Wars. It is he that convinces Anakin to return to righteousness, it is he that shows Rey the importance of serving the Force, and who gives the Resistance the hope they need to fight Ben and the First Order. Luke's arc is in deciding to being the beacon of hope. In battling his cynicism and doubt Luke helps the galaxy come to grips with their own doubts and fears in resisting the darkness of the galaxy.

Ben Solo, Luke's nephew and Anakin's grandson, struggles with how to inherit the legacy passed down to him by Anakin and Luke. Half of the Force Dyad with Rey, Ben initially he rejects his destiny, killing his way up the fascistic First Order. Thanks to Rey and his parents, Leia and Han, Ben is redeemed from Palpatine's lifetime corruption. He saves Rey from death, fulfilling Anakin's goals of saving a person from dying in the first place. And, in so doing, Ben conquers the real enemy of Star Wars: death. The closest character Ben is similar to is Gilgamesh, but we'll get back to that.

A lot of ink has been wasted on the modern conception of the hero. The idea of the hero as this nice, clean, doesn't kill people, has no historical reference at all. In fact, the further back I go the more I find heroes seem to resemble more of what we think of as anti-heroes of today: people who had their goals and were going to get them, come hell or highwater.  The heroes of Star Wars more resemble this older archetype, not the modern demand that heroes be "good people".

All of Life is Grieving: Introductions

 

One of my oldest friends is the survivor of a child rape gang. I didn't know until well after I'd grown up, and when I did I was incredibly surprised: he'd been married for years and, while being an incredible source of wisdom and empathy, was otherwise just... well.. a normal guy.  He was not the person you'd imagine when you think "former child rape gang victim", at all. As a survivor of childhood rape myself I had the barest inkling of knowledge of what this poor person had been through. And I've not handled it half as well, I assure you! Go ahead, read this blog: there's some weird stuff on here. So when I asked him how he managed to not go crazy, my friend, using sadness to smile, told me "All of life is grieving."

I dedicate this entire thing to him. I don't know if he'll ever read it. I doubt it. But I hope he does.

Now, my friend didn't mean that you had to be sad all the time. That's not really what he meant by grieving. What he meant was more along the lines of "Life will always disappoint you, and if you don't accept the disappointments and tragedies as they are you'll not last long. You'll always live if you accept what is, pleasant or not." But All of Life is Grieving is a more poignant and poetic statement, don't you think?

What this has to do with Star Wars really should be obvious, but I'll spell it out: anyone who grew up with Star Wars has an image of it in their heads. I know I do. I was terrified of Vader as a child. That breathing creeped me out. Watching Luke process that the genocidal murderer he'd been fighting was actually his father and still had something in him worth saving was something I attached to. I just so happened to be living in the wake of my own tragedies and Luke's problem was my problem: someone was not who I thought they were, and I had to figure out what to do with it all. At six. Luke maintaining the humanity (and thus goodness) of his father helped me realize I had options in how to deal with my rapist. I did not have to hate her, I could control how I responded to the tragedy. A large part of my personality was formed in the experience of watching Luke pull the helmet off of Vader, to find an old, infirm, and pathetic man underneath. The monster was pathetic. To be a villain was to be pathetic.

I wish I could tell you that I've lived up to this ideal. I've tried. And tried. And tried. And tried. And I have failed. The resentment was just too much for me to deal with. Over the years I have become known by family and friends as a fusion reactor of rage. That is not what I ever wanted. I wanted to live up to this:

And I have not. I can't. The older I get the more I have realized I was never going to. With the return of my childhood memories at twenty-six I've realized that time was never on my side: eventually, no matter how hard I tried, I would not forgive, I would resent, I would do the thing that everyone else did before that wretched mask came off. And then one day I realized that even if the mask had come off I'd still not have done what Luke had done. 

The Last Jedi dropped not even a month after that realization. 

If it had come any later I shudder to think what could have happened to me. Because there was Luke, failing himself. Folks:

Time. 

Wears. 

People. 

Out. 

It is an actively destructive force on us all, and nobody survives it.  The forgiveness Luke had to show himself for being mortal became another model for me. No, I'd not done what Luke had done. But I could try again. I needed to try again. Time, that nice word for death, be damned, I had to try again. I could not change what I had failed to do, but I could change what I was doing... provided that I accepted (grieved!) what I had been up until that point. The story opened up what I thought were my options.

Hey look, the Star Wars fandom!

Everyone who has grown up with Star Wars has some version of that in their head. It may not be filled with as much darkness and angst, but they have it. That's what art does: it open us up and helps us understand the world and ourselves in a different way. That is a reason why art exists. So when someone adds to a story it produces whiplash! And it's going to be intense! And it's going to get ugly! Really ugly! 

And for me, initially? It wasn't. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were exactly what I expected of an actually serious look at the world of Star Wars post-OT.

No, I never really considered the EU a serious look at it.

No, I'm not a Disney shill. Remember what I just wrote about Luke. If you think that's got the hint of someone who hasn't spent a great deal of time thinking about Star Wars and what it means to him then I genuinely don't know what to tell you. And I have no idea how to else to communicate what it does mean than the above vulnerabilities.

For everyone else, no, I didn't consider the EU serious. Lucas didn't, as the below clip discusses very frankly.

 

And, really, why should he?

And no, if Lucas sells his property to someone they're not obligated to do what he wants with it. That's how selling something works. If you don't like that, I'm sorry.

All that out of the way I'll be frank: The Rise of Skywalker threw me for a loop. I like what it did, and we'll get to that as we go, but for the first time I felt that sting: it wasn't how I understood Star Wars. The lessons I'd learned from everything up till that point, the things they'd helped me process, were moved around and recontextualized. And that hurt. I didn't like (and still don't like) that feeling. The Rise of Skywalker changed things. For me, it really changed things. And for the first time I felt the whiplash, the burning resentment. The more I think on it the hotter it burns. There's nothing rational about it, at all. I could use rationality to justify it, but that's hardly the same thing as something being coherent in and of itself.

I do not know if that's what all the people hating on the sequels feel. In the final reckoning I doubt people will be found to be so different from each other, once all the shadows are stripped away. So, I have to assume on some level that what I have always perceived as fan-boi "You took my childhood" rage I encounter in all (yes, all, please own up to it) sequel haters has at least a passing similarity to what I feel.

But you what helps that?

Facts.

And introspection.

Let's try that out, shall we?

I guess I'll take a look at what TROS has actually turned the Skywalker Saga into. We'll go full Death of the Author, take a look at this thing as a totality, and see what happened.

There's probably a subsection of anyone reading this who will go "But why? It's a show about space wizards and lazer swords". To those people I say the following:

1. It is the silly things that are the most important and broadest ranging: utterly hilarious concepts such as love are much more important than gravity, which is much sillier than serious things like politics. I mean, really, standing on a ball that's spinning so fast that I'm effectively glued to its surface, unless I get far away enough? Don't tell me that doesn't sound absurd.

2. The exercise of a mind is more important than what it is the mind is focusing upon, by and large. I've frequently found that the skills developed in understanding and integrating fictional and recreative elements bring a measurable and obvious increase to my own ability to see the world as it is. I am more important than your idea of what is a serious matter.

3. At the end of the day the urge to understand is objectively better than the decision to be angry. 

4. Criminy's sake, if it makes you mad then it obviously means a great deal to you, and if you think I'm not going to call out that obvious bad-faith argument then you've not been paying attention.

So, off we go! 

Son of Dathomir

The Clone Wars show was MASSIVE. From what I understand there were many more seasons beyond the seven that we got, with even some going into rough animatic form. Other stories, like Dark Disciple, were made into novels. The transformation of Darth Maul was made into a comic book, with an eye for the trades. It’s set between Maul’s capture by Palpatine and his reemergence in season seven of The Clone Wars. On the one hand I’m delighted by the story, which is excellent. On the other I’m peeved by the format and the fact that I incredibly important elements of lore were relegated to this comic… which I only recently discovered.

The story begins almost immediately after Maul was captured by Palpatine. Maul’s association of Mandalorians break out Maul easily… too easily. And Maul knows it. Instead of hiding he decides to take the fight to Palpatine immediately. It’s a game of cat and mouse where Maul thinks he’s the cat.

He’s not.

I love how Star Wars treats the problem of competing inner and cultural narratives. 

It’s strange coming to this comic post-TROS. Palpatine’s plan for immortality reads back into this book PERFECTLY. This book, along with the slaughter of the Nightsisters, forms a key part of the lore that made TROS inevitable. I get tired of the idiocy against that movie, and this book just makes that irritation all the stronger. I won’t go further into it than that, because I think folks should read the comic… but at least to me this link is incredibly clear.

Given how little I hear about Son of Dathomir, I’m surprised by not just its quality but importance to the lore of Star Wars. Maul makes a compelling journey, the plot is tight, and Sidious just becomes that much more of an asshole. And that can only benefit the story.

The Dying(?) Genius of Star Wars

 

Alright folks, let's get the hot take out of the way: Andor sucks. Those three episodes were some of the most boring, most overwrought, piece of shit writing I've experienced since Rings of Power. And, maybe it's just me, but I'm starting to feel this sense of dread about it all. I felt absolutely no need for a show about Andor. He's the second worst character in Rogue One (right behind Jyn Erso!), with so many foundational flaws that I was scratching my head as to why on earth anyone would make a show about him. But that's only half the real problem: a prequel show for Andor isn't necessary. Star Wars was not defined by its abundance, but by its restraint. 

You don't need to know what Luke was up to before the sequel trilogy.

You seriously don't.

Y'know why you don't need an Andor show or a Luke Skywalker post-OT show, just by default? Because the most important part of a story is what it doesn't say. If you're going to add something you have to act like you're touching a hot stove: lightly and with the expectation of harm. Part of what made the OT so good was how much was not stated. You didn't need to know what happened to Vader. You didn't need to know just how in the wrong Obi-Wan was. You had plot points and a story of great pathos, and the rest could be left to your imagination.

No, I'm not commenting against the prequels. Or the sequels.

Now, what happens betwixt those ears of yours is really important. Pretending that it's not is to discount all art, ever. Art is about an object reactivating your interior world. If the piece does not do that it is not art, but just an object, content. And the way art does this is by suggesting just enough to get your heart beating, your brain working, together in concert. The gaps left by the OT are masterful and they suggest something that you can think on for actual decades. That space is sacred and if you add to the work, you invalidate whatever happened in that space. Denying otherwise denies the existence of art.

The principal backlash against the prequels and sequels is the violation of this space. And that's a legit backlash. Anytime someone screams "BUT LUKE WOULDN'T DO THAT" or "WHY IS EVERYONE SO PATHETIC" or anything else, the root emotional cause is that the work they were able to do on themselves because of the OT's permission was interrupted. And because we have absolutely no understanding of art in our day and age it comes out garbled, childish, and sometimes oddly sociopathic.

Yes, Gene Wolfe went and added more than double.

No, I'm really not thrashing the prequels. Or the sequels. Adding to previously established stories isn't a bad idea, but you have to be really careful about it. Gene Wolfe's Solar Cycle was seemingly complete with Book of the New Sun and Urth of the New Sun. So was the Earthsea trilogy: yes, I know there's six parts to it now, but it was originally a trilogy.  The Solar Cycle particularly does this right, by jumping to a completely different part of the universe and exploring the same themes from Book and Urth of the New Sun in a completely different way, through different characters. Severian is barely referenced in the ensuing 2400 or so pages, and even then most of the references are oblique at best. And the one time he is directly referenced is so controversial there are people who steadfastly maintain that it's not Severian at all! Despite the clear implications of what's said, people cannot seem to accept the really hard truth Wolfe drops on us about Severian during those sequel 2400-ish pages. Y'know what you get with adding Long Sun and Short Sun? Y'know, the green, orange, and multi-colored volumes in the picture above? Not just an epic story that is an incredible commentary on grieving and forgiveness, but something that mostly indirectly changes the Book of the New Sun and Urth of the New Sun respectfully, even if not without some controversy. By changing things up there are now more gaps to be explored and thought about.

The genius of The Skywalker Saga is how the gaps in the narrative are leveraged. There's decades between each trilogy, sometimes a decade between each episode, and there is no apology made for it. And Lucasfilm has been mostly good about respecting this fact, with the best examples being the animation shows Clone Wars, Bad Batch, and Rebels. And we can zero in further, focusing on Saw Gerrera. Y'know, the dude who's pictured at the top of the post.

See? I was getting there.

When we first meet Saw in The Clone Wars he’s a green terrorist in the making. He’s got the edge to him, but can’t quite follow up on his aspirations. There’s a softness to him, like a tiger cub who’ll maul you, and do it while being soft and cuddly and probably mewing the whole time. You know what he’ll end up being, but he doesn’t know, and can’t. And that's sad. We then drop in on Saw about 15 or so years later. Saw’s now a fully formed person, ruthless, good at it, and not ashamed of it. But you knew what he was before; you know there’s still a spark of that dumb sweet kid in there, somewhere.  And it helps ground you. This is a person with history. You know that. And you hope he’ll turn around.

And, in a way, he does! Saw is last seen as an old man. His years of ruthless behavior have caught up with him, rendering him crippled and alone. I don't need to know what happened to Saw and what's in my head is a lot better than anything any writer can come up with, by default. The one person Saw hoped would care for him, Erso, is estranged from him. That clearly cuts deep in his soul. And you see that kid in the face of the old man. He clearly has regrets. But he is what he is and  can’t change it now.

These snapshots of Saw’s life are done over multiple creators and years. Each time their stay isn’t overdone; you get out before you’re tired of it all. If anything the weakest entry in this little series of vignettes is the shortest, but Rogue One’s a pretty disappointing film in general and that doesn’t surprise me at all. I find Rogue One to just be… mostly okay. At best.

This is another obligatory reminder that Andor sucks. Sorry not sorry.

That aside,  y’know what I thought of when I first met young Saw again?

This poor old asshole.

And that got a genuine reaction out of me. I didn’t want this young and dumb tiger to end up alone and broken. I heard Saw wheezing on that ventilator. I saw the limp. I felt the regret. Saw had sold his soul and lost. And yeah, in that brief moment that arc suggested itself to me. I felt that within me, deep down in my soul. I tried to take a moment to comfort the part of me that ached. I reassured it that Saw realized that he was in the wrong, and that even at the end, with no time, he tried. I have time. I have hope. And I can do a hell of a lot more than Saw in his wretched last moments.

That. Is. Art. 

And what's why you need it.

Now, can you see what my problem is with Disney owning Star Wars? Disney isn't Gene Wolfe or George Lucas or Ursula K. LeGuin. It's a corporation. It's a shark. It needs to make money, it has to keep moving. If it's not gaining it's losing. That's not an indictment against Disney or any other corporation. It's just a fact about the nature of what it is. With each release Disney makes I keep asking myself "Is this just the corporate cash grab? Or is this actually art?" So far Disney has had more wins than losses: Rogue One is about as artful as a painted prostitute, Andor ain't lookin' good at all, and season one of the Mandalorian is a sham, just straight up. And don't get me started on Book of Boba Fett, we could be here all day listening to that rant about the failure to actually write a coherent show that has any form of respect for Boba or his story and instead places corporate interests above-

Despite my opinions on Disney buying Lucasfilm gradually souring I have to admit that they’re doing a form of storytelling not even being attempted elsewhere. So long as we get more of Saw Gerrara’s type of corporate "fan service" and not… I can’t believe I’m saying this…

THIS.

Y'know, totally unrelated to the story…

I think I may be on board. I loved Kenobi. I know that’s probably controversial. But I don’t care. It actually added something substantial, something that I couldn't have come up with on my own. Long as Disney keeps that up I guess I’m happy. But we're asking a corporation to show restraint. That's not something corporations are known for. So, I hope that they do. I really do. But I'm never going to forget that this is what Disney has always been. and what they will always be:

I don't think anyone should.

Mando Mondays: Chapter Thirteen

Mando Mondays: Chapter Twelve

Mando Mondays: Chapter 11

We discuss a ton of things in this episode of Mando Mondays, ending with a resounding telling off of Obi-Wan Kenobi!

Mando Mondays: Chapter Ten

Another set of good times with Peanut Gallery Patron and good friend, Peter Lee!

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Over a Thousand Generations: Revenge of the Sith

 It's a bit rambly, but I think I made my point?

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The video was made originally on Facebook. Go check out my Facebook page!

Mando Mondays: Chapter Nine

So I know this posted on Wednesday, but it was on Facebook on Monday! I'll be better about getting these up the day of, promise!

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Clone Wars The Last Season Musings

After I finished the Last Season of The clone Wars yesterday I couldn't get it out of my mind; I mulled on it far into the night. Yes, the show actually kept me up. It continues to stay with me. That is not something I really expected. The tone was always weird to me, but Filoni has finally managed to take something I found middling and cement it as truly worthy.

My feelings for The Clone Wars has always been rather mixed. For every Mortis arc there was always some silly filler arc that just drove me up the wall. I get that the excuse for that is that the show is for kids, but children need to be challenged not pandered to. I get wanting to give them a break and whatnot, but man some of the filler here really challenged my patience. There was this light and cheery nonsense going on that seemed to completely miss the point of what the prequels were about. And honestly I resented that. I resented "happy" Anakin. He wasn't happy, nor did I find him particularly noble. You are only as noble as you are at your worst, and I knew he wasn't a noble guy. And, while I enjoyed the lost episodes that Netflix put up I found my problem wasn't addressed.

What I didn't realize was that I was being played for a long con. A very, very long con, which snapped shut on my soul. I did not anticipate this, at all, because Filoni was very careful to continue it right up until the last four episodes. The Bad Batch arc is very clearly a plug for the new show and, while enjoyable, certainly reads like one of the higher pieces of fluff The Clone Wars has produced. The Ahsoka Tano episodes are amongst the highest quality this show has ever produced, but I still found myself yearning for the more focused days of Rebels, where Filoni really hit his stride. I will reiterate my point: up until the last four episodes I did not see the point in making the season, and that annoyed me. 

And then this happened:

This is the point. This is the point of Clone Wars. You've got all these helmets, and you know who these clones were! You spent seven freaking seasons with them! They painted their faces (I was going to change it to helmets but I'm keeping it) to show solidarity with Ahsoka and they're dead after being forced to betray their role model and there's Ahsoka, staring down at her lightsabers, the ones that Anakin made for her as a welcome back present... 

And she drops them. 

That hurt. 

Seven seasons worth of memories, related and not, are in her thoughts. And in mine. Like, I never thought I'd be doing a trip down memory lane with this show, but I am now! All of these little moments of light which I originally found very corny are rendered bitter by all of this. There is no silver lining here. They fought and bled and sweated for a lie, a lie that they were prevented from seeing by the very institutions they stood upon. In the end, the very weaknesses of the show were turned into strengths. This isn't a meandering show, but one about the memories that were ruined because they were never real to begin with. If Anakin cared so much about Ahsoka why didn't he tell her the truth? She suspected it, along with the rest of the Jedi Order. It wasn't like everyone didn't know something was going on between Anakin and Padme! And he still continued to lie about it! He never confided his weaknesses, but built up a false image that completely betrays Ahsoka when she needs it the most. That look of confusion when she finds out that Count Dooku dies off screen just cements just how out of the loop Ahsoka and the Jedi truly were. Anakin always felt hollow to me in this show. Now I know that was on purpose. This last arc drops the awful truth of everything on Ahsoka, and she just crumbles in the face of it. At the end of the day she looks at everything she came from... and rejects it. 

That leaves us with Anakin. There's a poignancy in that one of the first things he did was to check on Ahsoka. He holds up the lightsaber she left and looks at it. All the show went through my mind, again, with this scene. I found myself remembering different things than before. And that was more of the show that all of a sudden was beyond bitter to me. Here was the man himself, staring down at what may have been one of the most genuine moments in The Clone Wars. Anakin is a mechanic. He loves to build things, to fix them, to set them right. Holding that lightsaber he knows he has been rejected. Let the reader consider that later, when Sidious tells Vader he needs to find a khyber crystal to corrupt into a red blade, that Vader does not use the lightsaber Ahsoka left him. There's a whole arc about this in the comics, about him going to find someone else to murder and corrupt that crystal. But he leaves the one that Ahsoka abandoned unscathed. I don't know what he did with it. We may never know. But this is the solitary point of light of the whole show, at least for me. Anakin did not abandon Ahsoka, even when she did the same to him. To Anakin it was all real, even if he didn't quite understand the monstrosity of what he'd done to his friends. And that's the image that kept me thinking, far into the night. In a horrible dark way the below is an image of hope. Even here, at the beginning of his trek into darkness, Anakin couldn't give up, not fully.

No one is ever really gone.

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The Pull: September 2020 Edition

 

Boy what a month so far! This has been a really amazing haul folks. I can't wait to get into it with you.

By the way, SPOILERS

The Amazing Spider-Man 46 and 47

I've read a lot of Spider-Man. I've loved the character since I was two. I've read his history, multiple times, and have tried to get into whatever sources I can to learn more about Peter Parker. I won't pretend to have a perfect memory about the character, but I do know a whole hell of a lot.

This is a truly unique story arc. I'm telling you now, it's going to be a classic.

Yes, really.

Jump on it. Now.

Throughout all his years Spider-Man has had a rule against killing. Unlike most heroes Spider-Man's rule against killing has a very poignant edge: he's lost so many friends, in some truly brutal and awful ways, that he cannot imagine inflicting that same pain on someone else, for any reason. He believes in the sanctity of life because it's been desecrated so many times in his life that he must hold onto it with every ounce of strength. And that's been directly challenged plenty! When Otto became Spider-Man he laughed at the rule. Peter's had many conversations with folks like The Punisher and Wolverine about the necessity of taking lives. And they keep pointing out the same thing: Peter is only a deterrent. He cannot solve anything.

I've never seen a Spider-Man story where this point was hammered so hard. Sin-Eater isn't just killing people, but he's bringing them back without their powers and their evil tendencies! They're peaceful! Reformed! I mean Sin-Eater has a bunch of powers now, but all these people are reformed. Right? Right?

And Peter doesn't have a freaking clue yet. It's beautiful. I've not been this excited by a Spider-Man story for a very long time. And that's because we're seeing something incredible.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 53

So I'd accidentally stopped following this title a while back and decided that I wanted to get back into it. 

Power Rangers has always been a concept that I found was hampered by its medium. I don't know of many adults who would say no to a story about a group of disparate peoples defending the world from perpetual alien invasions. I mean, Pacific Rim exists people and it's awesome. I'm not saying that Power Rangers is Pacific Rim without a budget, but... OK, that's what I'm saying. We're going to move on.

I have found that the concept of Power Rangers has always been respected by the comics. Without the constraint of budget and corporate idiocy the creative teams have been free to explore concepts that the TV fluffed, like the Dark Rangers. Zedd is terrifying. Legitimately. The rangers are well-written and... I can't believe I'm saying this... but Rocky has a freaking personality. 

That alone is worth it to me.

X-Men 11

I don't think anyone's really caught the joke of Hickman's X-Men comic run yet. Everyone's been talking about the incredibly progressive approach of this comic to a lot of things, and how Xavier's initial dream is dead. But that would be to ignore who Hickman is, as a writer, an artist, a person. 

Hickman constructs machines of truly epic proportions, details them out, makes sure they work, and then throws them at characters whose flaws are just as big as the machines he constructs. None of the characters are moral; they're constructed of virtues and flaws, miniaturized versions of his universal machines, all running around and trying to manipulate everything to get what they need. Hickman is not a moral writer. That's what gives his stories such a mythological scope and what makes him so beloved:

That is full on display here. Magneto is painted as Exodus as a true hero, someone who is willing to defend those who cannot defend themselves. The tone is appropriately mythic, painting a former genocidal maniac as the hero of the mutant, while making sure that we see Magneto as some messiah to the mutant race.

This is Hickman.

He's doing it on purpose.

I'm excited.

Darth Vader 4

I was told very specifically to pick up this comic. I was told that it was amazing and deserved my attention. I've actually heard that about all the other Darth Vader comics. And honestly I fight that sorta hype. Hard. I wasn't initially that interested in the comic, so that didn't help. But a buddy of mine insisted and he knows my... reservations, about hype. And Star Wars. And he told me to buy the damn comic anyway.

Boy I'm glad he did.

This is not what I expected. 

Vader is post-Empire Strikes Back, reeling from being rejected by Luke. He goes to Naboo, only to encounter the handmaidens of Amidala. The sheer visual story-telling chops of this comic are... just amazing. I loved all the intercuts, color variations, the emotional build up, all of it... it adds up to something that could not have been done in any other medium but a comic book. I don't see that very often. I'm wonderfully surprised to see it here.

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The Pull: August 2020 Edition

The Amazing Spider-Man: Sins Rising #1

As a supposedly conservative Christian, this was a painful read. I'm not Pentecostal, but there's a duality that I've encountered inside of myself that is not Christian, not of what is taught, that this comic brings to the forefront and criticizes, openly, painfully, and honestly. I found I had a lot more in common with Stan than I would like to admit. Good art holds up a mirror. This book held up a mirror in a way that was uncompromising to some of my experiences of American Christianity. 

Actually, a good deal of it.

The Amazing Spider-Man #44

There are a few times when comics really show what they're capable of as sequential art. They transcend the usual trash that is humanity's attempts at art and become something... more. When this happens you get a sublime, almost surrealistic blending of image and letter. 

This issue one of them.

There's a level of "come to this as it is" that is what makes the issue so special for me. There's no attempt to make the issue make sense, and so you have to go along, just accepting the issue as it is. There was a very similar eerie quality in Sins Rising which I didn't comment upon so much there. But the craftsmanship of both comics is just beyond what I would expect for any comic book. Truly art.

The Amazing Spider-Man #45

...and now we're dropped back into Spider-Man's world. There's this jarring and off-putting feeling which matches the story so incredibly well! The compositions have changed, in part because of the change of artist; the more grounded feel is what classic Spidey artist Mark Bagley is known for. Unfortunately Bagley's drafting just isn't up to snuff in this issue, which is sad, given his immense skills. That being said, Bagley's actual visual storytelling is just phenomenal and is used to contrast with the previous issues in ways that are entirely intentional. I love that they took two issues to build up to this one. It feels right and creates this divide from Spider-Man, isolating the character from you, the reader, and leaving him totally alone. You know too much. Spidey knows nothing. 

And your knowledge matches his confusion. Fantastic.

X-Men #10

When most writers swing big, they usually go for about fifty or so issues on a single book. Maybe a little bit more. When Hickman goes big he does at least fifty issues, over the course of at least two or three (or more) books. His new X-men initiative spans authors and comics, and is probably his largest thing he's done so far. And it shows. The thing that most people do not realize that makes a long run is that the concept has to be big enough to where you can go for forever. Hickman's early part of his Avengers run was criticized for being almost obtuse in the amount of plates that he juggled. The series didn't seem to have any connectivity. 

That, of course, missed what Hickman was doing: setting up the points that he was going to start bouncing the ping pong balls off of.

And he's still doing it in X-Men. And yeah, sometimes that's really frustrating, like it is here. Vulcan is not a character I have a whole lot of appreciation for. And I love what Hickman does with the character here, by fleshing him out to make him a hero I can actually root for! And I can't wait for the points to start to connect.

But it can be really frustrating to wait for that. 

That being said, I'm taking notes. When this sparks it's going to catch real good.

Star Wars #5

Luke has recently discovered he's Vader's son, and has to grapple with what that means. Luke has the black he eventually becomes known for in ROTJ, combined with the brown jacket he had from an earlier run. He's still a good kid, but a hurting one, seeking answers. And the person he's seeking answers from gives him answers he didn't expect or want, particularly about Order 66, the Inqiuistors, and Vader's role with them. Of all the people that Luke has to run into, this particular person seems to be the one to pop the idealistic bubble he had about the Jedi.

There's been a dream-like quality to this book for me. Each point they set down I find myself saying "But of course! How else could it be?" There's a magic to this title that is hard to put into words, but this whole run has felt right since the word "go". These folks get Luke. They get Star Wars. And watching that unfold is magic.

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The Force Awakens is Not A New Hope

So I've begun ranting and raving on my Facebook.May God have mercy on us all!

I Hate Everyone and Everything

So I was planning on just making a few addenda for my Star Wars Epic Review. Star Wars is a very, deeply, personal thing to me as it exists, Rise of Skywalker included. So it gets hard to watch as people just utterly... wreck the point. Rather than approaching it from the Campbellian framework that it exists in they prefer to see it as they would rather prefer to.

To be blunt, I find that silly. And immature. If you approach life on your terms you will never be happy, so I'm not sure why Star Wars is an exception to one of the hard and fast rules of living.

So, the thing is that, with the advent of the digital release of The Rise of Skywalker, I had the opportunity to just tack on my observations of The Rise of Skywalker, as if it was an appendix to The Last Jedi. And, given that The Last Jedi is one of my favorite movies, ever, it would be very easy to do that. But that wouldn't be approaching the series on its own terms, now would it?

So, I will start over, ALL over, from The Phantom Menace and up.

I do not relish putting my thoughts out there and seeing it have no impact on the Star Wars community, or few other people.

But my brain won't shut up.

And so therefore whoever wants to read this is going to have to put up with my temper tantrum of 25+ posts.

It's Still on the Shelf: Star Wars RPG (Fantasy Flight)

So I was talking with a buddy of mine who was considering playing in a one-shot I'm planning. I had originally pitched White Hack at him, but it wasn't heavy enough for his tastes. So he asked me what games I had. And if I could list them. And describe them. I looked over at my bookshelves and groaned inwardly.  This is something of an answer.

What is it: The Star Wars RPG line from Fantasy Flight Games is actually a "trio" of books, each of which handle the three implied settings of Star Wars: criminals, war, and the Force. It's expensive. It's over the top. It probably couldn't have been handled in one book? I don't know? Point is, they're divvied up. You pick the setting you want and move on. Or, if you're like me, you sigh from the depths of your soul and 180 bucks later???

The Star Wars games rely upon using unique dice, which help add some granularity to the action going on. It's not quite as simple as you succeed or fail, but you are instead consulting the dice kinda like a seer who consults the bones from some pagan culture or whatnot. It usually takes a minute, which is fine by me. I don't mind heavier dice mechanics, but your mileage may vary. As you decipher the symbols and realize what just happened, the players and the GM begin to talk it over. The players get to decide what any advantage gained from the roll does, while the GM gets to decide the disadvantage. Both sides have veto power. There's also a Destiny Point economy, where you can fudge in differing things into the game, as well as influence dice rolls. It's intended to be very subtle, one point at a time, but I always took that limit off and players seemed to have a much better time with ti. There's not a lot of guidelines to any of this, per se, but there are plenty of examples that one can measure against in the books.

It's this lack of advice that ultimately make the game a pain to run. You're supposed to award people XP, but it took a long time of me searching the book and going onto a forum to find out exactly how much and for what the players were supposed to get XP for... which as it turned out was whatever the heck I wanted to award them for. Which is fine, but it took far too long for me to get to the intent of the system for such an important thing.  So, if you're going to use the book, make sure to take this paragraph in mind and have a pretty clear list of things players can get XP for!

Why I haven't played it lately: Honestly? I don't find it scratches the Star Wars itch. For me Star Wars is about the interactions of tradition and the collective with the individual in their particular place in history. It's about the characters' search to fit within that framework. Yeah, there's lots of fun action and fiddly bits and whatnot, but those things serve the narrative, they are not the narrative itself.

That and Burning Wheel exists. You have to be able to compete with that level of janky, complex, unique gaming before  I really take notice anymore. FFG Star Wars just doesn't. It runs fine, once you figure out that you're just supposed to make everything up as you go along. Heck, I'd probably use the Career hooks to incentivize the players if I ever ran it again. But it's just not enough. Not for now.

Why's it still on my shelf?? I still like looking through the books, and I still have Star Wars games in mind, and some day I'll probably want to go back to it. We'll see. For the moment I'm at where I am with Burning Wheel. That is enough for the moment.

The Rise of Skywalker: Review

Over the last few days I resolved to try something that I've not seen anyone else do: approach the Sequel Trilogy on its own terms. I would try to forget the first six films, if only so that I could see what this trilogy had that the other two did not. And what I found was a discussion on the importance of tradition and family to the human condition. One cannot forget what came before, no matter how flawed the previous generation was. Trying to destroy the past inevitably destroys you, whereas trying to conserve its lessons, but to do so with a strong critical lens. And that tradition, provided it's properly followed, will rejuvenate who you are.

This movie takes all of those ideas and dials them all the way up to 11, while adding its own ideas to the mix. Palpatine's return is foremost in the narrative, with a directness that I found to be surprising and refreshing. Palpatine is not presented so much as his individual return but that of the Sith tradition. There's a ritual element in Palpatine's dealings that are hard to ignore, right down to the ritual dagger used to find him. And Rey is presented as someone trying to inherit the tradition of the Jedi, of being worthy of it, which is presented as something more than just being able to lift rocks, but being aware of the people who gave that tradition.

And that's the big addition to the mythos that Rise of Skywalker gives: actual tradition is the awareness of the people who came before you. The ending of The Rise of Skywalker, with all of its pop and flash, reminded me of stories of the Desert Fathers, like Saint Anthony needing an answer to a text from the Old Testament and so Moses came to talk to him about what he had written and why. Tradition is the collective dead, pushing forward to influence us. This is not a passive thing. The dead know. They care. They want us to learn from them. And how we react to this consistent push from beyond the grave is a large part of how we become defined as people.

The last (and most important) thing I want to comment upon is upon the nature of death as it's discussed in Rise of Skywalker. My father once told me that the best thing parents could do for their children was to die when it was time. We pass things down to the next generation by the simple act of dying. This was so that way the child could finally begin to live a life that was no longer defined by the living presence of their parent.  It's an amazing gift to give, to no longer have to be like your predecessor, but yet still have the lessons they gave you so that way you have their wisdom. They are put out of your conscious mind so that way you can just make decisions, just for you.

The Rise of Skywalker closes out a trilogy of movies that is about what came before and how it intersects with the now. It takes the very real issue of how one is to identify oneself and puts it into an incredible showcase of spaceships, lightsabers, and explosions.  And for all of its craziness Rise of Skywalker uses these crazy, child-like, things to say something that everyone needs to hear, all the time. We are not just us. We are those who came before, and we get to choose how that gets shown to those around us.