Lilith: A Farewell

 

All I have written is as straw. 

When I was younger I had a span of years where my Lyme's disease returned. During these years I lived as one in a neverending nightmare, where to exist was to be in pain. There were days I couldn't get out of bed because my joints ached so; Kyle would come looking for me and, seeing me, would pity me in my pain. He would help me out of bed, bearing my cries of pain and anguish as my feet and ankles gave out, and hold me up until I could get my feet to cooperate with me. My dreams were visions of awful spectacle; I would frequently have to pray myself awake. Others pitied me, this I knew, but I saw them as one sees shadows in the corners of your room, after awaking from something awful and unholy.  I would frequently find myself wishing for death. That part makes sense well enough, but I couldn't get anyone to really connect with why I truly wished my death: somehow I knew there was a Life awaiting me, beyond the agony. Beyond the cacophony was Silence. I didn't hate my life, I wanted more, and I knew it was on the other side of this life. And that was for what I longed.

Eventually I recovered from Lyme's. The pain stopped and I barely remember it. But the memory of that yearning for Life haunts me, even still. I did not have much context for this desire. Most people who profess Christianity do not have this hope, the real one, the hope that can bear all things. Or maybe it's that hope either has you or it doesn't. It is a fearful thing, to be in the hands of God! To have hope is almost identical to the way a man "has" a woman: she takes him in, and while he may boast that he has her, no sane person says he owns the world that gives him life. So it is with lovemaking, and so it is with hope, and indeed all the virtues, especially love: it has one or it doesn't.

The last few years on this blog have been a journey I didn't expect. I have learned much about myself and the world and God while writing. I have tried more than a few things, and found them all wanting. Many failed experiments are on this blog. I regret none of them. I needed to try them all. I am thankful for the time I spent on them.

But I have read Lilith, and the end is come.

It has come like a thief in the night, most unexpected and unlooked for. But yet it is here. George MacDonald's novel is the answer to a riddle I didn't know I was posing. It is answered. My search is over, and I find myself back where I began: longing for death, for Life is within it. But it does not find me sick and crippled. It finds me with friends, family, that I did not have before. Years ago I thought I was not dreaming this world. The seeming insight almost broke me. I have felt the error keenly, ever since. I didn't know that was what I was feeling, but the error is now so obvious that I have to chuckle at my own expense. But now I understand it. And I have found a family I wouldn't have had if I hadn't made that mistake. O happy fall! O happy mistake! For life is a dream most serious, most consequential. What we call life is but the mood you will have upon actually waking up. 

And wake I shall. The timing is irrelevant, for I control it not. So I wait. "...asleep or awake, I wait." And until then I will spin dreams that that will help me awaken in the best way possible. This blog chronicled the process of realization. From The Last Jedi until Lilith, all has led me to this moment. I have many things to make yet, many things that must last in the dream for other sleepers, long after I leave it.

How will you find me? For I go, and I go now. Alas, I cannot stay here. You will never see a post on this blog again. The Facebook will come down on Christmas day. The Patreon will close before I take another cent from my dear friends, who have helped me so! But I do not go into oblivion, as I have many things to do before I am awakened to Life. I have not done my due diligence; I owe a debt that will still not be repaid when I am called home by Father. He will have to forgive the debt. 

So where will you find me? I'm not sure how to answer that. But, if you look, you'll find me. I'll be doing my work.  A recovering Scot can only be in so many places at once, after all. 

Thank you to everyone, from the bottom of my heart. Love God. Keep the faith. What we think of as life is but a dream that will impact how we wake up. 

Awaken well, friends.

All the things under Heaven and earth can help one wake up well. 

But wake we must.

The Book of the New Sun: Second Read Through

My first review of this book was a purposeful babbling. I was trying very hard to put into words something that I'd always been afraid would eat me if I did. I went and finished The Solar Cycle in a flurry of turning pages, puzzlement, and deep mourning. Gene Wolfe was wrestling with what I still wrestle with: the inherent dishonesty of mankind, the terrible mercy of the Divine, and a pain that was far deeper than personal. When I finished Short Sun I knew I wanted to return immediately; I knew this to be a terrible idea. Reading the books was like the most painful of soul surgeries. I would need to wait. I wasn't idle; I read and read and read and learned and played games and explored ideas and tried to change just enough. I had a bit of a plan on going back, reading-wise. And it was going well!

But then one night I had a dream. I was standing on an electric dam, at night. I was admiring this machine of power, and knew it to be mine. I had examined the schematics thoroughly and I knew this place. I was the master. As I stood in the dying sun's rays I felt confident. 

I heard Gene Wolfe's voice, echoing above the crashing water. And my blood turned cold. 

I followed where I thought the voice was coming from and found a stair, leading down into the dam. It should not have been there. I knew the schematics. There was nothing in the dam, not there. But Gene's voice was clear enough, even if the words weren't. I didn't want to go down. Staircases that aren't supposed to be there was weird enough, what was the ghost of Gene Wolfe doing in my dream?? But my legs started moving. I tried to stop them. I knew what was down there, I knew what waited, and I didn't want to see it. The lie had been so pretty! So complete! Couldn't I just be left alone?

There was a door at the bottom. I stood there, trying so hard not to open it. But Gene spoke, beyond the door, above the roar of the water. The metal of the handle was so cold.

An abyss of darkness. Gene's voice was no louder.

I felt a moment of vertigo. I couldn't, wouldn't, go in!

And then I was standing in the darkness. Inside the dam was only that darkness. Only! There should have been pipes, electrical equipment, stuff! My head began to hurt and I clutched it in my hands. A BANG and I was deserted by the door. Gene's voice got louder and louder, and I began to try and scream to block it out. It was something he'd said in an interview. 

"You'll be a motherfucker or a saint, and if you're lucky you'll be both." 

There was a laughter with the last phrase that always made my cold with terror. I collapsed, and felt the shifting of the dam. I was hit by a drop of water.

I woke up, in a foul mood. After a day I went upstairs and stared at The Book of the New Sun. It wasn't time yet, so I had declared.

My hands trembled as I picked it up.

Severian is easier to empathize with this time around. In the first read-through Severian comes off as an amoral womanizer. On a second read-through it's apparent that most of my impressions of Severian were a reaction against his culture; I had foisted my culture shock upon the protagonist, as if to blame him for not being like me. There is a funny tendency in modern liberal thought to ascribe the sins of a culture to the people who are held captive by it.  We all have this feeling that others should know the truth that we, as liberals, think is inherent to all humanity, and we judge all others by those standards. This time around I was better able to absorb what was coming from Severian and what was coming from his culture, and how they collided in Severian's skull. And what I found was a man continuously struggling against his own culture. Severian was always questioning, trying to be free. No matter how flawed he was Severian wanted freedom from his cultural climate, and was willing to sacrifice everything to own up to what was inside of him.. The fact that he mostly failed  shouldn't tarnish where he succeeded. And Severian does succeed, in all the ways that one actually can. Any further would require suicide or monasticism. He comes to the conclusion that nobody else would come to: that without the New Sun the rest doesn't matter. Humanity cannot solve its issues without changing the context it lives in.

The plot this time around was... clearer? It's certain that Severian was being watched, prodded, and manipulated from the word "Go". Severian is simply trying to get from point A to point  B, and the rest of the world, aware of what he will become, is doing everything it can to get him their side. I can certainly see why Severian was chosen. His willingness to protect life whenever he could, to question everything that was in his power to question, made him stand out. And that's a powerful person to get on your side. I think my favorite "book" of the bunch is The Sword of the Lictor, where Severian winds up accidentally leading a rebellion because, I mean, of course! That's a very Severian thing to do. The Citadel of the Autarch is a fitting end, however; Severian, the one who always felt the limits of his knowledge so keenly, now has more knowledge than anyone knows what to do with. It's a good place to leave him. He'll bring the New Sun.

I caught the dying woman under the guild this time around, ha!

As I try to tie this up I find myself at a loss for words, again. This time around changed everything, all over again, just like before. But this time I was looking for it. I expected Wolfe to rock me. And he did. There are things I'm deliberately leaving out here, because, just like the first time, they'll continue to percolate in my heart, changing how I see the world. Ultimately you'll see the changes in what I talk about on this blog and how I choose to write about it, just like last time. The dream, that eternity, that I spoke of so  brokenly in the first review isn't an external thing that I long for now; a spark is now deep down, in the recesses of my soul, where I keep the nightmares and darkness. The dam had been built to cover this spark. Somehow it had survived.

This time the spark wasn't lit. 

It was blown on.

A crackling can be heard. 

My soul is warmer.

May the Power Protect You: Ashley Hammond (Space Yellow)

Let's get something out of the way: this game is not perfectly balanced. It can't be. There's too many interactions to test for to make it balanced.  This is a balance conscious game. There's a baseline usability that's required for all the characters; you must be this effective to be in the game. MMPR Jason is clearly meant to be this benchmark of balance. I don't know of a single character who fails that litmus test. But some characters are better. It doesn't mean they're broken, but they take advantage of the basic rules of the game better than other characters. Ashley is one of these characters. No matter what you do with her you're going to benefit, somehow.

Optimism is one of my favorite character abilities in the game. My dice luck, even with rerolls, is so bad that I'm for sure to get the additional energy almost immediately. And that's helpful for pushing forward. That extra little boost goes a long way. Obviously if you never roll a miss result on these dice Optimism probably won't be too useful to you, but if that's the case I'm not sure you're a real person to begin with. Or, y'know, not playing with loaded dice. Actually that last one is more likely.

Rapid Fire is one of the best cards in the game, particularly if you have a reroll ability available. Roll, see the 0's, spend the energy Ashley just gave you, add two more dice, and then reroll them all! Ashley can either wreck shop with her own cards or throw it onto another character's attack.

Take Aim is a great card. We've talked about it before, with Kimberly. Any energy generation is good. And rerolls are absolutely necessary. Moving along.

Trick Shot is a weird card. On the one hand, 0's are good for hitting targets not adjacent to the target. On the other hand, I target a card to freaking blow it up. That doesn't make sense, it's backwards! So I target GUARD cards I've already damaged by attacking another card not adjacent. I roll badly enough, it certainly works for me! The reroll from Take Aim may be used for... unusual reasons... here.

Yeah, huh.

Precise Shot ignores GUARD and doesn't do a lot of damage, even if it's for sure damage. Once again, the card presupposes some damage has already been dealt to the target, or maybe there's a bonus I don't know you having.  Regardless, this probably isn't going to be a card you'll be using to one-shot a high health target. And that's okay. It's almost like you may have damage being sprinkled all over the place from Trick shot.

Star Slinger is like a reverse Power Axe. It is just as tricky to pull off on a small grid, with differing logistics required.  I generally find that having an enemy card with FAST puts you on the back foot; normally you want to hit the very first card in the sequence and splash the back cards. You can still do that here (just go to the rear-most card), just expect to take some fire for it. 

Ashley's zord lets you hang yourself as a group, by drawing as many cards as everyone likes. You're either nuking yourself or doing a last-ditch assault. And y'know what? I don't care. I generally don't draw cards, and am usually too cowardly to do so. If you want to? Go for it. That's never been me. Well, until I really need to do it. That's different. 

Ashley isn't broken, not by a long shot. But she is really good. Her cards take advantage of the base engine of the game really well, and she has some genuinely unique cards. She's definitely in my top five to play! There's always something interesting going on with her, and she can hit pretty much whatever she wants, whenever she wants. This makes her a great offensive character.

Design Journal: Crescendo and the OSR

 

During my last 4e game (Why We Kept Her) I had a conversation with a friend that was fated to change my RPG experience forever. I had been really happy with the story that had been coming out of that game. It remains one of my favorite campaigns. When I talked to Andy about the game and the story coming from it he remarked that 4e was not a story game. Flabbergasted, I shot back that I was getting quite a good story with that game, thank you very much! Andy's response was that the mechanics of 4e weren't generating the story itself, but that it was simply a combat game that happened to be present while the story was being told.

He then showed me Burning Wheel.

Eight years have passed. I've played the crap out of Burning Wheel. It's been with me through the beginning of my marriage and three children. But I began to notice something odd towards the end of the long campaigns I've done with Burning Wheel. In order to keep with the advancement system of Burning Wheel we had to play a very different game than what was happening organically at the table. The endings of our stories, while they had epic problems to solve, would normally grow quieter, more reflective. One of the games in particular (The Giggling Dark) was almost frustratingly difficult to tell the story that was happening with the mechanics. Its sequel, Autarchy, took the problem and exacerbated it. The game mechanics seemed to want pride of place, something that I don't want to do.

I really didn't know what to make of my experiences. So I kept quiet, observed, and processed.

Eventually I realized I wanted to do the character evolution game my own way, and thus work on Crescendo began. I'd never really designed before; I didn't think I had anything to add to the conversation of game design. Turns out I have a lot to say. Freaking figures. From this sudden realization Crescendo, Shadow, (Lovecraftian horror) and Its Shadow Still Remains (a 4e-inspired adventure game) have emerged. 

I was more or less designing Crescendo via playtesting; iterate a draft in a week, throw it at the players and see if their noses wrinkled. I'd then take it back and work the bits they didn't like, rise and repeat. I've got really good sports for playtesters. What a blessing! The only two sessions I've tested with a group of multiple people  (the game is meant for one to three players, plus GM) didn't go well. One of my players in particular was consistently shafted, in both sessions. I felt terrible of course, and asked what she felt was going wrong.  Keep in mind I'd had a good time playing around with the mechanics and moving the bits around. I could feel I had a blindspot. What Lena said threw me:

"No story happened. I felt like I was playing a board game."

Keep in mind Lena has done a 38 session campaign of Burning Wheel with me. It's the best story I've produced with that game. She may not realize it, but her opinion matters a whole hell of a lot.

And that's when something crucial began to click into place. My game had taken on a quality I'd come to loathe in Burning Wheel: the eating up of story-telling, player creativity, by the mechanics. Play Burning Wheel with all the extras and you'll see it: a group of players wrestling the mechanics into a coherent narrative. And the weird thing was that over the years I'd begun to think of story as something that came about by solely by pushing on the mechanics of a game. That's patently not true, of course. You need players who know what they're doing and who like each other to have a fun experience; mechanics guide generation, they're not the generator of the story itself. I've no idea if that's something other "story" game folks think about, consciously or unconsciously. But I'd realized that I'd been thinking it. And that's just not what I want in an RPG. The game I really wanted wasn't poking at the mechanics and watching the dominoes fall. I wanted folks to be interacting with each other in the shared world they'd imagined and only have the mechanics kick in where there "should" be uncertainty, and thus conflict. And yes, eventually that means dominoes, but that's to get you into an unexpected spot, not an end in itself.

Something was buzzing in the back of my head; it popped into my head to look over Principia Apocrypha, one of the seminal works describing the OSR.  Most of the principles I wanted in Crescendo, as it turns out, are OSR principles. And the concepts that are a little iffy (high lethality) actually work, if you get a little creative (if not outright esoteric).

Let me explain really quickly what Crescendo's setup currently is. The default is to develop one character per player over the course of a 30+ session game, pitting a character's Arcana, Tenets, and Traits against the Setting's Movements.

Players craft three Tenets, which are beliefs that the player wants to have Conflicts about. They're generally short ethical statements, or statements about a character or organization. Make a Tenet about things you want to make trouble about.

"Death before dishonor. (St. George) d6/6."

"Grieving doesn't get things done. (Rahab) d4/2."

"My sister is a goody two shoes. (Lilith) D4/1."

When you change the story meaningfully in acting on your Tenet you get a metacurrency called Fortune, which lowers the difficulty of challenges. When you spend Fortune one of the Immortals your GM drew up does something to help you. Or it could just be some random happenstance of chance. It's up to the GM, but Fortune expenditure can be as subtle or outrageous as the GM likes. 

There's a second major element to characters: Traits. Traits are what you want to be a sticking point in the narrative; you want them to gum up the works. Traits don't have to be bad, or evil. On the contrary, Traits can be things about the character that are good, but inconvenient. Traits are summed up as one or two words.

"Jaded"

"Brave"

"Congenial"

You get two Traits at the beginning of the game and can have as many as four. If you use Traits to further the story you get Dynamis, which allows you to reroll your dice. Traits are also used to recover the health of your Tenets, keeping the character from making hard (and almost never good) decisions.

Finally, there's Movements. These are the three things going on in the setting right now, with timers attached to them that give you a general idea of their urgency. These are simple statements that show the end result intended.

"The people will rebel against the Duke.  Rahab d20"

"The Duke will find the Holy Grail.  St. George d20"

"The Mayor frames the Duke for his own misdeeds. Lilith d12" 

Players, by interacting with these Movements and either helping or hindering them, get Persona, which allows you to increase the step of the dice you're using to roll.

All these metacurrencies, once spent, become XP. XP may be spent on improving your character, but it's really expensive and can only happen on certain times. XP may always be spent on contacts and relationships (making them findable without trouble), as well as property and equipment, converting the XP into currency.

"But wait," you may say, "My sessions can go without a dice roll, at times. I like it that way!"

That's okay. At the end of each session all unspent metacurrency can be converted to XP. But it doesn't transfer back, so be careful what you wish for!

This is the general framework I am attaching to the Principia Apocrypha. Exploration and investment in the world are rewarded, you can get your XP through careful planning, you're rewarded for interacting with things you care about, and the world is unfolded as you go along.

The biggest similarly between OSR games and Crescendo is the philosophy of rolling. In a standard "story" game rolling is an opportunity to push the story in a new direction. It's not a conflict, but seeing where the story may go. I've never agreed with this mentality. That's not a comment on that philosophy, per se. Just that I'm not happy doing it. Picking up the dice has always been a tedious thing to me, no matter how many cool things can happen as a result. So Crescendo will be a more happily antagonistic philosophy. Cool stuff will still happen, failing forward is still a thing and all that, but the dice are always stacked against you and the consequences for failure always lead to hard decisions. So make good plans. You'll get rewarded either way, regardless of whether you're rolling or not!

One of the coolest things about Basic DnD is the recognition that advancement should be based upon something connected to the world; in the case of a lot of OSRs, that's gold for XP. Because of its roots in Burning Wheel Crescendo has a really enjoyable reward system already: set agenda, go for agenda, get meta currency, which lets you fudge rolls in your favor. Meta currency then becomes XP. I have no wish to change that system, I find it one of the killer apps of the game.  But spending XP on Stats and Skills I've always found to be odd; there's not a whole lot of plain ole steady progression in most fantasy stories. So I restricted advancing those two things to specific times of personal growth, and made it stupidly expensive. But you can always spend XP on contacts, relationships, items, and property. Having the aforementioned four then lowers the cost of Stats and Skills, particularly relationships and property. So if you really invest in the world you get more rewarded in the long term! The more you're a part of the setting the more powerful you can become, as you hit personal milestones.

But what about lethality? Well this is where I get into my esoteric ranting. Those who like it may find it surprising in a good way. Those who don't will accuse me of sophistry. In the medieval era death was considered another name for change. In fact the prerequisite for changing was thought to be mortality. If you were immortal you could not change.  Change is a form of death; something in you dies and something new replaces it. So does the lethality inherent in the OSR show up here? No, but there is a constant change in the character, of a substantial nature. Characters will evolve and shift over time, in fundamental ways. And you don't necessarily control when that happens or even what that may look like, at least fully. The game is quite lethal, in its own way. But instead of dying you find that your are not really as dedicated to your causes as you'd like; things you think you believe in can die on the vine unexpectedly, forcing you into hard decisions that will have an impact that you don't expect, and for much longer than you had the Tenet.

So you're trying as hard as you can not to get forced into a rolling, because if you do your character will do probably do things that aren't just unexpected, but downright distressing. Something definitely can die as you play Crescendo, and its ephemeral nature makes the death of these things you thought you believed in almost more upsetting than losing a character. Who your character was is permanently in the rear mirror, waving as your character becomes something new, something strange. Smart play, however, will reward you and help you get where you want to go, all without rolling the dice. 

Does that make it an OSR game?

I don't know. I think the labels story-game and OSR are a bit strange. There's some philosophical differences, sure, but I find it telling that the big story-game umbrella, PBTA, is much closer to OSR design principles than either camp would care to admit. I'm also painfully aware that anyone can grab a bottle of piss and call it Granny's Peach Tea.  They may actually be right, depending upon the granny and the company who came to call.

Are there RPGs that are actually Granny's piss? Besides, y'know, FATAL? Inquiring minds. Point is, anyone can claim anything. Doesn't make it true. So I suppose I won't be making the claim that Crescendo is an OSR game. I doubt most OSR players would recognize it as such and if you're tasting piss no one should be telling you it's actually tea. There's definitely some sophistry in doing that.

But I will swear up and down that the Principia Apocrypha is a good chunk of the framework of Crescendo. The fact that I'm adapting it to my game on purpose is as certain as those federally required list of ingredients that have to be on the back of peach tea bottles.

"Was made with a healthy consciousness of The Principia Apocrypha."

I mean, at that point if you decide the ingredient's piss (nevermind Granny's) you can't blame the label. I hope.

Want to see what Crescendo is all about? Head over to the Crescendo Discord! The alpha launches in January of 2022!

Midnight Mass: Clericalism and Celibacy

SPOILERS for Midnight Mass ahead!  You're warned!!

When I was in my late teens and early twenties I hung out with a lot of Catholic priests, particularly Eastern Catholic ones. One of these priests in particular was kinda like an uncle to me. He was a cheerful man, full of life and the vigor of a person whose mind was always working. I admired him; my love of Dostoevsky and more grounded stories comes from the hours of conversation spent discussing our wildly differing tastes in narrative. To the best of my knowledge he is still at his parish, joyfully serving them.  I miss him. I hope he's okay. But there was a habit this priest had that haunts me to this day. 

When he came into his house he would say "Honey, I'm home!" to the empty house. There was a bit of an echo, every time. And every time my heart broke all over again. 

Sometimes, when I close my eyes, when I cross the threshold of my house, I hear him. Still.

If you think he's the only Catholic priest who has this sense of sadness crossing the threshold of his house you're dead wrong.

Look folks, this is about to get really uncomfortable for any Catholic. We're going to look at the ugly reality of "universal" priestly celibacy. It is not a universal apostolic tradition. It did not rise organically within the Western Church, and its universality in the West was imposed forcibly, resulting in plenty of nephews and nieces and broken hearts. I've nothing against celibacy itself, but the corruption of Father Paul resides in this abusive and awful system. I do think some people are called to celibacy, but it is not an assignment anyone can give but God.

First off, this is not an apostolic practice. Most of the apostles were married. They were not commanded to put their wives away to preach, and they didn't. On the contrary, St. Peter's wife traveled with him and preached as well; St. Peter helped talk her through martyrdom! St. Paul's "I wish all were like me" is usually taken grossly out of context, particularly the Song of Songs, the height of all wisdom literature. The Eastern Churches repeatedly tried to warn against this practice, referencing their own apostolic practice of married clergy. 

It gets uglier. Despite the warnings (and unanimous practice) of every single (and I do mean EVERY) Church the West continued in its idea that celibacy was necessary for all priests. It was clearly and obviously a hatred of marriage as it existed, with celibacy being considered the higher calling; marriage was a consolation prize, at best. 

Now, to be fair, existing Germanic and pagan marriage practices were hardly virtuous; what a Western Christian's ideal of marriage was at the time looked very different than how the modern Catholic imagines it today. Everything revolved around the clan, making marriages extremely political. A lot of marriages in the Germanic tribe were thought of as how we'd think of as a political marriage. Young men and women were being essentially sold to secure the clan. And they'd better reproduce, because their good was the clan's. Right?

Right?

The Catholic Church railed against the whole thing. Marriage was a sacrament, and the clans had no business using people the way they were. Celibacy was likely seen as an escape from an oppressive and demeaning system. Marriage couldn't be a good thing, not as it was.

So to be married was to be embroiled in the clan, something the Catholic Church obviously didn't want. But needs are needs; priests were mostly free to be married until 1049, when Pope Leo IX  issued a universal ban, with the Lateran Councils of 1123 and 1139 backing him up. The local clergy largely ignored the utter foolishness of such a measure. Until the 13th century priests had concubines and plenty of nieces and nephews, with parishioners generally in the know.  Then the bishops finally stamped it out. I do not advocate concubines (or nieces and nephews) but a clear human need was ignored by the Latin hierarchy. And then the hierarchy stamped it out. Like so many things Latin Catholics think of as Latin tradition (banning babies from communion, splitting up the Sacraments of initiation, Vatican I) priestly celibacy was a top down imposition to get an ideal that has never existed in any part of the Churches, not ever.

It still doesn't.

And lest anyone get the wrong idea, the Catholic Church had scored a legitimate moral victory! After a thousand years of struggling against a cultural force that essentially legalized rape, the Catholic Church had won out. Direct consent of the spouses, something alien to Germanic marriage, was a good won by the Catholic Church; never, ever, ever forget that if you, a Western reader, have a concept of the worth of the individual that you got it in part from this thousand year fight with a systemic oppression no SJW could even conceive of, nevermind have the balls to resist. The gross thing that is mandatory Western celibacy was one battle in the war to be free of the oppression of the clan, to be as God envisioned, and nothing else.

But the baby was thrown out with the bath water. It's all well and good if you're trying to free people from a totalitarian system, quite another to use what really should have been a temporary measure and use it as your own system of control. And make no mistake, it is. The recent uncoverings of the sex scandals in the Catholic Church reveal priests to be totally at the mercy of their bishops. The good face of the Church must be above all else, was the byline.

Ironic, isn't it?

And this brings us to Father Paul. I'll argue forcefully that his affair is the crack in his armor. Unable to address legitimate needs, he had to convince himself that he wasn't in the wrong for breaking his vow of celibacy. Now, an evil oath has no weight upon someone's conscience, but Father Paul didn't see it as evil, now did he? There's a basic incoherency in his conscience that I do not think would have been so exasperated if he had not been put into what is clearly an impossible situation. If the real enemy of this story isn't representative of that rift between two goods, that so many priests must face, then what is it? If the human is made to be opposed to the divine won't the Devil use that? 

 

To those who are called let them be celibate! It is the life of angels, the real ones, who I promise you are a thousand times scarier (not to mention crueler and kinder) than what's presented in Midnight Mass. But I do not think those wishing to imitate the Holy Trinity and Christ and the Church, in marriage, are lesser. That wasn't really the point of clerical celibacy to begin with. Like what is so common in history a method of freeing people from totalitarianism become totalitarian themselves.

But there is a greater truth than this struggle, floating just above the vale of tears. Marriage and celibacy aren't equal. You can't compare them. They are different callings. As different as an apple and a shoe. Comparing them is almost laughable. Not quite, as there are similarities. But I can say the same between an apple and a shoe.

But the Latin Church couldn't see this truth. When you fight evil, when you destroy what you hate, you lose sight of what you love. And the mess in this show is the direct fault of a church that, until St. John Paul the Great, couldn't come up with a marriage theology beyond consent being a God-given grace.  I will not say the East has been perfect. They haven't.  The monastic fetish is nothing short of disturbing to me. 

But the issues of Midnight Mass are systemic to the Catholic Church, especially the Latin Church. They simply aren't this severe in Orthodoxy.

Period.

The Shelves

 

 

Last week I talked about returning to 4e DnD. It was a decision that just... happened. I may never be able to fully describe it. It just seemed to happen to me, as opposed to me making it. Whatever it was, it was not to be argued with. I've begun planning a Dark Sun campaign in full earnest, happily throwing myself into that setting. But something a little odd happened to me. I am not going to try to understand it or analyze it. But maybe it will prove useful to others. Maybe you'll understand it. Who knows until you're done reading it? 

In the years since I stopped playing 4e I've been looking at various Indy RPGs. And who could blame me? Burning Wheel opened up a whole new world. But there was another impetus in there. I wanted to prove to myself I wasn't yet another DnD drone. That's not a particularly positive tendency, mind. My misanthropic tendencies are well known to me, even if not dealt with as well as they should be. I wonder how many of my own issues would be fixed if I figured that out.

See, the problem was that the more stuff I looked at the more this curious chasm of desire began to open up. Something wasn't right. I didn't know what, but reading these games wasn't making me any happier. At the time I'd a lot of other things to focus on, and I was quite happy with Burning Wheel. It is an odd fact of human nature that you can be otherwise happy but yet yearn for something more. I was very happy with Burning Wheel's character centric gameplay; that engine can help generate more meaning in a night than other systems can in years. And if there's anything I crave it's meaning.

And yet that gnawing continued.

Finally I stopped futzing about. I'd been doing multiple Burning Wheel campaigns for years. I was burned out. I needed to do something else. And I did! I tried out Bleak Spirit, Torchbearer, Trophy Dark and Gold, Tenra Bansho Zero, Sword and Board, and Hearts of Wulin, and others I've forgotten about. And some of these games really stuck with me! Bleak Spirit, Hearts of Wulin,  and the Trophy games are great palate cleansers for me. Each of them helps me blow off steam from my time with Burning Wheel. I'll definitely go back to them from time to time.

But the hunger continued.

And I began to feel desperate.

Like I said previously, the decision to return to 4e wasn't something I made. It seemed made for me. I've been questioning this reality, but have decided to see where it goes. Well the other day I went into a Barnes and Noble. I just needed a place to burn some time and what better place to do that than a bookstore? Now most of the time I'll head to the RPG section. I'll look at the section, and kinda fantasize about getting the whole freaking shelf. Just to have it. I wouldn't even do anything with them. Just have them on my shelf to have them.

So I went to The Shelf.

And felt absolutely nothing.

Nothing.

I picked up a copy of The Mutants and Masterminds GM Guide. I own the Hero's Handbook. I opened the book. And immediately thought "I'll never want to play this." Superheroes at one point was something I had thought about getting into, but as I held the book I knew there was only one thing I really wanted to do: fantasy. That's where I've found my chief meaning in fiction, from the more grounded high concept/slice of life like Clannad to the weird science fantasy of The Solar Cycle and Star Wars. 

In case it wasn't clear already, I demand that I put meaning in what I do. It's not an option. The world is a pretty meaningless place these days, and to be able to give meaning? That's actually an escape for me.  The world only has the meaning we infuse in it. Man named the animals and what name Adam used was the name of that animal. Man is the creature who names, who gives meaning.

And when I looked up from the GM's Guide to that shelf there was no meaning I wished to give to any of it.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I wandered the shelves in shock for about a half hour, trying to find something to tickle my fancy. There was a phantom hunger in my soul. But I couldn't give any additional meaning to the things I found. There was nothing in me to give. 

So I went home. And pulled out Dark Sun. 

Thanksgiving 2021

 

You can either have a pleasing life or a meaningful one; most of the time you won't get both. The older I get the truer this rings. Most of the times I've been happy I don't remember, because I wasn't actually trying to engage with that moment. And the times I was happy while engaging the moment? Being happy was a nice side effect; being present is a reward in itself.

I'm still working out whether it's better than being happy. Hedonism is so hard to kick.

Definitely the most meaningful thing I experienced this year was a new addition to our family. It's amazing how much one can find out about oneself with the addition of one entity to the system you live in.  There's upheaval, doubt, and pure untarnished beauty. The whole experience has been more incredible than I can say. I mean, I'm stressed out and exhausted, but I can't really change whether I'll be stressed and exhausted, only what I can be stressed and exhausted about. And this is exactly the sort of thing that makes said stress and exhaustion worth it. Welcome, little one! We love you!

The collapse of our civilization continues to show itself. I don't think we notice because we have so much stuff on these stupid phones to distract ourselves with, but it is there. I know when I get myself off this stupid device it becomes clear just how lonely life really is at this point. I don't know who my neighbors are, not really, and I've been living near them for years. But this has led to an opportunity to read and learn. I've read more than I ever have before; I may never again get this opportunity. So I'm using that time to the best of my advantage. All things change. This will too.

I continue to put the time in for mental and spiritual health; I've never regretted it. Not once. It requires me to slow down and really work at focusing, which isn't comfortable, but how much does being quick benefit me anyways? And, while it was hard to do so at first, I've begun to share more of my spirituality with my children, something I've found tremendously satisfying. Perhaps it's the cynical modern in me, but I'm coming to realize that I want what I know and experienced to be passed on. Who I am should not die with me, it should be known. My life and what was in it should be known to my kids. They may do with it as they wish. But it is worth passing on the reason for my hope.

But perhaps the greatest gift, that I am gradually learning to accept, the one that gives context to all the others, is the realization that I am grateful for the struggle. I continuously find myself arrayed against interior forces that make the exterior decay of our world look like a cake walk. Time and again I try to turn back to the events going on in the world, only to find it is only an escape from my interior chaos. It is easier to deal with others, to make them look evil and bad and awful and cruel, than to realize that I am most definitely all of these things and so much more.

I find that I am not a captive, but a willing traitor to mine own self. 

The more I learn the more the Bible's talk about the heart of man being treacherous becomes a gentle reminder, as opposed to the judgmental statement that the world would like me to believe. Words that once felt like an unnecessary indictment become the slightest of nudges to look inside and own what is there. I absolutely must resist the wretchedness in my own heart.  Most of the time I don't even recognize the evil for what it is! I find myself making excuses for it; it was necessary at one point, or so I thought, why can't I keep doing these "survival" techniques? Excuses are so easy, they're readily available from my friends and family. It's not my fault I'm so angry, I was screwed over in pretty much every conceivable way one of my background could be! Whose sorrow is like mine? My Jerusalem was destroyed and it would be so easy to sit in it and despair!

But I find that if I resist this interior slide into chaos that I become more myself. Success is a byproduct: the struggle itself is the thing that I find enjoyable. And I don't mean in a nasty and wretched sort of a way. To resist chaos by dwelling in the purposeful Silence is a beautiful thing. To feel the pull of discordance and to feel interior repulsion is invigorating. I do not think such joy is permanent; the Christian will not end in conflict, but in Eternal Light. So I know it will change. I enjoy the Light chasing out the dark. Cobwebs get swept away, I board the ship, and wait for the day it is repaired and I get to see the swift sunrise. It is not for awhile yet; I will have to wait a very long time. Much was destroyed, and I had more than a small hand in doing it. But seeing the ship repaired, to know that it will be sturdy (even if it's not now), to see the preparations and plans, is rewarding in and of itself. Until then, the struggle awaits. That is my present. 

And I accept it with all the joy in my heart.

Let it come.

For some day it will be no more.

And I will be Home.

The Entrances of the Theotokos into the Temple

This universal feast of Catholic and Orthodox Churches comes from the Gospel of James. Joachim and Anna, righteous but childless, finally had a daughter in their old age. Mary had an attachment to the Temple, and at three went to live there. Escorted by her parents she came to the steps of the Temple, fifteen in number. Not only did she go up the stairs herself but she danced. This was her home. Zacharias took her into the Holy of Holies. Mary lived in the Temple until twelve, frequently visited by her parents until their deaths. She didn't want to leave the Temple when she turned twelve, but propriety demanded she go. And thus Joseph, an old widower who really just wanted to be left alone, was found.

Childhood love is everything. Sometimes this is obvious; I'm married to my childhood sweetheart. We now have babies of our own. What I experienced in my wife then carried forward into adulthood and new life has come from it. Very few people can claim that, or should. It's not like my wife and I married our childhood memories of each other. We found that what we have now, in the present, was marriage material. Neither of us had rejected the things we'd loved about each other in the first place, and so our childhood impressions stuck with one person.

But that doesn't mean what you love as kids stops mattering. I'd argue it never really goes away. If anything those are the memories I think one should clutch to the hardest. That feeling of beauty, of grace, however you found it? That can keep you going. I know it did me. What memories do you have that are beautiful? That make you better for remembering, no matter how painful it can be to do so? Nevermind if you think it's irrelevant. I assure you it's not, but is far more important than you know.

One of the most powerful memories I have is sitting up in a friend's treehouse on a farm in Illinois. The sun was setting; the fields were bathed in gold and shadow. I was by myself. It was quiet. Sitting there, after a long day of playing, I was struck by the silent light. The world was wrapped in a golden hue. A few minutes later and I found myself singing. It seemed the only way to really add to the beauty at the time. A few minutes later and I found myself climbing down to play with my friends.

It's a simple moment. My appreciation for it never seems to fade. I have to learn to do this more often, but every time I go back to that moment I'm a calmer, more thoughtful person when I come back out.  It doesn't really have a lot of "deeper meaning" to it.

I think the Theotokos dancing up the steps of the temple at three is one of those moments. She was going to live at the temple, where she always wanted to be. She was happy. And anyone who has seen a three year old climb steps knows it can be some work for them. But the Theotokos saw them as an opportunity to dance. And I'll bet you that moment stuck with her, all her life. A moment of pure joy, where the usually laborious steps were an opportunity to dance.

I'll bet we all have moments like that.

Don't leave them, okay?

I know it's not easy.

But I think it's worth it, to fan that little light. 

Midnight Mass: Clericalism and Spiritual Experience

 

Last week I took Flanagan to the woodchipper over his solutions to the critiques of Catholicism and Orthodoxy that he brought. It's not good when I can make an Azathoth joke, folks, it really isn't. But those who diagnose problems rarely have good solutions. That doesn't make their data any less helpful. And Flanagan's criticisms of modern Catholicism and Orthodoxy are right on the money.  But in order to show you what Flanagan is so right about we must discuss what an ideal Apostolic Church actually looks like and why it works. 

It is no secret that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are pathetic. Petty squabbles over doctrine, systematic hypocrisy, and plain bad ole witness to the truth abounds. If you are an honest believer these should be not just acknowledged, not just mourned, but you should actively hate these things, not to mention seeking these cancers out and cutting them out of the Body of Christ. That's the unvarnished truth of the thing.

I'm not saying these things didn't use to exist. Of course they did! The Church (if you bristle at the thought of being lumped in with either Catholics or Orthodox I promise you all this applies to you and then some) has always been amongst fallen people. Humans are wretches by default, monsters if left unchecked. A simple yardstick to whether you're being a monster or not is to ask if you feel glee over some act that separates you from another.

Congratulations. You found it.

You're welcome.

So yeah. Christianity is for the wretch, a corrective to the monster in us all. So it makes sense that things were always ugly, we're ugly beings! But the original model did a pretty decent job at keeping this in check. And decent is as good as you're going to get.

Each city had a church. In that church was a bishop. Think of each bishop as a head doctor. This doctor had received his pedigree from three other doctors (at least) and had been thoroughly vetted and approved by his patients, the laity. There was no mysterious overlord  telling you what was best for you, although other bishops did have to confirm the appointment. Now, each bishop (doctor) needed assistants, nurses we call them in the medical field. Nurses take a look at the patients and make sure the minutiae get sorted out. You need someone who's got some experience to fill this role, someone who we know has had their heads bashed in a few times. They were called presbyters, or later on priests. Now, whether you like it or not, churches do need to be run, they require administration. And that's where we get deacon(es)s. 

For the conservatives (what exactly are you conserving? I promise it isn't a a healthy system) yes, female deacons were not just a thing, but necessary. Not everyone had the same way of ordaining them, but the Byzantine female deacon ordination service is almost identical to the male one. Sorry, nobody was thinking about in persona Christi for clergy. Really wasn't a thing like it is now in the Roman Catholic Church. And that's part of the problem.

Notice the comparison to medicine! Clergy are not there for your normal spiritual life. Health does not require a physician. Oh sure, regular checkups are necessary (Confession), and getting your regular doses of God is necessary (Eucharist), but very few practical spiritual works talk about Communion, but instead focus on what you do assuming you have it. Supernatural grace was assumed before the 19th century to be a normative part of tht spiritual life, with each member of the Body of Christ having gifts that helped heal and glorify the community.

There are exceptions to this general model, of course. All models are fake. Some models are useful. And this is a good and useful way to look at the early Church. Each city was its own Church, because each city had its own bishop. This Eucharistic model was more or less the norm.

The problem was that, as the Church grew, the model of one bishop in a city became impractical.  Too many people were now in the cities to have one (or even a few) churches. Did we realize that the important thing was to keep bishops as local as possible? I mean, when there are more bishops you get more staff in general, but especially doctors and nurses, right?

Nope. We made the doctors politicians and made the nurses do the doctor's job, with none of the graces or privileges. 

Are humans stupid or what?

The thing is the model only really works if the bishop is around. Without the bishop the living grace of the apostles isn't readily available. I strongly suspect this is why the grace of monasticism began to flourish: to get around our idiotic ideas of bishops as politicians. Take that with salt, of course, but it is what I think, so whatever that's worth.

Regardless, however, the laity internalized this similarity between monastic and bishop. The churches followed suit:  celibacy is officially regarded as the true way of Christianity in the Latin Church, mandating that all their priests be celibate, and the Eastern Churches usually only pick bishops from amongst the monastics.

This distance creates simplification.

Simplification leads to overestimation.

Overestimation of others creates a lack of trust in your God- given, baptismal graces. 

Which leads to Clericalism: that which is distant is superior. Which is the exact opposite of the point of Christianity. We are to be gods by grace, not sycophants of the hierarchy!

If you don't value your own experience, you won't go looking, reject what you do have, and will hang onto the first megalomaniac who has no scruples.

Like Father Paul of this show.

So how do fix this, assuming I'm right?

I've absolutely no idea.

As my angel of a wife frequently reminds me, I have no charism to fix the Churches. But I do know that a spiritual strengthening of the laity isn't just a nice idea.

So here are my suggestions for my lay brethren, Catholic and Orthodox:

When you were baptized you were made priest, prophet, and king/queen. You were given much. Trust in the gifts God gave you! He is in your heart and if you show Him you are ready He will show up.

At the same time you have to acknowledge that God didn't just appear to only you one day. God left a Church, which has made some attempts at archiving spiritual practices and doctrine that hold to God. I do not mean listen to your clergy blindly. Unlike medicine spiritual knowledge really doesn't change that much, and it's important to have a good range of knowledge of what came before you. You are not a special snowflake; God is not going to contradict what He told folks for the last 2000 years. 

Keep it short and simple, at least at first. The following books can get you a pretty decent grounding.

Arise O God (which I have reviewed on this blog before) is the only English work I know that sums up the Gospel with all the mythological and spiritual  considerations necessary.  It is small and mercifully short. Catholics: do not let the fact it is by an Orthodox priest throw you off. This is pure gold. And it's so mercifully short and simple to boot. A real home run of a book!

Unseen Warfare is the best introduction to the spiritual life I've ever read, hands down. It is, not coincidentally, a book that has both Catholic and Orthodox contributors, over a few centuries. You can use it either way, which I heartily recommend. Maybe if we get a common parlance again it won't be so hard to talk.

To be ignorant of the Scripture is to be ignorant of Christ. That's not a trite saying. Scripture is to the mind as Communion is to the soul. But what's missing from common Catholic thought is that Scripture is incomplete without the Fathers and Mothers of the Church. They show what prayerfully receiving Scripture can look like. I personally use Ancient Christian Commentaries,which breaks it down into as short and easy to manage chunks as possible. You can pick any book you like to start out, although you really can't go wrong with the Gospels.

If you're in the mood to read more than that short amount (and a lot of the time I'm not) I find perusing the Old Testament to be extremely useful, given that the Old Testament is the context for the New. I go off a program suggested by the second most important book of Catholicism, The Golden Legend:

Revelation for Easter season

Pentecost through Advent/Phillips Fast: Samuel, Kings, and Maccabees

Christmas to Lent: Isaiah

Lent: Genesis and Exodus

I personally don't go through commentary here, not yet. I let the stories puzzle me. You are under no obligation to be so masochistic.

I also have The Book of the Elders, which is a collection of stories and sayings from the Desert Fathers. There are two editions: Latin and Greek. The Greek is longer, of course. I take these with heavy doses of salt and may puzzle over them for months.

I assume regular participation in the Sacraments, particularly Communion and Confession. The rest is just context for your walk with God in the Sacraments.

I take Flanagan's criticisms very seriously. I cannot solve the full scope of the problem as I see it, but I can suggest ways that have helped this cantankerous layman stay in the basket God is using to yank him out of Hell. There's more, of course. What I suggested is just barely a drop in the ocean of information out there. But anyone with the grounding I suggest would have been much, much, much harder to fool than the sad folks in this show.

Returning to 4e

I suppose this was going to happen sooner or later. Almost a decade later and I'm not just returning to 4e, I'm staying for the foreseeable future. For all of 4e's faults there nothing like it. Whether it be longings for deep tactical play, excellent character building, the skill challenge system, re-evaluating my concept of story games, or just plain ole nostalgia... it's just time to stop wandering. Time to go home.

Let's face it: nothing has ever done 4e's type of tactical play in an RPG. From what I understand Pathfinder 2e does something similar, but the resource management system of 4e's damn-well near universal At-Will, Encounter, and Daily set up hasn't really been attempted since. It's a very specific itch to have.

No, 13th Age doesn't count. I count it as a step backwards.

Like, when I think back to 4e that's the thing I really miss the most: everyone having a similar system of resources. This lets them figure out more intricate plans and really treat combat as a puzzle.

But that's only one half of the tactical picture. 4e's secret sauce, the thing that keeps the above framework interesting, is Page 42, which allows for strong and effective improvisation. You marry these two systems together and the conversation of combat becomes a free wheeling affair, especially if you're willing to let players sacrifice their power slots to make better on the fly effects. There's a lot of freedom in 4e, but that's specially because of the framework it operates in; any other system it wouldn't work quite as well 

Character creation in 4e is a bit tricky. On the one hand you can have people do it together, and get some really cool workshopping, with people coming up with combos and intentionally shoring up each other's weaknesses and increasing strengths. But it has to be purposefully done. For whatever reason I remember folks not doing this sorta thing by default, but when it is done it's deeply enjoyable. And yeah, I miss it. I'll make sure it happens.

The skill challenge system has gold at its heart, even if it has issues. The GM tells you how many successes you need before three failures; you get XP based on how many checks you had to make, not on how many successes you had. This gives you a good basis for getting XP on the nights when combat isn't on everyone's mind.  4e could be a surprisingly open system for how heavily focused it was on combat, even having rules for getting XP for straight up RP. This doesn't make it a good straight up "story" game (more on that nonsense in a minute), but the game has built in alternatives for when you're just not in the mood to pull out the battle map.

The term story game is bullshit. Period. The term is not positive, it doesn't actually have its own identity. It just means "We don't like DnD and that makes us superior". This isn't to say that DnD is a good game necessarily (5e is hot garbage), but liking DnD is certainly not proof of being uncultured or something like that. That's not to say you can't make a term for the various types in the indie scene. I'm sure better classifications can exist. PBTA (Powered by the Apocalypse) is now very much its own thing, as are FitD (Forged in the Dark) and RiT (Rooted in Trophy). Maybe instead of using story game or Indy as some weird form of identity we simply say what we play and have done with it?  I acknowledge not everyone does this. But I know I did, and it robbed me of a lot of fun I could otherwise be having.

I'm not here saying I think 4e is a perfect game. To the contrary, I think there's a lot of room to house rule. Combat takes way too long sometimes, some of the classes need significant help to be effective, and the system doesn't reward role-playing as it could. But, as it turns out, the design team was cognizant of these issues and were working on evolving the system! Dragon Magazine published a lot of Unearthed Arcana articles, addressing many problems of the system. Turns out that the designers had put a lot of thought into improving 4e and I like a lot of their ideas. From rewarding role-play with action points, long term wounds, go a complete backstory system, I can tell that the designers had more than enough to make a new edition that would have been an actual evolution of 4e. So yeah. 4e ain't perfect. But the ideas presented in Dragon Magazine are great and I'm definitely going to try them. But that means dropping the pretensions to grandeur. 4e's story isn't going to be Dostoevsky, more John Wick. But John Wick has a fantastic story in its own right, easily standing on its own.

And yeah, there's more than a little nostalgia at work here! 4e was the first RPG I legitimately loved. That's just not going to go away. Trust me, I tried to kill that and here I am, ten years later, right back to where I started. I've learned a ton along the way, and will always have Burning Wheel, Trophy Gold, and Bleak Spirit, not to mention Crescendo (whenever that gets done). I learned a lot. It'll make my present so much better.

It's been a good journey. Time to come home.

Avengers: Endgame

I remember going to see Iron Man in theatres. I liked it, but it sure wasn't Shakespeare. Robert Downey Jr was Iron Man, that I could tell, but beyond that? It was fun. But that really was it. Fun. There's a lot of technical craft and whatnot, but the movie lived and died by its lead, period. Sure as hell wasn't because of the script, that's for sure.

"I am Iron Man." What a fantastic way to end that movie!

And y'know what? Over the years I've warmed to the movie as a singular work. Still not my favorite thing, but there's a lot of heart in the film and I appreciate that. 

But I don't know of a soul who wasn't sent into a geekout by that post-credits scene! It was bold. Brave. And I wanted to know what would come next.

I make the distinction here between Iron Man the movie and Iron Man the promise. One of them is okay, the other pure gold. No one had ever tried this! The Avengers! Wow! 

Folks, The Incredible Hulk still has a much softer space in my heart.  I know that's heresy. But my goodness I love that movie. But Captain America is not a movie I love. Nor is Thor. But each one ended with a promise: this is going somewhere.

Y'know what I call that in the gaming industry? The Treadmill. Get something good (but not too good) along with a promise that it'll all add up in the end. That's one of the reasons I got out of Marvel Champions; I realized I was playing for what the game could become, with just a bit more time and money.

The Avengers is an amazing movie, on its own merits. Whedon took something that hadn't a snowball chance in hell of working and not only did it but did it with style. I was fine with it ending there. Marvel had managed the impossible. Whedon will never not have that to his credit.

But then they showed Thanos. And we got another dopamine hit. The Treadmill continued. 

Let's cut to the chase. Some of these 26 movies are excellent. Winter Soldier, Civil War, Ragnarok, the Guardians Movies, Iron Man 3... and the rest are merely okay. At best. But The Treadmill had been activated and we wanted to see where it was going. Infinity War was actually pretty dang good.

But what would happen with Endgame? Y'know, the end?

There was a moment in the final fight where I yawned. Yup. Everything up until that fight had been done... alright. But something was wrong and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. And I can tell you what exactly is wrong with this movie, but it may actually work to show you what this movie could have looked like, without the stupid checklist that restrained the Russo Brothers.

Most of the film I would have kept similar, up until that final fight. Hulk does The Snap, everyone asks if it worked and- 

BAM!

THANOS!

Thanos comes in for the kill. Immediate bombardment. Devastation so horrible it would have one upped Avengers. Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America crawl out of the wreckage to find Thanos with the gauntlet almost on. Steve just grabs Mjolnir ("I KNEW IT!") and thrashes Thanos. 

Oh, Chris Evans keeps the freaking beard. Not. A. Question.

Cap's not holding back, calling down a lightning storm that almost fries the atmosphere. "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!!!!!" Steve roars it at the top of his lungs, rattling the fillings of everyone in the audience. Thor and Iron Man jump in. This a brutal, ugly, awful fight. Cap, Thor, and Tony are fighting like animals. They've no idea if a cavalry is coming, they don't know where Hulk is. It's life and death. And it looks like it's going well, too! Until Tony makes a mistake, gets too close. Thanos uses him as a meatshield for one of Cap's super bolts. The suit lights up like a Christmas tree, and then goes dark. Friday's gone. Tony looks dead.

Steve almost stops at that point. He killed Tony! But Thor pushes on. They have to win. They must. They're all that's left. He finally has his moment of leadership. And Steve gets up. He's a mess, but he gets up. But without Tony it's just no use; Thanos cleans their clocks. "I am inevitable."

Steve gets up, one last time."No, you're afraid. And fear, it makes you less. Makes you hunker down, refuse to be vulnerable, not enjoy the time you do have. Fear gives you tunnel vision." Thor gets his ax into Thanos, "The Inevitable does not need fear. And I am just that." Thor is punched off planet. Cap's arm's broken a moment later; he drops Mjolnir. 

"Hi Inevitable. I'm Iron Man." Tony's been getting the damn glove on the whole time. We switch to his POV. We watch the fingers snap. And then the camera falls to the side, with the sound cutting out. It's getting dark.

There's a flash of light. And Stephen Strange walks into the POV frame, one finger held up. And then there's Peter, sobbing, pulling Tony into his arms.

And then there's Pepper. We rest on her face a second. She's luminous.

Darkness.

And then we cut to all the restored heroes standing around Iron Man.

If you cannot tell what I think is wrong with Endgame from that, I don't know what else to tell you. My version would certainly need revisions and probably a bit of pacing work, but y'know what it isn't doing? Checking boxes with a pen. There's no artificial inflation of a fight scene that had very little emotional weight. There was definitely no stupid stupid stupid dear God stupid "We've got her back" pandering nonsense. Just our three heroes, the three that we'd been following in one form or another this whole time, finally reaching their full potential, together.

That's all I needed 

Instead I got The Treadmill. Again. 

No, not this time folks. If something is being reported as truly excellent I'll give it a look. But I'm done with "Just wait for the next! It'll all add up!"

It didn't. And I'm disappointed.

Midnight Mass: A Beginning Critique

Boy, that was something.

Peter wanted me to watch this show. I did. I've a lot of thoughts. And I'm going to start with what I disagree with in this show. Understand I do not do this to show disrespect. On the contrary! This is a good show worthy of your time. But I need to get the bile out of the way. So bear with me please.

This is the most accurate and cutting take on modern Catholicism and Orthodoxy I've ever seen. If you are a believer in either Church you owe it to yourself to watch it. Period. It's not a question. Flanagan is an Ex-Catholic, who has measured and reasonable critiques of both Churches.

Yes, oh smug and self-satisfied Orthodox, especially you. 

We'll get there.

But first, my critiques. Flanagan makes two points I think need to be broken, and hard. I think them a smudge on what is an otherwise pristine production. Flanagan's thoughts on why religion exists are catastrophically wrong, and his ending statement on pantheism is a bandaid on the gaping wound which is theodicy.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, Flanagan is an atheist. And I will respond like he is. And, like most atheists, Flanagan posits that religion was developed for two reasons: the fear of death and early mankind being stupid. These aren't new claims, of course, and are just as tired and trite here as the first time I heard them. Religion was not invented due to a fear of death and needing to explain it. We think of Egypt and its detailed murals of the afterlife for its Pharaohs... and then forget Judaism didn't really have an afterlife. And that the Greek's underworld was a sad and dismal place for most, except the favorites of the gods. Norse mythology certainly doesn't have great options.  I could probably go on.

But I won't.

Here's how religion came about.  I think.

Go into the woods. Or on the prairie. Mountains. Somewhere isolated from our society. Leave your phone behind. 

Quiet, isn't it? It's a different kind of quiet than being in a city. Cities have always felt dead to me. All that concrete, you just get used to things around you not being alive.

Not out here, though. Everything is alive. Stay out there for about an hour or three. However long you can.  And listen. Soothing, isn't it? As you walk through the place you're in you'll find places quieter than others, where it almost feels.. well.. personal! There's an awareness you can find there. It's not an awareness like yours, of course, but if you sit in it and actually listen, jettison your expectations and just... exist... you can be aware something is there.

Now imagine if you couldn't get away from it. Imagine you didn't have that phone. Or anything else in your modern life. We're not aware of it, but electricity actually does make noise. It pulses all around us and blocks out everything else. But if you could hear that silence, all the time, and didn't really travel all that far, you'd get used to that presence, in that place. You'd probably go there just to feel like you're not alone. 

And then one day the thoughts in your head aren't yours. It's Something Else. And, after some initial shock, you might find yourself talking to it. It doesn't speak in a way you'd normally recognize but it is communicating. Turns out you have to have an open mind to the idea that not all consciousness works like yours. You have to accept real diversity.

No, the basis of religion is wonder and joy, as Carlyle says. And it is a wonder and joy that is now alien to us, living in the wreckage of the world wars. Men were different before World War I, that is a fact of history. Only a time as disllusioned and stupid as our could say something so ridiculous. So I don't fault Flanagan. I think that's a far more accurate take. Pre-moderns weren't cowards like us. Death was so present they didn't notice it the same way we do now. To even bring death into the center of the picture is so laughably modern that it almost doesn't deserve a response, except that it's a central idea in this show. So yes, it's wrong, and can prove it by picking up any pre-modern story and forcing yourself not to sneer. It's a titanic effort. But it's worth it.

Flanagan, through the words of Riley, who is really the hero of this show, posits that man likened stars to campfires, and that they had to be incredible because they were in the sky. Basically, since man had limited ways to figure out the world he anthromorphized everything. It is with reason, with science, that the world needs to be examined. Standard new atheist stuff, right out of that modern playbook of foolishness, The Golden Bough. The problem isn't just that this is inaccurate to every single actual shred of evidence we have of ancients, it's that science can only give is information about the material world. You cannot ask what the best way to raise a family is, whether or not morality need exist, or even why we exist. Those aren't scientific questions. Science has its limits, being a method for getting information about the material world. Morals aren't material. Neither is joy. You can't figure those out with science. You can collect material data on them, sure, but that doesn't make thing you're talking about material in itself.

The other thing that Flanagan does that I disagree with is he makes an open case for pantheism as a solution to the problem of evil. The self is just a dream of the cosmos. This sounds familiar.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Azathoth, the Blind Idiot God! He sits in the center of the cosmos, where many profane beings play on their discordant flutes to make sure he keeps dreaming. See, we are his dreams. If he wakes up we wink out. He is all. I'm not sure he even counts as distinct from us. And what a horrifying dream it is, isn't it?? Death and disease and terror and despair and people singing insipid Marty Haugen songs at Catholic mass and dictators and the World Wars and all the petty personal evils I commit involuntarily and paperwork and-

Have I made my point? If we are God we deserve what we get. The child sleeping on my chest as I write this, her energy comes from someplace evil and profane and I owe it to the world to snuff it out, so that way the dream doesn't turn into a nightmare again.

No?

Too dark?

I didn't ask if it was too dark. If you're going to follow the logic follow the fucking logic, all the way to the end. If the abyss blinks you may as well smile and wave and hold its gaze, cause I got news: you came out of it and to it you will return.

No, painted pantheism doesn't solve the problem of evil. 

And Flanagan saying it does is the true horror of the show.

Next week let's be more positive. Flanagan gets so much right. And I can't wait to talk about it. So much good can come out of this show, and I can't wait to share it with you.

War Freaks

Middle school was a truly wretched time for me. Puberty had triggered bodily memories (i.e. I couldn't consciously remember) of my childhood rape, which meant that I was having regular panic attacks with no known cause. Every. Single. Girl. In existence. Tripped off some form of flashback or another. All of them. Especially if it was wrong or gross. The attacks from the neighborhood kids had reached a fever pitch, particularly on my siblings, and I found my pacifism was more than a little challenged. Some part of me had sworn peace and it could no longer justify the position, but didn't know what to move to instead.

And, in case anyone forgot, middle schoolers are some of the cruelest creatures that will ever exist. If any of you think you're a decent person I will ask you one question: "What were you like in middle school?"

Think long and hard before you answer. 

Middle School had rigid ideas about what was acceptable or not. This was mostly related to clothing, of course. Given I was dirt poor and a spastic mess (not to mention extremely small and sarcastic) I was towards the bottom of the social ladder. There were a few kids down there, who were particularly grungy and filthy types, whose homes were much worse than mine and were trying to be kind to each other in the hopes of preserving whatever soul they had left from their childhood. And we'd sit in our little corner table, talking about them, the cool kids who didn't let us have a moment to ourselves (which was untrue, in hindsight). But we were the kind ones, the good ones.

And then one day I got a set of cargo pants and the jocks talked to me for more than two seconds.

When my supposed friends came up to me to talk I shunned them. They were not dressed as I was. I had this involuntary revulsion, this twitch of the body as I became a part of something cool and they weren't. The reaction was outside of my control.

I lost something very important that day: my self-respect.

Because that day I realized that I wasn't really in control of my actions. And had never been. I'd been conditioned by something as simple as my clothing to reject people who had always been kind to me. I was a product of what others had decided upon. It didn't occur to me until later that my friends may have done the same in my shoes. I can hope that's not true, but I'll never know. I withdrew into my own shell after that, and didn't really come out for the rest of my time in middle school. I didn't want to be what others made me, I wanted to be free. And if that meant being alone then so be it.

I really wish I could tell you I learned that lesson right then and there. I really want to. I want to end it on a note of "This was the day I became a free-thinking individual". I want to so badly. But I can't. Because it's not true.

No no, I went and did worse. I could have bounced back from the clothes thing. That's silly, after all, at least in isolation. That doesn't suggest a problem.

At thirteen I got my first girlfriend. My mother thought it quite sweet. And who could blame her? Megan was a sweet girl. She had a gorgeous voice and wanted to become a professional singer. She certainly had the talent for it. And we got along! I mean, according to my own boyish egotistical way of thinking we did. She laughed at my jokes. She didn't look at me like pond scum. That was quite the step up for someone my age.

And then the cool kids caught wind of it. I think I was mocked in good spirit? From what I can remember it was an attempt at good fun. It certainly wasn't cruel. But I'd been so conditioned, so badly beaten, molested, harassed, broken, that I more than overreacted. I immediately broke up with Megan. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 bucks. It couldn't have even been a day later. I dodged questions from my concerned mother about why I wasn't talking to Megan anymore. I hid in my room.

The story took an unanticipated turn, one of which we shall not go into here, beyond that I wound up living in my wife's family's forest, and was removed from having to see Megan, who happened to live up the street.

No, fuck it, we're talking about the flowers too.

Sorry folks, we're going back a second.

See, one day as I walked over to see Megan I saw a bunch of flowers in varying front yard gardens. They were gorgeous flowers. Me being the at-heart amoral person I am, I picked the ones I liked and had a beautiful bouquet to give her. She was absolutely delighted. But later she asked me if I had picked any of the flowers and, if I had, if I had asked permission. Because she walked by those gardens on her way to school and really liked them and wanted to make sure they were taken in good faith.

I opened my mouth to tell the truth. "Yeah, they really liked the idea!" my voice said. Wait, what??? "Totally cool with it." No, no, wait, what's going on???????

This is pertinent, because a few months later I was set to move to the Chicago area. Things had more or less fallen apart with the woman I was to marry later in life, an episode so painful that it would define my teenaged years. But, as I cleaned my room for one of the final times, I got the idea that I needed to call Megan.

She was not happy to hear from me. I opened my mouth. There was so much I wanted to tell her. How everything had managed to fall apart, that I had disappointed myself so thoroughly, that she deserved the truth about those damn flowers and a lot of other lies I'd found myself telling her and wondering why on God's green earth I'd done so. 

"Hey Megan, remember when I broke up with you?"

Just, what the hell, folks, what the hell.

"Yeah. I remember."

"Well, I'm leaving. I'm moving." It was all I could get out. I had no idea what on earth I was doing, this girl had never been anything but honest with me and here I was, twisting the knife instead of telling her the truth. I regretted being ugly to her, that I had always wanted to tell the truth but couldn't afford to lose her because of what I was. There was some seriously dark shit in my head, and I was afraid if one piece of the truth got out the rest would come tumbling out as well. 

And then I'd be alone.

Yes, there was a pause about this long on the phone.

"Okay. Bye."

That phone click still. STILL. Reverberates in my head. 

"But Nathan, you were thirteen! You're thirty-three now!" is what you are all saying now. You miss the point. Thirteen, thirty-three, one hundred and three, it happened. There was a total breakdown in my person, one in which I was merely a slave to something inside of me that caused me to be cruel. It is the privilege of the happy, the majority, to excuse cruelty. It is a prerequisite for being a part of any group, any social movement at all, that you will be cruel. Because of how we have chosen to organize society cruelty is unavoidable. And it is the fantasy of the marginalized that their marginalization makes them more virtuous. It certainly was for me. The instant we think our skin is on the line we turn on each other. It is a fact of human nature. And I promise you that you don't control it like you think you do.

I have since tried to instill an allergy into belonging to any group, for any reason, at all. Being in a group increases your capacity to be cruel. And I can't, just can't, do it again. Never again. When I was in highschool this manifested as me constructing my own social group, with people pulled from all social cliques. I refused to fit with anyone, and if I got too comfortable with a particular group I abandoned them quickly. They didn't seem to notice or mind; I never really fit anyway. But that's exhausting to do. I don't know if it's particularly healthy.

One day the church youth group went into Chicago, to give food to the homeless. The rest of the group was afraid of these dirty and stinky and sometimes crazy folks. I wasn't afraid of them, however. These were the faces of individuals who knew where they stood in the world and had accepted it. And were happy with it, even! How could I be afraid of them? If anything I admired them. They were what they were, in all their hideous glory. As we were handing out food one of them, a tall and skinny black man shouted out to me "HEY, BROTHER!"

I looked at him.

And I couldn't. I just couldn't. He was so damn happy, in that moment. I didn't envy him, I saw him as my better. He knew who he was and he was comfortable. He didn't feel the need to belong to anything, he was just himself. And he was free. And he was calling me his brother. He meant it. I felt that this man could see right into me. He saw it all. And he still called me brother.

Something inside of me breathed for the first time in awhile. I found that I had strode over to him. We hugged, tightly. It was like angel wings were around me. And for one second I felt the weight come off my soul. And I didn't have to question it. For once. And then he was walking away, food in hand, laughing and thanking me for the hug, that it had been a long time since someone had been nice to him like that. Everyone else was asking how the hell I could touch someone like that.

How could I not?

He had seen me.

How could I do anything else? After everything I'd done, involuntary though it was, to be given a chance like that? To have a real choice? Real choices don't come by often, folks. Believe me, I know quite well how rare actual moments of choice are. And what you do with them between the other things you don't actually have control over is what defines you.

Mercy is never to be turned down.