Monthly Archives: October 2020

Last week’s movies: 6 Underground & Enola Holmes

Posted on by Henry

I saw Enola Holmes last weekend, and saw 6 Underground the week before. One I can’t recommend, and the other I’d recommend to nearly everyone.

First, 6 Underground was a very pretty mess. I haven’t looked up who was in charge of writing (Paul Wernick & Rhett Reese?), edits, effects, or anything else past Michael Bay’s role as director, but somewhere along the line a great deal of the movie fell apart. If you want a simplistic portrayal of regime change a la Batman, with minimally developed characters and frequent holes in the story—and the world’s continuity in general—then 6 Underground is for you. As per usual, Bay is extremely good at finding beautiful camera angles and showcasing big action sequences… but he mostly ignores the other stuff that movies are made of.

Sometimes I fear I hallucinated my enjoyment of Bay’s Pain & Gain, and worry that I should re-watch it to see whether it’s still worth holding up as a counter-argument to my usual dislike of Bay’s movies. I haven’t gone back to it yet. It’s hard to muster my enthusiasm, when I’ve just watched something else by Bay.

Thankfully, Enola Holmes (eponymously named for the main character) was delightful.

I like middle grade and young adult fiction. If you’ve followed anything else here for a while, I doubt that will be a surprise. Enola Holmes feels like an excellent translation of Upper Middle Grade / Young Adult storytelling into movie form, and I would love to see a sequel (which I understand is in the works, lawsuits from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate notwithstanding). Relatedly, I now want to read the book series this movie was based on, the first book of which is The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer.

A few choice tidbits in no real order… I’m a fan of the movie’s little historical nods, especially including suffragists (later called suffragettes) who really did learn jiujitsu in order to take on cops who tried to break up their demonstrations. The movie’s (and I assume, the book series’) extrapolation of the Holmes family’s dynamic is excellent fun, and I loved seeing the growth of Sherlock (in the background) in response to Enola’s prodding—heck, any time Millie Bobbie Brown and Henry Cavill were on screen together was fun. Honestly, putting Helena Bonham Carter, Millie Bobbie Brown, and Henry Cavill together in a movie is a pretty strong lure for me. I also can’t overstate how glad I am for a period piece like this to include the women’s suffrage movement, and to draw the traditional male protagonists’ attention to it without making those protagonists the focus of the story.

If you enjoy Sherlock Holmes stories or Middle Grade / Young Adult narratives, and don’t mind some fourth-wall breaking commentary from the main character, I strongly recommend Enola Holmes.

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untitled, 10/22/20

Posted on by Henry

My thesis dealt with political speech by the President of the United States (POTUS). My original topic was ‘enemies,’ and how they were constructed by the POTUS in political speech. I ultimately had to change and narrow my topic to the use of the word ‘government’ by the POTUS in the State of the Union address, because I didn’t have a clear enough consistent and comparable body of data.

I wish Trump hadn’t changed that so much.

No other POTUS has so relied on creating and using “us vs them” relationships in their speech. It’s like he doesn’t know how *not* to. Like he doesn’t know how to say anything without bringing “us vs them” into it.

It’s infuriating.

I hope that our political speech can change. I hope that we can spend more time building each other up instead of driving wedges between us.

I don’t expect that any time soon. Seems likely we have more trouble to get through first.

Picking Players: Fun vs Creativity, Quick Thoughts

Posted on by Henry

When making a group of players for your RPGs you want people you like playing with, and you want people who will contribute creatively. The first is more important than the second. Honestly, I think that’s true in nearly any group you’re part of; you’d best be able to get along with them if you’re going to spend so much time together. If you’re spending time together for fun, that’s doubly true. I don’t mean there can’t be friction, but I do mean that you should feel comfortable with them, able to ask for what you want and have them honor those requests and talk with you about it.

Those two factors—whether you like spending time with someone, and whether that someone contributes creatively—aren’t entirely separate from each other. Someone that you like playing with, and who likes playing with you, will have an easier time falling into a collaborative creative rhythm over time. Someone who contributes creatively is likely to add things to your game that make it better, and which make playing with them more fun. But.

I don’t think it matters how much creative material someone adds to your game / story / group if they are not fun to play with or be around. Spending time with someone who contributes creatively while being fundamentally not fun to be around is honestly miserable. If they keep adding new ideas but can’t play well with others, or if they aren’t willing to engage with your time together *as play,* you have a recipe for trouble. When I’ve faced this before, I’ve felt stuck: the player’s contributions are excellent, and feel good, but I’m constantly reminded that the player themselves is just not quite right as a fit for the group.

Without outside requirements to include a negative player, there’s no reason to keep them. Until something changes, their creative contributions aren’t worth the added stress of working around their presence. That doesn’t mean that people can’t change, but it helps to have a certain level of shared trust and context before encouraging someone to shift their way of being in a group. Whether you want to put in the work to help them change their behavior is entirely up to you, and that work is *not* required of you. In the long run it may be helpful for them if you tell them why you don’t want to play with them, but you don’t have to engage in that potential drama if you don’t want to.

Relatedly, paying attention to how other people in your group feel about each other is worthwhile. Your experience, obviously, isn’t the only one in your group. If someone in your group is making another person miserable, that should be resolved too.

Also, just because you like spending time with someone in other situations doesn’t mean that they’ll necessarily be a good match to play RPGs with. It helps, but it’s no guarantee.

The Heart Garden

Posted on by Henry

The Heart Garden, as it is called in rumors and legend, is said to lie deep within the brambled thickets of a vast wild… possibly within several different wilds if the stories are true. Those stories say that, no matter from whence one arrived, it is always warm there, and it is lit from within by a softly pulsing glow that rises from the black earth itself. This pulse is always a heart beat, a quiet lub-dub that can be felt through the soles of one’s boots. It suffuses the land and the Garden, and the fruit which grow within that dense thicket are said to pulse in time with it. Those fruit, the heart-fruit, hang at the center of the legends told of the place: glistening dark red, dripping with their juice, all beating in time. They’re said to be the size of a large clenched fist, fibrous, dense, and chewy. But their properties, the stories told of what comes to those who can eat an entire fruit still fresh and warm from the vine, drive the otherwise sane and sensible to unconscionable risk in their pursuit.

The heart-fruit are said to offer many different things, if one knows how to choose wisely.

Some gift the eater with a true vision—though whether prophecy, the ability to see through all lies and misdirection, or ancient knowledge is unclear.

Other heart-fruit are said to beat with the land’s pulse within the chest of the one who eats them, sharing the vitality of the earth itself. There are tales of those so gifted who have ventured into the wilderness to find refuge from the depredations of civilization, or who have gathered up their strength to oust those who twist the earth against itself… or even those who’ve gathered others around them to teach them to hear the land’s heartbeat themselves.

Legends speak of the foolish, those who chose their fruit poorly and so grew a new vine in the Garden from their fertile chest. They also speak of the brave—who sought the heart-fruit for others and thereby returned them from the brink of death—and the kind, who planted seeds of their own gifts in the Garden so that others might benefit from them. There is no one story, no one fate of one who eats that fruit.

Nor is the Garden untended, for the Garden’s keepers are spoken of in hushed tones and are known to linger in the brambles and watch those who seek the Garden’s depths. Most claim that the keepers are robed and retiring, reluctant to speak with others or to engage with the world beyond their Garden. They are sworn to tend the place they protect, and to train the vines together until some greater pattern emerges and the heartbeat may be heard loud and clear. These keepers may be approached and questioned, but they are not bound to help any who trespass within their thicket.

Indeed, it’s claimed that some keepers have set the Garden itself against interlopers. Beasts roam the thicket and may pursue for sport or hunger. Strange mushrooms grow amongst the rich loam, with spores that bring sweet sleep and more rich nourishment for the spreading mycelia. The vines constrict and cluster, choke and grasp. Many who seek the Heart Garden are never again seen.

But yet there are stories which tell how to reach the Garden, and while many fail to reach it those few who succeed all hold the same lesson. The Garden is not bound. It is not a place as other places may be. If it is sought, and if the seeker holds the Heart Garden’s path in their own heart, they will pursue the Garden through the depths of the thickest wilds they can find. Only when they are lost within the deepest reaches, when the growth around them blocks out all light, will they find the brambles drawing closer and tighter until they give way to the warm black earth and the crawling sensation up the back of one’s spine. Then it is up to the seeker to find their way into the center of the Heart Garden, following the beat of the earth and the hints of light which lead them on.

That is the only way in. But no matter what route one took in, the journey out is never the same.