Author Archives: Henry

Underdog Sports Movie Showdown, The Boys in the Boat vs The Long Game

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I flew this week. On my flight, I watched The Boys in the Boat and The Long Game.

Each movie is a triumphalist underdog sports movie. Each movie is dedicated to a sport that I know little about. I think I’m marginally more fond of or impressed by crew (specifically, eight-person rowing teams) than golf. I like the drama of team sports, and appreciate the skill required to work that smoothly together, even if I have little interest in crew in general. I admire the skill and tenacity of golfers, certainly, but if I had to pick between a movie about golf and a movie about crew, well…

I’d pick the boat.

I’ve heard that you’re supposed to be more prone to enjoying movies that you watch on an airplane. Perhaps that’s because they pull you out of the noisy, cramped tin can soaring through the air at uncomfortable speeds and deposit you (for a limited time) in some other world of dramatic and emotional experience. Regardless of whether what I’ve heard is true, it can’t rescue a movie from simply being worse than its competition.

And “worse than the competition” is a galling and ironic position for a triumphant underdog sports movie to be in, don’t you think?

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Immersion & Worldbuilding in Co-op Video Games

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Void Crew, Deep Rock Galactic, and Helldivers 2: three co-op games, three “shooters” (kind of, more on that later), and three games that build on their own self-contained fiction. I’ve played all three. I’ve enjoyed all three. So why do I only admire two of them?

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Away in the woods, 6/20/24

Posted on by Henry

I don’t expect to have anything else for you today. I’m currently away in the woods. I hope you enjoy yourselves, and aren’t too overheated.

Trying (Apple TV)

Posted on by Henry

There’s a particular flavor of social awkwardness or social strife in shows and movies that hits me hard in a weird squirmy spot a little below my diaphragm. It spreads from there, worming around inside me, usually moving upwards. It’s a profoundly distressing and uncomfortable experience, and it happens most often in certain kinds of dramas, social comedies, or romances.

This experience has been with me since I was a child. I can still remember wriggling in my seat on the couch while watching movies, turning myself upside down and standing on my head as I tried to untwist or escape the awful tension inside me. I haven’t yet learned precisely what kinds of awkwardness and strife cause this, perhaps because I try to avoid the experience as much as possible, but it crops up time and again.

Unfortunately, Trying hit that spot.

That’s too bad, really. I thought the first episode was consistently funny, even as it teetered between sweet and almost-painful in that squirmy way. If the second episode hadn’t hit me so hard, I think I would have continued really enjoying the show. Let me explain:

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Over the Woodward Wall, by A. Deborah Baker

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Over the Woodward Wall (written by Seanan McGuire under her pen name A. Deborah Baker) is the first in a series of middle grade adventure stories in a mixed up sometimes-lovely sometimes-scary fairytale land. In many ways, it evokes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The setting’s surreality contrasts perfectly with the very real-feeling children who are this story’s stars, and the book does an excellent job of conveying earnestly true human experiences and life lessons while taking us on a dreamy-and-nightmarish impossible (sorry, I mean improbable) journey.

This should be a guaranteed home run for me. However, my fondness for this book ebbs and flows, a cycle driven by my mixed opinions about the narrator. It is my fondness that shifts though—I like it, I just like it by varying amounts depending on my mood. So what do I simultaneously admire and want to complain about?

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Butterfly in the Sky (2022)

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I have started (but not yet finished) Butterfly in the Sky, the documentary about the creation of Reading Rainbow. I stopped when I did because I knew that if I kept watching I’d watch all the way through, and I had work to do. The documentary hooked me and delighted me—much as the show did when I was little.

I grew up on Reading Rainbow (and Star Trek: The Next Generation, which created some confusion for young me). Young me didn’t understand why Geordi La Forge didn’t need his visor when he was telling me about books…

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D&D 5e’s alignment trap

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The 5e alignment system is a useful shorthand and a misleading trap. The Outer Planes as presented in the 2014 Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide only make the alignment system’s problems worse. The perfect overlap between alignments and planes—and the total lack of alternative Outer Planes—reinforces the alignment system’s worst inclinations: easy stereotyping, reductionist thinking, and a restriction of creative possibilities.

So what the heck are you supposed to do?

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No more bland-aids: make your Clerics interesting

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Hot take: clerics in D&D 5e feel like the blandest superheroes. Without a clear relationship with a greater power or a faith, it’s easy for them to float in the narrative void like a cornucopia of bandaids. The solution lies in placing more expectations on them, constraining them, and giving them a deeper connection with the story’s world and whatever they serve.

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Dead Boy Detectives (Netflix 2024)

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I’m two episodes into Dead Boy Detectives and I’m having a blast. Something about this feels wonderfully light and playful, despite the show’s somber, grisly, and morbid elements.

What can I say?

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How has Fallout been my chill-out?

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It’s been a minute.

I’ve been packing, clearing out, and moving into a smaller space (plus storage). This is, as ever, revealing. It’s also a tremendously time-hungry pain in the ass.

I’ve had less time for consuming media as a result of all this, but I’ve sometimes watched an episode of Fallout as a way of relaxing in the evenings. And I do mean relaxing. But why is this show about awful stuff not awful?

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