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.
Continue readingDead Boy Detectives (Netflix 2024)
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?
Continue readingHow has Fallout been my chill-out?
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?
Continue readingAnother slow week, & The Work of Art
Packing, 4/18/24
My everyday life is upside down, so please enjoy this soothing picture of Alex the cat.
Fog & Fireflies, by T.H. Lehnen
I want to see this animated.
In so many ways this made me think of something from Hayao Miyazaki. There’s a certain blend of wonder and fright within a gradually accelerating story that feels so distinctively Miyazaki-esque to me. This story captures that.
It has the meditative pacing. It has the gentleness over slowly growing undertones of threat that I associate with Studio Ghibli’s work. And it has Ogma, a classic Miyazaki-heroine; as the pressure mounts and Ogma’s world slips out from under her feet, her understanding of the world is transformed while her stubborn and hopeful nature remains.
Like I said, Fog & Fireflies feels extremely Miyazaki. I think it would thrive as a Studio Ghibli creation.
This doesn’t surprise me, as I’ve known T.H. Lehnen for years. We’ve been friends since we were in college and have played many hours of roleplaying games together, particularly Call of Cthulhu. I can see some of the horror that I know T.H. Lehnen enjoys creeping around inside this story. It’s that horror which I think completes the Miyazaki comparison.
Continue readingCascade Failure (on GeeklyInc)
I promised to link my review of L.M. Sagas’ Cascade Failure when it posted on GeeklyInc, but that entirely slipped my mind. The review is up! It’s been up for almost a month. My apologies.
In case you are deathly allergic to clicking external links, here’s the tl;dr…
Continue readingExpectations and Avatar: The Last Airbender
Last week I posted about expectations and Masters of the Air. I skirted around something similar in my previous live action Avatar: The Last Airbender post but, having now finished the first season of live action A:TLA, I’m going to say it directly.
This show suffers greatly from my expectations. If I’d never seen the animated show, I’d be more excited about this live action version. I also just rewatched some of the animated A:TLA because I feared that my memories of it might have been too fond, and…
Continue readingExpectations and Masters of the Air (Apple TV 2024)
Right around the release of Masters of the Air, I saw a number of moderately critical reviews of the show. None of them were harsh pans, but there was a thread of dissatisfaction that wound through their titles. I didn’t want spoilers, so I limited myself to browsing and skimming. I concluded that these reviews were mostly fluff pieces composed of many words saying little, building a 500+ word post from two rumors, an impression, and a handful of vibes—what I think of as publishing-padding, intended to fill post slots on a website.
For the most part, these reviews changed in tone as the show ran its course.
What I gleaned from these negative reviews was that the reviewers, or whomever they were sourcing their impressions from, had mismatched expectations. They were frustrated, I guess. They were watching Masters of the Air and expecting Band of Brothers.
Continue readingThe Gentlemen (Netflix, 2024)
Have I tired of Guy Ritchie?
The first episode of Netflix’s The Gentlemen reminds me of Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain without the leavening of self-awareness. Pain & Gain leaves us, the audience, with enough room to see the idiocy and toxic obsession involved. From the movie’s first moments we are offered a perspective that might empathize with the main characters, but doesn’t ask us to sympathize with or believe them. In that way, Pain & Gain feels like a critique of the stupidity and myopic ambition of its characters.
The Gentlemen might critique its characters’ beliefs… maybe. But The Gentlemen doesn’t offer the distance and outside perspective that Pain & Gain does. Even when it showcases the absurd, the first episode of The Gentlemen takes the main characters seriously and takes their perspectives. It believes its own hype. Instead of offering a self-aware critique of people’s unwillingness to admit that they’re stuck swimming laps in a shallow pool, this first episode puts us inside the fishbowl, trying to find a better fishman.
It’s flashy and stylish and dramatic. It also feels a bit stupid.
Continue reading
Fistful of Wits 