Sorry everyone. My post for today is just the news that I am once more utterly consumed by Worm. If you want to hear why, you can read my first post on the subject. It turns out that the later arcs are also extremely compelling (and no, I’m not actually surprised).
If you want something else of mine to read and you haven’t yet read my Monday post, check that out. I’ll have more for you next week!
Bye bye Boromir.
I love Boromir. I know I’m not the only one who does. And however much I like Boromir when he’s alive, there’s something that’s almost even more (tragically) appealing about him dead. This is less because I like his ruggedly handsome corpse, and more because of what Homer touched on thousands of years ago: in his death, because of how he died, Boromir becomes something more than he was in life. Boromir had what we might call a good death. Key to this, Boromir dies before he truly succumbs to the power of the Ring, and in his death he tries to make up for some of the mistakes that he has made previously. His act of self-sacrifice protecting the Ring-bearer is a fairly hefty weight in his favor on the scales of Judgement, making up for some of his earlier errors. Interestingly enough for such a perilous setting, he is also the only member of the Fellowship to die and stay dead.
It turns out that that single heroic death is pretty standard. Most stories, like most role-playing games, don’t have lots of character death. In reality, people engaging in the same activities that most adventurers and main characters pursue with wild abandon have a fairly high casualty rate. People are killed while fighting, they’re permanently injured, they get sick… and in many cases, their deaths and debilities feel meaningless. For every handful of people that die doing something we would idolize as heroic, far more are killed or injured in an almost banal fashion. Would we feel the same way about Boromir’s death if he had, I don’t know, been killed without having a chance to fight back? Stepped on a landmine? Slipped in the shower and broken his neck?
This article is honestly me cheating a bit as I would have preferred to write a true analysis or something more comprehensive than a question, but I’m busy! So this is what you get. But don’t fret, I think this question is actually extremely interesting, and very important.
Why do we play games? I ask this because I recently got into a debate and one participant countered criticism about a game’s setup with, “I hear people play games for the story.” Now this very well may be true since many games have fun stories, but so do books and movies, and you don’t have to fight your way to the next bit of stories in those. You don’t have to spend hours jumping from one plot point to the next. So why do we turn to games for story when we have books and movies?
To me I think the answer is “participation.” Games allow you to participate in the story. But it is with this answer that I then begin to question certain games which don’t let me actively participate in the story, but instead just force me to do task after task that holds no real meaning in the overall narrative. Along this vein, should we forgive games with great stories for their bad gameplay? I could go on, but I actually wrote a bit about this previously in my article about games and art, but I think we can go further into this question.
Since I need to get going I’ll leave the floor open for you to counter, explain, extrapolate, divulge, or what-have-you in the comments below.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Julia Griffin’s Snow Queen.
I admit it: I’ve long been a fan of pretty pictures. It’s no surprise, then, that I’m a fan of Julia Griffin’s work. For example, I just cannot get over this kid’s hair. The fine detail, the shimmer of light, and the delicacy of each strand seems incredible. And the Snow Queen’s fur stole is similarly impressive; I feel like I’m looking at the fur of one of my ferrets.
Done entirely in colored pencils, this is just one of many images created by my friend Julia Griffin for her retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen. She’s been working on this project for the past three years, and the time has finally come for her to turn her collection of images into a book. If you like that picture, or if you like stories about young heroines, or even if you just like the idea having a pretty picture book, you should check out Julia’s Kickstarter project.
You want to see more art? There’s more good stuff where this came from:
I continue to be amazed by the semi-stippled effect she’s created, as well as by her impressive attention to detail.
You know, I was going to wax loquacious about how cool I think this stuff is, but I think I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves. You should totally check out Julia’s work, and take a look at Julia’s Snow Queen.
You can see some of Julia’s other work here.
Funny how these things work. I was going to write an article about this book for last Wednesday, but then I was caught up by Worm. If you haven’t read that article already, I strongly suggest that you do. The truth is, I’m still torn by the temptation to just fall back into reading more instead of writing this. But A Mighty Fortress deserves its dues, and it’s best for me to write about it before all recollections of my previous life are completely washed away by Worm.
A Mighty Fortress returns to the world of Safehold, with all of the previously established intrigue, religious strife, and budding world-wide warfare that David Weber has thrown together into this meaty fictional stew. At the end of the previous book in the series, I was feeling a little let down: it wasn’t that the book was bad, it was simply that it followed my expectations so completely that I didn’t feel inspired to immediately grab the next book. But now I’m glad that I did; while it wasn’t some magical honeymoon moment, like the first denouement of a radiantly new setting, it was most definitely a lot of fun. Still true to form and somewhat predictable, but totally worth the read.
Lock up your doors, close your shades, phone in sick. You’re about to disappear, pulled down by the rapturous embrace of another internet fic. It will keep you up late, and get you up early. For those of you with a hankering for excellent stories and an intelligent treatment of what happens when the superhumans come home to roost, I have to share the new drug in town. As with all good drugs, the first hit is free. Unlike most, the other hits are free too.
I was jonesing for more Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality yesterday (you know, that fic that I liked so much), and thought I’d check in to see whether there was a new post. While I was out of luck on that front, the author, Eliezer, did post a new note on November 1st. Better yet, he recommended another piece of internet-based fiction: Worm. The name isn’t much, I know, but bear with me.
Worm is excellent. As I write this, I’ve just lost an hour and a half of my afternoon to its charms, and I’m only pulling myself away because I absolutely have to force myself to write something. As soon as I have enough of this written that I can put off finishing it until Wednesday morning, I’m certain I’ll dive back in. It is compelling and appealing, and I really don’t want to stop. I don’t want to write my own material, I just want to read more Worm.
Whew, ok. That was all I got down before I fell back into the fic. If you want to know more about the story that’s grabbed me, read on. Continue reading
Another plane ride, another unexpected movie review. I seriously hadn’t planned on watching The Lone Ranger, but boredom plus free makes for some powerful incentives.
I didn’t watch the film in theaters because it just didn’t seem worth $10 – $12. I’m still not sure whether it’s worth that much, but the movie passed the “acceptably fun” test for being stuck without other entertainment on a plane, and it didn’t explode with the offensiveness I had expected. That’s not to say that others won’t find it offensive, since some clearly already have (Hanay Geiogamah, for example). In fact, coming around to it, I had such low expectations for the movie that it can’t help but have exceeded them. Please bear this in mind. I’ll do my best not to spoil anything too much, and I’ll warn you before the spoilers get hot and heavy… but some are inevitable. Read on as you see fit.
Surprised to find that I like the show? So was I!
Girls und Panzer is an anime about girls in their early teens being (mostly) nice to each other. It’s also about tanks, and about young girls shooting at other girls driving other tanks. Don’t think too hard about it. The show is actually fairly high quality; the tanks are lovingly rendered in well-done CG that meshes with the rest of the art, and the writing delivers pretty much everything you could want from an anime about young girls and their tanks. Besides which, the premise is just too much fun: Girls und Panzer offers heavily armed and armored vehicles cavorting across the landscape as their adorable and irrepressibly friendly crews wrestle them into thrilling mock-combat.
If that doesn’t pique your interest, don’t bother. If, on the other hand, you think it sounds interesting… read on!
Pretty cover art? Check.
Fantasy Flight is good at making fun games, and their rehashing of the original Dune boardgame is no exception. Though they were unable to nab the necessary IP, they’ve cleverly injected the mechanics and flavor of the original Dune into the universe created for Twilight Imperium. But simply recreating an old game was not enough; they then streamlined and shaped it into something that you can pick up through one round of experimental play. The end result is a highly entertaining game with excellent group dynamics, one that introduces just enough complexity to give you lots of material to work with without overwhelming you with its intricacies.
I love chiptunes. I have met few other people who love chiptunes as much as me. Hell, I have met few other people who can even sit down and listen to chiptunes without getting annoyed. It is arguable that my love for chiptunes comes from nostalgia. It is true that some of my favorite games are old enough that their soundtracks are chiptunes (and I do listen to them recreationally). But I would argue that my love of the genre is more than just a fond looking back at simpler times.
Fistful of Wits 