also his drawings. make me insane. im pretty sure ive made a post about this before a while ago but i just love looking at his silly little drawings it adds so much to his character. even after everything he's been through he's still got some humor and lightheartedness in him. and he's really good at drawing too!! so it's likely something he's been doing since he was a kid

And now that Pride Month's over, Let's Talk About Pratchett.

The companies have taken down their flags. The marches and rallies are fading away. Rainbow colours are melting back into grayscale. And now that all the hubbub is dying down, let's talk about an author who did perhaps more than any other to introduce gender-and-sexual minorities to the public (and not just as a cute oddity to be cooed at from a distance, either).

Let's talk about an author whose works are perhaps the most representative, hard-hitting, and wholesome, in all of well-written English literature.

Let's talk about Pratchett.

Before we dive into the lovely little nitty-gritties, I want to just take a quick look at what Pratchett's writing really is, and what makes it so very exceptional. It's pretty simple, really.

He's funny.

That's the "secret" formula to Terry Pratchett's success across the global; he's funny everywhere, everywhen, across multiple generations and multiple decades and multiple geopolitical borders. You don't have to read Discworld with a lot of effort, thinking deeply after every line about the message the author is trying to convey. You don't have to analyze every character and every situation to see how the author is sculpting a crystal-clear mirror and holding it up to the face of Society. When I'm feeling down (cause college and life and pressure and dreams) and wanna start gouging out my forearms with my nails, I can just curl with one of my comfort books (like Men At Arms, or Unseen Academicals) and laugh and chuckle and just feel better. You can just enjoy it.

Now, I think, I can get to the fun stuff; analysing all of my favourite characters and the roles that they represent in mirroring Pratchett's view of People. (I should mention at this point that I am mainly going to be focussing on the Sam Vimes novels, and what I will be writing are my own thoughts and opinions. Anyone who knows more - or has just read/interpreted the books differently - is of course free to add their own musings.)

Fred Colon: Sergeant Colon is that rarest and yet most typical of things: Fred Colon is an ordinary person. He is no hero, or genius, or leader. He is not evil or even mildly malicious. And that is the very point that needs to be understood. People (most people) are not deliberately evil; they are, on the whole, fairly decent people who treat their friends well and try not to make enemies. It is just... petty selfishness, petty prejudices, petty apathy... all summated in every single member of the populace, and suddenly everyone knows that dwarfs are just money-grubbing bastards who'd bite your kneecaps off for a copper coin and trolls are dumber than the rocks they're made off but they'll as soon smash you to pulp as look at you and you can't trust a vampire cause they're too dead to be alive and-

Carrot Ironfoundersson: Captain Carrot is a cliché. Captain Carrot is a cliché wrapped inside a trope hidden in a Mary Sue, all turned on its head. Captain Carrot, rightful heir to the throne of Ankh, leader of all manner of beings, man who once beat Detritus in a fistfight... is not the hero of this story. In any other series, the story would have been of a brave new cop (who is also the king) standing up to the corruption and lawlessness of the Patrician while taking advice from his grizzled old half-drunk commander who dies four chapters into the first book with some vaguely portentous words that the hero remembers at the very last minute to give him the tools/strength/motivation necessary to keep fighting. But this is Pratchett. And the hero of the story, if there is one, is very much the grizzled old commander. Two other points have also always struck me about Carrot. The first is the matter of identity. Biologically, Carrot is very much a human, but in all other ways that matter he is entirely a dwarf - his name is Kzad-bhat, and even the deep-down dwarfs do not question his dwarfishness - and yet that does make him any less a human. In this is reflected the multiplicity of identity (not just of gender, which is what most people immediately jump to, but all identities). The second point is of the relationship between Carrot and Angua, which seemed to me a representation of a healthy dom/sub relationship. Unlike the twisted shit we find on ao3 (and in some published books that I don't feel that I need to name), Angua is at no point portrayed as lesser, weaker, incapable, dependent, or deferent. She is her own person, and the two of them just happen to have this kind of chemistry.

Samuel Vimes: Ahhhh. His Grace, His Excellency, The First Duke of Ankh, Blackboard Monitor Samuel Vimes, Commander of the City Watch. The protagonist, if not quite the hero, of the series. He is not perfect, not even close. He is casually discriminatory (species-ist?) and thoughtless in most of what he says. his saving graces are that his discrimination is universally applied at all beings living and dead, and that he has never, not even once, allowed his personal feelings of prejudice stand in the way of justice (which is at times, all that separates him from Fred Colon). Does that mean that it's all okay, and everything is now fine and dandy and hunky-dory? No. Not even fucking close. Words matter and actions matter and even how you feel deep inside - all of it matters. Prejudice is prejudice, and it is always wrong. there are no mitigating circumstances, no 'yes, but...' that can make it acceptable. But only an idealistic idiot would say that it is not better than the alternative. And this is the reason that Vimes is one of my favourite protagonists; he is not a hero. He is real.

Leonard of Quirm: A parody of the public perception of a genius (perhaps of Roundworld's Tesla and da Vinci), I have loved Leonard as a character ever since I realised he was gay. Allow me to elaborate. As I was recently re-reading Jingo, I noticed a line that went something like 'He started drawing how The-Going-Under-The-water-Safely-Device could be improved, piloted by a muscular man who was not overdressed'. And just like that, a couple dozen other off-hand comments slotted into place and I realized the homosexual truth. And I love this portrayal of homosexuality, because most books or movies or tv shows or fanfictions with a gay MC (or even sidekick) tend to have a storyline roughly equivalent to 'hey my name is [insert name here] and I'm GAY and I have a destiny to save the world and my family and my GAY boyfriend whom I'm dating cause I'm GAY and before I go outside I have to pick my outfit really carefully better go with salmon-rose-flutter pink cause I'm GAY and now I'm outside and I'm not very popular and this is my tragic backstory cause a lot of people don't like me cause I'm GAY and-' Yeah. This is not good writing. By barely mentioning anything, Pratchett somehow still managed to emphasise that a) homosexuality is one of your identities, not all of them and b) just because a story has a character who is gay doesn't mean that the story becomes about a character being gay.

Trev Likely: One sentence. Just one sentence. 'Hating people was too much work.'

If you actually made it this far, you are obliged to reblog. I'm sorry, but I don't make the rules. (Please?)

Dialogues With A Dreg, Part Four

Spoilers for Destiny and Destiny 2 ahead.

Hello, Guardian.

Let’s drop the allegory for a while. I don’t think it was working to begin with, and I prefer to speak plainly instead of in prose.

I love the game you serve as the protagonist in, at least mechanically. Part of the reason I’ve put nearly a thousand hours in piloting you around and clicking on enemy heads is because I’m chasing that satisfying “pop” when something’s brain explodes after I get them with a linear fusion rifle. I guess it’s better than being addicted to drugs or alcohol or video games with gambling mechan- oh shit god dammit wait, fuck, there’s Eververse here, I forgot.

Anyway, Destiny 2 has my full buy-in when it comes to gameplay, as I think it’s grabbed many folks in its three-year lifespan. I’m not as big a fan of the many modes to choose from in the game, and I think the story – when looked at holistically – is more-or-less a wash. But one aspect I can’t ignore is one I’ve tried to reason out in these Dialogues: Bungie, the game’s developer, wants me to live at least part-time in this world, and there are certain ramifications that come with that.

I first noticed these ramifications during the Faction Rallies in D2Y1, when it asked me to pick a faction and fuck shit up across the solar system. I picked what I thought was the coolest-looking faction, a group of (it turned out) thanatonautic, neoliberal warmongers calling themselves Future War Cult. They basically killed themselves over and over to see the future, and as a result they want Guardians everywhere to become absolute war machines. But as far as I could see, they were a “better” option than the other two factions: Dead Orbit, who just wanted to get the fuck out of the solar system and away from the Traveler, our slumbering charge, and New Monarchy.

New Monarchy is the MAGA hat gang of Destiny 2. They want to keep humanity safe by locking them inside the Last City, forming an eternal Guardian-led kingdom, and ruling with an iron fist. Yeesh.

In my first Faction Rally, I fought hard for FWC. I liked the gear they were giving me, not to mention the guns I could earn from them. They had an aesthetic I liked, and the story of thanatonautics is interesting enough for me to want to know more about how all that worked. But I didn’t like the insistence that we “reclaim” the far-flung reaches of the solar system, as if they belonged to us inherently. I didn’t like the ramping-up, constant drumbeat for war they were throwing out. Even if Lakshmi-2, FWC’s leader, seemed like the eye of a hurricane – calm, yet clearly still dangerous – the hurricane she was the center of was starting to irk me.

I’m sorry to say I didn’t drop FWC in subsequent Rallies, even if I wasn’t as enthusiastic about them as I was initially. If I could pick again, though, I know now I’d pick Dead Orbit. They had it the most right, plus Peter Stormare plays Arach Jalaal, the faction’s leader, which is just cool.

But the winner of pretty much every rally was New Monarchy. I couldn’t see the appeal, even if you stripped the clear trump-ass bullshit away. But a LOT of other Destiny 2 players fought for them, and they were the victors constantly. Bungie took the Faction Rally away in D2Y2, but it basically put me on an inexorable thought track to where we are today.

Simply put, I think the world that Destiny 2 is advocating for is at best a fascist one. At worst, we’re talking about reinstating the divine right of kings. Not only does mortal humanity lose in this bargain, but every other living creature inhabiting our solar system suffers for it as well.

Now, Guardian, I can see that this is an unwelcome statement to hear. I get it. After spending the entire five years of your existence thanklessly putting around the solar system and killing gargantuan, god-level threats to humanity and life itself, watching some nerdy, doughy writer cast aspersions on everything you do probably extends past irritation and into wishing you could shoulder-charge me into Glimmer particles. But I want to be clear: yours isn’t the only video game world – or even the only sci-fi world in general – that does this. As Nic Reuben (the original Destiny 2 fascism warner) put it in his 2017 post on the subject, Bungie writers are “blindly following a set of culturally encoded science-fantasy tropes”:

“‘True leaders are born. It’s genetic. The right to rule is inherited.’ Any time you play as a really, really ridiculously good looking person killing mobs of ugly things for a vaguely defined reason, you’re witnessing this kind of ideology first hand.”

One thing I would like to point out, though, before we continue: Guardian, I know you personally. I’ve fought as you across the stars. I know you don’t inherently want to rule over anything. You are intentionally a blank slate, you never voice your own desires except for that one time when a possessed Awoken prince killed your best ramen bud, and I want to believe that the only thing you want — which is the only thing I want — is to race Sparrows on Mars. But the version of you I play as is not the only version of you that exists. There are over a million of you. And aside from that million iterations of you that exist in this game world, there are others who absolutely want to rule. It’s high time to interrogate this world.

Fantasy Space Fascism: The Game

In his book Against the Fascist Creep, freelance journalist and Portland State Ph.D candidate Alexander Reid Ross defines fascism as “an ideology that draws on old, ancient, and even arcane myths of racial, cultural, ethnic, and national origins to develop a plan for the ‘new man.'” He continues:

“Fascism is also mythopoetic insofar as its ideological system does not only seek to create new myths but also to create a kind of mythical reality (ed. emphasis mine), or an everyday life that stems from myth rather than fact. Fascists hope to produce a new kind of rationale envisioning a common destiny that can replace modern civilization. The person with authority is the one who can interpret these myths into real-world strategy through a sacralized process that defines and delimits the seen and the unseen, the thinkable and the unthinkable.

“That which is most commonly encouraged through fascism is producerism, which augments working-class militancy against the ‘owner class’ by focusing instead on the difference between ‘parasites’ (typically Jews, speculators, technocrats, and immigrants) and the productive workers and elites of the nation. In this way, fascism can be both functionally cross class and ideologically anticlass, desiring a classless society based on a ‘natural hierarchy’ of deserving elites and disciplined workers. By destroying parasites and deploying some variant of racial, national, or ethnocentric socialism, fascists promise to create an ideal state or suprastate – a spiritual entity more than a modern nation-state, closer to the unitary sovereignty of the empire than political systems of messy compromises and divisions of power.”

Ross, A. R. (2017). Against the Fascist Creep. AK Press.

The Destiny franchise begins with you, a freshly-reborn Guardian, shooting and punching your way through a hive of vaguely-arachnid aliens your Ghost companion calls “Fallen.” You find a decrepit jumpship deep in the heart of the Old Russia Cosmodrome, which your Ghost fires up and uses to take you to the “last safe city on Earth,” a walled metropolis underneath the Traveler. You first meet with the Vanguard triumvirate, Titan Commander Zavala, Warlock Ikora, and Hunter Cayde-6, and then, after completing some tasks for them, you are granted an audience with the Speaker (voiced by Bill Nighy):

“THE SPEAKER: There was a time when we were much more powerful. But that was long ago. Until it wakes and finds its voice, I am the one who speaks for The Traveler.

“You must have no end of questions, Guardian. In its dying breath, The Traveler created the Ghosts to seek out those who can wield its Light as a weapon—Guardians—to protect us and do what the Traveler itself no longer can.

“GUARDIAN: What happened to it?

“THE SPEAKER: I could tell you of the great battle centuries ago, how the Traveler was crippled. I could tell you of the power of The Darkness, its ancient enemy. There are many tales told throughout the City to frighten children. Lately, those tales have stopped. Now… the children are frightened anyway. The Darkness is coming back. We will not survive it this time.

“GHOST: Its armies surround us. The Fallen are just the beginning.

“GUARDIAN: What can I do?

“THE SPEAKER: You must push back the Darkness. Guardians are fighting on Earth and beyond. Join them. Your Ghost will guide you. I only hope he chose wisely.”

Bungie. Destiny. Activision Entertainment, 2015.

This introduction to the world of Destiny is… shockingly reductive. Even playing the campaign when this happens, my first thoughts were, “wait so we’re not even smart or good enough to hear the children’s scary stories about the history of this world? what the fuck?” But over the course of years, we find out more and more about the so-called Golden Age of Humanity, the tools humans built with implied assistance from the Traveler, the various rich families and corporate megaliths that consolidated power over people across the solar system in the years and decades leading to the arrival of the Darkness and the ensuing Collapse.

Not only that, we start to get a pretty clear image of what life was like immediately following the Collapse. Humanity was almost driven to extinction, and the people left alive after this apocalypse soon wished they were dead. The Traveler “defeated” the Darkness but in the process put itself into something similar to an emergency reboot mode. It deployed the Ghosts, who resurrected people who could, as the Speaker put it, “wield its Light as a weapon,” but the first of these “Risen” were nothing short of horrific. They used their Ghosts’ regeneration and resurrection powers to become regional warlords, subjugating what few mortal people remained, draining the desolate wastes of what few resources they had, and basically sealing the deal on the “Dark Age” brought on by the Collapse. It wasn’t until the advent of the Iron Lords that these warlords were defeated and the “age of Guardians” could begin, but even the Iron Lords did some pretty heinous shit – like use a whole town of mortals as bait to lure in a band of warlords on the run.

But when it comes to creating a mythical reality, the Speaker has his formula down pat. Don’t get too bogged down with details, paint the conflict in stark good vs. evil, literal “Light vs. Darkness” broad strokes, and mythologize the actions of Guardians (but most importantly, our Guardian). And oh, what fodder for mythology we are.

By the end of the first campaign, we’re the hero who severed the connection between the Hive, the Vex and the Traveler and tore out the heart of the Black Garden. By the end of The Taken King, we’ve slain a god-king. In the Rise of Iron expansion, we stop the spread of a virulent nanoparticle with murderous intent called SIVA in its tracks, using nothing but our fists. In Destiny 2, we become the Hero of the Red War, the one who put an end to a Vex plot to sterilize all worlds, and who killed a Hive Worm God. We avenge our fallen Hunter Vanguard, we kill a Taken Ahamkara. We are the hub on which the spokes of history are turning.

In terms of video game power fantasies, I really truly can’t imagine a better-feeling one. It’s basically pure uncut dopamine being transmitted directly to the pleasure centers of the brain, one Herculean feat at a time. And if we were the only Guardian, if we were not part of a larger world, if everything around us was in a vacuum, I don’t know if I would be writing this article. But Bungie has been very clear about wanting to make a world where our actions do materially affect our surroundings. As such, we are essentially a walking propaganda tool for the Consensus, a pseudo-democratic government over the Last City, consisting of faction leaders, the Vanguard and the (now-presumed-dead, hasn’t been replaced) Speaker.

The Consensus wants badly to declare the advent of the New Golden Age, a time in which Humanity can finally emerge from under the shadow of the Traveler to pick up where it left off prior to the Collapse. The problem we supposedly face is the never-ending onslaught of Enemies. Four alien species showed up on our doorstep after the Collapse, all seeking to finish us off (according to the Speaker): the Fallen, the Cabal, the Hive/Taken, and the Vex.

Of the four-ish races of enemy, only one can said to be truly, deeply “evil” in the sense the Speaker intends: the Hive and Taken, led by Taken King Oryx and his sisters Sivu Arath and Savathun, the only force in the galaxy more fascist than the Guardians. The Vex are a race of machines whose only focus is on making more of themselves, a threat similar to SIVA. The other two alien forces, the Fallen and the Cabal, are certainly antagonistic toward Guardians but our initial reasons for fighting them are, frankly, butt-ass stupid. Basically, we fight them because they’re there. They have the audacity to land on planets that “belong to us” and scavenge resources from them. Until the Red Legion showed up on Earth, we basically only ever fought Cabal on Mars, and there’s really no reason as to why.

The Fallen, or Eliksni, on the other hand, end up coming off more as the tragic victims of our flippantly rampant genocidaire practices than actual “enemies.” They’re probably the weakest alien species we come up against. Their backstory involves them living in peace under the Traveler before their entire society was caught up in a Collapse-like “Whirlwind” and destroyed. Rather than give them Guardians, like it did with us, the Traveler instead just up and peaced out, leaving the Eliksni for dead against the maelstrom of the Darkness. The surviving “Fallen” got in their skiffs and desperately chased the Traveler across the heavens, stratifying the remnants of their society into “houses” and developing religious devotion to machines like Servitors in the process.

They tried to take the Traveler back at the Battle of the Five Fronts and Twilight Gap, and lost. Their armies were shattered, and we’ve been nonchalantly killing them en masse ever since. They are the “parasites” our Guardian must exterminate, along with the Hive, Cabal, and Vex. When we make friends with, or even simply allies with, a Fallen (like Variks the Loyal, Mithrax the Forsaken, or the Spider), it is made clear almost immediately that this 100 percent doesn’t change the relationship we have with the Fallen as a group. Variks is absolutely subservient to Mara Sov and the Awoken. Mithrax wants to create an Eliksni House that bows down to Guardians and Humanity for being “better stewards” of the Traveler than the Eliksni was. The Spider makes it clear that he only wants to grow his crime syndicate, but that we can help him out if we want. Never once does the Vanguard or the Consensus reach out to these allies and try to broker peace. And in-game, we simply don’t have an option but to fire on and kill Eliksni in droves. Kill or be “killed,” right?

When it comes to Humanity itself, while we never get a chance to actually leave the Tower and walk through the streets of the Last City, there are at least hints as to the deep class stratification at work here. You can’t get much more on-the-nose than an ivory tower of immortal beings overlooking an enclosed human race. Guardians atop humanity, the Speaker above the Vanguard over the Consensus over the people, and you, the very fulcrum on which history pivots, functionally over everything else. But in the mythical reality of this game, it’s really the Traveler über Alles, and humanity underneath the Traveler has become a wonderful, diverse melting pot without class, without fear. An ideal state where the walls keep Darkness at bay and humanity can discover the joys of tonkotsu ramen yet again.

A Light Story Vs. Lore Steeped in Darkness

Destiny has a reputation, unfairly earned, for being an okay game with a bad story, or at best a nonexistent one. The story isn’t really all that bad, it’s just poorly implemented up front, and I think my willingness to engage with the game’s world to the extent that I have is a testament to how powerful and evocative some of the beats in Destiny’s writing truly are. If we dissect the game we can separate the writing of the “story” from the writing of the “lore,” and in watching the plot develop over the past few years, we can see a gradual unification of these two areas start to occur.

This is helped greatly by third-party resources like Ishtar Collective, and by mechanical decisions Bungie made in D2Y2. Adding the lore back into the game with Forsaken was a good idea; choosing to fully integrate the lore into the world starting with Season of the Forge was a great one.

A side-effect of this lore-plot unification is a dismantling-in-real-time of some of the game’s most beloved and widely-spread legends, like the legend of Shin Malphur and Dredgen Yor. Even our personal legend is challenged in this way, and it’s a really neat way that Bungie writers new and old are critically engaging with their work. But it also really throws into stark relief some of the issues I’ve laid out in this article so far.

Take, for example, the lore book “Stolen Intelligence.”

Presented to us as intercepted secret Vanguard transmissions, “Stolen Intelligence” shows us exactly what the Vanguard really thinks of our actions, and what their goals really are. It was part of Season of the Drifter, which overall had a “trust no one” vibe to it, but some of the entries here are BLEAK, y’all.

Here’s an excerpt from the first entry, titled “Outliers.”

“Fallen armed forces continue to fall back from active fronts across Terra. Factions of House Dusk remain active in the European Dead Zone. Throughout the rest of the globe, refugee attack incidents have dropped by more than 70 percent since the conclusion of the Red War – largely attributable to depressed Fallen and human populations rather than any significant change in interspecies relations.

[…]

“The recent trending emergence of so-called “crime syndicates” (cf. report #004-FALLEN-SIV) is emblematic of the continuing destructuralization of Fallen society. Likely an artifact of multi-generational colonization of human strongholds, this agent believes that because these syndicates have no relation to indigenous Fallen culture, young Fallen are appropriating and imitating human mythology in absence of a strong cultural heritage of their own.

[…]

“VIP #3987, another former confederate of the Awoken, is a lesser-known personality known as Mithrax. Scattered field reports suggest that like #1121, #3987 styles himself a Kell of the so-called “House Light,” an otherwise unknown House apparently founded by #3987 himself. We have secondhand accounts that Mithrax has engaged in allied operations with Guardians in the field, though we have not as yet been able to corroborate these accounts with any degree of veracity. This agent is inclined to treat these reports with a healthy degree of skepticism until otherwise confirmed, as they may be propaganda from Fallen sympathizers in the Old Russian and Red War Guardian cohorts. We have requested intelligence records from the Awoken which may further clarify the matter.

“In addition, whatever the findings of said intelligence records may be, it should be stressed that one or two sympathetic outliers cannot be relied upon to erase the wrongs of past centuries, nor should their good-faith efforts to correct the sins of their forbears be taken as sufficient symbolic reparation.

[…]

“We have come too far to pull our punches now.”

Bungie. Destiny 2: Forsaken – Season of the Drifter. Lore Book: Stolen Intelligence. Outliers. Activision Entertainment, 2019.

Here’s another piece of “Stolen Intelligence,” about our relationship with Cabal Emperor Calus:

“Related to the above, #3801’s aggressive propaganda campaign appears to have been successful. Despite #3801’s recent inactivity, sentiment polls captured in the Tower at regular intervals over the last several months indicate that he has successfully swayed a significant percentage of the Red War cohort to believe that he may be a potential ally. Given our history with the Cabal as well as the events of the Red War itself, this is shocking and perhaps attributable to a case of mass traumatic bonding.

“It is my strong recommendation that the Vanguard pursue a reeducation curriculum before #3801 invites any Guardians of the City to defect to his service, a possibility which we have documented in multiple previous reports.”

Bungie. Destiny 2: Forsaken – Season of the Drifter. Lore Book: Stolen Intelligence. Passivity. Activision Entertainment, 2019.

Other entries detail the efforts of the Vanguard from keeping ostensible “conspiracy theories” from being published in the Cryptarchy’s journals; show the apparent oddity of mortal-Guardian “integrated neighborhoods;” and discuss the ongoing surveillance of the Drifter, a rogue Lightbearer who has survived since the early Dark Ages and who uses Darkness-aligned technology to run a PVEVP game called “Gambit”.

There are many other stories like these, scattered throughout the lore. Stories of Cryptarchy students being banished for making fun of New Monarchy’s leaders, of Guardians messing with Hive technology being burned alive and killed fully by the Praxic Order for their crimes of experimentation. Stories like these wouldn’t happen – couldn’t happen! – to our Guardian, because they’re too important, but are seemingly everyday occurrences to less consequential members of this society. In the real world, we’d call that an increasingly oppressive police state. In Destiny 2, it’s just flavor text.

There was a degree of narrative complexity added to Season of the Drifter that hadn’t been in the game prior. The entire season was essentially boiled down to “which side are you on, the Drifter’s or the Vanguard’s,” and in our path to make a choice, we heard from various bit players in our world. The Drifter told us his story in greater detail than perhaps we needed (and how much of it is true is debatable), but his story is also the story of a less morally-pure Guardian class. Everyone from the warlords to the Iron Lords did heinous shit to humanity while the Drifter watched, and it hardened him. The Praxic Warlock Aunor goes all in on her adherence to the City’s propaganda and ideology, trying to show us how untrustworthy the Drifter is. She ends up revealing more of her order’s goals than perhaps was wise.

This narrative complexity is nice, but it still betrays the game in a fundamental way. We now have the documents. We know what Guardians are actually about, and how they’re not exactly shining beacons of unwavering good like the Speaker would have had us believe. Regardless of declining Fallen activity, of a shift in Fallen culture, of actual living Fallen who want to ally with Guardians, the Vanguard is still adamantly pursuing “extirpation,” which is a fancy way of saying genocide (I’m not kidding, it literally means “root out and destroy completely”). We know the Vanguard and the Praxic Order have a hard-on for exile, reeducation and information suppression.

On top of everything, the narrative complexity was not met with any kind of mechanical complexity. Even with proof that the Vanguard wants to kill every Eliksni in the system, conscientious objectors don’t get to opt out. The narrative path that forks between the Drifter and Aunor converges again by the end of the quest. The “conspiracy theorist” that has been trying to publish paper after paper detailing exactly how the Nine worked with Dominus Ghaul to sneak his fleet into City airspace undetected was proven right by lore WE FIND IN THE GAME, but that doesn’t change our combat relationship with the Cabal remnants anywhere in the system, and homeboy still gets his papers rejected.

Ikora and Zavala, our remaining Vanguard members, insist repeatedly that Guardians are not a warfighting force, that the Vanguard and the Consensus is not an authoritarian organization. But everything we do says otherwise.

“A peace born from violence is no peace at all.”

Guardians do not get to choose their paths in the world of Destiny 2. The paths laid out before them lead to a life of warfare, of pain, of endless murder. Ostensibly, they are agents of good, trying to beat back the forces of evil, but if you look too close you see that really they’re just a bunch of indiscriminate killers with a mandate from the Orb God. Desperate to get out from under the heels of warlords, the Guardians created a fascist society, and adding insult to injury they pretend it’s a democratic, free one. Killing the Fallen is genocide, but you can literally never stop killing them because the game won’t let you. The only right way to play at that point is to turn off your console and go outside.

Destiny 2 isn’t the only video game to fall into this trap. As Nic Reuben said in the follow-up piece to his first story on how Destiny 2 is fascist, “I’m not saying Destiny is propaganda, just reliant on some of the same narrative tricks that make propaganda so powerful. At the same time, I don’t think that it’s too much of a stretch to say that games like Call of Duty make certain assumptions about what is justifiable, righteous slaughter and what is terrorism. Replace modern military hardware with future tech, replace terrorists with alien races that have traits synonymous with cartoon portrayals of traditionally marginalized social groups, and you’re effectively playing through the worst aspects of Call of Duty with a new coat of a paint.”

There is one glimmer of hope in the game. One sliver of lore that gives us pause and helps make the game bearable in its current state. It comes in the form of Lady Efrideet, former Iron Banner handler, youngest member of the Iron Lords, and a Guardian in self-exile from the City, the Vanguard, and its fascist dogma.

Lady Efrideet is one of the most fearsome Hunters in the Destiny universe. She is known as one of the best marksmen, if not the best one. She is impossibly strong, having once thrown Lord Saladin bodily off a mountain into a Fallen Spider Walker, destroying it. And she is also one of the only named pacifist Guardians who isn’t a member of the Cryptarchy. Her story is the story of the fall of the Iron Lords, as well as the beginning of the SIVA crisis, many years before our Guardian’s rise is documented.

But it isn’t SIVA or the Iron Lords that we’re interested in. Instead, we know that after SIVA was sealed away, Efrideet snuck away from Earth. She saw the deaths of everyone she knew and her will to fight was shattered. If this was the result of fighting for the Traveler, she didn’t want any part in it. So she took to the stars. In doing so, she ended up in the far reaches of the solar system, beyond even where we currently roam. It turns out, a small enclave of other Lightbearers, hesitant or unwilling to use their powers to kill, had also fled to this part of the system and had established a colony. It’s there that Efrideet resides, and it’s there I’d like to go.

Unfortunately, our Guardian is too “important” to the vast tidal forces at work in the Destiny universe for us to be able to leave for the outer reaches whenever we want. Because we are the hub on which the wheel of history turns, and there is no escaping that now, if ever we could. We are death, the flattening of a complex and intricate universe into one of simple shapes, the sword logic in a human/Awoken/Exo body. We are needed for the plans of the Nine/Mara Sov/Hive Queen Savathun to come to fruition. When or if the Darkness ever does come back, we will be the force that faces it and, win or lose, shape our future afterward.

Sometimes it’s nice having a video game place your character on a linear track. Games like Half-Life or Titanfall present to us simple choices in otherwise-complex story environments: progress, or die. Our characters are not immortal, but they have help from the technologies around us, are tenacious, are resourceful, are quick to adapt to changing situations. In Destiny, we simply exist. We can’t truly die. Even when it comes to the rules of the game, our immense “paracausality” causes us to shrug Darkness Zones off as mere inconveniences where other Guardians have died their final deaths. Because we are necessary. The Vanguard and Consensus need us to justify their horrific fascist policies. The great forces at work in the background need us to work as a pawn. Even Bungie itself needs us, powerful, trapped beings with a sense of right and wrong but no agency to actually act on those ethics, to continue its game.

I haven’t preordered Shadowkeep yet. For once I’m glad we’re not focusing on the Fallen or the Cabal. Going to the Moon means we’ll pretty much just be dealing with Hive, to say nothing of the unreal Nightmares we’re supposed to face. But I’m still undecided as to whether I even want to order Shadowkeep in the first place. If Lady Efrideet can go to the edge of known space and live peacefully with other pacifist Guardians, maybe I can put my controller down and step away, once and for all. It would be nice to have the extra space on my Xbox One’s hard drive. Other games exist to be played, and having the time and energy to do so would help me here, with No Escape.

But even then. I’m not expressing agency as a Guardian, but rather as the person who controls you, Guardian. While I go off to play other games, you sit and wait in stasis. Even if I don’t play, there are a million iterations of you willing to commit genocide daily for cheap rewards (shoutouts to the sixtieth Edge Transit drop in my inventory this month alone). Sure, it’s just a game. But this is what having a dynamic world means in practice. There are consequences to your actions. There always have been.

There is no reason why Humanity couldn’t share the Traveler’s gifts with, at the very least, the Eliksni. There is no reason why we couldn’t just ignore the Cabal in a state of mutually assured destruction, given how small a faction the Red Legion was relative to the Cabal army’s full size. Of the two remaining enemies, the Vex are less evil than they are simply a thing that wants the universe to be like it, and that’s threatening to diverse life throughout the universe, not just Humanity. The Hive/Taken are the true enemies in the game, but even they are directed, pawn-like, by their Worm Gods.

There is, likewise, no reason why the Risen had to organize in the fascist context they did. They could have created a society in which everyone could come and go freely, where ideas and actions could be given and received absent interference, where a true “golden age” could have sprung up naturally simply by living together harmoniously and using the Light the Traveler gave them to create, rather than destroy.

But that’s not how this story shakes out.

Legacy of Dominic Deegan: Part 2

See my original first impression here.

Last time, our hero, Snout, rudely picked up some weed from a giant animal thingy. Turns out it’s one of the many ingredients he needs, as he also takes a giant leaf, steals web from a spider, and with that he gives himself a shirt. You would think that in Deegan world, people would actually herd sheep more to get wool, unless Mookie believes PETA propaganda. Of course he does.

Turns out Snout is looking for a new home, and he finds a cave, as well as a talking...piece of paper? Pagefinder, or essentially, medieval Siri. Cool. Wait, what happened to the orc frenspeak? I guess Mookie realized it was kind of stupid so he just returned to making orcs write like humans again. Pagefinder is a spell that finds lost pages, and even he gets edgy, but at least his edginess is played for laughs. Speaking of playing edginess for laughs, Snout has to go to the Blood Horror Canyon to get the first lost page. I suppose it’s a bit funny, but if Mookie unironically creates another Chosen Superform in this comic then it’s just gonna be dumber in hindsight. Another joke that i find kind of funny occurs with the signs. Turns out Snout is being followed by...evil demon cthulhu thing, but he accidentally stabs him in the eye with a falling spire.

An exciting battle occurs with the weirdo thingy, and Snout tries using Pagefinder as a shield, and as a result we get the first F bomb in Dominic Deegan, if Mookie didn’t include dicks earlier i’d congratulate him on graduating from middle school. Turns out Pagefinder’s ink just killed the beast. Huh, i’m amazed, you CAN kill something in this universe without turning into a superform! Anyways, Snout finds the first lost page but it has a hole in the middle of it, rendering it mostly incomprehensible. Wah wah. Eyeroll face occurs, which is...i suppose the traditional version of the punchline face? Snout asks Pagefinder for help but he can’t, and he messes up Snout’s face again in his self-pity. I mean, even if it’s a repeated punchline i still think it’s way better than butt-less chaps and Spark’s alliterations.

Snout goes back to the weird eye thing’s library. I suppose the frenspeak earlier was actually the way the owner of the library, Bort, types. We’re shown a twist that Pagefinders actually can’t communicate in other languages so WHO REALLY IS THIS PAGEFINDER?? Pagefinder says he explains everything once Snout has found the last two missing pages. I have a theory, Pagefinder is Trapped Deegan. Of course, it’s a Mookie’s signature SHOCK TWIST that you totally can’t expect. The biggest evidence against it however is that Pagefinder is actually a likable character. No wait, turns out Snout’s theory is that Ink Witch is communicating with him through pagefinder. He needs to find a gruesome, evil tree and we get another eyeroll face. Fuck it, i’m just gonna call it the Modern Punchline Face (MPF) as opposed to Classic Punchline Face (CPF) because i know that’s gonna be common now.

We get another recycled gag with the signs which reveals Skori Trees can shoot branches. Snout makes it into Skori territory and is bombarded with branch bullets yet avoids every single one??? What is he using? Magic? He manages to make it out of Skori’s grasp without a single scratch. Okay so far that’s the first really dumb thing in this comic, because Snout apparently is either using dodging magic or extremely athletic. He tells Pagefinder he hopes to get the berries Ink Witch may have used instead.

Pagefinder gets a piece of dat berry, and suddenly a giant arrow pops up and she drags Snout to the next page...which is Skori Tree. MPF Number 3 occurs. Snout tries to make friends with the tree, but Skori wants nothing to fucking do with the orc. I wonder if Siggy hung that orc family from a Skori tree, just to bury him some more? So Snout’s next plan is to fly to the tree by using the Pagefinder. He makes it but Skori begins to make his plan impossible. Skori gives him the finger but Snout gives him one back. Then...the tree just gives up? Snout gets the missing piece, and we find out the ol’ Dullminic went to Asinoteph, where dreams become visions, and apparently he tried to see the future, but instead he saw...oh boy, next page will unveil the twist. Did he see the past? the present? the winter of his discontent? the apocalypse? the Chosen? Whatever it is, it’s probably dumb.

Snout gets ready to sleep, and even Pagefinders need to sleep. We don’t get reprise of the orc dick this time. No wait, we do, as we see Snout in a dream, where an ink vortex...happens. What? No blood? No gore? No horror? Hmm, maybe Dominic saw THE INK? Snout makes his dream diary, and presents his questions about the last page, that basically ask readers to think about these questions too. I actually like this. It makes our hero look more huma...er, orc, and being used to Gene Catlow mystery exposition it also helps recapping the ongoing mysteries of the comic without pretentious third person pronouning and vague vagueness.

Snout goes to last missing page, which is held by an orc with a beard. Is that a male crone? Old Stoneraper? How come Snout does not have tusks? Honestly, i like him way more without the damn tusks. The old bastard smiles kindly when he sees Snout and gives him the page. Holy shit? An orc being nice to another orc? That’s like...a fucking fever dream. The orc then commits magic disappearance thing. Yup, i’m sure it was Old Stoneraper. Turns out, Deegan did actually see the end of all prophecy, and beginning of his legacy. Um, what? So does this mean that the visions are now gone forever? Thank fucking god, because it got so fucking confusing in the original comic. But wait, if he’s looking for his legacy, is he talking about Snout? Or is he like, looking for someone with good legacy in a talent show? I dunno, lay your theories on me Snout. But before that, the old orc comes. But the Pagefinder warns him that he is in a TERRIBLE DANGER. Oh boy, never mind orcs being nice. All orcs are still assholes to eachother, thanks Siggy.

Snout tells the old orc he was one of the few who didn’t hurt him, if he only kneeeew. Snout asks Old Orc what happened to him, and he falls to...visionscape, sigh. He runs towards a strange ink cube before returning to reality. Turns out Old Orc took all the pages. Oh hey, our protagonist does mistakes, and he actually suffers from them. That’s the first time EVER i’ve seen that in this blog, and then...Pagefinder dismantles. Not gonna lie, it is competing with Sleeve in terms of saddest inanimate object death in a webcomic. Snout wonders what is he gonna do, when he remembers his strange dream. Turns out Dominic Deegan recorded a song called “The Day i Dreamed Again”? No wait, a poem. Turns out Dominic learned to see visions again, and wrote a book about lucid dreams. Bort does not have it, so he has to go into another library. We reach the page i saw in my last Webcomic Check, where poor ol’ Snout is afraid of leaving his new home, and even makes a full list of pros and cons of leaving his home. Not gonna lie, Mookie does actually explore a lot of things he can do with a deaf mute protagonist, as opposed to having a deaf mute protagonist for the sake of having a deaf mute protagonist.

Snout begins his quest the next day, believing he might lose so much if he stays in his homeplace, and the mysteries on his mind keep him up at night. He sees...a lot of things, but thankfully does not bump into any werewolves, dragons or four armed naga things. He finally finds a place called...Mongreltown, but is immediately followed by something. That something is the spaceship that destroyed his home. Mongreltown can wait as he sees the spaceship has crashed. Out of it comes...the Ink Witch, who looks way more adult than any other character Mookie has drawn. Ink Witch is happy to see Snout but remembers he is deaf so she talks in form of ink, and that’s where we leave our story.

So far, i really really like this. The only problems i had were the increased usage of cheap punchline pages and MPF, as well as the rather cheap ways the spaceship arc and the battle with Skori Tree were resolved, but on the contrast there was a LOT of stuff i enjoyed, and i can’t believe i’m saying that about a Mookie comic. Snout is actually a very likable character, and his design has grown on me, his unique status as a deaf mute protagonist was explored, without turning him into a stupid exposition machine, as he only writes when it’s necessary. Pagefinder (RIP) was a very likable character and Mookie seems to be mocking himself with some of the jokes in the comic. The mystery of Dominic Deegan’s fate didn’t really get me invested yet as it’s still an actual mystery that’s important and not just a side thing that’s resolved through third person pronouns and “unseen” reveals. Also we’re shown so many new creatures and species on this comic, none of which are hideous furrybait. It really helps upgrading this setting to an actual fantastic setting and not just “modern setting with fantasy textures applied” that the original comic’s Dominion was. Also, the comedy was actually kind of funny even with the occasional repetition and the MPF.

It’s not the best comic i’ve read ever, but it is the best comic i’ve ever read on this blog. There is a little bit of dread in me though that this comic might go downhill sooner or later. This is still Mookie writing this.

                                          re-uploaded ! thanks tumblr ! 

❝ Deceit is so natural; but a wolf in sheep’s clothing is more than a warning . ❞ KIM JI WOO? No, that’s actually ARIADNE DIGGLE. A SIXTH YEAR student, this RAVENCLAW student is sided with THE DOUBLE AGENTS ( DE.) . SHE identifies as CIS-FEMALE and is a PUREBLOOD who is known to be DECEPTIVE, HEARTLESS, and VENGEFUL but also WITTY, MOTIVATED, and CHEERY.

STATS.

NAME: Ariadne  Persis   Diggle         NICKNAME: ari, baby. AGE:  17 years old.                           BIRTHDAY:  September 27th. SEXUAL ORIENTATION: pansexual. GENDER: cis gender NATIONALITY: great british.              POB: Oxford. BLOOD STATUS: pureblood              HOUSE: ravenclaw WAND: cedar / dragon heartstring / 11” / surprisingly swishy. PATRONUS: unable to produce one but claims that it’s a penguin.

please read 2 the end 4 some connection ideas and spicy memes !!

IS A MONSTER CREATED OR BORN / THE CHILDHOOD.

The diggles on the whole, are a slightly out there family that never really made any sense.

 the kind of pure blood family that people looked at, and wholly wondered whether those blood lines were … really okay. smiley, happy, carefree,      but maybe a few gobstones short.

 Dedalus Diggle, his son Dion Diggle, daughter -in -law, Cybil Diggle, all held such similar personalities to them. It didn’t mean that they were anything less than incredible wizards, but their personalities often overshadowed any individual merit they held.

They worked just outside of London in Oxford, but travelled to Wizarding London on most days for their day jobs, all three of whom worked in a selection of odd jobs from the doing something or other at the ministry, to being a wizard tailor. but all three ( mostly just following dedalus ) were heavily involved in the Order at some point.

Another thing everyone in the family shared was the eccentric names, so it was no surprise when Cybil and Dion christened their first and only born, Ariadne Persis Diggle.

unforutanetly, their naming habits wasn’t the limit of their eccentric behaviour.

To Ariadne’s parents  it was so easy to misplace time, like the mad hatter, plans were lost or all together forgotten, they never got to anywhere punctually — - cybil would even go  on record stating that Dion was late for their wedding ; their child birth. meme for reference

 not that they would ever forget their daughter ; but they did. they left her places all the time; dragon alley, the super market, the forest. she got used to spending time by herself, ariadne learning to look after herself from a young age because she simply just couldn’t trust her parents to look after her. a

 terrifying concept that a child would have to fend for themselves, cook for themselves; not because their parents didn’t love them, but that they just forget to show it. 

part of this was because they were all truly different. ariadne wasn’t scatterbrained, she wasn’t forgetful, or flippant. she was dedicated & serious & incredibly intelligent.       what other child by age 4 could cook for themselves? dress themselves? take themselves to school?  

  ariadne was a child genius ;  a fact that their pre-school had to tell Dion & Cybil several times before they finally got the message;   Ariadne desperately needed a tutor.

In fact, it wasn’t even the seventeen messages, letters home, meetings with the head ( all of which went dutifully ignored ) it was the fact that at the age of 5 — one powerful sneeze almost completely blew up one wing of the small school. and it wasn’t a request,   it was a, “politely let go & no longer wanted at their ‘fine’ institution. “

it was at this point, dion and cybil began to see their own flesh & blood as being a bit of a pain /    annoyed with how much upkeep it required to take care of someone so inquisitive. they tried not to convey this to ariadne. but ariadne was smart, and gifted

ventually, ariadne grew very against her family and what they stood for, but as such a young child at the age of 7, she had no idea how to express this burning inside her heart, so she hid her aggression behind a loving smile, and took out pent up aggression on bugs she found in the garden. tearing them apart, and looking up what she saw in her families dusty, never used library.

eventually, the diggle’s gave out and hired a tutor, and hired the first person they could find with little regard for screening the applicants to find the best fit.   and so, they let a death eater and all the ideologies they carry with them into the diggle household.       see,  

after the whole kindergarten incident,      word of the young diggle girl had spread through newspapers, and the inside talk of the other pureblood families,  it had been noted with interest, so when the job opportunity opened up XYZ I GUESS THIS MIGHT BE A WC  were more than happy to step in to act as the guiding compass in young ariadne’s life.

for  the concept of a child genius, a young witch showing very strong potential in a wide array of magicks, was an interesting concept – and with such a gullible, malleable, manipulatable family? well, [ it’s free real estate meme !]

from the ages of 5-11, ariadne was tutored & trained in a wide variety of disciplinaries. along with this, a distinct hatred of muggles, a disbelief in absolutely everything her parents stood for, how her parents ignorance for her was how all order aligned people were. that they were ineffective; and useless, and whilst not necessarily the scum of the earth ( that was just mud bloods ) they had little to no use. but whilst they didn’t offer much, they were easy tools to be used.

she had tutoring to what was already 5th year material before she even started her 1st year, plus rudimentary training in extremely difficult types of magic such as apparition and legilimency. 

it wasn’t tutoring; it was indoctrination, pure and simple. but they were kind, they were nice, they indulged Ariadne’s interest in learning and inquisitive mind, all the whilst feeding it the less than wholesome ideals that the death eaters had founded themselves on.    

They also mentioned the fact that some people she would meet in life, those horrible, horrible people, were awfully bigoted against these blood purity ideas - the superior ideas - that they held. 

They told her, when dealing with these “acceptance for all / muggle lovers”  people, to keep quiet, keep what was said in lessons between the two of them, because in their words “ there’s no reason for you to go through the trauma we had.” but that wasn’t their reason, no, that was never their reason. They knew full well to get such a death eater loyalist inside the “other sides” ranks would be a feet that required years of predisposition and nudging into a perfect personality. 

Even after Ariadne turned 11 and no longer needed to be homeschooled, she continued the lessons throughout her holidays, constantly having them topped up with the most recent ideology, constantly nudged like a pawn on a chess board into the perfect position. 

And for all Ariadne’s brains,   she was trusting, and easily controlled, for she was near-sighted and once her trust was earned, it was almost impossible for it to be destroyed.

She was sorted into Ravenclaw, inspired by her desire for knowledge, her inquisitive mind that seemed far larger than the rest of her tiny frame ( standing at a whole, 4’9). 

But she was never really the best student,   because she already could do everything that was taught, she lacked the challenge she was so desperately searching for. 

But she couldn’t really find it ever at hogwarts,    so she just often choose to not go to class in favour of going to the library to learn things she didn’t know. And whilst she did often do well on exams,   the teachers would always end up docking her for her … less than sportsmanlike behaviour throughout the year. A plague to anyone who ever vaguely cared about house points.        

But other than annoying other teachers,     she wholly seemed to be a popular girl. She could never be found without her trademark smile, lopsided grin, infectious giggles. 

She had such a sunny demeanour that contrasted so greatly with her rotten insides. She was friendly to everyone, somehow, only interacting with the muggle borns through an unseen gritted teeth, and glares every time no one was looking. 

It also made Ariadne an obvious choice to join the M.A, said everyone with a resounding cheer. It made perfect sense! 

She was from a family that had long been associated with the Order of the Phoenix, she was incredibly smart and great in a duel, and seemed to get along with everyone ! 

Ariadne didn’t know what to say, but agree to sign up, secretly writing an owl to her tutor under the cover of dark. They got her in touch with the heads of the D.E’s at Hogwarts and they came to an agreement, an arrangement. With her tutor to vouch for her loyalty, Adriane signed up for the Death eaters, a heavily guarded secret known by only a select few. 

Ariadne personally loved the freedom that the flip-flop nature of her identity,  the secrecy, the manipulation. 

All in all,   the war feels something of a game to her. 

Much like how she is a pawn in somebody else's game, she feels a certain sense of control from being vested in both sides, that she has some sort of ability to manipulate everything as she sees fit, that perhaps she is playing the protagonist like in one of the stories she read growing up. 

But in reality,   she is still just someone else’s pawn, who will end up branded as a traitor, a wolf in sheep's clothing, no matter who ends up becoming victorious. 

to people in the MA, ariadne is a very well respected, dedicated (and unfortunately trusted) members. to the DE she is ALSO just a member of the MA unless they’re in the higher leadership !

hi ! thanks 4 reading to the end,  do i have any wc? you ask ! not really ! but here’s some concepts i’d love 4 ariadne !

- she can have so many friends ! just so many friends ! give her friends you cowards! - i feel like she’s been in a few relationships / all were quite innocent and ended on seemingly okay terms but maybe there’s an unspoken bad blood ! she’s cute and a pureblood, great for everybody ! - people who lowkey don’t like her or find her annoying / not that they doubt her alliance,    but maybe some (lower rank) DE who think she’s a blood traitor or overly nice?       or just anyone who thinks her smiliness is annoying. - .... . prankster partner ......    lowkey demon thinks it’s one of the easiest way to take her aggression out on people she doesn’t like .. .. - the ONE person who once really saw ariadne snap for whatever reason / very fun plotting possibilities !!!

34 Cool WiiWare Games That Are Going Away FOREVER*

 *Unless Nintendo decides to sell them again when the Switch U 4DS VR comes out in 2025.

As you might have heard, starting next Monday Nintendo is taking away the ability to add funds to the Wii Shop, which will close down for good in early 2019. That means a whole bunch of great games won’t be able to be purchased anymore. In order to raise awareness of this, the most important issue of our times (after all the other issues), we spent the winter playing as many WiiWare games as we could over on our YouTube channel. Here’s a summary of the gems we encountered:

1. 3D Pixel Racing

A pretty challenging motion control racing game with Minecraft-esque graphics. Pro tip: use a regular old Wiimote, not a Wiimote Plus. Trust us, the Plus is too sensitive for this game and you’ll end up falling off the track every two seconds. Despite the difficulty, this one gets a recommendation because of the cool look and for giving us an excuse to use the Mario Kart Wii wheel again.

2. And Yet It Moves

Using the Wiimote’s gyroscope, this game has you move the world around you (rather than vice versa) to navigate the levels.  One of those “easy to learn, difficult to master” type of games that defined many of the best on the platform.

3. Bit.Trip Runner

Originally a WiiWare exclusive, although you can now play it on 3DS, PC, Mac, Linux, and probably some Japanese toilets. You run from left to right and jump, slide, kick and... jump again to the music. A tribute to the platforming classics that deservedly became a classic itself (and the sequel, available on Wii U, is even better).

4. BurgerTime: World Tour

You know, BurgerTime! If you don’t know, this is a good excuse to get acquainted with this ‘80s arcade title. Like in the original, you attempt to assemble giant hamburgers on a series of platforms whilst dodging humanoid food monsters, only this time the graphics are in 3D and it’s all happening in space, for some reason. NOTE: Ironically, this fast-food themed game can’t be bought in North America right now, only Europe.

5. Chrono Twins DX

Originally designed for the DS, the gimmick is that the main character is fighting enemies in two different time periods at once.  For the DS this used each screen for the different time zones, but with WiiWare you get a simple split-screen.  It’s quite unique and challenging as you’re basically playing two sidescrollers at once.

6. Contra Rebirth

Remember when dudes with rippling muscles and mullets got to be badass gunfighters and nobody complained they were toxic?  Contra sure does.  Konami gave “Rebirth” to three of their classic franchises on WiiWare (CastleVania and Gradius were the other two) but this was probably the best of the bunch.

7. Dracula: Undead Awakening

If you never get tired of mowing down undead enemies then this will scratch that itch.  Basically you get a bunch of different cool weapons and use them against a bunch of different cool monsters for as long as you wish, or at least as long as you survive.  The challenge is so high that even lasting ten minutes on your first playthrough has the game calling you “noob.”

8. Eduardo the Samurai Toaster

A simple run n’ gun game (think Metal Slug) starring a sentient toaster facing off against flying onions, spear-toting carrots, and what appears to be an army of angry playing cards. It’s not clear what the plot of the game is, and there’s not a whole lot of depth to the gameplay, but it’s still a fun way to waste an hour (or more, depending on the difficulty). It’s supposed to be even more fun with 4 players, if you can find three other Wii-loving weirdos.

9. Excitebike World Rally

Motorcycle races.  Simplicity works sometimes, and just like the original Excitebike this one proves it once more.  Just like the original you get a cool level creator, only this time you can share it with anyone and not just whoever you give your cartridge to.

10. Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition

Lots of different modes that still capture the appeal of the original arcade classic.  The overall look is kinda coked-up, which captures the ‘80s arcade scene reasonably well.

11. Frogger Returns

Only the one mode this time, but it serves as a reminder of the timeless quality and endearing appeal of the core gameplay.

12. Gnomz

A chaotic 4-player party game starring sock-obsessed gnomes. You go around a single screen collecting socks and stomping other players to kill them; it’s like life itself. (Or, as many have pointed out, like the Super Mario War fan game, but less illegal.) There are three modes and a variety of scenarios. Like with Eduardo the Samurai Toaster, the more players the better, but the single player mode ain’t bad (and that way, you don’t ruin any friendships).

13. Gyrostarr

A pseudo-3D shoot ‘em up where the main difficulty is that you can actually shoot the power ups away, and you kinda need those to finish the stages -- if you don’t collect enough energy, the portal at the end of the level closes on your face. The difficulty ramps up slowly but surely across 50 levels. Another difficulty is not getting an LSD flashback on those trippy bonus stages.

14. HoopWorld

A basketball/fighting game that makes surprisingly good use of the Wii’s motion controls. This definitely falls in the “easy to pick up, difficult to master” category, since there’s a pretty wide range of ball throws and kung-fu moves you can perform by shaking your Wiimote and nunchuck in different ways. Or you can just wave your arms randomly and hope you win. The game is currently unlisted in North America, which we’re hoping is a sign that they’re planning to re-release it in modern platforms (with online multiplayer, hopefully).

15. Horizon Riders

A futuristic on-rails shooting game that you play with the Wii balance board. If you have the Wii Zapper accessory, even better (and you’ll look even sillier), but it’s not necessary to play. You aim and shoot with your Wiimote while leaning on your balance board to move from side to side. Definitely a good reason to dig that thing out of your closet. Be warned, though, that the game crashed on us in the middle of a stage, as seen at the end of our gameplay video.

16. Jam City Rollergirls

Roller derby has never been as popular to watch as it is for people to randomly talk about every few years for the novelty, usually accompanied by a movie that flops at the box office.  The last time the mainstream tried to make this sport happen it resulted in this game, though, so there’s at least that.  You play as characters with hilarious names roller blading through others with random power-ups and combat moves.

17. Jett Rocket

It’s a lofty ambition to offer gamers something that will remind them of Super Mario Galaxy, and it might seem foolish to do so on an indie dev’s budget.  But Shin’en managed to deliver with an uncommon 3D platformer collectathon with good amounts of action sprinkled in.

18. LostWinds

When a developer approached a title with motion controls in mind, it always stood out more than other games that tried to crowbar motion controls into the scenery in the hopes of a shortcut to Wii success.  LostWinds is in the former camp, making you use the pointer to create gusts of wind to elevate the main character onto platforms and knock around enemies.  In fact it’d be more accurate to say you’re playing as the wind spirit rather than the story’s protagonist.  Fun game with a beautiful art style.

19. Maboshi's Arcade

Nintendo knows how to make simple games that present difficulty when you don’t expect it.  In the three modes of this puzzler you play as generic shapes but the controls are difficult to master.  It kind of has to be seen to be believed.

20. Magnetica Twist

A connect-three type of game where you fire marbles and stuff.  What ends up twisted the most are your wrists whilst trying to aim your shots with any sort of precision.

21. Max and the Magic Marker

There are plenty of side-scrolling platformers that use childhood visuals and hobbies to appeal to the player, and yet they never really get old do they?  In this one you use a marker via motion controls to create platforms and defeat enemies.  You also can go in and out of Max’s childhood drawings.

22. Monsteca Corral

This is a weird one.  A bunch of monsters vaguely shaped like Doshin the Giant are gathered together by an unseen god-ish alien to fight robots that said alien had created earlier, but they turned against him.  That’s the plot as we can best make out, anyways.  There’s also dinosaurs.  Recommended for those who like their fun to be completely unlike the other fun they’ve had with games.

23. Pearl Harbor Trilogy – 1941: Red Sun Rising

Old-school dogfighting in a new-school 3D game.  Well, it was new when it released.  Anyways you shoot down enemy planes, defend your base, attack naval fleets and get commendations you don’t deserve.  Sometimes you see the action from the POV of the bombs you drop, and it works much better here than in Michael Bay’s version of Pearl Harbor.

24. Pole's Big Adventure

Chindōchū!! Pole no Daibōken is bizarre Japan-only SEGA title made to parody the crappy platform games that came out during the 8-bit era. Despite being full of intentional design flaws, like power ups that kill you or background objects that suddenly cut your head off, the game is pretty easy -- until you unlock hard mode, where the boss fights are actually challenging. Still, you’ll be playing this one mostly to laugh at the dozens of Easter eggs.

25. PictureBook Games: Pop Up Pursuit

Not many board games made it to WiiWare, but this was easily the best.  It’s largely straightforward “run to the end of the board” contests, with plenty of opportunities to ruin friendships.  The art style is the main hook, looking like a pop-up book, like the title indicates.

26. Rage of the Gladiator

You fight for your life against larger-than-life mythological creatures, like ogres and minotaurs and senseis.  The game got compared frequently to Punch-Out!! and with good reason, but the combat is actually a more creative and the dialogue is more humorous.  A blast to play through the first time, and a blast to replay.

27. Snowpack Park

Unlike most of the games on this list, there’s no combat in this one and your blood pressure won’t ever raise.  There’s plenty to do but it’s fun stuff, mostly involving playing with penguins.  It works great as a sort of palette cleanser to the violent action-packed games primarily showcased in this list.

28. Sonic the Hedgehog 4

The 16-bit Sonic games still hold up today as all-time greats.  Sonic 4 didn’t live up to those expectations but it did get SEGA to think about their past a little more seriously, and helped lead to Sonic Mania.  Episode I is on WiiWare, but you’ll have to find Episode II elsewhere.

29. Space Invaders Get Even

Another sequel to another arcade classic, but with the novel twist of playing the game from the enemies’ point of view.  Word of warning: this is possibly the only WIiWare game that has DLC.  The initial purchase of 500 points will escalate up to 2′000 points if you’re enjoying yourself.

30. Star Soldier R

Top-down arcade-style shooter, and if you know the type you know the drill.  The amount of content is pretty bare-bones, as it’s basically just time attacks.  But the replayability is rewarding if you’re a fan of the genre.

31. Tetris Party

We hope you know Tetris.  This is a Tetris that has good multiplayer, interesting variants where you do things like create platforms for some guy to climb to the top of the screen or use the tetrinos to make exact shapes like that of an apple.  There’s also a balance board mode, and as stated earlier it’s good to have an excuse to pull out the balance board.

32. Vampire Crystals

Vampires used to live peacefully with zombies but now they don’t, and it becomes your problem.  Thankfully you get plenty of guns, some so powerful that you end up creating a bullet hell where you’re the one firing them rather than dodging them.  It looks simple but the game actually is quite tough.  It’s not Cuphead-level but you will fail many times over.  With plenty of content and being one of the last WiiWare releases, this title approached the platform’s fullest potential.

33. WarioWare DIY

What sets this apart from the 87 other WarioWare games? The fact that players could make their own minigames, leading to an avalanche of creative, insane, and even NSFW games. Unfortunately the servers are no longer online, but you can still find thousands of fan games online if you look hard enough. The included games are pretty fun too, and if you have the DS version, you can make your own and send them over to your Wii.

34. Zombie Panic in Wonderland

Shooting galleries are perfect for motion controls, but gamers don’t get as many as we deserve.  Thankfully this one helps rectify that, with an interesting story and cool comic-book art sequences that keep things moving between all the gunning down of zombies and various giant monsters.

I got star trek thoughts because Discovery premiered and you’re gonna hear ‘em

firstly: Klingon redesigns

Klingons were retcons once already because the blackface of the original series where they had embarrassingly orientalist visual traits mixed with them being stand ins for russia in a cold war scenario became less relevant over time. 

Then we had the more prosthetic heavy look which caused the current controversy. It is a make up skin tone decision which looks fine when someone like Michael Dorn is playing a klingon, but not so much when it’s someone like Christopher Lloyd in the costume. the vaguely east asian cliche appearances with russian political position qualities were replaced by even darker complexions and culturally based on cliche japanese samurai and vikings as their primary qualities and the political metaphors were more general as only became specific as needed for individual episodes. 

The makeup required has always involved racial coding separate from the cultural and political coding of klingons. So YES in 2017 there should be more considered casting of these roles to avoid blackface. but also as far as the first two episodes are concerned there are new elements of cultural and political coding happening. 

The Klingon are given a more spiritual focus, there was already an increased focus on ritual with them in various series but here it is used to motivate the plot. The spiritual aspect however more closely resembles a simplified idea of ancient egyptian culture than viking culture visually. 

And the second and more plot relevant political coding occurring is that of cultural isolation and racial supremacy through unification. The klingons are not baddies as a race but their unification is shown as a result of a single klingon rallying together cultural outsiders to use the threat of alien influence upon their race, to have the fear of loss of cultural identity through multiculturalism be used as a tool to unify the various seperate klingon groups into a singular empire.

 it’s not a subtle metaphor but that’s what makes it star trek. It’s just interesting to me that the issue of racial prejudice disguised as a desire to preserve one’s cultural heritage is being coded as an other since the relevance to the audience might go over some heads by othering it in this way, i’ll have to wait and see what they do with these themes as the show continues.

secondly: similarity to other treks

The cinematic look for the first episodes has been done before TNG tried it and Enterprise is the most similar in it’s contemporary cinematic style for the premiere.

 The opening credits have a nice song but it feels like the middle of a more compelling track, i keep waiting for it to get to a memorable melody but it never quite does until it chimes in with the original theme at the end. it’s still nice just kind of forgettable, but DS9 and voyager both had themes i found kind of boring too even if they are melodically stronger. Either way I like it better than the so bad it’s good faith of the heart that enterprise used. Speaking of the use of schematics and various objects instead of a ship flying through space reminds me a lot of Enterprise’s montage credits so even though it’ll take some getting used to i overall still like the opening credits.

The ongoing story element doesn’t bother me outside of losing the longer seasons more time for individual character explorations format every other trek series had. TNG had a couple reoccurring story elements, voyager and DS9 and ENT also got to try for longer storylines, tv changed a lot over the decade or so of continuous star trek, it hasn’t been a purely episodic show since TOS with it’s occasional reoccurring minor characters. 

The closest visual and thematic series is the alternate original series films. And for once this is a compliment. It’s in the original universe but the technology and costumes are closer to the films which is annoying but i’ll forgive it because i can see ways in which they tried to imply a bridging between enterprise and TOS. The good news is they took the parental/authority figure deaths as motivation for protagonist and the cultural/racial outsider elements and the identity/rebellion elements that were applied clumsily to Kirk and Spock in the AOS films and gave them to Michael Burnham. They WORK for her because she’s a new character and it doesn’t feel like she’s being written out of character or characters that had a role of greater significance are killed off for her angst like it did with the AOS films. Her choices are more engaging because she’s new and we get to react to them and not to wether or not they should be happening at all.... that said:

thirdly: casting leads

i can’t speak from the perspective of those who need the representation but i’ll speak from the perspective of someone who grew up watching star trek with my parents every week. 

My mum’s disappointment when she realised we weren’t going to have a Malaysian actress as captain and a black actress as first officer was intensified when she heard that the ongoing captain was going to be another white guy. Michelle Yeoh was fantastic and I hope we get lots of flashbacks of her interacting with Sonequa Martin-Green’s character because then it will feel less like she was killed off as a plot device. 

Just having women in positions of authority talking to each-other is great to watch, it’s why Voyager is a favourite in my family, but if it’s only between white actors then there’s a problem. While having aliens stand in for race based issues is to be expected it can’t be ignored that a big part of the optimistic ideal in TOS was one of gender and racial equality on the bridge. That’s why the rather limited representations of various countries happened in TOS, not perfect but the intent is there and visually clear. The gender issue took a while but by DS9 and Voyager you had both Janeway and Sisko in command, you had B’Elanna and Seven working together to keep a shuttlecraft from breaking apart, you had Sisko calling Dax ‘old man’ and asking her advice because her previous form she was both male and his mentor, yes the alien as a racial metaphor was still in use but it was combined with diversity of casting to create representation on both actor and character levels. 

So having Georgiou and Burnham with the dynamic of mentorship and mutual respect and the complexities of race versus culture being directly addressed and the conflict that comes from insubordination out of motivations of loyalty and personal prejudice... these are all great concepts and we got to see them applied to women who aren’t white, who are allowed authority and complexity and intellect and imperfections. It’s great to see and I know a lot of people are concerned with the killing off of one and incarceration of the other but while i have no defence of Yeoh’s character getting killed off for the purposes of creating drama so early in the show, I will say that with Martin-Green’s character i highly doubt she’ll be in prison long it’s almost definitely a character development thing where they’ll explore the consequences of her choices since she is the type of character where no one would have expected her to do what she did. it doesn’t look like they’re going to be totally tone deaf on the issue of her character being arrested but i can’t tell for sure yet. 

The rest of the cast both seen and unseen as of episode 2 look promising, Doug Jones is a delight and I’m looking forward to Anthony Rapp’s character, I trust Jason Isaacs to give a good performance but yes I am also tired of another white guy as captain, at the very least the star trek franchise as a whole has been good about having both reoccurring and minor one off characters be reasonably diverse. there is a lot of room for improvement though and they are only just shifting more topics from metaphors to literal ones. AOS Sulu being gay was an incidental detail, Anthony Rapp’s character will hopefully have that feature inform his character but same gender attraction shouldn’t be an issue within starfleet, they can alway play with it being an issue for other aliens but either way having one couple is not enough, let’s bring issues of sexuality and gender fully out of the symbolic alien scope.

Book Review: How A Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom (vol. 1)

“In history, there are some scenes which are easily dramatized by later generations.  There are some conditions for this: First, it must be the turning point of an era. Second, it must have a certain flair when dramatized.”

In Elfrieden history, I assume the most dramatizable scene is going to be the point at which King Souma causes some kind of disaster that could’ve been prevented by listening to the kingdom’s existing experts.

Today we’re looking at a book again, and it’s... bad.

How A Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, vol. 1 (2016)

Souma Kazuya is an economist by training who dreams of working in the civil service.  But one day, he, like any number of unremarkable Japanese men before him, gets isekai’d into a fantasy world, specifically into the Kingdom of Elfrieden, which is (of course) at war with a Demon King.  The incumbent king decides Souma is The Prophesied Hero and abdicates the throne to him, along with arranging a political marriage between Souma and the king’s daughter Liscia to give him a veneer of legitimacy.  A mixture of societal reform and silliness is supposed to ensue, and if you’ve already read this and the series eventually delivers on either, let me know, because this first book in the series is bad enough on both counts that I am not interested in continuing.

After a shaky and rushed start, it felt like the book would pick up.  But instead, we got the talent contest, which poisoned the rest of the book for me.  See, in the third chapter, Souma decides to recruit fresh talent for his new administration by seeking people with extraordinary skills in any number of areas, no matter how unusual or seemingly-useless they are.  Many of them compete in contests in their respective skills (including martial arts, beauty, and... uh... an apparently performing arts category vaguely called “talent”), and the winners of some of those contests go to Souma for him to evaluate what jobs they’d be suited for, while others are sent directly to him due to unique abilities.  Those who Souma evaluates in person include a child who can talk to animals (apparently a nearly unheard-of talent even in this world of magic), a prolific memorizer of books who claims to be the greatest genius in Elfrieden and in search of a king worthy of his service, and the country’s most... skilled... eater(???), all of whom he finds a place for in his master plan.  It’s kind of stupid, but at this point, the book still seemed like it could become the story of an eccentric leader laterally-thinking his way to unusual solutions... if it weren’t for Aisha.

Aisha is a wood elf and the winner of “best martial artist”, and Souma's questions about her and her people’s way of life portend the terrible direction this will go.  Aisha’s people are subsistence hunter-gatherers, and when Souma provides just the most cursory explanation of forest management to her, she obsequiously pledges to defend him with her life.  Nobody finds this strange, nobody doubts the king.  It’s not even so much that I think Aisha’s people must have their own indigenous forestry practices (although that is certainly possible) as it is that this is one of many half-baked and overconfident schemes to rebuild this world in Earth’s image, and no matter how hamfistedly Souma does it, Aisha’s starry-eyed enthusiasm for anything he says or does comes off as the correct response.  Her introduction sets a different and awful tone, in two ways.

The first problem is that, over and over, Souma is... an incompetent person’s idea of a competent person.  He does not act in a way that ought to convince either the audience or the other main characters that he understands what the kingdom’s problems are or actually knows how to fix them.  Any effort on Souma’s part happens unseen in the background through magical multitasking, and it is rare that he is shown actually trying to understand or work on something instead of just pontificate about it at other people.  In one particularly frustrating move, near the end of the book, there is a landslide which was made worse than it would’ve otherwise been because of someone refusing Souma’s forestry policies.  If the landslide had happened before Aisha swooned over the concept of forest management, this could have easily instead been an example of Souma learning about a problem he is equipped to solve, an opportunity for him to prove himself.  But instead it’s just an “I told you so” moment.  On top of it, if Souma had misunderstood, misremembered, or miscommunicated his vague promises of forest management by culling too many trees or trees of the wrong age, he might have made the situation worse, something which I was able to learn in about two minutes of Googling but I guess the author didn’t bother to.  Introducing this real-world information could have created drama, or even just a near miss that once again would have created a better opportunity for Souma to come off as actually heroic and actually knowledgeable.

Even his introduction of a public sewer and water system, probably the best-thought-out reform plan in the book, doesn’t stand up to more than slight scrutiny.  The capital of Elfrieden has open sewers, a real-life problem (although it also incorporates the common trope of the medieval English dumping sewage directly into the street, which is a massive exaggeration) and that an enclosed sewer system was the solution.  Okay, so far so good.  He has a former elaborate system of escape tunnels renovated into a multi-tiered system of aqueducts for both fresh and waste water.  He thinks just enough about this scheme to include the completely reasonable step of at least some basic cleaning of the outgoing wastewater... but he gives no thought to the quality of the incoming water.  He also replaced the existing, apparently sufficient, well system with the same inflow of untreated river water that is then flowing downward into the sewer.  Even upstream of the sewer, replacing groundwater with untreated river water seems like a great way to produce an outbreak of fecal- and animal-borne diseases like cholera or giardiasis or whatever their fantasy world equivalents are.  Did he stop to consider that there might be a reason people weren’t already drinking the river?  Nobody knows, nobody cares, the whole thing is presented as an exposition dump in a conversation months after construction started, and it moves on to another tangential topic about a page later anyway!  Okay, so how is this safe?  Is there magic and/or some locally-made existing technology that might be suitable for decontaminating the water?  No, in another exposition dump, this time of Souma explaining background information directly to the audience as narrator, we learn that magic doesn’t work on infectious diseases.  Then why the hell would you have people replace their well water with an untreated river, you absolute moron?

Some outcomes of the changes he makes -- the wolf people starting a soy sauce company, for example -- are clearly meant to be punchlines.  I understand that, and I’m not condemning this for its genre or even its optimism, really.  But I am demanding that a story that sets it self up as being about “a realist hero” fixing a stuggling country actually show some sign of thinking about what that entails at a more than surface level.  The author could at least have set up Souma to be a playful and sanitized version of the Meiji Emperor, and have to face some kind of meaningful resistance by supporters of the old ways as he imposes sweeping top-down changes to eventually improve things, or of Catherine the Great, imposing his idea of modernization on a less-than-enthusiastic people, but without the tyrannical parts (I mean, we still want our main character to be sympathetic, right?).  And hey, that latter inspiration would even offer harem shenanigans, which tend to go over well in this sort of story.

As Souma comes in and orders changes, there is also little resistance or failure to be found.  He’s just another boringly-unbeatable isekai protagonist, with his only distinction being that he’s unbeatable in policy instead of combat.  I’m not saying I don’t want a story of someone succeeding at something.  There don’t need to be outright tragic consequences to Souma’s decisions (although some decisions really should have them).  But it blows chance after chance to show us the process of improving a country.

And that idea of improving a country brings me to the second giant glaring problem.  Even as Souma introduces the people of Elfrieden to many things that I would argue are improvements -- a greater diversity of foods, broadcast media, deliberative democracy, sewers, paved roads -- he does it in a way that people for the most part accept.  Over and over, he just sort of shows up and does things, succeeds, and someone praises him for telling them how stupid and backwards they’ve been.  And that gives the book an unfortunate colonialist implication.  Yes, he has been summoned by magic for the purpose of being declared a hero, but he still acts like he’s there to “civilize” people, which is absolutely jarring to see in a book published in the past century. It’s just scene after scene of Souma taking a top-line glance at the current state of Elfrieden and then succeeding telling people he explicitly describes as primitive how to fix themselves by spouting a solution about as specific and useful as you’d get from a cable news political commentator or high-school-level textbook.  (Interestingly, his definition of “primitive” is such that he objects to an apparently equal-footing and non-coercive form of polygamy, but not to the legal power to punish an entire family for the crimes of an individual.  So that’s... lovely.)

We just see Souma effortlessly and correctly “fix” these hapless primitives, with very little attempt to flesh out the world before he arrived, very little attempt to show the audience that the problems exist in the way they are briefly mentioned, and just the praise of almost-comically-overenthusiastic supporting characters to show that his alleged solutions actually fix anything.  Souma is eventually depicted learning from locals and acknowledging the existence of experts who know things he doesn’t, but it takes until about 3/4 of the way through the book before that happens, and infuriatingly this is a shift that is not addressed.  There is no learning process, no setback that causes him to seek to understand how and why things might be different in this fantasy world than they are in our own.  And it’s not until the epilogue that we see any meaningful formation of a reactionary plot against Souma’s moves against formerly-autonomous (and highly-self-dealing) nobles, a backlash I expected from the beginning.  I wonder if the author realized these problems and/or received harsh feedback on the first few chapters.

As much as I’ve complained about That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime, at least that had Rimuru using his OP helpfulness to play around with the absurdity of a world that runs like an RPG.  In that series, the hapless primitives Rimuru patronizes are, at first, NPCs incapable of doing anything consequential autonomously.  No such in-universe justification, no matter how weak, exists here.  It’s just a world of people who Souma can somehow enlighten with little effort because he is better than them. 

I am willing to accept that some of my complaints are really just distaste at the genre or storytelling style, and that of course a story focusing on the actions of a king isn’t going to look much at what’s going on outside the court.  But it is so grandiose and so disinterested in showing us the results of Souma’s policies that even the most charitably I can approach this story, it’s like watching him brag without backing it up.  And that, combined with the colonialist implications and uneventful stream of dumb and unbelievable successes mentioned above are why I can’t stand this book.  At best, this book is like reading someone else try to describe the rambling deconstruction/author tract Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality but fail by leaving out all of the parts where dramatic things happen and how magic works is explained.  At worst, it’s The White Man’s Burden: Medieval Fantasy Edition.  And I hate it.

-----

W/A/S: 7/3/8

Weeb: Offhand references to chuunibyou.  Internet memes.  This damn quote: “Tomoe’s going to be my sister-in-law.  A wolf-eared loli sister-in-law... that’s too many character attributes.”  This book, unsurprisingly, presumes not just a Japanese audience, but an otaku audience.  But make no mistake, broader Japanese cultural background info is also casually woven in, whether it’s mentions of this guy or this (NSFW) art genre or just the main character’s assumptions about the right way to do things.

Ass: The author sure does seem to like to describe how form-fitting the female characters’ clothes are, but it never gets explicit.  Just the low end of a certain kind of cringey bad writing.

Shit: There are, somewhere in here, the seeds of a few interesting ideas.  And there are certainly still ways the writing could be even worse (at least it’s no Battlefield Earth!).  But so much of the plot is handled so poorly that I can’t stop being angry at it.  I am not surprised to learn that this was originally self-published online; it feels like a story that was made up on the fly with minimal planning.  This book may well be a couple points better on this scale if the author had revised the first, oh, half to three quarters before the print publication so that there is more showing rather than telling and some sort of character arc for Souma.  But just having him suddenly act differently?  For me, it’s too little too late.

Day 5 - Huntsville

Jeremy’s up the earliest and sends a text to us that he’s getting breakfast with Noah at a place called the Grit. Rather than opt to join I just post up on the porch with Trey and indulge in a long long blog post.The weather is cooler and grayer, joggers and dog-walkers and kids on bikes roll down the streets, slow syrupy sunday morning, humidity and gristle, butter pats wouldn’t melt if you left them out on your plate but they wouldn’t be too taut to sink your teeth into. I feel a fundamental sense of repair from typing, reviving a column of spirit I’d quietly suffocated, knock loose a clot of rust in my clockwork and the machinery is humming along again. Now that I have the link to the blog to share to people I feel like I’m gingerly handing the missing puzzle piece to my patrons and well-wishers and companions, indulging a curiosity and rounding something out to myself that might prove the regard and sensitivity my quietness can bely, might be a kindness or a service to people who find me austere or impenetrable or bristly. I was staring at a picture of a cactus and identifying with it the other day, tall, two arms, tiny head, spiky, full of water, not so bad if you’re careful with them, just like me. 

Later tonight I will watch Tired Frontier play the last set of their tiny tour with us and what will end up being our last show of the tour as well. Watching the face of the guys I see things so so different then when I saw them for the first time, when they were complete strangers, tourmates but sight unseen. What I saw in their faces the first time I saw them play: Royal is tall and broad-shouldered and country and active and maybe a little sloppy and expanive and reminds me a ton of my friend Mike, so I have love for him off the bat, also his weird tuning and rococo pedal board setup and heedless mustache and you know, wife, set off little clockworks of insecurity in me and my mind props up baseless criticisms of him sourced solely from my ignorance of him. After three shows we are not friends but I know him much better, have seen him from more angles, have a better sense of him, he loves doing bits and laughs high and loud and chills endlessly, in this way he matches the tone and cadence of Kabir magnificently. Paul is beautiful and has a face like a svelter Jim Carrey and kneads the keyboard effortlessly, digital dough, his fingers are narrow and elegant and move only enough to play the next keys, the same sort of parsimony of motion I used to see from chefs with expert knife skills. I envy his bouny raven thick-sable hair. Trey looks plainly joyful when he plays drums. He extends his crash cymbal hardware to the maximum length so his crash is preposterously high up. I can’t discern a reason other than it’s kind of fun or different. He’s enthusiastic about my writing, I get to share him some other work I’ve done, he says he loves it, I swell with gratitude and we exchange emails.

The morning in Athens goes more or less like the morning before: me and Kabir and John and Paul all go get breakfast at Donderos’ again, drink tea and coffee, pack up our stuff. We take some group photos with both bands outside on the porch with the orbs and they’re cute and silly. Kabir flipped a coin to decide whether me or John drives the next stretch, it’s me, I’m a little apprehensive because I haven’t driven a 15-passenger van in awhile, but once I’m in it’s like riding a bike, I have muscle memory of driving big vehicles from U-Haul trips and, before that, the box truck I drove to transport food donations to the pantry of the Servant Center in Greensboro. I’m a good driver, I check my mirrors, I put on a halloween mix I made in 2015 and I am feeling myself, focused, caffienated, surrounded by friends, there’s some clouds in the sky and drizzles but it’s not bad and we’re making good time. The boys just listen along with me to the DJ mix for awhile then start up a new crossword puzzle and we all 4 do it collaboratively, one person describing the clue, letters, cross-clues, and we brainstorm for answers, between the four of us we’re really good at this, and we’re all laughing and in great spirits as we methodically complete the puzzle. We stop in Marietta Georgia at one point to use the bathroom, we stop at a KFC with a 20-foot mechanized/animatronic chicken head whose eyes roll back in its head and whose giant beak opens and closes in regular time like a campy pendulum. I buy a postcard and a souveneir cup from here because I think my Mom has family from Marietta Georgia but when we’re back in the car I can’t remember if it’s Marietta Georgia or Marietta Ohio, but I figure it will be well-received either way. We get back on the road and now we’re off the highway and onto some more remote state routes and we pass into Alabama and the rain lets up but its still overcast so the light is gentle and diffuse, the hills are rolling, we pass a colony of tiny homes, weird, livestock, bulls with giant horns that when I see them I just say ‘aurochs’ absent mindedly, livestock and cotton fields and when we see police someone will just say ‘ops’ and the whole drive everyone is just in a good mood, making jokes, kind and breezy. I marvel at how these boys do not seem to carry the same sort of darkness I feel I do, or maybe they just don’t wear it on their sleeves, or maybe none of them are neurodivergent or addicted or traumatized, or maybe they are but hide it well, or have coped and healed…something I’m used to is being around people who require a space to talk about extremely serious and heavy and heartbraking things. Maybe it’s a vestige of a lifestyle I’ve left behind. In all the time I’ve spent with Kabir and Jeremy and John and David (our NC bassist who plays home shows when Jeremy is in NY), I’ve never seen anyone come close to losing their temper, yelling, crying, crumbling, whatever. I marvel at the putative stability of my friends. I like having stable friends, I like having a stable life, it’s not how my life has always been. There is a level of tranquility and calm that washes over me while I’m driving through rural Alabama with my stable friends in a well-maintained van in my healthy body wrapped around a heart that is not broken and a mind that feels as clear and capable as it has ever been. Grace is unearned, I’m told.

We make it to Huntsville on time, the venue is called the Salty Nut, kind of a spacious and tidy bar with a kind bartender my height but with a double thick country accent and the show booker is slight and soft spoken and exceedingly kind, he receives us and then points us in the direction of a nearby restaurant called Banditos Burritos. The restaurant is festooned with vaguely southwestern or hispanic decorations and also random camp like a dirty 1990s Bart Simpson doll, a ruined acoustic guitar, a King Khan poster, a garden gnome on an old-fashioned scale with the sliding thing, a skateboard without trucks painted with a sleeping cactus person wearing a sombrero, etc. The people there are so so nice and when we say we are playing the Salty Nut tonight the guy behind the counter explains that menu items with steak and all beers will cost, but otherwise we can order whatever we want for free. We get burritos, nachos, beans, rice, salsa, hot sauce, ice water in a paper cup. We feast, scarf down, all hungrier than we realized, it’s essentially a non-franchise Taco Bell by my appraisal, which is absolutely perfect as far as I’m concerned, the beans and rice feel good and substantial. Tired Frontier shows up a little after us, gets the same stuff basically, we eat and laugh and finish and go back to the venue and wait around for awhile, I join Jeremy and Royal outside skateboarding and act crazy and try to film them doing tricks but my phone dies and and eventually they stop and we go inside and set up and play. The show goes fine, TF sounds as good as they have so far. They’re playing to a crowd of the other two bands and maybe 8 people in the bar sitting at a table eating food they brought over for Banditos Burritos. The show is fine, unremarkable. When we play, I do the usual routine of trying to play my hardest and with my whole body, and end up dropping sticks more than once and missing some snare hits and not being able to keep up on the driving floor tom parts, mostly because I’m not warmed up and maybe not focusing enough, I’m letting myself get a little carried away trying to play hard and fast rather than keep things tight, I worry this may miff the other guys but after the show there is no indication that anyone even noticed it or cared. There was a cool part where I dropped a stick but instead of it falling to the floor it bounced around on top of the snare and tom and I managed to snatch it out of mid air and keep playing and Jeremy noticed that and that made me feel cool. We played hard and to my ear we got good claps between songs, we are pretty live and high energy and I think even if people don’t like our sound they appreciate the energy, but also some of the songs are earworms and catchy and people like that too, I’ve heard. We finish, the other drummer from the other band, Golden Flakes, says great set man, we perch at the merch table but sell nothng. We listen to Golden Flakes play for close to an hour, very jam band vibe, many many guitar solos, kind of sloppy, sort of high energy rock and roll I guess, I by this time am tired and pretty disinterested, get on my phone for most of it. Toward the end of their sets someone who I assume is a townie is drunk and heckling them between songs in a way that they are clearly fine with and they know the guy and to me for some reason he looks the way I imagine the way the protagonist John from Shit Town the podcast would look. We are in Alabama after all. He sounds like John (not from our band, from the podcast). He’s annoying and I’m being judgy in my head about him when I should maybe feel sorry or indifferent, idk. It feels sad to me, I don’t feel like writing more about it. It’s awkward enough, the heckling and banter from Golden Flakes, that by the end of the set we all kind of joke-rush out of there, quietly agreeing that what’s happening is awkward and unpleasant and we should go. We get put up in Thomas’s apartment, and on on the ride home the guys talk about how Huntsville’s claim to fame is being the place where the Nazi engineers taken during Operation Paperclip were taken after WW2, whose skills were put to use developing rockets, and that all manner of testing has taken place in and around the nearby military base, the Redstone Arsenal. Kabir tells a story about how a nuclear warhead was dropped on NC and by freak chance did not detonate. It would have wiped out the population of the entire Southeast. I didn’t believe it but you can read about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash?wprov=sfti1

At the apartment I make a b-line for the couch, get my sleeping stuff out, eat an apple and a banana and a bunch of peanut butter out the jar and go to sleep. At the end of every day I feel so much more irritable and grumpy than I do at other times. I still really treasure a quiet space all to myself to sleep in and so this troubles that. But I just listen to a youtube video on European history, learn nothing, and have no dreams I remember.