|
|
|
February 9th, 2010
06:11 pm - An open letter that shows what a nerd I truly am
Dear DC:
Yes, it was kind of cool that you brought back the Multiverse, especially since you did so in 52, which was a fun series with two great writers (and two pretty good ones).
However, I am now officially over it. It's like every bloody DC comic I read is all about dimension-hopping, alternate versions of established heroes, continuity cross-pollination and in general a substitution of novelty value for strong storytelling. Furthermore, it must be said are simply Not Very Good (such as Trinity) and some - well, okay, mostly Countdown - are downright execrable, and no amount of crazy Earth-9 field trips and Sunshine Superman cameos really make up for that. Yes, I'm kind of glad the Milestone characters are being incorporated into core DC continuity, and I'm certainly interested in reading new Hardware and Icon stories, but they need to be better than the skullfuckingly wooden JLA storyline in which they were reintroduced.
I'm tired of it, and would be happy to read comics about, you know, the core characters and universe you focused on in the past. As long as they're good comics, rather than the markedly lacklustre stuff that keeps coming my way.
While I've got you here, I also want you to knock off the massive universe-wide crossovers, stop making the JLA crap, and tell Geoff Johns to find a new trick other than gruesomely butcher 90s characters that he didn't like just so that he can push the status quo closer to what it was when he was reading Adventure Comics at age 14.
You've published many awesome superhero comics with some of the world's most engaging and enduring characters, DC, and some of them pretty recently (albeit most of them written by Grant Morrison). Get your head back into the game, put a moratorium on multiversal shenanigans for a while and stop being so damned mediocre.
Yours pretty much forever, or until Batman actually dies for reals, Patrick
--
(PS And don't look too smug over there, Marvel, at least not until you stop putting out those fucking terrible Marvel Zombie comics. DC may have fumbled the ball lately, but at least they never gave Robert Kirkman any money, or published One More Day. You idiots.)
Current Mood: nerdier than
|
February 8th, 2010
08:29 pm
I'm hot, I'm tired, and some of my internal organs seem to have stopped working.
...must try harder to reserve posts like this for Twitter.
|
February 7th, 2010
09:33 pm - The price of heroism - slime and meaty bits stuck inside your armour
After a brief sojourn - well, a couple of months, but who's counting - a slightly recalibrated team of heroes fought zombies, skeletons and giant mounds of acid jelly in our continuing saga of 4E D&D.
Details behind the cut.
( Read more... )
|
February 5th, 2010
08:34 pm
It's late in life, but I'm slowly amassing a little collection of board games for those times when I can't organise a roleplaying session (which, let's face it, is more often than not).
At the moment the main ones are Dark Influences, Prince of the City, Mwahahaha! and the recently purchased Murder City - White Wolf one and all, proving I am a sucker for well-established IP and/or stuff created by people I know. Or perhaps that I like board games that still produce some kind of narrative and character, at least as a gloss over cardflopping and tokenpushing. (I also have Munchkin and Dungeoneer, but they don't seem to scratch the same itch.)
I really haven't had enough of a chance to play with the games I have, and I do want to work on that, but what games would others suggest that have that same pseudo-roleplaying element to them, or at least an opportunity to chew scenery and filter winning and losing through a name and silly voice?
(I'll take Arkham Horror as read. And please don't suggest the World of Warcraft boardgame; I'll never regain the two hours it took to play half a round of that.)
|
February 4th, 2010
09:42 pm
Well, the Laundry on Johnston Street has been bought out and made over, which more than likely spells the end of Extreme Karaoke.
Anyone know if it's relocated? Or if there is another open-mike-style karaoke night around where drunken hipsters can growl out a very dubious version of 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' without getting immediately glassed?
|
February 3rd, 2010
10:41 pm
We started watching The Wire recently; about halfway through season one right now.
I also started reading David Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets around the same time; again, about halfway through.
It's interesting to see how much material from the book got recycled into the TV series - characters, events, lines of dialogue. Nothing wrong with that, not at all; a good line is a resource worth using as much as you can get away with.
But the book is non-fiction; the characters are real people, the actions real, the statements real. To see that reality transposed into fiction, to see events of real-1988 spun and recoloured into fictional-2002, to hear an obscene exchange between two real cops come from the mouths of two fictional cops that aren't closely based on the cops in question... it's a really intriguing metafictional blurring of boundaries, an echo effect from seeing the genuine version and the fictional version side by side, and not necessarily preferencing the genuine over the fake.
Apparently some of the real cops from Homicide have small or cameo roles as fictional cops in later seasons of The Wire, in some cases interacting with characters based on themselves. Now that's fascinating. Reverb text.
|
February 1st, 2010
07:35 pm - All a Twitter-twatter
I joined up to Twitter this morning, mostly because ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) blithespirit kept nagging me to sign up and she's very good at wearing away my defences over long periods of time.
So yes, I'm now part of the Next Big Thing, a year or so after it stopped being the Next Big Thing and began rolling towards the Previous Thing That Isn't as Cool as Gluing Rodents to Our Faces, which is my prediction for 2012.
Thus far, it's not looking like replacing LiveJournal in my social media heirarchy, but I think it could make a solid case for eclipsing Facebook. I primarily use Facebook for party invites and general word-of-text info propagation, and that seems to really be Twitter's big thing. Signing up may mean I can keep abreast of what people are doing without being spammed with quizzes and invites to Flash games, which would be a fine thing, while leaving LJ for the kind of substantial posts that, let's face it, I make less and less often but want to claim I'm still capable of producing. It seems to emphasize the social part of social networking/media, and that's worth investigating.
I'm not so keen thus far on the virtual-stalking-of-celebrities thing, but then again they do seem to encourage it - and more broadly, it seems like it has potential for keeping in touch with events on short notice. I was complaining to a comedy promoter at lunch yesterday (why yes, I do hang out with interesting people, or at least meet them at friends' birthdays) that it's tricky to find comedy events outside of Festival time because venues move and shows are fleeting; it seems to me that the word-of-mouth style of Twitter hashnews could mesh well with that and let me keep my ear to the ground.
And of course, one day I can use it for my own merciless self-promotion. I'm sure you're looking forward to that as much as I am.
In the interim, I mostly plan to whinge about stuff. It's important to go with your strengths, after all.
|
January 31st, 2010
09:15 pm
Goddamnit, I didn't write a single fucking word this month.
Enough of this.
Current Mood: sick of my bullshit
|
January 30th, 2010
09:53 pm
Goddamnit, people, 'female' and 'woman' are not synonyms. One's a noun, one's an adjective! Stop using them interchangably!
Yes, yes, Shakespeare did it first: "To hold in Right and Title of the Female" and similar bits from Henry V. But a) English had different rules then, and b) SHUT UP I'M RIGHT.
The mass media is full of this kind of sloppiness, and if I freak out and shoot up the set of The Biggest Loser with an AK-47 this will be one of several reasons why. There will be an inquest, David Crystal will testify on my behalf, and I will be vindicated. And imprisoned, yes, but that won't stop me from being right.
...man, I'm lucky emrhyck find this kind of frothing semantic anal-retentiveness hot.
|
January 29th, 2010
03:50 pm
Comics Alliance on the best and worst Green Lanterns
Speaking as a Kyle Rayner fan, I have a theory about why so many comics reader have a big geekwoody for Hal Jordan:
Hal Jordan is Captain James T. Kirk.
Observe the similarities:
- Ranking officer of the enlightened Space Police
- Total maverick who's too independent to follow the Space Police rules, despite being happy to impose those rules on unruly aliens
- Ethnic/alien 'close friend' who mostly hovers in the background while occasionally inspiring slashfic
- Plot finds reasons to explain why the grey vanishes magically from his hair
- Gets to sit in a chair while flying around and showing off for hot alien chicks
- Totally nails hot alien chicks
- Gets played by much younger actor in recent/upcoming movies, because no-one in the wider world wants to see an action SF movie about their dad nailing hot alien chicks
- Writers keep trying to portray him as much cooler than he actually is
- Succeeded by a character who is actually interesting AW SNAP SON
I expect the HEAT and Trekkie kill teams to arrive any day now. But they can't deny the truth.
(I can think of more comparisons, but some are a bit insulting to my geek homeboys. Feel free to offer up more suggestions!)
|
January 28th, 2010
12:56 pm - Semantics matter, damnit
I'm struggling with Lolita, so I'm also dipping into a Peter Straub-edited anthology called Poe's Children, published in 2008, subtitled "The New Horror".
It includes an M. John Harrison story from 1988, a Ramsey Campbell story from 1982, a Jonathan Carrol story from 1990, a Thomas Tessier story from 1992, a Thomas Ligotti story from 1991, a John Crowley story from 1990 and a Stephen King story from 1984 that I first read in high school.
The theme of the anthology seems to be 'horror that blurs genre boundaries', 'horror that doesn't rely on classic and overused tropes', 'horror with literary merit', or possibly just 'horror that Peter Straub likes'. All of these are fine focuses for an anthology, it's true. But I would argue that 'new' is not the adjective that springs to mind when looking at the contents list.
|
January 27th, 2010
12:52 pm - Indie RPG and the Temple of Doom - With Great Power
The superhero genre is a broad one, not just in terms of quality but in the styles and themes of stories that can be told within it, everything from Watchmen to Fighting American to Starman and beyond. Most superhero RPGs attempt to encompass as much of that thematic breadth as possible, generally by ignoring theme (at least on a mechanical level) and instead focusing on flexibility and mechanics in character detail and creation, following the blueprint laid down by Champions. With Great Power takes a very different tack, focusing on the subgenre of 'hero overcomes great odds to save the day, but at great emotional cost and sacrifice', the model best typified by Spider-Man and most Marvel comics up to the early 80s or so. But rather than using early 80s game design, WGP does this with detailed and very specific mechanics that put characters' needs and relationships at the centre of conflicts, and carefully structures gameplay to produce a (hopefully) satisfying narrative arc.
Character creation starts with choosing a thematic conflict for the story arc, such as power/responsibility or freedom/duty. Characters are then defined with a handful of Aspects, narrative tags that can cover superpowers and skills ('Spider-powers', 'Black Jade Kung-Fu'), but also relationships, jobs, personality traits and anything else the player wants to see integrated into the plotline. After creation, the GM spends some time creating a villain or two in the same way, and a Plan that relies on the villain taking control of specific PC Aspects in some way. Play then revolves around scenes, setting stakes, and similar indie-game stuff, which feature either character/plot development or outright conflict; the difference is important and makes a big difference in gameplay.
The system uses playing cards, and development scenes are a simple high-card-wins clash between GM and player; conflict scenes are broken into pages and panels, and the system morphs into back-and-forth trick-taking, where changing suits allows you to narrate changes in conflict style (moving from slugfest to stealth, for instance). Losing a scene costs you your stakes and inflicts damage on Aspects, but in turn gives you more cards to spend in conflicts. Pretty straightforward, but there are many tricks and tweaks to give the system substance and (especially) to reinforce the theme and structure. For instance, GMs start with multiple decks and many wild cards, but the more conflicts the PCs lose, the more advantages are stripped away - so by the end, the NPC villain may have a big narrative advantage over the heroes, but the players actually have the mechanical edge over the GM and can make a last-minute dramatic comeback. WGP has a number of such tricks (some complex enough to require planning sheets and props), and they really reinforce the structure and direction of play in clever and more-or-less organic ways.
Gameplay aside, WGP is clearly and energetically written; the narrative voice is enthusastic but never over-hyped, and author Michael Miller's obvious love of the genre is infectious. Perhaps the best element of the writing is the ongoing example of play, a session with named players and PCs that illustrates every aspect of the rules clearly and engagingly. (There's also a short comic example for conflict scenes, but it's clumsier and largely unnecessary.) I often find indie RPGs don't give enough guidance to players and (especially) GMs about how to change their established playstyle, but WGP does this very effectively, to the point where I feel confident I could easily run a game and know what I was doing. The only concern I have is one central contradiction - the GM is meant to play reactively, bouncing off PCs' aspects rather than planning a plot, but at the same time has to play and portray the NPC villain as proactive, drawing the heroes into his/her Great Plan and thinking a step ahead. Balancing that could be tricky, and it's a shame the game doesn't give slightly stronger guidance there.
And that's a pretty minor flaw, frankly, in what is a very cool looking game. I burned out on supers RPGs 15-odd years ago, and ever since I've felt that I've said and done everything I think I need to with that kind of game. With Great Power makes me think about going back to that well and seeing what emotional power I could draw from old, classic themes and tropes. I hope one day to get the chance.
|
January 26th, 2010
07:48 am
Had a dream just before waking about a group of 19th-century American frontier wizards sitting down to meet with an oracle (played by Cate Blanchett, I think, although she never actually showed up), at which one of the wizards - the most powerful and arrogant - got up and sat at the oracle's table before she arrived, decided that her audience would be with him alone. I (well, my dream POV frontier wizard) eventually got up and quietly told him that while he was probably better than any of us, he needed to be sure he was better than all of us put together, because in the face of that kind of humiliation we would put aside our disagreements to oppose him. If he thought he could win a war, far enough - but he needed to be sure he could win a war tonight. Then I sat back down, and woke up before I saw what he did next.
I have no plans to write about 19th-century American frontier wizards, or for that matter about Cate Blanchett, but if I ever do I think I'll try to work that scene in somewhere. It had tension.
...I also dreamed that Adelaide got moved to north Queensland, and then got put back, but I don't think that scene had as much dramatic weight.
|
January 25th, 2010
06:36 pm
It's always a surprise to discover what side effect I'll suffer after donating platelets. Nausea's common, as is jaw pain, both presumably due to all the anticoagulant in my bloodstream. Headaches and general joint ache are also big winners. Occasionally it's numbness in the limbs and face.
Today it's fatigue, which kicked in about halfway through the process, to the point where I nearly fell asleep a couple of times. Not a great idea when you have a big needle jammed into your arm and blood pumping in and out for more than an hour. Particular for someone who tosses and turns (and occasionally has entire conversations) in their sleep. Nod off and it would have all gone Francis Bacon in there.
Kind of extra glad I had the day off work now. If I'd gone it at 5pm like I planned, I probably would have passed out completely.
Maybe next time I'll get mutant powers. It's gotta happen eventually, right?
|
January 23rd, 2010
06:26 pm
My boss unexpectedly told me to take Monday off, so now I have a four-day weekend. Excellent! The perfect time to get a pile of work done on Arcadia!
...so of course, I spent the afternoon cleaning out my study and getting the last five years of taxes into order.
If procrastination was an Olympic sport, I'd find pressing reasons not to show up for my gold medal.
|
January 22nd, 2010
07:16 am - Oh for fuck's sake, Bloomsbury
Remember last year when Bloomsbury USA pusblished a YA book about an African-American protagonist but put a white girl on the cover?
Well, apparently that didn't embarrass them enough, so they've gone back to the whitebread well.
Bloomsbury USA faces another races row over book cover
Bloomsbury USA's decision to feature a white girl on the cover of Jaclyn Dolamore's debut novel Magic Under Glass, which stars a dark-skinned heroine, has sparked controversy across the internet and accusations of "white-washing", just five months after the same publisher was forced to back down over a similar controversy. ...Although Dolamore's heroine is described in the book as black-haired and brown-skinned – and the official trailer for the novel shows her as such – the cover chosen by Bloomsbury USA Children's Books shows a white, brown-haired girl. The choice has provoked outrage from bloggers and commentators, particularly following the publisher's decision (later reversed) last year to feature a white girl on the cover of Justine Larbalestier's novel Liar, about a black girl.
The major difference, at this point, is that while Larbalestier (politely) criticised Bloomsbury and encouraged others to do the same, Dolamore (a first-time novelist) seems much more reluctant to make waves, and would rather people just bought the book and ignored the cover. Understandable for a first-time author, but still sad.
But not as sad as Bloomsbury's (apparent) pervasive racism.
|
January 21st, 2010
01:28 pm - Mini-book review - Boneshaker
I think one reason I've became disenchanted with the steampunk subgenre is that there are very few texts of any substance to provide it with a foundation. Steampunk developed around a scant handful of original novels, the most significant (and now least referenced) probably being The Difference Engine, and there still aren't that many of them. Without full-length books to develop the themes and conceptual palatte of the genre, all that's really there is a thin skin of tropes and visual signifiers, which is why steampunk seems to primarily exist in short stories, derivative texts (comics, short stories, RPGs), and ultimately became more an aesthetic/fashion movement than anything else. These things are fine, but ultimately solid, well-written novels are needed to make steampunk any more than the desire to stick a pressure gauge on a pair of welding goggles and wear it to a goth club.
Cherie Priest's Boneshaker isn't the novel that finally breathes real life into steampunk, but it's a good, readable novel that dares to move beyond the easy surface of the genre. It's set in 19th century Seattle, 15 years after the titular experimental tunneling machine carved up the streets and opened a vent of gas that turned people into zombies. Now Seattle is a wasteland surrounded by a 200-foot wall, outside which Briar Wilkes and Ezekiel Blue - wife and son of Levitcus Blue, the vanished inventor who created the Boneshaker and destroyed the city - eek out a comfortless life of mud, polluted rain and poverty. When Zeke enters the city to find proof of his father's innocence, Briar follows to rescue him, and soon they're caught up in intrigues involving mad science, air pirates, zombies and turf wars, all while trying to find each other and maybe create a better life for themselves.
Boneshaker's biggest risk is in eschewing the comfortable alt-history of frock coats and English dandies plus steam-robots that seems to dominate the fashion side of steampunk. Not only does it look to 19th-century frontier America for inspiration, it focuses on the ugly, scary and practical; Seattle is a war zone of shattered buildings, poison gas, mad zombies and dirty survivors, an almost post-apocalyptic landscape against which the occasional steampunk fancies provide contrast rather than comfort. Priest's prose is strong, with occasional moments of evocative magic, and the novel has a cracking pace and plenty of emotional development.
The only thing that left me scratching my head was that some of the supporting characters and their agendas seem more developed and interesting than they needed to be for the novel, given their minor roles. Perhaps Priest was trying to show that the situation in Seattle is larger and more complex than the slice Zeke and Briar experience, but that's a difficult thing to pull off in a limited space; instead, it felt more like she'd developed these characters and concepts separately, then slotted them into Boneshaker to show them off in a space that didn't really fit them. Not a major issue, but one that distracted me from the main narrative in places.
In any case, Boneshaker is an appealing read that aims a little higher than easy genre reading and reaches even higher in parts. It shows a flip side to a prematurely stale genre and possibly even sets the stage for more complex, ambitious sequels in the future. Well worth a look.
|
January 20th, 2010
10:23 pm
I had some spare time at work, so to satisfy any lingering curiosity I read the synopses of all the remaining Battlestar Galactica episodes on Wikipedia.
...oh, fuck off.
Yeah, not about to waste any further time on that nonsense. That's some weapons-grade stupid from the look of it.
God, I wish people would stop renting The Wire from the DVD library so I could finally watch it.
|
January 19th, 2010
12:39 pm - Set phasers to loss of interest
I caught the Battlestar Galactica miniseries a few years back, thought it looked adequate but never felt inclined to watch the series. Since then, the series has been lauded and feted by geek and mainstream audiences alike, and given that Channel Ten have decided to stop showing Supernatural because... well, because they're dicks, I guess... I figured it was as good a chance as any to rent the first DVD of the series and watch the first four episodes.
So, umm, when does it get good? Because those episodes pretty much bored me rigid.
Yes, it's all serious and grim and metaphorical, and I like serious TV, but I also like interesting characters, clear storytelling, engaging plots and decent pacing. Melodramatic whining, invisible sexbot friends, Christian overtones and dogfights that play out like slowed-down bumpercar races don't really do it for me. Plus the whole "future human culture with the same social mores, equipment aesthetics and dress sense of 2004 America" really doesn't work for me; frankly, it reminds me more than a little of L. Ron Hubbard's Marcab Confederacy, where alien warlords drive atomic race cars and wear fedoras and overcoats. It's a metaphor for modern America in the War on Terror, I already got that, so you don't need to make it screamingly obvious by beaming the cast of 24 up to the Enterprise.
I don't expect second season West Wing or anything, but I need more than this to bother watching. Am I going to get it? Or should I cut my losses early and find something else to waste brain cells on?
(Cos, well, I'm kinda thinking about Stargate...)
|
January 18th, 2010
04:27 pm
There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. - Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I wish the closure of the Tote meant something to me. I came to Melbourne after the arguable heyday of the live music scene, after many legendary venues and pubs had closed down or been bought out and turned into apartments or dance bars. I've seen more close down since coming here. And I feel bad that it doesn't mean more to me, because I can see how much it hurts people I care about, people whose history and development and personal stories played out against a background of sticky carpet and foldback.
It happened in Brisbane too, towards the end of the 90s, when the noise control laws shut down the Valley. It came back, in the end, but it was never the same; while our backs were turned the pubs became nightclubs and the punk noise became 4/4 beats. And there's a place for that, but it forced the rock out and we never really found it again.
But even if the best has gone, or is fading, I think it's worth noting that it's not going quietly. That thousands of people will turn out in support, just to show that they care and that they're angry. And I think that in Melbourne, much more than Brisbane, public anger and public passion can have an effect, can get some attention and make a difference. Maybe. I want to believe that, anyway.
So keep being angry. Keep demanding the laws change so that community-focused music pubs aren't treated the same as King Street boofhead bars. Keep giving a damn about the things that mattered to you, so that they have a chance to matter to someone younger and newer to the scene. And if it all falls through... well, keep remembering. Because it's when you forget that history turns into footnote. I'm sad for your loss. But I'm glad you still feel something.
|
|
|
