S02E01 of Discovery went out on Friday. I have some thinking. This thread incidentally brought to you by a need to distance myself a bit from the rest of the rage machine that is Twitter. #StarTrekDiscovery
— Drew Shiel (@gothwalk) January 24, 2019
(Strictly speaking, I want to ramble vaguely a bit more.)
So all of that is Star Trek on TV (or in novels, games, etc) as representation of something that has some reality elsewhere, in the same way as we have differing versions of Shakespeare or Beowulf or The Great Gatsby. And one of the things that changes over time is how we place people in that story. We start out by having people who look as much as possible like the "real" people, if there were real people, or like the physical description in the book, or like the first (or most famous) actor who played the role. And then later, when we have had several actors, or there isn't quite such an image in the public mind of what the real person looked like, we can change that.
Obviously that has all happened already for Shakespeare. In as much as he ever existed, we have no idea what Macbeth looked like - he was almost certainly male, and probably mostly white, and that's really all we can say. But you can certainly run a production of the Scottish Play where the titular character is played by a woman of Indian descent, and her wife is black, say. You can mess with a number of people's heads in a pleasing way by doing colourblind casting, genderblind casting, flipping everything (and how much would that rock? a cast entirely of non-white women except for Lord Macbeth, who's a big Samoan dude or something) and so forth.
We can't do that yet with Star Trek. But I can envision - and may well yet see in action - a production of The Old Series wherein Kirk is a woman, the same way as Starbuck was flipped in Battlestar Galactica. Given Kirk's approach to life often being seen as stereotypically masculine, that would be interesting. His relationship with Spock - particularly if it remains non-sexual (yes, I know, slash, but it's never been thus on screen) looks very different then - although, to be fair, something very like that has been done with Janeway and Chakotay in Voyager.
We're not quite at the stage of retelling yet. But if we consider Discovery (and TNG and Voyager) as being proto-retellings of "the core Trek story" rather than sequels and prequel, we end up with some interesting parallels and differences. First and foremost, obviously, the point of view in Discovery isn't the captain, and it's only getting slightly toward the mostly-ensemble approach of previous series. The choice of a Black woman as the point of view is solid; while it's not relevant in the milieu of Starfleet, it marks her as an outsider from a 21st century point of view in a way that echoes Vulcan-raised ex-mutineer Burnham.
Similarly, we have Stamets as a retelling of Scotty/La Forge/Torres. I'm not entirely clear on what Stamets' position within Discovery's crew is, mind; he's not actually the Chief Engineer, but an astromycologist. And you can draw a parallel between Tilly and Wesley Crusher, between Saru and Spock (and also Saru and Deanna Troi). Other parallels remain to be mapped; Airiam and Data may have a lot in common, but we haven't seen enough of them yet. And Bryce, Detmer, Owosekun, and other people we've seen on the bridge, likewise. And the Osnullus character (I'm not clear yet on whether that's her name or her species) is just a complete mystery as yet. But I'm hoping to see more of the background characters appearing, because consistent background characters are clearly one of the real strengths of Discovery to this point.
]]>So, assuming this is followed by some more posting, hi.
]]>I am up to date, more or less, on Agents of SHIELD. I am somewhat behind on Flash, rather more on Arrow, and very much so on Gotham. I'm watching Agent Carter with my wife, and I think we're about five episodes into that. I haven't even looked at Orphan Black or Penny Dreadful, although I do intend to. And House of Cards and Clone Wars are being watched in bits and pieces; I'm midway through Season 2 of the former and about five or six episodes into the latter.
You'll note that House of Cards is about the only non-genre show I'm watching. That suits me just fine; I'm just not all that interested in non-genre television. But the real point here is that I can watch nothing but genre and still be talking about six or seven current shows. And then there's the upcoming stuff.
Supergirl, for instance, looks like it's going to be absolutely stellar. Take a look here, if you haven't seen it already. From the trailer, it looks like it hits a lot of my buttons; capable female lead, good female supporting characters, the trailer on its own passes the Bechdel test, faithful to the established mythology in so far as it needs to be, and also fun. Importantly, it's not going the grim route of some of the DC material.
Speaking of DC, they seem to be doing an ensemble series which I can only imagine is a counter to Agents of SHIELD. The trailer there is avoiding too many spoilers, but it looks like a solid piece, spinning off from Arrow and Flash. We'll see how the ensemble nature is managed in the long run; it's a difficult thing to do well.
And in non-superhero material, Lev Grossman's The Magicians (originally an excellent book series) is now making it to television as well; trailer here on Buzzfeed. It's slightly altered from the original - which featured the lead characters starting off in their teens - but I'm ok with that kind of change for practical reasons. It's provoking some whining in the fan community, but I reckon that's going to happen with any such change; the feature you lose is going to have been important to someone, somewhere.
2016 looks like being a good year for television, and I'm happy that I'll have the time to keep track.
]]>Turn-based strategy games are good, although the king of all of these, Civilisation, in whatever incarnation it is at the time, tends to be too sticky; it keeps me playing rather than letting me return to the studying. And later in the game, it's pretty necessary to keep a flow of where you are in your head; trying to pick up where you left off while not remembering is hard. But maybe there are others out there now - I hear good things about Endless Legend. But it's currently €30 on Steam, and I object a bit to spending that much on a game I can't try in advance. Torchlight or Diablo are also possibilities. I already own Torchlight, which helps.
Some MMOs are suitable for this. EVE with remote trading (which I'm pretty sure my long-neglected character has) would be good. Wurm Online might also do; I'm sure there've been lots of new developments since I last looked. Although my deed has undoubtedly vanished.WoW, the way I used to play it with the auction house being the focus of activity, would also work. And maybe even the crafting and gathering stuff in it would be interesting. I just don't remember why I lost interest last time. EQ2's crafting and housing is another possibility; I recall it was good to drop in and out of. And Neverwinter has the advantage of being something I'm playing anyway at the moment, and being very good for drop in gaming.
I would like ArcheAge to be a possibility - it has a really nice looking combination of crafting, trading, and combat, with plenty of new stuff being poured in still. But it takes about ten minutes from deciding "I will play" to having a character moving around, and the random lag - which can amount to the character arbitrarily standing still for 30 seconds - makes it hard to play at all, let alone in short sessions. Also, I vaguely resent the way in which it's theoretically free, but you can't do some of the main activities at all well unless you're a paying customer. Neverwinter works this angle a lot better; give me the whole game for free and then dangle some shiny extras in front of me for cash, and I will pay up - at least as much as a monthly subscription for WoW or the like. But overall, I don't think it'll work, which is a pity.
Neverwinter and Torchlight are currently in the lead, with EQ2 and Wurm Online trailing slightly. I shall consider further.
]]>The era is gloriously indeterminable. This is true of the city of Gotham in all proper incarnations; it's dark, it rains a lot, it has Art Deco buildings and gargoyles, and you can't pin down the decade. There are 80s cars (maybe even 70s; I'm not great on cars), 90s tattoos and grunge-punk looking beards, mobile phones that are definitely 21st century, hats that haven't been worn since the 50s, and a slum apartment that could be from the 40s, if it wasn't fitted out by a hipster last year.
And the villains! I spotted Catwoman, Penguin, the Riddler, and Poison Ivy, for certain, and Renee Montoya is there as well. The future Barbara Gordon, too. Smallville suffered from a slow, slow start with regard to the rest of the Superman mythos - there's a sort of urban myth that many people didn't realise it was Superman prequel story at all - and the more recent Arrow was nearly as bad. Gotham packs all these into the first episode, and it's likely that there were a few more I didn't catch, where my lack of knowledge of the Batman continuity is letting me down.
The pilot was well-paced, beautifully shot, and established all kinds of character details and aspects of place. While I can't predict where it's all going (apart from the obvious), there are setups and hooks and all manner of ways to get good plots, arcs, and leads rolling from here. I'm pretty sure I approve.
Nobody actually asked this, but I'm going to make some recommendations anyway, because I'm in a mood to dispense wisdom, and I think that recommending books to read is about as wise as it gets.
So if you're looking for general life advice, then I recommend David Allen's Getting Things Done. Saying it changed my life is something of an exaggeration, but it certainly turned me from someone who had a long list of projects and not a lot of success in finishing them into someone who, by and large, manages an insanely busy calendar of stuff, gets projects finished, and doesn't go mad in the process.
If you're looking for a good graphic novel, I reckon you can't go far wrong with Saga or The Unwritten. Saga is still running, as far as I know, but there are two or three collections already, and The Unwritten has about eight collections, and is one of the better comics I've read in years. It's up there, to some degree, with Sandman. Saga is a sort of science-fiction, science-fantasy setup, detailing the life of a child whose parents were on opposite sides of a long, long war. The Unwritten is about a guy who's part Christopher Robin, part Harry Potter, and his quest to find out if he's real or fictional.
And if you're looking for a novel, well, Ann Lackey's Ancillary Justice is pretty thoroughly stonking. The point of view character is one avatar of a multi-selfed artificially intelligent spacecraft, who has a rough time perceiving gender signals, and therefore calls everyone "she". There are elements of the Left Hand of Darkness in it, and a bit of the feeling of Charles Stross' work on Saturn's Children, and maybe a bit of C J Cherryh. It's very much worth your time.
]]>This mystified me a little; that's not really how I watch Who. I've always been more interested in the big plots, the aliens and their interactions, and the long-term continuity. The concept of the Church of the Papal Mainframe, and its Silent confessors, for example, is a fascinating one. But by and large, with the huge focus on the companions in the series itself over the last few years, I haven't been paying as much attention.
It is possible that I will be paying more attention to the Twelfth Doctor. Spoilers, of course, follow, for the first episode of Series 8: Deep Breath.
]]>There were no stand-out moments where I was going "this is fantastic!". This is actually a good thing; I will take a general high standard throughout an episode over high points and low points. Which is not to say that there were not low points, and I feel like dealing with those first, so that I can get on with the better end of it.So the things that really grated on me can be batched into one main area: the Doctor's attitude to Clara. He (that is, the overall character) went from Eleven's spaniel-y persuasiveness to something much more reminiscent of the First Doctor's strictness, which is frankly out of period for the twenty-first century. He called her an egomaniac and a narcissist, and seemed to think they were reasonable points - which is something you might be able to land on Amy, but not on Clara. And then he fully expected that she would be able to manage in a situation where he had, apparently, completely abandoned her without any idea of what the plan would be, and with only her complete faith in him - or at least, the previous version of him - to confirm in any way that he'd be back. That would work in mid-season. I don't think it worked well at the beginning.
Anyway. Much of the above can be passed off as a re-setting of the Doctor's character, and if they stick with it, keeping him as mean and grumpy as he is, I'll be more ok with it.
As one other aside, I think the dinosaur was wasted; there could have been far more done with it. As it was, there was "Look! We put a dinosaur in Victorian London!" and then it just sort of went away.
So, to things I liked: I do like Capaldi as the Doctor. He seems to be picking up much more on the older series, and as I said above, there are echoes of the First Doctor. If that results in some slightly older companions, I'd be good with that too - in the new series, only Donna gave an impression of being over 25, and I'm still not wholly convinced that Clara is out of her teens (although I see that Jenna Coleman is 28). The Scottish accent is of no harm at all, and the redecorated TARDIS pleases me.
I very much liked the reappearance of the Paternoster Gang, and would like to add my voice to the rising chorus of support for a spinoff series. Also, I have no objection to the Doctor passing through Victorian London a few more times; it's an important era in British history, and nobody complains about him appearing repeatedly through the later 20th and early 21st centuries.
The appearance of a villain who wasn't one of the same old set was pleasing. And the new darker streak in the Doctor which leads to us not being sure if the reverse-cyborg jumped or was pushed is very interesting indeed. I'm pretty sure Eleven would have talked the robots into leaving the planet, possibly even repaired their spaceship for them. Twelve just went "this won't do" and eliminated them. The organ theft schtick was also pleasingly dark - although admittedly it's not the first time that Whovian monsters have been harvesting humans for something.
I liked the slightly longer episode; it made the whole thing run more smoothly, and with less frantic running around. I accept that frantic running around is a Who thing, but mostly I have to grit my teeth through it. The idea that Twelve is going to be a Doctor who steeples his fingers and plots rather than a Doctor who runs around in circles barking is a welcome one, and the change of pace worked well. I suspect that the longer episode was a season-opener, though, not a permanent fixture.
So overall, I liked the episode, and I think the poorer things about it might improve in hindsight.
]]>Some minor spoilers follow; nothing you wouldn't find in the first few chapters.
]]>Full Fathom Five is a magnificent continuation of the series. It brings together elements and thinking and characters from the other two books in a way that makes sense, and I think it can probably be read as a standalone novel just as well; the point of view characters are new. It brings closure for some characters, and leaves others open to continue. I know there are at least two more books coming in the series, and that makes me happy.I am trying hard to make up my mind on whether the central premise of Gladstone's world is "religion works like science" or "religion works like economics". I think it may be both, plus a few more. In this case, the action centres around a business concern that builds idols. Idols work in something like the same way as an tax-shelter offshore account does in our world, if one was dealing in soulstuff instead of money. That is, they can be worshipped - indeed, are worshipped - by specially trained priests, on behalf of clients, who reap the benefits without having to deal with the vagaries and dictats of actual gods and worship themselves. I think.
There are two notable elements I want to call out here. First is that the two point of view characters are women. One of those is transgendered, having been born male - and while the transgendered element is central to the character, it's not a plot point in any major way. Second, from eight major characters, only three are men. None of this is in any way artificial, and to be honest, I really only noticed when I was listing off major characters in notes for this review.
Second, there's a wide variety of socio-economic class backgrounds among the characters, and this is handled well. None of them are ignorant of the very existence of other classes, as happens a lot in fantasy, but all of them have misconceptions about how the others actually live. Again, this is gracefully handled and integrated into the story, and I wouldn't really have noticed if I hadn't picked up on the gender balance first. At some point, I'm going to have to pull out the Proper Literary Analysis, and read these books from a Marxist perspective. They are certainly and absolutely on the regular re-read list, at the very least.
In the same way as Two Serpents Rise was set in a pseduo-Aztec setting, Full Fathom Five is set in something like Hawai'i. It's a modern Hawai'i, though, with tourists and urban renewal in among wild areas. I'm not sure why, but I feel it works better than the pseudo-Aztec area. I don't know that I'm completely happy with the influences being as transparent as they are, though; it jars a little in a way that other good fantasy settings don't. I think that might just as well be my own lack of knowledge of those cultures and settings, though; I've never had a problem with pseudo-Norse, pseudo-Renaissance-Italian, or pseudo-Medieval-English settings. I do admittedly have issues with the pseudo-Irish ones, but that's mostly because they're (usually) broadly wrong.
I remain utterly charmed by the modern thinking over the fantasy fundamentals. There are no swords, and very little armour to be seen, but magic and the transmission of souls are an essential part of the setting. I am thinking forward to the more or less inevitable RPG set in Gladstone's world, and I really want to see it, not least for the setting details and the mechanics of souls.
]]>There are some games on there that I've only barely heard of, too: TERA:Online is not on my radar at all, likewise Blade and Soul, and RIFT. And I've really only heard of Lineage 2 by way of it's predecessor. Looks like I'm more out of touch than I thought - or else I'm paying attention to a very Western-only section of the MMO demographic, and not getting much from the Korean-focussed market where Lineage and its relatives are popular.
]]>However, since then, I've had a look at the Basic Rules, and read some impressions from other gamers.
In particular, there's a line in the Basic Rules which says "You don't need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender", and goes on to explain that androgynous, hermaphroditic, and various other points along the gender spectrum are ok to play. I will concede a great deal of slack to 5th Edition on the basis of that one line. It also makes sure you know you can play male or female characters of any race without hindrance.
It's not enough to make me buy the books, but I might give the game a try at a convention, and I'm certainly much better disposed toward it.
]]>The first ones I'm going to look at are Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise, the first two books in the Craft Sequence.
Some spoilers are inevitable, but I've tried to keep them to an absolute minimum.
]]>The TL;DR version: Both of them are excellent books, read them.For more detail: Gladstone has taken the trouble to construct a complex, deep world, in which magic and gods work in interesting ways. There are shades of Jim Butcher's thinking in the careful structuring of magic and its associated systems, and something almost like Barbara Hambly in the lively and convincing existence of his characters. I don't really have higher praise than "like Jim Butcher and Barbara Hambly", really.
Three Parts Dead is details the initial work of Tara Abernathy for an international necromantic firm called Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao. It's worth noting that Tara is a black woman, depicted as such on the cover, without any impractical poses (or at least the cover I've seen), and that then has no bearing on her activity through the book. It's a pleasing aspect.
The world is essentially a modern one (though not our modern one) where magic is a standard part of legal, industrial, and religious processes. I love this concept dearly, and Gladstone provides ways to explore it throughout the novel, as Tara gets to grips with places and concepts she's not wholly familiar with. There are interesting twists on the idea of contracts and souls, which I appreciate since I've been playing with similar ideas in my own RPG campaigns, and solid characterisation. Small details early on play out perfectly to the end of the story, too. It makes perfect sense, for instance, that a priest of a fire god should be protected from smoke damage, and thus immune to any side effects of his chain-smoking.
Overall, it's a really good read, and rated two "dammit, is this my stop already" realisations.
Two Serpents Rise is perhaps not quite as startlingly good. It's partly because it's the second in the series, I think. And it's also partly because the specific setting's influences and origins in this world are a little clearer to me; they're closely related to pre-Columbian Mexica. The wider setting is the same, and while I didn't see any overt connections between the two books, the city of Alt Coulomb, where Three Parts Dead takes place, is mentioned a couple of times.
It's still an excellent book, though, depicting a few months in the life of Caleb Altemoc, a sometime gambler and professional risk manager working for Red King Consolidated in the city of Dresediel Lex. Caleb's ultimate employer is the Red King, a sorcerer old enough to have essentially converted himself into undead - something that seems to be a professional risk for higher-powered magic users. Two Serpents Rise deals with the nature of belief and godhood, and does so in an urban setting with modern thinking.
The next book in the series, Full Fathom Five, is out later this month. I'm looking forward to it greatly.
]]>Second, it should work in a browser, or in a fairly simple app.
Third, it should be playable by logging in once a day. The advantage of logging in more often should be incrementally decreasing - so you get 1.5 times the benefit if you log in twice a day, 1.75 if you log in three times, 1.875 for four logins, and so on. Neither should it penalise you for not logging in - you just don't gain anything for that day.
That's the business side, more or less.
On the game side, it should deal with resource gathering, resource processing, and the sale of finished goods. That is to say, it should be like crafting in most MMOs.
It should be represented by some kind of premises - an estate, a starbase, a monastery, a colony planet, a college of wizardry, whatever. This should be arrangeable and decorate-able, as per Farmville and all its clones, but also as per Starcraft. You should be able to look at and interact with other players' premises. They should be very customisable, up perhaps to the point of EQII's player housing.
It should not be cutesy. This, I think, was probably Farmville's downfall; the people it attracted with its graphic style didn't much care about the gameplay, and those who cared about the gameplay didn't much like the graphics. I will allow that cartoonish is ok; I used not to like cartoon graphics in games, but World of Warcraft and Torchlight have successfully warped my brain enough.
There should be significant player interaction; it should not need to be with specific players. This is the auction house component, as it were - the beauty of WoW's auction house was that you could chuck stuff up for sale, and buy things, depending on the actions of other players, without needing to know who they were, be concerned with the quality of their play, or indeed, be online at the same time. I do see this as a sales-and-purchase component, but there could be plenty of other activities, as per EVE's contract system.
There should not be levels of production that you pass through. A major failing of many MMO crafting systems is that materials are tiered; once you pass through the levels that use Iron Screws, you'll never need them again, and once you get to the maximum level, and are using Ultra-Titanium Warp-bonded Screws, you'll never use anything else again, or at least not until the next expansion. Complete newcomers should be able to do stuff and make stuff that is useful to the longest-established players, and thereby give access to the market.
The game should be constantly tinkerable with, not set and forget. It should be complex enough that "best loadout" is hard to achieve, and preferably have some way to respond to best loadout concepts so that they stop being "best" after some significant percentage of players use them - an ecological response, from one point of view, or a market response to saturation, from another.
If this game existed, I would play it every day. It doesn't seem to. If it could combine the atmosphere of Fallen London (or something equally well done in another milieu), I'd probably play it more than my employer would be happy with.
]]>A release schedule has now been put out. It includes two adventures by Wolfgang Baur, as well as the three core books. The books are coming at $50 each - so it looks like the policy of keeping the core books a bit cheaper, and making money on the supplements has been discarded. Given the number of people who only ever bought the core books, that seems like a sound business decision, and perhaps it'll stem the flood of supplements and extras - although I'm sure there will still be plenty.
Now, I'm probably in the Elder Gamer category by now. I've been playing RPGs for something over 25 years. I've moved away, for the most part, from heavily mechanical systems to more freeform ones - Fate being my current focus. And I'm no longer moved as much by a shiny cover.
But those covers just don't look interesting. Whatever else you can say about 4th Edition, the cover art was good, and the layout and design were excellent. This just doesn't have the same impact. In other words, it's kind of lacklustre - much like the ruleset itself.
I'll wait and see. Maybe I'll hear good things about it, and get interested again, but right now, the news isn't grabbing me at all.
]]>"This has taken a pretty serious rewrite, thanks in part to the discussion on the forums."
How often do you see that? I'm pretty sure I've never seen a line like that from a large company. Almost always, by the time a feature makes it as far as being explained to the users, it's set in stone, and won't be changed for any amount of discussion or feedback.
Goblinworks aren't just taking an interesting path with regard to what's in the game, they're going an interesting way with regard to how the game is designed and built as well.
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