Category Archives: Criticism

Hammer, Sickle and Giant Steel, Comrades

You know what the world needs? More mechs. But I don’t mean Japanese mecha, I mean old style giant-tin-cans-on-legs mechs. We’re talking about the old Mechwarrior from the nineties mechs, where it took forever to turn and your vehicle was huge, plodding and carrying the weight of something that would be thousands of pounds. Japanese mecha are cute but are basically samurai with guns.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Accessed from https://cf.geekdo-images.com/opengraph/img/OroKc5LPGoND4I9_uXn13pLCMxM=/fit-in/1200x630/pic3163924.jpg

Scythe and its associated imagery and whatnot belong to Stonemaier Games. Though, I’m uncertain how accreditation works given the controversy over its art. I’ll let Stonemaier deal with that.

So over the past month, I got the privilege of playing a boardgame that fulfills this desperate gaping hole in our societal’s foundations: Scythe – a Stonemaier Games release designed by Jamey Stegmaier. For my friends who are super into boardgames – and let’s be clear, I am not super into boardgames – this was an exciting release. The art is gorgeous (though evidently mired in controversy) and the gameplay is pretty interesting. I wanted to give the game a shot, and a large part of that was the massive steam powered mechs set in a turn of the nineteenth century Europe struggling with a shift from agrarian society to an industrial one. But beyond the neat setting for the game, there’s a number of interesting gameplay mechanics that made the game standout.

Sadly, Derek and I never really got an opportunity to try the game together when it lauched. Derek played it a bunch, however, so when he invited Adam and I to a campaign for the final expansion release, I felt I was at a bit of a disadvantage. Scythe had already two substantial add-ons – Invaders from Afar and The Wind Gambit – and Rise of Fenris was billed as being its biggest addition yet. I had some catching up to do and I was essentially thrown at the wolves in order to do it.

Let’s begin with what I learned from my first game.

Scythe involves players choosing a faction which provides them with a lovely little hero figurine that depicts their character and their animal companion. I’m not certain why every character has a pet. From what I can tell, they never factor into the gameplay itself, but each seems to be designed carefully around matching the animal and character with their general culture on which they are styled. A faction is a fantasy version of an old turn-of-the-century nation state. Derek chose them randomly for our session and we had Saxony (Germany), Nordic Kingdom (Norway) and the Togawa Shogunate (Japan). We were then randomly assigned our factions with Adam on Germany, Derek on Norway and myself as Japan. Derek was excited since he got to play his favourite faction. I was fortunate since I was the only expansion faction and had additional rules to learn.

We then played our first game of the Rise of Fenris campaign.

Thankfully, Rise of Fenris is specifically designed for idiots like me. It introduces the elements of the game gradually, with only the campaign log sheet as the new element to juggle on the first match. This let me focus on learning the base of Scythe. Which, despite its appearance, isn’t as formidable as I initially felt.

Scythe is a rather misleading game that appears like it would be fantastical Risk on a strange board. Every faction starts in a predetermined location. The original five start on isolated islands with the two expansion factions (Scotland and Japan) taking up the distant corners of the map. The board is separated into hexagonal territories associated with a single resource. There are four resources on the board – wheat (or honeypots as we called them), iron, wood and oil. You need wheat, iron, wood and oil in order to enlist lieutenants, build your mechs, build your structures and upgrade your board actions respectively. Along with your faction board, every player is handed a random action board at the start of each match. These boards have the same actions split across four columns but the top actions are randomly paired with the bottom actions on each board. That was a confusing sentence.

Let’s break down the action board since it’s the meat of the game. If you are dealt, say, the Patriotic board, then you will have the Move action on the top of your first column and the upgrade on the bottom. On the other hand, the Industrial board has the Bolster action over the Upgrade action on the first column. The way your turns work is that you will select one column and then perform the top and bottom actions (if able). Some of the top actions have a cost associated with them but they’re usually pretty small like paying a coin. The bottom section, however, all have much higher costs. These costs, of course, are determined by your action board so those Industrial and Patriotic names aren’t just for show. They will generally steer your style of play with your faction.

It’s an interesting way to mix-up the game’s strategy. Each faction has a unique element that generally makes them strong at a portion of the game. Saxony may place any number of their accomplishment stars for winning battles despite the game’s win condition. This naturally pushes them towards war. Norway, however, can cross rivers with their workers prior to building the associated mech which grants that ability. Thus, Norway is pretty good at territory control. Japan drops traps and I have no idea how they work because expansion factions are weird. But while you may pick Saxony as your faction you might end up with the Agriculture board that makes your mechs cost four iron to build. That’s a lot of iron and may direct you towards a more peaceful approach to the game.

So how do you win?

Each player has six star tokens to track their progress against twelve or so tasks. These tasks range from winning a battle, building all your mechs or maxing out the power tracker on the game board. The first player to place all six stars immediately ends the game. But this doesn’t necessarily mean they win. Factions are then scored on the number of territories they control, the amount of gold they have accumulated and the number of stars that they have placed. How high your score is on these three factors is further influenced by your popularity with the people. It’s possible (and happened twice!) that you could trigger the end of the game and still lose the match – much to Adam’s chagrin. From what I can gather, reputation is king and you want to get as high as you can on that track so that all your other objectives will push you ahead of your opponents. There’s a bit of a wrinkle with this reputation tracker, however. Whenever you battle an opponent and win, you force that opponent to retreat his units back to his starting territory. If some of those units are workers, then you lose reputation equal to the number of workers that were forced to retreat.

So despite the initial appearance of trying to dominate the board and scoop up all the resources, there’s a real cost to just rampaging which will be reflected in the people’s dislike of you as a war tyrant.

In fact, I did very well during the campaign by minimizing my combat engagement. I mostly adopted a strategy of trying to pump my popularity as high as I could while constantly improving my action board and building the little buildings. There are the four different actions on your action board, after all, and mechs only really contribute to combat. Buildings provide four different bonuses. They’re pretty small and mostly improve your action economy when taking the top action on your board. Your monument, for example, can improve your popularity by one every time you take a bolster action. The windmill allows you to produce an additional resource on the tile that it’s built. Your mine allows greater movement between certain tiles on the map and the armoury improves your power on the power tracker.

There’s a lot of moving parts to Scythe and while the game mechanics are fairly simple, knowing what to do is pretty complicated. I made a goal of trying to reach the factory for my first couple of games. The factory space is located in the centre of the board and when you arrive you may look at the top two cards of the factory deck and choose one to keep. This gives you access to an additional action that you may take. The value of this action, however, varies wildly between what your goals are and the card you draw. I saw a lot of factory cards throughout the campaign and can confirm that they are not all built equally. Sadly, controlling the factory also counts as three territories at the end of the game scoring. I say sadly because I never was able to maintain it throughout the campaign due to the presence of far stronger military factions that could chase me out whenever they wanted. But it does mean that the factory always holds strategic value and a point of interest even after you scoop up that factory card.

So that’s regular Scythe in a nutshell. It’s meaty enough that even after a couple of runs through the regular game, I still don’t know what’s the best way to address it. But as the campaign progressed, a regular game quickly became a fleeting thing.

See, Scythe: Rise of Fenris adds a whole slew of wrinkles to this formula. I believe there was a new mechanic pretty much every game. And there were eight matches to be played throughout Fenris. A lot of these new elements were mostly to add variance to basic aspects of a regular Scythe game. For example, later on in the campaign you can randomly select the tasks that you place your stars on. The expansion also included mech and infrastructure mods. These are powerful tokens that can really change the nature of your faction. Mech mods allow you to customize the abilities your mechs provide. Oh! I didn’t talk about mech abilities (because there’s so much of the darn game to cover). When you build a mech, it provides a new bonus that applies to your character and all your mechs for the rest of the game. Some of these are simple things like giving you an extra movement when you take a move action. Others give you greater advantages in combat like if you are fighting alone or if you’re defending. Some let you enter the lake tiles or move from lake to lake. Since you can’t take the same action twice, these little changes can give you an advantage whenever you take your movement action. The mech mods allow you to further customize and specialize your faction for a specific game plan.

Infrastructure mods, however, are the real bees knees. Most of these give you a free use of a bottom action board action. This is really valuable in the early game when you’re unlikely to have four iron to build your first mech which could take upwards of four turns or more to achieve. All three of us immediately latched onto grabbing as many infrastructure mods as possible and I’m uncertain about their value outside of a campaign game. It did make the campaign feel a bit manageable since it shrank the length of the games (and we had to squeeze three games in each time we played). I could see infrastructure mods being an excellent way to introduce a handicap for a mixed-skill play group, however. Give your beginning players a free infrastructure mod or two while the more experienced players get nothing. It’s a little advantage that can give the beginner something to be more competitive and a pretty simple addition that doesn’t require a lot of explanation.

I’d say the biggest mechanic the Rise of Fenris adds that would get the most play are the two new factions. These are pretty advanced when compared to the original factions released. And, as luck would have it, Adam and I both ended piloting them in our games. I was in control of the Vesna faction which is all about variance. Vesna’s mechs actually start with two blank abilities and her other two mechs have very underwhelming abilities. However, she has a pile of her own mech mods that she picks six randomly at the start of each game. You then tailor your mechs to the mods you chose and the goal of that match. For a more experienced player, I can see how this would be very valuable. I mostly just picked random ones because I had no idea how to use my mechs. Her other ability, however, I really enjoyed. At the beginning of the game, after setup, she gets to draw three factory cards that she has access to from the very start of the match! This is extremely powerful but comes with a significant downside. Once she uses a factory card, she must discard it. This applies to the factory card she picks up from reaching the middle of the board as well. However, early access to these cards seemed very powerful and I think Vesna is a strong early game faction meant to rush out an early advantage then close the game before her enemies can catch up.

The Fenris faction, however, is almost the exact opposite. Led by Rasputin, Fenris is all about war. They have a stack of eighteen influence tokens. Whenever Rasputin moves, he can drop these tokens on the board – one on his square and one anywhere else. Later, with a mech ability, Rasputin and his mechs can jump to influence tokens. This gives Fenris unprecedented mobility but there is a cost. Each influence token held at the end of the game counts as a negative victory point! Thus, Rasputin begins with a massive deficit in victory points that he’s trying to offload. A further wrinkle, however, is that enemy players may move onto influence tokens. Doing so claims the token but also results in negative victory points at the end of the game. Rasputin also has a unique board in that he naturally has less and gains less popularity. No one likes weird Russian mysticism. It’s hard for me to evaluate the strength of Fenris, especially since Adam came into it so late in the campaign and accidentally had a perfect setup to play them (since he was initially Saxony, all his infrastructure mods were for pumping out fast mechs which is Fenris’ goal). Even worse, Adam was able to leverage his superior mobility (and our low player count) to secure Tesla for the final match of the campaign.

Tesla I think may be the least useful element of Rise of Fenris. I didn’t like him and I’m not saying that just because he made me lose or that he’s ridiculously broken in the Fenris faction. Tesla operates as a second hero for your faction, with all the abilities of that hero. Only one player can control Tesla but when it means that Adam can toss influence tokens at twice the rate, it really negates the negative of Fenris while also making it near impossible for us to counter him. I was able to eke out a victory in the final map, but as it turns out, final scoring basically assured Adam the win after his run as Saxony. Seriously, if you want to win the Fenris campaign, grab Saxony. Their ability to complete multiple quests per game and get as many stars as battles they win is silly since you can claim those victories as any goal during the final scoring. More than half your final score is determined by how many rows and columns you complete on your campaign log and Saxony ensures that, no matter what random board or victory condition you pull, you will always be able to fulfill your missing requirements for those rows.

Granted, Derek did teach us the game wrong so we were all playing with one victory condition near impossible to complete. That might have skewed things a little as well.

Overall, I think I liked the Rise of Fenris expansion. It adds quite a lot to the Scythe experience but its greatest strength is providing more variance so you can breathe new challenges and strategies into matches if you’ve played it enough to turn the base game stale. There’s far too many fiddly components in it, however, so I think you’ll only ever end up playing with one or two different components in any given match. At the very least, Vesna and Rasputin should give a lot of exciting games on their own with their very strong faction abilities.

And I don’t want to brag too much, but for having never played the game before, I ended up winning five of the eight matches. Maybe I was given an unfair advantage between having Japan and turning their start location into the incredibly mobile Vesna.

Or maybe I’m just a Scythe savant. Though it’s more likely that I’m an idiot savant.

Look Who’s Back

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So I have a friend and one of our favourite past times is to watch really bad movies. And when I say really bad, I mean Flash Gordon bad. A peruse of Netflix’s horror section will show a large list of things that’ll make you question why they were ever made. Yes, I contribute to the existence of the Sharknado series (even though we have yet to start it – beginning with the last and working our way back of course).

It’s our equivalent of “mindless entertainment” though mostly it’s revelling the sensation of confusion than anything else. And who knew there was such a large bafflement market?

Granted, a number of these movies are quite likely honest attempts at art which produced questionable results. The more earnest the creator, the more guilty the pleasure.

Thus, when my friend discovered a comedy about time-travelling Hitler who starts his own news program, we thought we were in for a treat.

What we didn’t expect was an actual good movie.

There is something to be said for foreign films and their liberty from the Hollywood blockbuster mould. That conversation can be saved for another day, however. But that German film isn’t as beholden to rigid American film standards certainly made Er ist wieder da a far better better experience than one that would be filmed in the oppressive heat of Los Angeles, California.

Accessed from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Who%27s_Back_(film)

Er ist wieder da is based on the Timur Vermes novel of the same name. It is directed by David Wnendt and distributed by Constantin Film.

On it’s face, Er ist wieder da is a rather uninspiring film. Its premise is that Adolf Hitler (yes, the Adolf Hitler) is transported in time to a decided modern 2014 Berlin. It’s your typical “fish out of water” but with slapstick comedy towards the homicidal Fuhrer of history. When he first awakens, he discovers three youths playing soccer and earnestly asks them for directions to his Chancellery. The film is overlaid with Hitler’s internal monologue and at first he sees everything through his outdated viewpoint for comedic effect. The children are disappointingly useless. Hitler wanders towards Brandenburg Square only to be mobbed by a host of tourists wanting selfies with the tyrant. He eventually stumbles across a newsstand and, upon learning the actual date, passes out.

And here is where I need to discuss the film’s peculiar format. It’s really a movie about two stories. One focuses on a failing reporter (the one attempting to do a maudlin piece about inner city youths and their need for soccer as a coping mechanism to today’s hardships) who discovers Hitler and hatches a plan to use him as a means to upgrade his freelance work for a social media company to a full-time position. The other story is how modern Germans react to Hitler in their midst.

One of these stories is not like the other.

There’s a curious blend of fiction and reality traced throughout Er ist wieder da. Fabian Sawatzki (the reporter) mistakenly assumes that Hitler is just a very devoted method actor. Him and his bosses are more taken by Hitler’s dedication than his words and view him more as a joke or novelty than the villain of their history books. It really is just all fun and games with the politics at MyTV being the primary motivator for the different characters to continue to aid Hitler.

And this disbelief directly feeds into the second story.

While Hitler is being attended by the newsstand agent, he is told that his clothes are filthy and he should go get them cleaned. A flummoxed Hitler then enters into a dry cleaning service. It’s at this moment that the film gets strange.

The interaction between the clerk and Hitler is decided “off.” It’s a scene played for laughs – Hitler is determined to find a dry cleaner that will wash his undergarments – but there’s no denying the uncanny realisation that these clerks aren’t… well… actors. It becomes readily apparent that Er ist wieder da has adopted some of the Sasha Baron Cohen style satire wherein the filmmakers (ostensibly unwittingly) discuss and film real life people when one of the attendants looks directly at the cameraman as if to ask whether this is really happening.

But rather than dispel the meta-fiction of the movie and it’s premise, this splicing of real life scenes elevates Er ist wieder da from some overdone trite cliche into a rather disturbing and effective movie.

The change is grossly subtle and that is the point. Sawatzki drags his newfound Hitler about Germany like a show puppy on parade. They attempt some humorous news segments like Hitler commenting on the German coastline (before being hit by a storm) or trying to buy a puppy (which he promptly shoots for biting him). Sawatzki’s attempts to sell Hitler to his boss prompts another unscripted scene where Hitler offers to make them some money by falling back on his talents as a painter by doing (rather poor) caricatures of tourists in a German town square.

It should be no surprise that most people treat these interactions as a joke. Certainly it is unbelievable that Hitler could travel through time (even the fictional characters cannot believe it) so many tourists play along with the actors and laugh at Hitler’s comments about imprisoning vagabonds and breeding strong, pure Germans. It’s to Oliver Masucci’s credit that this film even works because he never once breaks his portrayal of Hitler. The audience may even be lulled into a sense of empathy as Sawatzki and Hitler are threatened in the town square by some rather irate looking locals about a Hitler “impersonator” and the inappropriateness of their publicity stunt.

But the filmmakers are unyielding in the message. Hitler’s commentary is crystal clear: he’s only returned to continue on with his original work. When Sawatzki hits a dead end with his variety type programming, Hitler suggests that they should do a series on political commentary. He then interviews a local foodstand owner to learn what issues she has with the government that are being ignored. She almost immediately leans into the problems of foreigners and Muslims, which Hitler is quite eager to seize upon and encourage.

It does not take long for his unscripted moments to change from slapstick laughter to horrified laughter. The audience is captive as Hitler begins stoking these angers and fears of everyday Germans. He sits down with prominent members of the community, saying that they need to purify Germany by expelling the foreign invaders or rounding them up into camps. And the people agree. One official, when asked if he would vote for Hitler should he run, even admitted that he would – only after asking that they turn the camera off (which the filmmakers do not).

But this isn’t the clumsy racist reveals of Cohen’s Borat character. Er ist wieder da is far more elegant in using this naked satire because of how blunt it truly is. There’s no ambiguity in the movie. People are talking to Hitler. And the more he talks, and the more they agree with him, the harder it is to ignore that this isn’t Hitler before them. The movie may have shown that Masucci isn’t a particularly accurate double of Hitler but his mannerisms, speech and positions are. With a Sasha Baron Cohen film, people are interacting with caricatures that have no baggage and history. Borat is as much to the people as he is to Cohen: a coat to be adorn to parade around in a role but ultimately discarded. People’s racist or frightening beliefs can be dismissed as those getting “pranked” by the actor.

But not so with Er ist wieder da. Hitler is Hitler. We know what the conclusions of agreeing with him entail. We know the end results he’s striving for. There’s no amount of deception here. This is Hitler, scapegoating undesirable members of society and enlisting German support and affection in doing so.

And that’s what’s so terrifying about the movie. There has been a lot of discussion and other films that warn the factors of 1930’s Germany were hardly unique. Most people can, on some basic level, recognise that another Hitler could arise. But it’s a wholly different story to see it happen shamelessly before you.

The fictional story of Er ist wieder da proceeds as you’d expect it. The MyTV quickly becomes a platform to broadcast and expand Hitler’s reach in communicating with the people. His brash, anti-establishment stances garner a lot of support and applause. Youtubers create endless videos promoting Hitler’s words chasing after the high views and positive reception he garners. When footage of Hitler shooting the dog leaks, Hitler is only briefly waylaid. He’s fired from MyTV with the executive who never supported him taking over. Sawatzki takes Hitler in and Hitler turns to writing a book about his life and experiences while in modern Germany.

Mein Kaumpf 2.0 is, unsurprisingly, a hit that garners Sawatzki film rights to shoot the movie version. MyTV, now floundering without the success they had from Hitler, try desperately to get him back (going so far as to recreate the memetic scene from Downfall but showing the social media executive officer as Hitler). It’s only once Hitler meets the grandmother of Sawatzki’s girlfriend that Sawatzki starts to realize what is happening. The grandmother correctly identifies Hitler as who he is (the other characters dismissing it as her dementia) and Hitler himself is simply disappointed to learn that she was Jewish. He leans into his anti-Semitism and, as is unfortunately always the case, Sawatzki only then decides to look into Hitler’s background once someone he cares is hurt. It’s at that point that Sawatzki sees in his own filming that Hitler appeared at the site of his old bunker in a cloud of smoke and realizes that this man is the real article.

The movie, as you can probably predict now, ends on a rather low note. Sawatzki is imprisoned for his mad ravings. Hitler’s movie is a success, owing in part to the attack on him by neo-Nazis who think he’s being disrespectful to their idol. Course, as we saw in prior unscripted segments, real neo-Nazis are rather easily swooned by a strong arm figure and they quickly are wooed over to Hitler’s banner. Hitler takes to a ride around Berlin with his new publicist by his side (the prior disgraced executive of MyTV), ready to announce his intentions to enter the political sphere. As he drives by, the camera dutifully captures each Nazi salute as he passes.

Accessed from https://www.indiewire.com/2016/05/look-whos-back-how-a-german-comedy-about-hitler-predicted-donald-trump-288721/

Oliver Masucci delivers a stunning performance of Adolf Hitler that it’s hard not to point out both his skill and guts. I doubt I would enter a neo-Nazi clubhouse and accuse them all of doing a terrible job.

This movie, of course, isn’t saying that modern Germany but one step away from fascism and all its citizens are SS members in disguise awaiting the return of their glorious leader. Of course people think it’s a joke and not real. But the movie is very clear in that regard. Hitler starts off as a joke but the more people spread him and encourage him, it’s a very sudden turn until it stops being funny.

Thus, there is a conversation to be had about making comedy pieces about Hitler, Nazis and fascism. Charlie Chaplin famously said he would have never created The Great Dictator had he known about the concentration camps. I think Er ist wieder da rather straddles the line of that debate. It leverages its humour as a criticism against fascism while simultaneously acknowledging that such humour can normalise and assist those it’s meant to stop.

Er ist wieder da is, like a Sacha Baron Cohen piece, a weak test of modern society’s susceptibility to what we all know to be wrong. And, predictably, our society fails even the most rudimentary challenge. This isn’t an indictment of our modern institutions and beliefs. It’s a reminder. Social democracy wasn’t achieved through apathetic passivity. It was a struggle and fight to implement. It will always be a tenuous thing at best, irreparably flawed and prone to collapsing in on itself within the slightest moment of inattentiveness. It requires constant work to maintain. We must be diligent and stand on guard against those that would do it revocable damage whether intentionally or not.

Clan Warfare

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So, it’s been awhile. Kait and I have been very busy. Derek hasn’t been seen for years. Thus, our blog has sort of been neglected for a bit. For that, I am sorry. We’re working on something… that should be announced soon. Hopefully. It’s been taking a lot of time and we’re desperately short on that resource.

However, I have something to share today. If you’ve come for gaming news, you might have noticed that I talked quite a bit about Summoner Wars here. Well, for those not up-to-date, Summoner Wars is dead. The company that made it has retired the game after releasing the last second summoners for the factions that hadn’t received it. It was perhaps a touch bittersweet. I’ve been playing and thinking about Summoner Wars for a couple of years and now it is finished. The cards, of course, still exist and we can play it at any time but there’s something to be said for the excitement of new releases.

On the other hand, however, Summoner Wars had some issues which I’ve discussed. It was a flawed little gem. It was fun, different but held back by intrinsic design flaws that could never truly be designed around. In some sense, it was like Team Fortress 2.

Unlike Team Fortress 2, however, Plaid Hat Games has announced a sequel.

Alright, that’s a lie. Plaid Hat has done no such thing. But they have released a new game that contains a number of similarities that it’s hard to not draw a line between the two products. I’m talking about Crystal Clans and I’m excited to share some of my initial thoughts with you about the game.

Image accessed from https://www.plaidhatgames.com/games/crystal-clans

Crystal Clans and associated media belongs to Plaid Hat Games. You can check it out at their website, https://www.plaidhatgames.com/games/crystal-clans

Crystal Clans represents a first for me. It released in March and I’m talking about it in June! That has to be a record for relevancy from me. Typically I’m a year or more behind on the latest hotness. Three months makes me almost cutting edge! It’s also the first game I’ve purchased sight unseen. I typically like to try things before I buy them. I’m a cautious consumer and hate “wasting money.” Anything I get needs to be used enough for the purchase to be worthwhile. So if it’s something that isn’t enjoyable I’ll still feel a compulsion to play it.

Which makes things difficult if the game is two player.

I had been meaning to hit up a boardgame cafe and try Crystal Clans. I was eager about it when Plaid Hat announced it almost a year ago. Unfortunately, there’s been very little floating around after its release so I was a touch nervous committing to my purchase. But I recently bit the bullet and here we are.

Consequently, I haven’t put enough time into the game to provide a proper review. You’ll have to wait for that whether you want it or not. What I can do is talk about my initial reactions and feelings. Because those are valuable, right?

Let’s start off with a general overview. Crystal Clans is a competitive two player battle card game that involves moving your cards across a board. Each deck represents a unique clan with their own heroes and units. Sounds familiar right? Crystal Clan’s relationship to Summoner Wars is both a blessing and a curse. It offers a level of familiarity that puts off those originally unsatisfied by the predecessor and lures in those that wanted a bit more of the same.

However, outside of its superficial qualities, Crystal Clans is very much its own game.

For one, there is no enemy summoner. In Summoner Wars, the game was one only once the commander of your opponent’s army was killed. In Crystal Clans, you are fighting with your opponent over the game’s namesake. There’s a dozen or so crystal cards (sorry, I don’t actually have the game beside me and I’m too lazy to get up and count them) that form a deck, three of which are ever available for acquiring. To get these crystals, you must march your little armies out and hold two of three special crystal spots on the board, king-of-the-hill style.

And when I say army, I don’t mean some strange metaphorical extraction of game pieces into a fantastical representation. You can literally stack three of your units into one cohesive force. This adds their defence and attack together, while also slowing the battalion down by the most sluggish unit amongst the lot. However, only the top card of the stack benefits from its unique ability (generally speaking). Thus, there’s some strategy to how you organize your units. For example, if you’re the Meteor clan, you probably want your Titan Knights leading charges across the battlefield because they reduce the activation cost of your battalion while they lead. But once you reach the frontlines, you want to swap things around so that your Citadel Knights benefit from both their tactical expertise and allow you to trigger the clans unique ability, Prediction.

But it’s not just stacking your units that is a massive departure from the Summoner Wars formula. Your deck is only composed of units. There are no events in this game so everything can be thrown on the board. There’s also no dice. This may seem like combat is a boring deterministic affair where the person who draws the best squad first wins. However, when two armies meet, both players must play one card from their hand (or their deck if they are unfortunate enough to have no hand). These units now act as battle cards and each unit in your deck has different effects depending on the relationship of the symbols played between you and your opponent.

There are three types of battle cards. I don’t really care what Plaid Hat calls them, they’re the Bull, Turtle and Fox. Generally speaking, Bull battle cards add attack to your squad. Turtle adds defence to your squad. Fox does random things. But there’s more interaction between these types for each battle card has two effects whether its played against its antagonist symbol or not. One effect is typically stronger than the other. Bull (attack) beats Turtle (defence). Turtle (defence) beats Fox (random). And finally, Fox (random) beats Bull (attack).

It’s an interesting sort of guessing game wherein you’re trying to either wipe out your opponent or save your stack while figuring out what your opponent is going to play. There’s an emphasis here on attack that makes exchanges generally a bloody affair. There’s a reason for this: it makes the game all about the cost of exchanges.

For there’s a very interesting mechanic that separates Crystal Clans not just from Summoner Wars but most other games I’ve ever played. The economy of Crystal Clans is built and played out by a shared initiative track. Whenever you summon a unit, you pushed the little crystal down the track towards your opponent. Once it passes a neutral band, your turn ends and your opponent’s begins. It’s a fascinating exchange wherein the more you spend, the more you give your nemesis. Expensive turns produce explosive counter plays. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that conservative play will rule. The specialized design of the clans means some benefit from rushing while others want to slow down and grind things out. Furthermore, crystal scores are highly expensive acts, costing upwards of eight or nine initiative to snag a crystal. Lastly, ignoring crystals and constantly butting heads means you’ll eventually run out of your deck. When that occurs, you shuffle your discard and make a new draw deck but your opponent gets a free crystal without needing to pay or control two zones.

The Crystal Clans board is significantly smaller than the Summoner Wars board. While I was initially skeptical, I actually have no complaints with the cramped playing field at this time.

And every action costs you. You want to draw cards? That’s three initiative. Want to move your units. Depending on your battalion, that’s one to three initiative. Attacking requires spending initiative (unless you perform it at the end of a move). You can also force your opponent to discard cards if you control their home zone but this action also costs you three initiative.

There’s a strange flow in this initiative passing that I haven’t quite wrapped my head around. Intuitively, it makes sense to try and leave your opponent with as little initiative as possible. But sometimes a large summon can force your enemy to spend more to respond to it. In fact, because drawing cards requires spending initiative, I feel that the game is less about favourable economic exchanges in terms of summon costs but more about economic exchanges in terms of card usage. If you can win a battle using two units to your opponent’s three, then you can force them to draw more than you. Do that enough times and they’ll run out of deck and you’ll get a free crystal.

Alternatively, if you score three crystals, then you effective put your opponent on a timer. If they run out of deck, you’ll automatically win when they have to reshuffle and claim the fourth and final required crystal. There’s a tempo here that’ll take time to understand and utilize and it’s one of the things that leaves me most excited for Crystal Clans.

As I’ve said, Kait and I have only just begun to play the game. Of all the changes to the Summoner Wars formula, I feel the biggest is in Crystal Clan’s simplicity. Summoner Wars struggled with some fairly counter intuitive mechanics and play elements like killing your own units for economy and the dangers of crossing the middle line due to reinforcement and board control based on wall plays. In this regard, Crystal Clans makes sense. You want to rush your units out and claim those crystal zones. You want to win battles. You want to beat your opponent’s units. The hardest thing to grapple, outside of learning the strengths and weaknesses of six fairly unique decks, is figuring out when to do these. Winning a big battle and taking board control is great but if you score a crystal without a hand, you could open yourself up to a rather brutal counter attack as you have no control over your battle card plays. Learning when to discard cards in your hand, when to replenish, when to push and when to score definitely takes some time.

I’m happy to say, however, that the game doesn’t feel as unfair. Without dice, there’s always a sense that you could have done something else to take back the match. There’s still some element of luck. You can’t control what crystals are available for claiming. You can’t control what order your cards come up in your draw pile. But really outside of that, it’s all on you. And at least for now, it feels a lot more fair.

Hopefully later I’ll be able to go into more detail about the clans, once I have more experience playing with them. But I’m excited that I could spend a whole post just talking about the mechanics without any mention of all the unique cards or the clans special mechanics. Each one changes a fundamental aspect of the game and while some are certainly far better than others, that they give each clan an identity is great design.

Plus, Plaid Hat Games has announced six new clans to be released at a future date so there will be plenty more Crystal Clans to discuss in the months to come!

Enthroned: King Arthur and Her Knights Book 1

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Book cover. Image from the internet.

Title: Enthroned

Series: King Arthur and Her Knights

Author: K.M. Shea

Tags: Arthurian Legend, Medieval, Fantasy, Time-travel

Every once in a while I find myself taken with a book or a series. For reasons I cannot even begin to explain, I have fallen for the series King Arthur and Her Knights. It is a sweet, lovely series of seven books, the first of which is titled Enthroned.

Book cover. Image from the internet.

The premise is simple: while on vacation in Britain, American born Britt Arthurs is pulled back in time to the time of Legendary King Arthur. Specifically to the time when Arthur pulls the sword out of the stone. The real Arthur has run off with a shepherdess and Britt is recruited to take his place. Yup, it is a silly idea. And yes, I can certainly find flaws or at least things I don’t like. But mostly I found the series charming.

I like Britt. I like her largely practical view point, especially as she is a little older (in her mid-twenties). I like her open way of speaking, her strength with a sword and various flaws. Yes, time travel is a tricky beast to write about. This one had some good ideas, the spell dealt with the language barrier. Britt’s slightly unusual past explained her skill with the sword and competency when riding. I found it entertaining that her modern slang was not understood by those in medieval england.

Book cover. Image from the internet.

The author neatly dealt with the issue of Britt’s gender. I like that from the very beginning, there was a core group of powerful individuals in on the secret. It certainly made the cover up of her sex more believable.

I was especially pleased that the author dealt with the idea of bringing knowledge of past events to the past. Legends are twisted and reshaped over time. The stories we tell today are not the same stories that were told 200 years ago about King Arthur, so it is not unreasonable to assume that the actual events are also different. Now, you do have to accept magic exists for this world to work. But internally, I found it consistent.

Arthurian legends have often been a miss for me. I am no expert in the history of King Arthur and perhaps that was a boon in this case. Over the years, I was turned off Arthur largely by the betrayals. Like Britt I struggled to like Lancelot with his affair with Guinevere. So, this Lancelot and Guinevere were fun to read. Especially as the main character was largely biased against both parties. Granted, I also struggled with the encroaching domination of Christian beliefs as they squashed out the pagan rituals, a topic not covered in this series.

Book cover. Image from the internet.

I have two complaints that I would level at the story. As much as I loved the ending (spoilers to come), I found the paradox of time-travel set up by the last chapter disheartening. Especially as it was such an easy fix. I know the author is trying to be cute and have everyone connected, but really, I would have been happy, if the Knights and Fairies who came forward had not interacted with Britt during her childhood. Poof – no paradox to deal with.

My second complaint is: the books were too short. I loved the little daily scenes about the castle and interacting with the different knights. I would have loved to see Britt interact with even more of the people of Camelot. Mostly, I would have loved to read more about her adventures. Each of the first six books is about 125 pages, with book seven being a more satisfying 290 pages.

Book cover. Image from the internet.

Yes, there is magic. Yes, there is time travel. But most importantly there is adventure, sword-fighting, a hint of romance and all the chivalry you could want in this series. Also, a strong female character backed up by other strong females! I loved this series and for right now it is my obsession. So, I bequeath five stars on Enthroned, Enchanted, Embittered, Embark, Enlighten, Endeavor, and Endings.

Tomb Raider, 2018

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Image from the internet.

A movie based on a video game. Well, it worked for Angelina Jolie when she started as Lara Croft in the first Tomb Raider adaptation.

While I have not played any of the games, I remember the adds for the recent-ish reboot of the video game series. I was almost intrigued enough to purchase the game, but became sidetracked with other things. Still I remembered the trailers. So when I saw the trailer for the new movie, I thought – hey, this looks like the video game. And yup it was.

Apparently the latest Tomb Raider movie was based on the latest Tomb Raider video game. There is lots of running. Lots of tossing Laura around in a manner that no real human could survive with actually breaking at least a couple of bones. There is lots of grunting. But when it comes to plot, character or even dialogue – well this version is lacking.

Theoretically, this is set before the first Tomb Raider movies and is supposed to give more of an explanation as to how Laura becomes a tomb raider. As someone who saw the other films this was an large example of failure. There is a huge disconnect between the character we are introduced to by Angelina Jolie and the more recent Lara Croft played by Alicia Vikander. First, Alicia’s Lara is far more passive and mostly lacks a personality. Unfortunately, I spent most of the movie thinking – this was not the explanation we had for her father’s disappearance. This is not the name of the evil secret organization. This is not… well interesting.

Image from the internet

Even the action scenes were largely bland. There were too many running scenes that looked like they were filmed using a green screen. I should not see so easily through your special effects. The settings were less entrancing than one would hold. And there was a distinct lack of puzzles. Okay, that may be a silly complaint as there probably weren’t many actual puzzles in the 2001 film, but at least that older film had some dialogue.

While I appreciated the attempt to move away from the obviously magical to having a more scientific explanation for the central mythology. It was poorly developed, under-played and sadly executed. Also, it was rather incongruous how much effort was spent dispelling the woman as being a god with magic powers, when you completely fail to give any logical explanation for the disappearing floor. Exactly how would that have worked?

So, yup, like nearly every review I have stumbled across since first watching this movie, I will agree: Tomb Raider 2018 is a dud. I wouldn’t bother with this one.

Modern Magic – Enchanted, Inc. and Vampires Drink Tomato Juice

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Book cover for Enchanted, Inc. Image from the internet.

Title: Enchanted, Inc.

Series: Enchanted, Inc.: Hex and the City

Author: Shanna Swendson

Tags: Urban-Fantasy, Comedy, Fairy-Tales, Magic

Title: Vampires Drink Tomato Juice: A Chicago Urban Fantasy

Series: The Magical Beings’ Rehabilitation Center

Author: K.M. Shea

Tags: Urban-Fantasy, Comedy, Magic

Between binge watching the Olympic games and working, I have managed to read a couple of books. Recently, I have been sucked into two worlds that share a number of delightful similarities.

Both series take place in urban settings, though neither book is the dark urban fantasy that has been very popular recently. Shanna Swendson’s magical New York city is filled with frog-princes, winged fairies, gargoyle security guards and Magic, Spells and Illusions, Inc. It is a world where magic is mostly hidden as the lives of wizards and other magical beings runs side-by-side with the corporate business world. K.M. Shea has integrated the more classic urban-fantasy species of vampires and werewolves into her Chicago setting. But again, they remain hidden from the eyes of the average human.

Book Cover for Vampires Drink Tomato Juice. Image from the internet.

I know nothing about either city, having not visited or lived in either New York or Chicago. So, I cannot comment on the authenticity of the settings. They seemed interesting enough. New York felt more like a bustling city while Chicago setting seemed to have less of an impact on the story. However, I thought that the species of Swendson’s New York leaned more towards classic fairy tales – with a twist. There were fairies with wings and elves with pointed ears, but both species are placed in a corporate business setting. Shea seems to prefer the more popular collection of vampires, werewolves and elves. Though she also gave her mythical species a unique spin to make them a little more interesting. Mostly by making them less like their most popular examples. The vampires are not all ruggedly handsome and sparkle in the sun. She also expands the usual collection of creatures to include some goblins, that are seen more like mafia than small dirty individuals.

Book Cover for Once Upon Stilettos, book 2 in the Enchanted, Inc. series. Image from the internet.

Both books are comedies. These are light-hearted books about friends, friendship and even a little romance. The bad guys are more devious in Swendson’s book, as he does want to take over the world – through business. Actually, the kidnapping at the end of Shea’s novel also revolves around a business transaction. Cooperations are dangerous business it seems.

Swendson’s main character is a grown career woman, with schooling, smarts, and a sweet Texas drawl. Katie Chandler was perfectly adorable in her down-to-earth attitude, and complete normalcy. Her change in job leads her to the MSI – Magic, Spells and Illusions, Inc. As an executive assistant, Katie works for the CEO of this interesting downtown business.

Sixteen year old Morgan Fae hails from the suburbs of Chicago. Still attending, high school, Morgan finds herself employed by the Magical Beings Rehabilitation Centre. Here she mostly teaches the magical creatures of this hidden world about being human – at least a human teenager. Can any student really be considered normal? Certainly Morgan makes a good effort at being as practical as possible for a high schooler.

Book covers for the Enchanted Inc. series. Image from the internet.

The quirky style of both plots, the solidly built characters and the entertaining secondary characters works to draw in the reader for both series. While, my leanings might be for the older, business women in Swendson’s Enchanted, Inc., there is no denying the appeal of Shea’s Magical Rehab Centre. Certainly, both books are filled with enough magic and modern mayhem to entertain any reader. The stories are built up competently, the pacing is solid and character development makes sense. These authors know how to pepper their writing with just the right number of clues that the big twist at the end fits internally with the story. I have enjoyed other books by both Shanna Swendson and K.M. Shea and these stories did not disappoint.

Full marks for both Enchanted, Inc. and Vampires Drink Tomato Juice. I will certainly be reading more in both series.

Call Me Maeby

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Alright, so I had a bit of a hiccough over the last couple of weeks. I came down with a cold, thanks in part to being around a bunch of children and teachers. Despite my directive, someone passed their disease to me. Then, when things were looking better, my computer decided to die. I have that sorted (maybe) with a new hard disk drive but who really knows with computers. I already had my mouse give up on the sweet struggle of life. Call me unlucky, but anything can go in this crazy world of ours.

So, yeah, I’ve missed my posting. Apologies. Good news is that I know what I’m doing for the next month or so. It may or may not be tied to an upcoming announcement. Is vague! Be excited! Tentatively!

But that leaves me with a post to make today. As I’ve fully brought you up to date with the crazy twists and turns of my life, I suppose the last thing available to me to describe is a movie I saw awhile ago. It was a little independent flick called Call Me By Your Name. I think it may have been nominated for an Oscar. I know around Oscar season, my family and friends get a little more motivated to see some flicks thus proving the effectiveness of the over marketed and highly unimportant awards ceremony. However, I’m not going to complain too vociferously over entertainment and spending time with people that I like.

Instead, I’ll give you my review of Call Me by Your Name.

It’s boring.

Boom, review done!

No but really I found the movie long and tedious. I had a hard time feeling sympathetic to the main character. There wasn’t really anything of interest or note to capture my attention. The plot is a coming of age and a coming out story of some young man in the early eighties. You’d think given those two pretty well covered themes that the movie would have something to revolve its two and some odd hour plot. But not really. It’s not like Elio has any real conflict to overcome. His parents are atypically accepting for that time period. His family is pretty well off, living in some northern Italian villa where the greatest challenges Elio faces is deciding whether he wants to swim in the local river or the family’s private pool. His greatest turmoil is that his room is given over to a summer student and he has to stay in the slightly smaller guest room right next door.

Course, this summer, it just so happens that the oh-so-dreamy Armie Hammer moves into his room and turns poor Elio’s life upside down! Or not. Maybe. It’s really hard to say. Elio still just putters around the manor though now he’s just complaining about the uncouth American under his roof in three different languages to his family and friends. Nor does Armie Hammer really introduce much in the ways of inconvenience towards Elio since he’s actually quite educated and rather polite – apparently for an American. So the plot putters around the unspoken and, generally undeserved, conflict within Elio has he tries to come to terms that he has a crush on Armie Hammer while he masturbates with a peach and pops his girlfriend’s cherry. He also eats a bunch of apples because this movie is seemingly filled with fruit.

And just when the movie starts to float the potential that maybe, possibly, theoretically his family might not approve, an older gay couple come to visit and its revealed they’re long time friends of Elio’s parents. When Elio makes some disparaging comment about them afterward, his father is quick to reprimand him for being discriminatory. So that balloon pops in the shortest conflict resolution I’ve seen in a film.

Accessed from https://teaser-trailer.com/call-me-by-your-name-poster/

Call Me by Your Name is directed by Luca Guadagnino and is produced by Frenesy Film Company and distributed by Sony Pictures Classic. I do not own it or associated media.

And it’s not like there was a lot to distract from the aimless narrative. The Italian countryside is pretty much just some small village and remote farms. The soundtrack is artsy, I suppose. I think there’s something to be made by the piano pieces used sporadically throughout. I’m not sure. I’m neither a theatre or music major. No, I spent the majority of the film trying to figure out how old Armie Hammer is supposed to be. Given the context of the film, I think he’s meant to be in his early twenties. At most he’s a master’s student and Elio’s father’s university. Which would put him around twenty-four years old? I got the impression that the movie was billed as some taboo generational gap relationship but I can’t really say that an eighteen and twenty-four year old are really of vastly different generations. And given that absolutely no one comments on the age gap in the movie, this is neither a source of concern or thematic importance. It’s mostly just Armie Hammer playing a younger character and seeming much older because Armie Hammer has always looked like a middle aged man.

So, yeah, it was boring.

There is a humorous observation I made, however. Granted, I’m hardly an expert in gay cinema, but I’ve seen a couple of movies and there’s this really bizarre element in them. For some reason, gay cinema objectifies women far more than mainstream cinema.

This isn’t to imply that they’re sexually objectified though there’s certainly quite a bit of boob in Call Me by Your Name. No, I mean that these movies quite frequently strip agency and personality from their female characters even more than normal. For example, Elio’s girlfriend and her friend exist solely in the movie to act as the socially pressured romantic interest and contribute nothing else. The girlfriend is there only for Elio to agonize over whether he should keep having sex with her despite wanting sex with Armie Hammer. The moment he realizes, no obviously everyone would go for the giraffe, the girlfriend pretty much falls right off the screen never to been seen again (save for a very brief moment wherein she forgives Elio in order to absolve him of any guilt from the plot). Elio’s mother, likewise, serves as the mouthpiece of parental disapproval for youths struggling with their identities even though she too has a scene where she expresses her undying affection for her child regardless of what he might do or who he might be. And just like that, she too disappears from the plot.

Like, I get that the core struggle of gay media is the still controversial sexual relationship between men but this doesn’t mean that gay men don’t have any relationships with women. That female characters get reduced strictly to their sexual role in the gay character’s struggle for self acceptance is strange to me. Maybe this is just a stereotype, but in my experience most gay guys I knew from school associated and connected far more with the girls in their social circles than the guys. That there’s a seeming dearth of representation for these close and important bonds in gay youths strikes me as peculiar. It’s a trend that is both perpetuating negative portrayals of women in cinema while simultaneously missing an important real world element. Maybe it’s because gay cinema focuses solely on eliciting feelings of loneliness and abandonment that this occurs since stigmatization from male peers is pretty easily explained and fairly accurate for reality. Or maybe this is an example of patriarchal influences wherein even when dealing with stories of discriminated classes, there’s a sense that to achieve some measure of respect you still need to disassociated yourself from other discriminated classes. I don’t know, I’m not brushed up on fourth wave feminism.

At any rate, when the girlfriend was telling Elio that she had a secret I was super hoping she was going to come out as a lesbian because, despite the astronomical odds, I would have found that far more engaging than Elio continuing to be grumpy while batting puppy dog eyes at Armie Hammer for another thirty minutes. Plus it would really spin his relationship with his girlfriend on its head, demonstrating quite clearly that he really didn’t care nor know anything about this girl who was just dragged across the village green so he could prove his manliness by conquering her. It would have also kicked Elio into confronting his own feelings a good twenty minutes ahead too which would have been a merciful reprieve.

Now, after saying all that, I do want to end on a positive note. Both for female representation and gay cinema in general. With the handful of gay films I’ve seen, I’d count two amongst them as being really good. There’s Weekend by Andrew Haigh but more important to the discussion is C.R.A.Z.Y. by Jean-Marc Vallee. I think both actually do a far better job of tackling homophobia within society and gay men’s experience of discovering themselves while navigating discrimination from the greater public. And C.R.A.Z.Y. is very similar to Call Me by Your Name as it specifically deals with a young man accepting his sexuality and how it impacts his relationship with his father. And yet, despite being a film strictly about male relationships (both sexual and non-sexual), C.R.A.Z.Y. still presents its women characters in a far more rounded light. While Zac’s mother is devoted to her son much in the same way as Elio’s, there’s a greater depth of characterization and portrayal to her despite still occupying a minor role in the overall narrative.

Course there’s another element in C.R.A.Z.Y. and Weekend that’s missing in Call Me by Your Name. Both films try and tackle more than the mere sexual experience of the character and draws deeper on the personal relationships of the characters with the families and society. It seeks to unveil some fundamental aspect of humanity, regardless of the sexuality of the characters and the conflict that causes, and brushes against a universalism for the human condition. Call Me by Your Name, on the other hand, comes off as some flippant summer crush that indulges the idle fantasy of “what if” towards an unlikely scenario which really only teaches us that summer flings are fleeting and ephemeral. But even this carpe diem read is more generous as Call Me by Your Name doesn’t truly push this momentary seizure as desirable when we’re revealed that Armie Hammer has returned home to marry his off-again, on-again girlfriend while Elio’s father looms over him warning that the future fast approaches when no one will want him anymore.

Maybe instead of requesting that Armie Hammer forget his name, Elio should have requested that he just keep in contact more often. Carly Rae Jepsen probably had the better idea all along.

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Book cover for Ready Player One; image from the internet.

Title: Ready Player One

Author: Ernest Cline

Tags: Boy Fantasy, VR, Dystopian Future

Reflections: With the impending release of the video adaptation, I was recently lent the book Ready Play One. After a week of effort, I finally finished reading it. I also finished reading the third and final installment in Patrick Weekes’ Rogues of the Republic series, The Paladin Caper. I bring this up because there are some strong similarities between these high fantasy novels; only one was well written and one was boring.

As I have mentioned in an older post, the Rogues of the Republic series is a blending of Ocean’s 11 crossed with high fantasy Dungeons and Dragons. Ready Player One is a nearly dystopian, virtual reality fantasy that was written by someone who loves the idea of D&D. Both books pull heavily on D&D style fantasy elements and trops. The difference is Ready Player One references D&D with key phrases like: I collected my ring of power and stashed in my bag of holding with an ancient sword that added +5 to my attack value. Yes, there are lots of terms from D&D embedded in the book, but there is less of an integration of the concepts. Mostly it is a series of references that do not help with world emersion.

Whereas in Rogues of the Republic the D&D elements come out as character types and world design. Only these are not simple flat caricatures, the book has a complex ensemble that includes a shapeshifting unicorn, a talking warhammer, a death priests, a wizard and many others. Despite the large cast of characters, they are all interesting and individual with complete backstories and personal goals. It is fun to watch how they all interact together on the page.

Book cover for Ready Player One; image from the internet.

Both books focus around a fetch quest and even include some con work to accomplish the main quest. While the fetch quest of Ready Player One is the main point of the book. It spends a great deal of time coming up with clever riddles that are so vague they could literally reference anything – as long is it was part of the 1980’s. The unique (selling?) feature of Ready Player One is the constant passing reference to music, movies, and occasional books from the 1980’s. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the references that can be used by the reader to understand the oblique clues. The clues must all be explained and even then there is no logic or elegant flow to their reasoning.

In contrast, the Rogues of the Republic is an over the top con-theft story. That wraps nicely together come the end. Internally, the world is logical. The heist may be ridiculous but it is written in such a way that sweeps the reader along. The surprising twists seem to come out of nowhere, but in the end it does make sense. Everything works and then it all ties together.

The biggest difference between the two stories is the method of telling, or the style of the author. Rogues of the Republic is well written and highly entertaining. The characters are complex, the world is internally consistent, and the banter between individuals is vastly amusing. The author is good about including diversity, adding some social commentary in a way that is not hamfisted or last minute additions. Most importantly, Patrick Weekes is good about showing and not just telling. There is lots of action, the characters are always doing something, even if doing involves conversing with someone else.

Cover for Patrick Weekes’ book, The Paladin, third in the Rogues of the Republic series. Image from the internet.

Ready Player One suffers from poor writing, that is largely boring. There are long swaths of exposition (the first 10 chapters), which demonstrate a poor concept of their world and a number of logical concerns (internally speaking). The dialogue between characters sounds is largely dumb – with all characters sounding like 15 year old boys. And let’s face it, 15 year old boy are not known for their witticisms. The first conversation that final broke up the monotony of the main character’s stream of conscious thought devolved into a series of 1980’s style insults with no purpose or substance.

Also the author spends way too much time explaining… well everything. Including words. With the story set in a not to distant future, focussing mostly on the virtual reality of that time, you would expect the audience to be mostly young boys (teenagers). Much of the content is wish fulfillment for male nerds. So, it baffles me that the author spends the first half-dozen (or more) chapters defining terms like VR, XP, PvP, and MMO. Granted, my mother might not know these terms, but then I don’t think she would have picked up this book anyway. The other one that really stood out to me, was the discussion about how people could make money in this alternate VR world as though it was something new. People have been buying and selling skins for years now. And even I know about marketplaces and microtransactions. Mostly, it seemed like Clive was writing about Gabe and Valve. (personal perspective only)

While Ready Player One is far from the worst book I have read, it is not one that I would strongly recommend. It is filled with tons of 80’s references which fail to develop into anything more than “hey, remember the 80’s, cause like, yeah… that’s all I got”.

If you want something more, something well written, fun and still filled with crazy high fantasy elements, then pick up Rogues of the Republic instead. This trilogy is filled with all the D&D references you could want, all the major heist adventure you could hope for and is actually well written too!

Apollo’s Fickleness

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You know what we haven’t had in a good, long while? A proper rant. So never fear, intrepid reader, I have come to complain about something which has almost no bearing upon your life and, likewise, will not leave you the better for reading. We are to embark upon sweet Apollo’s curses which seem to serve as nothing more than petty time wasters.

Or something. The Ancient Greek Pantheon moves in mysterious ways. But mostly it’s just a lot of gods turning into animals in order to tempt humans into inter-species intercourse.

As a speculative fiction writer, I often spend my thoughts on the future and potential directions it may take. I wonder of the impact of certain new trends or technologies and the complex relationship humans have with the world. On the inverse side, I am also interested in retroactive perceptions and how we got to this very moment in society, how things may have advanced differently and whether past trends could have led to alternative outcomes. There are a lot of ‘what if’ scenarios and deep consideration of one idea or philosophy and the cascading effect it may have on everything else.

I know I’m not alone in these musings for I have read discussions of other people debating these topics. Invariably, one is drawn to the concept of cultural relativism wherein a person’s beliefs and attitudes should be accounted for within the environment they inhabited. This isn’t a rant against cultural relativism, however. It is, instead, a rant against the hilariously misappropriation of cultural relativistic thought in one very specific application.

I’m going to discuss how incredibly asinine it is to argue that eating meat is somehow a great moral failing that will be harshly judged by future societies.

So if you’re an ethical vegan, I’m sorry I’m going to offend you right now. Take that apology for what it’s worth. I appreciate your dedication to your own moral code but your visions of the future are, simply put, absurd.

I do appreciate the attempt at self-reflection. It’s a mental exercise that I feel is sorely underused by many people. To try and picture what a future will look like then apply those later value judgements back on yourself can be a worthy thought experiment for identifying potential behaviours or feelings that are problematic now and can be thusly addressed. For example, I think it’s fair to say that transgender issues will be far better received in the future than they are now while they break into the general public consciousness. As such, I think it’s equally fair to say that future generations will look back and be baffled why we struggled with acceptance towards this issue much like we look back and are aghast how prior generations viewed race relationships.

Accessed from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Kratzenstein_orpheus.jpg

Orpheus and Eurydice by Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1806).

I also think our relationship between capital and labour will shift as economic theories and practices adjust for new technologies and modes of life. In a similar vein, I’m certain teens will read textbooks and be confused about our consumerist culture just as we are equally baffled the mercantilism and the need to hoard silver and gold.

I don’t, however, think future peoples are going to wonder how it was that we ever dared put the flesh of other living creatures in our mouths. Largely because I don’t believe that future societies are going to be stupid. Or, at the very least, they won’t be that stupid.

I feel this idea that meat eating will someday be vilified arises from a person’s own personal feelings clouding their ability to forecast the feelings of others. I know I’m constantly surprised people don’t think like me but that spurs me to try and understand why perspectives and feelings differ not double down that my vision is right and everyone else will eventually reach its inevitable conclusion.

Now, I recognize this rant is levied against an obvious minority opinion but maybe it can provide insight into why other views may not be adopted by future societies as well. But there’s a clear difference between something like Transgender Rights and veganism. The largest being the one is based solely on communal acceptance and the second requires a large change of society’s functioning with regards to technological development.

No vegan thinks that humans are naturally herbivores. To be educated enough to balance your diet solely based on macro and micro-nutrients derived from plant matter necessitates a great amount of dietary restraint plus a heavy investment in time and commitment. You won’t survive simply chowing down on nothing but carrots and lettuce. Furthermore, the variety of plant matter is clearly not naturally found in one location and if you know all the minute plants that carry the necessary iron and protein (or heavens if you’re taking obvious supplements) then you know our bodies simply are not adapted to a plant-based diet.

Can it be done? Of course. Do I think it’ll be done more prominently in the future on a large, industrial scale? Actually, to a degree, I do. I think there is a valid argument towards the lower environmental impact of a plant based diet compared to one heavily based around meat. But such a widespread transition isn’t going to be based on the complete lack of understanding of why meat eating existed prior. I also think that the only way to get wide scale adaptation of this kind of diet will require laboratory produced protein replacements.

In this way, we don’t have the technology to change people’s diets to a healthier alternative on such a massive scale yet. When it happens it’ll be like the implementation of the car in society. I’m sure it’ll have a large impact on the agricultural industry and climate. It might even change society so it’s entirely unrecognisable to us now. But it won’t render those who live in it the inability to understand that, prior to the widespread infrastructure for lab grown meat, people had to make do without such benefits.

Ask someone now how life might have looked like without a car and they’ll probably accurately predict that people moved around a whole lot less than we do now. They might not be able to imagine living without such convenience but it’s not like they can’t imagine a society existing without it.

This is contrasted with, say, slavery. For a lot of us, the absolute cruelty and inhumanity of enslaving people is so foreign that even conceiving of it is impossible. Movies recounting the barbarism and brutality of the slave trade sounds unbelievable. We may have the documents and artists may attempt to recapture the conditions but even with the evidence and visual aids, it’s still inconceivable to think that one in five of the people brought onto slave ships ended up dead and pitched overboard.

I can understand conflating meat eating to something like slavery if you object on the former due to moral grounds. They seem like similar issues derived simply from the inhuman philosophies of the people who perform them. But whereas humans have evolved to eat meat, humans didn’t evolve to enslave each other. One action is pretty instinctive to the point where blame would not be levied against a vegan if, say, she were stranded in the wilderness and had catch small game or steal eggs to keep herself alive. Humans may have developed conscience enough to consider the moral impacts of their diet but it doesn’t change the fact that it requires going against the requirements of their body.

This isn’t to say just because we’re adapted to it we should do it. As I’ve said, there’s good reasons for a wide scale adoption of vegan diets. But if such a change comes, it will be with an understanding of why such changes hadn’t been implemented before. Wherein the justifications for the cruelty to one another based solely on differences that do neither harm to others or society are less empathetic. In this way, the discrimination of our fellows stands apart. Just as we struggle to accept LGBT individuals into society now due systemic harmful ideology, so too will future generations be baffled by cruel punishment to other sentient entities with, perhaps, the development of true artificial intelligence.

Ultimately, while our empathy stretches far, the struggle to get it to encompass all of humanity makes it extremely unlikely for people to fail to understand why it didn’t at one time extend to fish.

Winter Book Shelf – The Princess Game

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Book cover for The Princess Game; image from the internet.

Title: The Princess Game: A Reimagining of Sleeping Beauty

Author: Melanie Cellier

Series: The Four Kingdoms

Tags: Young Adult, Fairy Tale

Reflections: I don’t usually like to read books out of order. I make a point of starting series with book one. This not always the best method, but one that I am a stickler for following. Except in this instance. Belonging to the Four Kingdoms series this was book 4 and I have not read the others. Though it does read comfortably as a stand alone novel.

The Princess Game was a cute re-imagining of Sleeping Beauty. It was safe and light but I rather liked it. I am a sucker for hidden identities. Particularly when a person pretends to be one thing during the day and something else at night. Not surprisingly I am a huge fan of Zorro. And there were elements of that dual identity throughout the book.

While I appreciate the idea of making Sleeping Beauty more of an active participant in her life, I did find the curse a little on the weak side. Granted, this was because of some interference of various fairy godmothers (to be discussed later). Instead of death or sleep, the princess is cursed to have her gifted intelligence put to sleep – in effect becoming an idiot. Only, through some more magical manipulations, Sleeping Beauty is forced to have the appearance of an idiot, while she keeps her fierce intelligence to herself.

Book cover for The Princess Game; image from the internet.

I appreciate that the book celebrates the importance of intelligence, but overall this a very low impact curse. Mostly it means that when seen by others who know who she is, our heroic princess must play the part of flighty airhead. This seemed to take the route of keeping her conversation on topics of clothes or in a pinch anything that is not related to the current topic of discourse. Cute, but not high stakes.

My other complaint comes in the form of an over abundance of fairy godmothers. It seems at times the characters are tripping over these gift-giving magical creatures. It feels a bit like a cheat to have everything solved so easily by someone else. Though, this re-imagining did try to stay rather close to the Disney version, complete with the requirement of True-Love’s Kiss. Like with many other stories, there was a lack of subtlety that would have made the simple, familiar plot a little more intriguing.

Still, with a target audience of young adults, there is nothing offensive in the story. And I did like the princess turn spy, so overall I would give this a 3 out of 5.