For those of you who haven't heard, tomorrow marks the last day of the Facebook game "Marvel: Avengers Alliance", which started out as a turn-based tie-in to the 2012 'Avengers' film and just sort of kept going for four years and 166 playable characters. It wasn't a perfect game--it was a Flash game and prone to bugs and balance issues just like many others, and it had its grindy elements just like pretty much any game that tries to get you to log in every day and play it as much as possible does.
But it had some amazing virtues. It had a character roster that hit just just the classic Marvel characters like Spider-Man and Thor and the Hulk, but quirky and offbeat cult favorites like Howard the Duck and Daimon Hellstrom. It introduced players to new heroes like the Blue Marvel and Faiza Hussain, spotlighted obscure heroes like Phyla-Vell and Cloak and Dagger, and even allowed you to redeem a variety of villains from Magneto to Ronan the Accuser and put them to work in the service of humanity. It allowed for a dizzying array of team-ups and crossovers, and was every Marvel fan's dream in a lot of ways.
And the gameplay, while simple, was not without its depths. The different characters each had their own mechanics and special abilities, and figuring out how to combine them could produce synergistic effects that made them amazingly powerful. (Drax, for example, was lethal but withered quickly under direct assault, while Groot was a walking shield wall that took the hits for his team mates. The two made a devastating pair.) Combine that with a variety of different game situations that mandated or prohibited specific characters and you had a recipe for constant reinvention and adaptation to the different enemies the game threw at you.
I've been playing the game in one form or another for about three years now, pretty much ever since 'City of Heroes' went the way of all things. It got me through my grieving period for that game, in a lot of ways. Now I have to grieve this one. I guess that's the problem with games that offer you an infinite number of possibilities and a sweeping array of things to do. In the end, it just means that your interest in the game outlives it instead of the other way around.
Showing posts with label eulogies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eulogies. Show all posts
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Thursday, April 21, 2016
But I'm Here to Tell You There's Something Else (The After World)
The same year that took David Bowie has now robbed us of Prince. I don't know if these two musicians were associated in life, but I think that death will now link them forever in the memories of music fans, and I think to some extent that's a fair thing. Like Bowie, Prince seemed to have something of the trickster about him, endlessly reinventing himself as well as his music almost as a kind of game. In fact, it could be argued that Prince took the game further than Bowie ever did--Ziggy Stardust was a persona, but Prince was willing at times to shed himself entirely like an old skin.
Prince was also one of those musicians who I always think of as an artist's artist--certainly he had his share of hits for the general public, but it always seemed to me even when he was alive that his greatest legacy would be the way he inspired other songwriters. He always seemed to be so advanced, pioneering whole new ways of thinking about music that others picked up on and worked into their own acts. I think he left a legacy that has forever transformed music.
I suspect he'll also be remembered mostly for that music--by most accounts he was a private, troubled and difficult individual who mostly preferred to keep the spotlight on his work. Even when he did let it shine on himself, it was Prince the persona and not Prince the person who became the focus of attention. For most, the fiction presented by 'Purple Rain' will become the man. That's not such a bad way to be preserved.
Like Bowie, he was someone who died too soon simply because time is not long enough to allow a genius to create. And I'd really like 2016 to stop this now, thanks.
Prince was also one of those musicians who I always think of as an artist's artist--certainly he had his share of hits for the general public, but it always seemed to me even when he was alive that his greatest legacy would be the way he inspired other songwriters. He always seemed to be so advanced, pioneering whole new ways of thinking about music that others picked up on and worked into their own acts. I think he left a legacy that has forever transformed music.
I suspect he'll also be remembered mostly for that music--by most accounts he was a private, troubled and difficult individual who mostly preferred to keep the spotlight on his work. Even when he did let it shine on himself, it was Prince the persona and not Prince the person who became the focus of attention. For most, the fiction presented by 'Purple Rain' will become the man. That's not such a bad way to be preserved.
Like Bowie, he was someone who died too soon simply because time is not long enough to allow a genius to create. And I'd really like 2016 to stop this now, thanks.
Monday, January 11, 2016
The Planet Earth Is Blue (And There's Nothing We Can Do)
I got to work this morning to find out David Bowie passed away. It was a strange feeling to learn that, like something of immense and indefinable value had been stolen in the night. I don't think that we'll ever be able to appreciate the magnitude of this loss, even those who were tremendous fans or those who were close to him personally, because one of the monumental achievements of Bowie's life and career was that he saw things that were invisible to the universe until he revealed them.
As such, I'm not really sure you can quantify the impact of his life and work. He created strange and wonderful things, ideas that inspired the people who inspire the rest of us. He found different ways of thinking about art, about life, about fame and the artifacts of culture that rise up around the people who dream for a living. I can imagine a few of the mysterious connections between the world we live in and the man who just passed out of our life--could Steven Colbert have existed without Ziggy Stardust? How many fantasy writers were touched by strangeness for the first time by the Goblin King? But I can't say that I see them all. He's too big for that.
And so I wish he had more time. Because I cannot imagine what five more years, one more year, even six more months of Bowie would have given us. I cannot imagine how he could have transformed the world all over again in that span, because he was rarer than a genius. He was, in his own way, a magician in the truest sense of the world, someone who changed reality with his thoughts and his words and his music, and even the geniuses he inspired cannot perform his magic.
David Bowie is gone, and that is a sad thing even if the world he helped make is wonderful.
As such, I'm not really sure you can quantify the impact of his life and work. He created strange and wonderful things, ideas that inspired the people who inspire the rest of us. He found different ways of thinking about art, about life, about fame and the artifacts of culture that rise up around the people who dream for a living. I can imagine a few of the mysterious connections between the world we live in and the man who just passed out of our life--could Steven Colbert have existed without Ziggy Stardust? How many fantasy writers were touched by strangeness for the first time by the Goblin King? But I can't say that I see them all. He's too big for that.
And so I wish he had more time. Because I cannot imagine what five more years, one more year, even six more months of Bowie would have given us. I cannot imagine how he could have transformed the world all over again in that span, because he was rarer than a genius. He was, in his own way, a magician in the truest sense of the world, someone who changed reality with his thoughts and his words and his music, and even the geniuses he inspired cannot perform his magic.
David Bowie is gone, and that is a sad thing even if the world he helped make is wonderful.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Gone But Unforgettable
Wes Craven is one of the reasons I always wanted to be a writer. Not that I watched 'Nightmare on Elm Street' as a nine-year old and came away wanting to make horror movies; I don't even think I saw the movies until they showed up in greatly-diminished form on UHF television a few years later. But as a nine-year old, I did know one thing; every kid on the playground was talking about Freddy Krueger.
How could they not? He was, and is, a potent and iconic symbol in popular culture. He was a brilliant distillation of a host of fears both modern and ancient--he tapped into the zeigeist of the time and the panic over child abductions and repressed traumas, but he also expressed the most ancient and terrible fears about the strange world of dreams that we enter unwillingly for eight hours every night. Everyone has a nightmare. Everyone was once a child afraid of a sinister stranger, or an adult frightened for their child. Freddy Krueger manifested those fears so perfectly that he was made immortal in almost the first instant of his appearance on camera.
Which isn't to reduce Wes Craven to Freddy Krueger; he had a long and brilliant career with plenty of famous gems and plenty of underappreciated classics that will bear re-examination. (I'm a particular fan of 'The Wishmaster', myself; it's a fairly classic tale, the person who awakens a genie and learns first-hand to be careful what they wish for, but it's elegantly and stylishly told.) But Freddy Krueger is a genuine contribution to humanity's common myth, a folklore figure whose tales will be told and retold down through the ages. A thousand years from now, whether as interactive hologram or direct mental projection or (depending on how pessimistic you want to be) people telling stories in front of the fire erected to keep out the lizardwolves, they will tell stories about the man with knives for fingers who will get you in your sleep. (Which is a good way to keep everyone awake and watching for lizardwolves, really.)
And Wes Craven, while he may not always be remembered as Freddy Krueger's creator, will always be remembered because of Freddy Krueger. With his imagination, he has purchased a form of immortality, a legacy that will live on long after we have forgotten our presidents and kings and long after the richest man's money has trickled away into the hands of his descendants. Wes Craven is dead, but Wes Craven will also live forever. That's the kind of thing that deep down, all writers aspire to. I can't say I'm any different.
Godspeed, Mister Craven. You cannot be forgotten.
How could they not? He was, and is, a potent and iconic symbol in popular culture. He was a brilliant distillation of a host of fears both modern and ancient--he tapped into the zeigeist of the time and the panic over child abductions and repressed traumas, but he also expressed the most ancient and terrible fears about the strange world of dreams that we enter unwillingly for eight hours every night. Everyone has a nightmare. Everyone was once a child afraid of a sinister stranger, or an adult frightened for their child. Freddy Krueger manifested those fears so perfectly that he was made immortal in almost the first instant of his appearance on camera.
Which isn't to reduce Wes Craven to Freddy Krueger; he had a long and brilliant career with plenty of famous gems and plenty of underappreciated classics that will bear re-examination. (I'm a particular fan of 'The Wishmaster', myself; it's a fairly classic tale, the person who awakens a genie and learns first-hand to be careful what they wish for, but it's elegantly and stylishly told.) But Freddy Krueger is a genuine contribution to humanity's common myth, a folklore figure whose tales will be told and retold down through the ages. A thousand years from now, whether as interactive hologram or direct mental projection or (depending on how pessimistic you want to be) people telling stories in front of the fire erected to keep out the lizardwolves, they will tell stories about the man with knives for fingers who will get you in your sleep. (Which is a good way to keep everyone awake and watching for lizardwolves, really.)
And Wes Craven, while he may not always be remembered as Freddy Krueger's creator, will always be remembered because of Freddy Krueger. With his imagination, he has purchased a form of immortality, a legacy that will live on long after we have forgotten our presidents and kings and long after the richest man's money has trickled away into the hands of his descendants. Wes Craven is dead, but Wes Craven will also live forever. That's the kind of thing that deep down, all writers aspire to. I can't say I'm any different.
Godspeed, Mister Craven. You cannot be forgotten.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
God Dammit.
Just...god dammit.
He was too good to die. He was too goddamned good to suffer and die like this, losing everything that made him a genius bit by bit with still so much to say. He was the best writer I've ever read--and I say this as someone with a classical education, someone who's read Shakespeare and Miller and Brecht and Faulkner and Hemingway and Austen and any number of Great Authors you would care to name. He was that good. He was better. He was the best satirist since Jonathan Swift--and I don't mean "best" in the sense of funniest or wittiest, although he was that too. He was the best because he understood humanity and he understood people, the vast mass of us and the individuals, and his satire illuminated the human condition and made you a better person for reading it.
He taught me an infinite amount about the craft of writing, simply by reading him. Every book was a masterclass on the art of plotting, the art of storytelling. But more than that, he taught me the art of having something to say--his books were driven by passion, by a deep and abiding belief that you could use art to illuminate the injustices of the world, both great and small, and that illuminating them went some small way to curing them. Not enough, never enough--he knew that, which was why he kept writing right up until the end, but it was better than nothing.
His writing may never get the respect it deserves. It's fantasy, and it's funny fantasy at that, and the arbiters of quality have never really been comfortable with the idea of humor being as important as everything else in the human experience. But he deserves all the respect in the world. I never met him, but goddammit, he's the kind of man you have to mourn simply because he was the best ever and we will never see anyone his like again, and to lose him is to see the world diminished. I'm crying right now while I write this and I don't care.
And because I will never have the skill with words that he did, and I will never be able to eulogize him the way he deserves, just...goddammit.
He was too good to die. He was too goddamned good to suffer and die like this, losing everything that made him a genius bit by bit with still so much to say. He was the best writer I've ever read--and I say this as someone with a classical education, someone who's read Shakespeare and Miller and Brecht and Faulkner and Hemingway and Austen and any number of Great Authors you would care to name. He was that good. He was better. He was the best satirist since Jonathan Swift--and I don't mean "best" in the sense of funniest or wittiest, although he was that too. He was the best because he understood humanity and he understood people, the vast mass of us and the individuals, and his satire illuminated the human condition and made you a better person for reading it.
He taught me an infinite amount about the craft of writing, simply by reading him. Every book was a masterclass on the art of plotting, the art of storytelling. But more than that, he taught me the art of having something to say--his books were driven by passion, by a deep and abiding belief that you could use art to illuminate the injustices of the world, both great and small, and that illuminating them went some small way to curing them. Not enough, never enough--he knew that, which was why he kept writing right up until the end, but it was better than nothing.
His writing may never get the respect it deserves. It's fantasy, and it's funny fantasy at that, and the arbiters of quality have never really been comfortable with the idea of humor being as important as everything else in the human experience. But he deserves all the respect in the world. I never met him, but goddammit, he's the kind of man you have to mourn simply because he was the best ever and we will never see anyone his like again, and to lose him is to see the world diminished. I'm crying right now while I write this and I don't care.
And because I will never have the skill with words that he did, and I will never be able to eulogize him the way he deserves, just...goddammit.
Monday, November 26, 2012
End of an Era
This appears to be the last week ever for 'City of Heroes', which I think it's safe to say is my favorite video game of all time. I've been a member since about the first month (my friend let me play his account for a few weeks to try it out) and it is genuinely saddening to me that NCSoft seems determined to kill the game. (They said they "exhausted all options" when it came to keeping the game alive, but even the tiniest leaks of information belie that statement.)
This game has meant a lot to me. A lot of the good times with my friends over the last near-decade involved 'City of Heroes' LAN parties, and a lot of my characters have developed a life of their own in my imagination. (Suffice to say, a lot of the early genesis of 'Self-Taught Superheroes' has its roots in 'CoH'.) I think the game was an excellent piece of design work, very casual-play and casual-gamer friendly, and I think it was influential all out of proportion to its playerbase. You can see, scattered through my blog, some of my character ideas...I've backed those characters up using the Sentinel+ tool, but that doesn't mean I'll ever get to play them again. Paragon City might have been a virtual place, but that doesn't make it any less real to me.
I'm going to spend the last week of the game's existence playing; there's still at least one character I'd like to see hit 50 before they shut the servers down. After that, I'm going to keep my eyes and ears open for good news...because I believe that a game like this is too good to die forever.
This game has meant a lot to me. A lot of the good times with my friends over the last near-decade involved 'City of Heroes' LAN parties, and a lot of my characters have developed a life of their own in my imagination. (Suffice to say, a lot of the early genesis of 'Self-Taught Superheroes' has its roots in 'CoH'.) I think the game was an excellent piece of design work, very casual-play and casual-gamer friendly, and I think it was influential all out of proportion to its playerbase. You can see, scattered through my blog, some of my character ideas...I've backed those characters up using the Sentinel+ tool, but that doesn't mean I'll ever get to play them again. Paragon City might have been a virtual place, but that doesn't make it any less real to me.
I'm going to spend the last week of the game's existence playing; there's still at least one character I'd like to see hit 50 before they shut the servers down. After that, I'm going to keep my eyes and ears open for good news...because I believe that a game like this is too good to die forever.
Sunday, April 01, 2012
In Loving Memory
I took my girl to a fancy ball;
It was a social hop.
We waited till the folks got out,
And the music it did stop.
Then to a restaurant we went,
The best one on the street.
She said she wasn't hungry
But this is what she ate.
A dozen raw, a plate of slaw,
A chicken and a roast,
Some applesauce and asparagus,
And soft-shell crabs on toast.
A big box stew, and crackers too;
Her appetite was immense!
When she called for pie,
I thought I'd die,
For I had but fifty cents.
She said she wasn't hungry
And didn't care to eat,
But I've money in my clothes
To bet she can't be beat.
She took it in so cozy,
She had an awful tank.
She said she wasn't thirsty
But this is what she drank.
A whisky skin, a glass of gin,
Which made me shake with fear,
A ginger pop, with rum on top,
A schooner then of beer,
A glass of ale, a gin cocktail.
She should have had more sense.
When she called for more
I fell on the floor
For I had but fifty cents.
Of course I wasn't hungry
And didn't care to eat,
Expecting every moment
To be kicked into the street.
She said she'd fetch her family round,
And some night we'd have fun
But when I gave the man the fifty cents,
This is what he done:
He tore my clothes,
He smashed my nose,
He hit me on the jaw,
He gave me a prize
Of a pair of black eyes
And with me swept the floor.
He took me where my pants hung loose,
And threw me over the fence.
Now take my advice, don't try it twice
If you've got but fifty cents.
It was a social hop.
We waited till the folks got out,
And the music it did stop.
Then to a restaurant we went,
The best one on the street.
She said she wasn't hungry
But this is what she ate.
A dozen raw, a plate of slaw,
A chicken and a roast,
Some applesauce and asparagus,
And soft-shell crabs on toast.
A big box stew, and crackers too;
Her appetite was immense!
When she called for pie,
I thought I'd die,
For I had but fifty cents.
She said she wasn't hungry
And didn't care to eat,
But I've money in my clothes
To bet she can't be beat.
She took it in so cozy,
She had an awful tank.
She said she wasn't thirsty
But this is what she drank.
A whisky skin, a glass of gin,
Which made me shake with fear,
A ginger pop, with rum on top,
A schooner then of beer,
A glass of ale, a gin cocktail.
She should have had more sense.
When she called for more
I fell on the floor
For I had but fifty cents.
Of course I wasn't hungry
And didn't care to eat,
Expecting every moment
To be kicked into the street.
She said she'd fetch her family round,
And some night we'd have fun
But when I gave the man the fifty cents,
This is what he done:
He tore my clothes,
He smashed my nose,
He hit me on the jaw,
He gave me a prize
Of a pair of black eyes
And with me swept the floor.
He took me where my pants hung loose,
And threw me over the fence.
Now take my advice, don't try it twice
If you've got but fifty cents.
Friday, June 24, 2011
R I P Gene Colan
I'm glad that I took the time to send him fanmail while it still had the chance of meaning something to him; Gene Colan was one of the legends of Marvel comics, a genuine artist with a distinctive and dreamlike style unlike anyone else in the field, then or now. His art on Doctor Strange and Daredevil was iconic, and his work on Tomb of Dracula remains an unsurpassed milestone of moody horror. He was gracious and generous, and his response to my fanmail was just one of many examples of that.
"Gentleman" Gene Colan, one of the great ones. Rest in peace.
"Gentleman" Gene Colan, one of the great ones. Rest in peace.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Saying Goodbye
I received an email this morning that Kelly O'Guinn, aka Kielle, died of cancer recently. I hadn't heard anything about her in years, but she was such a wonderfully vivid personality that my memories of her sprung to mind immediately.
It was about nine years ago, when I'd only recently discovered things like "the Internet", "fanfic", and had barely started to form the idea that I could construct plots, prose, and dialogue together into stories. I wrote a couple of things--a Doctor Who story, a Green Lantern fanfic, a big dumb DC cross-over to cancel out another big dumb DC cross-over that had irritated me--and I more or less dumped them onto the Internet with a thud.
Kielle loved them. She sent me praise, and since at the time she hosted a huge fanfic site, she made a couple of them "stories of the week" which made other people read them and send me praise. She sent me email encouraging me to write more, she laughed at my jokes and told me so, she at one point fell off her chair laughing at something I'd written, or at least she claimed to. We didn't keep in touch, but she was a wonderful person at the exact time when so many writers need wonderful people and too many don't find them. I believe I owe her a lot.
She's dead now. I didn't want to believe it, because she was just too alive a person to be dead. People like her shouldn't be allowed to die.
I don't think I've got any more words about this. I think this is the point where words run out, because you either know this place personally and they're not needed, or you don't and they're hopelessly inadequate.
So goodbye, Kielle.
It was about nine years ago, when I'd only recently discovered things like "the Internet", "fanfic", and had barely started to form the idea that I could construct plots, prose, and dialogue together into stories. I wrote a couple of things--a Doctor Who story, a Green Lantern fanfic, a big dumb DC cross-over to cancel out another big dumb DC cross-over that had irritated me--and I more or less dumped them onto the Internet with a thud.
Kielle loved them. She sent me praise, and since at the time she hosted a huge fanfic site, she made a couple of them "stories of the week" which made other people read them and send me praise. She sent me email encouraging me to write more, she laughed at my jokes and told me so, she at one point fell off her chair laughing at something I'd written, or at least she claimed to. We didn't keep in touch, but she was a wonderful person at the exact time when so many writers need wonderful people and too many don't find them. I believe I owe her a lot.
She's dead now. I didn't want to believe it, because she was just too alive a person to be dead. People like her shouldn't be allowed to die.
I don't think I've got any more words about this. I think this is the point where words run out, because you either know this place personally and they're not needed, or you don't and they're hopelessly inadequate.
So goodbye, Kielle.
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