My Current Punditry Pet Peeve

I keep seeing it in every single article about Trump that's been published in traditional media or online. This particular one is from a Salon article by Sean Illing, but they all say something similar:

"If any other candidate said what Trump said this week, his campaign would collapse immediately. But Trump has been saying and doing things that would disqualify anyone else for months, and yet he slithers on."

Look. I understand that Trump did defy the political odds during the primaries by thriving despite some glaring and horrible statements. But can we stop pretending that Trump is somehow "normalizing" horrible discourse, or that he's not paying a price for his commentary? His polling numbers are in freefall, he went from dead-even with Hillary to having (according to FiveThirtyEight) a 13% chance of winning, his brand is toxic, Republicans are openly fleeing him in droves, the RNC is being flat-out asked to stop spending money on the Presidential race, every single media outlet is raking him over the coals as an affront to democracy, and he's losing states that haven't gone to the Democrats in 24 years. The only way that he could be more ruined by his Presidential campaign is if he literally burst into flames in the middle of one of his rallies and was dragged down to hell by the fiery claws of the Beast.

(Which may yet happen at this rate.)

The point is, Trump will still be allowed to speak all the way through November, unless he drops out or the Republicans finally come to their senses and lock him in a small windowless room without access to Twitter until November 9th kick him off the ticket. But that's not the same thing as still having a political career.

The Brutal Truth About the "Two Party System"

A lot of people will, as part of the ongoing debate about how miserable and grinding the current election is, talk about how frustrating it is that in America we only have Trump and Clinton as viable options because "we live in a two-party system". (Usually, this is right before they talk about writing in Mickey Mouse, and right before I deliver a long and boring discussion of tactical voting that I'm going to skip this time out, which is kind of a shame because I have a great analogy but I'll save it for later.)

The problem is, this isn't untrue. We don't live in a two-party system. We live in a two-competent-party system. There's no reason encoded into our nation's laws that genuinely prevents a third party from forming, and in fact there are actually something like one hundred political parties currently operating in the United States. But most of them are content to run essentially as ego-stroking campaigns for their members, insisting that they would totally win if not for "bias" and "a rigged system" while ignoring their own clear issues that prevent them from gaining a foothold beyond the occasional Congressperson or state official. Here's why you don't see a national third party that competes with the Democrats and the Republicans, and why it has very little to do with media coverage or any rigging that might be going on.

1. Third parties don't put in the work. The Green Party runs a Presidential candidate every four years, and insists each time that their momentum is growing and that they're going to take back the mantle of "liberal" from the centrist Democrats. But a) nobody has ever explained how President Stein will get her agenda enacted when she has literally no Congressional support, and b) nobody has ever explained how a party with absolutely no track record in government will suddenly do a great job in that field.

The fact of the matter is, a third party needs to be built from the ground up, not the top down. A Presidential run is great press, but any third party that wants to have a hope in hell of enacting their agenda needs to have a full ticket--a Congressperson for every district at minimum, Senators for the 33-34 seats up each year, and probably local representation as well. But that kind of work is boring and low-profile, while running for President is exciting and fun and entails lots of interviews with people who really want to know your opinion! So the Green Party is Jill Stein every four years talking about how unfair it is that she never gets elected.

2. Third parties are fringe. Both the Libertarians and the Greens this year are presenting themselves as alternatives for those in the Republican and Democratic (respectively) Parties who want a candidate who's more true to their beliefs. Meaning more conservative for the Libertarians, and more liberal for the Greens.

The problem is, a candidate who trends toward the far end of the political spectrum is going to have less appeal to the middle, for obvious reasons. And if you have less appeal, you get fewer votes. A third party that gets fewer votes doesn't get elected. Once you start selecting for ideological purity and campaigning for the outliers, you're not going to win. Hell, that's the problem the Republicans have this year, which is why they nominated a sculpture of Mussolini made entirely out of pre-chewed Cheetos.

3. Third parties tend to be single issue parties. This isn't so much true of the Greens and the Libertarians, who are least are making a pretense of caring about actual governance, but something like the Alaskan Independence Party is basically running on the issue of, "Hey, seceding from the United States would solve all of Alaska's problems!" (I assume the "Rent Is Too Damn High Party" in New York state has a similar approach, but I'm not quite sure what their issue is. Probably legalization of marijuana or something.)

The problem is, this is a nonsensical approach to governance. There's no single fix that can be pushed through that will solve the problems the United States experiences on a yearly basis, and generally these candidates tend to be delusional people who have focused their emotional energy on demanding one unworkable fix because it's easier to believe that you can Solve All the Problems with one heroic swoop than it is to deal with the years of constant and unrewarding work needed to make the world a better place. Most people know this, which is why these parties tend to only attract a few true believers who are just as delusional as the candidate. Which brings us to...

4. Most third-party candidates tend to be delusional nutbags who build the party around their particular hobbyhorses, and they wind up more as cults of personality than viable attempts to do the work of governance. The obvious example that comes to mind is H. Ross Perot, whose stated goal was to create a pragmatic third party focused on practical solutions rather than ideology, but that wound up being held hostage to the narcissistic whims of its eccentric candidate. (Yes, I know, it does sound like the Republicans are rapidly descending into third-party status, doesn't it?) But really, I mean something like this guy:

 http://andy2016.com/

Take a look at those proposals. This is a man sincerely running on a platform of disclosing the Pentagon's secret time travel program and admitting that we're already on Mars. This is the kind of thing that third parties in America are doing right now. They're not out there trying to become a viable alternative to the current two dominant parties, they're out there trying to put Bigfoot on the Endangered Species List. This is why we live in a two-party system. It's not because the Republicans and Democrats suppress the competition, it's because third parties are more interested in being symbolic forms of protest against an unpleasant reality than any kind of actual group interested in promoting responsible governance. Until someone--a lot of someones, really, because a political party isn't just something you make with your buddies in the garage--is willing to change that, a third party won't gain traction in America.

In fact, at this rate, we could be down to a "one-party system" in a few years unless the Republicans get their act together. But that's probably a separate post.

My One Political Prediction

It, um...seems to have been an interesting few weeks, politically speaking. I believe that since I last blogged, Donald Trump has picked a fight with the parents of an American soldier who died stopping a suicide bomber on the grounds that they support Islamic terrorism, stabbed his two most prominent national political allies in the back, insinuated he would use nuclear weapons as a first resort, asked the Russians to illegally interfere in a national election on his behalf, discussed documents that he claimed were "top secret" (which may not actually exist), and oh yeah he kicked a baby out of one of his rallies.

And then said that he doesn't understand why he's behind in the polls.

With all that, the Republicans seem (unsurprisingly) to be hitting the panic button. There's just one problem--that button's not hooked up to anything. There is no provision for denominating a candidate who has been selected as the Republican standard-bearer once the convention happens. This means that no matter what Trump does--publicly setting fire to Reince Priebus' car, pissing in Paul Ryan's protein shake, playing the "I'm not touching youuuuu!" game with John McCain--all they can do is ask him to drop out. (And Trump knows it, which is why he's doing all this. Trump is only nice to people when he needs to be in order to get something out of them. Voters should remember that in November.)

Which brings me to my one political prediction. Because rumor has it that the Republicans are, in fact, privately trying to get Trump to drop out (a rumor that the Republicans are denying with the same approximate degree of believability that NFL team owners use when insisting that they have full confidence in their 1-11 head coach and don't plan on making any personnel moves until after the season). And those journalists who have looked into this have said that if Trump were to drop out, the Republicans would need it to happen before September 1st in order to be able to put the new candidate's name on the ballots in all 50 states (once they selected him or...oh who are we kidding, him...to become the nominee, which would also need to happen before September 1st).

So here's my one political prediction. I'm not saying that Donald Trump is going to drop out and fail to finish what he laughably calls a political campaign. (Although it's not an impossibility. If you quit, claiming that the game is rigged and people aren't giving you a fair chance to win, you can always claim you would have won.) But I will say that if Trump does drop out, it will not happen until at least September 2nd.

Because if there's one thing that the Ryan/McCain episode has made clear, it is that Donald Trump never does anything gracefully when he can achieve the same outcome while avenging imaginary slights against him. If Donald feels like the Republicans have insulted him (which, although entirely justified on their part, they have) he will exit the race in a way that makes it as clear as possible that the blame for his failure rests on them, and in a way that does as much damage to them as a party as he conceivably can. In this case, that means shifting his campaign message to suggest that he's being sabotaged by his own party, then dropping out after it's too late to find a replacement and watching their electoral strategy crash and burn.

I realize that "Donald Trump does something spiteful and petty to his allies in order to salvage his ego" is not exactly going out on a limb as far as predictions go, but I feel that it will at least help you during this uncertain period to know that we are stuck with Donald for another month at least. Beyond that, it will depend on which kind of humiliation he hates more--the humiliation of losing to Hillary, or the humiliation of not even trying.

Review: The United States of Arugula

It's strange--looking back on our nation's history, we can collectively remember a time when TV dinners were new and exciting and frozen food was a miracle and SPAM was something to be lauded and celebrated. But somehow, it's difficult to connect our modern day Instagramming of "food porn", 24-hour food-based TV networks, celebrity chefs and McDonald's arugula salads to the days when the most exciting thing about food was how well it kept and how easy it was to make. What happened to bring us from food as a grim necessity to food as an epicurean delight?

That's not just the question I ask myself every time I walk past a Hungry Man TV dinner and wonder who still eats those, it's the basic premise of David Kamp's book 'The United States of Arugula'. The book starts in the 1950s, the era when fast food and processed food was at its ascendance, and introduces the key characters responsible for transforming our cultural understanding of food. He covers fine dining, cookbooks and cooking shows, and the process of food sourcing and how it changed slowly but surely over the decades.

There's a lot of interesting stories in the book, many of which show how the counter-culture movement of the 60s intertwined with the push for ethically-sourced and healthy cuisine, and he highlights a number of important figures in the history of the culinary arts that might otherwise have gone forgotten. In addition to obvious stars like James Beard and Julia Child, he covers Craig Claiborne, Jeremiah Tower, and a host of other people known primarily to foodies who he feels influenced the development of modern cooking and taste-making.

In a way, this is also probably the book's weakness. Because he wants to cover the breadth of the transformation of food culture as well as the depth of it, there's a lot of jumping around to focus on figures within the industry who play only a minor role, or who are more remembered for their influence on other famous chefs. Towards the end, without the organizing principle of "how did this person's legacy contribute to food culture as we know it?" (because as the book ably shows, it's hard to tell a food fad from a cultural contribution to our national cuisine right away) the book loses focus rather badly. The last few chapters are a dizzying leap from chef to chef to celebrity chef, with no real explanation given as to why some merit consideration within the book's pages and others are a mere footnote.

Still, the overall theme comes out very well despite that--the last fifty years have seen a national conversation about what we eat and how to make it better tasting and healthier. And while that's occasionally descended into faddishness, snobbery, scolding and absurd levels of bacon worship, it's still a conversation worth having. Kamp makes that case very well indeed.

My Brief Take on the New Trek Fan Film Guidelines

There is exactly one thing you have to understand about the new Star Trek fan film guidelines. They are a promise, not a threat.

The promise is actually pretty impressive. Not quite unprecedented--Lucasfilm embraced the fan film community, albeit with a few reservations--but this is a pretty big deal. Paramount is saying that they will let anyone, for free, make their very own short film based on one of the four biggest entertainment properties in science-fiction (Marvel, Star Wars and Who being the other three), for free, gratis, so long as certain rules are adhered to. Are those rules pretty stringent? Sure. Do they let you make your very own Star Trek with absolutely no threat of legal action by the holders of the IP? Sure.

And if you don't want to adhere to those guidelines...you don't have to. Sure, you could be sued by Paramount, but what people are forgetting in their initial judgment of the new policy is that this was always the case. All Trek fan films prior to this point, every single one of them from the officially unofficial series that used Trek actors playing their copyrighted characters down to the guys wandering around in their heavily wooded backyards in pajamas yelling, "I AM KIROK!"...they all risked a lawsuit. Because they were infringing on someone's intellectual property. They had no legal defense against that, none of them. It wasn't fair use, it didn't matter that they weren't making a profit, it didn't matter how it was distributed. They all were potential targets.

So nothing has changed for these people. Officially, 'Star Trek: New Voyages' is operating outside the guidelines and is vulnerable to a lawsuit should Paramount decide to go after them. Officially, Paramount can't say to them, "Hey, we don't really care, you're not making any money and your show is good PR for us so knock yourself out." But that was the case yesterday too. All this is, when you boil it down, is a way for Paramount to cover their butts so that when someone like Alec Peters comes along and raises a million bucks to make a feature-length movie while selling bootleg merch, he can't say, "Well, I had no idea that I couldn't do it!"

Of course, that won't stop fans from freaking out about it, but hey. Fans gonna fan.

Review: The Tropic of Serpents

After gushing about Marie Brennan's first book about the intrepid Isabella, Lady Trent and her voyages to discover dragons, I felt like I would be remiss if I didn't spend at least a little bit of time talking about the second book in the series. This one focuses on her journeys into the swamps of Mouleen (an ahistorical continent with clear parallels to colonial Africa) to study swamp dragons, during which she gets unavoidably swept up in local politics.

It's the local politics that take up a lot of the book, which is a little disappointing if you come to the novel looking for dragons, dragons and more dragons. On the other hand, Brennan does a good job of conveying, through Isabella's slow realization that her country may not have the finest interests of Mouleen at heart, the contradictory and messy interests that lie at the heart of the colonial mentality. Being something of an outsider in her own homeland due to her decision to pursue a traditionally male career, she's positioned perfectly to notice that the Scirling (read: British) promises of aid and comfort tend to come with a lot of armed men, and not a few concessions to a superior military force. Her decisions regarding that ugly truth behind the "White Man's Burden" myth form the narrative's spine.

There are also further developments in the slightly ominous metaplot that was seeded in the first novel--having discovered that preserved dragonbone is as light as aluminum and durable as steel, Isabella spends no small amount of time in the book attempting to avert a resource war over the rare and endangered dragon species that we already know (since this is presented as her memoirs) has already happened. This book keeps that to the background, but it informs the entire story with the slow drumbeats of impending conflict. There's a lot of very clever metaphor going on here, with dragons standing in for any number of precious and irreplaceable natural resources...plus, they're freaking dragons, which is always cool.

I'd recommend the second book just as strongly as the first. It takes a bit longer to get to the dragons, but the time it develops other themes is time well spent.

Match-Making

Is it wrong that I really hope Tom Hiddleston turns out to be gay or bisexual so that he can be linked with Benedict Cumberbatch romantically (whom I also hope turns out to be gay or bisexual) simply so they can have the "power couple" nickname "Hiddlebatch"?

I would accept, as an alternative, a romantic liason between Tom Hiddleston and Mark Ruffalo, who would of course be "Hiddleuffalo". (I suppose technically they could be "Ruffleston", but I feel like that lacks the quiet dignity of "Hiddleuffalo".)

EDIT TO ADD: I would also be satisfied if Mark and Benedict caught each other on the rebound from that serial cad, Tom Hiddleston, and formed the power couple "Cumberbuffalo".

Corrected Facebook Memes

Hi everyone,

I'm sure that some of you, in the wake of the tragic massacre in Orlando last weekend, may have gotten a few people posting a meme on Facebook about how they stand ready with their Second Amendment-approved legal firearms to defend you from the madmen. I won't repost the original meme, as it needed a few edits for factual accuracy (which I've helpfully made). If you do happen to see it, feel free to provide them with the corrected version below:

“I stand behind you in line at the store with a smile on my face...and a gun under my shirt which I occasionally stroke and pet like I’m masturbating with it in public, and you are none the wiser, yet you are much less safer for having me next to you. I probably won’t shoot you. My gun won’t pull it’s own trigger. I might pull that trigger, if my obvious power fantasies and propensity to believe problems can be solved with gunfire finally conflict with my deep-seated feelings of inadequacy to the point where I just have to show the world that I matter by killing a bunch of people, but my gun isn’t just going to go off or anything. It is securely holstered with the trigger covered. It can’t just go off. However, rest assured that if a lunatic walks into the grocery store and pulls out a rifle, I will get shot before I can do anything. And that’s really kind of the best-case scenario, because despite my erotically-charged fantasies of shooting down ‘bad guys’ with my penis substitute, I have no real experience of firing this thing at anything other than paper targets in a controlled setting. I’m just as likely to shoot a cop or an innocent bystander as the actual shooter, and that assumes it’s a real threat and not me just panicking at the sight of a black guy wearing a hoodie and staring at me too long. Because if that happens, I gotta tell you, I’m unloading every bullet in my clip at him and claiming ‘Stand Your Ground’ later, even if he’s eight. The point is, I’m dangerously unstable and prone to pulling out my gun whenever I think I’m in danger. I’m part of the problem, but I think I’m part of the solution. Repost this if you’d like to make sure that wannabe vigilantes like me are kept as far away from firearms as humanly possible.”

Called It!

I was bored and going through some of my old posts, and I found my original reaction to the New 52 from May 31st, 2011. I would like, specifically, to draw your attention to the statement, "No, not the "We're relaunching everything at #1!" crap. That'll be retconned away within five years, max."

DC Rebirth #1? May 25, 2016. A week before the deadline. I don't know whether to be proud or disgusted.

CONsole Room Roundup

Sorry about the lack of a blog post last week, I was getting ready for a con, then attending a con, and am now recovering from a con. Said con was CONsole Room, a Twin Cities Doctor Who convention now in its third year; this year, we had as guests Dominic Glynn, composer during the Classic series era, and former companions Anneke Wills (Polly), Frazier Hines (Jamie), and Wendy Padbury (Zoe). All of them were really sweet and fun to have over to the Twin Cities, although what with scheduling of events I didn't get to see nearly as much of them as I'd hoped.

I also did several panels, which went quite well (I think). I talked about superheroes on TV, Doctor Who spin-offs and controversies, and where to start watching (and reading) Doctor Who. It was a smaller con than CONvergence (and needless to say, infinitely smaller than Dragon*Con or GenCon), so the panels took on a bit of a round-table feel. The panels I was at were more open to interjections from the audience, and it had the atmosphere of a discussion rather than a lecture. (Which is generally good, but can be harder to achieve as the audience gets bigger.)

Also, I watched an episode of "The New Avengers" with my son and he liked it and wants to see more. Not sure what to do about that.

It was a lot of fun, I'm already registered for next year, and I'd love to see some of you there! Also, if you want to be a panelist, go ahead and put your name in! We could definitely use more voices and more diverse voices, and goodness knows if I can do it, you can do it.

DC Stokes Their Vast and Terrible Engine of Hate

I've had this theory for a while now. It sounds kind of crazy, I know, but it's really kind of the only explanation for certain business moves that DC (and its parent company Warner Brothers) makes. My theory is that they have some sort of mystical engine hidden away in the basement of the DC offices, a vast and terrible engine performing some sort of arcane function that is absolutely vital to the company. And this engine is fueled entirely by Alan Moore's fury. So every once in a while, DC has to just go out and do something for the sole purpose of infuriating Alan Moore.

That's really the only explanation I can come up with for this. There's certainly no creative reason for it; nothing Johns is saying makes a lick of sense as a plausible piece of story logic. This quote: “If you’re going to have a conflict between optimism and pessimism, you need to have someone who represents a cynical view of life and also has the ability to affect this," said Johns. "I know it’s crazy but he felt like the right character to use," highlights the fact that Johns apparently either didn't read or didn't understand a comic that was all about Doctor Manhattan rediscovering the tiny miracles that are all around us and setting out to do something wondrous and transcendent instead of being imprisoned by cynicism and despair. (Well, insofar as 'Watchmen' was "all about" any particular thing, because it really did have a multiplicity of ideas, but certainly that's what Doctor Manhattan's arc was about.)

And it's not a sensible business decision, either. Setting aside the plan to once again urinate on the smoldering ashes of your relationship with the man who penned all the best sellers in your back catalog, it's not as if the world is really clamoring for more 'Watchmen' written by people who aren't Alan Moore. If 'Before Watchmen' settled one thing, it was that. Nobody is interested in 'Watchmen' for the characters, they are interested in 'Watchmen' for the writing, which is the one thing that DC has, largely through their own actions, placed entirely and permanently beyond their reach.

(Perhaps that's actually part of the problem--DC, like Marvel, is predicated upon the notion that creators are valuable but ultimately interchangeable, and that the true value is in finding intellectual properties that they can continue to sell no matter who is behind the metaphorical camera. Having a series like 'Watchmen' that they cannot exploit in any meaningful sense without respecting Alan Moore's talent and autonomy is like a poison pill for them.)

Honestly, given Johns' tone in the interview, the decision seems to be entirely motivated by petty spite. It's as if Johns is saying, "Hey, comics aren't fun at all, they're joyless and despondent and filled with unlikable anti-heroes! Who could possibly be responsible for that? Well, I told everyone back in 2005 that it was all Marv Wolfman's fault, and yet somehow things still haven't gotten any better in the ensuing eleven years? I know! I'll write a comic that blames Alan Moore!" And meanwhile, the guy who's been working at DC for the last sixteen years and who's been their Chief Creative Officer for the last six somehow skates. (Who could that gentleman be? I wonder...)

Honestly, I really hope that engine is doing something useful. Because I've pretty much given up on any hope of getting good comics out of the whole deal.

Lazy Link Post 3: This Time It's Personal!

As has been mentioned in the past, I've been recapping seasons of the Amazing Race over at Mightygodking.com. Now that the newest season is in the books, here's a linkroll of the episodes in order:

"I Should've Been a Boy Scout"
"You Look Like Gollum"
"Bros Being Jocks"
"Get It Trending"
"We're Only Doing Freaky Stuff Today"
"Let the Good Times Roll"
"Welcome to Bloody Fingers 101"
"I Have a Wedgie and a Half"
"Salt That Sand!"
"Monkey Dance!"
"That's Money, Honey!"
"The Only First That Matters"

Not sure when we'll see TAR 29--it's been renewed, but not yet scheduled--but I plan to blog that one as well!

Insane Comics Moments, Part Ten

Normally, it would take a lot for an issue of "What If?" to make a list of insane comics moments. I mean, it's a series that basically takes as its starting point the idea of checking out all the crazy consequences that might happen if Wolverine had become a vampire, or the High Evolutionary had turned everyone on the planet into a giant telepathic hive-mind. There's a certain baseline expectation in these stories of bizarre events that can't happen in a canonical Marvel title, is what I'm getting at. So I wouldn't generally say these count as "insane"...

But then I saw this.

Take a good, long look at that, if you will. Imagine being a fly on the wall during that pitch session, hearing either an editor or a writer enthusiastically proclaim that you can get twenty-two non-crazy pages out of the concept of "Nick Fury and His Howling Commandos Fight Space World War II". Imagine being the person who has to actually sit down and write this thing. Imagine being the person who has to illustrate this collage of insanity, setting it out for posterity in pictorial form. You can't either? I don't blame you.

The basic premise, as outlined by the Watcher, is that Leonardo da Vinci was taken more seriously in this reality, and so humanity got a five-hundred year (or so) head start on air travel. Which turned into space travel, which turned into intergalactic travel, which means that by 1945, we've colonized big chunks of space and are running into the Betans, who look (and are explicitly described as in the narration boxes) "even more nightmarish than the worst caricatures of the Japanese." So, you know, we're not dealing with any kind of awkward and cringeworthy racism on top of this ludicrous premise.

The Betans attack one of our early warning stations (which, in this book's closest stab at subtlety, is not actually named "Space Pearl Harbor") and before you know it, we're at war! Nick Fury leads a group of Space Howling Commandos, who are pretty much the same as the normal Howling Commandos except that Gabe Jones has a "sonic laser bugle" and I'm so sorry if that phrase just made your head implode, and they train under the watchful eye of their computer base commander and his robot adjutant. Because of course they do.

As it turns out, the computer has a plan to lure the enemy into an assault on Midway Station (hey, remember what I said about subtlety? GONE NOW!) But the Betans have a secret ally among the humans who is feeding them information! Who is this traitor? Why, none other than Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, of course! But he's not allied with the Betans solely because this is Space World War II and he was a bad guy in the comics. No, he plans to draw the Betans and the Earth...ers? ...icans? ...erosities? ...anyway, he plans to draw them into a war while Germany hoards its resources in secret, the better to overwhelm both groups after the war and institute the rule of the Nazi Party! Which is still a thing in a world where space travel was invented by the time of the Wright Brothers.

Needless to say, Nick and his boys take care of the Betans, dish out a little chin music to the Ratzis, and even manage to save the robot adjutant from being scrapped in the assault on Midway. All in a space day's work! There's a suggestion that more lies ahead for Space Nick Fury and His Space Howling Space Commandos in Space, but thankfully this particular alternate timeline has never been revisited.

Review: Rat Queens Volume One ('Sass and Sorcery')

One of the interesting things about tabletop gaming is the way that it transforms the material that informs it. That is to say, the clear inspiration for fantasy RPGs (lawsuits and denials aside) is 'Lord of the Rings' and its successors. It is intended to create epic fantasies in which noble and stalwart heroes from a curated variety of races quest for the means to defeat a major, world-shattering tyrant in glorious, dramatic fashion...

But in practical terms, this "epic" is being interpreted by regular human beings with puckish imaginations and wild improvisational skills, resulting in battles where the villain is defeated by a horde of zombie chickens or the cave troll is repelled by the newly-researched spell "Bigby's Fist of Forcible Intrusion". Half the fun of gaming is warping and perverting (in the non-sexual sense of the word...usually...) the tropes of high fantasy into something more like what actual people would do in a fantasy world.

All of which is by way of saying that 'Rat Queens', the comic by Kurtis J. Wiebe, manages to capture the spirit of fantasy as it's practiced on the tables of the world far better than just about any of the fantasy novels that inspire said campaigns. The heroes aren't noble, wise, honorable warriors--they're debauched, selfish, vengeful, and mostly in it for the cash and the glory. They bicker, they plot petty revenge, they pack field rations that are entirely hallucinogenic drugs and candy, and they treat magical healing as a convenience rather than a gift from any god. (One of the best running jokes in the series is that the cleric is an atheist.)

All of this makes it sound like the protagonists of 'Rat Queens' would be unpleasant to spend any length of time with, but Wiebe is smart enough to realize that style and charm make up for morality any day. So Betty, the halfling thief, is loopily adorable, and Hannah the necromancer is smart and sexy, and Dee the cleric presents an interesting and thoughtful analysis of what atheism means in a world where the gods are real and present gifts of power to their worshipers. And Violet, as a dwarf who shaved her beard to present the face that she saw in her mind every time she looked in the mirror, is a welcome and meaningful representation of a group traditionally marginalized in fantasy stories.

Basically, 'Rat Queens' is a gloriously absurd, amoral, glamorous look at fantasy on the sharp end. It's about real people doing not so much the right thing as the thing that seems right at the time, and it's a whole lot of fun. I'll be picking up Volume Two as soon as I can.

Why I'm Rooting For Marvel To Regain the FF Rights

Because I totally want to see Victor von Doom make a guest appearance on 'Agents of SHIELD'. It would be so awesome to see the fight between him and Daisy Johnson.

Think about it--she'd blast him with seismic energy, shouting, "You're nothing but a relic--an outdated footnote to history made of obsolete technology and outmoded ideas. Oh, you've made your attempts to update yourself, but nobody cares anymore. The world's moved on without you."

And Doom blasts back with energy bolts, declaiming, "Relic? I am an icon! I am a legend, the cornerstone of the world you made. You think you would be anything without me? You think you're anything now? You're nothing but flash without substance, a few marginal improvements on a design I conceived. I am no footnote to history. I AM history."

And in the surprise finish, the Vision shows up, phases through both their chests to knock them unconscious, and says, "You're both obsolete. Unreal FTW!"

(Yes, this is a terrible joke.)

My X-23 Concept

I know that right now they've turned X-23, the Wolverine clone with an extremely problematic backstory, into the new Wolverine. And that's fine so far as it goes, because it makes her a main character and gives her a significant amount of development and all, but it also has that problem that's also affecting the new Thor and the new Captain America, which is that it's only a matter of time before some bright-eyed young editor says, "Hey, you know how we can get a cheap sales boost for the next six issues? Bring the original back!" And then they become a surplus protagonist, and if the comics industry is known for anything, it's known for the woefully mistaken belief that killing off a superfluous protagonist is a shocking twist that will get people to sit up and pay attention rather than the laziest and most obvious thing to do with a story.

So I'd like to see X-23 get her own series as X-23. And my idea for that series is actually related, somewhat, to that problematic backstory I mentioned. Not in the sense of "she was forced to turn tricks and now must get REVENGE!", because if we're getting into lazy and obvious, well...that's high on the list. But I feel like Laura Kinney is a character who has been denied agency pretty much for most of her life, and my idea for her ongoing series would be for her to try to walk away from her past as a killer, her genetic ties to Wolverine, her legacy as an X-Man, and to find out who she is as a person when she's not embroiled in all the chaos that is her life. (Naturally, it's not that easy.)

In my version of the story, she quits all the X-Teams and goes to a normal college. She majors in sports medicine, learning how to help people with debilitating injuries...and, it must be noted, how to inflict debilitating injuries while causing an absolute minimum of physical damage. She still keeps some ties with her mutant friends, spending time every week in a room lined with adamantium and someone like Kitty Pryde who she can't hurt, trying to control her instinctive response to the trigger scent that turns her into a murderous killer. She tries to keep away from as much of her old life as she can...

But there are still people who need her help. From time to time, in exchange for keeping her off the radar of the world's black ops agencies, some of her old "friends" from her time as an assassin ask her to assist with jobs suited to her talents. She's made it clear to them that she's never going to kill anyone again, and they've accepted that...sort of...but her skills make her invaluable in retrieving kidnap victims, repatriating stolen goods, and other tricky tasks that a skilled infiltrator and combatant can perform. The real challenge to Laura Kinney, though, is finding a way to help people without hurting them. Or at the very least, to minimize the damage she does. She's decided she needs to not be Wolverine. Because Wolverine is a berserker, a monster in his own way, and she wants to be something else.

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.

Spoiler-Free Review: "Welcome to Night Vale: Ghost Stories"

I had the opportunity to see the newest "Welcome to Night Vale" live show this weekend as it passed through the Twin Cities on its way to parts unknown, and while I naturally don't want to spoil anything for anyone, it was another very excellent live show. I'd put it in some ways above "The Investigators", last year's live performance, in no small part because Cecil Baldwin gets to do some genuinely powerful stuff with this script. Although WtNV generally blends genres from scene to scene and even line to line, it tends to hit one of three predominant notes, funny, scary or moving. This one falls in with the last.

We got some very good guest performances as well--won't spoil who, because for all I know it's different from city to city--and some funny recurring bits that are definitely crowd-pleasers. But it really comes together very well at the end, and if you do have the chance to see it in person, you won't be disappointed. And if you don't have the chance to see it in person, you will almost certainly enjoy it when it comes out as a download.

The Weather was Carrie Elkins and Danny Schmidt, two musicians from Austin, TX (a town near and dear to my heart). They were also quite good and we braved the horrific crowd around their merch table afterwards to buy their CDs. They are also crowdsourcing baby names, so put in your vote for Rowan.

Honestly, the only tiny disappointment I had was that they sold out of t-shirts in my size before the show even started. Other than that, a generally wonderful time was had by all, and I look forward to next year's tour!

Review: A Natural History of Dragons

I can only assume that the reason we haven't seen something as quietly brilliant as Marie Brennan's 'A Natural History of Dragons' long before now is because the fantasy genre has been struggling for decades to dig its way out of the steaming mound of sub-par Tolkien clones that compensated for their lack of originality with an excess of length. Because part of the brilliance of Brennan's concept is that it's so gobsmackingly obvious that as soon as you hear about it, you wonder why nobody has ever thought of it before.

For those of you unfamiliar with the book, it's a memoir written by "Lady Trent", a scholar and a gentlewoman who's made her life's work the study of dragons in their natural habitat. Brennan takes as her inspiration both classic romantic novels (think Jane Austen) and legendary writings on natural history to turn the entire idea of the dragon on its head. She places it into an ecosystem, treating it like a real animal that has habits, biology and a place in nature, and writes an incredibly moving and fascinating story about a young woman who decides to learn everything she can about these rare and fantastic creatures.

For this to work, everything else has to be absolutely grounded in reality, and Brennan does not disappoint. She writes a pseudo-Victorian fantasy world that feels textured and multi-cultural, sprinkling in details about religion and history and society that makes sense as an actual world and not merely window dressing for the dragons. The plot is also clever, interesting, well thought out and holds tantalizing hints for future volumes (there are at least three more books in the series) but the amazing achievement is the way it feels like a true story written by a real woman in a world that just happens to not technically exist.

In case I'm not making myself clear, I adored this book. It makes its stunning conceit seem effortless in a way that only a genius can, and it's a charming page turner that feels like Jane Austen collaborated with Charles Darwin. It's a wonderful sign for the fantasy genre that we're getting books like this out of it.

Why I Disliked the Winter Soldier But Love 'The Winter Soldier'

I have made very little secret, in the past, of my dislike for the comic book character of the Winter Soldier. I have always found him to be emblematic of a certain trend in superhero comics that I'm not fond of, a desperate need to pretend that the genre doesn't have its roots in juvenile fiction and a tendency to paper over everything that could be considered immature with the same overcompensatory obsession with violence, guns and ruthless brutality. Retconning Bucky into a Super Seekrit Black Ops Assassin always felt kind of pathetic to me, even before they transformed him into a Super Seekrit Black Ops Cyborg Soldier.

(Um, for those of you who don't know, according to Brubaker even before Bucky became the Winter Soldier, he was a ruthless assassin killing off Captain America's enemies from the shadows so that Cap could continue to be a star-spangled propaganda machine, and the whole "camp mascot, cute kid, bad puns" thing was a ruse to divert suspicion. Y'know, just the way that Jack Kirby intended.)

Actually, that's kind of the point. I feel like when you write for a shared universe, there's a certain responsibility to respect the work that came before you, and I feel like turning Bucky into a merciless shadow assassin for the US government because you think it's "uncool" that Captain America used to hang out with a teenage boy in short shorts. If you don't want to deal with that part of Captain America's history, that's fine. There are a lot of other things to do with Cap. But retconning it into something nasty and dark and mean always struck me as an unprofessional way to play in the big sandbox.

(And frankly, if you'll allow me a second parenthetical aside in three paragraphs, it felt emblematic of Brubaker's treatment of Cap's mythos in general. I was never the biggest fan of the Jack Monroe Nomad, but I thought the character had been well-written in the past and had potential for more stories, and turning him into a mentally unstable psychotic and then killing him off just to show everyone how badass the Winter Soldier was left a bad taste in my mouth. It was, again, disrespectful of the character's history.)

So with all that said, why am I not just okay with but enthusiastic about the Marvel Cinematic Universe Winter Soldier? Because it's not a retcon. They are not leapfrogging the character from Point A, pun-happy kid who has the dream job of being Captain America's sidekick, to Point Z, grim and merciless gun-toting cyborg who kills people because That's What Cool Heroes Do. They're telling the story of Cap's childhood friend, the guy who always looked after Cap and fought alongside him in wars small and large, who was turned into something terrible against his will and is trying to reclaim his humanity. That's not the story Kirby told, but it's also not a repudiation of it. I can take that Bucky Barnes and that Winter Soldier on their own merits, and enjoy them for what they are.

And in a month or so, I get to see the next installment of their story. I can't wait.