Now don't get mad. In concept I love the character of Spiderman. I used to buy the Spiderman comics all the time, right up until the Clone Saga. I stopped because I didn't like the direction it was going, and I just didn't have the money to keep buying comics. I've kept up a little bit with things here and there and my disappointment with Marvel has only grown. I'm going to try and explain in this post why I have a problem with certain things. Now I might get a thing or two wrong, and if I do feel free to let me know. This is entirely based on my opinion.
1. Spiderman revealing his secret identity. Seriously this was a stupid move. Peter knew the kinds of people he had been fighting and he knew that they would come for his friends and loved ones. He had been worried about that since he started fighting crime. Heck he had to move into the Avenger's mansion to keep his family safe because, surprise surprise, people started coming after them. I really feel like this was an editorial mandate and not something the writers would have done. At least that's what I hope. It was a controversial decision then and led to an even more controversial decision that proved that Joe Quesada is a hack.
2. Spiderman makes a deal with Mephisto. sigh. Where do I begin with this one? The One More Day storyline has been analyzed and reviewed by people with far more training than me but I'll try to put this in my own words. Spiderman has always been one of Marvel's most moral characters. This was put to the test during the Maximum Carnage storyline where his belief in not killing people was put to the test. In the end he held true to his morals, even when it would have been easier to give in and kill his enemies. I liked how that ended as I felt it showed Spiderman genuinely struggling with what to do; but this all came crashing down with another editorial mandate. For those that don't know J. Michael Strazynski had been writing Spiderman for quite a while and was leaving the title. Joe Qesada, a hack and Marvel's head editor, decided that you can't write interesting stories about a married Spiderman so he mandated that Spiderman make a deal with Mephisto to save the life of Aunt May, who had been shot by an assassin. For greater context Aunt May's spirit told Peter to let her go, that she had lived a long life and was alright with dying. So Spiderman, Marvel's one of Marvel's most moral characters, made a deal with the devil; not for the greater good but out of pure selfishness. Quesada corrupted everything Spiderman stood for in that moment, it was an epic jumping of the shark and it is a move I'm not sure I can forgive.
3. Doctor Octopus killing Peter Parker and taking over his body. Again where to begin? I don't know the whole story but it culminated in Doc Oc taking over Peter's body, but retaining all of Peter's memories. This apparently caused the good Doctor to have a moral shift and start fighting crime as the Superior Spiderman and taking over Peter's life. Now if he really was being influenced by Peter's memories and personality don't you think he'd work on a way of bringing the real Peter back? But no he takes over Peter's life, lives on pretending to be Spiderman in a story that will probably end with the real Peter coming back through some contrivance and Doc Oc going evil again.
There are other things I don't like but I could overlook, but with the above three I just can't support Marvel Comics anymore. One of the rules of good storytelling is that when the hero has to make a hard choice it has to be believable. We've seen it before in multiple scenarios. We've also seen heroes refuse to deal with creatures like Mephisto because they knew what they were dealing with, beings of ultimate evil that twist such deals to cause maximum suffering. Heroes, especially noble superheroes, don't make deals with the devil, especially when they offer you everything you want.
Friday, July 19, 2013
The Batman
Over the years there have been many different portrayals of Batman. I'll grant that the Silver Age years got silly and over the top because that's what people wrote then. The Comic's Code Authority held power then and they used that power like a ten ton hammer to enforce what people could and couldn't write about. As time progressed we got more mature stories and then something interesting happened, Frank Miller wrote and drew Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. A whole generation of fans were influenced by Miller's work and it kind of shows in recent years; and that's a problem. I liked Dark Knight Returns as a story but it does have its flaws, and what I want to talk about today are the things I found interesting about Batman, and why the Millerization of Batman is a bad thing.
One thing that set Batman apart from other heroes is that he didn't have powers. He trained his mind and body from the time he was a child to do what he does. Criminology, chemistry, computer skills, forensics, several different hand-to-hand skills, and his observational skills. It took him years to master these techniques, and he knows that he's one of the best at what he does, but he's also not incapable of making mistakes, which I'll get into later.
Another point that made Batman an interesting character was his motivation for fighting crime. Superman became a superhero out of a desire to help people, because he was taught to use his powers to make the world a better place. Batman, on the other hand, saw his parents murdered and swore vengeance on all criminals. Even now he won't let that go, and I think he knows what it will do to him, but his oath is more important to him. I think the best portrayal of this was Batman Beyond where you see an older Bruce living in the mansion alone, until he starts training Terry. It is a sad way for Bruce to end up, but in many ways it's the only way he can end up if he continues on the path of vengeance.
Now there is one thing I would like to talk about that is an area I don't think anyone has explored, and I think it could make for a really good story. Provided it was given to a quality writer. While Batman is a great detective he does have one ability that gets overlooked sometimes. It's not a super power, but it's not something everyone can do, and I'm not sure you could really be trained to do it either. He can understand how his enemies think. One of the Joker's key motivations is to break Batman, to get him to think like he does, and yet Batman already can. There are plenty of moments where I think Batman could have easily slipped to the other side but he's always chosen law and order over insanity. You have to wonder what goes through his head when he figures out what people are up to, and why it makes sense to them. Seeing what goes on in Batman's head would be could be a really good story, but I'm not sure I trust them to get a good writer right now to do it.
Now we get to my problem area, the Millerization of Batman. For those that don't know what I'm talking about I suggest going to thatguywiththeglasses.com and checking out Linkara's reviews of All Star Batman and Robin, a Frank Miller comic that is apparently in cannon with Dark Knight Returns. In a nutshell he portrays Batman as a brutal, kidnapping psychotic. The problem is this writing shows a complete lack of understanding of the character he claims to love. Batman has issues, yes, but he's not some raving lunatic just beating people up left and right. Look if you're a fan of Miller's current style then have at it, but I just don't think he gets it. He routinely objectifies women, and I'm sorry he just doesn't know Batman. Ugh.
Just for the record, for me, the best Batman will always be the Paul Dini, DC animated universe Batman. Especially in Batman: the Animated Series I thought they captured the character and what he was about the best. For anyone else your mileage may vary, post your thoughts in the comments below.
One thing that set Batman apart from other heroes is that he didn't have powers. He trained his mind and body from the time he was a child to do what he does. Criminology, chemistry, computer skills, forensics, several different hand-to-hand skills, and his observational skills. It took him years to master these techniques, and he knows that he's one of the best at what he does, but he's also not incapable of making mistakes, which I'll get into later.
Another point that made Batman an interesting character was his motivation for fighting crime. Superman became a superhero out of a desire to help people, because he was taught to use his powers to make the world a better place. Batman, on the other hand, saw his parents murdered and swore vengeance on all criminals. Even now he won't let that go, and I think he knows what it will do to him, but his oath is more important to him. I think the best portrayal of this was Batman Beyond where you see an older Bruce living in the mansion alone, until he starts training Terry. It is a sad way for Bruce to end up, but in many ways it's the only way he can end up if he continues on the path of vengeance.
Now there is one thing I would like to talk about that is an area I don't think anyone has explored, and I think it could make for a really good story. Provided it was given to a quality writer. While Batman is a great detective he does have one ability that gets overlooked sometimes. It's not a super power, but it's not something everyone can do, and I'm not sure you could really be trained to do it either. He can understand how his enemies think. One of the Joker's key motivations is to break Batman, to get him to think like he does, and yet Batman already can. There are plenty of moments where I think Batman could have easily slipped to the other side but he's always chosen law and order over insanity. You have to wonder what goes through his head when he figures out what people are up to, and why it makes sense to them. Seeing what goes on in Batman's head would be could be a really good story, but I'm not sure I trust them to get a good writer right now to do it.
Now we get to my problem area, the Millerization of Batman. For those that don't know what I'm talking about I suggest going to thatguywiththeglasses.com and checking out Linkara's reviews of All Star Batman and Robin, a Frank Miller comic that is apparently in cannon with Dark Knight Returns. In a nutshell he portrays Batman as a brutal, kidnapping psychotic. The problem is this writing shows a complete lack of understanding of the character he claims to love. Batman has issues, yes, but he's not some raving lunatic just beating people up left and right. Look if you're a fan of Miller's current style then have at it, but I just don't think he gets it. He routinely objectifies women, and I'm sorry he just doesn't know Batman. Ugh.
Just for the record, for me, the best Batman will always be the Paul Dini, DC animated universe Batman. Especially in Batman: the Animated Series I thought they captured the character and what he was about the best. For anyone else your mileage may vary, post your thoughts in the comments below.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Why I Gave Up on American Superhero Comics
First let me say this. I love superheroes. As a kid I always wanted to be one, and I love stories about people with special abilities using those abilities to make the world a better place. I loved the recent Marvel shared universe movies, and there have been some other good ones; but this entry isn't about those. This is why I quit comics. If you still love comics, you aren't dumb for doing so. As I said in my second post you should love your fandom and not be afraid of what other people think about it. This is about the problems that I see in the medium, and I'll grant that some of what I'm going to say is subjective as it is a matter of personal taste. Anyway with that out of the way let's get into the meat of things by talking about Marvel first.
Many people say that they like Marvel comics because the characters are more complex. They have problems and that makes them more relatable and I'm sorry but I have to disagree. See problems indicate something to overcome, and sometimes this is true; but most of the time what Marvel characters actually do is suffer. Time after time, tragedy after tragedy and they just soldier on because apparently that's just what they do. I'm not saying that a character should be happy all the time either because that's not good storytelling either, but having a constant string of terrible things happening all around you is also bad storytelling. Struggle is part of the journey, but its not the ONLY part of the journey. See if you keep your characters in a constant state of emotional pain to show how noble they are then you make a joke out of them, it ceases to be realistic because a person, any person, can only take so much before they lose it and break. It takes more to be complex than being put through the emotional wringer constantly.
Another big problem with the Marvel universe, again this goes back to their claims of "realism" is that the average human of the world is stupid. Mind numbingly, bone crunchingly stupid. Spiderman has been saving New York City for years, sometimes on a daily basis, and people hate him because apparently J. Jonah Jameson owns the only paper in the city. Cops hate him, people hate him and this despite everything he's done for the city. This is just not realistic. Some newspaper, some television news personality, heck some NATIONAL personality would support the guy by this point; but since this is Spiderman everything has to go against him even though it makes no sense.. At least at the start it made sense because he was an unknown factor, but by this point I think the cops and people of NYC would be telling Jameson to shut it. They'd see through him, because people learn. Heck if Captain America would just do an interview and tell people "hey don't worry Spiderman is good, I've worked with him and he's a friend" I think people would listen because he's Captain freakin' America; but nope never gonna happen, even though Cap and Spidey are friends, because Spiderman has to have it hard all the time, even when it makes no sense. Mutants are another issue I have with Marvel. I get that when X-Men first started it was an allegory about race. You couldn't tell those stories back then openly because of the Comic's Code Authority. So it makes sense that, back then, mutants were hated and had to fight for their rights, but see every civil rights struggle comes to an end because most everyday people start to change their minds about it as young people start to take over the system and start to vote for change; but this is Marvel where people are stupid, well more so, so the conflict is never resolved. Even though mutants heroes, and the X-Men in particular, have saved the world on numerous occasions the reaction they get from you average person is "Blarg you're a mutie I hates me some muties". It just doesn't make sense by this point to continue the allegory because, while there still some racists out there, they don't have power any more. Dr. King won, though he didn't live to see it. I know some people now see it as an allegory for being gay, and I don't know about that I just know how it started, it still stands to reason that by now people would be ok with mutants. They'd see that the majority just want to be left alone, just like them; but nope everyone's a screaming racist. See here's another issue where established heroes could help. Again we turn to Captain America, one of the most trusted heroes in the nation. He could do a nationally televised interview and talk about these things and at least some people would listen to him, because he's Captain America. What we have is no resolution and no world growth because someone at Marvel is afraid that they'll run out of some contrived, constant struggle nonsense to throw at the characters if the world starts to change for the better.
Then we come to, what was for me, the final straw from Marvel. The great jump the shark moment in the life of Spiderman, and I think many people will know where this is about to go. Yup the deal with Mephisto. Really? A deal with the devil? Marvel's arguably most moral character, up to this point, makes a deal with the devil to save Aunt May, who already told him she was ok with dying. This is where I decided Joe Quesada was a hack and that Marvel no longer had respect for their own source material. Spiderman refused to kill Carnage and a number of other villains who all came back and tried to kill him numerous times. He talked all the time about the greater good and doing what was right even when it was hard and then he makes the most selfish decision of his life by sacrificing, not just his marriage, but also the daughter he would have had. No. Just no. I still want to punch Quesada in the face over this because I think it destroyed any moral credibility the character had, it showed that he was just as selfish as anyone else. All his talk about nobility and the greater good, and keeping on in the face of tragedy was just that. Talk. Especially when they had already, apparently, killed Aunt May off in another storyline and he came through that fine. This was a story done to sell comics, it was a cheap marketing gimmick and I'll never buy another Marvel comic book over it again. As an aside the killing off of both Peter Parkers was also stupid, and no Superior Spiderman is not Peter Parker, he's Doc Oc with Peter's memories.
Then we come to DC comics, which has its own set of problems. One of which being the constant reboots of the DC universe. It gets confusing when you have to keep asking, ok what comics are cannon now? There's such a convoluted backlog of stories that are all over the place and characters that don't make much sense that the first reboot after Crisis on Infinite Earths was somewhat understandable, there was just too much material to keep track of and where it was connected to. Then it moved on to event, after event, after event and it just got too hard to keep track of what they were doing. It wasn't worth it to me to keep reading when they were just going to "shake things up" a few months later anyway. There is such a thing as too much change too quickly.
Another problem is the shock factor change that DC has a penchant for, and I think they do this when they run out of ideas for what to do with a character. I'm sorry having the Joker cut his own face off was stupid, and revealing that Batman had revealed his identity to the Joker early in his career was another jump the shark moment. Batman is NOT that abysmally stupid. He's the world's greatest detective for crying out loud. Killing off Catwoman was stupid because it was just a shock value choice. We all know she'll be back in one form or another, because death has no consequences in comics. No one ever stays dead in comics and because of this no fan takes character deaths in Marvel and DC seriously.
My other issue with DC is their penchant for wanting to "dirty up" superheroes. Ugh. Can we please get past this juvenile notion that everything has to be grim and gritty? This nonsense started in the nineties and it just won't go away. Not everyone needs to be an anti-hero, superheroes shouldn't be killing people and the genre does not need to be "dirtied up" any more than it already has been. It has been a trend for the past twenty years and I'm sick of it. There's a reason the Image characters all but disappeared.
Sigh. Look like I said I love superheroes its just depressing to see where the genre has gone. You see one world, Marvel, where everything is stagnant. The people of the world never change even though they have real world experience seeing heroes of all shapes and stripes saving people, yet they hate the people they hate because in Marvel the heroes have to suffer because it is easier to do that than come up with an actual complex plot line. Then you have DC, where things change all the time and people seem used to it on some level. Some other dude is dressed as Green Lantern? They just shrug and go about their day to day lives. Supers in that world are kind of innocuous and are even used in suicide missions by the government. I think the real problem though is that both worlds are kind of stagnant. I think that if the worlds has progressed in a semi-real time fashion then the companies would have been forced to come up with new heroes and villains and would have been forced to confront some of the issues that they've been avoiding for the past thirty odd years.
Every story has an ending and the stories we've been telling with these characters have been going on, in some cases, since the 1940's. There are only so many tales to be told before you resort to stupid contrivances and repeating yourself over and over again. Maybe, and this is hard for me to say, maybe it is time to close the book on some of these stories and create new characters to write about. Find new journey's to explore, or at least new one's to begin.
Many people say that they like Marvel comics because the characters are more complex. They have problems and that makes them more relatable and I'm sorry but I have to disagree. See problems indicate something to overcome, and sometimes this is true; but most of the time what Marvel characters actually do is suffer. Time after time, tragedy after tragedy and they just soldier on because apparently that's just what they do. I'm not saying that a character should be happy all the time either because that's not good storytelling either, but having a constant string of terrible things happening all around you is also bad storytelling. Struggle is part of the journey, but its not the ONLY part of the journey. See if you keep your characters in a constant state of emotional pain to show how noble they are then you make a joke out of them, it ceases to be realistic because a person, any person, can only take so much before they lose it and break. It takes more to be complex than being put through the emotional wringer constantly.
Another big problem with the Marvel universe, again this goes back to their claims of "realism" is that the average human of the world is stupid. Mind numbingly, bone crunchingly stupid. Spiderman has been saving New York City for years, sometimes on a daily basis, and people hate him because apparently J. Jonah Jameson owns the only paper in the city. Cops hate him, people hate him and this despite everything he's done for the city. This is just not realistic. Some newspaper, some television news personality, heck some NATIONAL personality would support the guy by this point; but since this is Spiderman everything has to go against him even though it makes no sense.. At least at the start it made sense because he was an unknown factor, but by this point I think the cops and people of NYC would be telling Jameson to shut it. They'd see through him, because people learn. Heck if Captain America would just do an interview and tell people "hey don't worry Spiderman is good, I've worked with him and he's a friend" I think people would listen because he's Captain freakin' America; but nope never gonna happen, even though Cap and Spidey are friends, because Spiderman has to have it hard all the time, even when it makes no sense. Mutants are another issue I have with Marvel. I get that when X-Men first started it was an allegory about race. You couldn't tell those stories back then openly because of the Comic's Code Authority. So it makes sense that, back then, mutants were hated and had to fight for their rights, but see every civil rights struggle comes to an end because most everyday people start to change their minds about it as young people start to take over the system and start to vote for change; but this is Marvel where people are stupid, well more so, so the conflict is never resolved. Even though mutants heroes, and the X-Men in particular, have saved the world on numerous occasions the reaction they get from you average person is "Blarg you're a mutie I hates me some muties". It just doesn't make sense by this point to continue the allegory because, while there still some racists out there, they don't have power any more. Dr. King won, though he didn't live to see it. I know some people now see it as an allegory for being gay, and I don't know about that I just know how it started, it still stands to reason that by now people would be ok with mutants. They'd see that the majority just want to be left alone, just like them; but nope everyone's a screaming racist. See here's another issue where established heroes could help. Again we turn to Captain America, one of the most trusted heroes in the nation. He could do a nationally televised interview and talk about these things and at least some people would listen to him, because he's Captain America. What we have is no resolution and no world growth because someone at Marvel is afraid that they'll run out of some contrived, constant struggle nonsense to throw at the characters if the world starts to change for the better.
Then we come to, what was for me, the final straw from Marvel. The great jump the shark moment in the life of Spiderman, and I think many people will know where this is about to go. Yup the deal with Mephisto. Really? A deal with the devil? Marvel's arguably most moral character, up to this point, makes a deal with the devil to save Aunt May, who already told him she was ok with dying. This is where I decided Joe Quesada was a hack and that Marvel no longer had respect for their own source material. Spiderman refused to kill Carnage and a number of other villains who all came back and tried to kill him numerous times. He talked all the time about the greater good and doing what was right even when it was hard and then he makes the most selfish decision of his life by sacrificing, not just his marriage, but also the daughter he would have had. No. Just no. I still want to punch Quesada in the face over this because I think it destroyed any moral credibility the character had, it showed that he was just as selfish as anyone else. All his talk about nobility and the greater good, and keeping on in the face of tragedy was just that. Talk. Especially when they had already, apparently, killed Aunt May off in another storyline and he came through that fine. This was a story done to sell comics, it was a cheap marketing gimmick and I'll never buy another Marvel comic book over it again. As an aside the killing off of both Peter Parkers was also stupid, and no Superior Spiderman is not Peter Parker, he's Doc Oc with Peter's memories.
Then we come to DC comics, which has its own set of problems. One of which being the constant reboots of the DC universe. It gets confusing when you have to keep asking, ok what comics are cannon now? There's such a convoluted backlog of stories that are all over the place and characters that don't make much sense that the first reboot after Crisis on Infinite Earths was somewhat understandable, there was just too much material to keep track of and where it was connected to. Then it moved on to event, after event, after event and it just got too hard to keep track of what they were doing. It wasn't worth it to me to keep reading when they were just going to "shake things up" a few months later anyway. There is such a thing as too much change too quickly.
Another problem is the shock factor change that DC has a penchant for, and I think they do this when they run out of ideas for what to do with a character. I'm sorry having the Joker cut his own face off was stupid, and revealing that Batman had revealed his identity to the Joker early in his career was another jump the shark moment. Batman is NOT that abysmally stupid. He's the world's greatest detective for crying out loud. Killing off Catwoman was stupid because it was just a shock value choice. We all know she'll be back in one form or another, because death has no consequences in comics. No one ever stays dead in comics and because of this no fan takes character deaths in Marvel and DC seriously.
My other issue with DC is their penchant for wanting to "dirty up" superheroes. Ugh. Can we please get past this juvenile notion that everything has to be grim and gritty? This nonsense started in the nineties and it just won't go away. Not everyone needs to be an anti-hero, superheroes shouldn't be killing people and the genre does not need to be "dirtied up" any more than it already has been. It has been a trend for the past twenty years and I'm sick of it. There's a reason the Image characters all but disappeared.
Sigh. Look like I said I love superheroes its just depressing to see where the genre has gone. You see one world, Marvel, where everything is stagnant. The people of the world never change even though they have real world experience seeing heroes of all shapes and stripes saving people, yet they hate the people they hate because in Marvel the heroes have to suffer because it is easier to do that than come up with an actual complex plot line. Then you have DC, where things change all the time and people seem used to it on some level. Some other dude is dressed as Green Lantern? They just shrug and go about their day to day lives. Supers in that world are kind of innocuous and are even used in suicide missions by the government. I think the real problem though is that both worlds are kind of stagnant. I think that if the worlds has progressed in a semi-real time fashion then the companies would have been forced to come up with new heroes and villains and would have been forced to confront some of the issues that they've been avoiding for the past thirty odd years.
Every story has an ending and the stories we've been telling with these characters have been going on, in some cases, since the 1940's. There are only so many tales to be told before you resort to stupid contrivances and repeating yourself over and over again. Maybe, and this is hard for me to say, maybe it is time to close the book on some of these stories and create new characters to write about. Find new journey's to explore, or at least new one's to begin.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
My Experience with JRPGs
It might surprise people to know that I didn't grow up with a PC. I never knew about games like Ultima, Might & Magic or the Wizardry series until much, much later in life. No my introduction to the role playing genre of video games came from consoles. Now many people think of the Legend of Zelda as a role playing game, but to be honest it has never really felt like one to me. It has always felt like more of an action fantasy game. Just a personal opinion but there it is. No the game I consider my first jrpg was Dragon Warrior for the NES.
What is there to be said about that game? The story was pretty simple, as most game stories were back then. You were the descendent of the hero Erdrick, on a quest to defeat the evil Dragon Lord. It was long, and grindy and you had to be careful to not go to far before you were leveled up because the higher level monsters would kill you and it was wonderful.
I never had a huge library of games growing up, my family just never had the money to keep buying them. So I had to make sure that I liked what I had, which is why I stuck to the Final Fantasy series. In fact Final Fantasy IV (first played as II on my SNES), is one of my favorite games of all time. Most of the time I found the characters compelling and I generally liked the main protagonists.
Cecil's story, for example, was really good. A Dark Knight that finds redemption to become a Paladin and then go on to save the world. As a kid that spoke to me. I was powerless in my everyday life and here I got to play the hero, get the girl and save the world.
Now there are certainly problems with jrpgs. One is the ever expanding cast with the limited party space. Final Fantasy VI, while a good game, had too many characters for me to care about. Final Fantasy VII did the same, while also having a bunch of thoroughly unlikable people too. Suikoden is very guilty of this, though the huge number of characters is, minimally, linked to the games plot. The best games have a core group of characters that you grow with. Final Fantasy IV has a large number of characters but Edward, Tellah, Cid, Pallom, Porrum and Yang are all temporary characters and tend to sacrifice themselves when they leave your party for good, leaving a final party of five. With Final Fantasy IX and X, again, you had a large cast of characters and incentive to use all of them, with very few party slots. I didn't play much of VIII because I thought it was terrible so I can't comment on that one but I believe it had a large cast of playable characters too.
Another problem can be the villain. The most memorable villains are the ones with the best laid plans, or the best personalities. Kefka, for example, is widely regarded as the best Final Fantasy villain. He's utterly crazy, wants to destroy all life and seeks to become a god to do so. Now, yes Kefka is a memorable villain, but his goals are kinda generic. In a way he's the Joker without the punchlines. They let you know he's utterly without honor when he poison's one castle's water supply killing everyone within, except Cyan. We get that he's crazy and he is memorable, whether he's the best villain is debatable. Then we come to Sephiroth. Ugh I think this guy is as overrated as Cloud. The whole tone of FFVII is just too dour for me and Sephiroth's goals are just pretty substandard. Now the villain I remember the most is Luca Blight from Suikoden II. He's not just crazy, he's also evil and he loves it. He revels in killing people and the times you see him it builds up to the final showdown, and he's not even the last boss of the game.
I learned a lot about story progression by playing jrpgs and the older one's tended to be better in my opinion. Especially the ones that were sprite based. I know there's this move toward a more realistic art style and 3D graphics but I just like the old school look.
I'll go into a list of my favorite games another time. I just wanted to write about my experiences and what I thought about things today.
What is there to be said about that game? The story was pretty simple, as most game stories were back then. You were the descendent of the hero Erdrick, on a quest to defeat the evil Dragon Lord. It was long, and grindy and you had to be careful to not go to far before you were leveled up because the higher level monsters would kill you and it was wonderful.
I never had a huge library of games growing up, my family just never had the money to keep buying them. So I had to make sure that I liked what I had, which is why I stuck to the Final Fantasy series. In fact Final Fantasy IV (first played as II on my SNES), is one of my favorite games of all time. Most of the time I found the characters compelling and I generally liked the main protagonists.
Cecil's story, for example, was really good. A Dark Knight that finds redemption to become a Paladin and then go on to save the world. As a kid that spoke to me. I was powerless in my everyday life and here I got to play the hero, get the girl and save the world.
Now there are certainly problems with jrpgs. One is the ever expanding cast with the limited party space. Final Fantasy VI, while a good game, had too many characters for me to care about. Final Fantasy VII did the same, while also having a bunch of thoroughly unlikable people too. Suikoden is very guilty of this, though the huge number of characters is, minimally, linked to the games plot. The best games have a core group of characters that you grow with. Final Fantasy IV has a large number of characters but Edward, Tellah, Cid, Pallom, Porrum and Yang are all temporary characters and tend to sacrifice themselves when they leave your party for good, leaving a final party of five. With Final Fantasy IX and X, again, you had a large cast of characters and incentive to use all of them, with very few party slots. I didn't play much of VIII because I thought it was terrible so I can't comment on that one but I believe it had a large cast of playable characters too.
Another problem can be the villain. The most memorable villains are the ones with the best laid plans, or the best personalities. Kefka, for example, is widely regarded as the best Final Fantasy villain. He's utterly crazy, wants to destroy all life and seeks to become a god to do so. Now, yes Kefka is a memorable villain, but his goals are kinda generic. In a way he's the Joker without the punchlines. They let you know he's utterly without honor when he poison's one castle's water supply killing everyone within, except Cyan. We get that he's crazy and he is memorable, whether he's the best villain is debatable. Then we come to Sephiroth. Ugh I think this guy is as overrated as Cloud. The whole tone of FFVII is just too dour for me and Sephiroth's goals are just pretty substandard. Now the villain I remember the most is Luca Blight from Suikoden II. He's not just crazy, he's also evil and he loves it. He revels in killing people and the times you see him it builds up to the final showdown, and he's not even the last boss of the game.
I learned a lot about story progression by playing jrpgs and the older one's tended to be better in my opinion. Especially the ones that were sprite based. I know there's this move toward a more realistic art style and 3D graphics but I just like the old school look.
I'll go into a list of my favorite games another time. I just wanted to write about my experiences and what I thought about things today.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
A Critical Look at Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog
First let me say that I know that this has probably been done to death. Many commentators have critiqued Dr. Horrible, and there are some very good review of it. I should also say that I have no formal training in cinema. I don't know the first thing about lighting or camera work or screen writing. I'm going to make an attempt though to analyze the characters because I think that's something I can do. I'm a huge fan of Dr. Horrible and I really wish that Joss Wedon would do more with the character, even if it was just in comic book form.
First lets look at the world.
Obviously superheroes and superpowers exist in the world of Dr. Horrible. Even underwhelming powers like Moist's. People know about supers and seem to just accept them as part of everyday life, though they don't seem to be as innocuous as they are in the Tick's The City. There are supervillains as well as evidenced by Dr. Horrible himself and the Evil League of Evil..So we establish early on that these things are known and accepted by virtue of the fact that Billy aka Dr. Horrible has a video blog where he talks about wanting to be a supervillain, but I'll get into that later.
Next I want to talk about the one character I hated. Captain Hammer, played expertly by Nathan Fillion. We see Captain Hammer through Billy's eyes. He's arrogant, a womanizer, selfish, cruel, and seems to only really care about himself and his image. There is literally nothing to like about his character and I don't understand how he's been able to con the people of Los Angeles for so long. He seems to be a very good liar off screen, and somehow seems to have not garnered a reputation for womanizing. From clues given in the short Captain Hammer seems to have been born with his powers. He's tough, strong enough to throw a car at someone and able to leap high and far enough to get onto a moving van. This has made him into a bully. He only fights crime because people admire him for it. They give him what he wants when he wants it and the people and media of LA seem to practically worship him. I'm not sure if Joss ever gives a reason for this because even at the end they don't seem to blame Captain Hammer for abandoning them. Either way at the end he shows his true colors when he tries to kill Dr. Horrible and ends up killing Penny instead, and causing himself pain for the first time in his life. That's another interesting thing. Its not even clear if he's actually injured, he's just experiencing pain and he runs. He shows himself to be a coward. He might have been a crime fighter, but he was no hero.
Then we have Penny. Penny is love interest and represents the optimism that Billy is lacking in his life. She genuinely believes that there is good in everyone, so much so that she blinds herself to their glaring character flaws until its too late; and even then she still has faith in the good in people. Felicia Day plays Penny with a sweetness that could easily have been annoying and I think she was the best choice to play this character. She tries to be proactive, trying to get signatures to open a homeless shelter, only to have people walk past her like she wasn't there. She believes that good will win out and that people are starting to come around, not realizing that Captain Hammer is only using her to hurt Billy. She even blinds herself to Billy's nihilism and seems to believe him when he says oops I meant Ghandi when he slips for a moment and says that he wants to be an achiever like Bad Horse. If Penny has a flaw its that she doesn't see the world around her until its too late. She dies because she's in the wrong place at the wrong time and she dies believing that Captain Hammer, a man who we've seen isn't good, will save her and Billy. A tragic end for a tragic character.
Then we come to the Doctor himself. Billy starts out as not entirely unlikeable character. Yes he steals; but he seems to be, at the start, a relatively unsuccessful supervillain with dreams of joining the Evil League of Evil. Billy wants to be Evil and his journey is progressively darker as it goes along. He starts out not wanting to fight a poser named Johnny Snow in a park because kids play there, and ends up willing to murder Captain Hammer because he's tired of being pushed around. He says throughout the movie that he wants to be evil and that he wants Penny, but we know that he can't have both. I wasn't that shocked by the ending of Dr. Horrible and here's why. If it had had a happy ending where Captain Hammer was outed as a jerk, Billy got the girl and gave up being a villain it wouldn't have made sense. Billy wanted to be evil, I'm not sure he understood what that meant at the beginning but by the end he's embraced being Dr. Horrible fully and claims to not feel a thing. It remains to be seen if this is true, because it ends with Neil Patrick Harris as Billy and not as Dr. Horrible. Billy loses the thing he loves to get the thing he wants and he doesn't seem to look back. He's a questionable character at the beginning but he's on the path of evil. He has several chances to turn back but stays on the course, even saying in one of the songs that he has no remorse.
You can't look at Dr. Horrible the same way you would a superhero story because its not. It is a superVILLAIN story. There's no happy ending to be had, because that's not the nature of the beast. It is a great story and I love it; but you have to look at it from the right perspective and understand it for what it is. An origin story of a supervillain. We just happen to like the villain at the outset.
First lets look at the world.
Obviously superheroes and superpowers exist in the world of Dr. Horrible. Even underwhelming powers like Moist's. People know about supers and seem to just accept them as part of everyday life, though they don't seem to be as innocuous as they are in the Tick's The City. There are supervillains as well as evidenced by Dr. Horrible himself and the Evil League of Evil..So we establish early on that these things are known and accepted by virtue of the fact that Billy aka Dr. Horrible has a video blog where he talks about wanting to be a supervillain, but I'll get into that later.
Next I want to talk about the one character I hated. Captain Hammer, played expertly by Nathan Fillion. We see Captain Hammer through Billy's eyes. He's arrogant, a womanizer, selfish, cruel, and seems to only really care about himself and his image. There is literally nothing to like about his character and I don't understand how he's been able to con the people of Los Angeles for so long. He seems to be a very good liar off screen, and somehow seems to have not garnered a reputation for womanizing. From clues given in the short Captain Hammer seems to have been born with his powers. He's tough, strong enough to throw a car at someone and able to leap high and far enough to get onto a moving van. This has made him into a bully. He only fights crime because people admire him for it. They give him what he wants when he wants it and the people and media of LA seem to practically worship him. I'm not sure if Joss ever gives a reason for this because even at the end they don't seem to blame Captain Hammer for abandoning them. Either way at the end he shows his true colors when he tries to kill Dr. Horrible and ends up killing Penny instead, and causing himself pain for the first time in his life. That's another interesting thing. Its not even clear if he's actually injured, he's just experiencing pain and he runs. He shows himself to be a coward. He might have been a crime fighter, but he was no hero.
Then we have Penny. Penny is love interest and represents the optimism that Billy is lacking in his life. She genuinely believes that there is good in everyone, so much so that she blinds herself to their glaring character flaws until its too late; and even then she still has faith in the good in people. Felicia Day plays Penny with a sweetness that could easily have been annoying and I think she was the best choice to play this character. She tries to be proactive, trying to get signatures to open a homeless shelter, only to have people walk past her like she wasn't there. She believes that good will win out and that people are starting to come around, not realizing that Captain Hammer is only using her to hurt Billy. She even blinds herself to Billy's nihilism and seems to believe him when he says oops I meant Ghandi when he slips for a moment and says that he wants to be an achiever like Bad Horse. If Penny has a flaw its that she doesn't see the world around her until its too late. She dies because she's in the wrong place at the wrong time and she dies believing that Captain Hammer, a man who we've seen isn't good, will save her and Billy. A tragic end for a tragic character.
Then we come to the Doctor himself. Billy starts out as not entirely unlikeable character. Yes he steals; but he seems to be, at the start, a relatively unsuccessful supervillain with dreams of joining the Evil League of Evil. Billy wants to be Evil and his journey is progressively darker as it goes along. He starts out not wanting to fight a poser named Johnny Snow in a park because kids play there, and ends up willing to murder Captain Hammer because he's tired of being pushed around. He says throughout the movie that he wants to be evil and that he wants Penny, but we know that he can't have both. I wasn't that shocked by the ending of Dr. Horrible and here's why. If it had had a happy ending where Captain Hammer was outed as a jerk, Billy got the girl and gave up being a villain it wouldn't have made sense. Billy wanted to be evil, I'm not sure he understood what that meant at the beginning but by the end he's embraced being Dr. Horrible fully and claims to not feel a thing. It remains to be seen if this is true, because it ends with Neil Patrick Harris as Billy and not as Dr. Horrible. Billy loses the thing he loves to get the thing he wants and he doesn't seem to look back. He's a questionable character at the beginning but he's on the path of evil. He has several chances to turn back but stays on the course, even saying in one of the songs that he has no remorse.
You can't look at Dr. Horrible the same way you would a superhero story because its not. It is a superVILLAIN story. There's no happy ending to be had, because that's not the nature of the beast. It is a great story and I love it; but you have to look at it from the right perspective and understand it for what it is. An origin story of a supervillain. We just happen to like the villain at the outset.
Cinematic Role Playing vs Rules Mechanics
Back to role playing games.
We've all been there. There's something we desperately wanted to do with our character, it would be a great role playing moment, and very cinematic; but there's just one problem, the rules mechanics don't cover it. Its a common problem and not one I really know how to fix, in fact there was only one system I know of, that I actually played, that would let you do cinematic things within the rules of the game.
The company was West End Games and for gamers of my generation it is best remembered for two systems Torg, which I didn't play, and their d6 Star Wars game, which I did. It was a great system in which you rolled multiple dice for an action. You could take more than one action but you lost more dice with each action you took. So say you were playing a gunslinger type character and you wanted to run into a room, step on a chair, step up onto a table and leap across the room shooting at three different people. In that system you could. You'd lose a lot of dice on each action but you could do it, the rules accounted for player creativity. Contrast that to the d20 system. I'm not sure there's a way you can do the same scenario, the rules just don't account for it. The d20 rules, while still good, just don't account much for the players getting flexible and creative with things.
Even my favorite system, Legend of the Five Rings, doesn't account much for player creativity. If someone shoots an arrow at you, you can't just cut it out of the air and look cool. You just get shot. Magic in that system is very limited too, though I can see why they didn't want the casters overshadowing everyone else.
The rules shouldn't get in the way of the players fun, if someone finds a creative use for a skill or a spell that isn't covered by the rules think about how it will affect the situation currently and how it affect future rulings. Be fair. Not everything has to have rigid mechanics, and in fact that's the worst thing possible.
Allow me to elaborate. I used to play in an Organized Play living campaign. I played a table at a convention where I had over a thousand gold. Now the rules say that gold weighs x number of pounds per 50 pieces. I was trying to negotiate to get information that the party needed to progress the plot. When I offered 1000 gold for the information, instead of asking me HOW I was carrying the gold the judge told me that I wasn't carrying it because the rules said it weighed too much. Now I could have argued the point, but I wasn't going to see these people again and I was too mad at the time to trust myself to not say something I would regret. I was basically rules lawyered into being quiet and just letting the mod progress the way it was written. This, by the way, is a problem with some living campaigns. They over compensate by being very formulaic and rules centric with very little actual role playing.
What I'm trying to say is try to be flexible if you can. If you trust your players to not abuse things let them get creative where they can. The rules for a lot of systems are very rigid and players look for ways to shine within the systems they're given. Some players look for loopholes and ways around the rules and those are the players you have to consider when letting people get creative, but don't let rigidity get in the way of fun. Follow the rules, but if there isn't a rule for it you'll have to make one on the fly.
Creativity isn't bad and the rules don't have to be so rigid as to be stifling.
We've all been there. There's something we desperately wanted to do with our character, it would be a great role playing moment, and very cinematic; but there's just one problem, the rules mechanics don't cover it. Its a common problem and not one I really know how to fix, in fact there was only one system I know of, that I actually played, that would let you do cinematic things within the rules of the game.
The company was West End Games and for gamers of my generation it is best remembered for two systems Torg, which I didn't play, and their d6 Star Wars game, which I did. It was a great system in which you rolled multiple dice for an action. You could take more than one action but you lost more dice with each action you took. So say you were playing a gunslinger type character and you wanted to run into a room, step on a chair, step up onto a table and leap across the room shooting at three different people. In that system you could. You'd lose a lot of dice on each action but you could do it, the rules accounted for player creativity. Contrast that to the d20 system. I'm not sure there's a way you can do the same scenario, the rules just don't account for it. The d20 rules, while still good, just don't account much for the players getting flexible and creative with things.
Even my favorite system, Legend of the Five Rings, doesn't account much for player creativity. If someone shoots an arrow at you, you can't just cut it out of the air and look cool. You just get shot. Magic in that system is very limited too, though I can see why they didn't want the casters overshadowing everyone else.
The rules shouldn't get in the way of the players fun, if someone finds a creative use for a skill or a spell that isn't covered by the rules think about how it will affect the situation currently and how it affect future rulings. Be fair. Not everything has to have rigid mechanics, and in fact that's the worst thing possible.
Allow me to elaborate. I used to play in an Organized Play living campaign. I played a table at a convention where I had over a thousand gold. Now the rules say that gold weighs x number of pounds per 50 pieces. I was trying to negotiate to get information that the party needed to progress the plot. When I offered 1000 gold for the information, instead of asking me HOW I was carrying the gold the judge told me that I wasn't carrying it because the rules said it weighed too much. Now I could have argued the point, but I wasn't going to see these people again and I was too mad at the time to trust myself to not say something I would regret. I was basically rules lawyered into being quiet and just letting the mod progress the way it was written. This, by the way, is a problem with some living campaigns. They over compensate by being very formulaic and rules centric with very little actual role playing.
What I'm trying to say is try to be flexible if you can. If you trust your players to not abuse things let them get creative where they can. The rules for a lot of systems are very rigid and players look for ways to shine within the systems they're given. Some players look for loopholes and ways around the rules and those are the players you have to consider when letting people get creative, but don't let rigidity get in the way of fun. Follow the rules, but if there isn't a rule for it you'll have to make one on the fly.
Creativity isn't bad and the rules don't have to be so rigid as to be stifling.
Orson Scott Card, Geeks Out and Creator vs. Creation
I'm pretty sure by now everyone's heard that Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game has been turned into a movie and is soon to be released as a summer block buster. I'm also sure that those in the nerd community have heard that there is a protest movement being lead by the group Geeks Out. Geeks Out wants people to boycott the movie because of Card's views on homosexuality and same sex marriage, a move they have every right to make. That's part of having freedom of speech. Just like Orson Scott Card has a right to publish his political statements. What neither side has is a right to freedom from the consequences of speech, not that I think what Geeks Out is doing should HAVE negative consequences but I'm sure there could be from someone.
Now I have to be honest. I'm not at all familiar with the science fiction writings of Orson Scott Card. I've seen his name on books in book stores and libraries but none of his books ever leaped out and said READ ME, at least to me. What I do know is that Card has a not insignificant fan base, some of which are probably in the LGBT community. Hearing your favorite author, one whom wrote about acceptance of people who were different, suddenly start talking about how you had a mental disorder has to be a jarring experience and it is not one I would wish on anyone. It probably feels like a betrayal of a very personal nature. I know that if I suddenly found out that my favorite author hated something that was an integral part of who I was I would be pretty devastated, and I'm not sure I could continue reading that person's work.
The thing is Card's outspoken nature really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Based on what I've read, and granted this was on his wikipedia page so take this with a grain of salt, he used to hold secular humanist revivals at conventions where he, and again this is entirely based off my readings I could be wrong, made fun of certain religious conventions. He was just as unapologetic about that as he is about his views now. Now I think that he was being a jerk then, and he's being a jerk now. Nothing has changed except the target of his ire. He converted at some point to Mormonism and that's his choice, he came to a personal revelation and that's a very personal journey. I can't say that I agree with his religion of choice but it is his choice, and that has to be respected. What I can't respect is being a jerk. I am making the choice to support Geeks Out and their boycott because I think, while Card is entitled to his opinion, and entitled to publish his opinion, he is not entitled to be free from people being put off by his opinion.
Here's where it gets a little rocky though. See I just said in my previous post that people should love what they love, and that includes the science fiction of a jerk like Orson Scott Card. Let me explain. As I said, Card has a not insignificant fan base and many of these people have been waiting decades for Ender's Game to be made into a movie. They have every right to want to go see that movie, and they aren't your enemy for wanting to go see it. Some people have the ability to separate the creation from the creator, and they should be allowed to enjoy what they enjoy without being harangued about it. Just because they like his science fiction doesn't mean they agree with his politics.
I'm making the choice to support the boycott for a number of reasons, but it boils down to this. I have gay friends that are nerds and who are familiar with Card's rants and I want to show solidarity with them in this.
Look into the issue yourselves and make your own choice.
Now I have to be honest. I'm not at all familiar with the science fiction writings of Orson Scott Card. I've seen his name on books in book stores and libraries but none of his books ever leaped out and said READ ME, at least to me. What I do know is that Card has a not insignificant fan base, some of which are probably in the LGBT community. Hearing your favorite author, one whom wrote about acceptance of people who were different, suddenly start talking about how you had a mental disorder has to be a jarring experience and it is not one I would wish on anyone. It probably feels like a betrayal of a very personal nature. I know that if I suddenly found out that my favorite author hated something that was an integral part of who I was I would be pretty devastated, and I'm not sure I could continue reading that person's work.
The thing is Card's outspoken nature really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Based on what I've read, and granted this was on his wikipedia page so take this with a grain of salt, he used to hold secular humanist revivals at conventions where he, and again this is entirely based off my readings I could be wrong, made fun of certain religious conventions. He was just as unapologetic about that as he is about his views now. Now I think that he was being a jerk then, and he's being a jerk now. Nothing has changed except the target of his ire. He converted at some point to Mormonism and that's his choice, he came to a personal revelation and that's a very personal journey. I can't say that I agree with his religion of choice but it is his choice, and that has to be respected. What I can't respect is being a jerk. I am making the choice to support Geeks Out and their boycott because I think, while Card is entitled to his opinion, and entitled to publish his opinion, he is not entitled to be free from people being put off by his opinion.
Here's where it gets a little rocky though. See I just said in my previous post that people should love what they love, and that includes the science fiction of a jerk like Orson Scott Card. Let me explain. As I said, Card has a not insignificant fan base and many of these people have been waiting decades for Ender's Game to be made into a movie. They have every right to want to go see that movie, and they aren't your enemy for wanting to go see it. Some people have the ability to separate the creation from the creator, and they should be allowed to enjoy what they enjoy without being harangued about it. Just because they like his science fiction doesn't mean they agree with his politics.
I'm making the choice to support the boycott for a number of reasons, but it boils down to this. I have gay friends that are nerds and who are familiar with Card's rants and I want to show solidarity with them in this.
Look into the issue yourselves and make your own choice.
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