tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40145387958214205642024-03-13T19:15:23.026-07:00A Blog About ThingsMcKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-64588876336598675672016-03-16T21:14:00.004-07:002016-03-16T21:14:57.653-07:00McKinney Reviews: Firewatch, or as I like to call it "Only Forest Fires Can Prevent You"When I first sat down to write this review, I found myself at a loss. Firewatch defies most expectations of what a game is supposed to be. There's no way to lose, the puzzles (such as they are) are very, very simple, and you have a map of your surroundings with you at all time so it's almost impossible to get lost. It's very, very close to what some on the internet have derisively named "walking simulators"; games where the player has nothing to do but walk through an (ideally beautiful, or at least visually-striking) area, poking objects in the environment to recieve a series of nuggets of exposition. And at first glance, it seems that's exactly what Firewatch is. I know, viscerally, that there's more to the game than that, but the appeal of the game is not one easily put into words. Still, putting things into words that aren't easily put into words is basically what I've built my life around, so here goes:<br />
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<br />In Firewatch, you play as a man named Henry. Henry has been having some "personal problems" lately, and to help clear his head he takes a summer job hiking through the woods of Shoshone National Park as part of the eponymous Firewatch. (It's less glamorous and ranger-y than you think) People are spread thin in that part of the world, and Henry's only source of companionship is chatting over a radio with the Firewatcher in the next zone over. Her name is Delilah, and she's a bit of an ass.<br />
<br />Delilah is fantastic, a well-rounded personality who is written well enough to be a selling point for the game all on her own. Much like Henry, she's got some hefty baggage to carry around. Unlike Henry, whose backstory is laid bare to the player in the opening moments of the game in a quick, simple "choose your own adventure"-style narration, Henry (and the player) have to figure out what Delilah's "deal" is entirely from what she chooses to tell them. I really can't oversell how multifaceted and real Henry and Delilah's relationship is, interwoven as it is through the narrative of the game. This is what truly separates the game from the much-maligned "walking simulators": it's not a walking simulator at all, but rather a talking simulator. By the end of the game I felt like I knew Delilah (both from what truth she told me, and what she lied about) more completely than I know some people I lived with for months. By the same token, Henry really seemed to have grown as a person, or at least bounced back from the borderline-depressed stat he started the game in.<br />
<br />While the back-and-forth between the two leads is excellent, (and depending on your tastes, might be worth getting the game for) it's only one of the plotlines that Henry follows on his journey from the beginning of summer to the end. While Henry learns how to carry out his duties on the Firewatch, he's free to explore the bounds of his assigned territory, uncovering the remnants of those who came before. This pastoral wilderness is full of places for Henry to explore, from Native American religious sites to notes and resources other park rangers left for each other. The end result is that every new day feels like the engrossing hike it should. I'm not much of an outdoorsman, but I think it's safe to say that this is what people who are nature-inclined go looking for. There are layers upon layers of history to explore, all of it punctuated by Henry's musings and Delilah's snark.<br />
<br />Now, you might have noticed I didn't say a word about what the actual plot is. There's a reason for that; the story hinges on several significant twists and to say too much would ruin one of the main reasons to play the game in the first place. While I chose to take the game in the way one would a netflix miniseries, others have binged on the entire game in one sitting. It's easy to see why; the writing and the narrative are both top-shelf, careening into new plot developments and bumping up against genre boundaries along the way. The strong writing, ironically, will likely be why many people who would otherwise love the game will come away with a bad taste in their mouths. It swings wildly at times between stories it seems to be trying to tell; it isn't until the last half-hour of the game that the player can finally think to themselves "oh, this is the kind of story they were trying to tell" and without spoiling too much, a lot of players have and will find the disparity between where the story is actually going and where it's really going to be disappointing. The game has a pretty significant variance in review score from one critic to another, and among those in the "target audience" the biggest divide is between those who think the sometimes maudlin changes in tone and apparent genre ruin the game or complete it.<br />
<br />I, as you can probably guess, loved it. It unifies the game as one that, more than anything, is about how much people change when they leave civilization behind, and how much some of them need other people to complete themselves. It's not a perfect game; it's short (around three hours if you stick to the main plot) and at $20 a little overpriced. The graphics engine sometimes stutters, causing your camera to jerk around unexpectedly (I didn't have this happen often, but whenever it did it sabotaged the carefully-constructed atmosphere the game was trying to develop). The mechanics of actually hiking around are a bit clunky, relying on context-sensitive button presses to climb, rappel, and jump instead of allowing the player to do this freely. But in spite of all of this, the game soars. It's not the kind of game you play endlessly, replaying the same sections over and over to see all of the different ways things can play out; while I fully intend to replay it once I get through my massive backlog of PC games, it will be a replay in the same vein as a rereading of a favorite book. I'll certainly try new things (apparently there are several turtles Henry can find and adopt, and someone pointed out that since all of Henry's dialogue is optional, you can go through the game ignoring her completely) but the core of the game, Henry and Delilah's tense, personal journey, will still be the same. The two characters I love will still be there, watching as the end of summer looms.McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-91930642361587905062015-07-17T23:28:00.000-07:002015-07-17T23:28:50.899-07:00A Short Story: Kex's Blood OathSo, as you may have noticed, the whole 2015 book challenge didn't really work out. Work has left me so emotionally and mentally drained that I haven't really been able to work up the motivation to track down all of the books I was going to read and write about. I HAVE been writing, though; whenever the mood strikes me I've sat down and written a bit, 300 words here, a few tweets-worth there, but nothing I really felt was good enough for this blog. (This is, after all, what I want to be able to point future employers to for samples of my work.) That is, until now. I'm actually pretty proud of this one; I banged it out in one marathon session, and it hasn't been edited at all. I might revise it at some point, or even make it into part of a larger whole, but for now I think it stands alright on its own. Enjoy!<br />
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It was just supposed to be an easy raid. There were eight of us, and only one of her.<br />
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Sure, she was a Ranger, but we’d killed Rangers before; no matter the skill, one man against more than one is a losing bet. The delta in human reaction times is simply too small to account for a whole other person providing input to react to.<br />
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Sure, she had a firearme. But lots of Rangers had armes, and we’d killed them just the same. Darci’s numeneran medkit could give us anything we needed so long as it had flesh to make it from, and flesh was easy enough to come by. So we could risk the occasional flesh wound in the course of staking a good corpse to loot.<br />
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But this Ranger was different. Hair white-blonde, drawn back tight into a molecule-precision braid. Eyes cold, grey irises so dark they were almost black. An unusual trench coat the color of sand, stained with blood. And by someone else’s god, was she beautiful. Not that a pretty face had ever stopped us before.<br />
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So we moved into the usual position in the silica hills; these vast piles of dust, like dunes but without the gale-force winds to form them. With a mind for ambush tactics and the right color camouflage you could disappear into what looked like flat ground in the glare of the noonday sun, which is exactly what we did. All we had to do was wait for her to cross into the sweet spot, which to our great fortune (hah) she did.<br />
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Most people, when four big men in combat leathers with swords and spears rise up out of the silica like wraiths, tend to break and run, or just break down and cry. We always give our targets a chance to drop any valuables and leave, as a courtesy. Some take it, others don’t. Always ended the same way. We gave her the same chance. I told her our terms, “Drop the arme and the satchel, and just keep on walking.” In response, she leveled the arme, and fired, filling the air with thunder. Not aimed at me, or any of the men with me, but past us, at Kira. Kira was our archer, a prodigy with a bow, and better at ghosting into the silica dust than any of us. Even I couldn’t have seen her, and I told her where to hide. Her head exploded, a gush of blood and brain suddenly marking her for all to see. That’s when we charged. I led, sword raised, roaring in her face. She racked the slide of her firearme, ejected a casing the size of a fist, and blew my sword arm to bloody ruin. I dropped and tumbled to a stop, clutching my arm close, blood staining the pale white hills.<br />
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I remember little of the next moments, only that I spent them trying to drag myself away from what was quickly becoming the worst fight of my life. The Ranger dodged easily away from my friends, thunderbolts dropping them with holes in their bodies the size of melons. Little Darci, bless her soul, broke from cover, sprinting towards the fight even as I, dazed from pain and blood loss, tried to wave her off. “Not worth it!” I tried to shout. “Save yourself!” But the strength wasn’t there. I felt a dampness in my midsection and looked down; in my fall my own sword had cut me open from chest to stomach. Darci ran, knife in hand; she would take one of her own fingers off to feed the numenera in her pack. Then the Ranger caught her, and a blast to her upper torso ripped her apart. I rolled onto my back on the shifting silica, and collapsed.<br />
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I saw the coward, Luz, had skirted the battle, hiding behind his invincible shield. At seeing Darci slaughtered he almost regained his nerve, closing in on the Ranger from behind. He was too slow; she fired, and he brought his shield up to block it a hair too slowly. Although even the Ranger’s big arme couldn’t pierce the fantastic alloy (we’d salvaged it from a crashed skyship), sparks ricocheted in all directions. One found his eye, and he collapsed. The last two, lovers Tom and Vic, had given up and gone running away down the hills; the Ranger sighted them and shot them down, all tangled limbs at the bottom. At least they’d still be together in death.<br />
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The Ranger found herself with two targets: a bleeding cripple, and a half blind craven. She rounded on me, and I prepared to die. Then, a metallic whistling sound carried across the hills. Luz had found his courage at last, but too late. He hurled his shield, sharp edges spinning through the air, and if his aim had been truer or her reactions less quick, he might have taken her head off. But instead it merely grazed her, splitting the pale skin of her cheek and tearing through part of her ear. Now defenseless, Luz had only time enough to raise his hands in hopeless surrender before she blew his leg off. He screamed piteously as she stalked toward him. I couldn’t watch, and rolled back onto my stomach to crawl to what was left of Darci, dragging myself along on my one good arm. I had to get to the medkit. <br />
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I pressed a few buttons experimentally. It beeped uselessly as I heard the metallic click of an empty firearme behind me; apparently the Ranger had used the last of her ammunition. She shouted, a human woman’s voice, high and cold, full of such boundless rage that I could not understand whatever words she spoke, if they were in a tongue I could speak at all. I heard a thud, and a dull crunch, and Luz screamed. I did not need to turn and look to know what she was doing to him, stomping his skull flat into the dust. There was another thud, more cracking, and Luz’s cries stopped. Then another thud, and another, and another. I kneeled in front of the bloody stain that had been Darci, her corpse having been flung away by the force of the shot. She and her pack had been forcibly separated, and I hunted with morbid desperation for some scrap of meat the medkit could turn into chemicals that would let me stand. All I found was a knife. I looked down at my ruined arm, held on only by a few tendons and a scrap of skin at the elbow, and knew what I had to do. I drove the knife into the gristle, and sawed once, then twice, and then once more, trying not to scream. Tears ran down my face, both for my pain and my loss. I shoved my arm into the numenera, and it pulled until the last tendon snapped. My vision went white, literally blinded by agony.<br />
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A moment later it produced a vial of fluid the color of old blood, with a short rough needle of bone. I had no idea what it would do; I rammed it into the meat of my leg anyway. Suddenly, the stump of my arm stopped bleeding, scabbing over instantly. The wound in my side sealed itself, torn muscle pulling itself together, skin sealing over in a rough, red scar. New strength welled up inside of me, and I hauled myself to my feet. I took a step, and screamed. Though my arm and side still pained me, it was nothing compared to the volcanic fire in my blood. Every little move brought fresh agony, but instead of robbing me of my focus it sharpened it. I took up my sword with my remaining arm and ran at the Ranger, who had just finished crushing Luz’s skull beneath her boot. She had not reloaded, and brought the arme up to block my wild overhand swing with with a resounding clang and the sound of shearing metal. <br />
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My sword was forged by one of the finest blacksmiths the Ninth World had ever seen, and was certainly the sharpest I’d ever held. It could not break the accursed Ranger’s gun, but it marked the metal and sent sparks up, flaring and showing fear in her eyes. I hammered her again and again, each time missing by inches or being blocked by her weapon, which became more and more worn by criss-crossing gouges in the black-tinted metal. She proved as deadly a fighter as she was a sharpshooter, capitalizing on my missing arm to crack me in the face with knees, elbows, the stock of her firearme, or whatever she could find, but the combat drugs coursing through my veins made any pain wash over me like silica on a breeze. My sword refused to find a mark on her skin, but did cut a gash in her satchel. Out poured dozens of shells, ammunition for the arme she carried. The satchel emptied, we shared a moment’s pause. Then she dove down the hill after the rolling shells.<br />
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I dove after her, sword in a reverse grip, trying to drive the blade into her spine. We tumbled, practically in free fall, my blade finally drawing her blood in countless glancing blows. At the bottom of the valley between the hills, at the foot of dead trees long since buried and exposed again by the dunes, we came to rest. She scrambled for a shell, frantically trying to reload her arme. I stomped toward her, limping from a twisted knee but too filled with bloodlust to care. I lunged at her, she parried, guiding my thrust into the trunk of a gnarled tree. It stuck there, not long, but long enough for her to swing the arme like a club into my chin, cracking bone and knocking teeth free. I barely felt it through the haze, but still I staggered. She brought it down in an overhand arc onto my head, and dropped to one knee. With the last of my strength I wrenched my sword from the tree, slashing wildly, and for a moment I thought I had her. Another overhand chop, flicked sideways at the last moment, came down on one of her hands holding the arme, cleaving fingers and causing her to stumble backwards, dropping the weapon. She fell against the trunk of the tree. I lunged, putting all of my hate and the last of my adrenaline and drug-fueled power into the thrust. <br />
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But may someone else’s god curse me and my terrible luck; my aim was not true. My blade buried itself deep in the tree and sawed through her trenchcoat, the armor beneath it, and the flesh of her shoulder with equal ease, but the wound was not mortal. It ruined the use of her arm, but her free hand searched within her coat and found a knife, black metal glimmering with flecks of starlight. The first slash caught me across the throat, and I gagged as my lifeblood splattered across her face and coat. She plunged the knife into my chest again and again, but I was beyond pain. All strength fled from me, drugs or no. I fell to my knees, and her good arm drove the knife into my chest. Then everything went black. <br />
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I awoke….later, curiously numb and well-rested. A respirator wheezed somewhere nearby, and a tall, but stooping figure swathed in layer upon layer of earth-toned fabric loomed just out of arm’s reach. I noticed that instead of a face, it had a single ovoid lens, black like a starless night sky, looking like less a visor and more a portal into the cosmos. For some reason, this did not bother me.<br />
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“The Raider lives again,” it intoned, with a voice somewhere between the clatter of antique keyboards and the chittering of insects. “For a time, it was in doubt that it would do so. Does it remember its name?”<br />
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“Kex-“<br />
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“-Stoneheart. The Raider. Do you remember their faces?”<br />
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“Wait, whose faces?”<br />
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“The faces of your friends. Do you remember their faces at the moment of their deaths?”<br />
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“Frak you, whatever you are. I’m not talking-“<br />
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“Philethis.”<br />
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“What-“<br />
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“This one is Philethis.”<br />
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“Is that your name, or your species?”<br />
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“Yes.”<br />
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“Frak you.”<br />
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“No.”<br />
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“FRAK Y-“<br />
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“DO YOU REMEMBER THEIR FACES?” It suddenly loomed over me, a thin hand laid with inhuman tenderness over my face. Its voice echoed, booming with such volume and force that it cowed me all on its own. The hand smelled of rubber; I couldn’t tell if that was its skin or it was wearing gloves. It had seven fingers.<br />
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I hesitated a moment; the great lensed face lowered itself closer. I could not see my reflection, despite the polished shine. “Yes, I remember their faces. Every one. Where’s that Ranger? Where are we?”<br />
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“You are sheltered, not far from the scene of your struggle with the Pale One. You fought with courage and skill; not many can move the unstoppable from their course, even if only slightly and only for a moment. A worthy death.”<br />
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“So I did die.”<br />
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“Indeed. We were able to bring you back. At least, the parts of you that remained.” The hand disappeared back into the massive cloaks, and bonds around my wrists and ankles snapped open. I’d been so distracted by my strange caretaker that I hadn’t even noticed them. “You will see we have done our best to repair what was damaged, but some was beyond our skill.” <br />
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My torso was a wreck of scars, jagged and still livid pink, and I saw that the respirator was no external machine at all, but implanted, seemingly replacing my lungs. A glowing cylinder sat dead center in my chest, an electric pulse replacing my heartbeat. My right arm, my sword arm, was now a gleaming prosthetic, metal bonded directly to flesh. I felt around inside my mouth; they had even replaced my teeth. <br />
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“You can work miracles. Why do I have so many scars?”<br />
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“Time is, was, and will always be short. The Pale One is still walking, and the rose petals are falling.”<br />
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“What? Who’s this Pale One, and how can I stop it?”<br />
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“You came very close before, but this one fears her full strength will be too much. Find friends. New ones. Strong ones. Better than the ones before.”<br />
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“Frak you, again.”<br />
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“Again, no. You will need all the help you can get, especially when the dead feed themselves to the unliving and the moon cracks and bleeds.”<br />
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“So I find people to help me kill the frakking Ranger-“<br />
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“Pale One”<br />
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“RANGER. And stop her from, uh…”<br />
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“Feasting on the dead to crack the Moon.”<br />
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“Right. I still don’t understand that part.”<br />
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“You will, when you see what has become of your friends.”<br />
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“Why? They’re dead already. Nothing can change that, other than you. What’s happened to my friends?”<br />
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“It is better that you see for yourself.”<br />
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“What?” I pushed past the Philethis, scrambling up the side of the hill, barely thinking of the wires and actuators that drove my limbs where nerves, veins and muscles once did. When I reached the top of the hill, looking across to the site of our doomed ambush, I swore a blood oath before my own gods, and no one else’s. I swore by the sky, the sun, my ancestors, whatever would listen; I swore I would find the Ranger and scatter her pieces across the four corners of the world.<br />
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Because when I looked across the hills, I saw bloodstained silica, and the tattered remains of our combat leathers. Luz’s shield, all the spilled firearme shells, and Darci’s numeneran medkit were all gone. And so were all of the corpses.McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-41795775534214415672015-01-10T10:54:00.002-08:002015-01-10T10:55:13.042-08:00Book Challenge 2015: World War ZThe first book I read this year could have fit several categories; I’ve owned it for over a year and hadn’t read it, it came with a recommendation from several friends, it’s been turned into an (execrable) movie, and with a bit of stretching it can be considered to be a collection of short stories. For the sake of simplicity (and because the other books-turned-hollywood-blockbuster-fodder I have access to are Twilight, Harry Potter, Eragon, or other overexposed or downright crappy titles) I elected to fill the Challenge’s <a href="http://mckinneybat.blogspot.com/2015/01/mckinneys-2015-reading-challenge-master.html#more" target="_blank">#3 slot</a> first.<br />
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World War Z, for the uninitiated, is a collection of fictional interviews by the stellar Max Brooks, previously the author of The Zombie Survival Guide. His narrator, a fictitious counterpart of himself, converses with an international collection of survivors of the War Z, from civilians who fled their homes to deep-sea divers dealing with the submerged dead to the soldiers on the tip of the spear taking the fight to “Zack”.<br />
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Brooks faces several obstacles as a writer of “Zombie Lit” foremost among them being the “mechanics” of the Zombie Apocalypse: it has been well-documented on a variety of forums, websites, and presentations that a true apocalypse at the hands of the walking dead is all but impossible. We’re too smart, our pop culture has prepared us too well, and the idea of a shambling corpse overcoming a fit adult, even taking into account the risk of infection with the zombie virus, is frankly ludicrous. And yet…<br />
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Brooks’ vision of how such an apocalypse might have come to pass is one of the most compelling, fully-realized accounts I’ve ever encountered. He wisely sidesteps the debate over the functionality of a “zombie virus”, putting his words in the mouths of eminently practical individuals, an entire world full of people saying “yeah, I know they shouldn’t be able to walk, or fight, or survive, but they do, and it’s our job to find out how to deal with them anyway.” It’s a world where zombies are killing people, but people are the REAL problem. Bureaucracy, greed, xenophobia, irrationality; these are the weapons Brooks’ pre- and post-war humanity uses against itself. Nearly one third of the interviews are devoted to those who helped to spread the virus or weaken humanity’s defense against it: a quack-cure spouting doctor who fled to Antarctica to avoid trial for selling “vaccines” that did nothing but spread false hope; accounts of military engagements failing horrifically to comprehend the threat they faced, throwing troops into a meat grinder. Horror stories of infected refugees unaware of what they carried until they spread it, wiping out entire camps full of refugees. Mankind isn’t just inhumane to man in this apocalyptic world, it’s ignorant to it.<br />
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Even so, it’s a Mankind that can learn from its mistakes. The fact that the book is framed as a collection of “post-war” accounts from those who survived shows that we can not only survive this catastrophe, we can THRIVE. The narrative in the later portions of the books becomes more speculative; while the early portions ponder how the modern world might respond to a global catastrophe, the final sections take these ponderings and extend them into a “future history”. Brooks shows how our diverse cultures survive contact with “Zed”, “Zack”, and “The G”, and then shows how surviving changed those cultures. Perhaps I should worry that Brooks seems to believe it’s going to take an apocalypse to make humans remember their shared humanity, but I’ll take some optimism over no optimism at all.<br />
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Bottom line: if you want some stellar writing wrapped up in a zombie thought experiment, read this book. (Just don’t watch the movie; it was crap.)McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-20498631452297407982015-01-10T07:29:00.003-08:002015-01-10T09:10:05.877-08:00McKinney's 2015 Reading Challenge - Master PageSo a few weeks ago I decided I’d try the <a href="http://media3.popsugar-assets.com/files/docs/Love%26Sex-Love%26Sex-2015ReadingChallenge-print.pdf" target="_blank">2015 Reading Challenge from Popsugar</a> when it crossed my twitter feed. More out of lack of anything else important in my life than anything else, I decided to return to my oft-languishing blog and give my impressions of the books I was reading. As a result, I should be posting a new book review/overview every week or so this year. Wish me luck!<br />
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If you’re interested in keeping track of what book I read for what reason (and why would you be?) bookmark this page, which I’ll keep updated as I go.<br />
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McKinney’s 2015 reading list:<br />
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1. A book with more than 500 pages:<br />
2. A classic romance:<br />
3. A book that became a movie: World War Z<br />
4. A book published this year:<br />
5. A book with a number in the title:<br />
6. A book written by someone under 30<br />
7. A book with nonhuman characters:<br />
8. A funny book:<br />
9. A book by a female author:<br />
10. A mystery or thriller:<br />
11. A book with a one-word title:<br />
12. A book of short stories:<br />
13. A book set in a different country:<br />
14. A nonfiction book:<br />
15. A popular author’s first book:<br />
16. A book from an author you love that you haven’t read yet:<br />
17. A book a friend recommended:<br />
18. A Pulitzer Prize-winning book:<br />
19. A book based on a true story:<br />
20. A book your mom loves:<br />
21. A book that scares you:<br />
22. A book based entirely on its cover:<br />
23. A book you were supposed to read in school but didn’t:<br />
24. A memoir:<br />
25. A book you can finish in a day:<br />
26. A book with antonyms in its title:<br />
27. A book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit:<br />
28. A book that came out the year you were born:<br />
29. A book with bad reviews:<br />
30. A trilogy:<br />
31. A book from your childhood:<br />
32. A book with a love triangle:<br />
33. A book set in the future:<br />
34. A book with a color in the title:<br />
35. A book that made you cry:<br />
36. A book with magic:<br />
37. A graphic novel:<br />
38. A book by an author you’ve never read before:<br />
39. A book you own but have never read:<br />
40. A book that takes place in your hometown:<br />
41. A book that was originally written in a different language:<br />
42. A book set during Christmas:<br />
43. A book written by an author with the same initials:<br />
44. A play:<br />
45. A banned book:<br />
46. A book based on or turned into a TV show:<br />
47. A book you started but never finished:McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-1316292000000281082014-12-07T17:13:00.000-08:002014-12-07T17:14:33.691-08:00A Brief(ish) Dissertation on Trevor PhilipsFull Disclosure: I have not finished Grand Theft Auto 4 or 5, and likely never will. (My GTA IV disk is AWOL and GTA V stopped working so I deleted it from my hard drive) While they are impressive feats of engineering, they are deeply lacking in a vital quality: respect. Respect for the player, respect for the player’s time, and respect for their own internal consistency. Foremost in my thoughts is Trevor, the third of three protagonists to be unlocked and by far the darkest.<br />
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Trevor Philips is, on the surface, a very clever character. I’ve heard from various unconfirmed sources that Rockstar intended each of the three protagonists in V to be a deconstruction or representation of a type of sandbox game player. Michael represents the intended player, who plays the game largely as intended: doing missions, robbing banks, but all in all a fairly reserved person. Franklin is the completionist, speaking over and over about how he wants “something more” than the random diversions his fellow gangbangers embroil him in, but he also has access to two of the long-term collection quests. Franklin wants everything he can get, but he doesn’t just want to start fights for no reason. That’s Trevor’s territory. Trevor represents what the average joe thinks of when he imagines someone playing GTA: objectively, he’s a psychopath, killing people who insult him, running people over in his nigh-indestructible tank of a pickup truck, going on rampages for no reason besides the fact it suited him at the time (rampages are actually one of his side-activities). There are hints that Trevor is also a jab at rival franchise Saint’s Row, as many of his traits and story beats are reminiscent of the characterization of SR’s “Boss”. Both are highly-driven, consistently-underestimated individuals whose sole motivation is the control of an entire city’s criminal underworld. Both think the most effective method of taking control of said underworld is to kill everyone who won’t submit to working for them, and both largely succeed. (Spoiler: everyone who fights Trevor or the Boss ends up dead in an excessively-painful way.) Trevor Philips Enterprises/International is similar in concept to the Third Street Saints, albeit MUCH lower-rent. Trevor is Rockstar’s take on what the Saint’s Row protagonist (boy, nameless characters are annoying to write about, huh?) would be like if they were transplanted to a reasonable facsimile of the real world. Trevor is what you’d get if someone really did only accept being in total control of a regions illicit dealings. “You go through me or you don’t go at all” writ large. That’s Trevor’s high concept, though. How he’s utilized in a plot sense, however, tends to be very scattershot.<br />
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In one mission, <a href="http://gta.wikia.com/Minor_Turbulence" target="_blank">“Minor Turbulence”</a>, Trevor flies a crop-duster biplane into the cargo hold of a low-flying cargo jet, kills the mercenaries inside, and hijacks the plane for his own use. (Or tries to, anyway. There’s no way to actually escape with it without being shot down. Just as well, as it’s so large even the in-game airport can’t fit it.) It’s widely considered to be one of the best standalone missions in the game, and it’s no coincidence that Trevor is the only character in GTA who can diverge from the semi realistic physics of the game to that extent; another nod to the increasingly ridiculous antics of the Saint’s Row series. Trevor is also involved in the most controversial and (in my opinion, unfun) missions in the game: <a href="http://gta.wikia.com/By_the_Book" target="_blank">“By The Book”</a>, in which he tortures an innocent man for information so Michael can find the right man to shoot. It’s slow-paced, brutally-detailed, and says absolutely nothing about torture as an information-gathering method other than “do a quicktime event to burn this guy’s chest hairs off with a car battery!” It’s not essential to the story for any reason other than that it’s mandatory to unlock the next story mission. Neither the man Michael ends up killing nor “Mr. K” the torture victim end up being relevant to the story at all (I’m not sure, but it might not even matter WHO Michael kills.) It’s an awful mission, and reveals the truth of how this game was written. This wasn’t some Telltale Games adventure plot, carefully constructed based on interplay between character motivations and morals. This entire game was built around the writers asking themselves “what can we have the player do next?” and just putting that into the story, whether it fits or not. Whatever Trevor’s motivations, backstory, or concept were at the outset, by the middle of the game it’s clear that he’s less a character and more a clever cheat for the writers. Whenever the level of drama or shock value, they can simply copy-paste “Trevor does something ridiculous and stupid” and go from there. Need someone the player can control for a torture mini game? Trevor can do it! Need someone to make sure a plane gets crashed into the ocean for a later plot-point (I assume)? Trevor starts with a high flight skill! He’s praised by players who love his pattern of getting into trouble and solving his problems in the most outrageously-violent way possible, but what they forget is that he usually starts the trouble himself, by <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall" target="_blank">acting in a way no sane person would.</a> After his tightly-plotted and paced introductory missions, (Which are still full of the “Trevor causes stupid problem, Trevor fixes problem in insane way” story pattern, by the way) Trevor quickly stops being a character and turns into a plot device.<br />
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One of the very few brilliant conceits of the story is that Michael (the story-focused player, keep in mind) is absolutely terrified of Trevor, not just because Trevor wants revenge and doesn’t know that Michael is the man he wants revenge on, but because Trevor (the screw-everything, anarchic player) doesn’t care about Michael’s intricate personal relationships, or the trouble his actions could cause. The player Trevor is meant to represent doesn’t care about the story of the game he plays, just about winning, and Trevor’s disregard for others mirrors this. It’s an incredible piece of plot development and it’s a shame the rest of the game wasn’t on the same narrative level. Now, it’s important to note that NONE OF THIS MAKES GTA V A BAD GAME. I’m not overly-fond of it, for a variety of reasons, but it did entertain me in parts, and many others have rated it quite highly. But for all the pride the writers of this game have in their (enormous) piece of literature, it is too unfocused, cynical, and mean-spirited to keep my interest for long.McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-62483214772332383602014-10-07T21:47:00.000-07:002014-10-07T21:47:52.592-07:00Destiny - The Bad Bits<a href="http://mckinneybat.blogspot.com/2014/09/destiny-good-bits.html" target="_blank">Last time</a> I told you all of the ways Destiny was the best game I’ve played all year, but now the time has come to tell you all about the many ways it ranks the worst.<br />
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This game has been taken apart and analyzed more times than I can count over the last few weeks, and while opinions on the game’s overall quality have varied significantly a unified narrative has started to emerge: ironically, that narrative is that the narrative of the game itself isn’t very good. This is the dark side of the conflicted game design I mentioned previously; Destiny doesn’t know what kind of audience it wants to attract, other than the same 18-34 year old men every other AAA game is chasing after. It doesn’t know how much it wants to rely on its story missions; the writing quality varies immensely from quest to quest, with some missions beginning or ending with cutscenes ranking among Bungie’s best and others given nothing but Peter Dinklage’s monotonous exposition playing over barely-disguised loading screens.<br />
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The voice acting deserves special mention. Despite having some top-tier acting talent (Bill Nighy! Peter Dinklage!) and diehard nerdbait (Nathan Fillion! Gina Torres! Lance Reddick! Dinklage again!) Destiny’s voice acting is almost universally mediocre. Fillion and Torres at least are veterans of voice acting and understand the nuances that separate it from acting on stage or screen, but they’re largely wasted, voicing static quest-givers/item vendors in the game’s single social area. The rest of the cast seems to be entirely lost, given lines without context or emotional guidelines…I assume, because there’s no other way a cast this talented and charismatic should be able to turn in a performance this disinterested.<br />
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The dialogue is all very arch, cliche stuff, and would’ve benefited from these actors turning in the kind of memorable, nuanced performances they’re known for, making their general ineptitude all the more depressing. Bungie clearly tried to model each world in Destiny as a “zone” in more traditional MMOs; each planet has its own line of quests, usually with some vague overarching goal, but usually not. (Earth is the notable exception, with the unofficial tutorial quests culminating in the discovery of a “Warmind” code-named Rasputin, which your Ghost touts as being “a powerful ally against the dark”…and then promptly drops it from the storyline, presumably to be picked up in DLC later on. I hope. This is one of the times Bungie’s attempt to have it both ways profoundly backfired, as they merged MMO-style quest-giving with Bungie-style gravitas-heavy cutscenes. Gamers only tolerate verbose expositionary dialogue that serves only to tell the player where to go and what to kill because that dialogue can be clicked through quickly and doesn’t disrupt the flow of the experience. Destiny ends up trying to infuse those same boring quest descriptions with a bit of Bungie’s “epic” scope and grandeur, and it. Just. Doesn’t. Work. You end up sitting there, watching boring cutscenes that simultaneously contain the only context you get for what you’re doing on any given mission and tell you absolutely NOTHING interesting about any of the characters or the world they live in.<br />
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Nothing joining the MMO half of this game to the FPS half works as intended. The gunplay may be fun, but there are functionally only 10 guns (revolvers, burst rifles, scout rifles, two kinds of auto rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, fusion guns, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns) with nothing other than low-key, uninspiring upgrades separating one looted gun from the next. Loot drops so rarely that Bungie has had to spend more time patching out loot-farming exploits than adding new content, <i>and the player base is angry with them for it. </i>The enemy factions, although visually distinctive, feel very similar to fight; one gunfight blends into another, and although it’s easy enough to get caught up in that familiar kill-loot-sell looping rhythm, it’s not likely to lead to the kind of memorable moments that will give Destiny staying power. I can tell you the plot of all three Halo games, and memorable moments from each, from memory. I can’t tell you ANY memorable moments from Destiny, other than what I’ve already mentioned in this article.<br />
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And this is just the big stuff. Don’t even get me started on all the little nitpicks I have, like how the game ties leveling beyond 20 to the “light” attribute which starts dropping on the already-anemic armor loot, slowing progress to a crawl. (It’s hard enough getting gear that lines up with your class, favored weapons, and aesthetic. Then you need to make sure it has a high enough light level to actually help you.) Or how there’s no inter-player economy; you can spend an hour playing, find a single legendary engram, and have it be an item you can’t use because it’s class-restricted and thus useless to you because you can’t trade items with other players. I got around this by storing stuff I couldn’t use with my current character into the Vault (an inventory shared between all of my characters), but this is a vital feature in the MMO genre; I can’t imagine how this game shipped without anyone thinking of it. (And a lot of people don’t want to spread their time between three different characters, which you have to do so the loot you find doesn’t out level your alternates.)<br />
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I could go on, but I’m starting to rant/ramble and that’s a clear sign I’ve let an article go on too long, so let me leave you with this: I feel the need to stress that despite all the shame I just heaped on it, Destiny is still a fantastic, beautiful game that’s fun to play, especially with friends. In the end, this review (like all game reviews) boils down to whether the good outweighs the bad. It’s just that in Destiny’s case there’s a lot of weight on both ends of the scale. I honestly can’t tell you whether Destiny is a good game or not, only that I had fun with it. Good luck, Guardian.McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-91978828572634056812014-09-28T21:30:00.002-07:002014-09-28T21:31:24.096-07:00Destiny - The Good BitsSo…Destiny. It’s a big game. Four planets, plus another area, with more promised in the future. Three Classes, with two Subclasses apiece. Procedurally-generated loot leading two dozens of variant weapons and armor pieces. It’s SO BIG, in fact, that I’m not going to try to review it in one unified article. I’m going to talk about the good parts of Destiny in today’s article (as the title might lead you to suspect) and the bad parts in the next (which should go live by the end of the week.)<br />
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Usually, when I talk about video games with my friends, I tend to just give them a basic “is it good or not” breakdown. I am not very articulate in person. On paper I gush, and holy crap does Destiny have a lot to gush about. Firstly, there’s the art style. My first impression of the game was “this looks like a game made of all of the concept art from all the other games out there.” Each faction is visually distinctive, as are the three player-character classes. It’s a very colorful game world, with even the Moon (famous in real life for mostly being all one uniform color) having genuine style and avoiding monotony. Most importantly, they all fit into the same universe. The overall tone of Destiny is at once unique and instantly familiar. It reminds me of Arthur Clarke’s Third Rule of Prediction: “Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It’s the aesthetic you have to end up with when your characters teleport into their one-man spaceship, fly to the moon by way of wormhole, teleport out and start shooting at four-armed aliens with REVOLVERS. The incredible thing is that I didn’t realize how anachronistic it all seems until I wrote the previous sentence, because of how well it all gels together. The real-world tech blends seamlessly into the future-tech blends seamlessly into the technology that seems like magic. Here, you can see an example of what I mean, just from looking at the guns:<br />
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“Seems like magic” might as well be the game’s byword, with various class and enemy descriptions having more in common with a fantasy game than with the harder sci-fi Bungie is known for. From Warlocks and Wizards to the Hive and the Cabal, the game feels like a mashup of the two genres, and it’s a testament to Bungie’s art department that they blend so well.<br />
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From a purely technical standpoint, the game is stellar. It absolutely oozes polish, from the slick (oddly PC-style) inventory that smartly borrows from Diablo to the gorgeous maps that serve as your mission-select screen. <span id="goog_1399061009"></span> <br />
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As you can see, they're equal parts Age of Sail parchment ocean maps and futuristic mathematical star charts, further extending the anachronistic motif that is the backbone of the game’s art style.<br />
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Now, all of that is nice, but in a first-person shooter all the beautiful art and shiny graphical technology you can pack into a DVD just serve as window dressing to make the business of shooting dudes more pleasant. All the gloss and paint in the world won’t help you if the thing you’re painting is ugly, but Destiny’s core structure (the gunplay, and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrFK4NlGCo0" target="_blank">kinaesthetics</a> (insert link to errant signal) of moving around in the world) is rock solid. If you’re going to build a game around exploration of a wide-open map and punctuate it with claustrophobic, trench-and-tunnel gunfights, these are the movement and shooting models to do it with. Every movement is smooth and fluid, with Bungie’s signature high-flying leaps augmented by a series of double-jump mechanics for added mobility. When you can reliably pull off head shots while hurling yourself through the air, you know you’ve got a winner. <br />
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While the control scheme owes a great deal to Call of Duty’s cover-based, iron-sights gameplay, the increased mobility makes it feel like a cross between that series and Bungie’s own Halo series, transitioning smoothly into a three-way (go on, giggle. I know you want to.) with Metroid Prime when the player encounters one of the bullet-sponge bosses that cap off so many story missions and “strikes” (Destiny’s equivalent to other MMO’s large-group raids). As fun as the game is when played solo, it’s obvious Bungie intended this to be played with friends, and even pick-up groups make for fun, engaging adventures, with the shared overworld leading to some awesome team-ups with total strangers. The “public event” model City of Heroes and other MMOs pioneered makes an appearance here, with random high-intensity encounters with huge groups of regular enemies or a supercharged boss enemy appearing once every few hours of game time. (Participation is optional, but success rewards all participants with rewards that almost never appear anywhere else.) There’s nothing like patrolling the Moon and having the sky suddenly go dim, your AI companion (the Ghost) shout something to the order of “Oh, CRAP.” and suddenly find yourself surrounded by enemies, only to watch as your fellow players hurl themselves into the fray around you, with guns and super-moves blazing. (The super moves deserve more attention. Few things are as satisfying as unleashing these shiny bundles of particle effects and annihilation.) <br />
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Destiny is gorgeous, and a BLAST to play, no matter what you’re fighting, so much so that it almost hurts me to have to write about all the NON-gameplay things it gets so wrong. See you next time for Destiny - The Bad Bits!McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-50969345755251384792014-09-19T22:44:00.000-07:002014-09-19T22:44:19.369-07:00Almost a review of Destiny...This post was originally going to be my review, but then I hit this tangent and I wanted to get it out of the way before getting into the meat of the game. (Not to mention that I'm writing that review now and it's going to be pretty big, so I'll probably break it up into two or more posts.) I only hint at the overall feeling I have toward the game, but that's what the proper review is for. Anywho, tangent!<br />
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I’ve never played a game quite like Destiny.<br /><br />Well, that’s not exactly true. I’ve played FPSs and MMORPGs before, and Destiny borrows liberally from both of those to make something new. What I mean is that Destiny is inherently conflicted in a way that I’ve never seen in a product THIS BIG. Activision, one of the largest (and most hated, but let’s not get into that now) game publishing companies in the world, teamed up with Bungie, creator of one of the most iconic video game franchises ever made. (If you don’t know which one, why the hell are you reading a blog post about a video game in the first place? Go play some games and come back later.) The hype machine was in full swing for this one; pretty much the only time you see ads for video games on TV is when the heavy hitters come out with something new they want everyone to see. <br /><br />There were preorders, <a href="http://www.vgchartz.com/preorders/41889/USA/" target="_blank">more than any other game this year.</a> There were preorder bonuses, like the ability to dye your little robot buddy and speeder bike red. (Presumably because Gamestop -with its clean-cut red-white-black color scheme- was involved.) And of course there were the usual cries of corruption, with the release tied to the activation of servers in such a way that <a href="http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Destiny-Reviews-Later-Than-You-Expect-67075.html" target="_blank">the game would not run until the day of its launch,</a> making it impossible to give a full review before millions of players threw down $60 or more on it. It reminds me of a movie that a producer knows isn’t any good not getting a press screening so the reviews don’t scare discerning moviegoers away. <br /><br />If it were any other game, by any other developer (My low opinion of Activision notwithstanding) I’d be crying foul like anyone else. But here’s the thing: Destiny doesn’t need “protection” from the free press. If anything, I wish more people knew this thing existed, and was on the previous generation of consoles (which is where I, an impoverished peasant, am probably playing it as you read this.) so they could play WITH me. It’s a game with a lot of content and a lot of intermeshed systems, but the one thing they all have in common is that they’re better experienced with friends. My next post is going to be something of a holistic review of the game as I’ve experienced it; I aim not to tell you whether it’s a good game and fun to play (spoiler: it REALLY is) but WHY it is. (I'd meant for this post to be that review, but it sort of got away from that.)McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-40025076342677548202014-06-01T20:58:00.002-07:002014-06-01T20:58:14.553-07:00Moldy bread, linguistics, and you.
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So I was looking at bread last night (I have WILD NIGHTS)
and I thought to myself: “Why do we say bread ‘goes moldy’ if it doesn’t go
anywhere?” After I finished giggling at my inane banter I gave the matter some
more serious thought. I hypothesized that we developed these ways of talking
about food during a period after the food in question was invented (DUH) but
before the process of spoilage was commonly understood. Ancient precursors to
scientists observed a loaf of bread harboring colonies of mold, or raw meat
being seeded with maggots and starting to rot and assumed that what they
observed was simply a natural part of the life-cycle of meat and bread; the
theory of Spontaneous Generation was born, and the lingo of the now-defunct
theory made it into the common lexicon. (Or more likely, people with no
knowledge of theories, science, or hygiene left their banana bread out too long
and decided the bread killed Mildred after she ate it, and that it was part of
the natural life cycle of banana bread to turn green and poisonous.)</div>
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This little thought exercise serves no purpose, I just
thought it was neat the way commonly-accepted beliefs from the past can shape
the way we talk about things today; we say bread has “gone moldy” even though
we now know that the bread is being consumed by tiny organisms that only become
visible on the macro scale long after they’ve set up shop. If asked, you might
say that you talk about it that way because “it’s more natural to say it that
way.” But it’s only natural to say things like that because they’re entrenched
in our culture, and linguistic drift can only change so much.</div>
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I just wrote 300 words on linguistics and banana bread; I
think it’s time to go to sleep now.</div>
McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-16106388940916981052012-09-03T17:12:00.002-07:002012-09-03T17:13:32.051-07:00Why "The Fastest Man On No Legs" Scares the Crap Out of Me<style>
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I don’t really care about sports.
Let’s get that out of the way right now. I have respect for most athletes (the
ones that don’t do notably bad things, at least) because of the time they put
in and the lengths they often go to for their chosen sport, but I have no real
interest in playing them, nor do I care who is currently doing the best at
them. As a result, the Olympics mostly passed me by without a second thought.
Sure, America’s swimming and gymnastics teams did fantastically, but we’re one
of the wealthiest nations on Earth; <i>of course</i> our athletes are going to be
among the best. The one story that really did jump out at me was that of Oscar
Pistorius, a South African sprinter who made it into the semifinals and then
finished that semifinal dead last. Why did he jump out at me? Because he was
born with no legs.<br />
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
should clarify: technically, he does have legs, but they end immediately below
the knee like the best-case scenario for a war amputee. (He was in fact born
with legs but due to a congenital deformation of the fibula they were amputated
before he left grade school.) The story of Oscar Pistorius is a classic one; a
tragedy of birth leads to an ostracized childhood, a coach with a bright idea
(giving the boy without feet artificial legs) leads to a spark of hope that
gutters but then burns brighter than ever as he enters his 26<sup>th</sup>
year. He is an exemplar of what technology can do for the disabled as the
future we were all told was coming finally arrives. I am terrified of him, or
rather I am terrified of what he represents. While again, I have great respect
for him as an athlete, it must be noted that he is a white man from South
Africa. Being a white man is very, very different from being a black man
anywhere in the world, but <i>especially</i> in South Africa, where the shadow of
Apartheid still looms. The springbok boots he wears in the place of feet are
expensive, after all, and learning to walk and run in them requires physical
therapy. Pistorius is from a wealthy family; were a black South African man born the way he was, the odds of him having the same resources and care are incredibly low. Simply put, Oscar Pistorius’
parents bought their way out of having a disabled son.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
brings me to the main point of this post: I am a transhumanist, someone who
looks to the future and sees not just what technology can do for humanity, but
what technology can help humanity <i>become</i>. I see Oscar Pistorius as a vanguard
of the future. In the future I hope for, disability is an outmoded concept.
Everything wrong with a person can be repaired, or improved upon. “Humanity” is
whatever we define it to be. People who dream larger than I can will alter the
definition of person in ways we can’t currently comprehend (and not in the
legalistic “corporations are people” sense) and quality of life will improve
for everyone. But it’s a long road from where we are now to the future I want
for us. This is why Oscar Pistorius scares me. He’s certainly an impressive
physical specimen; <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Oscar_Pistorius_2_Daegu_2011.jpg" target="_blank">just look at him.</a> But he’s not just in fantastic shape and
powered by an indefatigable drive to succeed in the face of all odds, he’s <i>lucky</i>. Right now the boots he wears are enough to put him on even footing (no
pun intended) with other Olympians; what happens when they make boots that are
uniformly <i>better</i> than organic feet? Olympic judges sparked a firestorm among themselves about this already (And several smaller competitions have barred him from competing outright) so we can at least expect scrutiny there. Writ larger, what happens when the wealthy
can literally buy better bodies for themselves? In everyday life we see how money can often solve problems; what happens when sufficient money solves the problem of sleep? How does a lower-class worker compete with someone who can afford to treat basic human needs like luxuries? This is the dark side of
transhumanism, where instead of equalizing humanity it makes us even less equal
than we were before. The story of Oscar Pistorius has the seeds of both futures
in it; I hope to God we fertilize the right one.</div>
McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-21082356745055290162012-08-10T21:08:00.000-07:002012-08-10T21:09:20.719-07:00D&D Post Op: Design Philosophies (Or: Can Someone Come Up With A Better Name For These?)<style>
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<br />
So in my last post (which no one who values their free time has any business reading) I examined these editions of D&D from a purely mechanical standpoint. I made that obnoxiously long post so I could make this one and have something to cite. This is largely hypothetical, as I didn’t really follow the development cycle of either edition of the game and am not particularly inclined to research them too thoroughly. I don’t want to talk about what the designers SAID they were aiming for, I want to talk about what they actually DID aim for. <br />
<br />
Once again: <br />
<br />
DISCLAIMER 2.0: I’m not unbiased in this; I prefer 4th edition to 3.5 for reasons I SWEAR I’ll elucidate by the end of this piece, but I’m not going to let my opinions color my commentary at all if I can help it.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
As RPGs go, D&D has always been fairly narrow in its focus: when compared to GURPS, Savage Worlds, or the Cortex System it’s almost myopic. Its rules imply a fairly specific kind of game world that operates under a generally well-understood set of conditions: humans and human-like creatures mostly good, non-humans and monsters almost overwhelmingly evil. This is a stark contrast to other systems that aim for the broadest possible set of scenarios. The “G” in GURPS stands for “generic” after all. D&D started off attempting to simulate fantasy adventures, like those of old medieval tales and more modern classics like the Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia. It has since become a very specific variety of fantasy all its own, the popularity of which has spawned novels in turn. <br />
<br />
It’s easy to see how this happened. By 3.5 edition, there are no fewer than 3 different magic-using core classes, not counting classes that have a smattering of spells as features. In the fantasy epics D&D was originally meant to ape, magic was rare if it existed at all, or was the purview of gods or similar (Merlin from Arthurian legend comes to mind, as does Gandalf) In making magic available as a regular option, and putting the tools to create the magical swords, rings and staves of fantasy in player hands, an irrevocable barrier between the stories and D&D was erected. Some of the best campaign settings for any fantasy RPG look closely at what the comparative omnipresence of magic and divinity can do to the world. (My personal favorites are Eberron and Forgotten Realms, which start with the same premise and take it in very different directions. A topic for a later post, I think.) <br />
<br />
D&D 3.5 and 4.0 both start with this paradigm, a world of swords and sorcery, where humanity coexists with a world of things both much greater and much lesser than they, and morality is mostly black and white. (Once again: humans good/orcs bad) 3.5 takes a more simulationist tack; spellcasters must work for their power and suffer weakness and frailty until they reach it, while those without magic maintain a roughly even balance with the enemies they face (assuming the DM uses the guidelines provided for encounter design) To paraphrase TVTropes: warriors are linear, wizards are quadratic. Any DM worth his salt has to acknowledge the effect this has on a campaign setting; either the PCs are the only characters to reach that level of prowess, or the world is dominated by magocracies because no non-magical force can counter the abilities a high-level spellcaster can bring to the battle. <br />
<br />
That’s not the end of the simulation (I admit simulation may not be the right word, seeing as we’re talking about MAGIC here). The rules include a basically-functional list of prices for all manner of goods, not just those used by adventurers. The economy is fairly bare-bones, but there is at least an attempt at having one. Magical gear is a highly-integral part of character balance, especially for non-spellcasters (ironically enough). As armor class doesn’t go up without equipment, spells, or ability score increases, new armor can be the difference between victory and defeat. A lower-level character with high-level gear will be much more effective than a higher-level character with low-level gear, as long as the delta between the two isn’t too great. For better or for worse, 3.5 D&D is a decent simulation of what the prototypical Dungeon Fantasy setting would be like. <br />
<br />
4th Edition starts with the same basic setting design as 3.5, but goes in a different direction. I imagine the designers looked at 3.5 and saw what people complained about (imbalance between magic and non-magic classes, lack of options for non-spellcasters, broken magic-item economy, difficulty in healing because of limited spells-per-day, etc) and decided to fix them in ways that were the polar opposite of what was expected. The broken magic item economy (in which non-spellcasters were helpless without magic gear that was often crafted by their magic-using allies, rendering them even more superfluous than usual at high levels) no longer exists, because the economy is mostly irrelevant to traditional adventurers anyway. The imbalance of powerful spellcasters is rendered moot by giving non-spellcasters similarly high-powered effects, while nerfing spellcasters back into video-game-style blasters instead of the reality-warping powerhouses they could become in previous editions. (Quoth a friend of mine: “I can FEEL the lack of options.”) Healing is simplified and partially divorced from magic or any kind of healing class at all, because real heroes can find it in themselves to push through things that would kill ordinary people. 4th edition saw what D&D’s core setting assumptions implied, and narrowed the focus of its ruleset until that was all it did. <br />
<br />
The new class structure, where class and race are largely defined by what powers the character gets from them, undoubtedly bears resemblance to popular video games like World of Warcraft. This is not bad, in itself. World of Warcraft is successful at least in part because it encapsulates the dungeon-crawling fun of old editions of D&D. For better or for worse, 4th edition is what the system’s developers thought every fan of D&D came to the gaming table for. I think that this is the crux of the furor surrounding this edition of the game: D&D’s vision narrowed until the core archetype of the Dungeon-Crawling Adventurers was all it included, and gamers who didn’t play D&D in that specific way HATED it. In their eyes, and the eyes of those that thought similarly, the developers behind D&D 4.0 were laughing in their faces and telling them “No, silly little gamers. We know how to play D&D the RIGHT way and you’ve been doing it wrong all these years. This is hopefully not what the design team at Wizards of the Coast had in mind, but that’s what a huge number of players (many of whom had been die-hard D&D fans since the early days) extracted from the very DNA of 4th edition. Hence the firestorm. (Or if you’re feeling vulgar, the shitstorm. The storm of fiery excrement.) <br />
<br />
Now, my explanation for why I like 4th edition more, despite the tightening of the game’s horizons, lack of freedom, and greater emphasis on combat mechanics. Simply put, I don’t run fantasy games very often. I’m not very good at coming up with unique campaigns in stock fantasy settings, for whatever reason. (Oh, this is a shameful admission.) I’m not a deep roleplayer; most of my NPCs are archetypical at best, stereotypical at worst. I’m also not very good at the kind of improvisational acting needed to carry off long-form dialogue roleplaying. What I AM good at is incidental RP, strong descriptions, both in-combat and out, and memorable snippets. My strengths as a DM come out in exactly the kind of scenarios that 4th edition focuses on, namely: well-delineated combat; and short, focused roleplaying sessions. 4th edition looks at dialogue between the PCs and NPCs and says “screw it, let the guy make his argument and roll a d20. Just like me. Other systems encourage dialogue and give combat the weight of lethality to make it matter. 4th edition says that combat should be FUN for everyone, regardless of their character class and level of experience with RPGs, and people shouldn’t be left out of something just because their character isn’t designed specifically for that. A shootout in World of Darkness is tense and exciting because any given turn could be your last, as a good shot can cripple or kill you. A pitched battle between an adventuring party and a band of roving goblins in 4th edition is fun because it’s supremely tactical. Everyone has a role to play, and at the end of the day isn’t that exactly what we ask for from RolePlaying games?McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-15639542178467968202012-08-08T21:04:00.003-07:002012-08-08T21:04:53.709-07:00D&D Post-Op: 3.5 and 4th<style>
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<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /><sup></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally. Almost a full year since this blog was first
established, and I’m just now getting to the subject I was going to tackle day
1. I need to step it up around here. Anywho, in this post I’m going to do an
autopsy on two editions of D&D that have officially ended their runs. (Yes,
4<sup>th</sup> edition is soon to be a thing of the past, since <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/arts/video-games/dungeons-dragons-remake-uses-players-input.html?_r=2" target="_blank">since 5th Edition is now in development.</a>) The transition from
the former to the latter was one of the most acrimonious in RPG history, to the
point where it adversely affected the sales of 4th. The 4<sup>th</sup> Ed
Essentials line was, in part, an attempt to recapture some lost players by
rolling back several of the changes made in 4<sup>th</sup>. Not popular stuff.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
SUPER-MEGA-DISCLAIMER: I am personally a fan of 4<sup>th</sup>
edition over 3.5. I’ll end this piece with my explanation for why, but I’ll do
my best to avoid letting that bias interfere with the examination itself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This first part will examine the two systems from a
mechanical standpoint, comparing the rules of the two systems to see the kind
of games they build. To prevent ruining the nice formatting, I've implemented a handy dandy jump-off below:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Both systems use the D20 system as their core (really, the
D20 system is a generalization of 3.5) in which all situations with an element
of chance are resolved by adding plusses and minuses to the result of a
20-sided die roll and comparing that total to a Difficulty Class (hereafter
referred to as DC) The more adept a given character is at something, the larger
their bonus to a roll. The harder the task, the higher the DC. e.g.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Alfred is a skilled climber (+5 bonus) and is trying to
climb a rope. (DC 15) He needs a 10 or higher on a d20 to succeed. He’d have an
easier time than Barry, who isn’t as skilled (+1 bonus) Barry would have to
roll a 14 or higher to successfully climb the rope.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a versatile mechanic that works for a variety of tasks,
whether trying to decipher an ancient book in a dead language or trying to stab
a goblin so it dies. The differences arise in the granularity of the two
rulesets. Take skill checks. In 3.5, there is a dedicated climbing skill that
you must put points into if you want to be a good climber. With each character
level, a character gets a certain number of skill points that can be assigned
to this and a variety of other skills. The points are additive, so if at level
one Albert puts 4 points into Climb and then another point at level 2, his
Climb bonus would be +5. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Those points would be absolutely worthless if Albert were to
try to swim across a river, or jump over a crevasse. In comparison, 4<sup>th</sup>
edition has an Athletics skill, which encompasses climbing, jumping, swimming,
and other athletic endeavors as the DM defines. You do not assign points to the
skill. At character creation, each character has a certain number of skills to
become “trained” in. These choices are taken from a certain list, also
determined by class. These choices do not change unless you decide to retrain
them, or take a feat that allows an additional trained skill. The trained
skills gain a +5 bonus outright, as well as the inherent bonus provided by
ability scores (more on those later) and the bonus from leveling up (all skills
increase their bonus by +1 at every even level) Skills are much more general in
their application (note the contrast: in 3.5 there is a dedicated climbing
skill, while in 4th the ability to climb well is tied into swimming, jumping,
and running well, among others) In 3.5 each level is a decision as to what you
want to focus on, while in 4th your characters skill strengths are mostly set
in stone at 1<sup>st</sup> level. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s variation in proficiency in 3.5; a character who
puts the most points possible into the climbing skill at every level will be a
much better climber than one who only puts a few in when they have points left
over. In 4<sup>th</sup>, two characters of the same level who are both trained
in a skill will have the same bonus; boosts from feats, ability scores, race,
and equipment notwithstanding.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The two systems use feats in similar ways: they handle
useful “tricks” or talents that go beyond the boundaries of skills but that
fall short of what character class entails. Examples include the item crafting
feats in 3.5 (condensed into rituals in 4<sup>th</sup>, themselves governed by
a feat and various skills) and the racial feats in 4<sup>th</sup>. In neither
case is there a build that CAN’T take such a feat, other than obvious
restrictions like race, or arcane knowledge. It’s hard to take advantage of
one’s orcish heritage when one has no orcish heritage, after all. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The contrast between the two lies in the functionality of
the feats. In 3.5 feats are part-and-parcel with class features (for vanilla
Fighters, they ARE the class features) and play a significant part in
determining what a character can do. In 4<sup>th</sup>, they are more meant to
improve something a character can already do. They are usually tied to a
specific race or class, unlike 3.5. They usually provide numeric bonuses, like
Elven Precision, which grants a +2 bonus to the reroll granted by the racial
power available to all Elves. The feat doesn’t add a truly unique boon, it just
improves something the character had to begin with. Similar feats are available
to all races, and many classes have similar feats that enhance their abilities.
In 3.5, feats allowed members of any class to do things like fight from
horseback without penalty, snatch arrows from the air, or fight effectively
with two weapons. Other than mounted combat (an entire linked list of feats
condensed into a single item on the list) there are no such feats in 4<sup>th</sup>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The reason for this is the largest distinction between the
two, mechanically speaking. Whereas in 3.5 each class has a set progression of
special effects that unlock as the character increases in level, 4<sup>th</sup>
defines each class with a few abilities at first level and a selection of
“powers” over the course of each level afterward. These powers are tied to the
class’s role in combat and general mythos. One can create a wizard who
annihilates swaths of enemies with bolts of lighting hurled from her fingertips
or who beguiles her enemies with illusions that make them mistake friend for
foe. Likewise, a Fighter’s powers allow him to do things like sweep through
multiple enemies, crush defenses and leave brutal, gaping wounds that bleed and
weaken their enemies. The contrast can be seen in the example of both versions
of the Paladin class, a holy knight blessed by one or more deities:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A 5<sup>th</sup>-level paladin in 3.5 can: smite evil
enemies by calling upon their divine favor, resist all mortal diseases without
effort, heal the wounded by a certain number of HP per day, cure diseases a
certain number of times per week, and summon a celestial mount of some kind
(usually a horse or riding dog) as a companion.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A 5<sup>th</sup>-level Paladin in 4<sup>th</sup> can: infuse
her weapon with holy light, channel the damage of her attacks into healing effects
for her allies, spend some of her own vitality to heal her allies, gain divine
favor to increase odds of an attack hitting or to resist a harmful effect, and
several variations on these combinations.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The important thing is that while 3.5’s effects from class
features are more varied and idiosyncratic (curing disease by laying hands on
the afflicted is a very biblical heroic act) they are static, unlocked in a
specific order that encourages multiclassing to achieve the list of abilities
desired. A multiclassed Paladin/Fighter would be a highly-skilled warrior with
divine blessings to fall back on, while a Paladin/Rogue would be more akin to a
holy assassin who can stealthily kill enemies hated by the gods with nothing
more than the touch of their holy hands.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The concept of multiclassing barely even exists in 4<sup>th</sup>,
ignored in favor of making the character classes more distinctive. A
sword-and-shield fighter will usually have a different selection of powers and
thus different tactical options and a different battlefield role than his
friend who wields a two-handed greataxe. Returning to the Paladin example, a 4<sup>th</sup>
edition Paladin tends toward one of two archetypes: the compassionate
battlefield leader, taking hits for other party members and healing them at the
expense of himself; or the holy warrior, striking down enemies and engaging as
many foes as possible in combat to slay the enemies of his faith. Relentless
focus on one archetype or the other is possible, but many split the difference
and choose powers that allow for elements of both.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One thing you’ll likely notice reading through the rulebooks
is that while in 3.5 many of the classes not specifically tied to battle (such
as the fighter, et al) have features that are useful outside of combat (see
again the “Lay on Hands” abilities the paladin unlocks), the 4<sup>th</sup> edition
powers are overwhelmingly combat-focused (especially noticeable with the
classes that should logically have roles outside of combat; spellcasters
apparently know their rituals, parlor-trick cantrips and how to blow stuff up/mind-control
them in a combat timescale/blow up their brains and NOTHING ELSE). This leads
into the second part of this series, the game design philosophy of the two
editions, which is the better part of WHY these games are so divisive. Tune in
next time!</div>McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-82912198305320588232012-07-26T23:20:00.000-07:002012-07-26T23:20:05.115-07:00Asexuality and the Pedant (Or, lookit me bein all pretentious and crap)<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
An average night of me trawling the internet:<br />
<br />
Me: Hmm, I wonder what’s on 9gag tonight?<br />
<br />
9gag: Hey, let’s taunt McKinney with a blatantly-incorrect representation of
his sexuality and provoke him into writing a boring blog post about it on his
boring blog.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So here we are.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the title of the post states, I am asexual. I experience no
desire to have sex with anyone, regardless of their appearance, gender,
personality, or philosophy. You’d think this would be an easy concept to grasp,
but you’d be wrong. I’ll be using this post to clear up a few common
misconceptions about asexuality, because I’m sure everyone will enjoy that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://9gag.com/gag/4775699" target="_blank">The post (and woefully-misinformed fb commentary) in question</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the rant: an asexual relationship is NOT the same thing
as being “friendzoned” The very concept of the friendzone is founded on
butthurt men and women on the internet not grasping that not everyone
everywhere who wants to be on friendly terms with them also wants to sleep with
them. Asexuality is not about love or an inability thereof. If someone is
asexual it can mean a variety of things but generally means they simply have no
desire to have sex.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The simplest way to explain it is in terms of a linear
scale: In a similar manner to the way Kinsey described the spectrum of human
sexuality (from purely heterosexual to purely homosexual) the scale can be
expanded into two dimensions to account for the spectrum of hypersexuality to
asexuality. This does not cover the entire breadth of what asexuality is to
different people, however. For some/most people (indeed, when one immerses
oneself in so-called “non-standard sexualities” as I have, it’s easy to forget
that I’m talking about a relatively small fraction of the population here.)
their desire to be romantically involved with their gender-of-choice is
intimately tied to their desire for sexual intercourse with them. For many
(though by no means all) asexuals, this tie is still present, so a lack of
sexual drive results in a lack of romantic drive. For others, this tie is
negligible if even present at all, which leads to a more active romantic life.
And there are certainly some who don’t even think about dating in those
mechanistic terms! Thus, our newly-2D Kinsey scale (Kinsey Scatter Plot?) must
necessarily be expanded to include a 3<sup>rd</sup> axis: romanticism. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Moreover:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sex is NOT the universal end-goal for relationships. One can
have a wonderful, fulfilling relationship with another person without ever
being physically intimate with them in any way. Love is an emotion; what people
do in their romantic unions is as unique to them as the couple itself. I’d
certainly like to think that if I can maintain a relationship for over a year,
then my non-sexual relationship is a bit more emotionally-founded than Joe
Blow’s one-night-stand. Dating is like a huge, many-layered cake; some people
like the top layer, others like the bottom (Insert dom/sub joke here) and
others like different layers in between. Making the assumption our unfortunate
example has (that if a guy likes a girl and isn’t boning her six ways to Sunday)
belies a sad lack of emotional depth. They assume that the dating cake only has
one layer. And a one-layer cake is still going to be delicious, but it’d be
remiss of me not to at least understand what the other layers have going on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I guess the most important thing one should take from this
is: love who you want to love, in the way and circumstances you want to love
them. Just don’t trash talk other people’s relationship paradigms without
learning anything about them. You know who else does stuff like that?
Homophobes. And homophobia is not welcome here. And another thing, asexual
relationships are not the same thing as friendzoning, and the friendzone isn’t
even a thing, and- *is shot*</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well I guess the friendzone rant will have to wait for
another night. I hope that this is at least slightly coherent, dear reader.
Until next time!</div>McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-22419939267753230362012-07-12T16:02:00.001-07:002012-07-12T16:05:01.715-07:00the "I" in iPod<br />
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A lot of literature has been produced on why my generation
is so spoiled. Some blame so-called helicopter parents, hovering over their
children, obliterating anything that could challenge or hurt them. Others blame
media schilling the message of specialism, or snowflake syndrome. I blame
music. Specifically, mp3 players. It’s hard not to feel like you’re going
someplace important when you’re listening to this while walking there: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/scjD_zrHbpA" width="420"></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the flip side, few things can exacerbate a
feeling of isolation like listening to a playlist full of this for hours on
endless repeat:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SmVAWKfJ4Go" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
And with an mp3 player, you can listen to that as much as
you want, whenever. You’re in control of the music and no one can make you
change it, as long as you’ve got some headphones. Your will is all that
matters. The preceding generations had to wait for songs they liked to play on the radio, find a way to record them, or buy their cassette tapes. (and on long car rides it was all down to what the people in the front seat of the car wanted to listen to) The generations that came before THEM had to hope they had friends who could play music or hope for the money to buy a phonograph and records. We are the first generation to grow up with the power to choose the soundtrack of our lives for ourselves. More to the point, we are the first generation that -for good or ill- has the opportunity to truly lose itself (and thereby its perspective of the rest of the world) in its music.</div>McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-6284709739425629172012-06-30T22:42:00.000-07:002012-06-30T22:42:06.970-07:00I remember when the Edition Wars split the Skies<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Dungeons & Dragons has been
around for 38 years. This is a LONG time. It’s older than me, almost all of my
friends, and some of their parents. It’s outlasted wars and whole political
administrations. It’s stayed fairly popular through media firestorms, scandals,
changing fads (anyone want to reminisce about 90’s fashion?) and a whole host
of cultural changes that have swept away hordes of other pop-cultural
milestones. It’s here to stay. But just as it is unusual in its tenacity, it
has its own set of problems. It’s true that most of these problems are common
to roleplaying games, but as D&D is by far the most popular and well-known
system these unique challenges are most strongly apparent among its dedicated
community. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Foremost
of these challenges is the concept of an “Edition War”. Every decade or so, TSR
(now incorporated into Wizards of the Coast, itself a subsidiary of Hasbro)
would revamp the ruleset, fixing a number of fans’ longstanding gripes with the
current rules, and invariably creating a new set of gripes once the fans had a
chance to kick the new rules for a while. This also had the happy-for-TSR side
effect of rendering a great deal of the books these gamers invested in
obsolete. As with any large group of people, audiences inevitably split when
faced with the possibility of change. Some groups chose to stick with the
system they’d grown comfortable with, while others would try the new version
and see if it worked better for them. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Remember
how I said D&D was a long-runner, lo a whole paragraph ago? Well, D&D
is officially on its 4<sup>th</sup> Edition, but by my count it’s at least had
11 revisions over the years. (And that doesn’t include 5<sup>th</sup> Edition,
in development as I write this!) That’s a LOT of disagreements. To this day
you’re likely to find people still running adventures and whole campaigns in
the old 1974 rules, for a variety of reasons. Each new edition has had to
balance the inevitable splitting of the fanbase that exists with drawing in new
players. The more the edition skewed toward courting one group, the more the
other shied away. Case in point: the transition from 3.5 edition to 4<sup>th</sup>.
(Hah! So even by the system’s own count there are at least 5!)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the record, the D&D releases have been tied to the
following edition changes, in order:</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Dungeons & Dragons (classic, purely a child
of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, inspired by the Chainmail fantasy combat
system) (1974)</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>D&D Basic Set 1<sup>st</sup> Revision (1977)</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1977. Yes, I
know. There was a split in rules-heaviness.)</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>D&D Basic Set 2<sup>nd</sup> Revision (1981)</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>D&D Basic Set 3<sup>rd</sup> Revision (1983.
This was to be the last Basic set. The Basic Sets were discontinued after this
stopped selling well, the devs reasoning that there was no reason to split the
fanbase further. Predictably, the later editions split the fanbase even more.)</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>AD&D 2<sup>nd</sup> Edition (1989)</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>D&D Rules Cyclopedia (1991)</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>D&D 3<sup>rd</sup> Edition (2000, also the
first edition published and developed by WotC rather than TSR, which was
acquired and discontinued in 1997)</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>D&D 3.5 (2003. A more incremental update, a
far cry from the radical changes made before and since, and the most
significant base-breaker in D&D history, until…</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>4<sup>th</sup> Edition, the (current) most
controversial RPG system on the planet. (2008) This was followed up in 2010
with the beginning of D&D 4E Essentials, which was part simplification and
part attempt to draw in older players who might have abandoned 4<sup>th</sup> edition
over the radical changes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’ll get into just WHY 4<sup>th</sup> was so controversial
in my next post in this series, which will compare it with and contrast it
against the edition that came before it.</div>McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-46041684386943800322012-02-04T23:49:00.000-08:002012-05-13T20:43:28.609-07:00MANLY PRODUCTS(OHAI. So, this was supposed to go up almost six months ago, but I couldn't figure out how to make video embedding work. So I left it alone for a while, and then the semester happened. Anywho, pretend you're reading this in the tail end of Fall 2011. I've found that listening to someone yammer about the Mayan Apocalypse helps.)<br />
<br />
This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I, as many who know me have likely guessed, am not a large person, and thus not MANLY. I cannot bench-press cars, crush steel chains in my teeth, set off chemical-weapon sensors with my body odor or any other such MANLY things. I love to dance, my taste in movies tends toward the nerdy and in some cases slightly girly (I liked the Princess Diaries, ok?), and I play roleplaying games with other sissy, unMANLY nerds all the time.<br />
<br />
For the longest time, I was fairly convinced that no company had any idea how to advertise to a guy like me. Every commercial I saw aimed at my sex was trying to convince me that it would make me irresistible to women. If I didn't know better, I'd think that congress passed a law (As if!) banning products for men that weren't aphrodisiacs for use on their women. (Because the women in these commercials <i>are</i> "their women." They belong to the men in these commercials by dint of their owning the product being advertised.) This seems disingenuous to me. Women (and men, for that matter) aren't going to suddenly swarm you and give you lots of sex just because you used Axe. (Just the opposite, I've found.) I was lost, adrift, un-advertised-to. Then came The Old Spice Guy:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/owGykVbfgUE" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
THAT is how you advertise to men. He's so masculine it's almost parodic, but the video is so ridiculous that you know OSG's in on the joke. He's also (importantly) classy, and shows he knows how to treat a woman right. The message this commercial sends is that this is a product used by men of class, and not just MEN. For a while, it seemed as if advertising was taking a turn for the better (or at least less annoying) even if ad companies took the wrong message from the OSG campaign's success. Namely, that clever, handsome guys speaking directly at the screen make all ads better. (There were HOTEL COMMERCIALS using this gimmick for a while!) Hell, even the Old Spice ads with Terry Crews were funny in a bizarre, slightly disturbing way. And then this happened:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3iuG1OpnHP8" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
Some numbskull ad agent saw how ridiculous manliness was selling a product aimed at dudes, and decided to aim a FRIGGING DIET SODA ad at what he thought was that audience. However, there's a very important difference between the guys that buy Old Spice to smell nice and please their ladyfriends (Note, I'm not getting paid to endorse OS, so I won't endorse them. I will, however, say that I have had THREE girlfriends since I started using it. Take that for what you will.) and the lunkheads who go along with this soda commercial: OSG is aimed squarely at classy dudes who want to smell nice for themselves and/or their S.O. This Dr Pepper commercial is aimed at guys who apparently still think girls have cooties. This particular ad misses the point of Old Spice's ad campaign completely by being so thickheadedly MANLY that it borders on offensive, and the others in that series aren't much better.<br />
<br />
Come on, advertisers. If you want me to buy your product, try not to make me think you see me as a testosterone-poisoned Neanderthal. Flattery breeds loyalty. This primitive caveman view of masculinity is NOT FLATTERING.McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4014538795821420564.post-30464948410589352082011-09-24T11:57:00.000-07:002011-09-24T11:57:30.935-07:00Welcome to my domain<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>144</o:Words> <o:Characters>823</o:Characters> <o:Company>SUNY Geneseo</o:Company> <o:Lines>6</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>1010</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">Come in, come in. Put up your feet and rest a while. I’m McKinney and I’ll be your host for as long as you want to stay.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Some of you (Oh, who am I kidding. No one who doesn’t know me will be visiting this blog for a LONG time yet.) may know me in real life, and if you do you know I’ve got opinions on a whole load of crap. This blog is going to be my platform by which I share them. I’m not going to be posting pictures of kitties in hats and bowties, or just mindlessly sharing YTMNDs every day. (Just every <i>other </i>day) I won’t lie, I’m a huge nerd so most of this site’s posts are going to be game-related, whether video games, RPGs, or board games. Of course, if I come across something REALLY cool, I may just violate the BAT honor code and show it to you anyway.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, what’s first on my list? What flamewar-inducing topic shall I cover first? Something divisive, something that destroys friendships and sunders gaming groups…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’ve got it: Dungeons & Dragons 4<sup>th</sup> Edition.</div><!--EndFragment-->McKinneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03803315088333268963noreply@blogger.com0