Working at a bookstore killed my relationship with public libraries. Well, that and college libraries. Seeing fresh releases, and hearing all the positive buzz about big deal books fostered a compulsion called tsundoku; the acquisition of so many books that one has no hope of reading them all. (I do the same thing with PC games, as do many others; a practice my friend Jose suggests we call Steamdoku. I agree. Digression over!) College, in turn, made me associate libraries with doing research or serious work.
So I stopped checking out libraries. But is that really a problem? If I buy so many damn books, why would I go to a library ever again? Well, precisely because I have so little time to read any more. Stick with me.
When I broke up with libraries, I also let myself believe that their selections were hopelessly outdated. I pictured collections consisting of James Pattersons gone by two years and yellow paged paperbacks that have somehow held on since the sixties. Maybe I did it to help justify my buying compulsion. Or maybe that's an accurate assessment of the Pasadena Public Library. I don't know anymore, and it doesn't matter because the Burbank Public Library is freakin' awesome.
There was one category of bookstore purchases that were always out of my budget: audio books. Before you roll your eyes, or rail about how real authors must read on paper to keep notes, keep a couple things in mind. A) I have a full time job. B) working out feels like a waste of time. C) driving feels like a waste of time. Audio books help me fit more fiction into the cracks of my life.
Burbank has a ton titles in audio form. And lots of stuff by authors I would like to read, but never buy, or think to seek out when visiting a Barnes & Noble.
This is the real benefit of libraries. Getting books for free is nice, but finding books you would never encounter under other circumstances is really what makes the difference.
Perusing the audio book selection reminded me that I love Joe Hill and I love William Gibson.
From Hill, I picked up Heart-Shaped Box. It's a story about an aging rock star with a menagerie of messed up detritus who buys a ghost. It's my workout book, because it is brutal enough to distract me from the task at hand. I mean, this fucking guy. He knows how to hurt characters (and by extension, readers). People drone on and on about how mean GRRM and Joss Whedon and even Jim Butcher (really?) are to their characters because they kill people or beat them up. Bull. Shit. A quick death or cracked ribs are so much kinder than what you can do. Even maiming pales in comparison to the emotional trauma you can inflict with a single brutal line or revelation. That's something Hill borrows from dear old dad, but I greatly prefer his work. His stuff is also more concrete, pairing physical violence with psychological, or using one as a metaphor for the other. He has sharper, darker teeth, and his narratives feel more complete and cohesive. They may be more traditional, but I like his beginnings, middles, and most of all his endings.
On a related note, I finished up Locke & Key, and it is fantastic. I can't think of a comic book series that does a better job of capturing the angst that is 15-18 years old. The finale is great. Again, brutal. Again, fairly traditional, but it will make you genuinely sad, balancing very tender moments with some very sharp sticks, with great heroism interspersed (not so much with the laffs), and most importantly, you will have a sense of closure. Would love to read more short stories and side stories that leverage the universe's concepts, but happy to see Bode, Kinsey, and Tyler's tale come to a satisfying close.
Back to the bounties of the Burbank Public Library, I've picked up The Peripheral from William Gibson to listen to while driving. It's been a long time since I've read anything by him, so I forgot how much of an impression he made on my writing still. This book feels a little more accessible than the super-slangy cyberpunk of his Sprawl trilogy, but it still has that great environmental/conceptual mystery quality that typifies his work. You are thrust in a world, and by about midway through the book, you have a handle on the setting, but you still have to work out all the mysteries of the plot. I highly recommend it to Sci-Fi fans, and already gifted it to one person.
Very strong central premise about communicating between adjacent time streams, but it also focuses on post-humanity, and long-game evolution of telepresence technologies. Think Ghost in the Shell, dialed back a couple notches, with less emphasis on an ephemeral cyberworld, and a deeper examination of being able to inhabit other human bodies. There's also some stuff in their about drones and gaming. Very high concept cocaine.
The library also has a fairly extensive collections of movies, including some new releases you can rent for a dollar. Seeing how Blockbusters are a thing of the past and Redboxes are scratched to hell or have the wrong discs half the time, that's super convenient.
Moral of the story? Do yourself a solid and check out your local public library. You may be pleasantly surprised. If not, you will have restored an old librarian's faith in humanity.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Monday, June 1, 2015
Witching Hours
Finally beat The Witcher 2 last week. Twice, actually, exploring two different endings, which themselves were just two permutations stemming from a larger plot schism. I can't think of another time a game compelled me to play through alternate endings rather than just YouTubing them. After factoring in idle time, I think the game took me about 80 hours to complete. It was a genuine journey and I look forward to playing The Wild Hunt soon.
Due to it's high body count and sexually charged nature, the world of The Witcher will draw inevitable comparisons to Game of Thrones, but only because the latter has become such a presence in popular culture, so I will do my best to avoid that shorthand. Dark fantasy has been around for a long time, and this is a much more fantastic universe than GRRMs dragon-enhanced take on the War of the Roses. It has explosive D&D style magic, elves, dwarves, and even a few sci-fi flourishes. For example, the denizens of the world have a strong enough grasp on genetics to meddle with them.
You yourself play Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher, which is a mutant magi-swordsman bred for hunting monsters. He has white hair. He has cat eyes. He is an amnesiac. Despite those fan-fic grade cliches, the story itself is unexpected, filled with genuine moral dilemmas, twisting alliances, political intrigue, and ugly consequences.
Like Mass Effect 2, it refines a very messy first game, streamlining and speeding up stilted combat into more seamless, action-oriented gameplay. It retains the very interesting alchemy system, which rewards preparation for fighting specific monster types. Character customization is also considerably more coherent: instead of spending coins of different value on skills of different value, you have three primary skill trees and one training tree with slots for permanent stat bonuses.
There are lingering issues. It's a very buggy game. Invisible walls pop up due to messy in-game geometry. There are ways to unwittingly bug quests, even in the enhanced, de-bugged edition. It frequently crashed due to Steam sync, or faulty cut-scenes. I noticed that as my autosaves piled up indefinitely, the game took longer to load from the main menu, and by the end of the game, attempting to load a game from the pause menu was a guaranteed crash. You can also only change key-bindings via a pre-game launcher. I mean, really? The inventory can also be a chore to navigate, but that's due in part, to the massive amount of shit you accumulate.
It's the staggering amount of writing that impresses me. It took me 80 hours, and if I pursued the other plot chain, I'm sure it could bring the count to 100 unique hours of gameplay. There are fewer choices than Biowares offerings, but they matter more because they aren't mere opportunities to push around some arbitrary morality meter. CD Projekt Red did the fucking work. If you make one political alliance over another, your quest and the game world change accordingly and significantly. You won't learn everything you can about the characters on a single play through. Despite those divergences, the plotting is very tight. Your quest journal is actually recorded by your bard friend, Dandelion, and the entries are all witty. Conversational dialog is also pleasingly colorful.
So, this is the paragraph that caused a knockdown drag out between two couples of friends on facebook. It deals with sexism in games, so if you're burnt out on that topic, skip to the conclusion I guess, but I think it gets peoples' blood up because it taps into something deep seated and important. I'm a big fan of speculative fiction that includes sex, even if the inclusion only amounts to softcore bedroom scenes. I don't think that's a pleasure any guiltier than slaughtering digital men by the score. But a progressive world this is not. Hell, it is objectively misogynistic. Geralt philanders without consequence. Sex is a prize for saying the right thing in a single conversation chain, like a compressed dating sim. Almost all the women, including those milling about town, share the same top-heavy model in low-cut outfits. Far more troubling, is the fact that every major female character in the game is brutally victimized at some point. There are powerful women. Soldiers, sorceresses, and queens. But they all end up kidnapped, enslaved, tortured, raped, or killed. The only gay character and lesbian happen to be scheming villains. It's bad enough to make GoT appear enlightened. (Damn! I was doing so well, too.)
Doesn't feel great to admit I can forgive it those toxic politics, let alone hunger for another game that will feature the same. But I enjoy the successful blend of sword and sorcery combat. I get sucked into the mechanical ecosystem that requires crafting and alchemy. I am curious about where this world is going. And, not every game needs to forward a social agenda. That said, I think CD Projekt Red can do better with how it handles women. They are powerful characters, they influence the world, but they end up being punished in ways that don't square with what happens to the straight men.
The Facebook duel was as follows. One side asserted that Dragon Age was vastly inferior to Witcher, while the other argued Dragon Age attempted something more ambitious by allowing players to customize the gender, sexual preference, and race of their main character, rather than locking players into a straight white male role. Both parties made some valid points, but passive aggression slid into ad hominems, and it was the kind of debate that was denied discourse from the start. Nobody won, and any kind of mixed judgment would look like indecisive platitudes. If I knew how to sort this shit out, we'd have peace in the Middle East and Gamergate would be a solved problem.
Here's what I took away, though, in the interest of full disclosure: I have yet to play Dragon Age Inquisition. The last Bioware title I played was the underwhelming DA2. My issue with that game, and other recent offerings, is that those factors end up being almost purely cosmetic, save for who your character decides to bed. I can see how that is empowering; it's refreshing to have a black hero whose story isn't about being black. But in an RPG that promises to tackle complex issues like sexism and racism, I think those choices need to have a little more weight. Do they need the brutal sexual violence of the Witcher? Maybe not, but if your game is going to take on issues, it needs sharper teeth. While ambition is commendable, execution deserves credit where due. Straight White Cis Male Tale or not, (and you can make a case that it's not, since Witchers are pariahs), Geralt's tale, and it's impressive number of plot permutations, is a technically ambitious and impressively executed piece of literature.
Looking forward to getting lost in Gwent soon.
Due to it's high body count and sexually charged nature, the world of The Witcher will draw inevitable comparisons to Game of Thrones, but only because the latter has become such a presence in popular culture, so I will do my best to avoid that shorthand. Dark fantasy has been around for a long time, and this is a much more fantastic universe than GRRMs dragon-enhanced take on the War of the Roses. It has explosive D&D style magic, elves, dwarves, and even a few sci-fi flourishes. For example, the denizens of the world have a strong enough grasp on genetics to meddle with them.
You yourself play Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher, which is a mutant magi-swordsman bred for hunting monsters. He has white hair. He has cat eyes. He is an amnesiac. Despite those fan-fic grade cliches, the story itself is unexpected, filled with genuine moral dilemmas, twisting alliances, political intrigue, and ugly consequences.
Like Mass Effect 2, it refines a very messy first game, streamlining and speeding up stilted combat into more seamless, action-oriented gameplay. It retains the very interesting alchemy system, which rewards preparation for fighting specific monster types. Character customization is also considerably more coherent: instead of spending coins of different value on skills of different value, you have three primary skill trees and one training tree with slots for permanent stat bonuses.
There are lingering issues. It's a very buggy game. Invisible walls pop up due to messy in-game geometry. There are ways to unwittingly bug quests, even in the enhanced, de-bugged edition. It frequently crashed due to Steam sync, or faulty cut-scenes. I noticed that as my autosaves piled up indefinitely, the game took longer to load from the main menu, and by the end of the game, attempting to load a game from the pause menu was a guaranteed crash. You can also only change key-bindings via a pre-game launcher. I mean, really? The inventory can also be a chore to navigate, but that's due in part, to the massive amount of shit you accumulate.
It's the staggering amount of writing that impresses me. It took me 80 hours, and if I pursued the other plot chain, I'm sure it could bring the count to 100 unique hours of gameplay. There are fewer choices than Biowares offerings, but they matter more because they aren't mere opportunities to push around some arbitrary morality meter. CD Projekt Red did the fucking work. If you make one political alliance over another, your quest and the game world change accordingly and significantly. You won't learn everything you can about the characters on a single play through. Despite those divergences, the plotting is very tight. Your quest journal is actually recorded by your bard friend, Dandelion, and the entries are all witty. Conversational dialog is also pleasingly colorful.
So, this is the paragraph that caused a knockdown drag out between two couples of friends on facebook. It deals with sexism in games, so if you're burnt out on that topic, skip to the conclusion I guess, but I think it gets peoples' blood up because it taps into something deep seated and important. I'm a big fan of speculative fiction that includes sex, even if the inclusion only amounts to softcore bedroom scenes. I don't think that's a pleasure any guiltier than slaughtering digital men by the score. But a progressive world this is not. Hell, it is objectively misogynistic. Geralt philanders without consequence. Sex is a prize for saying the right thing in a single conversation chain, like a compressed dating sim. Almost all the women, including those milling about town, share the same top-heavy model in low-cut outfits. Far more troubling, is the fact that every major female character in the game is brutally victimized at some point. There are powerful women. Soldiers, sorceresses, and queens. But they all end up kidnapped, enslaved, tortured, raped, or killed. The only gay character and lesbian happen to be scheming villains. It's bad enough to make GoT appear enlightened. (Damn! I was doing so well, too.)
Doesn't feel great to admit I can forgive it those toxic politics, let alone hunger for another game that will feature the same. But I enjoy the successful blend of sword and sorcery combat. I get sucked into the mechanical ecosystem that requires crafting and alchemy. I am curious about where this world is going. And, not every game needs to forward a social agenda. That said, I think CD Projekt Red can do better with how it handles women. They are powerful characters, they influence the world, but they end up being punished in ways that don't square with what happens to the straight men.
The Facebook duel was as follows. One side asserted that Dragon Age was vastly inferior to Witcher, while the other argued Dragon Age attempted something more ambitious by allowing players to customize the gender, sexual preference, and race of their main character, rather than locking players into a straight white male role. Both parties made some valid points, but passive aggression slid into ad hominems, and it was the kind of debate that was denied discourse from the start. Nobody won, and any kind of mixed judgment would look like indecisive platitudes. If I knew how to sort this shit out, we'd have peace in the Middle East and Gamergate would be a solved problem.
Here's what I took away, though, in the interest of full disclosure: I have yet to play Dragon Age Inquisition. The last Bioware title I played was the underwhelming DA2. My issue with that game, and other recent offerings, is that those factors end up being almost purely cosmetic, save for who your character decides to bed. I can see how that is empowering; it's refreshing to have a black hero whose story isn't about being black. But in an RPG that promises to tackle complex issues like sexism and racism, I think those choices need to have a little more weight. Do they need the brutal sexual violence of the Witcher? Maybe not, but if your game is going to take on issues, it needs sharper teeth. While ambition is commendable, execution deserves credit where due. Straight White Cis Male Tale or not, (and you can make a case that it's not, since Witchers are pariahs), Geralt's tale, and it's impressive number of plot permutations, is a technically ambitious and impressively executed piece of literature.
Looking forward to getting lost in Gwent soon.
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