Ant-Man Squished by MCU House Style

Last Sunday I saw Ant-Man. It was dumb but pretty fun. That's all most people need to know really, but I have reputation to uphold. If you're reading this, you want gonzo over-analysis of Marvel's Cinematic Universe.

I think it is worth noting this is the latest I've waited to see any Marvel movie since opening. It's tempting to blame flagging interest, especially after the fatigue I expressed with Age of Ultron, and that's definitely part of it, but you can bet I will be watching Netflix's offerings straight out of the gate. I think the main issue is that I was skeptical of the hero (why does this silver age chestnut get a flick before literally anybody else slated for a title?) and I heard something that made me sad: Edgar Wright's script had been scrapped. Whedon said it was one of Marvel's best screenplays ever. Lo and behold, my first thought when the flick ended was "There is a better version of this movie somewhere locked up in a desk."

Again, it wasn't bad. I'd rank it above the Thor movies, which I would describe as "earnestly watchable." Paul Rudd was a peach as always. Evangeline Lilly was hurt by a lame role (and make-up that made her look much older than she is). Douglas gave a good delivery of a very straightforward role. Michael Peña is fast becoming one of my favorite character actors, even if he was typecast as a pseudo-stereotypical Mexican friend/hood. I don't know what David Croll was going for but he didn't hit the mark. As with Lilly's character, it's mostly the fault of the script, but his manic menace and discordant sycophantry made him the most forgettable villain in the MCU to date.

You don't really watch these things for the plot or performances though. Or I don't know. Maybe you're a masochist? That's cool. Whatever waxes your ride. The ridiculous action and great one-liners delivered, even if they were trailer'd to death.

There were flashes of a film that stuck together better. Something as fun as Guardians of the Galaxy. I can't put my finger on exactly where things went sideways, but I feel like they didn't commit to the screwball comedy angle as hard as they could. The ant powers were presented in a way that was remarkably straight forward with very few laughs, which seems like a huge missed opportunity. I know Wright would have committed to that humor. Paired with his hyper kinetic cinematography, saturated with whip-cuts and graphic embellishments...(yearning sigh). But no. The need for stylistic cohesion is finally starting to show it's teeth.

It's very weird to me that Marvel is getting more cautious after the success of stuff like Guardians and Daredevil. Their comics are also wildly, refreshingly different from each other. Look at Hawkeye vs Rocket Raccoon vs. Captain Marvel vs. Ms. Marvel vs. Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vs. any Spidey or Avenger's book. There was a place for Wright's vision in this pantheon.

My interest in the movies is starting to shift from intrinsic interest to this kind of morbid curiosity. I'm waiting for the moment when the gravy train goes off the rails. This wasn't the movie to do it, and Civil War, with the introduction of Sony's Spider-Man, will be a shot in the arm. But after that? Cummerbach's Doctor Strange is going to be tough. It is very difficult to make magic mainstream. Most magical fiction is the strict domain of book nerds and D&D dorks. Harry Potter managed to break through, but Game of Thrones and the Lord of the Rings (films) have marginalized it with more grounded stuff, like sword fighting, sex, and politics.

It hurts me to say this, but I would rather things go to hell with Doctor Strange than with Black Widow or Captain Marvel, because I can imagine some smarmy studio suit pounding his fist on the boardroom table, shouting "See? Nobody likes female comic book characters!" That guy can go fuck himself, preemptively. Black Panther would also be a very bad point for Marvel to drop the ball. Even worse than the lady-led films. At least nerd audiences can rally around Katniss Everdeen, whereas the only black superheroes we have are Anthony Mackie's Falcon, and Cheedle's War Machine who have both been relegated to sidekick status. (Falcon makes a fun cameo in Ant-Man tho).

When things inevitably go to hell, it won't be supernatural plots, or female, or black superheroes at fault. It will happen because they've made like twenty of these things, and people have moved on, or moved back to whatever was trendy before tights and capes movies.

No twist ending here. Fans of Marvel, heist movies, or Mr. Rudd should go check it out. Less dedicated fans can afford to give this one a pass with Civil War right around the corner.

What it Means to be a Magician

I finished Magician's Land a year ago now, and I can tell you that Lev Grossman's three books on twenty-something spellcasters are my favorite trilogy. Books, movies, whatever. These are the stories that are closest to what I want to write myself. I'm still not sure I've nailed this, but I think I could write about it in circles for years, so it's going up now.

My wife, my dad and a few of my best friends gave up on it after the first book, and I can't think of any people whose literary opinions I hold in higher regard. And usually, their critiques sway my opinion somewhat. Not so here. Rather, I felt compelled to try and share what I found in them that felt so profound. So if you've given up, read on. At the very least, you'll get to see how things play out. Needless to say, stop here if you still want to read them, or if you're waiting for the SyFy series (please be awesome), because this will spoil EVERYTHING.

The grander the scope of a fantasy novel, the harder it is for me to engage with it. I grow distant from the tale once it becomes more about politics and history than individuals. One man is a tragedy, while a hundred is a statistic and all that. Call it narcissism, or blame it on my ADD baby, but I need characters I can project myself into with personal problems I can relate to. Nations and empires, or even lineages spanning eons like Lord of the Rings tax me, because the character's personalities feel secondary to the world. I only found Dune and A Song of Ice and Fire more palatable because of their use of close POVs.

Maintaining that kind of human-driven drama is something I wrestle with in my own writing, because long-form fantasy seems to gravitate toward tropes and trappings of epic scale.

Star Wars and Harry Potter come closer to what I'm after, without the black and white reductionism. They have an epic scope, but at heart, they are family dramas that deal with about three generations of people. By the end, the Potters and Weasely's are one family, as are the Skywalkers and Solos (even if you discard the now non-cannon EU, the sentiment is there), and they are a mircocosm for the world they live in and shape. The main characters are broadly drawn, but the supporting cast is eccentric. Both invite us to project our own relatives and acquaintances onto those people, and fall in love with them all over again.

The Magicians finds an arc that is even more personal, with a cast of characters that hones closer to real people. I've been spoiled by a charmed life. As an only child with two incredibly successful parents, the only baggage I've really had to carry are the huge expectations I've created for myself by looking to their example. So there is something that resonates even more strongly with me than family drama: the pursuit of personal growth.

Courtesy of Better Book Titles

Growing up I had everything in the world, but once I hit my teenage years I was terribly unhappy. That's everyone to an extent, but I think I was madder about it than a lot of people. I confused my expectations of myself with my expectations of life. It's not hard to see how a frustrated teenager and young adult could transmute a lack of fulfillment into perpetual dissatisfaction, or assume happiness is inherently frivolous. Quentin was also an only child born to well-off parents (though they never really "got him") and on top of that he was told he was a genius his entire life, (up to the beginning of the books). He was raised on fantasy books and wanted to be the hero. But he couldn't do magic for real, and he didn't have the girl, so everything sucked. But even when he could do magic, and he did get the girl, and he discovered the beloved fictional land that shaped his boyhood was real, things still weren't right.

I like to think I was never that petulant, but I came close enough to recognize the same root problem: we were waiting for the world to make us happy instead of doing something about ourselves. Sounds simple, but it took me years to figure that out and I'm still trying to do the work. I guess that's why I was more willing to be patient with him. I get why he's an asshole. His acerbic voice and aimless but incredibly fervent ambitions struck a chord.

Despite being a cautionary tale, The Magicians outclasses standard "be careful what you wish for" stuff because it never loses sight of why the wishes were worth pursuing in the first place. It's not about scoring points, or putting line items on your CV, but about figuring out how your dreams can make you better, and getting it wrong--a lot.

The first book just hints at that broader message. If you have to read just one, the is the one to read, but I think stopping there takes a hard heart, or at least, less patience for very believably flawed people. He is not as sensationally fucked up as Joe Abercrombie or GRRM's characters, who I think hold broader appeal because they are more distant from reality. You don't have to deal with masochistic boy-kings and schizophrenic berserkers on the daily. Quentin is just kind of a prick and everybody has to put up with pricks.

The Magicians closes with him going back to Fillory, the magical land from the books of his boyhood, even though it ended up being horrifying, and later empty, because it cost him his lover. I read that as hopeful; maybe I can still find something to love about magic. Maybe I was wrong about myself. But "hopeful" isn't closure, and recognizing so many of Quentin's flaws in myself, I wanted to see how this played out.

The Magician King I think, is the weakest link of the trilogy. This one is really Julia's story, told in the middle of Quentin's, and while it's deeply compelling, it fits oddly into the arc of the other two. I think it taxed the trilogy in ways Lev could not anticipate when he started out with just one novel.

We come back to old Q at the end, and it's an important turning point: for the first time, he is subjected to true unfairness. He is viciously punished for doing the right thing. What happened to Alice hit him harder, but it was also his fault. Here, he saves magic. All the magic, in every world, and in response he is stripped of his crown and exiled from Fillory. Why? Because fuck Quentin Coldwater. That's why.

How a person reacts to punishment for doing the right thing is the truest test of their character. In Magician's Land, we finally get to see if Quentin passed. Given the veins of despondence shot throughout the series, I was afraid. I expected something brutal. Which is why the last book is truly magical. Quentin becomes a good person. Not all at once, but rapidly.

Even though his friends have seemingly abandoned him, he keeps fighting. He begins by swallowing his pride and seeking a job at Brakebills, a college he initially loved but came to resent. When he is fired for doing something risky, he acknowledges it and takes it in stride. When he hypothesizes a fantastic cause for his estranged father's death, and turns out to be wrong, he carries on instead of moping. And when he is presented with a terrifying opportunity to correct his gravest mistake, he seizes upon it.

It works, but doesn't go as planned. He rescues Alice and she hates him for it. She was utterly consumed by magic and disconnected from the world, in a blissful state of power. When he brings her back, gives her emotions, and taste buds and a body again, a life with meaning, she is livid. The first Quentin would go "this is bullshit," and give up. This Quentin keeps trying and manages to remind her that being a human beats being a selfish monster; I mean, talk about epic role reversals. At the end, things aren't perfect between them, she flat out tells him "we're not dating." Given her actions at the end, I think that they might pick things up again, but even if they don't, Quentin is just happy to have rescued her from madness.

He also becomes a dragon and then, briefly, a god, which is, you know, freaking awesome.

I love the way Lev does magic. Sure, the study and theory might be a little mathematical; not sufficiently subjective, (which was Robert's gripe), but when it actually goes off, wow is it cool. I can't decide whether the fox transformation or Quentin's first spell cast is my favorite scene of magic, and the probability-shifting card game that starts the third book is great as well. The first appearance of the beast, and Reynard's rape of Julia are both as terrifying as they need to be, which is no mean feat.

One of my favorite scenes in the whole trilogy is in book one, where Fogg speculates as to why certain people can use magic. His hypothesis is that magicians are inherently unhappy. Which made a lot of sense to me. Maybe I just liked it because I can be a broody sumbitch, but there is logic there. You won't try to change the world in earnest unless you feel like there is something wrong with it. I was bothered by the implied corollary, however. Once you find happiness, or worse, in order to find happiness, you have to break your staff, bury it fathoms, and drown your book. Prospero could have done better.

Quentin's story is a journey to another conclusion: you can keep your magic, and have happiness too, as long as you work on yourself in tandem with the world. Find your magic, find a goal, and use them to figure yourself out. That's what it means to be a magician.

Half Life 2 and Black Mesa: Subtlety Between Shootouts

This was originally supposed to be about Black Mesa but it turned into a bit of a ramble touching on emergent versus linear storytelling.

A friend once asked me what my favorite video game stories were. I went to grad school for that, and it's my job description, so I wanted to impress. The first couple titles that sprang to mind weren't terribly unusual. I think I said Final Fantasy 6, The Last of Us, Arkham City, and Gunpoint, all for different reasons. If he asked me now, The Witcher franchise would vault to the top of that list, followed closely by Wolf Among Us, and Tales of the Borderlands. Again, pretty standard stuff. I did manage to throw him one curve ball though.

"Half-Life 2."

"...Really?"

Yup. The story is unfinished (and sadly looking like it might stay that way), it has a silent protagonist (which I hate), and on the surface it looks like your standard re-telling of War of the Worlds, right down to the tripodal alien war machines. But there's more happening behind the scenes. Or maybe between the scenes is more accurate.

If you rush to the next firefight or puzzle, you'll miss out on ambient dialog and broadcasts that flesh out the plot. The writers are humble enough to not cram their tale down the player's throat. Instead of saying "OMG this is so important, the fate of the universe depends on you!!" they let the level design and mechanics make you fear for your life, feel oppressed, and then in the quiet moments, the game gives you little glimpses of what went wrong, and how bad it really is.

The cliff notes version of Half-Life 2 is that Earth has not only been invaded, but already conquered by an alien collective called the Combine. As befitting their name, they genetically remix every race they conquer to refine their race of super soldiers. The entire world is now an Orwellian police state and the bulk of humanity has been penned in old cities that have been redistricted and augmented by the Combine's sci-fi tech. You start out in a bleak Eastern European metropolis called City 17, and its aging already-dystopian architecture, is merged with the Combine's pristine, geometric tech is a great juxtaposition. There is, of course, a resistance, and you do, of course, join and lead it. That's all you really need to know.

Now here are the cool details you can miss: the Combine have set up 'inhibitor fields' that prevent us from breeding, but promise our race will have 'genetic immortality' and travel the stars, which, would actually be compelling carrots for a lot of people. But they put chemicals in the water that make the populace forgetful and docile. The alien species they've introduced as biological weapons (and maybe crude terraforming tools) have ravaged the environment. It took them only 7 hours to completely dominate the planet, and--oh yeah: this is all your fault.

A lot of people aren't clear on how Half-Life 1 and 2 are connected, especially since many people jumped on at HL2. That's unfortunate, because the connection between the games is in my opinion, the coolest part of the lore. At the beginning of the first game, Gordon performs a science experiment at Black Mesa research facility that opens portals to an alien planet. A hostile army of aliens invades, and the military is called in to kill everyone and everything involved. Gordon of course, kills them better, goes through the portal to the alien planet, and kills the leader of their alien army, Nihilanth. In the process, you free a race of enslaved aliens and thwart an invasion on Earth. Yay! Awesome right? No. Turns out Intergalactic assassinations have huge consequences. By killing Nihilanth and crippling his army, you paved the way for the Combine to sweep in and conquer Earth. Nice job, slick!

Then there's the G-Man: one of the most enigmatic characters in all videogame-dom. He's pasty, suited man who speaks like one of the supernatural denizens of Twin Peaks, has a talent for appearing and disappearing in impossible places, and the ability to freeze space=time. At the end of the first game, after you've committed your "one-man genocide," he offers you a job. The terms kind of suck: you don't know what work you'll be doing, and if you refuse, he strips you of your guns and leaves you to inevitably die fighting hordes of aliens, avenging their comrades. If you accept, he puts you into suspended animation until Half-life 2.

The original Half-Life has not aged well, but fortunately, a dedicated team of modders and programmers called The Crowbar Collective have remade Half-Life 1 practically from scratch. It is known as Black Mesa Source, and you should buy and play it. Consider that endorsement an imperative if you have yet to play Half-Life 2, provided you have patience for somewhat dated graphics. Incidentally, I discovered that my threshold for old graphics is Source 2. It is just realistic enough for me to feel immersed, which is a testament to the engine considering it's now a full decade old.

Why bother with Black Mesa? Well, it also has that slow burn. The beginning of the game is arguably a fist-person survival horror affair, that ramps up into some of the most intense firefighting of any shooter you'll play. And there are puzzles throughout. Most of them are very basic, some are jumping puzzles, but they provide enough variety to break up the bouts of action. The fights themselves, in fact, are like improvisational puzzles. Unlike most modern shooters, where you have a regenerating health bar, you have a shield and a health bar that can only be restored with items. I miss this trope, because it allows the designers to exhaust you. To chip away at your sense of security, and thrust you into fights where you feel the weariness and desperation of your avatar.

The level "Surface Tension," may be the best I've played in a shooter. You start by storming a dam in one very intense firefight. Immediately after that, you must ward off a helicopter with a laser weapon. Then you flush yourself down the dam, and navigate an incredibly claustrophobic cliff face as more soldiers try to kill you. The helicopter returns, but you can ground it permanently with a new laser-guided rocket launcher. Most games would call it a day there. But you are just getting warmed up. You have to escape a tank; a rare firefight where your only chance is to run. Then you must navigate a warehouse, rigged with dozens of trip mines and ordinance, Entrapment style, in one of the most nerve wracking sequences you will experience in any game ever. Then the tank catches up with you and you have to take it out with an environmental weapon. Finally, you have to kill an alien giant with a mortar as it shakes the tower you are standing on--this last part was pretty badly glitched, regrettably, marring an otherwise incredible experience. But the game is still in early access, and the developers are actively engaged in fixing up the title.

Both titles excel at immersion because they commit. They trap you in first person the entire game and there is a single linear path that you must follow through the levels. At Georgia Tech, I remember a lot of the teachers and my fellow students felt that videogame storytelling was hobbled by cinematics, set pieces, and linearity. It was regarded as "a legacy approach to storytelling," inherited by analog media. When you look at drek like COD it's easy to empathize with that complaint, and when you see just how creative you can get with something as simple as Twine, it's hard to not want games that take that versatility a step further (I think Tell-Tale has successfully made themselves the sovereigns of that dimension).

But my professors and peers were chasing an even more elusive whale: truly emergent storytelling. This describes systems that would effectively improvise valuable (emotionally potent) stories in the course of play, as opposed to taking you down a number of branching corridors. I was a member of the project group that tried to develop that kind of gameplay. It's been long enough now that I can admit it felt like a bit of a bust. With the crucial exception of tabletop roleplaying, I haven't found a system that creates meaningful narratives on the fly. I know you can find good RP if you find the right people in the right MMO, but what results is effectively collaborative fan fiction. The onus of storytelling is on the player rather than the system.

Other than failing to leverage the 'affordances' of digital media, the backlash against linear stories is that they are didactic; you are forced to engage with the world a specific way that elicits a specific emotional response. I think that only becomes a problem when you feel the strings tugging you, because that breaks the immersion. If you are leaning into the strings though, it feels a bit like flying, or riding a roller coaster. Yes, I would love it if Gordon Freeman spoke, and I'd be ecstatic it if you could speak for him and make choices... but when I played, I wanted to know what happened next rather than the ability to do things differently.

I guess there are two main takeaways I'm trying to convey here: you can make familiar linear stories compelling with enough experiential immersion, and squeeze in some meaningful subtlety,even when paired with huge scripted action scenes. That and the Half-Life franchise rocks. Here's hoping Valve comes back to it some day.

CCSD 15 Hall H Postmortem

So. I've reviewed what I could of the Hall H news and trailers that came out of Comic Con.

Star Wars wins. Hands down. The behind the scenes video was beautiful, even if it doesn't tease too much about the story (which may actually be for the best). That impromptu live concert for panel attendees also sounds (ha) incredible.

Batman V. Superman had a much stronger showing this time around. The shots of Bruce in Metropolis amidst the destruction were really compelling. Interesting to know he has at least one dead Robin under his belt. I doubt we'll see Tim or Dick due to the number of Justice Leaguers who will already be making cameos. Carrie Kelly is a possibility, just because of Snyder's hard-on for all things Frank Miller. Wonder Woman seems suitably bad-ass, and I am still very curious about those Superman soldiers. The Suicide Squad trailer had a cool aesthetic, but it came across as kind of soulless and dry. If there was ever a DC movie that needed some levity, it's this one, and they have the cast to exploit it.

The leaked Deadpool trailer on the other hand is looking pretty good. Almost a "here's how you should have done it" to Warner Bros. I think it does a good job of capturing the "I can't tell if this is just dumb, or so dumb it's smart" vibe of the comic character. Post PG-13 big brand superhero movies are also just a rich vein to tap; think Kick-Ass with a bigger following. Even if the thing is a bomb, I think Fox will be pleased with the opening weekend results. Almost guaranteed that critics won't get it, but a lack of artistic acclaim hasn't hurt Transformers or Fast and Furious. I was less wowed by their X-Men stuff, even though the last movie was arguably the best yet, and Wolverine 2 was better than Wolverine 1.

Weird that Marvel sat this one out. Despite their fairly big media push, I am not feeling the hype-train for Ant-Man like any of their recent films. A Comic Con nudge may have done it some good. Something to tease Doctor Strange and Ms. Marvel would have been nice too, but you can't always get what you want.

In terms of smaller stage stuff, ConMan is looking like a lot of fun. The Battleborn, Halo, and Assassin's Creed "play this game in real life"-style installations made me sad that I wasn't there.

That's my 2 cents, having not been there. People who attended, am I missing anything huge?

Rekindling Library Romance

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.

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.

The Aging of Ultron

It's been like half a year since I last blogged about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), so we're due for more. This spring has an interesting pair of offerings, with Joss Whedon’s long-awaited Age of Ultron and Netflix’s relative dark horse, Daredevil. Now people are already hyping up for Civil War. Even as a self-professed Marvel zealot, I'm starting to experience some fatigue with their project, and I can't help but wonder how much longer less-dedicated audiences will last in Marvel's ambitious (read: insane) media campaign.

Of the two projects, I actually prefered Daredevil, which once again breaks new tonal ground for their shared-screen universe. Not terribly surprising, given my fondness for dark, vigilante-flavored brooding and hardcore violence.

Stellar fight choreography and production values are enough to carry the show. The corridor fight scene in episode two that pays homage to Old Boy is absolutely brilliant. The brutality has been dialed up to 11, and that does a lot to delineate the show from Marvel's tamer network offerings, or the fanciful CGI brawling of the Avengers et al. There are times where it feels excessive, and it pairs oddly with the show's prudishness. We can watch a man's head get pulped by a car door, but god forbid we see naked people. Admittedly, that is consistent with comic book ethos (and most of American entertainment) but disappointing for somebody who is hoping our society can get over its crippling fear of sex. Rosario Dawson is also excellent at being naked. I'm just putting that out there.

It's not without its faults. My buddy Brian Solloway pointed out the characters are quite weak in the first few episodes. Foggy is likable but initially very one-dimensional (even compared to Arrow's broadly drawn supporting cast) and Karen is even more straightforward and often downright annoying. Matt is a little more interesting, but kind of... under-developed. While the flashbacks do a good job of explaining why he loved his dad, his violent crusade to protect Hell's Kitchen is essentially presented as a cure for insomnia. He puts people in the hospital because he can, and it's cathartic. At best, he comes across as a high-functioning psychopath. That's an observation made about Batman all the time, and Daredevil's own writers have made the comparison, but there are meaningful distinctions. In particular, I would have liked to see is a deeper exploration of the dichotomy between his life as a lawyer and a vigilante. Something to suggest a more complex character arc to be had here.

Especially since the show's villain, Wilson Fisk, seems to have a much more realized and complex vision for the city. In the comics, Kingpin was a generic gangster, even by Marvel's mustache twirling standards, but Vincent D'Onofrio breathes nuanced, menacing life into him. He may be the best villain Marvel has put to screen yet, surpassing even Hiddleston's Loki, Redford's Alexander Pierce, and Spader's Ultron. He has this child-like vulnerability to him that pairs well with explosive rage, but its offset by calculated obsession and chilling megalomania. Each of his scenes are compelling, and unlike most TV villains, his character has a fully realized arc that runs parallel to the hero.

So I'm definitely on-board for season 2. My guess is Electra will make an appearance, but I am more interested to see how this will pair with Kristen Ritter's Alias show. That's a tough project. The show has to start with her as a has-been hero, and she hasn't appeared in the MCU to date. The trades have already talked about cross-overs that may segue into a Defenders series which...agh. You can only stretch this so far, guys. Consolidate a little.

I'm also very curious to see if it will feature Asa Butterfield's Spider-Man, who is also undoubtedly active in other neighborhoods of New York City, but my guess is that he will be largely relegated to the big screen. On that note, I'm disappointed that Sony and Marvel aren't taking Miles Morales or Spider-Gwen out for a big screen spin. Asa is great, and I think he will make a good Peter Parker, but we've seen that guy (and his origin story) twice now in the past 15 years. Age of Ultron had an opportunity to just introduce him with the stinger, and totally punted it. I mean, come on Joss. You don't need to actually show Spidey or have him talk; just a close up of a New York window suddenly "thwipped" with webbing. Let people know he's there, and already active. This fan-made thing goes above and beyond. Perfect execution.

On the whole, I enjoyed Ultron. This one felt more Whedony, which is what I wanted, but somehow it ended up on par with the first film for me. Big fights. Fun dialog interspersed. But we’ve seen that movie a couple times now. There is nothing that changes the status quo, compared to say, Winter Soldier, or even the battle of New York in the first Avengers. Nothing that expands the tonal range of the universe, compared to Guardians or Daredevil. I'm really mixed about how Hawkeye was handled too. I much prefer Clint as the fallible (failure-prone, even) Avenger. He does upstage Ultron by delivering the best speech in the movie, which does double-duty as a snarky meta-commentary of the MCU as a whole ("Look, none of this makes any sense...") and a truly awesome "it’s time to be a hero" speech. It also felt fairly in-sync with his comic persona.

As for the criticisms of how Joss handled Black Widow... I mean, Jesus Christ. Are we really arguing that Natasha having a love interest prevents her from being a strong character in her own right? Because that doesn't seem very feminist to me. Also, my word choice was deliberate: Banner is Natasha's love interest. She does all the brave stuff, courting him broad spectrum without seeming desperate. Meanwhile, he is timid and conflicted throughout. Her romantic interest doesn't diminish her stature on the team. And if you want a romantically aloof female character, look no further than Maria Hill. As a writer, it's really disheartening to see, because there really doesn't seem to be any winning where feminism is concerned. Only cannibalism.

That said, I don't think Whedon taking his ball and going home was the best play. I understand it. Death threats are appalling and nobody should have to put up with that kind of treatment. But quitting social media won't stop it. His reaction strikes me as very generational, which is weird to say about somebody whose writing has always been so hip and with it.

Personally, I don't think the "quiet place" he talks about is a thing anymore. For better or worse, Millenials have been groomed to crave constant contact and assessment, to ceaselessly produce content and respond to it. That interplay informs my writing process. Sure, it may be vain--toxic even--but that makes addressing that system more important. Admittedly, I know not of what I write. I don't have many readers (let alone legions of fans), and they are generally personal friends and family.

Getting back to the film, Spader has some fantastic lines and the perfect voice to deliver them. I think he would have shined even brighter with some more screen time but when you factor in all the big names in that cast, we get pretty well-acquainted with his genocidal tinhead. Aside from the creeping feeling of an aging brand, I think the biggest disappointment with the movie was Vision. There wasn't enough time to make him feel like something other than a literal deus ex machina. His power set could be described as "playing on godmode." Thanos ain't no thang with this dude around.

Even though I'm getting a little worn out by spectacle upon spectacle, I'm still gonna see Ant-Man, if only to hunt for traces of Edgar Wright's vision of the film. Expect more commentary then.

NOTE: (spoiler warning) my friend Kat Eason pointed out most of the criticisms about the handling of Black Widow related to her calling herself a monster because she was sterilized. I assumed that comment referred more to her being trained and forced to murder people at a young age, but the conversation could have been articulated more clearly. Given the envy she seemed to have for Clint's family, it's possible she felt broken, or monstrously disfigured. Or maybe it was just another way to relate to Banner. Given his socio-political track record, it's absurd to think Whedon believes that barren/sterilized women are monsters, but disappointing that he didn't consider how that conversation might come across.