Michael Offutt's Blog, page 20

The bizarre and angry culture war of Dungeons & Dragons is in a meltdown over the new Open Game License.

There is a bizarre and angry culture war going on in the Dungeons & Dragons community. Those who prefer old school Dungeons & Dragons are profoundly conservative and libertarian (it's weird that politics can be so easily seen but there it is). Some are as right wing as you can get, making the likes of Sean Hannity look like Obama by comparison. With a population base that plays D&D equal to about 55 million, I think of these folks as a hundred thousand or maybe a couple hundred thousand of that total. So, I think they are a small group. But they are the storm the capital on January 6th types, and they are very vocal, abusive, and the "don't tread on me" crowd.

The things that these conservatives love about D&D is the exhilaration of an open world. They prefer inherent uncontrolled chaos, spontaneity, and vast opportunity in a sandbox-styled campaign. They think this is exciting because anything could happen. Your character could get killed in the first encounter or eventually wind up as a king. They want things to be difficult for the characters, but the people running these games who stress that these difficult conditions are the proper way to game...are themselves extremely lazy storytellers.

Many of them call an hour of prep time as sufficient. They don't invest in props or models. They don't spend a lot of time reading modules or other source materials so that they can make their worlds more interesting. They basically just "mail it in." When running games, they don't give out magic items and are extremely vigilant regarding any kind of power creep because they want to be able to just pick up a game and prep in five minutes. They shut down ideas, actively work against players, and ignore rules to substitute their own that almost always castrates a character class even further on what it can do.

While running a game, the monsters they use to challenge players will be difficult if not impossible to defeat, which (in their minds) makes the experience more realistic because the stakes will be your character's life. In their worlds men have toxic masculinity traits galore, women are love interests, and there are no queer characters and anthromorphized animals (no furries!). It is a strange thing to watch when these people meltdown online because they can't find players. It's like watching the business owners complain that "No one wants to work," when these businesses are offering shitty jobs with low pay and no benefits. They should say, "No one wants to be exploited anymore. Damn, I miss the past when I could exploit people whenever I wanted." But yeah...times have changed. People have wised up. And we are all paying the price for that with inflation and scarcity. I suppose what I'm saying is that it isn't easy to make a world where everyone is respected and cared for, but its worth it. It's super easy to make a world where a few get all the goods and everyone else exists in misery. A lot of humans like the easy way out.

By contrast, those who play newer RPG's tend to be liberals. They want inclusion, tons of choices, things decided ahead of time, equitable, balanced, and fair encounters. And they want sustainable progression and a more predictable world to play in. The DM's for these games tend to put in a lot of work, carefully building worlds that make sense, and accounting for power creep by adjusting and tweaking encounters so that they challenge but do not crush players. It's kind of a "Wizard of Oz" trick in that there are smoke and mirrors in play. The DM knows that the characters are supposed to win. Their job is just to make it so that it isn't obvious that they are winning. But yeah...the deck is stacked in the player's favor, and everyone then has a good time. These people, who number in the millions and who are fans of the game, get shouted down a lot by the angry and very vocal conservative players who seem to be getting more filled with rage at what the parent company, Wizards of the Coast, does every day.

Recently, WOTC announced a big change in the way they deal with third party content using the "Open Game License" that has been pretty much taken for granted for more than twenty years. There are a lot of players who escaped the drudgery of the brutal capitalism they adore to put themselves in a position where they charge for content. But they have no empathy for those who still have to work in drudgery rather than doing something that they love. These "content creators" say to those others, "Hey! Adapt or die! I adapted! If you want something you gotta stop being a snowflake and just go out and put in the hard work like I did." But the thing is...they didn't really do hard work.

What they did was founded small corporations that churn out endless amounts of third party content. Many of you reading this blog are writers, and writers these days (especially self-publishing ones) number in the millions. Creativity is cheap y'all. It is not a precious resource. Now, as a consumer of some of this third party content, what I do choose to buy is well thought out and has good production values. But all of it is still just a money grab from the Dungeons & Dragons nerd community. Kickstarters have exploded to the point that it is getting harder and harder for new people to make any money, because the third party creators have flooded the landscape trying to make a buck.

Some of the more successful ones generate hundreds of thousands (or millions) in profits. All of these bootstrapping, entrepreneurial types are now on notice as WOTC is going to demand tribute from anything over $75,000 a year, and there are draconian rules that will allow them to claim as their own any content you create that uses their parent game system. It's all meant to secure their intellectual property, but the "content creators" and by and large their libertarian supporters who yell "don't tread on me" are (in a word) furious. And it has gotten so bad that I've had to dump several Facebook groups that (as far as I knew) existed to connect people and allow them to find players for local tabletop games. These have now all been inundated by YouTube posts saying WOTC is a money-grubbing evil monster, that D&D is being destroyed, and going so far as to say that everyone who plays is under threat. I've been shaking my head, saying, "This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen."

For years, these people have (by and large) been jealous and bitter of WOTC's success in the explosion of popularity in Dungeons & Dragons. They are stern gatekeepers as well. They wanted people to play their old, ruthless, uninteresting games with no diversity and celebrating the white male, and they called anyone who didn't want to play like that a "snowflake." Many (for lack of finding anyone who wanted to play their increasingly out of touch games) switched to the fifth edition only to proceed to lambast, strike out rules, and criticize the ruleset completely in an attempt at the old "bait and switch." The thing is, new players don't like to have their free time being abused by another human being, which is how a lot of old school D&D tends to be.

They also promote hysteria in the same manner as conservative talk radio promotes hysteria by floating conspiracy theories and by making mountains out of molehills. As a longtime player, I've never been more aware than I am now at the stark differences between how conservatives and liberals define what "fun" is and how they prioritize what is important and what isn't important. I don't actually know where it will all end up. What I do know is that the Open Game License in any iteration is a benign thing to people who just enjoy playing the game, and that the outsized cries of anguish are from people who are making money at D&D content, which is just plain weird. I get that community is important. But trying to monetize a hobby is some sketchy crap to pull, and I think that maybe if you are that kind of person, you should try working like the rest of us in drudgery and the capitalist system that you voted for and created. It's hard for me to shed any tears for any corporation or group that thinks that they had a right to build upon Wizards of the Coast's intellectual property without paying them their pound of flesh.

So anyway, that's what's been going on in the Dungeons & Dragons community. I'm interested to see how it all ends up. I enjoy the game a lot and I always have. I think the game will be better if  many of these "content creators" just move along and develop their own systems. If they choose to do this, then good for them. I'm just getting tired of the social media posts that are everywhere in the groups I'm in declaring, "I'm going my own way because I've been stabbed in the back for the last time by Wizards of the Coast." I'm like, "Please do and don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out." However, if I like what they make, I just might buy a copy and start playing their game. I think that will be healthier for everyone, and maybe my Facebook groups for "finding a group" can return to normal instead of constant demands to sign "this petition or else!"

If only we lived in a world where people could just admit freely that there are only so many good ideas, and that if you are a corporation that comes up with the "good idea" that it would be okay to eliminate your obscene profit in said idea (we'd all have to settle on some threshold that would make you rich but not obscenely rich as a reward) and let everyone have a piece of that pie forever after. So yeah...socialism. Expect anything else from this democrat? But I know we don't live in that world, because people are still gaslighting themselves into thinking that there are infinite good ideas and that if you can't come up with one, then you are stupid and deserving of your failure. This is categorically untrue, but whatever. All of these "content creators" who go off and design their own game are about to find that out, as many of their companies fail to generate the profits necessary to sustain their business.

On Wednesday of next week, I want to talk about Netflix's Locke & Key. See you then.

I've been watching a lot of episodes of Mobile Suit Gundam and I have thoughts to share about the experience.

I've been watching Mobile Suit: Gundam and consuming its huge and sprawling storyline with friends who are fans of the cartoons. We started with the most popular and dominant of the various Gundam storylines where it seems the bulk of the franchise seems to rest. For those who don't know much about Gundam it begins in a timeline called "The Universal Century." This is defined by the rise of a political force on Earth called "Earth Federation" that happens in a timeline where people who live on Earth have been in space for quite a long time. They've got colonies inside colossal cylinders that use spin gravity, and the inside of these enormous space colonies are so huge that they support cities, an atmosphere, and things like farming and fishing. It's basically indistinguishable from Earth except you can see the subtle curve of these colonies on the horizon (think of Larry Niven's Ring World and you're getting close to what I mean). But yeah, you've got roads, streets, skyscrapers and you can drive a car down a road just like you would on Earth.

The most notable thing about the Universal Century then is the conflict that Earth Federation has with the Principality of Zeon. These are people who live on space colonies that are pretty far out from Earth, and they are colonial secessionists who take a lot of their political cues from fascism and Nazi-ism (specifically) as seen on earth in the first half of the twentieth century. The head of the Principality of Zeon is a powerful (and fascist) Zabi family, and the story that follows is called "The One Year War" in which huge, mechanized infantry branded as "Mobile Suits" begin to dominate everything. And you see Zeon deal blow after blow to Earth and to their own people who are oftentimes treated with callous disregard.

In one part of the story, Zeon gases an entire space colony probably a little smaller than the state of Rhode Island and then drops that on Australia, which leaves a crater that looks like its 300 miles wide. I joke with my friends that I think all of the gay people were in Sydney at the time partying because Gundam as a story has very little diversity at least in its early iterations. Everyone is straight and white and pretty sold on the patriarchy as the way things need to be. There are some attempts to create strong female characters, but they usually either end up sacrificing their lives so that a male can live, or they end up as love interests for a male or as a vehicle for a male to "bear heirs" that we may see in other tellings of the story. Additionally, all of the characters who matter and get the most screen time are teenagers (the bulk of which are teenaged boys) which is probably the target audience for the story.

Interjected into all of this is the concept of a "Newtype," which is essentially this story's "superhuman." Just like in X-Men and other comic books, the "Newtype" represents the natural evolution of space-living humans that develop psychic abilities. These "abilities" make them excellent at the infantry warfare. Essentially, no one but the most talented crop of Gundam pilots even has a chance against a "Newtype." And the psychic abilities are probably a kind of proxy deus-ex-machina for whatever else they may need in order to forge more stories with these giant machines, and the various struggles of humans in a world devastated by war and fascist governments. In fact, I'd say Mobile Suit: Gundam's world-building mostly concerns itself with being a longstanding critique of capital combined with a military industrial complex that is out of control. Amidst this madness and death, you sprinkle a bunch of blond and blue-eyed characters everywhere and give us young male protagonists with muscly arms and slender builds. There's a joke online that says, "The Japanese know what we want" in reference to these prettily drawn and obvious "western" characters.

I'd also like to say that, for a cartoon, the franchise has plenty of moments of shocking violence. It ranges from the amputation of limbs to kids watching their parents die in front of them to nuclear explosions that wipe out entire facilities of people. There are scenes where a person will knock others (who are trying to get away and save themselves from said nuclear explosion) off ladders and staircases, acting in the most selfish of ways, screaming "Only the strong will survive!" And the consequences that characters oftentimes face for the choices they make are followed through (for the most part) with excruciating detail.

My journey through the Gundam backlog is progressing nicely. One of the friends I watch with is gifted with a good memory and has an almost uncanny ability to recognize drawn faces immediately and then memorize the name of that character even though the spelling of the names are oftentimes divorced completely from their pronunciation. This adds a second layer of difficult for me, so I'm oftentimes confused when a character bites it on screen, wondering which of the characters had just been killed. But the friend soon clarifies, and that makes it easier to watch these episodes. However, it is not lost on me that these "cartoons" were probably watched by a lot of kids in Japan. Their entertainment was quite different than mine (think Flintstones and Space Ghost), and I'm wondering why there was such a huge cultural divide.

 

Avatar: The Way of Water is an incredible film

Over the holidays, James Cameron released Avatar: The Way of Water in theaters. I really loved the first Avatar, so I was excited to see it despite the trolls online that seemed to want it to fail (I'll never understand that mindset). I took a bunch of friends with me on opening night, and we had seats at the IMAX theater here in Sandy, Utah (a suburb of Salt Lake City). In just a few short words, the film was a stunning sequel, and I honestly want to see it again though I've yet to find the time to do so. I also want to say a few things about it that I don't think are spoilers.

I knew going into this movie that James Cameron was going to film the thing in 48 frames per second. When filmmakers decide to do this, it creates a kind of hyper-realistic effect on the screen. Many people think of it as a kind of "uncanny valley" where everything is perhaps too clear and for some reason, doesn't look right. This is because we are used to seeing films that do not have this built in resolution even though we float through our lives by looking at things in this kind of clarity. When we see it in a film, it kind of jerks us out of the moment.

So, I was expecting to maybe not like the film in places because it might look "too good." However, James Cameron performed a trick that I'd never seen before. He combined the latest in 3D technology with the 48 frames per second, and the combination of those two things was absolutely magical. I found myself suddenly inside the film. There was a submarine sequence that was underwater, and I'm telling you, I thought I was inside that submarine. In another scene, a character races to the edge of a cliff, and I literally grabbed my armrests because I thought I was going over. I've never done this in a movie before.

This week marks a threshold for the film in which it has become profitable a little less than its one month anniversary. That just blows my mind that something like what Cameron has done could actually make money (it needed to basically make 1.7 billion dollars). This isn't too strange nowadays though, as (I guess) there are now fifty movies that have made over a billion. So if you don't make the billion dollar club, you're kind of a loser where movie box office receipts are. I do wonder if Avatar: The Way of Water will topple the original Avatar and become the highest grossing film of all time. But none of that matters. I enjoy the story and the "experience" of seeing these films in big theaters equipped with the latest technology. It's worth the price of admission and then some. And I'm glad that the whole saga is going to be coming out in the years to come. There is no question though that James Cameron is the most powerful director of films that has ever lived. 

Artificial Intelligence could be assistive technology and that may disrupt everything.

In the news cycle lately, there has been a lot of discussion surrounding A.I. generated art and writing. I myself have played around with "Stable Diffusion," which is one of the several computer-powered programs out there wherein a user can plug in a variety of different criteria and get an image generated for you within minutes. The same kind of input can be used to generate written materials and reports. The New York Times recently examined one such thing from OpenAI called ChatGPT, and it said that it was "inspiring awe and fear." Here's another quote from the same article: "ChatGPT is quite simply the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public." Here's one example of its power that was placed online for others to examine:

And ChatGPT isn't even OpenAI's best A.I. model. However, people are already saying that it is going to have an impact on society as big as the invention of the iPhone or as big as Google.
So what does this mean for writers and writing? Well, dare I say that we contemplate a future where nobody needs to be a good writer because A.I. can write whatever it is you're trying to write for you, and write it better? I graduated a long time ago in 1994, but I look at this and see that my educational experience from college has been rendered obsolete. I feel sorry for anyone that has graduated much closer to 2023 with similar degrees as mine.
All the papers that I wrote from scratch can now more easily be written by A.I. And that speaks to my next point: education is going to be immensely affected by this new technology. My co-worker's son used ChatGPT to write an essay for his college class, and the professor had no clue that he hadn't written it. He received a "B" grade for it. And he literally did no work other than feed a prompt into a computer and then went on to play video games with his remaining time. Fun stuff, right? There's also no way to effectively stop people from using this technology. Why? Because in the end, it's just another kind of assistive technology.
You may ask, what is assistive technology? Well, it is technology that helps people with disabilities to overcome obstacles that may prevent them from functioning like an able-bodied individual. But I will tell you from experience, practically everything qualifies as a disability nowadays, and accommodations are everywhere. Think you have trouble doing math? Well, you may have a math disability and therefore you get to use a computer program that will calculate things for you so that you don't have to. See where this is going? That kind of thing is called an "accommodation."
Here's another example: you have difficulty writing and say it is because of a traumatic brain injury due to playing football in high school? ChatGPT could be an "accommodation" that helps you write the essay that you could have written if it wasn't for that injury. With disability, it is rare to actually question whether a person would have had the ability to do a thing if the disability were removed. It is usually assumed that they could. So with the rise of these kinds of things that could be construed as "cheating," it may become important for people to be evaluated on knowledge, skills, and abilities that they might normally possess in order to determine if the use of an artificial intelligence is warranted.
Imagine having that discussion and what it would look like. Awkward doesn't even describe it, and "illegal" comes to mind with regard to rating other human beings. You sit before a committee that decides that (even without your learning disability) you would never have been good at math or writing. They decide that this was your "natural" state and thus, you don't qualify to use an artificial intelligence cheat bot as assistive technology because they want to see what you could normally do without it. Yet, the next person does get to use it and comes off as more professional, which then looks a lot like discrimination. Ugh...what a can of worms. And I don't think there's going to be a solution unless we (as a society) are willing to ask some very uncomfortable and awkward questions and face some awful truths: not all people are created equal, and those of us who got the short end of the stick should not be allowed to use artificial intelligence and computers to even the odds. Otherwise, education, talent, and certifications will start to lose their value in many white collar applications.
Contemplating all of this makes me want to look to the future and imagine how this will all unfold. There's this narrative that I've seen where people say robots and artificial intelligence will liberate us all from the drudgery of jobs and that we will all have lives wherein we can focus on human connection in a liberal utopia. As much as I'd want this to happen, and to be a member of a society wherein we have enough time to pursue fun things and build connections and travel, I think there is a more likely (and very dark) scenario. See...things like housing and food cost money. We all know this, and the prices on those two things alone are soaring along with everything else.
I think what the future looks like is more likely to be this: artificial intelligence makes it so that companies can get by on very few workers, making them richer than they are even now (and corporations are going gangbusters by any measure). None of this wealth will be shared. And prices will continue to go up. People will have no source of income except the trickle that comes from government disability checks and social security. This future is one where 70% of people are just poor, and people die all the time from poverty. And then there's this cream of the crop of people who live incredible lives, exploiting, over consuming, harassing, and doing whatever they want because they have all the money. I think that this is the future that artificial intelligence will unlock for us. It isn't going to be a Skynet or a Wargames scenario. It's going to be a scenario where good paying jobs are super rare, and only a few people get them while everyone else must be a servant and work until they die and honestly...nobody cares. As a person who is childless and with no stakes in the game, I'm fascinated to see if this comes true. I'm also fascinated to see if society finds any way to stop this from coming true, and if so, what exactly that looks like. Maybe it looks like telling people who could greatly benefit from using a tool that, "You can't use this, because it is bad for society as a whole! I don't care that you suffer. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one!" But how many people are capable of being that mean? We live in a society where (for many) their own virtue is the most sacred of things. If you do have children though, I think you should be a little worried as to how the next generation is going to pay the bills. People may need to discard virtue in order to embrace survival.
But, what do I know? I'm just a guy trying to understand how things work. At 51, I'm becoming more confused every single day when trying to answer that question.

The 2023 IWSG sets up the new year by asking what word you'd use to define yourself going forward.

Happy New Year everyone. Whether we want it or not, 2023 is here. I'm sure that this year will be full of challenges just like 2022 was. I (for one) hope that there are a few less financial challenges that arise this year, but I guess we will see. Being the first Wednesday of the new year, it is also time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group post. But before I get around to answering the question, here's a little bit about what the IWSG is, and how you can join it too in order to network with other writers. Disclaimer: I borrowed most of this from the IWSG sign-up page. 

What is the purpose of the IWSG?: Simple! It's to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! On a personal note, it's weird that we are in 2023, and many of us are still concerned with appearing foolish and weak. Maybe this is part of the human condition that we just cannot escape. Or, we have all just grown used to a world which holds no empathy for anyone.

When does the IWSG army post?: We do so on the first Wednesday of every month. This is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. To participate, you post your thoughts on your own blog. You talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. You discuss your struggles and triumphs. You offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. You visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting.
When you participate, be sure to link to their sign-up page located HERE , and display their badge in your post. And please be sure your avatar links back to your blog! Otherwise, when you leave a comment, people can't find you to comment back.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the January 4 posting of the IWSG are Jemima Pett, Debs Carey, Kim Lajevardi, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, and T. Powell Coltrin!

Now, about that question I mentioned above that I was answering....
Every month, the IWSG organizers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say. But always remember that the question is optional!

Now here is the January 4th question - Do you have a word of the year? Is there one word that sums up what you need to work on or change in the coming year? For instance, in 2021 my word of the year was Finish. I was determined to finished my first draft by the end of the year. In 2022, my word of the year is Ease. I want to get my process, systems, finances, and routines where life flows with ease and less chaos. What is your word for 2023? Why?
For 2023, my word of the year is going to be "No." I'm going to say "no" to a lot of things. "No," is going to be my new boundary word. I'm not going to get roped into time-eating and exhausting activities demanded by family or acquaintances or work. I'm going to say "no" to inflation eating away at my lifestyle by finding new ways to increase my income. I'm going to say "no" to aging by lifting weights and getting stronger. I'm going to say "no" to things I have always done that make me miserable and reclaim the time I spent doing those things and repurpose that time toward pursuing joy. I'm going to say "no" to people who are always complaining and want someone to listen to their complaints. I'm going to say "no" to gaslighting, and "no" to manipulators. I'm going to say "no" to Covid-deniers and vaccine deniers and the expectations they heap upon others. I'm going to say "no" to go fund me's and others begging or asking for money. And honestly, I think things are gonna be okay, even with all of those "no's" that are coming from me. I think the word "no" is underappreciated, and a bunch of us would be in a better place if we said it more often. Thanks for visiting.

In the November IWSG I contemplate why I have never participated in NaNo. And also Happy Holidays to you 2022.

Hello everyone, and happy NaNo. This is my last post for 2022, so I figured I'd make it for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. I shall be back in the new year (2023) for the Insecure Writer's Support Group post in January. If I don't hear from any of you between now and then, have a Happy Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

Here's a bit about the Insecure Writer's Support Group copied (and modified some) directly from the sign-up page, which you can find AT THIS LINK.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Be sure to link to the IWSG page and display the badge in your post. And please be sure your avatar links back to your blog! Otherwise, when you leave a comment, people can't find you to comment back.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

The IWSG Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and their hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the November 2nd posting of the IWSG are Diedre Knight, Douglas Thomas Greening, Nick Wilford, and Diane Burton!

Every month, the IWSG announces a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.

Remember, the question is optional!

November 2nd question - November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

I have never participated. When I first heard of NaNo WriMo I think I didn't participate, because I didn't have trouble writing a book, which is what I think its purpose is. If anything, my books ended up being too large. On many nights, I could write like 4,000 words easy, and it wasn't hard to come back to those words the very next day. In-between then and now, something has changed. I'm not sure that I'm a novel writer anymore. I don't feel the compulsion to write stories or to want to see things I've published being read or reviewed. Rather, I really enjoy reading what other people write. I don't know if it's just a phase, or if I've become more of a discerning audience for books to find homes with.

This isn't to say that I'm not a writer. I very much enjoy writing on my blog. And I do a lot of writing for work, but it's more the technical writing stuff. And I'm currently writing a module for Dungeons & Dragons to test out on my group (we play on most Saturdays at my house). D&D is kind of a "living" novel. You get instant "live" feedback on your ideas and can see how they land with people whose characters are part of the story. My current group has these characters: a rabbit person (think a kind of fey), a tortle (a tortoise that has many human traits), a devilish character with horns and a tail, someone playing a human male slut, a knight in shiny armor, and an assassin. It's all quite interesting, and they are very much enjoying playing these characters in the world I've created for them, and they do many funny and interesting things. A lot of it is completely unexpected.

Of course, I make no money at the above, and money is always nice. There's part of me that wonders if maybe I'm not one of those writers that embraces the monetization of something they enjoy. This clearly works out for some people, and I applaud those people wholeheartedly. But I think I may like crafting stories without the pressure of trying to market them. I feel like there's a lot more freedom there. Writing is also a pretty lonely experience. When you are at your computer, tapping at keys, you are just by yourself. Sure, your mind is very distracted with what you are doing, essentially immersing yourself in your imagination. But the real-world matters, and how we interact with the real world defines the minutes and hours of our lives. Even though I'm not making any money writing, I'm making lots of friends by running and participating in Dungeons & Dragons games. So, I get to scratch that itch and have people over for a fun time, and this oftentimes spills over to other days in which we get together for other things. Being social is fun, and having friends is fun, especially when they are your unique kind of weird.

Anyway, I hope that is a good answer to this month's question. As I said above, I will be skipping the December IWSG post, but I will be back for January's. See you all then.

P.S. Watch AMC's Interview with the Vampire. I need a 3rd season of this show like I need air to breathe. It's so good.

Russia's war with Ukraine is a weird and unsettling mess to watch.

The war in Ukraine that Russia started has been a really strange one to watch as it plays out on the world stage, and through incredibly well-informed media that is able to throw light on things. Moves that Russia has made would have been seen as clever or brilliant in another era. Now, they just look comically stupid and the acts of a deranged madman.

The latest of these "acts" is a ploy by Moscow to create a pretext for escalating the war in Ukraine by detonating a dirty bomb within Ukraine's territory and then saying that Kyiv did it and not Russia. This is what the Secretary of State calls a "false flag" operation, meaning it is done to create a pretext for intervention. In case you don't know what a dirty bomb is, it's a phrase that describes a conventional explosive wrapped with radiological waste.

Other such "false flags" that Russia created involved Ukraine supposedly planning to use a chemical weapon. Want a second example? American Intelligence uncovered a plot by Russia to hire crisis actors to create a false pretext for invasion. Like seriously...Russia was going to hire actors to run through a script so that they could appear as heroes coming to the rescue. This would be laughable if it wasn't real. And it's real.

The firehose of propaganda coming from Russia is a strange and unsettling phenomenon. In the past, it has worked really well. And we see it work really well in our own country as (apparently) it is easy to dupe people if they have a reason/grudge to buy into a false narrative anyway. For example, they've said that U.S. mercenaries were preparing biochemical weapons in Ukraine. A little bit later, the propogandists made up an explosion that supposedly happened in Donetsk in early February. And the list goes on and on. All of these things are designed to get Russian citizens and its allies on-board with the land grab that Putin is trying to complete. It's so weird, especially when you consider how big Russia is already.

One of the most unsettling things about all of this (for me) has been the realization that what we all know comes from either direct-hand observation or by believing other people. And by and large, the history of the world has been shaped by believing other people as direct-hand observation simply hasn't been possible until the modern era with cameras nearly everywhere. Cameras have been a godsend and being able to check the photographic record or the satellite imagery against what a person says has (time and again) exposed just how duplicitous, petty, and awful many people are. And history is always written by the victors, and it is clearly biased.

George R.R. Martin shows us this in HBO's spinoff of House of the Dragon. This is a story about the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. But more than that, Martin wrote it to show through a fictional lens what a historical civil war between two women might look like if it were written within the context of a patriarchy and the authors were men. And this is exactly what we are seeing in House of the Dragon. It's that last thing that really fascinates me about the series, and the two women (the two "Queens") devolve into petty hatreds and histrionics over their particular desires to rule the Iron Throne (or to install their heirs on it). Despite the comicality of imagining this as a fantastic tale, how is it any different than what we see in real life? It isn't...not one bit. And that is how wars start and hundreds (if not thousands or even millions) of people die as a result.

That is an incredible thing to observe and then realize about humanity. We are all living in the most interesting of times.

Dwayne Johnson is here to save the DC Universe with Black Adam

There are spoilers in this post for Black Adam. You have been warned.

It's taken quite a while for us to get a Black Adam movie. I honestly don't know if we needed one. After having watched it on Friday, I still don't know if we needed one. However, that's a uniquely short-sighted thought on my part as I don't "need" any comic book movie really. I enjoy them for entertainment. And viewed through that lens, Black Adam was a lot of fun. Also (disclaimer) I'm a fan of Dwayne Johnson. I follow him on Instagram, and I pretty much watch anything he does. So, this is a biased commentary.

Look...Dwayne Johnson is not a great actor. But I like watching him punch people as long as I know that he actually isn't really hurting anyone. He really could if he wanted to, because he's that strong. But it's so much funner to see him playing a character like Black Adam where he can do so with impunity, and we can just kind of enjoy him destroying things. The city that served as the location of the film took an absolute beating (for example). Personally, I'd hate that if I were living in this city in real life. But because it was obviously a movie set with CGI, it was really fun to watch statues topple, get hurled around, buildings explode, and mountains cave-in. Oh yeah...and bad guys were hurled miles to just go splat at the end. It was (overall) probably terrifying for anyone that was in Black Adam's way. The only thing I missed was Zack Snyder's touch. Snyder has a way of just making superheroes seem like they punch harder. I don't know what exactly Zack does, but you see it in the superhero movies he does direct. Superheroes just look awesome.

Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a., "The Rock", is also a bit dour in this production. His effervescent charisma and sense of humor is toned down. I imagine that being an "origin story," we will see more of the Rock at his "Rockiest" in the future, which you should read as funny and likeable. Another thing I enjoyed about Black Adam was that we saw a whole fresh slate of superheroes, and we saw a new web of relationships develop. It was kind of fascinating that the Justice Society are bad guys for the first half of the film, trying to reign in Black Adam's murder-lust, even though all the people he was killing were really bad men. They even get called out for not caring about oppression until they get ordered there to take out a superpowered guy who is actually doing something about the criminal mercenaries occupying their country. For all that Hawkman talks about due process, he's also there to capture Black Adam and shove him into a dark site prison with no trial or due process (and get paid generously for it, judging by the size of his mansion estate).

I do like that they cast Hawkman with a black man. This seems very much to be in line with his Egyptian origins. What I don't quite understand is why they turned this black man into the greatest maximum-aggressive AMURICAN-imperialist you can imagine. But...yeah, that's what they did. 

Dr. Fate is a superhero I've been wanting to see on-screen for decades. At first, I was dubious about Pierce Brosnan's casting. Even though it appears to be a one-off and the helmet will end up on a much younger person, Pierce Brosnan brought all the silver fox charm to the yard. As well, the effects they used to show Cyclone's powers was pure beauty. It was wonderfully made, like a church window turned alive, yet it didn't take away from her fierceness.

I would watch this movie again. It was big, dumb, fun. And there's a great cameo at the end with Henry Cavill's Superman returning for the role that I enjoyed a lot. I guess Dwayne Johnson is here to save the DC Universe. It's a good time for it too, because I'm getting Marvel fatigue if I'm being honest. She-Hulk was the worst in a downhill slope that started several years ago post "Endgame." I think the DC Universe has nowhere to go but up, up, up.

House of the Dragon is called adult epic fantasy because it dares to show humans with realistic behaviors.

The Targaryen Civil War coulda/shoulda ended here by burning the usurping cabal alive.
As House of the Dragon heads into its season finale, I want to say that although I don't think it is as great a series as Game of Thrones was, its been quite successful in blazing its own story. It would be simple to say that it's just a retread of "dynastic succession." I suppose you could say that this was (afterall) the crux of what Game of Thrones was all about: powerful people squabbling over who gets to be the one in charge and with unlimited power. We'd all like to think that someone with no checks on their power is benevolent. But more often than not, this isn't the case. They are a tyrant that rules with an iron fist, and people who are subjected to that power live horrible miserable lives.

The thing that I've enjoyed so much about House of the Dragon is that it's so real. Yes, there are dragons, which cannot and do not exist in our shared reality. And yes, there is magic too. But what is so real about the show is that it never shies away from how gross human beings really are. We are a miserable species, and the sanitized version that we used to get in the United States has convinced many of us otherwise through media filled with Disney musicals and to the lack of ever seeing a dead body unless it has been prepared by funeral homes for public viewing. In the United States, religion has forced and shamed sexuality into backrooms, public nudity including breastfeeding is shunned, and for the most part we pretend that certain "genitalia" simply do not exist. It's a thing we don't ever talk about. It's all clean, sanitized, tucked away, and there are messages on repeat saying, "no one wants to see your bits...so tuck them away." Shame, shame, shame.

House of the Dragon doesn't do any of this, and it owns its truth of just how gross, disgusting, and horrible people are not only to themselves but to one another. For much of the history of mankind, this is how humans have been (and they still are but no one wants to call people out on it for fear of being called hateful). And I've learned that a tiger does not change its stripes, even if it is plucked and trimmed and cleaned up like a Kardashian on parade. That's just a smoke and mirrors show, and one that psychologically convinces people to put others up on pedestals when we really shouldn't be doing that as much as humans do. Putting people onto pedestals makes them into something we look up to. It makes them into something to be admired.

However, our society could be far more enduring if we admired things that helped large groups of people to flourish instead of elevating undeserving people onto pedestals. What would the world be like if we could banish ideas that a person is "out of your league" and replaced them with "you should be grateful that someone likes you?" A lot of culture, particularly white culture, teaches that we need to find our best selves so that we can rise to the top. It's all about self empowerment. By contrast, indigenous people have a culture that emphasizes finding the best traits in yourself that will best serve your people and help your tribe flourish. It's an entirely different way of looking at things, and it explains a lot about why capitalism, particularly the brand we have in America, is so brutal. It also explains why people I know in real life really struggle with feeling gratitude toward anything. In my personal friend group, people don't like to thank others, because it makes them feel "lesser." It makes them feel like something has been done for them that they could not do themselves. That's a huge problem when your pride gets in the way of letting another person know you appreciate them. But that is America today.

So House of the Dragon is unapologetically grotesque, and I love it. But it isn't off-the-deep-end grotesque. Nope, it just shows people as how they really are. There's a scene in the penultimate episode where Queen Alicent, in order to get information she needs from Larys (the spymaster), must allow him to jerk off while he stares at her naked feet. It's so gross and so undignified. Surely, foot fetishes are uncommon, and this couldn't be a real world scenario. Think again. This kind of fetish is wildly common, and there are all sorts of people you interact with everyday who see sweaty, even stinky feet as a sexual object. Did you know that part of ancient wine-making involved people mashing grapes in vats with their bare feet? What made the wine ferment was the yeast between the toes, which is probably the grossest fact I know from reading articles about wine-making.

What about the multiple scenes of women dying in childbirth? Yep, we've just sanitized it all and thanks to advances in medicine, we've managed to make it possible for women to increasingly survive childbirth. But sex, childbirth, and bodies have always been grotesque, no matter how you size them up and clean them up and try to tighten this and prune off that. And incest is more common than many people want to admit (surely this doesn't happen in my neighborhood!), and people hating and plotting against other family members, and backstabbing at jobs and the list goes on and on. Ask any lawyer about how families tear apart when parents die and siblings argue over money. What about parents that end up having children that abuse them? This happens a lot too. 

People are awful, and they are gross, and it's wonderful. And it's not just poor ugly people. The good looking ones are awful and gross and mean too. They are amoral. I think that's the real beauty of George R.R. Martin. He knows all of this, and he crafts his stories around humans with whom we all can relate. It's anti-Instagram and anti-Tik-Tok. House of the Dragon throws mud and other body fluids on all carefully curated media posts to make cute girls and cute boys look like they are perfect dolls who don't fart, go to the bathroom, or have grotesque desires. It's like George's baseline is a garbage heap, which is how it should be. For example, a man that abuses his daughter with "benign neglect" rather than the other kinds of things at his disposal is actually a good person. Murder is the most horrific crime someone can commit by law. Yet, I'm beginning to think that everyone is capable of it given the right conditions and circumstances. Some will always be better at it than others, just like any other skill. And there will always be "those people" who actually enjoy it. Why? Because humans are terrible, and somehow we've tried to convince ourselves that we aren't.

In the penultimate episode of House of the Dragon we saw Princess Rhaenys (The Queen that Never Was) sneak below the Dragonpit which is filled with people to celebrate Aegon's coronation. Aegon is Alicent's son, and he's a weasel of a person, immature, undeserving, and he will be a terrible king. He'll basically be a tyrant. He's also not the heir. But his mother and the other backstabbing usurpers want the throne for themselves, so they hastily crown him basically ensuring that the country will be plunged into a violent civil war. At Aegon's moment of triumph, she breaks through the concrete floor, scattering small folk and shocking the Greens (Alicent's faction) on the back of her enormous dragon Meleys. Meleys is a swift, ferocious dragon, and with one word, she could end the entire cabal before her and burn them all alive. I would have done this without a second thought. But Rhaenys doesn't for whatever reason, and I think she will live to regret that decision A LOT. Her decision to not do it is very human too. She's in the moment of her power, and chooses to take the high road, forgetting that her opponents will always take the low road, because that's what people do. She chooses not to be a cold-blooded killer, not to be a kingslayer and a kinslayer, and to not have the blood of her nephews and niece on her hands. I know from the story that what awaits Rhaenys is not the same courtesy. But whatever. High road versus low road. I will remember that Rhaenys (in the end) was a decent person, and there are a few of those around. Not everyone can be vile. But it's finding out which ones are vile and which ones are not that makes for a good story.

It's weird to me that all of the things I've talked about above make House of the Dragon "adult" epic fantasy. This is why Game of Thrones is "adult epic fantasy" as well. When we talk about J.R.R. Tolkien's work, the term "Children's Epic Fantasy" comes into play a lot. So that's how I recognize the differences between the two. One is written for adults and one is written for children. And then it gets doubly weird when you meet adults who are obsessed with Tolkien, and you realize that they're arguing over "children's books." However, I wish that the above stuff I've described, i.e., foot fetish scenes, people being gross, murder, incest, and all the things that humans actually do, wasn't considered "adult." Rather, I'd like them to be rebranded. I would say that this story has "real humans" in them, and the other story you are reading has "idealized fantasy humans who are as real as pink unicorns with sparkles." It could come from a desire to interact with adults who truly embrace adulthood, instead of meeting forty-year-olds who act like children and who are married and do crossfit and complain that "adulting is so haaarrrddd." Anyway, I'm looking forward to the season finale, and I'm glad that it's been renewed for a season two. The civil war is going to be awful to watch, but I will thoroughly enjoy watching all these characters perish in horrible ways.

Generation X and every generation to follow was lied to from the beginning: Scarcity is real in everything.

When my friend Meg couldn't find an eighteen pack of eggs in the grocery store on Sunday evening, I realized the truth of that moment: scarcity is very real. And it's in everything. It just wasn't that real in America until 2020. There was an illusion machine here, made from twigs of propaganda, and by a profit-driven healthcare industry that makes money when Americans are happy.

But 2022 scarcity is more than just an uncomfortable truth. It's more than just, "Mike can't find a pack of 18 eggs and must settle for something else." It was also a moment of personal empowerment, because I had an epiphany. It was a moment of validation, because it provided an answer to A LOT of troubling questions I've had about life when things happened to me (and others) that didn't make sense. So, this particular post is dedicated toward pointing out all of this scarcity and making a mockery of the many gaslighty idioms that fall from the lips of people who lack self awareness of their own privilege.

Let's start with Alaska. If you didn't know, Alaska called off (for the first time in history) the snow crab fishing season that such shows as Deadliest Catch have highlighted for cable viewers. Why did they do this? Because the snow crab population has absolutely cratered. It's down like 90%, and they are so panicked by it that they want to conserve what's left and take measures to help the population recover. And that means that fishermen are out of business. So why is this happening? Scarcity...that's why. There aren't enough snow crabs. Who knows? They may go extinct. But the capitalist idiom that could be useful in this situation would be for some smug a-hole to walk around and tell those fishermen, "You just need to work harder." It's the most tone deaf attitude, but hey...I've heard that stuff all my life.

The Mississippi River too is drying up really badly in places. It's so low that barges are having difficulty operating on the "Mighty Mississippi." Below are some pictures, and they aren't from "Chy-NA!" Imagine Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer playing in those puddles near the Memphis bridge. Why is this happening? Because fresh water is scarce, and now people are finally seeing that this scarcity is real and it's everywhere. Is it in Utah? Yep! The Great Salt Lake is now half its size, and you can physically walk to the islands that are in it without getting your feet wet. Is it in California? You betcha. Every year another portion of it burns up. As a result, good clean air from the outdoors is getting scarce too. But maybe some smug a-hole should suggest that we all rake the forest or take shorter showers. That'll fix it! It's not the world that is terrible, silly! It is you! You need to pull on those bootstraps!

There's a loneliness epidemic in the United States. I'm not making this up. Seriously. There are tons and tons of people that no one wants to be around, and I can't blame them. I bet if I asked them, "Would you like attention?" They'd say, "Yes, I would." And then I could reply, "Sorry, there's an attention scarcity right now in the United States." Have you heard that young men are in crisis mode? Have you heard that a lot of angry and disaffected men are becoming violent, because they cannot find consenting partners? I'm gonna take a stab and say there's a love scarcity too. But how is this possible when I've been told on more than one occasion by smug a-holes that "there is someone for everyone."

What about good paying jobs? Surely, there isn't a scarcity of good-paying jobs! Oh...but there is, and there's data to prove it. Not everyone can have a good-paying job. There is always going to be someone who is stuck with the low-paying terrible job. That's how capitalism works. So why don't we teach this? Why don't we tell kids, "Look...life is terrible and hard. I don't know how yours is going to go, but you could seriously die alone, broke as a joke, and with no food and water. Everything is scarce, and you need to be grateful for every win and to not crap on people, because life is about survival." But this isn't what we say. Instead I hear, "Oh baby, you deserve anything, and you can do anything. You're so smart. Don't worry about anything. It will all work out." But no it won't! That's a lie. There are plenty of examples of things "not working out!"

Surely there isn't scarcity in food. Oh wait. Yes, there is! There are people in our country who don't have enough food. But wait a minute...this is America...at least there's no scarcity in housing! Oh ding! Wrong again! In my own state, 76% of people can no longer afford a home. Why? Because the people who own homes don't want to sell them unless they pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the official reason (because no one wants to call their neighbor a greedy S.O.B. is that there is "more demand than supply," and "high interest rates" and blah blah blah). Scarcity in money, and scarcity in places for people to live.

I don't know how many times I was told growing up, and then in my twenties, and then in my thirties, and so on and so forth, "Mike...stop making excuses! You just need to work harder. People that work harder get the rewards!" This is a lie. It simply isn't true. Working harder only increases a random chance that something "good" might come of all that labor. But unless you are lucky, it will not overcome scarcity. Period. And living in denial that there is scarcity in literally EVERYTHING and that somehow all the things you failed at are YOUR FAULT BECAUSE...YOU LAZY is just a recipe for mental illness. Ironically, there is no scarcity in mental illness. We now have an abundance of that to go around in the United States.

Is there scarcity in quality medical care? You betcha. Is there scarcity in justice? Yup. Is there scarcity in people who can actually do quality work? Yes. Is there scarcity in good looks? Yes, otherwise a plastic surgery industry would not exist. Is there scarcity in intelligence? Yes, there is. But...wait...man, I thought "all men were created equal". Uh...I hate to tell you...but that is just a nice saying to make people feel better. There is scarcity. In. Everything.

It frustrates me that more people don't live in the present and live in the truth of what's really happening. Gaslighting people is a hideous thing to do, and it makes it harder for our society to address scarcity in all of its forms. But in the least, I'm getting a certain kind of validation from the calamities of the world, because I realize that most of the things I failed at were out of my control. I just didn't have the luck and privilege of making those things a reality. It would be so nice if those who do have the luck and privilege (to overcome various scarcities in all of their forms) expressed a little gratitude for just once, instead of being a smug jerk.

How amazing would that be for someone to say, "I'm truly blessed, and I was born with a thing that I take for granted that you literally can never have?" They could finish with, "I am so thankful for this, and I feel so sorry for you. It isn't fair, and life sucks." But I've literally never heard these words from anyone in my life.

That kind of self-awareness (it appears) must be pretty scarce too.