Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 31

…and then Pete Townsend says, “Can anybody play the drums?”

I was thinking about reinstalling Rock Band again recently, but I decided that, even though I really loved playing it back in the day, I am at a point in my life where I would rather spend that time actually learning an instrument, instead. I have played bass guitar and ukulele in the past. I also played guitar in the way that every lame college dude does, which means I never learned any theory, but I memorized some guitar tabs and chords, and sort of faked my way through a few songs for friends who were either too polite or embarrassed to tell me how bad I was.

I was sort of thinking that doing it as a game would be fun, so I gave Rocksmith guitar a try, but after about two hours of different game modes, it’s not for me. It was like all the frustration of Rock Band or Guitar hero, but without any of the fun of pretending that I was a rock star. I may plug in my old bass guitar (which is now a vintage instrument because I’m old) and try that mode, but for now, I’m going to try something different.

I have always wanted to learn to play the drums, and I was pretty good at the Rock Band drums when we played all the time, so I decided to pick up a small, inexpensive, student kit, and use YouTube videos to master the basics. While I was shopping around about a week ago, there was a shiny little kit on sale at woot, and it had more pieces and cost less than the three piece kit I was looking it, so I bought it. It was delivered today.

I’ve been putting it together, which is really fun, but murder on my old hands and knuckle joints, so I took a break to write this dumb post about the new experimental hobby thingy I’m doing: Is it possible for a 45 year-old dude like me to learn how to play the drums, using only the resources available online?

I intend to find out. I’ll document the process here.

who lives who dies who tells your story

The airplane shakes as violently as I have ever experienced in a flight, and I can hear the engines whine as the pilot cranks them up. I push down into my seat just a bit as we begin to climb. Two years ago, this kind of turbulence would have terrified me to the point of white hot panic, but I am calm. Ever since I got medical treatment for my depression and anxiety, I have been able to rationally accept things that I was once irrational about. I am able to react to things the way I imagine a normal person would (my doctor discourages me from saying “normal” in this context, because it makes me sound abnormal. He wants me to say “healthy” or “non-depressive”, but he’s not the boss of me). I know what’s happening: we are flying through the leading edge of a storm front that is on its way down the Pacific coast. The winds that are pushing and pulling that front are shaking the plane, so I imagine that I’m on a boat in heavy seas, or in a wagon on a rough dirt road.

We dip slightly, and my stomach goes weightless for half a second before we resume our climb. Anne grips my arm so tightly it hurts a little bit. I glance at her, and she frowns. She does not enjoy this. I close the book I haven’t been able to read, lean my head back, and shut my eyes…

I am in my office. My phone rings, and I see that it’s my friend, Mikey.

“Hey! I know you!” I say, “want to do some crime? Like, go get sushi and not pay?”

“Can you sit down?”

“Yeah, of course.”  In the four words he’s said, I can tell that Mikey has terrible — not just bad, but terrible — news. Mikey lives with MS, and I brace myself, expecting him to tell me something about his health.

“Wil,” he says, through a sob, “Stepto died.”

I fall into my chair like I’ve been hit by a car. My body goes cold. My arms and legs go numb.

“What?” I say. It’s a stupid thing to say, because I heard him clearly. I know that my friend is gone and is never coming back. Still, I hope that I misheard him, that this is a joke, that somehow I am misunderstanding him.

“He died earlier today,” Mikey says, crying. He tells me all the details that he knows, while I just say “Fuck!” with increasing anger and disbelief.

We talk for a few more minutes. I will not and do not remember what we talk about.

It is six weeks later. For six weeks, I have wanted to cry. I have needed to cry, but I can’t. It is six weeks later, and I’m a standing in the wings of the Triple Door Theater in Seattle, waiting to walk onto the stage and tell jokes, at my friend’s memorial service, because that’s what he wanted us to do when he died.

“I want to tell you about the time Stepto and I had cigars in the Caribbean,” I say, “I want to tell you about how he saved my Xbox for me, about how he made me laugh and how much I miss him in my life.” I think, but don’t say, that I want to talk about how sad and angry I am that Stepto successfully kept his alcoholism a secret from me, and from everyone who was closest to him, for the more than ten years we were friends. I want to talk about how angry I am that he got a second chance, when he survived a coma last year. I want to say a lot of swears, because he convinced himself and me that it wasn’t alcohol that put him into a coma, but some kind of genetic thing and a virus and something else that was a bunch of bullshit. But I am coming up on two years of an alcohol-free life, myself, and even though I’m not an alcoholic, and even though I don’t do any recovery programs, I do know that addiction is powerful and all consuming. I know that it’s incredibly easy to convince yourself that you’ve got it under control, and that the rationalizations and justifications come as easily as opening another bottle after adding an empty one to the lie. Huh. I was going to write “line”, but my fingers made the first typo I think I’ve ever made that was more apt than what I intended. I want to be angry, but I can’t be. Stepto was sick, and he couldn’t get well, so he died. But while he was here, he was a good friend, and a magnificent human being. The world is better because he was in it, and the sun is not as warm or as bright as it was, now that he is gone.

“I only have five minutes,” I say, “so I can’t tell you the story about how I had explosive diarrhea on the side of the road while the entire state of California drove past me, but I promise you that it was one of Stepto’s favorites.” But I tell some jokes. They feel awkward, and not all of them land. I end with a terrible pun that makes the audience laugh and boo and I know that it’s exactly what Stepto would have wanted, if he’d been there.

I walk off the stage and back into the dim light of the wings. Maybe now, I think, the tears will come. The wall of grieving emotions will give way. It will crack and crumble and I can sit right here while I cry it all out. I want to cry. I need to cry, but I can’t.

I go back to my seat in the theatre, and I enjoy the rest of the show that we are all doing in tribute to our friend, who left us far too young and for the worst reason.

When the show ends, Anne and I go back to our hotel with some friends, and we sit in the lobby for a few hours, way past our bedtime, catching up and hanging out. We hardly talk about Stepto at all, which feels right in the moment but feels somehow wrong, now, in retrospect. We order Chinese food, after midnight, like we would have when we were younger. While we wait for it to arrive, a meth’d out kid wanders in, shows us that he’s lost most of his teeth and broken his jaw, then does a series of acrobatic somersaults before he wanders off. It is surreal and hilarious and sad.

“He’s so young,” Anne says, sadly. She could be talking about Stepto, or the kid, who we will describe as “Drugs Man” in the retelling.

At almost three in the morning, we go upstairs and go to sleep for a few hours. We go to the airport, and our flight is unremarkable, until the turbulence begins.

Anne clutches my arm so tight it hurts. I glance at her and she frowns. She isn’t enjoying this. I close the book I haven’t been able to read, lean my head back, and shut my eyes.

“Why are we climbing?” She asks.

“It’s the storm,” I tell her, eyes still closed. “Probably trying to get above it,” I say. I am so calm, I don’t recognize myself.

I have been practicing meditation for a few months. I’m learning to clear my mind and let it drift. I’m learning how to step out of the world for a few minutes at a time, while I allow my mind to show me what it wants to show me.

I stop feeling the movement of the plane.

I see a blue door that gets bigger and bigger until it is all I can see. I am being drawn toward it, then through it.

A whale swims slowly through the space before me. We are inside a mottled eggshell, and I am falling gently toward a field of tall grass. Before I hit the ground, I right myself and begin to run. I run through the grass, as it parts in front of me.

I have become an eagle. I am soaring high over snow-capped mountains. I swoop down into the forest and fly among the trees. The air is cold and it tastes clean. I land in an aerie, and fold my wings close.

Everything is gone. I am in nothing but thick blackness. It is not just the absence of light, but the absence of anything.

The blackness turns into thick, softly oozing oil. A rainbow sheen appears on its surface and glimmers in the light that is not there. It flows and swirls and then it rises up, splashing around me. It consumes me and drowns me. I feel it fill my nose and mouth and lungs. It fills me completely until I become the oil. 

No. Wait. I am not oil. I am … nothing. I am now in a black void that I know is space. I look down and see the moon. I look up, and I see the earth. She is warm and inviting. And then she is gone.

There is only blackness, again the absence of all things. And Stepto is there. He looks at me and I know that he is at peace. He is calm and content. He was suffering before, and now he is not. I embrace him and he holds me tightly.

I begin to cry. He holds me more tightly as he turns into a black bear. He releases me and grabs a fish out of an invisible river. Then, he is gone. I miss him so much. I continue to cry.

I am soaring back toward the Earth. 

I fly over a desert and toward a cliff dwelling.

I open my eyes and discover that tears have been running down my cheeks, collecting in my beard, and falling onto my chest. The images I saw were profound, and though I don’t wish to dissect them, taken as a whole, I am comforted. I need to cry, and I did. The captain speaks over the public address. We have flown out of the turbulence, and are beginning our descent to the airport. I raise my seatback to the upright position, and prepare to land.

I miss my friend so much. I have a long road to walk without him. Stepto was in my life for ten years. It’s not enough.

thanks for listening.

I wrote this on my dumb Facebook yesterday:.

At least three blogs linked to my blog about the minifigs today. All three of the ones I saw essentially quoted the entire thing, and then added commentary that misrepresented what I said, and what my intention was when I said it.

Another blog, home to one of the most pathetic, sad, empty, angry, hateful failures in the universe also linked to it.

The resulting flood of toxic and cruel and hateful people into my life has been appalling and revealing.

Unsurprisingly, when a shitty person is shitty, they attract other shitty persons to their blog. When a blog that presents itself as news writes shitty posts that are intended to make shitty people feel better about themselves by attacking and tearing down other people, those sites attract shitty people.

And now a lot of those shitty people are all up in my business. I can ignore a lot of it, and I block and move on, but it’s frustrating and disheartening to see so much hate and cruelty projected from people who I don’t know and wasn’t writing for in the first place. It’s gross and it makes me feel … well, the only word I can come up with is “icky” and that’s not the best word. I just feel like the stink of toxic, terrible people is around me today, and it makes me grateful for the millions of you out there who are not that, who choose to spend a little bit of time in the same virtual space as me.

Dickheads are gonna be dickheads, and I have to be better at just ignoring that (Hardwick is the Zen master of this, if you’re looking for inspiration). But those news blogs that reprinted exactly what I wrote, but then recontextualized it (and me) to create a false narrative … that’s frustrating to me. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough in my post, so I left it open to interpretation. Maybe I didn’t make it clear that I was answering a question, sharing a raw and unfiltered emotional response to something, and concluding that I was disappointed. I wasn’t mad, I wasn’t ranting, I wasn’t furious, I didn’t call for a boycott. I just said I was disappointed, and I explained why. I thought I was clear, and I thought it was dispassionate (as much as it can be when it’s talking about something that has been a bit of a raw nerve for thirty years). So if I wasn’t extremely clear, I guess that’s on me.

But I can’t help but feel like these blogs deliberately used sensational language to create a narrative that justified their writers essentially quoting everything I wrote, adding no new information or informed analysis, and collecting the ad revenue. That’s frustrating to me, because they get to move on to their next bit of sensationalized bullshit, while I spend days dealing with the trolling and associated garbage from people who will read their sensationalized headlines, accept their sensationalized framing, and then come after me on social media or in the comments of my own blog. It’s ironic that I had to block some shitty people here, because one of the founding principles of my blog, over ten years ago, was for me to have a place to speak for myself, after a lifetime of being spoken for by publicists. It was to give me a place to set the record straight, after years of being talked about by people who knew little to nothing about me. And here we are, a decade later, and I’m doing the same thing I was back then: speaking up to say, “that’s not what I said, and you know it’s not what I said.” There’s an argument to be made for just ignoring it and moving on, and there’s an argument to be made that I’m doing this all over again ten years later because I’m screwed up, emotionally. Maybe that’s the case. I have to live with this brain that lies to me all the time, and I’m coming off of 24 hours of shitty people telling me to kill myself, so maybe I’m not the most objective observer in this regard.

But all of that is prelude and context to what I hope will be the real takeaway from this stupid thing: I am genuinely grateful that I interact with kind and good people in real life and online almost every day. I am grateful that we work with intention to create a positive and uplifting place when we are together, and I am grateful that, even when I was a shitty teenager, I never would have wanted to be around cruel, unhappy, nihilists who have little to no empathy in their lives, and use anger to give their lives meaning.

Thanks for listening.

Note: Because I’m dealing with trolls and dickweeds right now, I’ve set comments to go into moderation, unless you have a previously-approved comment. Thanks for understanding.

because so many of you asked…

Approximately 162% of the total population of Twitter users has sent me this Gizmodo post about some mostly-awesome custom (unofficial) LEGO minifigs that are inspired by the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Approximately 600% of them asked me to comment, and since I can’t do that in 280 characters without resorting to the dreaded [THREAD 1/66], I’m doing it here.

Before I get into the Wesley part of this that you’re all here for: I love that this set exists. I love that enough people want to do TNG LEGO to create a market demand for these figures. I can’t speak for the rest of the cast, but things like this, based on us, are always awesome. Earlier this year, a guy gave me a little minifig that he made of Wesley, and even though it’s unofficial, it is a delightful thing to own. He’s in his little red spacesuit, and he looks like he’s got a course you can plot. I love it.

In this particular custom set, though, Wesley is depicted as a crying child, and that’s not just disappointing to me, it’s kind of insulting and demeaning to everyone who loved that character when they were kids. The creator of this set is saying that Wesley Crusher is a crybaby, and he doesn’t deserve to stand shoulder to minifig shoulder with the rest of the crew. People who loved Wesley, who were inspired by him to pursue careers in science and engineering, who were thrilled when they were kids to see another kid driving a spaceship? Well, the character they loved was a crybaby so just suck it up I guess.

“Oh, Wil Wheaton, you sweet summer child,” you are saying right now. “You think people actually loved Wesley Crusher. You’re adorable.”

So this is, as you can imagine, something I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with for thirty years. It’s been talked about to death (on this very blog, more than once), but I’ll sum up as briefly as I can: I reject the idea that nobody liked or cared about the character. Now, It is absolutely true that, for the entirety of the first season, Wesley was a terribly-written character. He was an idea, a plot device, and was not handled with much care or respect. I think the best example of this is in Datalore, which I wrote about in Memories of the Future Volume 1:

Wesley, who was sent to check up on Data, does what any smart Starfleet officer would do: He reports to his captain that something fishy is going on with the robot and suggests that maybe they shouldn’t be so quick to trust him.

Picard, the captain who recognized Wesley’s intellect and promoted him to acting ensign, and Riker, who chose Wesley over everyone else on the ship to check up on Data and report back on what he found, not only ignore Wesley’s concerns, they actually tell him that he’s out of line for expressing them!

“Data” (actually Lore) leaves the bridge — after making it clear that he doesn’t know what “make it so” means and arousing absolutely no suspicions from Picard — and Wesley decides he’s had enough of this bullshit.

“Sir,” he says, “I know this may finish me, but —”

And Picard, the captain who recognized Wesley’s intellect and promoted him to acting ensign, and the closest thing to a father figure Wesley has ever known, responds with three words that follow and haunt me to this day: “Shut up, Wesley!”

Trekkies around the country gasp in delight as an episode that was veering dangerously close to the Tkon empire suddenly has redeeming value. Printing presses, silk screens, and button-makers go into overdrive as entrepreneurial fans do what they do best: skirt the borders of IP infringement to make a quick buck. Children are still attending college today from the sales.

[…]

Wesley points out that everything he said in his report, and all of his concerns, would have been listened to if it came from an adult, or a competent writer. Picard considers this retort momentarily, and then sends him to his room to organize his sweaters. Then, for good measure, he sends Dr. Crusher to keep an eye on him.

“Personally, I hated the way they handled Wesley in this episode. He’s already on his way to becoming a hated character by the adults in the audience, and the writers cranked it up to Warp 11. It was stupid of them to have Picard give him an adult responsibility and then dismissively treat him like a child when he carried it out. It undermines both of the characters — how is the audience supposed to take either of them seriously?”

Another brief and related note on “Shut up, Wesley”, from a Reddit thread seven months ago:

People have been saying this to me since I was fourteen. I’m nearly 45. I’ve heard this for the entirety of my adult life. It’s annoying. It isn’t funny, it isn’t clever, and it’s just become obnoxious.

More than that, though, let’s put it into dramatic context: an adult says that to a kid who is doing his best to help, to do his job, to live up to the expectations that have been placed upon him. It’s used to shut him down, to disregard and silence him. And it turns out that, holy shit, the kid was right all along. In context, if we accept that it’s all real: Picard never says that to Riker, or Geordi, or Tasha, or to literally anyone else under his command because that would be profoundly unprofessional. But there are different rules when you’re dealing with the kid among the adults (and, believe me, the producers and directors on TNG treated me the exact same way).

So it’s a loaded phrase that bothers me, and I’d really like it if it just went away forever.

 

So back to the minifig: it’s “Shut up, Wesley,” made into what would otherwise be an awesome minifig, in a collection of truly amazing and beautiful minifigs. It’s a huge disappointment to me, because I’d love to have a Wesley in his little rainbow acting-ensign uniform, but I believe that it’s insulting to all the kids who are now adults who loved the character and were inspired by him to go into science and engineering, or who had a character on TV they could relate to, because they were too smart for their own good, a little awkward and weird, and out of place everywhere they went (oh hey I just described myself. I never claimed to be objective here).

I want to be clear here, because I know that future members of my Twitter blocklist will send me a cropped image of LEGO Wesley crying, or tell me to shut up because I’m making too much of this: this isn’t about me. This is about thirty years of people kicking Wesley Crusher around because writers in the first season of Next Generation (who gave us such memorable gems as Angel One, Code of Honor, and The Last Outpost) didn’t write him as well as writers did in later seasons, and once the fandom narrative was fixed, no amount of Final Mission or Starfleet Academy -like episodes could change it.

I understand that a lot of people will see the humor in this, and I respect that. From a certain point of view, it is very funny. I don’t think that this was done this way to be mean/ If anything, it’s just lazy. But because so many people asked me what I felt when I saw it: I’m disappointed, because this isn’t the way I’d like to see Wesley portrayed in a medium that I love. I just feel like Wesley Crusher and the boys and girls he inspired deserve something that isn’t making a joke at his expense, or just reducing him —again– to little more than an idea.

“We are the spark, that will light the fire that will burn the First Order down.”

We went to The Last Jedi at the Chinese theater last night. It’s the first time I’ve been to the Chinese since Pulp Fiction or 12 Monkeys, and I feel no pressing urge to go back any time soon. That area of Hollywood is just gross and crowded, like someone took the worst aspects of Times Square in the 70s and now, put them together, and concentrated them into two awful blocks.

But I digress before I even begin, because of course I do.

I loved The Last Jedi. It’s a little long, it has some humor that felt a little out of place to me, and some of the edits were a little jarring, but I am willing to overlook those flaws because it was just a really fun Star Wars experience. I felt like, if I were a kid today, this movie would be my Star Wars, it would the one I would still be talking about in forty years, the way the original Star Wars (that I refuse to call ‘episode whatever’) is for me today.

You may need a second to parse that, because I did and I wrote it so go ahead. I’ll wait.

Hi. I’m still here. Glad you are, too.

I’m not going to discuss specifics, and I hope you won’t comment on specifics, either, so people who haven’t seen it yet don’t have to worry about spoilers. But here are some thoughts:

I loved that there are so many strong and independent female heroes in Star Wars now. I loved that there are role models for girls the way there have always been for boys, and I love that there are people of color the way white dudes have always been there. I know there’s a type of fan out there who will be pissed about me even mentioning this (keep fucking that chicken, kiddo!) but it’s important in ways those people can’t or won’t understand, and it made me really, really happy.
I loved seeing characters who were so important to me as a kid. I teared up several times, just because it felt so good to see them again.
The battle sequences were amazing. The duels were some of the best lightsaber fights I’ve ever seen.
The Porgs are adorable and fun and didn’t upset or annoy me the way literally everything in that goddamn Jar Jar movie did. I can’t wait to go buy a little Porg plushie.
The themes of resistance and hope and the refusal to give up in the face of overwhelming odds felt incredibly timely, but also timeless. I loved that that message is there for anyone who wants to hear it.
I mentioned that it’s a little long. At almost 3 hours, it felt like the second and third parts of a trilogy that started with The Force Awakens. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, just an observation.
I can’t wait to go see it again. It was in 3D, which I didn’t know before we got into the theater, and I’d like to see it without having to wear smudgy glasses that were impossible to clean. I don’t think it needed to be in 3D, but that could just be my deep-seated aversion to 3D. I’m going to say 3D one more time: 3D (yes, that was two more times. Settle down, Francis.)
It was a delightful surprise to see Captain EO in the movie. I didn’t expect that, and the CG was kind of incredible. that didn’t really happen i just wanted to see if you were paying attention.

Oh, and you probably already know this, but I went in costume:

Live long and suck it.

Live long, and may The Force be with you!

thank you for your kindness

I’ve been reading all the comments so many of you left on my last post, and I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your kindness. It really does mean a lot to me, and it really does make a big difference, to know that I’m not the only creative person who is struggling right now, and has been struggling this entire year. It means so much to me that so many of you who are reading this took a moment to let me know that you’re there, and that you care about what I make.

The Internet in 2017 (at least in my personal experience, which is absolutely affected by my depression) is so flooded by casual cruelty, it is overwhelming and suffocating and exhausting. Thank you for showing and reminding me that good and kind people are in this world. Thank you for taking the time and making the effort to reach out to me. You didn’t have to do that, and I’m very grateful that you did.

I went to my brain doctor a few days ago, and talked with him about how much I’ve been struggling. I told him how bad I’ve been feeling, and how hard it’s been for me to do any of the creative things that I’ve always loved to do. He told me that a lot of his patients are having the most challenging year they’ve had in a long time, so it’s not just me. We talked about some different things we could do, and decided to change up my meds a little bit. The adjustment has been tough for the last few days, but I woke up this morning feeling hopeful and … well, not joyful or even happy, but at least I didn’t feel bad. I know that doesn’t sound like much of an improvement, but it really is. It’s going to take another ten to fourteen days for my brain to fully adjust, but I’m hopeful and optimistic that this is going to help me get back to feeling like a person, instead of a bag of failure and sadness.

 

this is stupid

Every day, I open up this editor.

Every day, I sit here at my desk, and stare at the empty space.

Every day I struggle to find something to put into the empty space.

And every day, after hours of frustration and false starts that lead nowhere, I close it.

I hate this. I hate this so much. I used to get stuff done every day, even if it was only a few hundred words, but this whole fucking year I keep feeling like none of this matters and none of this is worth the effort and nobody cares and there’s just no reason to do any of it.

I really really really hate this.

What’s the best entry point for Dungeons and Dragons?

A Redditor messaged me, “You’re a board game guy so i figured I’d take a shot in the dark and ask for your advice. Basically wanted to start Dungeons and Dragons and wanted your recommendation on the cheapest way to get everything I needed to actually start playing for real[assuming my boyfriend and our friends want to make it a regular thing]. I’ve seen people debating on what handbooks and packs i need to start, and i want to be sure I’m not wasting my money on useless books and all that”

It’s been way too long since I played or talked about D&D, so I’m sharing my response here, in case it’s helpful to other people.

Hey! I’m so glad you asked me, and I’m happy to help. This is one of those questions that wakes up the gatekeepers and can lead to people giving up and walking away from D&D before they ever start. I’ll do my best to give you a simple answer, and then some more information that you can come back to later, if you’re interested.

Speaking as a voice of experience, who has played the game since 1983, and who is intimately familiar with every edition and potential entry point: the very best way to get started is to pick up the 5th edition starter set. It has everything you need to learn and play the game, and if it turns out that D&D isn’t for you, you’ve only spent around $20. It’s widely available in bookstores, toy stores, and tabletop game shops. It’s written specifically for people who are new to the game, so it walks you through the basics and gives you information that you need when you need it, instead of overloading you with a bunch of facts all at once. For your twenty bucks, you’ll get enough to play for several sessions, and by the time you’re finished with the adventure it contains, you’ll know if you want to keep playing, or if D&D just isn’t for you.

You can stop now, and come back later if you’re still interested in the game, and want some more resources.

Okay, so if you want to get a deeper look at the rules that are in the Core Rule Books, Wizards of the Coast has a lot of free resources online to help you get your feet wet, including the basic rules.

Matt Mercer and Satine Phoenix have made tons of super helpful videos for Geek and Sundry about running games, including little tricks and things that can make adventures more interesting and fun for the players. They’re on the G&S YouTube channel.

If you’ve decided that you love D&D and you can’t wait to dive in a little deeper than the starter set, you will need to get the Core Rule Books. This is your first substantial investment, because there are three of them at minimum, and they all cost around $30 each. These books teach you how to design and create your own characters and adventures. They also give you the information you need to play through the published campaigns that Wizards has released, like Tomb of Annihilation, or Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

If you love that, and you want to start building your own adventures and campaigns in that world, Wizards has these incredible and detailed guides to their primary fantasy world, The Forgotten Realms (think if it like Middle Earth for D&D), including the Sword Coast Adventures Guide. These books don’t give you a specific adventure to run, but they tell you everything you need to know about the history, geography, fantasy races, cities and towns, and secret lore of that world.

I could go on and on, but I already have, so I’ll stop here. Feel free to shoot me a message if you have additional questions at any point in the future!

So this got me thinking: what’s going on in D&D right now? Is there a published adventure you love? A campaign setting you think veteran players should check out? Tell us, if you’re interested in sharing that sort of thing.

Look what you made me do! Here’s my first impression of Taylor Swift’s Reputation.

I am so far out of the demo, this feels maybe like an Abrictosaurus reviewing an opera, but for the six of you who have asked me if I’ve listened to the new Taylor Swift record, Reputation, (because I’m such a big dumb fan of 1989), here are my first impressions.

I just finished the first playthrough, and I like it. I haven’t paid super close to the lyrics, because I’ve literally listened to it one time, so this is just based on the general musical tone and pacing of the album.

Thoughts on the rest of the record:

…Ready For It? kicks off with a punch that winds me up for the rest of the record. I’m generally not a big fan of that dubstep wuuuubbbbvvvvsszzzzzzsound, but it works for me in this context.

End Game is a collaboration with Ed Sheeran and Future that left me cold. It feels out of place on this album, but especially after …Ready For It? got me so pumped up to hear what comes next. The vocals are so overproduced, the whole thing is a little much for me, but I suspect that the legion of Taylor fans who love Ed Sheeran will eat it up. (See above about how I’m not in the demo for the album.)

I Did Something Bad is glorious, lyrically and musically. I love that Taylor Swift is just dropping a huge DEAL WITH IT to everyone. This is probably my favorite song on the album.

Don’t Blame Me feels like a Lorde song, which sort of made me go “Buh? Wha? Fluh? Huh?” because I listened to Melodrama right before I listened to Reputation.

Delicate didn’t do much for me.

Look What You Made Me Do didn’t floor me when it was a single, but I feel like it works so much better in the context of the album, which isn’t what I expect from a pop album that is usually designed to have a bunch of singles (notable exception is Tove Lo’s Queen of the Clouds, which is a pop concept album and damn near perfect. Also, her new record, Blue Lips, is great).

So It Goes… feels like a song that could have been on 1989, and I mean that in the very best way.

Gorgeous is another one that could have been on 1989, the emotional B-side to Blank Space. I expect it to come back around in summer.

Getaway Car feels like a song that didn’t quite make the cut for 1989. I wasn’t crazy about it.

King of My Heart has this particular beat that’s common in pop right now that isn’t my favorite thing, and the vocals are way over processed, but for some reason those two things come together to make this track the exception that proves the rule.

Dancing With Our Hands Tied feels sort of like if Imogen Heap collaborated with Everything But The Girl in like 2002. It’s lush in a way that I haven’t heard Taylor Swift before, and I really liked that.

I’m not crazy about the falsetto in Dress, but maybe that’ll change.

This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things is a lot of fun, and feels like it would be right at home in a modern Broadway musical. (And honestly, I just don’t care who – if anyone – that song is about. Music critics just need to get over the tired trope that Taylor Swift writes songs about everyone she has dated or known or whatever. Maybe this song is about someone in particular, but why does that even matter? Maybe it’s about you, stupid music critic, you big dummy.)

New Year’s Day is a great album closer. The stripped down vocals, simple harmony, and solo piano are such a great counterpoint to the production of the rest of the album. I can feel the brief moment of darkness at the end of it, before the house lights come up, as the lights go out on the stage. I think this song is going to be in a lot of graduation videos this year.

So, overall, 4 out of 5. One track I just don’t like at all, two tracks that I can take or leave, and 12 songs I really liked. Reputation didn’t grab me on its first listen the way 1989 did, but I feel like I’m going to get into it more upon subsequent plays.

But not grabbing me right away and compelling me to restart the album right away doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a great record; it just means that it wants me to do a little work to find my way into it. It’s like, The Bends grabbed me right away and I played it to death. OK Computer took me several listens to appreciate and love, and all these years later, I never play The Bends, and will put OK Computer on pretty much always.

Did I just compare Taylor Swift to Radiohead? You bet your face I did. Don’t @ me. I contain multitudes.

point of clarification

I see that the right wing noise machine has spun up and worked its adherents into quite a furor about me.


 


Fox News and its allies are working really hard to deflect attention and anger away from the role that unfettered access to weapons of mass murder played in the latest incidence of mass murder in America. Fox News and its allies want you to be angry at something they misled you into believing I said, so you will take the anger and sorrow and desire for action you feel after a mass shooting, and aim it at me, instead of holding the people in power who could prevent this to account. Fox News, Paul Ryan, and their allies are counting on their ability to fool you into believing their lies, so they can continue to do nothing until the next mass shooting, when they’ll offer thoughts and prayers but no action.


 


For a certain demographic of Fox News viewer, what I’m writing here won’t be enough. They just want to express righteous indignation and pat themselves on the back because it serves their narrative, so I’m not writing this for them. I’m writing this for reasonable people who are as sick and angry as I am about the endless cycle of preventable gun violence in America.


 


This is what I wrote yesterday, when I first saw that I was being misunderstood:


 


“I am so sick and angry that this keeps happening. America is the only first world country where we do nothing while our fellow humans are slaughtered by entirely preventable gun violence every day.


 


“People like Paul Ryan can write and pass laws that can address this epidemic of gun violence, which should be considered a public health crisis, but instead, Paul Ryan and people like him offer “thoughts and prayers” as a shield for their inaction.


 


“I heard privately from some close friends who are people of sincere Faith, and they were concerned that my anger at Paul Ryan would be misread as an attack on people of Faith. I want and need to apologize to anyone who felt like I was attacking them, or their faith (unless that person is Paul Ryan). I respect your Faith, even if I do not share it. I respect that prayer brings comfort and strength and guidance for a lot of people, and if you are one of those people, praying for God to bring comfort and strength to the families and friends of the victims and survivors is a deeply meaningful act.


 


“I am not attacking you or your Faith, and I see that in my anger, I didn’t write my thoughts as clearly as I could have. For that I sincerely apologize to anyone who I offended or hurt. I can’t take it back, but I can tell you that it was never my intention, nor is it my belief.


 


“I am angry at people like Paul Ryan who are quick to offer their thoughts and prayers after mass murder, but who refuse to do anything to even attempt to slow or stop the epidemic of gun violence that plagues America. He and people like him are hoping that you will give him a pass and let him exploit your Faith so he can continue to shrug his shoulders, take money from the NRA, and do absolutely nothing else.


 


“So just to be crystal clear: I apologize to those of you who are sincere people of Faith, who felt attacked by me. That was not my intention.”


 


==


 


To the professional atheists out there who are endlessly cruel, condescending, and dismissive toward people of Faith: I am not your ally and I’m not on your team. Don’t claim me as one of your own, because the right wing noise machine misinterpreted what I said (and I will do better in the future, to prevent my words from being misunderstood and misconstrued so easily).


 


To anyone who believes that my anger at Paul Ryan’s empty words is in any way directed toward the victims of gun violence: Attacking the victims, the survivors, or the victim’s families of any mass shooting, the way Alex Jones does with his false flag lies, is despicable and inexcusable. I want to be very clear: I was not and I am not attacking anyone who was in that church, I am not mocking their Faith. I don’t believe that a reasonable person would believe that I was, but because that lie has taken hold as a narrative, it’s important to me that I restate this, once again: Paul Ryan hides behind empty words about thoughts and prayers, exploiting the real and sincere beliefs held by people of Faith. He and people like him offer words without deeds over and over again, and I’m sick and tired of it. *That* is what I am attacking, and that is what I am angry about.


 


Fox News and its allies are working really hard to deflect attention and anger away from the role that unfettered access to weapons of mass murder played in the latest incidence of mass murder in America. Fox News and its allies want you to be angry at something they mislead you into believing I said, so you will take the anger and sorrow and desire for action you feel after a mass shooting, and aim it at me, instead of holding the people in power who could prevent this to account. Fox News, Paul Ryan, and their allies are counting on their ability to fool you into believing their lies, so they can continue to do nothing until the next mass shooting, when they’ll offer thoughts and prayers but no action.


 


Once again, to people of Faith who find comfort and strength in prayer: I am not mocking or belittling or attacking you or your relationship with God, and if you felt that I was, I hope you will accept this apology.


 


I will not apologize for being angry at Paul Ryan and people like him who have words but no deeds, and I hope that people of Faith will hold him to account.