A Three-Letter Word

(Content warning: what follows will be a frank monologue that talks about body issues, weight, self image, self esteem, depression, anxiety, bullying, trauma and suicide. If you really don't want to read any of that, no judgement whatsoever. I understand. Feel free to check out one of my other blogs which are less heavy. This one is about Blade Runner. If you're into that sort of thing.)

Hi folks. My name is John, and I'm fat.

Here's a picture of me at Nine Worlds this year.

Yes, I am the one on the left, har har har. (This person cosplaying Ellen Ripley was really cool. Very friendly. Many thanks to her!)

I am fat. I use that word to describe myself, not to take the piss out of myself, not to disarm people who weaponise it against me, but because it is true. I am overweight. Obese, is the term. The BMI chart - if anyone even thinks that is a thing any more - doesn't go up far enough to account for my height or my weight, but I probably sit in the red bit.

Ever since I hit puberty I have been this shape.

Like, you can look at kid pictures of me and I've got pudgy little cheeks. You can look at teenager pictures of me and I am, yes, fat. I am fat, have always been fat, and will remain fat until such a time as I actually decompose or am otherwise reduced by being dead.

As you can imagine, this has led to my certain life experiences. I lucked out in many other areas of my life - I recognise that I have the privileges of being white-passing, straight-passing, cis, and coming from an only slightly poor household. This thing, though - this thing is something that can affect just about everyone.

Being generally treated like shit by half of the people I ever met was a strong motivator toward changing something. So I tried.

This is where a lot of people are going to roll their eyes and close this window, but stick it out, because this is the literal truth.

None of it worked.

I can understand your skepticism, trust me, because for all my life I was surrounded by people telling me I was wrong, and I was lying, and I was doing something wrong. To the point wherein I actually started doubting myself. Doubting whether or not I remembered how things went, properly.

It goes like this: I try to lose weight by just reducing my calories and doing more exercise. Two months pass. I put on a few ounces. I reduce the calories more, do more exercise. Doesn't work, again - this time I put on four pounds, which is absurd. My mother and father are confused at this, because mum's the one making my meals, and there's only so much snack food you can buy on £2 a week pocket money. So they assume I am sneaking food elsewhere, I promise them I'm not, I get the "Alright then" with the roll of the eyes which basically tells me they don't believe me at all.

So then, I am put into the care of the health services. Referred to a dietitian. I am issued a rather strict eating plan. Everything not on the plan gets lobbed out of the house and my pocket money goes away so I can't spend it on food. For six months I am on the first plan, and my weight actually - this time - doesn't change at all. It remains constant. I AM miserable, but - you know. Constant. The dietitian, who predicted the loss of three stone in those six months, throws up her hands and declares that I am either not doing enough exercise (har fucking har) or I am cheating on the plan. Except this time my mum is on my side here - because I haven't been.

We see another dietitian. This one swears by the cups-of-rice diet. Like all your food is measured in cups of rice. The idea of which actually made me burst into tears when I was in the back of the car on the way home. Nothing but rice, forever. But hey - at least I wouldn't be fat any more. Right?

I lost a pound in the first week.

I put on three in the second.

I had monthly weigh-ins. I was meant to be referred for six months but after the third the lady didn't want me to go any more, because I was half a stone heavier,and her heavy hints of "something else going on" pretty much told me she thought I had cheated on this diet, too.

Which I hadn't.

My food had basically been plain rice, for three months. It killed me. It absolutely killed me. I like food, that is no surprise to anyone. I like food, and here I am, eating basically plain rice. I got sauce sometimes, that was a luxury. Carrots, too. I love carrots. Maybe I love them because they were the only interesting thing I got to eat in that period of my life.

It was during this three months that I was written out of doing PE classes at school, anything high-impact like running or basketball, because my knee joints were already deteriorating. But you don't get Arthritis when you're young, so it can't have been that. That was because I was fat, too.

Now, there will be a lot of people shaking their head at me. "John," they will say, a knowing smile on their lips, an understanding hand on my shoulder. "You don't need to justify yourself. Everyone tries and fails to diet. Everyone does. You just need to try again, and you need to stick to it."

I mean, right, I fully agree.

The idea of not sticking to it was alien to me. I was highly motivated to make this work, and that was why I never cheated - because I was tired of being beaten up for it. Literally being physically assaulted for being fat. I was tired of being called names constantly, of always being self-conscious of myself, of always flattening myself against corridor walls and taking seats that people couldn't move behind me. People made my life an absolute hell. As a child, many times, I considered doing something very drastic about it. I must have been broken. There must have been something wrong with me. Didn't you just eat less and then the fat went away? Didn't you just jog and do the exercise bike and play the stupid football and eat the boring stuff and then it went away?

Except it never, ever fucking did.

It flies in the face of common wisdom, I know. But then a lot of actual facts in terms of weight loss don't actually marry up with common wisdom - here's a Time article on the topic. What it comes down to is that nobody loses weight the same way, and some people can lose it easily, and some people find it difficult to put any on, and some people find it nigh on impossible to actually lose it.

You will find it difficult to get any hits on actual science for this on Google, obviously, because dieting is an industry and a lifestyle - and it is one that is primarily fed by insecurity. Nobody in that industry wants one of the first ten results on Google to be "Actually Maybe You Are Already An Okay Weight, Just Eat More Veggies".

The notion of someone being a size and being okay with that size is an alien one. If you find it very, very hard to lose weight, that is your body pushing back. If you enter starvation mode and stop burning calories the moment you cut out your daily snacks, then that weight is probably not going anywhere. Nobody cares about though, because just wanting it bad enough and not drinking Coca-Cola any more worked for their uncle Derek, who put on eight stone when he quit his job, but now he's managed to lose seven, so literally anyone can lose weight, right?

Medical fat-phobia is such a common thing, too. Relatively recently, I talked to a doctor about joint pain. He didn't even blink, just suggested that if I lost weight it would help. After an awkward silence, I explained to him that I meant my knuckles. He cleared his throat, looked at my medical records, found the word Rheumatoid, and told me he couldn't do anything. Well, glad we sorted that one out.

For a long time I hated the word fat, because it was a knife that was stuck in my back constantly.

It carried a lot of hostility in it, and a lot of my own hang-ups. It carried the hatred and derision of my peers (and hell, just normal people who didn't even know me), and it carried the feeling of failure of constantly trying without any success. It also carried the constant accusations of being a liar. A treble-whammy of shit.

...if people weren't actually shit to me, though, I don't think I would have thought twice about it.

While I was fat, it didn't stop me doing things. It didn't stop me riding a bike or playing football - though I wasn't very good at the latter, I still did it, and did it every single school day and most Saturdays. I would walk a lot of places. I was still capable of every physical task in front of me, aside from winning any running races. Even if I hated doing it, I could still do cross-country races. We played cricket, and rugby, and (against my doctor's advice) basketball. While I was told my knees were in serious trouble, I kind of ignored that, because they didn't hurt unless I jumped around on them or dropped down on them - though when I got to fifteen they started crunching whenever I bent them. They still do.

It's as I got on in life, and I paid less attention to people that don't matter, and I found my confidence and my capabilities in the outside world, that I started using the word fat again.

Yes, at first, it was to disarm people that would use it against me as a weapon - but then I started to think, why should it be a weapon? We're not in school any more. Is fat really a bad thing? Is fat really a thing I shouldn't be? Is it a thing that you should scold me for being, in the street? Is it worse than being a racist, a sexist, a bigot, a thug?

The fact is, no. It isn't a thing that is inherently bad in and of itself.

Some people will throw up their hands at this, tell you how bad it is for you to be overweight, so on. If any of them had a similar childhood to me, or anyone that knew me, then I understand why.

Anyone remember the Two Minutes Hate from Nineteen Eighty-Four?

That one.

I will never use the word Fat to describe someone else unless they have told me I can or should. Just because that's my word now, doesn't mean it is theirs, and that's because the word still carries the same trauma, the same pain that it carried for me. And it carries that pain and trauma because we got to be the target of the two minutes hate.

I've talked before about insecurity, and how it drives people to turn on others. When Person A decides they need to lose weight because that will fix the hole they have inside, they go out and do so, but they find that Person B is apparently happy without having to do the same. I mean, I've also - in that same mini-series - done a blog about how high school never ends, which is also relevant, so...

So this word. This three-letter word. Fat.

We don't hate it because it is what we are.

We hate it because of how it was used on us. We hate it because people told us it was the reason why they treated us badly. We hate it because out parents and other people told us it was a bad thing to be and constantly, constantly pushed us to not be that thing any more. We're told from an early age that fat is mutually exclusive to beautiful or attractive or handsome, which leads to me being told, when I use the word to describe myself, to sometimes be told: "No you're not, you're lovely!" Which usually results in a snarky comment along the lines of: I didn't say I wasn't, did I stutter? But in these people's heads, fat is a definite negative. It precludes everything else.

You can probably replicate the same effect with any other word, with a concerted effort. If any school-age brunette was beaten up for being a brunette, and the word Brunette was spat at them from across the room as a term of abuse and hatred, and their parents constantly told them that, actually, it would just be a little easier for them if they just bleached their hair...

It's got so little to do with our own weight, and so much more to do with other people. With the fact that this was how other people were raised, how they get their kicks, how they make themselves feel better. Sure, they might be powerless in a sea of confusion in a world they don't understand and surrounded by people they have no empathetic connection with, incapable of illustrating their thoughts and hopes and dreams, and feeling like they will never achieve the things they aren't even sure they actually want to achieve...

...but at least they're not fat.

People want to make sure that chronic illness can't happen to them. It's why they offer such insipid solutions if it ever comes out that you suffer from one. They are just the things they cling to as reasons why it can't happen to them. It's the same with being fat - they don't like the notion of having to suffer from how society treats you, so they make themselves feel better with the thought of "Well, if you didn't like it, you could just lose it really easily".

Insecurity made manifest. And the easiest and quickest way people find to deal with it is to dump it on someone else.

Well I'm not letting that happen to me, any more.

I'm fat. I've always been fat. It's the shape I am, it's a shape I tried not to be and failed at. In the failing, and in other people's treatment of me even while I was failing, my mental health got very seriously snarled up. At least part of the reason behind my attempt to kill myself was tied to it,and to the clinical depression and generalised anxiety which was probably fed by it.

Except I wasn't depressed or anxious or suicidal because I was fat, if I am at all honest.

I was depressed, anxious and suicidal because every other fucker that I knew decided to punish me for being fat.

And I'm not taking that bullshit. Not against me, and not against anyone else I know.

This three letter word is my shape, and fuck you if you don't like it.

Readers Request - Private Lives, Aliens and The Perfect Pizza

Once more, folks, we come across the wondrous and sometimes terrifying place that is Readers Request. I will be answering your topics and questions, provided via Facebook and Twitter. I will be answering all of them, seeing as I didn't have all that many. No matter! It means I can natter at length about things, which is one thing I seem to be good at.

Cast thine eyes below! As always, names removed to protect the innocent.

Knowledge = sexy, fight me. - I mostly agree. I could listen to someone pop off about something they are passionate about for hours, though. That's not even a sexy thing. That's a thing. Also I am kind of wary of fetishising someone's intelligence or knowledge, because I don't want to devalue people who don't fit into my idea of what "smart" is. I know, I overthink this stuff. That's me, though - one-man Team Overthink.

Are there any stories, musicians or anything really that changed in a way you initially were wary of or actively disliked that you have changed your mind on and now like? (or vice versa) - More of the vice versa, really. Like when you first get into or find out about something, you can watch it without knowing anything relating to the people who made it or whatever - then you find stuff out and it makes you recoil. One thing I was wary of which I have since found out I shouldn't be was What We Do In The Shadows, the Taika Watiti vampire movie, which I had mistakenly conflated with In Shadows, the Burton/Depp thing. So I just avoided it like the plague. Which was a huge mistake. Also Baby Driver - I don't know why I was CAUTIOUS about this but I was, and then Chris tells me it is super-recommended, and all of a sudden it is one of my favourite movies like ever.

Private lives and public figures.... If you dedicate your life to public service do you forgo your right to a private life? - I have opinions on the notion of a private life. I think everyone's life should be private when they want it to be. I think that the notion that a public figure's life should be an open book because they are a public figure is a bit of a sticky one, given that privacy is a human right. Literally, Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. Should people be called to account for doing shady shit? Yes, absolutely. Should people be hounded constantly even when not doing shady shit? Hell no. I'm sure there is a middle ground between "Media Lynch Mob" and "Zero Accountability".

When is a photograph not a photograph? - A photograph is defined as "an image created when light falls onto a photosensitive surface". I think that digital photography still counts. So like - that's what a photograph is. That said, that doesn't mean that everything that is a photograph is JUST a photograph. Like let me see if I can find one of my favourite ever photographs and pop it in here:

Muhammad Ali standing over (and yelling at) Sonny Liston in victory. There's a lot going on here. It is a photograph, yes, but it's a statement too. It tells you most of what you need to know about who Muhammad Ali was, as a man. Ali had mere moments ago hit Liston with a right hand punch that many believe wasn't powerful enough to do what it did to Liston - but if you ever watch the replay, you'll see his lead foot actually leave the ground when he gets hit. Ali is, in this moment, demanding that Liston "Get Up And Fight, Sucker".

Sorry, I digress. So yeah. A photograph is a photograph, but sometimes it's more than a photograph.

Uranus and soda stream. :) - Okay so. Soda Stream was a fantastic idea that had several problematic limitations, the primary one being that you ended up making lovely drinks at home that still worked out as more expensive than just buying them from the shop, and that was without considering the cost of getting the machine in the first place. Uranus is an awesome planet, goes around the Sun once every 84 years, and is ABSOLUTELY fucking frozen cold. Like the surface temperature is around -200C. So to combine Uranus AND Soda Stream? It wouldn't work. Would freeze solid immediately. ...wait, is this a bum joke?

Scones. Cream or jam first? - If you're from Devon - cream first. If you're from Cornwall - jam first. If you're not - whatever makes you happy, honestly. It's not like we're talking about toilet roll (dangle to the front obviously) or making tea (milk goes in last unless you're using awful china) or making a sausage sandwich (brown bread, toasted, brown sauce).

Weirdest animal mating habits. - So there's three that I find very weird. Snails, who effectively harpoon each other before they get to the good stuff - I mean, that's metal as fuck but also scary as hell, I don't want to be harpooned by a snail even if it's NOT going to try and shag me. There's the male angler fish, who does something that I have seen people actually do, which is attach to and osmose into their significant other to just stop existing as their own entity. But truly, the weirdest one of all that I have ever seen, is...humans. Because we're animals. And because the hoops I have seen someone jump through to try and get into bed with someone else - note, they haven't been ASKED to do this stuff, this isn't something they have been tasked to do by the potential bedmate, this is just things they THINK they should be doing - is just comical. We do this to ourselves, people. WE are the funniest animals.

Which coming apocalypse do you think most likely and what will things look like after? - Well I think the future we are most likely heading toward is that of the Blade Runner / Alien universe (it's the same one canonically). I think apocalypse is less likely, but if one DOES happen, then I think we are looking at something like Terminator, if only because the Soviets actually built a real-life eighties-era computer system that could automatically launch a nuclear strike. A literal SkyNet, just without drones connected to it. If we did it once? Just saying. Arms companies can do basically whatever they want.

Aliens on tv are frustratingly unimaginative - here are some better ones... - Ooohhohohohoh. HAH. YES. Okay. So. Better ones. Every alien species in Becky Chambers' Wayfarers books. The limited alien life that can be found in the James S.A. Corey Expanse novels. Gas entities. Non-symmetrical entities. Creatures from zero-gravity environments that don't have an upright alignment. Creatures from aquatic worlds that DON'T just look like sealife from our own. Energy beings that don't always have to wear shells or cloak themselves (I love you Shadows and I hate you Vorlons but come on now). Anything that doesn't look like a Grey, or a human-animal hybrid, or an elf. A race that was MADE, so it doesn't have certain evolutionary traits - herbivores with carnivore eye arrangements anyone? Also while it is creepy stop making aliens look like Slenderman. That was played out five years ago and it's super-done now. Also if an alien species is going to evolve rapidly on the spot, a'la Life or whatever, make it look cool, not just some sticky white blob. It looked like hair gel.

Why are potatoes so versatile and awesome but we don't treat any other root vegetable the same way? - Cultural stuff probably? Like potato is so thoroughly accepted as being the cornerstone of our diet. And so it is the go-to, so people eat a lot of it as kids, so they like it when they're an adult, so other root vegetables taste different, and we're too busy clawing ourselves out of the muck we live in day in day out to go try new things. ...we should, though. So yeah, fuck it, new root veggies for all!

What traps would you have in your dungeon lair and why? - TRAPS traps traps okay so. My dungeon lair would actually probably be a black glass skyscraper because I'm into that cyberpunk shit. So each floor would contain a different trap. First floor - automated gun turrets. Second floor - hidden spring-loaded poisoned spike launchers. Third floor - CYBERYAKUZA. Fourth floor - razor wire. Fifth floor - laser mesh with a claymore mine at the end of it. Sixth floor - TWO MECHA! Seventh floor - literally just the words "Watch Your Step" written on the door. Eighth floor - perfect height for the snipers in the buildings opposite. Ninth floor - the throne room, which contains the steps up to the TENTH floor, which is the helipad. Which is ready for me.

If you were to have a super-power what would you have? - This changes whenever I think about it for more than two minutes. As of right now, though - I think I would like that healing factor. It would just make my life so much easier. Not even in terms of warding off future damage that I might take, it will hopefully fix the scarring in my lungs and the shit going on with all my joints. Then I'd be happy as a sandboy.

Why is Prince so awesome!? :D - I mean, he was encouraged from childhood. Thoroughly encouraged. He was surrounded by music. Practice plus will plus talent. He wrote songs deftly and with confidence, and he performed them, able to pretty much lay down any instrumental track he wanted. He recorded constantly, wrote constantly, his output was incredible. And in the end, he was so good because there is a song for everyone in his back catalogue. There's at least one song that cuts you to the bone,t hat you hear and can't turn off. If you're lucky, there's more than one. Oh, and by the way, he's basically one of the best guitar soloists ever.

What songs could be about the same thing/event but from different perspectives? eg It's Raining Men and Bodies. - It's The End Of The World As We Know It and Bad Day by R.E.M. are both about a financial crash when viewed from two different perspectives. So Long Astoria and All Signs Point To Lauderdale are both about the same small shitty town, but one person has fond memories while the other just wants to fucking bail. Before Tomorrow Comes and Rise Today by Alter Bridge are both about the same person - the first from that person's perspective, the second about someone encouraging them to do the thing they are doing. There's a LOT of these, it's almost a blog in and of itself.

What equates a 'geek'? - Well now. The actual etymology comes from German I believe. Geck. I think it means foolish. Up until recently, it was commonly taken to mean anyone not of the mainstream - but we can basically assume that geek culture is pretty significantly intertwined with the mainstream at most levels, now. Even if there's levels of geekdom. But there were dictionaries which basically described geeks as carnival performers or "freaks". I remember it distinctly being still used as a derogatory term for people who liked computers or other assorted nerdy stuff back when I was in high school, so I think it got put on like a jacket - a reclaimed word. Sure, we're geeks, so we go to geek clubs and do geek things and the stuff we like is geek stuff. Now it's become an entire aesthetic. It's everything that was classically associated with that lifestyle, that nowadays just isn't. What is mainstream and what isn't has become such muddy water that the word kind of loses all meaning outside of a stereotype of someone with thick glasses and social awkwardness who likes Lord Of The Rings and using computers.

Your perfect pizza? - Thin base, crispy but not unbreakably solid like chipboard. Barbecue sauce rather than tomato - small meatballs, ground beef, nice mix of herbs and cheese, a sprinkling of jalapenos. Delicious. Preferably eaten with a chilled cherry coke, a side of curly fries with salt and a sprinkling of cholula, while listening to good tunes in good company.

And there you have it. The readers have requested, and I have provided, as I will often do. Next time, we will be talking about something a little bit more solid, a little bit more focused.

Thank you for coming on this trip with me, you beautiful people.

Best Of The Bad Bunch

Having just come back from Nine Worlds - and there will probably be a blog about that - I am absolutely shattered, having socialled myself into a coma. What this means is that the blog will not be some kind of epic sojourn into perfected academic understanding of any particular topic.

So I am, instead, going with a suggestion provided by my lovely significant other, inspired by a brilliant panel featuring several brilliant authors:

Who are your seven favourite villains?

Well, alright then. Hold onto your britches. In no particular order.

Carter Burke

YOU KNEW IT WAS COMING.

Okay so Carter Burke, right? If you haven't seen the 1986 action science fiction horror movie Aliens, you haven't lived - especially the special edition, look for the sentry guns and the scenes in the colony before the marines show up. It is my literal favourite movie ever made, if the last blog didn't clue you in on that fact. If you haven't read it, it's about Bishop, go read it. Now. Yeah, now. Then come back here.

You back? Good. Okay.

Carter Burke. The man who made the xenomorph look reasonably honourable. The greasiest rat-fuck son of a bitch to ever become dogmeat. When he bites the dust, you feel the most deep sense of "yeah fuck you" satisfaction, because you hate him. You hate his slick smarmy attitude, you hate his duplicity, you hate his lying fucking face, you hate the way he makes these empty hand gestures and gapes like a dying fish. You hate him. You hate him so thoroughly and so completely.

And then he gets his head fucking eaten.

Delicious.

-

Rick Deckard

TW-TW-TWIIIIIST

You see, Blade Runner is a noir flick; this means that the morality is all higgledy-piggledy. So you need to look deeper than the surface when you look for who is right and who is wrong, and in a previous blog, I talked all about why Roy Batty wasn't wrong.

So we have Rick Deckard. He used to be a Blade Runner - he still is one - and a Blade Runner is a person who, in this setting at least, hunts down Replicants and retires them. Given that Replicants need a very specific test to even tell them apart from humans, what that basically means is that Deckard hunts down people and kills them. The only crime those people commit is to not do what the company that makes them tells them to, such as wanting to live for more than four years.

Rachel doesn't know she's a Replicant. Roy does, and wants to live. Deckard wonders at one point if he might be. (He isn't, by the way. I will die on that hill.) Both the original and 2049 really serve to erase the difference between Replicants and people. So - yeah, Deckard's a professional murderer cleaning up corporate messes, who would retire himself if they told him to. He forces himself on vulnerable girl, and gets piss drunk because he can't deal with his job but keeps doing it anyway.

Sure, the greater villains of the piece are Tyrell and Bryant - the corporate overlord and the demanding police chief - but Deckard, being presented as the protagonist while actually being an assassin for hire, surely takes the cake there.

-

Megatron

"I would have waited an eternity for this. It's over, Prime."

Sure, there are a great many different Megatrons in different Transformers timelines - but all of them are awesome, let's face it.

I am particularly fond of the gladiatorial pit-fighter of Kaon presented in Transformers Prime. He just oozes hostility and nastiness. When presented with perhaps certain death, at the mercy of a human controlling an industrial drill, Megatron tells him simply:

"Kill me now, boy. Or you will never get another chance."

Jack doesn't, obviously.

In another episode he has to fight a super-powered Insecticon bare-handed, does so, wins, then turns on the Autobots and dares them to have a crack at him too.

He then falls the fuck over, because he's near death himself.

Bad. Ass.

-

The Tessier-Ashpool Family

You know what Cyberpunk is - I already talked about Blade Runner - now meet the real villains of the novel that pretty much started it all, Neuromancer.

The Neuromancer in the title is an AI. As is Wintermute, who gave their name to my Starfinder character. They are both created as a way for an insanely wealthy family to keep maintaining their fortune and their legacy, a family that hated the earth enough to build a literal space arcology - the Villa Straylight - and that hated being in space so much that they just stayed there, in their baroque nightmare, being frothing mad and wealthy beyond understanding.

We encounter this place in the third act of the novel, a novel which begins in the murky underworld of Chiba City in Japan. Chiba is a place profoundly ruled by poverty and crime. Case - the main character - rents a plastic gun early on, just in case something bad happens. He rents a plastic gun. That's just a thing he does. Imagine the kind of world that creates that demand. Now imagine the kind of people who have more money than ACTUAL sense, like literally, who hang in orbit up above that world.

If you need more evidence as to their literal evil, one of them - the patriarch - has sex with and consequently murders a clone of his own daughter.

So fuck these people and everything they stand for.

-

Carnage

In terms of Marvel villains, there's few I like more than Carnage.

I mean... he's pretty great, isn't he? When you think about it. Like Venom is cool, but Carnage is like cool but injected with maniac juice. Venom is a dangerous foe to Spider-Man, who defeats his spider-sense and can catch him totally unaware. Carnage is all that, plus, if he wants to, he can turn his hand into an axe and eviscerate you with it. Something he is very willing to do, because he loves eviscerating people.

There's just something so much more dangerous about the Carnage symbiote than most other bad guys in the Marvel universe. He sits between the huge deific threats (Apocalypse, Galactus, Thanos) and the powerful-but -mortal bad guys (Omega Red, Doctor Octopus, The Mandarin). It took one of the literal most powerful heroes in the Marvel universe to actually put him down, via flying him up into orbit and ripping him in half.

See?

He's scary. He's violent. He's hard to defeat in a way that is morally sound. You can slap around a mugger, you can web up a thug, but Carnage? Carnage demands that you run, or fight. Just to survive, let alone to win.

And when you consider that the symbiote can infect other people... like, say, Wolverine... or Juggernaut...

...or Multiple Man...

Yeah, just thinking about that makes me sweaty.

-

Donnie Darko

I'm gonna have to explain this one...but also I kind of don't want to.

See, the entire trick to the movie Donnie Darko involves watching it, understanding it, and then interpreting it properly. If you do all these things, then I daresay you will agree with me insofar as that, in terms of the bad guy - Donnie is that guy.

Sure, there are worse people.

I mean, Kitty. Kitty is the most horrible, awful individual I can imagine. She's like that pink flowery shithole woman from Harry Potter but actually real. We all know someone like Kitty.

And Patrick Swayze... like, (SPOILERS) when you find out some wealthy pseudo-Christian self-help guru has a bunch of child porn stashed in his closet, you're probably not surprised. He's still an asshole, and he still needs punishing.

I am not going to go into the core of the plot. What I am going to do is tell you to go and watch this movie, and then understand this:

Donnie looked at what Donnie had done, and decided that what Donnie had done was the wrong thing to do.

Villains often think they are heroes of their own story. It's rare that they can witness evidence to the contrary and realise the fact.

He does.

-

The last villain is one that may surprise you, and herein I will present all the choices I went through before settling on one:

The Human Race
SPACE!
Stalin
War
Yourself
Film Production Companies
Internalised Homophobia
Religious Extremism
That Guy On The Bus That Always Wants To Talk To You Before 8am
My Grandmother
George Lucas
Whoever Threw Out The Whedon Script For Alien 4
Nazis
Whoever Didn't Throw Out The Script For AvP Requiem
Rocky Balboa
Stalin
Impressionist Painters
Lists
Wasps
Buzzfeed
Calorific Content
Empty Carbs
That Weird Feeling You Get When You Drink A Cold Beverage Too Quickly Like Not Brain Freeze But Like A Chill In Your Throat That Is Just Super Uncomfortable
Superman
Yourself
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Yourself

No, really. Yourself. From Enter The Gungeon.

So to clarify.

Enter The Gungeon is a super-fun twin-stick bullet hell game with an amazing soundtrack, superb pacing, graphics to die for, replayability out the ass - it's just great, I can't recommend it enough. If you don't believe me, go watch a review or LP. Try Dunkey, his one is pretty much on point.

You see those crosshairs?

You, as the player, are entering the Gungeon in order to take - from its depths - a gun that shoots into the past, to kill your own mistakes. That is your end goal, the reason why you decide to enter this mad labyrinth filled with bullets that shoot you with smaller bullets, and enemies that are puns on firearm terms. This is why you bullet hell. This is why you have to live.

And when you lose all your health, where in most games you would be killed by the thing that killed you - in Enter The Gungeon, you get shot by the time gun.

You are literally shooting yourself from the future.

The thing is, THAT is what kills you. That is the thing that stops you. Not the bullet that the cute little shotgun shell just shot at you. It's the bullet YOU shoot.

One of our greatest enemies is ourselves. Our doubt, our internalised hatreds and fears, our damage, our dissonance. Of course, we have a lot more enemies than that - systems that are rigged against us, people that hate us for being us, people that casually harvest their fortunes while damning the rest of us to a forever up-hill climb. One of the things we can definitely work on changing is ourselves.

And a thing we should definitely stop doing is shooting ourselves before we have a chance to fail.

...huh.

Well done, John.

So yeah. There you go. My seven favourite villains.

Normal service resumes on Sunday.

I May Be Synthetic, But I'm Not Stupid

I'd like to open with Asimov's three laws of robotics.

1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Get it? Got it? Good.

Aliens is my favourite movie, something I have established before - and it is my not very humble opinion that it is a far more clever movie than it lets on. There's several world-class performances in this movie, and not just from the principle main cast too - perhaps one of the best performances in this movie is put in by the legendary Lance Henriksen, in his portrayal of the (spoilers) android, Bishop.

Let's talk about the first time we really meet Bishop - no, not when he walks past out of Cryo.

No no no, when we MEET him. In THIS scene, in the mess hall, right here.

See, this scene establishes character and setting, and it does so with great subtlety. It does so without you even realising it is happening, because these people are just playing out their roles, right? They're just being the people you know they are.

So let's review.

In this scene, we have all the non-commissioned Marines dining together, while the Lieutenant decides to eat on a separate table with the two civilian contractors - a fact that is noted, and interpreted as aloofness. This is an assumption that carries through until it's revealed that he's not really aloof - he's just inexperienced, and has no idea how his soldiery would perceive him doing the very basic thing of eating with Burke and Ripley. After all, none of the Marines want to eat with the civvies - and they'd just have to sit there by themselves. So it's the right thing to do to keep them company, right?

As much of an asshole as Hudson can be, he still respects Sergeant Apone, referring to him as "Top" when he enquires about the mission - but Apone doesn't know, so he spins a joke about colonists and their virginity. A further divide between the soldiery and Ripley in particular. This is a hyper-macho social environment, and it remains to be seen whether or not these Marines are all talk or not; an impression further portrayed by Frost and Hudson slapping hands over "Arcturan Poontang". Spunkmeyer has a smart mouth, but Hicks replies to his derision regarding the food with fatherly advice, humorous or not: "It's good for you, boy, eat it."

As this happens, in the picture above, we can see Bishop offering people food.

This is easily seen as his job - we don't know who or what he is yet, but he's been established as not a soldier (he's not sat with them) but not quite a distant civilian (not sat with them either) - and also, he's interacting with the troops directly, quietly, socially, positively - but in a subservient role. Everyone else has gone to retrieve their own main meal, but here he is, handing out cornbread to people and not, himself, eating.

And then this happens.

"Bishop, do the knife thing, man."

Further character establishment. Specifically we establish that Hudson is a clown, and that the Marines know Bishop, and have known him for longer than their new Lieutenant - no shared experience with them, but this is an event that has happened with Bishop and the Marines before. Hence the cheers and jeers from the others, until he caves in and...

Obeys.

Later - when the scene has played out as we all know it does - Bishop explains to Ripley that he cannot "harm, or by omission of action allow to be harmed, a human being", which is almost word-for-word a repeat of the First Law of Robotics. He states it is part of his behaviour inhibitors, which Ash - from Alien - simply wouldn't have. Perhaps due to what happened in Alien, even if the events of the movie are officially denied by Weyland-Yutani, or perhaps due to other events wherein the "twitchy" Hyperdyne 120-A/2s have hurt people.

Now if Bishop just outright said "I can't hurt you, I'm not allowed," then this would be a throwaway line - but he phrases it in almost exactly the same way as the First Law is written; and if he is encoded with the First Law, then it isn't a huge assumption to believe he is encoded with the Second and Third laws, as well.

So what happens in this moment is the Second Law is invoked - Bishop must obey the instruction given to him by a human, even if he initially resists - despite the fact that it can cause him physical harm, because the Third Law implicitly gives way to the Second Law. So of course he will relent, and of course they know he will.

As this goes on, Drake and Vasquez, in left of shot, exchange a look - she slaps his arm and he gets up, wandering back behind Bishop casually and up to Hudson's left hand side. I like this look, because it's clear throughout the movie that Drake and Vasquez are very close, having a bond over and above that which is shared by anyone else in this unit, and one that appears to also be entirely platonic.

Then he does this.

For one thing I love the fact that Hudson grumbles at Drake for what he is doing - clearly indicating that as the class clown he doesn't appreciate being shown up by the far more confident and capable Drake - but his real surprise is shown by Bishop going along with it.

Another thing - see those brackets mounted into the table? All of the Marines are eating out of standardised lunch trays that fit into those brackets. Clearly this is a design nod to the fact that there might be a sudden shift in momentum or similar, or that artificial gravity may fail. Just a nice touch.

Here, though, could have been a moralistic dilemma for Bishop.

He's not allowed to hurt Hudson, directly or by omission of action, even if Drake tells him to - the Second Law can't subvert the First Law.

He could have refused the order, but that would also involve refusing Hudson's own order, which was made without any perceived risk to Hudson. Which he isn't allowed to do.

So he does the next best thing.

He puts his own hand directly over Hudson's, overlapping somewhat as Lance Henriksen actually has larger hands than Bill Paxton. Which is a good thing.

In this circumstance, he is obeying the First Law by placing himself in harm's way, so that the knife will harm him before it ever harms a human. In doing so, he is obeying the instructions given to him by both humans involved in this scenario - and he is invested in not harming himself as per the Third Law, which gives him further motivation to not miss.

We all know what happens next.

Look at their faces.

Vasquez and Apone are loving it - she knew exactly what Drake was planning. Drake is satisfied, amused by Hudson's constant terrified scream. Bishop is so focused on what he is doing that he doesn't have a facial expression. He's too busy not hurting himself (Third Law) OR Hudson (First Law).

It bears mention, as an aside, that this scene was shot as-is and sped up - and that while Bishop's knife trick was part of the script, Hudson's hand being involved was not. The entire cast and crew involved discussed the scene, how to do it, and agreed that Mark Rolston should be the one to force Bill Paxton's hand under Lance Henriksen's. EVERYONE knew it was going to happen...aside from Bill Paxton. So that look of terror is real. Even if the production knife is blunt, Henriksen stood a good chance of hurting both of them during the shoot. Of course Henriksen wasn't worried. He'd practiced this a lot.

Bishop gives Hudson his knife back, thanks him, and walks away. Drake puts the tray back, slaps Hudson's shoulder amiably and tells him to enjoy his meal. We're left with Hudson looking visibly shaken at his own uninjured hand.

Brilliance.

Bishop walks back to the civilian table, offers the remains of the cornbread to those at the table, and then notices that he's nicked his finger in the showboating. Something it was entirely possible for him to do without actually hurting Hudson, given that his hands were bigger.

"I thought you never miss, Bishop," quips Burke. Which is interesting. It indicates he knows Bishop, or at least has heard anecdotal evidence of the already-established prior behaviour of the Marines and their accompanying artificial person. Arguably, he wouldn't have missed if he didn't have Hudson's hand trapped underneath his own - the necessity for protecting the person leading to a lapse of care in terms of protecting himself.

Ripley's following reaction is understandable - and Bishop's alarm at her fear of him, given that he knows he can't hurt anyone. Of course, she wouldn't know. She's been out of the loop for almost sixty years. Sigourney Weaver's acting in that moment is stellar, by the way - she glances, she realises what she is seeing, she turns to face the threat and leans back, head tilting back so far she is almost looking at him with sanpaku, her words of recrimination toward Burke coming out in a rush. It's a brilliant moment which is sold so well by Weaver that you can't help but feel her alarm yourself.

It's when he explains that he is bound by behavioural inhibitors to never hurt a human, and then rather tactlessly offers her some cornbread, that she loudly makes her feelings on the matter clear. Her precise words to him:

"Just stay away from me, Bishop. You got that straight?"

This scene alone is a goldmine for Henriksen's portrayal of Bishop. The hints all the way throughout this scene as to his nature, before the reveal of the white blood, should tell you what he is - and sets you up for the revelation, leaving you to just accept it. Of course he's an android. He's acted like one, he's been treated like one. Subconsciously the character has been set up for us to be the thing he is.

Further down the rabbit hole.

Ripley orders Bishop to stay away from her. It is done out of anger, out of fear, and out of alarm - she has an understandable suspicion of the behaviour of any android, let alone a company plant as she must suspect Bishop to be, given that he is canonically the spitting image of the man who runs Weyland Yutani in the events of Alien 3 (and presumably this movie, as the two are separated by almost no time whatsoever, perhaps a month maximum).

It is 55 minutes and 34 seconds before Bishop actually speaks to her again, almost an hour. Not to a group that she is a part of - directly to her. In that time the Marines have landed, they've made their initial investigation, found Newt, cleaned her up, entered the atmosphere processor, been ambushed, been almost wiped out, lost their Cheyenne dropship, lost their APC, witnessed Hudson's first breakdown, salvaged what they can from the wreckage of the APC, found out that they can expect rescue in two and a half weeks and witnessed Hudson's second breakdown.

He only speaks to her when the group are in a resource-restricted emergency situation. The group knowing what he is doing and where he is going is important, so there are no breaches of security, and so that his time can be efficiently used in treating a member of the group who is seriously injured and also trying to discover a way to defend themselves against the xenomorphs. Ripley's order to "stay away from me" (Second Law) is countermanded by her requirement to know what he is doing for the safety and security of the group as a whole (First Law), seeing as she has established herself as a competent leadership figure in the absence of the incompetent Lieutenant Gorman.

Likewise in a scene later, in which he is presenting his findings to the group - Ripley primary among them - he does so knowing that Ripley has shown discomfort and displeasure at his presence, but knowing that conveying the information he has is likewise important survival. It's at the end of this scene, wherein Ripley orders him to destroy the samples, that he lets slip an important bit of information.

"Mister Burke gave instructions that they were to be kept alive in stasis for return to the company labs...he was very specific about it."

This instruction he was given only gets brought up when Ripley gives him a conflicting instruction. That the samples could do harm to people isn't a metric that comes into it - fourth, fifth and sixth degrees of separation from harm done is a sticky area to get into in terms of absolute laws - but as he states later: he may be synthetic, but he's not stupid. So when Ripley states he wants them destroyed, he doesn't quibble. He immediately informs her of the vaguely potentially dangerous situation that Burke had ordered him to instate, and in doing so, forces her to resolve the discrepancy between the two instructions. He can't tell Burke no; that would break the Second Law, unless his action would directly cause harm. He CAN engineer a situation in which Burke can be forced by another person to rescind his instruction, and thus, he can conflict-free follow Ripley's instruction, which I daresay he is happy to do.

When it comes to the realisation that the atmosphere processor is set to explode, and the only way to get off the planet is to manually re-align a satellite dish at the far end of the complex, Bishop volunteers.

There's several reasons to do so. For one thing, as he says, he's the only person qualified to remote fly the second dropship from the Sulaco. He conversationally adds, after that statement:

"Believe me, I'd prefer not to. I'm synthetic, but I'm not stupid."

The balance of this is easy.

In the scenario presented, perhaps one of the marines would stand a greater chance of making it through the tunnel unmolested, reaching the satellite dish and doing the requisite technical work - Hudson has demonstrated significant electronic competency multiple times in the movie, further proven by him being one of the qualified motion detector operators.

As Bishop establishes, though - Bishop is a better choice to remote-pilot the vehicle, increasing the chance that it will land without incident and be capable of conveying the marines off-world. Also, if Bishop is ambushed and killed during his trip through the tunnel or while aligning the dish, then it is him who has died in the line of duty - rather than one of the humans.

He isn't qualified to fight. He literally rejects the firearm that Vasquez hands him, in a cinematic moment that I adore - she gives it to him without a second thought, as she is a Marine, and having a weapon to defend yourself with is second nature. He gives it back to Ripley, knowing that if it came down to pulling the trigger, he'd be dead already. The look on his face.

That's why he never volunteers for any combat operations - he would be more of a hindrance to his human team-mates than an asset, and would thus put their lives at risk more by his presence than his absence. In this scenario, though - the lives of all the humans are best served by him doing the job, a metric that balances the primacy of the First Law perfectly over his Third Law programming to protect himself.

The last thing he says before they close and seal the conduit behind him is to tell Ripley to watch her fingers, before he starts to shuffle down the crawlspace; Vasquez murmuring "Vaya con dios, man," as she welds the plate back.

He may be crawling down a two-hundred-meter choke-space tunnel toward certain death, but the last social interaction he has with the people who didn't even ask him to do this is to look out for the safety and well-being of the woman that previously ordered him to stay away from her.

In the scene earlier in the movie when Spunkmeyer brings some supplies to Bishop - who turns and looks at him in a vaguely creepy way, but Spunkmeyer's response is more akin to dealing with someone who is spacing out than an inhuman machine - wherein Lance Henriksen had suggested he wear special contact lenses to make his eyes creepy, to give him the appearance of inhumanity. James Cameron did a screen test for the scene and found that the way Henriksen played the scene out, from his coldness and distance to Spunkmeyer to his only really seeming to engage when he is studying the xenomorph under his microscope, was creepy enough.

That's the two ends of this character - a nuanced, textured individual who is a stand-out personality in a unit full of alpha gung-ho soldiers. A stellar job of character acting from a stellar actor. Both Henriksen in Aliens and Ian Holm in Alien put in simply breathtaking performances, for two different reasons - and of course, Holm's performance informs Henriksen's in terms of trying to make Bishop a counterpoint to Ash. No pretence of humanity, here - in fact, the only reason Ripley didn't know was because Burke should have told her but didn't. The Marines all know who Bishop is, and they like and respect him. He does his job, and they tolerate his personality quirks, and they trust his competencies as he trusts theirs.

Just another example of fantastic character from my favourite movie. Part of my reasons why it IS my favourite movie.

The Bumper RPG Audience Participation Post

Soooo I game a lot.

Yes, video games, but the thing I really enjoy doing - my Thing, as it were - is roleplaying games. I've made plenty of posts in the past on the topic, so you could probably work this out about me.

Well, I decided to go all in today. I asked for questions, comments and anecdotes on the topic, and you didn't disappoint.

I will ALSO be providing links to some cool stuff - youtubers who do a great job of teaching on the topic, podcasts and actual-play posts. All put together either by people who are my friends or people I respect.

So with no further ado, and names removed to protect the innocent, we'll begin with the questions.

Does LARP also count? ;) - ...yes, I used to (and still in a limited fashion do) LARP. Though not the spongy-sword type. My knees just aren't up to it any more...

Which character that you've played/encountered do you most wish was real? - Well there's a few I've played that I am very glad were NOT real, and even more that I've encountered - Rotsnik the Murder Goblin being one of them. But in terms of who I most wish WAS real, hmm. Out of characters I have played I would say that Perdix, the cheeky and charming Fate/Time Mage, would be a true blessing to the world if he really existed. Out of other people's characters that I have encountered, that's a hard choice - but Brayla, a certain Alchemist of devil-may-care attitude and incredible skill, would be a brilliant person to meet at a pub.

Do you ever wish you'd taken the blue pill? - Never. I've had so many good times, learned so many useful skills and made so many good friends through the hobby that imagining my life without it is just impossible.

Do you take a little something of yourself into your characters? Or do you like to completely escape? - Depends on the character. Yonks ago I did a thing about traits I like seeing in RPG characters, and a couple of them are traits I think I have. I think it's a really hard thing to make a character that is nothing like you, too. Like, at the character sheet stage you can do it - but when it comes down to actually playing that character and judging what they would do in a situation, removing yourself from that decision-making process is really hard. It can be kind of liberating to play a character that is deliberately very unlike yourself, though. I mean, my Rogue Trader captain was a million miles away from me and he was one of my most enjoyable plays.

What is the most memorable encounter you have played through, and one that you have ran in a game? - Hah, okay. There's a few of these. There was the fight against a group of evil Magi who were trying to hatch a dragon egg at Glastonbury festival, while AC/DC played Thunderstruck. There was the fight wherein we had to kill our friend Patrick (who was the villain in his own story) in Carisbrooke Castle. There was the moment when myself and the spell-slinger did a dungeon backwards, and the follow-up when the DM of that game found the perfect opportunity to do the same thing in a totally different scenario. There was the time that we as an evil party ambushed a nominally good party, and slaughtered them, and then they reversed time with a Wish and ambushed US instead and made my flying mount vanish from underneath me and I fell a hundred and fifty feet to the deck... in terms of encounters that I've run myself, though. I remember someone meeting an alien entity when I ran Eclipse Phase - coming face to face with the creature (which had no facial features) and freezing... then it just turned and moved away. I was pleased with how that went. That and wrecking Mars with a space elevator cable and giving my party a minor phobia of the intro of a Thrice song.

If you could DM for a group of famous people, who would you choose for your group? - I know this one. Vin Diesel, The Rock, Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day and Kevin Smith. Usually I prefer to run for four but I am sure I can stretch to five with a mob like this. (The best thing is they all game and I know they do.)

Did you ever have a transition from playing a game "games master" to become story teller? Most of the games I've played with you running the story seems forefront. - I have done a blog about this as well, kinda. It just so happened that the vast majority of my formative RPG time happened in a period and with groups that primarily played games that were heavy on the narrative. World of Darkness specifically calls the person that is running the game the Storyteller, for that precise reason. I just like there to be a plot, you know? And I've never been the kind of gamer that finds the plot gets in the way of rolling dice and killing dudes. Just never happened. So I run the kind of games I like to play in.

Are there any systems or settings which appeal to you but you haven't yet played or run? (pretty open I know but legit curious 😅) - OH yeah. Feng Shui, Tales From The Loop, Over The Edge, Nobilis, Continuum. I've played Mechwarrior but only once and I've love to play it again. Shadowrun's more recent editions. Cyberpunk. Never played Cyberpunk, would love to. Numenera. Infinity. Quite a few!

Are there any things you've seen in media that you've wanted to(or have) introduced in your games? Possibly a bit of a cheat given that they're based on DnD but I loved the "Individual Magical Effect" from Goblins comic, and the portrayal/explanations for both alignment and attempted redemption in Order of the Stick. - Oh a lot of things. The magical effects from Goblins is one I actually use. The criminal underworld presented in John Wick is something I am planning to use at a later date. The notion of the Doomsday Clock is something I use in my games, but haven't had to actually make it tick for a long time.

To explain - the Doomsday Clock is something you can have when you have a group of players that you feel you may have to keep in line. If you feel they are acting out, or getting distracted, or generally being doofy beyond your capacity to deal, you add a tick to the Doomsday Clock. When it has ticked to thirteen - a Bad Thing happens. It can be useful less as a stick to beat your party with but more as a reminder that time at the table is limited and we want to make it a good time - and you can totally use it as an excuse to bring in that bad guy that you've wanted to use in the past three campaigns!

Have you ever TPK'd a party or been in one? And if not, why not! - I've been in more than one. My first real D&D game. We found a baby dragon. Then the mama found us. Then there was one in Vampire, wherein the car crashed and the world ended when we attacked the Prince. The last time I played Paranoia it was a TPK, but I think that has to happen. In truth, I don't think I've ever actually run a TPK. I don't often set up a scenario in which all my players will DEFINITELY die, there's almost always a way to live, and my players are often smart people. In fact the one game I set up and ran at Nine Worlds con in 2015 that was designed for my players to die in a dungeon - for purpose of having another party finding the dungeon half-completed later - the party actually succeeded, against all odds, and made it out alive. Maybe I'm just soft on my players, I just don't like killing PCs unless they have earned that bullet.

What the longest running game you've been in? - In terms of tabletop, that would be the "Quantum Leap" Pathfinder game, in which we ran six (it ended up being about eleven) different game modules, from Level 1, to Level 20 Mythic 10. And in each scenario we would appear in the world where we were meant to be, in new bodies (or sometimes old bodies), and do the job, before being snatched away by the powers that be. That ran for at least a year and a half, maybe two years, and it averaged out to once every two weeks. If we're talking online I've been RPing a single constant game world with my girlfriend since about 2012.

Whats the longest single continuous session you've done? - Hard to say. I know that back when we used to play Dark Ages Vampire and such there were some all-day sessions. Though I think the actual longest has to be the Epic Game Weekend in Colchester, wherein we put in two solid ten-hour days of RP back to back. Slightly ruined by drama but that was the game in which my lvl36 Cleric of Hades was blasted off his Nightmare and had the good grace to look surprised and dismayed before plummeting to the ground. (He lived.)

What do you do when a party does something completely unprecedented and you've not prepared for that scenario? - The last time this happened (and I can remember the last time this happened) I laughed helplessly for a solid thirty seconds, then asked for five minutes so I could go plan out what was going to happen next. Your players will NEVER think badly of you for doing this, in fact they will take the time to crow and preen about how they were able to throw a googly past God. They should take pride in the fact that they've sideswiped you so hard.

Are there any particular setting or systems you just won't play in? - System AND setting? MERPS - Middle Earth Role Playing System. The fucking table game. Yawn. Uh. I don't find Paranoia that fun, but I can be convinced. There's a lot of systems I would rather not play but would give a shot to anyway, precious few that are Hard No systems. The ways you can guarantee me not wanting to play the game: 1) random generic medieval fantasy boredom, 2) modern world coffee shop roleplay without any differentiating factor from a soap opera, and 3) a rule system so loose and fluffy that it is basically just seven friendly thoughts printed on candy floss.

How hard is it to keep track of the math and modifiers during high level games? - It can get pretty difficult, depending on the game one is playing in, the class of character one is playing, etc. Playing a Level 20 Mythic 10 Cleric of the Goddess of Death was actually relatively easy once I'd done all the maths to work out precisely how many dice I rolled to achieve certain things. But that's the benefit of planning things out beforehand. There is no shame in having a cheat sheet. Attacks with and without power attack, against your chosen foe, using different weapons - work it all out ahead of time, maybe with the player at the table that really enjoys maths (me), and then you aren't stuck in a Number-Based Anxiety Loop when asked to roll to hit the Aboleth Goddess later.

What do you think people can gain from roleplaying? Not any one specific system or game but generally. - Lots of things. Empathy for one thing - pretending to be someone else can make you sensitive to their needs and the way in which they see the world, which can lead to understanding that other people are different but still worthy of care and attention. Problem-solving and teamwork are two gimmies, too. You take a bunch of office folks on a team-building weekend and a table full of gamers and give them the same challenge - using these materials to cross this river then climb this wall - and I guarantee you that the gamers will work out how it is done before the team-building folks even agree on who is in charge. Mathematic competency is helped by working with numbers constantly and there being a reward for making those numbers work. Descriptiveness, imagination, communication, social skills - all things improved by regular guided RP. I think schools should offer it as an after-school or lunchtime club activity, advertise it heavily and even reward those particularly devoted to it. It can offer so much.

Why is it more popular with boys/men? - I don't actually know, but I could probably lay the blame for that at the feet of the kind of culture that embraced D&D back in the eighties. As many jokes were made about girls not being allowed at the table as were made about D&D players being afraid of sunlight and not washing. I think, though, these days it is a lot more evenly split - and I know this is only anecdotal evidence from one perspective but I think over half of the people who contributed questions and anecdotes to this blog weren't male. So who knows? I think they should be for everybody.

How do you balance the needs of players who prefer narrative vs those that are all about the conflict/battle bits? - Difficult, but - as a player grows and gets better at gaming in general, they start to want to expand their horizons more. So no combat monkey will be a combat monkey forever. Usually. It's not always difficult to include narrative AND conflict, though. Sometimes that conflict can drive the narrative and inform it. Sometimes the war you are fighting is the story that you are following. In the end, though, it can be very rewarding to play a character who is good at one thing that is stuck in a situation where doing that thing isn't the solution. I particularly enjoy playing characters who are very combative who are put in scenarios that simply can't be solved by fighting. It's a challenge - it lets me get my beak wet in terms of roleplaying characters put in situations that aren't their standard fare. Though in the end, if you have a player who wants to quit the game because they only want to do A and there's too much B - that's a conversation to have. Everyone wants to have a good time at the table, and being constantly dragged away from the situation that you want to be in is no fun, but always getting what you want is no fun either.

I think another interesting one is how to control a setting if the actions of one player is stressing out another... - So that's not so much a setting issue as it is a party issue. I know this has happened in games I have played in and run, wherein one player goes full kamikaze and is intent on taking everyone else with them, or gets bored and goes off and does something that is widely accepted as being a Bad Idea. The thing with being a group of four imaginative people with different characters and abilities is that disagreements as to how to handle something often happens, especially if those characters have different morality systems. It's for this reason that I don't often run games in which people play evil characters, not because it stops folks disagreeing, but because a good character will try and reason with their wayward team-mate, whereas an evil character may well just murder or cripple them. If it is a question of someone doing something deliberately at the table that really stresses someone else out, then that's a thing that needs to be talked about out of game. Again, we're all here for a good time, not to be slaved to someone else's power fantasy - and if we can't come to an agreement on how not to fuck with each other, then someone has to step away.

Maps or no maps? - Depends on the game and the needs of the players. A dungeon dive without a map is difficult, and a game wherein knowing the facing and positioning of the enemy in a combat situation is important can usually be benefited by having a map. I tend to like running minds-eye though, because that way we can get into fun descriptiveness of kung fu style wire stunts and how we do things in relation to our opposition, rather than desperately trying to work out how to move those last three feet so you can get a +2 on your attack roll.

Dice or LARP? - I prefer dice, if only for fact that I am far less physically capable than 99% of the characters I would end up playing at a LARP. Not just in terms of beating snot out of people with boffer weapons but in terms of being able to stand up for more than ten minutes without being in significant pain.

From questions, we move onto anecdotes and contributions.

I contribute this, just for shits and grins - This comic is great, you oughta read it.

My dice bag is a snake! I only have one set of dice, tho, lol - Your dice bag is adorable and I love it. See below.

The only new RPG thing I’ve done recently is write an actual play for the first time. If you could mention it for me I’d be grateful. At nearly 8000 words of effort now I would love to have some more readers! - Which I will gladly do. The game is SLA Industries, something I have played and enjoyed myself, purely on the basis of there being a weapon called a Boom Hammer. A sledgehammer with a socket for a shotgun shell and a pressure plate that sets it off when you hit someone with it. You can find the AP right over here. Go look, folks. Follow with me the adventures of ACU Puncture limited.

How about the time I spent months setting up a transition to 2E on exalted online and had to go to a funeral and when I got back you and the rest of the team completed the transition and sanctioning with 0 problems. - I'm gonna lay that at the feet of your superb planning, because I don't remember having a lot to do with it. In terms of online RP, though, it's always good to have a reliable team under you in a chat environment. Nothing worse than constantly thinking you have to check up on the people allegedly meant to be helping you out.

In one of my first games (with my brother's friends) the DM had set up a big mystery for us to solve. I still don't know all the specifics, because it became one of those games where no one could get time to get together after the initial meeting, BUT! We were interrogating some low-level minion and getting nowhere when I looked at my spell list, leaned over to show it to my brother, and asked 'I can cast this, right?'. MY brother said 'yes' so I said 'I cast Zone of Truth!' The DM just about flipped the table, and we found out info that should have taken us several sessions right then not 5 min after we started. (and I'm not making this up cause of that famous DnD game thing, this really happened) - I love shit like this. It's what we live for. In fairness, though - the DM should know that the spell Zone Of Truth exists. Like, it would be pointless me planning on something being a secret if one of you can literally just pluck the idea out of my NPC's brain. Like, why wouldn't I use the tools in my toolbox to achieve my goals? When you have to get REALLY clever is when you want information to be kept secret but the party have all sorts of ways of finding it out - how to increase mystery while you have spellcasters that can scry on distant locations and know if the people they are questioning are telling the truth. That'll work out your writing muscles a bit. It takes the greater person to hold their hands up and admit that the party got around their little scam, though. Like you know you are a good DM when the party sees clean through your bullshit smokescreen and hits the nail on the head, and you can just admit that they did it and move on with the game.

Here's a good one. Back when I LARPed V:tM and W:tA, we used to congregate in the basement of the WTC. one night, cops had been called about some rowdy dude in the other tower - but they zeroed in on us... We all started getting up to leave, except the dude who was supposed to be "dead" at that moment... we had to spend 20 mins explaining to the cops that he was just unwilling to break character, and then four dudes hadda carry him out XD - When we LARP'd vampire, one of the folks that showed up to the game brought along a realistic prop of their character's primary armament. This ended up being a problem, because their primary armament ended up being an MP5 with a laser sight. We're out in this park at like 10pm and these two police walk past, and I have this perfectly framed view of the guy in question arguing with someone else, while these two coppers clock the fact that he has what looks like a machine gun strapped to his chest... this was post-9/11 too.

I ran logistics for our LARP back 5 years or so ago. A friend of mine, who had been staffing, decided to play an event and call in all his backlogged production. I had to print up tags for 200 in-game "intoxicants". Took forever to get them all printed and cut, stamped and signed as legit. I deliver them, he goes into game and, within about 20 minutes, trades every single one of them to an NPC for in-game "drugs". >.< I was so freakin' mad. They then spent the rest of the event addicted to the in-game drugs and stealing everything that wasn't nailed down to fence for more drug money. I was actually in-game for that event, too, and we spent the entire event hiding every single bit of loot we acquired because they kept stealing everything. - Ugh. See, this is obnoxious. The idea of making someone put in the at-home work to make this scenario pan out... like, the amount of effort put in doesn't come close to equal to the payoff. I'd be mad too.

I would like to follow this little lot with a selection of links, to things that I think my gaming people will find good.

I'll start with a podcast that I really enjoy - Cosmic Crit. It's a Starfinder podcast, and Starfinder is one of the games I am really into at the moment. The players are neat people, the stories make me chuckle, and it's generally a good listen.

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about The Adventure Zone. It's longer, so there's more of a backlog to catch up on, but it's worth it. The McElroys are entertaining at the worst of times, and in this they are on fine form.

There's some folks on YouTube that deserve a look, too.

Satine Phoenix is involved in gaming on Twitch and has a lot of guests that are well worth a listen to. Also those ELF EARS I never thought I'd like something elf related but ELF EARS

Seth Skorkowsky will provide you with advice and anecdotes in his inimitable style. He's a funny guy who knows what he is doing.

Matthew Colville is someone I've only come into contact with relatively recently, but his three videos about politics are essential viewing for budding DMs.

And there you have it. One bumper crop of reader-contributed RPG content. Who'da thunk? It turned out pretty good. This is a topic I can hold forth about for aeons, so I'd best not dwell. Maybe once a month I can turn this blog into Dungeon Corner or something. I dunno.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading - if you contributed, thank you for your contribution - and if you're gaming this weekend, may the crits be ever in your favour!

Omission Of Action

So let's say that Superman is real.

There is a comet hurtling towards earth, maybe thrown at us by some invisible enemy, maybe just falling down the gravity well. The impact of this comet will demolish an entire continent, and through the dust-winter that follows, basically kick the earth into an ice age the likes of which 99% of life won't survive.

Superman is aware of it. He knows it is coming.

If he chooses to go do something else rather than stop it - including just standing off to one side and watching - then that's an act of evil, right? Permitting mass extinction through inaction. We can agree that is a bad thing.

Ten points if you know where this is going already.

Let's go back to the starting block.

Superman is real. There is a group of evil men (let's call them the Hurters) that deliberately kill millions every year. Straight-up murder. They're not from the countries that Superman usually does things in, though - and Superman is busy. He can't stop the Hurters, because he's trying to use his Super-planning to fix problems for comparatively wealthy people that are outside of the reach of the Hurters.

He can stop them. It would take time and effort, but it is doable, because he is Superman. He possesses the capability to stop the Hurters. He just doesn't do it, because he's doing something else, even if he is aware of the problem.

That, too, is an act of evil - right? People being killed every day is more important than traffic jams or selling things. Through deliberate inaction, Superman is permitting mass murder. We can agree that that is a bad thing.

Five points if you know where this is going.

Back to the starting block again.

Bruce Wayne is real. The Hurters are killing millions every year, but not directly - instead, they are destroying people's access to safe food and clean water. Seven and a half million a year are killed by hunger and malnutrition, and almost a million are killed by lack of clean water. Eight and a half million people a year, killed by the Hurters - that's the First World War, every five years.

Bruce Wayne knows. He can fix this - he's not super-fast or super-strong, but he has the capability to replace all the lost food and clean water. He can do this despite not being a superhuman, because he has another super-power, which is a vast amount of money. Money becomes resources and manpower which becomes water purifiers and improved farming conditions, and can lobby for better political support to make sure that people don't starve.

Bruce Wayne, instead, spends his time faffing around with advanced technology and making the numbers in his bank account bigger. Perhaps he feels that stopping the Hurters is a job for Superman, though apparently Supes isn't up to the job either, but hey, who is counting? Bruce Wayne is busy. He doesn't stop eight and a half million people a year dying, because he's busy.

That, too, act of evil. People dying from preventable causes through inaction of Bruce Wayne, permitting mass murder at the hands of the Hurters. Those awful Hurters. We can agree that is a bad thing.

Two points if you know where this is going now.

Back to the starting block.

No superheroes, this time. No comic characters. Just people that exist with vast sums of money, which we have already established is an actual super-power. No villains, either - no Hurters. Just eight and a half million people dying every year of the same causes, starvation, malnutrition and lack of clean water.

The people with vast sums of money could fix this. They don't. They're busy.

I'm sure you can put the rest together yourself.

In an unrelated tangent, here's the Forbes rich list: