It's 2021 and Wizards of the Coast is starting out of the gates with a lot of really interesting developments for their popular games.

I'm usually not one to talk about news releases, but one that happened on February 25th caught my interest. Hasbro, the parent company of Wizards of the Coast, is giving Wizards its own operating division. Wizards of the Coast is the parent company to Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, both of which are games that I enjoy and love to play. They also have tons of other games, but those are the two big ones that impact my life.

The Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition ruleset is my favorite that has ever been put out. I've played all the versions except the fourth edition one, and that was because I was in a time of my life when I thought I'd try my hand at going to the gym and being a normal person associating with other "normal" people who are not nerds and like to go to nightclubs and date and all that. After I got over this period of my life (with a huge realization that you just have to find people who are into the same things you are and you'll find happiness), I returned to running Dungeons & Dragons. To explain a bit further, I choose to run rather than play D&D (ever hear of the term "Dungeon Master?") mostly because all the people around here suck at it, and I'm a born storyteller. I always advise young people to "play to your strengths."

Anyway, a lot of people apparently think like I do, because D&D is more popular now than it has ever been, literally seeping into the bedrock of pop culture. But none of that happened because Wizards got lucky. Rather, it happened because they are working really hard at doing a great job and making a game that is both diverse and inclusive. The supplements they are putting out right now are of the highest quality that I have ever seen in decades. The game is so detailed and welcoming with mind-blowing art and fleshed out non-player characters. And the adventures are these huge sandboxes that are just loaded with fascinating details and all kinds of things to keep people entertained for hours on end. There is so much world development going on with the fifth edition game that I can only say it is very impressive.

Additionally, the stuff that you can acquire to enrich your home games is incredible. The sky is literally the limit from a basic no frills setup to hundreds of thousands of dollars. I fall somewhere on the lower end of that spectrum, but every penny I have spent toward Dungeons & Dragons stuff has been more than worth it, whether it was miniatures, terrain, or books. So yeah...long story short, Wizards of the Coast has been knocking it out of the park for five years now. Really, the best thing for Hasbro to do with Wizards of the Coast is honestly just to get out of the way of Wizards of the Coast and let them work their magic. So I was really happy to find out that is exactly what is happening.

Other things that were included with the news release had to do with the Magic: the Gathering card game. I guess that Lord of the Rings and Warhammer 40K properties are going to have some crossover in the collectible card game. That should please fans of both of those intellectual properties. They are also going to re-explore the demiplanes of dread in a new supplement called, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. This stuff is going to be all new material based on a boxed set of products that hasn't been touched for twenty-five years or so. However, I loved what they put out way back then. It's going to be nice to have those areas of gothic horror explored in a new 2021 supplement with all new art and updated super villains with recurring characters from the Curse of Strahd adventure that I ran (with great success) to some eager players a couple of years ago.

 

This short film of Conan the Barbarian is an excellent fan portrayal of the titular character.

This short film by user MugenMancer that was posted on YouTube is an excellent fan portrayal of Conan the Barbarian. For one, Conan looks like Conan should. In the books he was never supposed to be a clone of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Jason Momoa got a bit closer to the actual look of Conan, but the movie in which he starred was terrible. This short captured the panicked and frenetic feel of the Hyborian age better than any of the movies have done with their lofty budgets and paid script writers.

I've only read a few Conan stories, as they are mostly difficult to find these days despite the popularity of the character. And they are (for the most part) short stories as opposed to novels which I tend to gravitate toward in order to sink my teeth into them. So, if you're not really a short story kind of person, getting a little slice of the life of a barbarian here and there, it's probably not something you'd enjoy.

A short story in the world of Conan doesn't have the breadth to explain anything. You just are told that Conan wants a thing, that it might (for example) be in a structure with a weird name like "The Tower of the Elephant," and then you are off and running as he infiltrates said tower and overcomes traps as well as dark sorceries in order to acquire a fabled jewel or something similar. This short below is pretty much the same thing. Conan is running from some orcs that look like they live in a temple to some dark god. And he ends up killing them all. That pretty much sums up what Conan is.

It would be interesting to see a series developed around Conan (as opposed to a movie). There wouldn't need to be a lot of dialogue, and the main character could travel around a savage world stealing things from ancient temples and killing monsters. Also, I want to give a well-deserved clap in this post for MugenMancer. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to animate something this good all by yourself. I bet it was really difficult to do. 

The key to effective world-building may lie with developing powerful characters first to establish a framework for stories about the meek.

I've been working on a pet project as of late: updating my Dungeons & Dragons homebrew world to fifth edition (which is the newest of the rulesets that is available to purchase). The word "homebrew" simply means that it is my own world that we all play in (I have a group of six players) as opposed to a prepackaged one that comes from Wizards of the Coast. There's a lot of work to it, but there's a lot of work to running a game in someone else's world too because you have to do a lot of reading and memorizing of details in order to make it real. There is no shortcut to downloading that information into someone's brain. Oh if only that thing from the Matrix were real and you could just connect yourself to a computer and download kung fu.

Anyway, I've discovered something interesting about world-building. It is really beneficial to flesh out in detail the super-powerful characters of my fantasy world. For me, it has made me realize that certain things would click together. There would be consequences for the actions taken by these characters. For example, knowing who was at the head of a fantasy empire allowed me to visualize their allies. And if they had allies, then there might be embassies or trade happening between countries. The exercise became a rabbit hole that I could follow down with all of these branches that go this way and that way, and they intertwined to become a kind of supporting network for my whole fake world.

So, I ended up discovering a way easier method to create stories for new campaigns, rather than starting with the low-powered folk and wondering...what can I do with these guys? Or...what are they doing in this whole made-up universe. If I could visualize a super-powerful character in charge of a kingdom or something similar going to war with another kingdom, then it made sense that these events on a huge scale would impact someone very small in the scope of things. So I could tell a singular story about a peasant or a farmer, who was impacted by the events of this huge war.

Having done some of these exercises for my Dungeons & Dragons world, I now wonder if the same kinds of exercises would bear fruit in creative writing. I also wonder if famous authors like J.K. Rowling started with a concept around their most powerful characters. In other words, I wonder if Dumbledore and Voldemort were the first things that popped into her head, and then she created a whole world around these characters. When all the table dressing was set, well Harry Potter would just naturally pop out and that's where she decided to start telling her story. In other words, I'm suggesting a very top down approach to world building, rather than starting with a character like Harry Potter, and then trying to find all the answers as to what he is and what the world is like that he inhabits.

Anyone else use this kind of approach when building a world for your characters? Please let me know as I'm curious.

The red band trailer for the new Mortal Kombat movie looks like great fun

Two months before the film is to be released, Warner Brothers has put out a trailer for Simon McQuoid's Mortal Kombat video adaptation. When I was in college, the first Mortal Kombat was very popular in these things that we called "arcades" that existed in malls. During my junior year at college, I remember that Mortal Kombat 2 came out and they put one in the area under the cafeteria where all of us went to check our mail. I spent several hours there distracting myself with that dumb game (but I was really good at it so it wasn't expensive).

Well, there have been other Mortal Kombat video game adaptations, but none of them have been good. The one that came out in 1995 had a really metal opening title song by (I think) Rage Against the Machine. I could be wrong though. It's just what I remember.

Anyway, the effects for this thing in the red band trailer I have linked below actually look good. Sub-Zero looks great, as does Liu Kang and Kung Lao. It almost makes me want to learn how to play the newest release of the game on a gaming platform, but I think I have better ways to waste my time. However, it does bring back fond memories. My favorite character to play was Liu Kang, and I just really liked his story.

Anyone else have some Mortal Kombat thoughts? Have a great weekend.

Zack Snyder's trailer for Justice League shows the man knows how to market.

Zack Snyder knows how to put together a movie trailer. He really does. This spot for the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League, which (if I remember correctly) adds two hours to the film's original run time, is packed full of goodies that make me want to watch it. But I didn't really enjoy the original Justice League movie. So...am I getting suckered in again? Hmm. I guess. I'm actually kind of fascinated at how radically different it seems to be from what we got with Joss Whedon in the theatrical release a few years ago. One thing it has going for it? It seems to me that the big studios don't really spend this kind of cash on parody projects these days. So, it's interesting that Warner Brothers is making a leap of faith like this for Snyder to release his own cut.

I actually wonder how successful this movie will be. Any of y'all out there got any thoughts and care to weigh in? I put the trailer below for those who may not have seen it yet. But at first glance, the thing looks epic.

The Stand on CBS All Access proves that certain ideas have an expiration date and are best viewed within the context of the era in which they were released.

I've been watching The Stand on CBS All Access. I haven't ever read the book. But given that there are many adaptations of this book now, I don't think that the story has aged well. And this probably means that I won't be reading the book, like ever. My reasons are based in the reality that entertainment is much more exciting now. And that's just the march of time, I think. It's not any fault of Stephen King. Rather, my brain just requires more stimulus these days to hold my interest. Allow me to tell you a story.

My mother (who was born in 1933...she passed away in 2016) would always tell me that Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was the scariest movie she had ever seen. When I watched it as a teenager, I wasn't scared at all, because the bar had been raised so much higher on "thrills." But I had the intelligence to know that it was a masterful film, and I knew why my mother was so impacted by it. The horror of the mental illness, coupled with the reveal of a mummified body kept in hiding within the old house, was something audiences had never seen before. So it was ground-breaking and terrifying. To me...it was boring. So I only watched it once.

Anyway, I think that The Stand is also suffering from this kind of age-inflicted banality. It's a forty-year-old story, and it unravels much the same as it always has in its other adaptations. Only this time, I noticed how boring everything was. A disease wipes out humanity (we've seen this before now so many times it is cliche). Mother Abigail is a prophet, but as far as prophet's goes she's just basically wise and has the power to project herself into people's dreams. Flagg can use illusions and float and survive fatal damage. We live in an entertainment world where Wonder Woman soars and Thanos snaps people out of existence. Sure, Flagg also appears as a kind of undead thing or as an animal depending on his mood. However, he technically has fewer powers than Dracula, and I just wasn't impressed.

The characters live mostly in and around two locations: Boulder and Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, they do what sinners do, and nothing is shocking anymore, because entertainment has filled all of those holes in the decades since The Stand was published. We see people having public sex, doing drugs, gambling, and killing for sport. This is pretty much run of the mill now in shows that just want to feature any level of debauchery. Game of Thrones was honestly more edgy than anything we saw in Las Vegas in those scenes. There's nothing unusual about it. In Boulder they hold meetings until five people need to travel to Las Vegas to make a stand. The hero of the story, Stu, falls and breaks a leg. So he can't go on. Meh, seems legit. The trip there is boring, and what happens in Vegas really doesn't register any blips on my emotion reader. Nadine pregnant with an evil baby jumps out of a window and kills herself along with evil baby. We've all seen "evil baby in woman" before, and there's nothing special. Prometheus did it better. And then Trash Can man blows up Vegas with a nuclear weapon, which is about the most exciting special effect you get in this series.

Now...I'm not saying The Stand isn't a good story. It is. But it feels like it belongs in another era. It's "frights" are like Edgar Allen Poe's Fall of the House of Usher or The Pit and the Pendulum. It's like reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I'm sure audiences when these things were first released, were shocked and frightened. There are plenty of accounts that Frankenstein when it was new, scared the bejeebus out of its readers. I have no doubt that it did. But no one who reads Frankenstein in 2021 finds it even remotely interesting. It's boring. The thrills just haven't aged well.

I think it's sad that I found The Stand to be so slow and plodding. I didn't feel emotionally invested in any of the characters, because they were essentially just real people who had real jobs and were somehow immune to a world-ending disease. It was like watching a show where Joe from 7-Eleven now has to help other survivors figure out how to turn the lights on (because the people who did that before have died). So you end up watching the show, and they get the lights on, and yup...that's pretty much it. It would be like you inviting me to watch you do your laundry, only it's harder because a lot of people died a year ago and soap and fresh water and electricity is harder to find. But there aren't any supernatural monsters like zombies complicating things.

If these characters die, it's not through anything unusual. They fall, or they get shot, or they die with the fragility of being human. There's nothing supernatural or spectacular. A person that falls ten feet is probably going to die without a doctor. So yeah...that part is very real, but it seems weird when contrasted with how other shows do death. Like Daenerys Targaryen has a fire-breathing dragon burning people to ashes. You just don't get anything cool like that at all from this show. When "god" shows up in the finale (I think it's god), it's just in the form of a smoky cloud with a bright pinpoint of light that throws lightning bolts around.

Anyway, it was an interesting thing to watch. Would I recommend it to anyone? I would if you are someone who doesn't watch a lot of television. If you are someone who cannot handle a lot of stimulus, it is perfect for you, because it isn't very stimulating. There's hours of people walking, and you see them talking about stuff. There's a deaf and mute character who seemed interesting but he didn't do anything at all except walk places and then he just died. I think if you are under forty, it will bore you to tears. But in its day, I hear it was quite the thriller. It's just more proof that certain ideas have an expiration date, and they are best viewed within the context of the era in which they were released.

I feel so much empathy for what Wanda Maximoff is going through and it is painful to watch.

I've been watching WandaVision like many of the rest of you out there. For me, it hasn't been all that enjoyable. As a caveat, I'm not saying that it isn't good. It is, but it's the kind of painful entertainment that Marvel seems to be embracing to tell its stories that I may not be the biggest fan of. Spoiler's ahead as I continue to discuss what I'm talking about.

So, it's this idea of trauma. In Avengers: Endgame it was "fat Thor," which I found to be an extremely painful character. It was played off as funny, which I didn't appreciate. It's one reason why I have not rewatched Endgame, and one huge reason I didn't like the movie. Thor was in incredible pain. He had suffered tremendous trauma, and none of his friends bothered to check-in on him in five years. Thor had essentially been abandoned to become an alcoholic, as he sought out drug abuse as a means to deal with the horrible things he had experienced. I absolutely loathed and hated what they did to Thor in this show.

Well, Wanda Maximoff is next on the list it seems. I always felt that Wanda should be incredibly damaged by the trauma of both losing her brother and then watching Vision die and then herself being "dusted." What WandaVision is doing is examining what happens when a goddess (a person with god-like powers) goes through extreme trauma, sadness, and grief. When I watch this show, it is painful. All the laugh tracks, her mind-controlling everyone, and her anger... it's all incredibly sad. This character is in unfathomable emotional pain, has the power of a god, and none of her friends care. They are all gone; there is no one from the Avengers trying to console her at all. In fact, it seems to have taken everyone by surprise, because no one expected her to go off the rails like this.

It's an incredibly good story, but it's also incredibly uncomfortable too. Elizabeth Olsen is doing a tremendous job in playing this character. I see the pain in her eyes every time she is confronted with a thing that breaks with her "suspension of disbelief." At this point in the season, these "fourth wall breaks" are manifesting multiple times in an episode. At some level, you know that she is aware that she has become unhinged. But it's what she wants. She tells people to leave her alone, because she is finally happy. However, that isn't an option because she's hurting people. Wanda has become the villain.

It reminds me of the same arc that Daenerys Targaryen took in the Game of Thrones series. Here was an incredibly capable and intelligent character who just had so much trauma that by the end, she became the mad queen. I wonder why this kind of madness seems to only hit female characters. Why trauma just seems to build and build on these kinds of characters, and (because they are female) they snap and the whole world has to pay for it.

Most of these kinds of stories all have a character eventually learning to deal with their trauma, and then moving through it to get to the other side. I don't know what Wanda's "other side" looks like at this point. But I don't think there is a cure for madness when it happens to a god. Most of these kinds of stories end very badly, and I wonder if this is just another way to "put down" a character after they have gone crazy. I am invested in the series, and I want to see it through its conclusion. But yeah...it's a painful watch for anyone with empathy who actually can see what's going on.

Because of WandaVision I have questions and thoughts about the Blip.

 

Years after Avengers: Endgame brought a finale to the story arc of the Infinity Stones and Thanos, I have questions. I maybe should have thought of them back then, but I didn't. What brought them to mind was WandaVision and seeing Monica Rambeau (who had appeared in WandaVision's sitcom reality as "Geraldine") reformed out of ashes.

So my first question is: If you got blipped while you were on a plane, would you get blipped back into the middle of the sky and then fall to your death? So, thinking on that horror show...I must conclude that this is not the case. Rather, the Hulk's "snap" put everyone back safely. So Monica showing back up in a chair makes sense even if the chair she originally fell asleep in 5 years ago had been moved.

So these are complicated questions, obviously. And I shall never get a satisfactory answer to them. I mean...what if you were blipped in the middle of complex surgery? That would have to suck to suddenly be back without being sewn back up or if they were in the middle of removing something. Yikes.

I did find one reference online that said that Bruce Banner wished everyone back safely. However, my brain at this point, still wonders about collateral damage of people disappearing and then reappearing five years later. The consequences have to be huge, and I wonder how many stories you could tell dealing with those consequences before they got old.

The directors and writers have said that the Avengers had a lot of time to work out what it is they wanted: all of the people who got dusted by Thanos to return safely. This may be the equivalent of a fifteen page plan (or something similar) that includes enough food for those people to eat, and that they don't unblip in the same space as a thing occupying a space. There are those speculating too that maybe Banner's snap was to "implement the plan" that had been worked on and the Infinity Stones took it from there. They are unquestionably more than just magic objects. They define reality itself, so perhaps they have a kind of sentience to them.

Looking back on the whole Infinity Stones story arc, I will give the MCU credit for sticking with their whole "everyone is gone for five years" catastrophe. I thought they were going to cheese out an ending with a complete time reset and everyone would be hunky dory. But, they decided not to go that route, and to embrace all the consequences of "The Blip," and I guess we are just getting started on how these things will play out.

The Netflix series for Sabrina has ended and I have lots of thoughts about this hot mess of a show.

I'm going to chat about Sabrina (the Netflix series) which has ended now. So spoiler alert, if you are still watching or intending to watch.

The fourth (and final) season of Sabrina ended at the turn of the year, and I just finished watching it. When the show first aired, I was rather shocked at how different it was to anything I'd known about Sabrina. And it took me a little while to enjoy it because the main character of Sabrina was such an asshole. But we wouldn't have a show if the main character wasn't immediately doing exactly what she was told not to do (and suffering the consequences). I think (overall) my favorite character was Harvey. The people he interacted with on a daily basis were insufferable, and I'm glad the writer doing his lines knew how to thread that particular needle. 

That being said, there were a lot of qualities I did like.

For one, it was very adult, sexual, respectfully diverse and inclusive (although the graduate thesis level gender studies remarks seemed out of place in high school), and fun in the kind of way that I think a lot of people who are in love with Halloween (the holiday) imagine it to be. It was a very "woke" series as far as that goes, which seems really odd because it had so much to do with things that I think are evil. But I guess this show's interpretation of evil was that you could still have all the Beelzebub stuff as long as you were respectful about it. It just seems weird to me that you could use the right pronouns with someone (like "they" and "them") but then cut the head off your own father. Like...how does that work exactly? It seemed to pack some kind of messaging like, "the worst crimes in the world are ones which target identity." However, I was raised that murder and rape are actually worse than that...so, I got a little lost.

In many ways, Sabrina might have been a clever ode to the spooky holiday. And I really do mean "clever" because the way the sources of magic whether they be from Hecate or Lucifer are all clearly defined. Hell's role with its earth-bound witches is so intertwined that there is no sense of "other" in Sabrina. Rather, Hell is just right through the door, and you visit it as much as you would the kitchen in your home. And getting there and back again is as easy as opening a fridge door. Early on they try to scare you with mysterious gateways in mines that appear to be portals to Hell. But you do get to the point of asking, "What's the big deal?" when by fourth season, Sabrina just goes there all the time and chats up her father Lucifer or drops off a doll house or attends a social event.

And with regard to Hecate and Lucifer, both of these entities appear to be just "sources of power" rather than actual religions. If anything, Sabrina's track record with regard to religions isn't great. The way in which they used Baron Samedi in the fourth season seemed "not right" mostly because it was a big surprise and Hilda was in a queer relationship with a witch who was really a man the entire time. And then there was the whole first season fiasco with the statue of Baphomet and the Satanic church, that went to court. But mostly, religion for these witches (at least) doesn't seem to matter. They can trade faith like shirts. It was really all about the powers they got from the entities rather than anything they actually felt toward them. That does seem odd, but when your god is someone you "pal around with" I suppose you can unfriend them just like on Facebook.

I'm also not sure how I feel about the end of this show. Sabrina dies, and the ending feels very "tacked-on." She's just sitting in an empty room with three pictures and Nicholas Scratch (who presumably committed suicide so he can be with her) shows up and they just start kissing. It feels strange. Additionally, I'm just assuming that Nicholas Scratch committed suicide. What he tells Sabrina is that he swam in the "Sea of Sorrows," and I don't know what that is other than a metaphor for extreme depression. If he did commit suicide to be with his one true love, maybe that's a trope that we should just leave with Romeo and Juliet.

I also was not a fan of Father Blackwood. I was tired of this villain, and his crazy turn for Eldritch Terrors seemed very empty. It also felt like the Eldritch Terrors had absolutely no use for him, so he was pretty much just this really annoying person that distracted from the overall plot of the fourth season. It seems like the showrunners didn't really get Lovecraftian horror either, because the fourth season of Sabrina was just monster of the week, which pretty much sums up 90% of the series Supernatural.

Anyway, all that said, I did enjoy the show, but it doesn't hold any rewatch-ability for me. I think the ending caught everyone by surprise, because even the showrunners didn't realize that they'd run out of time when they were told that it would not be renewed for a season five. Knowing this, my strong preference is for shows to know that they're ending. That way people can write, film, and act like they know that the end is coming. It's basic storytelling, and it should be required of television.

For the February IWSG we are talking about online friendships we've all made in the digital age.

It's February 3rd and Black History Month. It's also the first Wednesday of February 2021. I was reminded by a friend that 1980 was 41 years ago. I don't know why that stung, but it kind of did. So to take my mind off how long ago 1980 was...I'm going to answer the February 3rd question that's on the Insecure Writer's Support Group Sign-up page which you can find HERE.

Here's a little bit about the IWSG:

It was created by Alex Cavanaugh, who is an amazing science fiction writer and musician and networker. He wears many hats.

It's purpose is to share and encourage other writers.

We all post on the first Wednesday of every month.

Here is the February 3rd question: Blogging is often more than just sharing stories. It's often the start of special friendships and relationships. Have you made any friends through the blogosphere.

I have. I think that Alex and I are friends. We've never met, but I think it'd be fun to do that someday. I feel like I know a bit about him. I have also met Patrick Dilloway in person, and I thought that I had a bit in common with him too. I know we share the same politics, and we have some interests that crossover. Patrick is really into comic books whereas I just kind of dip a little into them. I haven't read actual comics for years, so most of what I remember is old stuff. I do occasionally google stuff to catch up on storylines. Like (apparently) there is a new big bad in the Marvel universe right now that is called Knull who is a bigger and stronger villain than Thanos was. He literally destroyed the Sentry (who is basically Marvel Superman) and just ripped him to pieces in a few seconds. He's the first symbiote or a king of symbiotes (remember Peter Parker's black suit?) Anyway, Patrick would be the "go to" guy to ask all about Knull whereas I'm just passingly aware of Knull and the storyline in general (if that makes any sense).

Another blogger I've met is David Powers King. But he's more than just a blogger. He's a pretty big deal these days too. I know he writes great books for young adults that are a lot of fun to read and should be made into shows on Disney Plus. I had dinner with him once at one of my favorite restaurants in town. But that restaurant closed as did a bunch of others I liked. Covid is like a wrecking ball with restaurants right now.

I've never met Liz, but she seems like she would be a fun person to meet. And then there is Andrew over in the bay area. I'd actually really like to meet Andrew. I think that would be fun. I enjoy reading his review of things, and we are politically aligned too which is always a plus. I'm not saying I don't appreciate conservatives, but I live in Trump country so I'm around them 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. It's just nice to be able to meet people who have the same ideals as me. It's like a breath of fresh air.

Please stop by the IWSG's awesome co-hosts. They are:

Louise - Fundy Blue , Jennifer Lane, Mary Aalgaard, Patsy Collins at Womagwriter, and Nancy Gideon!

Anyway, that's about it for my IWSG post. Thanks for stopping by.