Happy Birthday, Robert E. Howard

Today is Robert E. Howard's birthday. I've already said a lot about why I love his work and why I'm so moved by his life, so I'm just going to say that much. Happy birthday, Bob.

Something Cool I Never Knew About

I was just bumping around the internet, reading about things that interest me, when I came across this:



Hey, awesome! Universal Studios had a Conan live show in their tours! And sure, it might be based on the movie, but it's Conan, right?

Wait a second... why does a weedy guy pick up a sword and turn into a big musclebound dude? Does he have the power of Grayskull? And why is Red Sonja involved? Exactly what is this based on, anyway?

Okay, so this has absolutely nothing to do with Conan, but it must have been pretty kick ass to watch back in the day. As I've said before, I love cheesy fantasy almost as much as I enjoy quality fantasy. Swords, fire, animatronic dragon. What else does a boy need?

Apparently someone recorded the whole thing on a crappy camcorder (did they have any other sort in the late 80s/early 90s?). Enjoy the campy awesomeness!

Dark Horse Solomon Kane, you're sitting in the naughty chair

(Note: not for the squeamish, and also plenty of spoilers)

I was a bit disappointed with the first volume of Dark Horse's run on Solomon Kane, but the second volume is making me want to drop the title. This isn't any sort of review, mind. This is how I feel. Results not typical. If you feel strongly about it, you're more than welcome to.

My primary complaint is the gore. As an avid fan of the writer's work, I don't mind pints of squirting blood and lots of violent action. But after a point it just turns my stomach. It's always a line between telling a story and just being unnecessarily gruesome. In the first volume, guts are spilled in liberal measure, including one scene in which a man's intestines are apparently twisted around Kane's sword as he pulls it out. The real turning point for me came when a monster tears off a named female character's face near the end of the story. I can take most things, but gratuitously graphic violence towards women makes me sick.

In the second volume, the gore dial got ratcheted up to 11. Practically every scene in which a monster gets shot or stabbed resulted in copious amounts of hanging (and/or splattering) red viscera. And they do get shot and stabbed frequently. And it's not just the monsters. In one scene, a man gets the top of his head cut off and his brains spill out. In another, a woman has her neck twisted all the way around, breaking her spine. A man who falls from a second-story window breaks both legs into a shredded mess with the bones sticking out. Feel free to call me a sissy, but this feels excessive.

Both stories are based around original fragments written by Howard, in the same way the Conan series has been doing in some of the volumes. The first volume deals with the fragment "The Castle of the Devil," which originally never even goes as far as to establish what the real nature of the conflict is. The comic pretty much makes up the whole story, beyond it involving Kane, a wandering Englishman, and a sinister baron's castle around which he likes to string up children for supposed crimes. I actually liked this story. The supernatural mystery and tangled strings of motivations made it an entertaining read.

The second volume uses a full Kane story, "The Rattle of Bones," and another fragment, "Death's Black Riders." Contrary to what I would have expected, "The Rattle of Bones" makes up a single chapter, surrounded by the fairly flat story built from the fragment. They really base it on a single line from the two page fragment: "They swept on, horse and rider a single formless black object like some fabulous monster." In this story, this is literal: the enemies are misshapen, vaguely centaurlike monsters. They're attacking people for reasons never clearly explained. It's suggested they were summoned by a gypsy to fight off bandits, but they stick around apparently just because they'd like a Solomon Kane sammmich. A monster gets a couple of lines about wanting to destroy the whole human race near the end, but by that point Solomon Kane has killed most of the other monsters, so that's a pretty optimistic goal. The story is mostly an extended siege of a tavern and a lot of fighting off the monsters as they try to get in. Not terrible, but nothing special.

(Aside: I like the way they did "The Rattle of Bones," but it felt rushed. It could have used a longer simmer to get the right spooky flavor.)

The dialogue isn't great, either. It's serviceable for the most part, with occasional awkward line: "Did your prayers stop that thing, priest? No! 'Twas this [the pistol], in my iron right hand!"

In the end, it's the gore that makes me pause. For a great story (and the first one is quite good), I can put up with even a lot of it. But the second story was pretty weak, and being constantly showered with visceral splatter makes me think I'm going to leave the rest of these volumes on the shelf.

(I should also mention that the coloring in the first volume was done by the excellent Dave Stewart, who also colored many of the Dark Horse Conans with art by Cary Nord. Give credit is credit is due, Stewart does a bang-up job.)

A Very Half-Assed Reaction to the Age of Conan Video Game

In the tradition of my very half-assed reactions to fantasy stuff, I will here review the Age of Conan MMO. There's a free to play intro, so I decided I'd take a crack at digital Hyboria.

First things first: the game needed to download 3+ gigs of stuff before it would play. That's in addition the ridiculously long install time. Even after that, it had to update itself for at least another ten minutes after I launched the game and got into the character builder. After I built my character, I had to wait ANOTHER ten minutes before I could actually fire up the game.

If you had any doubts that I was going to make a "Conqueror" class Cimmerian hero with the height and muscles maxed out, you haven't read enough of this blog. Surprisingly, the Cimmerians in this game are quite pale. Makes me wonder, considering how often Robert E. Howard refers to Conan as a "bronzed" man. Well, maybe he was just dipped in bronze at some point in his career.

First, the good. I kind of like the combat system of selecting to attack left, high, or right depending on where your enemy is defending. Since the screen shows you were best to attack (wherever the enemy has the fewest arrows), it's basically the world's easiest game of Simon Says, but it does get more interactive than just rick clicking something and going for a pee break while the fight unfolds.

I was hoping these three basic attacks would last me, but soon enough as I leveled up (the game threw levels at me the way I throw coins at dancing girls in Tarantia), I unlocked a bunch of abilities that have a short warm-up meter and then unleash an attack that takes a few seconds to cool down. So though I could say it's more or less like World of Warcraft, what I really mean to say it's more like World of Warcraft and less UNlike World of Warcraft. Still, the three basic attacks does work for me. It's kind of fun, forcing the player to take an active role in the fight... if you ignore that you're just swinging wildly away at each other anyway while you both stand still. Hack and slash, swashbuckling brawling this ain't.

NPCs have exclamation points over their heads when they have quests for you and question marks when you're ready to complete the quest. If you don't know why this is a criticism, you've probably never played a fantasy MMO.

After coming across a maiden in need of saving literally thirty seconds into entering the game (after someone bitched at me about me being a slave who just survived a shipwreck and told me to go into town), I killed a few beach combers, freed the maiden with a key one of them dropped, and then she started following me around, cheering and clapping every time I got into a fight. She became my very own personal cheering section while I got chewed on by baddies. Yay gender equality.

At this point I should mention the performance. My six year old computer (the retired Southern gentleman planter Colonel Aloisius Dell) did most emphatically NOT enjoy playing this game. I turned the settings all the way down until the graphics looked worse than World of Warcraft (flat textures, pastel colors, crude movements), but the screen would still freeze for a few seconds when there was too much going on--usually when I was getting stabbed in the nipples.

I beat up some pirates and their pet cats, found a few slightly less awful items (I started the game with a broken oar as a weapon--apparently I couldn't even find a whole oar), and beat up a fat guy who used to be my slavemaster. In this conversation, the game made sure to earn its M rating, making reference to "raping" my ears, calling the dude a "whore's son," and various other jargon Tarantino would have been proud of. It would have been a tense scene if our conversation wouldn't have drawn on so long, or if I could have just broken it off with a kick to the groin. He's all "Hey, my slave! Come be my slave again." I'm all "I'm going to kick your balls off." He's all "Don't be like that. Let's get you into town and I'll sell you." I'm all "I'm going to tear you a new asshole." He's all "There's no need to get bent out of shape. We can work this out. Here, put these chains on." I'm all "I'm going to tear off your head and shit down your neck." He's all "If you really feel strongly about it...." I'm all "CAN WE JUST START PUNCHING EACH OTHER ALREADY?" He's all "Well, if you REALLY want to." (Conversation paraphrased.)

After I beat up some Picts (hanging out in Tortage, in the Barachan isles? eh, it's a demo area), I headed past some vine-covered idols of dark gods (points) into a forgotten jungle-swallowed temple (more points) to fight some ghoul-type monsters. After doing my usual ass-kicking, I grabbed the key to a door and headed through the rest of the jungle. I punched some gorillas in the balls (REH loved using gorillas as enemies, so even more points here), then came across a flowing river of lava.

I really could have just gone over the bridge, but I decided to see what happens when I touch the river of lava. I gingerly dipped my toe into it, only to be told that I've been incinerated. A few seconds later, my character died, and I respawned. No biggie. My cheering section even found me a moment later and we continued with our day as though nothing happened. I talked to her, and she didn't even seem to notice that I, apparently, just died a horrible flaming death not thirty seconds ago and reappeared somewhere in the jungle. There was a gimmick about me being marked somehow and not allowed to die by the gods, but this really broke my sense of being immersed in a gritty fantasy world and reminded me I was playing a game.

When I arrived at town, I was told I couldn't go into town since I was wearing my slave chains. Instead of just putting on a really loose long-sleeved shirt, I was told to go talk to the blacksmith, who then told me he couldn't take my chains off until I helped him shore up a dam to keep lava from destroying the town. I had to go grab materials for him to help build the dam. Now, anything involving lava is awesome, so I might have forgiven such an obvious fetch quest, but this is a game with Conan's name literally all over it. It's not called "adventures in extreme engineering."

The blacksmith also reminded me of another complaint, which might seem trivial, but it really chapped my loincloth-clad ass. In character creation, I maxed out my character's muscles and height, and yet it seemed like every male NPC was A FREAKING HEAD TALLER than my guy. Maybe I get bigger as I level up or something, but nothing makes me feel weenier than having to crane my neck to look up at every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wants me to fetch his widgets. And a Conan game should NOT be making me feed weenie, BY CROM!

And then I saw my first other player. He jumped out of the town, bunny hopped right by me, swinging his sword wildly, and disappeared around a corner. I wish I was exaggerating.

At this point, I exited the game to go pick up some library books, and when I went to boot it back up, I found out I'd have to download the entire three gigabytes AGAIN. I guess it just lost the first three gigs or something. In a fit of rage, I buried my axe in the monitor and shouted, "BY THIS AXE I RULE!" (Okay, that's a Kull reference, but it's close enough via "The Phoenix on the Sword" connection.)

The verdict? It's an MMO. It's got some gimmicks, but it's just another MMO. There are buff classes, healing classes, magic classes, and melee and ranged DPS classes. Maybe the graphics would be better if my computer was made during the Obama administration, but that's not really at issue here. An MMO is a grind. You fight the same enemies over and over. You execute pointless, grinding quests. You swing wildly at enemies until one of you falls over. You kill "weedy grunt enemy" and "slightly bigger, though only slightly less weedy grunt enemy" a thousand times before you finally start equipping things that aren't called "torn ragged brown-stained loincloth with a hole that lets the breeze through." You're not changing the fate of empires or thwarting evil wizards, you're doing the same linear kill sprees a thousand other players are doing at the same time.

If you're looking for the tight action, the thrilling swashbuckling, the intense emotion, the wild bloody exotic ADVENTURE that is Conan, a video game just won't cut it.

It's almost like I saw this coming before I even tried it....

Now if you'll excuse me, the necromantic ghost of Robert E. Howard is at the door, and he's got a knuckle sandwich he needs to give me.

(PS Yes, I did go back and play a little more, but it wasn't getting any better, so I got bored and did the blog. I told you it was half-assed.)

Brief Star Wars Thought

"A Jedi's strength flows from the Force, but beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side of the Force they are. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

I've been watching a lot of Star Wars these days, trying to reconnect with the reasons I've loved Star Wars since I was a kid, trying to separate in my mind the wise Muppet Yoda from the CGI lightsaber-wielding Yoda, and all that comes with both. The last line of the quote stood out for me.

Much has been made of "destiny" in Star Wars, and whether the paths of the characters are predetermined. The ability to see the future has been used to explain away lots of inconvenient plot points (although "always in motion is the future"), not to mention the giant plot device of the prophecy in the prequel trilogy. But this quote seems to present another type of destiny in Star Wars.

This quote suggests you choose your own path, and that path determines your destiny. Your destiny isn't a single line that's already been laid out, but rather a number of alternatives among which you choose by the paths you take. This feels much more like wisdom about the consequences our choices have rather than an assertion of predetermination. The two paths Luke's life could go play a big role in Episodes 5 and 6: will he choose to follow his father's path or forge his own? This is about choice, not a single destiny he's bound to obey.

The same thing applies to the Emperor's taunt of "I have foreseen it" and "it is your destiny" in Episode 6. It's possible the Emperor really has seen one possible path Luke's life could go, but his downfall is he doesn't leave room for Luke's own choices. He makes the mistake a lot of Star Wars fans (and EU writers, cough cough) seem to make: that destiny is something set for you rather than something you forge yourself.

Maybe I'm trying too hard to read into it what I want to be there, but I still find this encouraging, because on closer reading it doesn't seem nearly as deterministic as it does on first watching. Your destiny is the path you choose.

What Kind of D&D Character Are You?

Recently, my friend Kage took a quiz about what D&D character he is, so I decided to do the same. When I got to question 42, I knew I was in trouble.

42. Civilization makes us...

...stronger.
...weaker.

How do I answer that? I've written quite a lot exploring this issue, and the best answer I've been able to come up with is "both." I can certainly see the Robert E. Howard perspective that civilization makes us weak, but I also think that civilization ennobles us and creates art and learning.

I'm answering these questions based on what I really think, not on what I wish I think, but still, I'm stumped on this one. I don't like living in the city, and I love the country. On the other hand, I really admire cosmopolitan cultures like the Victorians and the Romans. GAH! I think I'll just go with 'stronger.' After all, I am going into academia.

Here's another one:

45. Animals...

...deserve our respect.
...are delicious.

Animals get my full respect. I really do love animals, and yet I also love eating them. I respectfully eat their delicious bodies. How do I answer this?

Also, several questions are about things like "It's better to be agile or tough?" And I'm left thinking, well, out of the two of these, I'm more agile than tough (a little vs. not at all), but I believe it's much better to be tough. So how do I answer that?

98. A powerful but corrupt lawyer offers you money if you'll testify against your friend. Do you:

Condemn your friend and take the money?
Take the money and testify, but try to keep your testimony ineffective?
Refuse the offer and refuse to testify?
Testify on your friend's behalf, no matter the consequences?

This is another really tough one. My choices are obviously between the third and fourth option, but it leaves out an important consideration: is my friend guilty? I think some of these are purposefully ambiguous. Now that I think about it, that's probably good: it allows the quiz to take into account the underlying assumptions the reader draws out of the questions.



You Are A:

Neutral Good Human Wizard (4th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength- 13
Dexterity- 13
Constitution- 15
Intelligence- 19
Wisdom- 15
Charisma- 15

Alignment:
Neutral Good- A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards- Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.




Honestly, I'm most surprised to get such a high Con score. Why? Because of all those toughness questions I answered? Those were personal opinion, man, not actually reflected in my puniness. The same with my Strength score. I'm average at best, and I freely admitted that. I really tried to answer these questions as would play out in real life. Also, as I mentioned on Kage's blog, I don't see being good as limiting at all. In fact, if someone tried to persuade me to be otherwise, I'd consider that to be forcing me to be something I'm not!

Black ICE/White Noise

I remember the mid-90's, when cyberpunk was a legitimate genre for video games--ten years after it was a legitimate genre for fiction. Combine that with my fascination with vaporware and failed technology (the Jaguar), and you get a story that's definitely grabbed my interest.

If only I could find more about this game and its production!

Avatar: Special Edition

In the time since I last blogged, I've moved to a new city and started my PhD program at a new school. Despite all this, the first post I'm making is about Avatar, and having seen the new special edition at the theater. Yes, James Cameron can add a couple of minutes of bonus footage and I'll shell out ten bucks to go see the same movie again. But to tell the truth, I would have paid the same for the chance to go see Avatar again. It was 3D. I complained about it a bit the first time, but now I genuinely think it adds something. I felt drawn closer into the world, experiencing the scenery and things around the characters more distinctly. Because of focal length, the background stuff in 2D is often much fuzzier in 3D, which means you can look around a lot more freely in 3D.

So here are the new scenes, if I can recall them all.

-While flying out on his first mission as Avatar, Jake sees a herd of creatures we don't really see in the other version. It's a scene of a few seconds, but it sets up a scene later on, so I mention it.
-On that same mission, Grace, Norm, and Jake visit the old school. We see a series of bullet holes in the chalkboard, but Grace doesn't want to talk about it. When Jake asks why the Na'vi haven't come back, Grace says, "They've learned enough about us," or something to that effect. There's also a scene in which they find a Na'vi-sized copy of The Lorax. Grace says something about it being her favorite. I really hope this was Cameron poking fun at himself, rather than hammering home his point. This was a good scene, but we gathered as much from the movie as it was.
-When Jake sits down with the Na'vi around the fire, there's a brief scene in which Neytiri introduces herself and teaches Jake how to say her name. He still says it wrong.
-When Jake startles the little swirly-flying thing for the first time, Neytiri joins him in scaring them up to make them fly. This shows that she's seeing the forest through his eyes, experiencing his childlike wonder along with him.
-When Grace moves the project to the Hallelujah Mountains, Jakes explains why the levitation works as they get off the flyer. Since unobtainium is a superconductor, it works like maglev. "Or something." I didn't feel this was necessary information, but it's still cool.
-After Jake gets his banshee, he and the other hunters shoot some of the beasts I mentioned above. This leads directly into the "stone cold aerial killer" monologue.
-Yes, infamously, we get to see Jake and Neytiri link their qeues when they are mated after his initiation. This is maybe an additional three seconds. Big whoop. Hardly the "Na'vi sex scene" people keep yammering about online. Even in the original we see that their qeues are touching, and I assumed from the first time I saw the film that they linked them.
-We see the aftermath of the Na'vi attack on the bulldozers. The humans have all been massacred and the machines have been destroyed. Especially since this is seen through the eyes of the humans, I felt this scene was particularly important, and probably my favorite of all the ones they added. It shows the Na'vi struck first (admittedly with good reason) and it explains Selfridge's decision to attack Home Tree.
-During the final fight, we see that Tsu'tey survives getting shot and falling from the shuttle at least long enough to...
-After the last fight, Jake, Neytiri, and the Na'vi come across Tsu'tey as he lies dying. He tells Jake he needs to lead the Omaticaya, and says he is proud he fought beside Jake. This is the one addition I wish wouldn't have been included, since it's so sentimental and unnecessary, but it was a bit lightened when Jake answers, "I'm not officer material." But we all know he will do it.

There were some other brief moments, but I'm pretty sure I hit everything major.


The bottom line is that the extra stuff is good, but doesn't change the movie hugely (though I do enjoy that it complicates the plot a bit that the Na'vi destroyed the bulldozers and killed the humans guarding them). What's really key is that I was worried, going in, that I wouldn't connect as much with the film as I did the first few times I saw it. But I did. I was completely immersed, and I had tears in my eyes in several scenes.

So call me soft or call me a fanboy, but I loved seeing the Special Edition, even for ten more bucks. I might even see it again.