Fifteen - The Characters of Christmas Past

We have been:

The Raiders of the Lost Knark

Todd, the Bored Druid

Arthad, the Black Knight

Kråkmåns Höghatt, the Faithful Dwarf

Aust Galanodel, the Visionary

Vackeria, the Wild Woman

The Sleepless Fellowship

Beo, the Absurd Hero

Ling / Ree / Arepo, the God of Paradoxes

Naseef, the Man Who Should Be Dead

Freddy the Cat, the King of Tigers

Aust Skywalker, the Last of Ban Lam

The Wizards of Jalan City

Vincent Mario Giovanni Winthrop, the Entrepreneur

Luke, the Child of Misfortune

Pervoslav, the Russian Scientist

The French Thief

The Mathematician

The Vampires of Berlin

Athela, the Beautiful Beast

Dragomir Zhukov, the Rogue

Zetha, the Doll

Ulrich, the Patriot

Plus Eddie, Mr. Crane, and many others

The Rune Pilgrims

Vesper Kite, the Hero of the Empire

Wade, the Champion of Death

Sojiro Naraku, the Lovestruck Sorcerer

Ulf, the Northerner

The Fandango Four

The Ultimate Fighter

The Hybrid

The Littlest Vampire

The Fat Ninja

The Exalted of the East

Vincent Cale, the Bronze Falcon

Zaraki Kensei, the Sword Saint

Lily, the Drug Queen

Sharif, the Monster

The Guardians of Shinwa Taizen

Song Hui, the Mistress of the Mindscape

Hyun Wook, the Hopping Vampire

David Blaze, the American Samurai

The Scions of Japan

Shinichi Kurode, the Aquacop

Magnus Magnusson, Thorboy

...and Brian.

The Blood-Bearers of Quetzalcouatl

James Fleming, the Monkey Man of Mystery

Rederick von Steinberg XIII, the Faceless Rogue

Setsuna, the Ojou-sama, and Setsu, the Godchild

The Ragnarök Renegades

Simo Pohjonen, the Finnish Sniper

Yvain the Dangerous, alias Åke Björk, the Fake

The Iron Librarian

The Protectors of Ptolus

Gell, the Paladin

Lupi, the Honourable Psycho

Storm, the Wild Druid, and Logan, the Sun's Chosen

The Agents of PSI

Assistant Director Jack Hudson, the Werewolf

Special Agent Karen Lennox, the Mage

The Hope of House Tepet

Tepet Kalyna, the Princess of Creation

Tepet Taran, her Bodyguard

The Military History Club

Lloyd Wilder, the Prince of Britannia

Cecil Darashia, the Psychic Prodigy

The Kingslayers

Gabrian De Veers, the Cold Killer

Garrus, the Iron Man

The New Kardus

Gehenna, the God of Judgement

Gwendolen, the Human

…and many, many others.

May their stories live forever, and may there be still more heroes in our future.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Fourteen - BFFs

Here are some characters whose friendships were a huge part of their greatness.

Lloyd Wilder and Cecil Darashia - The Storm 'Verse, home of these two characters, revolves around two great principles: Passion and friendship. Despite their many differences, they exemplified both. Lloyd was a kind, friendly Prince, and Cecil a fierce, dangerous pauper – but they covered each others' weaknesses, both in combat and in social situations. Though they frequently misunderstood each other and caused unintentional trouble for themselves and their friends, they always had each others' backs – because that was the very first lesson they learned on their arrival to Eisenkrone Academy.

Gabrian and Garrus - This pair of Iron Heroes complemented each other very well, despite being mechanically rather similar. Both of them were damage-sponges, capable of enduring brutal beatings – and perhaps that was the cornerstone of their friendship in a sense, because they withstood terrifying punishments for each other. Garrus carried Gabrian out of a crumbling castle after a fight against the Demon King, and Gabrian delivered the death-blow to the dragon that nearly slew his friend. Theirs was a friendship worthy of Iron Heroes – a friendship forged in iron, and tempered in blood.

The Norlanders - Hoo boy, I doubt anyone has heard of these guys before. They were a Northern team of a berserker and a warrior-poet, appearing halfway through the Fairy Tale Game I ran in D&D a million years ago. Something about these two characters just clicked with each other. They were created to be friends, and they lived up to it – right up until the bitter end, surrounded by enemies in a pitch-black cave.

Thirteen - Freaks and Monsters

Today we take a look at some seriously scary characters.

Sharif - Sharif is the first character that springs to mind on this theme. An unkillable man-eating shapeshifter with a severely disturbed mind, Sharif reads like some horror movie monster but was, in fact, a Lunar Exalt from the Chronicles of the Bronze Falcon. He Exalted due to his tenacity and perseverance in surviving a famine, but he also killed and ate his brother in the process, something which... well, pretty much broke his mind. Only very barely human in any sense of the word, Sharif remained playable because of his strong loyalty to the Solar Exalted, who perhaps, perhaps, might one day fix him. Or, you know, just unleash him upon their unsuspecting enemies. And occasionally friends.

Wade, the Champion of Death - Wade was actually a quite benevolent character, but that didn't stop him from being scary and weird. Wade had fallen in love with Death itself, and devoted his life (or weird pseudo-life, as it were) to her service, harvesting souls and bringing euthanasia to those who needed it. An Arcana Evolved Champion of Death, Wade was very, very, very good at killing stuff, but only ever did it when appropriate – a death-dealer in moderation, inhuman yet with a strong moral code. As he found out near the end of his life, his predecessor Hamadathurian had not been thus restricted.

The Littlest Vampire - I have sadly forgotten his/her name, but this character – from Trigonometry Fandango, a freeform anime-themed game – was the creepy kid-trope incarnate. A soulless female vampire, forced to reside in the body of a little boy, the Littlest Vampire was a murderous little child who specialized in slashing tendons, so that people fell over and could be properly disposed of. Although his/her team also contained no less than two super-powerful killing machines, neither of them could really match him/her in terms of cold-bloodedness.

Athela - seductive, manipulative, psychotic. Likes: Crushing peoples' will, necrophilic threesomes, stalkers. Dislikes: Water, especially in Berlin. 'Nuff said.

Twelve - The Opposite of Optimized

You are really terrible at your job.

Tepet Taran - Sure, Taran did protect his princess and did eventually deliver her to the Blessed Isle – but that didn't stop him from being terrible at his job. A Dragon-Blooded socialite whose only real reason for existing was being married off to some other important House, Taran was chosen for a super-important world-spanning covert mission solely because nobody would really miss him. He did have a few redeeming skills, sure – he knew how to parry attacks (because “Not the face! Not my pretty face!”) and he could... Hm. I guess he could also jump kind of far? Either way, he wasn't exactly the best guy to drag along on a trek through the wilderness.

Todd Ark - Todd, a member of the Raiders of the Lost Knark, was admittedly pretty okay at being a druid – but kind of awful at being an adventurer. A half-fey druid with butterfly wings and antennae, he grew up in a home with a talking stump, fairies coming to visit, unicorns grazing in the garden and all kinds of weird phenomena – yet in spite of this he had the personality of a particularly bored desk clerk. What made him bad at his job was that, being a D&D character, he was supposed to kill monsters and take their stuff – but he was far more interested in relaxing hobbies like gardening or taking a leisure trip with his yacht.

Jack Hudson and Karen Lennox - basically the worst police duo ever. They got better after they turned into a werewolf and a wizard, admittedly, but for being an FBI agent and a highly trained NYPD officer, they were remarkably bad at actually solving crimes. It's a good thing they soon moved on from crime-solving and into the more esoteric realm of... um... whatever you call all the weird stuff they did.

Almost every character by VMGW's player - I tried really hard to pick just one, but I couldn't. The defining feature of his characters seem to be “really good at lots of things, none of them applicable or relevant to the adventure”. I suppose the best exception I can think of is Vesper Kite, who actually was pretty decent at serving the Empire and the Church by being a swordsman. He, uh... ended up murdering the Pope. There were reasons.

Eleven - Powerhouses of Powerful Power

Like the fist of an angry god.

Timothy Luvenhay - Tim takes the cake when it comes to being a powerhouse of powerful power. A four foot tall speedster, Tim had pretty much every power source you could stack onto a single character in the Arcana Evolved system. He could run so fast that battlefield composition didn't matter to him at all, he could turn into lightning, he could keep fighting even while dead, and this is all on top of his swordfighting skills which were his actual signature power. Tim single-handedly defeated a Rakshasa Mage King and his unbeatable undead bodyguard in the span of three rounds of combat, something I will never forgive him for.

Mr. Smith - Mister Smith was pretty much just a straight-up attempt at playing the system in the NWoD rules if I don't misremember, but he accomplished the feat quite admirably. A super-duper-secret agent, Smith featured only for around two sessions but packed enough firepower to take out even supernatural enemies without being noticed – which is quite a feat in a system where mortals are designed to be extremely squishy, even if he didn't get many chances to shine.

David Blaze - David, from the Japanese Mutant game, wasn't intentionally designed to break the game system or anything – far from it – but over the course of his career, he became pretty much synonymous with “unstoppable in combat”. Of course, since the game wasn't heavily combat-focused, this made him more of a specialist character than anything else; he still needed his friends in a multitude of situations – but when it came to plain fighting, David was pretty much the best. Only two things ever really posed a threat to him: the symbiote super-soldier Aku-Shin Kage, and the insane vampire that lived inside his closest friends' head.

Zaraki, again - Zaraki may have been a pretty silly character, but man that guy could kill stuff. When you make a character whose highest passion in life is “swords”, and that guy also happens to be a Solar Exalt... things die. A lot.

Ten - ...instead of these comedians

Today, we take a good look at hilarity.

Mr. White - Mister White makes the list again. A rotund, fat little man whose love of money was only exceeded by his love of chicken, Mister White was a banker in a freeform Wild West game whose special talent was being able to run ridiculously fast. That was it, really. He sucked at everything from gun-slinging to surviving in the desert, and the combination of being absolutely useless and completely obsessed with chicken makes him one of the funniest characters I have ever seen.

Zaraki - Zaraki was the poster child for “one-track mind”. He cared for exactly two things – swords and womanizing – and he cared about them to ludicrous degrees. He was a Solar Exalt in the Chronicles of the Bronze Falcon, and though he had his moments in the limelight, he was primarily a comedic character. To be precise, he was an idiot. Rarely have I seen any player commit so much to a funny concept, to the degree that he actually memorized a children's book because it seemed like something his character would do. Zaraki read it to his daughter, who was a genius prodigy. She wasn't amused.

Brian Ansiell - Scion of Anansi, Brian's special power was being able to convince anyone of anything – well, that, and causing mayhem. A character with no real motivation, Brian just stumbled through life and did whatever amused him, which put him in a multitude of wacky situations. He owned a pet jaguar for a while, he became a member of the Yakuza, and he almost kidnapped a celebrity chef. I doubt he ever really knew why he did... well, any of the things he did. I guess he didn't need a reason.

Ling Tem'Enneth - Ling “died” pretty early in the Arcana Evolved game, to be reborn as Ree Kaspathodex – which was perhaps for the best, because the original Ling was batshit crazy. He makes this list because I have rarely seen a character commit so hard to always having his hit points be in the single digits. Ling fell off roofs, fell out of trees, fell into thorny bushes... I don't remember any enemies actually hitting him in combat, but then again, there was rarely any reason to target him in the first place.

Nine - A Toast To Absent Friends...

These are the characters of some of the people I haven't played with for a good long while.

Vincent Mario Giovanni Winthrop, from Mage: The Ascension. An iconic character in every way, Mr. Winthrop was a stockbroker who could manipulate time. Constantly armed with his pocket watch (except for that one time it turned into raspberry ice cream as a Paradox backlash), Mr. Winthrop was a wealthy man and linguistic genius with no real applicable skills for the adventure – trademark of his player, who seemed to make a sport out of giving his characters powers that were entirely irrelevant to the task at hand.

Naseef, from Arcana Evolved: Breath of the Ancestors. Naseef was, on the face of it, a simple humble woodsman – and though his eventual career took a very different turn, it's his initial plain nature that makes him iconic. No frills, no bells and whistles, just a straightforward everyman trying to survive in a dangerous world. He was eventually corrupted by Requiem, a sword possessed by a powerful Spirit of Death, and turned into an avatar of death itself – before being redeemed at the Tree of Life, and swearing an oath to defend humanity.

Freddy the Cat, also from Breath of the Ancestors. Freddy was a happy-go-lucky thief and master of disguises, who – perhaps unlike the other characters in the story – remained more or less himself even as he grew and changed. It is precisely this happy-go-lucky nature that I think makes him iconic to his player; even in the face of dire tragedy, he kept on smiling. While he ultimately learned a lesson about responsibility, he never ceased to be an optimist.

Aust Galanodel, from Raiders of the Lost Knark. While Aust would reprise in Breath of the Ancestors, I think I liked the original Aust just a little bit better. Aust was an idealist, a visionary, and a mad scientist. He entered the story as an elf seeking to rescue his wife, but as his need for power constantly increased, so did his addiction to it. Aust was a futurist and transhumanist – or I suppose, trans-elf-ist – and his quest for greatness is something that rings through in all characters from his player. The first Aust, with his prosthetic ruby hand and mind-rewriting powers, stands out as the best example.

Eight - Lloyd Wilder

Lloyd was a character suffering from severe Trope Overdose, and that is why I think he's the iconic character for his player. Being originally based off the Chaste Hero, he came to live and breathe heroic tropes. It's rare to see those characters done really well, but Lloyd definitely pulled it off – though, of course, much of his kindness stemmed from the fact that he was far too naïve to even realize he'd been wronged most of the time.

Lloyd was the Prince of Britannia, hidden away by his father (the Crown Prince) in a small rural village to grow up an ordinary boy. At the age of fifteen, he left his home against his father's will to join Eisenkrone Academy, to wield his extraordinary powers in service of the world. His adventures in just the first year at the academy are too numerous to recount, but after just a year and a half he had mastered the elements of Air, Water and Earth, with only Fire remaining. Lloyd may yet see a chance to master this last element – we haven't definitely ended the story of Eisenkrone Academy – and if he does, he will have to master his powers quickly. Inner Lloyd, his mysterious alter ego, is growing in power – and he is every bit as evil as Regular Lloyd is good.

Lloyd's most iconic moment, I think, is his greatest tragedy. His father, Walt, knew that his son was in danger at Eisenkrone, and travelled there to bring him home. Just as he arrived, the school was attacked by ultra-nationalistic terrorists, and Walt Wilder died defending his son. Only then did Lloyd learn who he truly was – Lloyd Pendragon, Prince of Britannia.

Seven - Vincent Cale

...on the subject of obfuscating stupidity, enter Vincent Cale. Vincent was a Solar Exalt, an archer, assassin, ostrich-riding woodsman, bumbling idiot and fantastic supreme ultimate genius. He was one of the most intelligent people in the world, but since he grew up in the forest with barely any human interaction, it took a while before his smarts manifested – and when they did, it was perhaps the most astonishing transformation of a character, ever.

The Vincent Cale that stepped onto the stage in the first session was an angry young man, seeking revenge for the murder of his father. During his journey, he learned that he was the Bronze Falcon, the reincarnated King of the East, and accepted his duties with... well, I would say grace, but Vincent was never graceful. In fact, his most interesting trait may have been his crippling inability to look or sound cool; he was terrible with words, something which his player committed to one hundred and ten percent.

What makes Vincent iconic is his smarts and savvy, coupled with his inability to apply them. Many other characters have followed in his footsteps – but Vincent's brilliant mind and terrible luck became a hallmark for his player, whose characters are often geniuses with crippling weaknesses.

Vincent was an Exalt, so it's really hard to pick just one moment from his career – but his most defining stunt ever was probably that one time where he got shot in the spine 17 times, only to perform surgery on himself, fashioning an artificial spine out of his appendix. It combines both his limitless intelligence, and his limitless lousy luck: He fired the 17 shots himself.

Six - Lupi

Lupi is a fairly recent character on this list, hailing from the latest run of the Banewarrens. A more or less psychotic halfling (culturally goblin) rogue, Lupi turned out to be some kind of psycho with a heart of gold – or at least, someone who genuinely cared about her friends and... not so much about anyone else. She managed to establish herself very well, committing violent murder and maiming during her time off, but being absolutely invaluable when actually working with her team. Aside from her supreme backstabbery skills, she saved her team mates from dozens of traps and ultimately ended up saving an entire city.

Lupi, I think, is iconic in the sense that she possessed a degree of obfuscating stupidity, which is something I've seen in her player a lot. On the surface she seemed random and insane, but there was a definite method to her madness – a tactical thinking that went hand in hand with her antics. It is perhaps telling that she was the only character to survive the adventure – and that despite being nearly mauled to death by a minotaur in the second session.

Lupi's coolest moment must have been her disappearance act at the end of the story. She gave the glory to her dead companions, and asked everyone to forget about her – and then stepped out into the city of Ptolus, and disappeared. She was an unsung hero... and perhaps that was for the best.

Five - Setsuna/Setsu

Setsuna's chronicle might have been short, but she managed to establish herself pretty well in the time she had. She was a Scion of Amaterasu, a half-goddess of the Sun, but carrying a crippling and unusual curse.

Every time the sun went down, Setsuna transformed from a gracious, pretentious Japanese lady into a seven-year-old girl, not only physically but also mentally, which effectively made her two characters in one. As Setsuna, she was smart, aristocratic and domineering – as Setsu, she was impulsive and charismatic, but also... well, mentally seven years old. Her adventures took her from Mexico City, to the underground caves of the Aztec Bat-Men, to Machu Picchu, to the icy reaches of Svalbard. Throughout all this, she had her loyal dog Kiba at her side.

Setsuna was iconic to her player in the sense that she was an oddball. The very concept itself was unusual, and very funny when combined with Setsu's deadpan attitude towards it. Setsuna was a little less comfortable with the arrangement; the concept was successful in the sense that it created a comedy relief who could still be taken seriously. I think that, perhaps, may be the hallmark of the player.

Setsu's best moment is undoubtedly when she rescued a rainbow serpent from captivity, and the grateful creature granted her one service. She immediately cashed in – spending it on a joyride across the Peruvian jungle, for absolutely no good reason.

Four - Karen Lennox

Ah, Karen. She was all over the place – I think that's the best way to describe her. Impulsive, rash, ridiculously brave, sometimes oddly brilliant, sometimes criminally insane. It goes without saying that she illustrates her player's style quite nicely.

Karen Lennox was a police officer, who first became an investigator of the supernatural and thereafter a Willworker - a spellcaster extraordinaire. She specialized in mind-magic and warping space, and many of her greatest moments revolved around Thinking With Portals. Her adventures were strange, to the point of becoming outright comic-book bizarre. She fought her own evil clone created by the Mothman, she was almost possessed by a former college professor, and she killed some random woman by dropping scuba gear from a paraglider. I don't think anything will top the sheer weirdness of that last decision.

Karen existed in a world where supernatural creatures frequently rubbed elbows, and she seemed to live by the maxim that whatever doesn't kill you, simply makes you stranger. She was arguably crazy – but on the other hand, she lived in a crazy world. Her lateral thinking often backfired, but it can't be denied that some of her plans were surprisingly successful.

Her most triumphant moment may have been using the Supernal Tarot to ascend to the Mindscape, narrowly avoiding her death even when her body was ripped to pieces, and thereafter being reborn from her friend's right rib. It's a great example of the sort of mad-scientist thinking she usually deployed.

Three - Tepet Kalyna

Kalyna was iconic to her player for many reasons, but I think the chief reason is that she started as a blank slate. Kalyna was pre-generated, an ordinary, rather dull princess-type character whose only ambition in life was to marry a prince and live happily ever after. Then, the world of Exalted brutally caught up with her.

Kalyna was cast into the wilderness in the company of a total stranger, developed elemental superpowers, travelled to the ends of the earth, fought against tyrants and monsters, had a baby, and lived with a primitive tribe for three years. It's hard to imagine a more adventurous and eventful life, even for a roleplaying character, and the way she handled it was amazing and impressive. More than any other character I've seen, Kalyna grew organically. All roleplaying characters, of course, are shaped to some degree by their circumstances – but she may be the most triumphant example of such a development, and therefore, perhaps the most triumphant example of her players' style.

One of Kalyna's coolest moments, I think, was taming the Sky-Dragon in the Indicara Valley. She caught, tamed, and learned to ride on a giant pteranodon, and then used it to paradrop into a Fair Folk-infested ruined temple. The plan went off without a hitch, but even for a Dragon-Blooded hero it was pretty insane.

Two - Dragomir Zhukov

Dragomir is another case of a first character who really holds up. Even as a player grows, learns, and tries out different things, sometimes you just click right away. Dragomir emerged in the long and complex Berlin chronicle, stepping onto the stage almost by accident but remaining in the spotlight for the remainder of the chronicle. Which was ironic, because Dragomir mostly dwelled in darkness.

A Russian street-kid turned vampire, Dragomir stumbled into the machinations of the Sangiovanni family mostly because he was too clueless to fear them. After that, his unlife became one of strange irony. He tipped the scales of city-wide politics without being interested in them, and had fortune falling in his lap without knowing why. What was ultimately the strangest about Dragomir, however, was how well he always did in spite of being intentionally sabotaged by his player.

Dragomir was the first example of “helping” I've seen, a character whose player almost seemed to have it out for him – he became saddled with phobias, addictions, and obsessions, and yet in spite of his rapidly declining mental health he somehow managed to keep going. He was a great example of a character who creates conflict sometimes merely by existing – the scorpion to Berlin's toad, someone who's destructive not because he wants to, but simply because it is in his nature.

I don't think Dragomir ever reflected on his actions. His player certainly did, and that definitely makes him an iconic character.

The most memorable moments with Dragomir tend to be his failures, for some reason. I think the time he stole a sacrificial dagger out of sheer kleptomania, only to realize he'd just robbed a group of werewolves, may qualify as one of the funniest. Did I mention he had a crippling phobia of dogs?

One - Beo

We start here, at the beginning. I had already played for five years when I began running Arcana Unearthed, but Breath of the Ancestors turned out to be a very different sort of game – one that had the lofty goal of exploring the human condition. It did so partly through the story, but primarily through the characters. Beo was an interesting case.
An orphan and runethane apprentice, Beo had been forcefully transformed into a mojh, a genderless reptilian – and also carried the dormant mind of Xethar Ar'Nuade, the Sleepwalker, bound with an unbreakable rune inside him. Beo's struggle was one of freedom – freedom from Xethar, freedom from his reptilian form, and ultimately, freedom from destiny itself. A very tragic hero, Beo destroyed everything he held dear yet kept on fighting out of a sense of responsibility. Beo was, basically, the first roleplaying character I'd seen with a rich and complex inner life, one whose dulled emotions were gradually replaced with oaths and responsibilities, yet whose very fundamental struggle was one of liberation. He was a revolutionary, both in the story and in terms of how I've come to view roleplaying games.
Beo is an iconic character. He is the epitome of his creator's style, a conflicted and tragic hero whose weaknesses are far more interesting than his strengths.
Beo had many cool moments, but I think my favourite may yet be his final confrontation with the Council of Dragons, in which he denied them dominion over the world out of sheer spite. They offered him everything he wanted, but he turned them down simply because he really, really, really hated those guys – and in doing so, saved the world. Or possibly doomed it; we never actually found out.

Roleplaying Memories

So, I've been writing a little list of RPG characters that I've grown fond of over the years. Originally I was going to email them to everyone, but then I figured hey, why not post them here instead? I could space them out a little between now and Christmas, and make sort of "traditional" advent calendar - one with no story, but rather a bunch of pictures.

I'm not sure if I can think of 23 characters, so for now I'll just be doing one per day. Maybe there'll be more if I can think of them. The first entry will be posted... presently.

The Definition of Music Fan

When can you call yourself a fan of a certain band or artist? How much of their music need you have heard before it crosses from "I like these songs" to "I like this band", you think?

An Argument For Eugenics

I woke up this morning to a little informational video about introversion and extroversion. It had a few things to say about these two ends of a rather complex spectrum, but the bottom line - the idea behind the video - was that modern society is being pretty mean to introverts. Our society values traits like aggression, risk-taking, boldness, and social interaction very highly over traits like contemplation, focus and a careful nature.
I have personally found this to be true. I am far more proud of the outgoing aspects of my nature than the more abundant introspective traits. It isn't strange that it should be so. Modern society is highly based on social interaction and communication - the ability to form casual contacts is very important, and high social mobility means we must constantly adapt to new kinds of society. It is no accident that the hero of our times is the con-man, the pick up artist, the audacious social explorer.
The video I saw said that, as extroversion or introversion are part of our genes, to discriminate based on these traits it is equal to racism and sexism, and here is where I found myself disagreeing. There is a fallacious logic in racism or sexism that does not seem to apply here; race or sex is not inherently tied to behaviour. Introversion is, by its very definition. And so, perhaps, it may be argued that introversion is doomed to go the way of the dinosaurs; it is an outlived phase of human evolution. At best, it is a disability to be cured.
Should we "cure" people of contemplation, focus, and a quiet nature? Why not? The traits are far less useful than the ability to interact openly. This applies, seemingly, in all strata of society.
So here it is, then, an argument for eugenics. Introverts, including myself, are rapidly becoming fossils, remarkably out of place in the Facebook age. Evolution has a way of handling things on its own, of course - so there is no need to actually remove people from the gene pool - but when a behaviour is harmful, we also have no reason to interfere when it naturally diminishes or dies out.
Then this is the argument, distilled to its cold, Darwinian core:
Introverted people are disappearing. Let them.

On Having A Cat

I have now been living with a cat for 36 hours. Here are some initial thoughts on what it's like to live with a cat.

Firstly, somehow I felt it made the apartment a bit cramped. Which is weird, because, y'know, it's a cat - it's not that big. But its presence feels bigger than its physical body. At the same time, I don't quite regard it as a person. When I'm alone with the cat, I'm not quite by myself but I also don't have company. It's unsettling. It's like there's a ghost in the room.

Second, cats smell. I don't like the smell, and it seems to stick to textiles, which unnerves me. I'm a bit freaked out to touch anything which smells like cat, even though I'm not that freaked out to touch the cat itself, which makes absolutely no sense.

Third, it's kind of adorably dumb. That part I like. Despite how I suck at reading the body languages of animals, cats aren't terribly complicated. They mostly care about food and sleep. Interacting with a cat puts me a bit in the same mindset, which is somehow kinda soothing. I guess that's one reason why people have cats. They're not very judgmental because they have absolutely zero ambitions themselves.

Fourth, it has an impact on the people I live with. They get a lot more shouty. The cat does things it's not allowed to do, and then they shout at it. It's really weird. I'm not used to shouting. It's a good thing I'm not taking care of the cat myself, because I don't think I would be very good at shouting at it, and apparently that's important.

These are just the first few reflections I've made. Maybe I'll change my mind regarding some of them, or all of them. Maybe there'll be other things I haven't considered. So far it's very strange though.

Ray Bradbury is dead

So, at long last, Ray Bradbury has died. He's one of my all-time favorite authors, so I thought it warranted a mention here. I think it's spectacular and fascinating that he has lived up until now; this is a man who started his career writing about Martians. He was eighteen when the radio drama War of the Worlds was broadcast. He saw the rise and fall of the US Space Program. Many others live long lives, of course, but this man wrote science fiction - and I find something beautiful in that. He lived his life trying to see into the future, and he lived long enough to see where he was wrong, and where he was right, more than three-quarters a century worth of future. Rest in peace, Mr. Bradbury.

Boy Vision

Okay, so this post is a thought sprung from three entirely unrelated things I've read and heard about. They are:

1. The Mantis Shrimp, which can see colors which we can't see.
2. What D remarked a while ago at a party about how culture is integral and cannot be changed once it is set.
3. A forum thread about sexism I recently read.

Now, to actually explain what these have in common will take some work, so bear with me here. I'll try to start with explaining the relevant points in number 3. See, this woman - Devilfish - was remarking that what bothers her with sexism isn't so much the big things, because nobody is advocating the big things. As in, nobody (at least, nobody serious) is arguing that women shouldn't be allowed same pay for the same jobs, for example.

What bothered her was, instead, all the tiny things. People making fun of women without make-up. Wolf whistles while eating popsicles. Being appreciated not for her skills but for her looks. Many small things. The exact phrase she used was "death by a thousand cuts", because taken by themselves, they're small and trivial and can be brushed off, but they aggregate into becoming very frustrating over time. Now, I started thinking - how come I haven't noticed all those small things? It seems to be that small "cuts" of sexism occur towards women very often, yet it's rarely that I - or other men, for that matter - seem to register them. It's hard to understand what living under such a torrent of tiny annoying things might entail.

That brought me into thinking about point number 2. We can't say much for certain about the biological differences between behavior in men and women, but whether there are biological differences or not, men and women are raised as part of slightly different cultures, or at least, are raised to understand their roles in that culture differently. This sort of thing is ingrained in us from a very young age. And that leads me to point number one, the mantis shrimp. The mantis shrimp has 16 different photoreceptor pigments; humans have only three. What this means is that the mantis shrimp can see 32 colors whereas humans can only see 6; every other color we see is just mixture of black, white, red, green, blue, and yellow.

So the mantis shrimp can see colors that we, as humans, cannot understand because we are biologically different. Then it stands to reason that perhaps, I can't perceive some things that women perceive because I am culturally different; because I have been raised to focus my attention elsewhere. It might be that some such things are simply impossible for me to understand, and because I already have my formative years behind me, they will always be impossible for me to understand; even if I were zapped by a gender-transformation gun and lived the next 50 years as a woman, and tried my damnedest to adapt to that, I would still retain the way that I was raised, and old habits die hard.

I don't know if I had a point with this, exactly, but I found the thought that we are "brainwashed" not only into a set of behaviors, but also into a certain perception very interesting. When a woman hears a comment about her body, it can be argued that - because she's been raised to think about her appearance in a whole other way than I have - she hears that comment in a different way than what I do, and I will never be able to hear some of the "shades" of that comment. I can tell whether it's a light or a dark color - a positive or negative comment - but I sometimes can't tell whether it's tinted in the unpleasant tones of "You are a sex object" or not, unless those tones are unusually stark. At least that's what I imagine.

This might be absolute hogwash, I don't know. Maybe people aren't all that different, even if society does its damnedest to try and make us different; still, the theory of radically different perceptions would explain why some men can't seem to understand that they're being sexist even when a lot of women insist they are.

Miss Optimus Prime

The last post being on the subject of heroic self-sacrifice, I think the transition into talking about Optimus Prime is seamless, here.

I realized the other day while watching Transformers 3 two things: One, the Transformers movies are kind of a lot sexist. As in, kind of a lot actually - particularly the third movie, whose two only female characters delivered an incredibly blunt message: Eye candy girlfriend is useless except as eye candy, also women in charge are terrible and need to get sexed up - preferably by the worthless comedy relief character, because, y'know. Women.

The other thing I realized, however, was a more profound insight. There's something I've always found kinda cool about the Transformers: They're a sexless species. They don't have genders. In fact, their reproduction works in an entirely different way from most species on Earth. We refer to most of the Transformers as male, because... well to be honest, kinda just because men are the default sex in our culture. I thought that perhaps it's because most of the Transformers look male, but actually... not really. They look so different from humans that there's no real way of telling what sex they would be if they had them. Yes, the voice actors in the cartoon are men, but I read the comics so the cartoon voices aren't really "canon" to me - and besides, female bears don't exactly sound anything like female humans, but they're still she-bears.

And then it struck me: Not that human terms really apply to the Transformers, but if we desperately wanted to assign them sexes... wouldn't it make the most sense to refer to Optimus as a woman? After all, Optimus Prime has the Creation Matrix - Optimus is the one who creates new life. The creation of life has, on Earth, in most cultures, been viewed as pretty much the definition of being female.

Optimus Prime is really only set apart from the other Transformers because she can give birth. She is also the one who nurtures, teaches and heals the other Transformers using the Matrix. It marks whoever bears it as a leader, but are we going to call Optimus Prime a man simply because she's in charge?

Optimus Prime is, of course, neither man nor woman because the terms don't apply to Transformers. But if we're going to go with one of them... wouldn't woman be the most logical choice, given the biological functions of Earth females?

Easter Sunday

Today is a peculiar day. It's a day whose religious implications pass by us almost unnoticed: Even if we're aware of what the holiday celebrates, I don't think we stop to reflect on what it really means.

Today is Easter Sunday, the day when Jesus conquered Death. By now, it's a story that's been re-told, re-imagined, re-arranged so many times that we hardly even think about what it's trying to say. This story is getting old. It's getting too old for us. It doesn't seem to mean very much, not anymore, not to us. But we're not the people whom this story is for. We're not the target audience.

The story of Easter was meant for people to whom Death is not a distant threat, not someone who waits at the threshold of old age, not a snarky skeleton with a scythe or a woman in black robes. The story of Easter was written for those to whom Death is an enemy; for those who live in constant fear of plague and famine and bullets. Because death may be a natural thing, and it may be something that we can accept and talk about and understand, but ultimately, it is destructive. Death ends things. We can wax poetical about it, but at the end of the day, death hurts – not so much its victims as it hurts those who are left behind. But we can't hope to understand this. I don't understand it. I have never seen the ugly face of death up close – the random, pointless, indiscriminately cruel face of death – and I pray I never will.

The story of Easter is written for those who have seen that face. It is written for those who have seen people crucified by the Romans, slaughtered in the World Wars, burned by napalm, taken by the Black Plague. Those people are not us.

But if there's one thing we should take away from the story of Easter, it's that those people are still out there, and to them, this story is still meaningful. It doesn't matter that Jesus came back; that's not the important part. What matters is that things got better, that things will get better.

And so, the true meaning of the story is this: If we work hard, if we live our lives with grace and virtue and compassion, then there may come a day when nobody needs to hear it.

A nasty habit of reblogging

It's a bad habit and I should stop, but I just can't help quoting this piece from Slacktivist:

>>[R]ights are meaningless unless they apply to everyone. “Rights for me, but not for thee” doesn’t really mean I have rights either — just tenuous, fragile privileges I can enjoy and defend until such time as thee and me switch places.>>

The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

--Dr. Keith M. Kent

sometimes it's really hard to get out of bed in the morning and i don't know why i even try. i think this is why i should though.

Cut off his hand!

So here's a thought. When I was younger, I spent a lot of time thinking about the Middle Ages, as young people are wont to do. Now, when I read and learned about their legal system, it struck me as odd how steep the punishments were for stealing, as opposed to - in our view - much worse crimes, like murder or rape. Stealing was considered one of the worst crimes, punishable by gruesome execution, maiming, and the like.

Now, a lot of people attribute this to cultural differences and talk about "honor" and stuff, but I think the reason behind the steep punishments for stealing is actually far simpler: In a society of medieval tech level, killing or raping people - at least people who matter - is actually kind of hard, especially without anyone finding out. Even just murdering your oafish neighbour requires you to actually get close to him and try to hit him with a club or something, which means that murder is inherently pretty dangerous to pull off.

Stealing, on the other hand, is really, really easy. In a country with medieval tech level, the only thing that'll stop you from stealing is if someone is physically blocking you from it. Medieval locks could basically be picked with anything vaguely toothpick-shaped, and it's not like they had any more sophisticated burglar alarms than - usually poorly trained and mistreated - guard dogs. And that's just trying to steal valuable, expensive things - trying to nick some guys' fancy bronze knife that'll fetch you food for a week is as easy as reaching a hand into his coat pocket when he isn't wearing it.

So, to compensate for how easy it was to get away with theft, people made the punishment really, really steep, to try and discourage people from pulling off what was arguably one of the easiest crimes you could commit. Gradually, security improved and peoples' situations improved, so there was both less of an incentive to steal, and a lot more work involved in doing it. Today, you wouldn't steal a car or a TV because it's a lot of work, and there's a high risk of being caught.

...you see where I'm going with this?

Stealing a car or a TV is hard. It requires prep-time and a well laid out plan to get from "see car" to "sell car to shady guy in Poland". On the other hand, downloading a movie or a song is ridiculously easy. It requires no work, there's a minimal risk of being caught, and it's overall just not terribly dangerous.

So society has responded by going medieval on our asses. Sure, there's no killing or maiming of pirates, but that's just because our legal system is nicer overall: The punishment for piracy is still highly disproportionate. So we're back to the same morally confusing system: Surely it's worse to beat someone up and steal their stuff, than it is to download their music? Surely people in the middle ages thought it was worse to murder someone in cold blood than to take his shiny knife and leg it, but people weren't very likely to just randomly murder someone outside a wartime situation ("war" in this case also including family feuds, which were basically wars between small-scale nations). They were, on the other hand, probably tempted to nick shiny stuff all the time.

The punishment for theft was so steep precisely because it was so common. It is the same with piracy in our age.

And it's a retarded system. It didn't work for the Middle Ages, and it won't work for us.

Sharing A Talk

I don't necessarily agree with every little detail, but he has a very good point: There is a lot we can learn from religion without necessarily becoming religious.

Reblogging

All the cool kids are doing it.

Here's something I want to share:

Letter To 1962

The Male (Homosexual) Gaze

Related to previous topic:

Maybe this is what a lot of homophobia is rooted in, as well? Like, a lot of dudes, when they hear their friend is gay, react like this:

"Oh. Uh, so, um. Am I turning you on right now?"

It's like they're afraid that the gay dude will turn them into a sexual conquest, and men don't want to be sexual conquests. Women don't either, of course, but society tells them that it's okay. Men are deeply afraid of being objectified.

Sidenote:

This would be the thing I would hate the absolute most if I were gay. It's like suddenly, people think you're this weird pervert who gets turned on by 50% of the human population, all of the time, always. It would suck.

Self-Analysis: The Objectified Woman and I

First, what spawned this train of thoughts:

A while ago, I read a whole buttload of Escapist articles concerning objectification of women in video games. What struck me was the division between how male and female authors addressed the problem. The female authors were, in general, arguing that there should be more non-sexualized women in video games, to give female players someone to identify with that wasn't a man. The men, on the other hand, were generally arguing that, to even the score, there should be more sexualized male characters. In this case, I think the female authors are in the right, and the male authors were sort of missing the point - but it spawned a semi-related train of thoughts in my mind.

The full train of thoughts is quite long, as these things tend to be, and there's no way for me to write down my full reasoning in a concise manner, but here's the gist of it:

Jean-Paul Sartre argued that human interaction, by necessity, involves a degree of objectifying. We can't always perceive the full scope of humanity in everyone in our surroundings, so there is a need to objectify, to simplify. The cashier at a supermarket is a good example: Of course, if you start a conversation with her, you'll find out that she's a human being with as much depth as anyone else, but most of the time, we regard her as a bit player: A minor NPC, without any real humanity - much like the ever-present Vendor guys in computer games. (Sartre was a cynic, so his argument was actually that objectification is the only possible mode of human interaction, but I sorta disagree with that. Nonetheless.)

Sartre further argued that to be on the wrong end of this objectifying process isn't very pleasant. We don't want to be treated as objects by other people, we want them to see the way we truly are - rich, complex human beings. Ultimately, we don't want to be judged. This is what led him to coin the famous phrase "Hell is other people".

Now, who objectifies whom obviously becomes a question of power. It is convenient for me to objectify you, but it is unpleasant for you to be objectified. The obvious solution is clearly for us both to treat each other as human beings and not do any objectifyin' of any sort. Unfortunately this is sort of a Prisoners' Dilemma situation. You can treat me with all the respect you want, and I can still be a total dickhead and treat you like a vending machine/microwave/sex toy/whatever.

The second-best solution would be for both of us to objectify each other - this is what ties back into the male authors' solution to the Girls In Videogames problem. It's not a good solution, but it's at least a solution - both you and me have to endure some discomfort, but at least the situation is fair. Unfortunately, this is a bit of an unrealistic solution. We don't like being objectified, so we will try to do stuff to prove our humanity, our agency - and if given power, we can enforce this humanity, this agency, over people. Such power can be established bluntly, e.g. through violence, or subtly - consider the stereotypical seductress. Often objectified in the media, certainly, but in reality she is very clearly exerting power over and objectifying her target, having no genuine interest in him as a person; merely turning him into an instrument of her will. [I apologize for the gender role and heteronormativity here, but you get my point].

In videogames, this hierarchy is clear. A guy who is offended by being put in the tight pants of a sexy bishounen can just go back to playing God of War; a girl who is offended by being squeezed into a minimal bikini can... play God of War, I guess. But you've heard these arguments before.

Nonetheless, sexuality and intimacy are pretty complicated subjects. There's a lot of objectifying and a lot of vulnerability being thrown around, and a deep amount of trust and respect needed to pull it off. It isn't strange that we would want to objectify people in the contest of sex. We want to look, we want to touch, we want to judge - but we're afraid of being looked at, of being touched, and most of all, of being judged. So we pretend that there isn't a person with his or her own thoughts doing all the looking and touching.

And here's what I'm actually getting at, namely some self-psychoanalysis: This is probably the reason why I was so afraid of women for much of my youth. I was afraid of the female agency - afraid of being reduced to something less than I was*. I think, despite what our macho culture claims, that many, many other men are afraid of this as well.

The prospect that a woman would think "I don't care who he is, I want to screw him" might superficially seem pleasant to the stereotypical man, but here's the catch: Men are used to being the subject in a sexual situation. The man who behaves like the Hollywood man is thinking through a filter in which he is the actor, and the woman doesn't really want to use him, she wants to be used by him.

The thought that it could be the other way around never even enters Hollywood Guy's mind. If someone tries to convince him of it, he would just grin and say that it's mutual.

But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes a woman really is in power. And to be confronted with the thought that all your ideas and dreams and hopes are insubstantial - that all that really matters about you can be reduced to one tiny, insignificant detail like how much money you make or what you have between your legs - that is a deeply disturbing thought, no matter what you happen to have there.

----

*Just to be clear here: Was I, as a teenage boy, afraid that women would only be interested in me for sex? No. Not strictly speaking. But I was afraid that women would see me as something less than a person. It's not so much which object you're being reduced to as it is the fact that you're not being seen for what you are.

Better Days of a Defender of the Innocent Youth

So we saw a documentary on the youth magazine "Okej" from the 1980s. A guy was railing against the perverting effects of hard rock, and it got me thinking:

What happens to all the moral guardians once it becomes obvious whatever they were railing against is harmless? What do the moral-panic guys do when the Black Sabbath fans become responsible family fathers pushing on forty, when the guy who watches splatter movies becomes a store manager, when the gamers spawn little gamerlings and make surprisingly good parents? Where do the morally outraged go, what becomes of them once society accepts whatever they were railing against, as inevitably happens?

Do they just give up? Do they shut up, but grumble in silence about how "punk ruined the world" for the rest of their lives? Do they resent the new society where Satan-worshipping baby killer music is featured on Melodifestivalen? Do they admit they were wrong?

The guy who went on SVT in 1985 and seriously claimed that W.A.S.P. would be responsible for raising an entire generation of violent, hedonistic anarchists - what does he say now, when the hard rock generation works as accountants and nurses throughout the country? If you interviewed him, what would he have to say about it?

I'm really quite curious.

Quote of the Now

"Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted."
- J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories"

Do You Want To Playtest 5E?

The fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons has been announced. It will likely come out sometime in 2013, and hopes are high that it will end the edition wars by uniting fans of 3e and 4e under a single banner. Whether or not it succeeds remains to be seen.

Mike Mearls, of Iron Heroes fame, is one of the lead designers, and he has published an article asking for playtesters. So here's my question: Would you like to playtest D&D 5E?

Soundtrack of Me

If someone were to make a movie about me, for whatever reason, I would want the following songs on the soundtrack. They're not necessarily my favourite songs in the whole world, but they're songs that I feel accurately represent me. Some of them wouldn't really work as a soundtrack as such, but never mind that - this little exercise is more about trying to represent myself with a small selection of songs.

Without further ado:

1. Supertramp – The Logical Song
This song is pretty much my theme song.

2. Pet Shop Boys – It's a Sin

3. Scooter – How Much Is The Fish
This song makes no sense, but it makes me happy and all pumped up. Plus, it's been following me since I was pretty small.

4. The Beatles – Fool On The Hill

5. The Beatles – Nowhere Man
It might be a bit redundant to include both this song and Fool On The Hill, but they are actually quite different songs. Both this and Fool On The Hill have been following me for quite some time.

6. The Seat Belts – Real Folk Blues
The theme song of a love story.

7. Bob Dylan – Positively 4th Street
The theme song of another love story.

8. The Beatles - Here Comes The Sun
The theme song of yet another love story. I'll leave it up to you to figure out which is which.

8. Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory – Pure Imagination

9. Aladdin – Friend Like Me
I know, I'm totally full of myself.

10. Gorillaz – Some Kind of Nature

11. Gorillaz – Revolving Doors
...Gorillaz song lyrics as a rule make no sense, so I'm not really sure if these songs say anything really applicable or meaningful, but I like the Gorillaz and their melodies, if nothing else, need to be on the soundtrack.

12. Dr. Steel – We Decide
Wouldn't at all work as a soundtrack for anything, I think, but I like the message.

13. Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody

14. Per Gessle – Farväl Angelina
I know the original is in English and by Bob Dylan, but I really like the Swedish version. Also, I feel like there maybe should be at least one song on this list in my actual native language.