Laughter Through Tears

The best thing about How to Get Away with Murder is Viola Davis.(1) The second best thing about HTGAWM is that it is a show about smart people making stupid decisions. I might have mentioned this is one of my favorite characterization themes. Annalise is brilliant from the start, shown to be both creative and ruthless in her problem solving abilities. She habitually takes the most difficult cases and prides herself on being able to turn around desperate situations.

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(1) I may have teared up just a little when I found out she would be playing the incomparable Amanda Waller for DC's Suicide Squad movie.

Crossposted to hazelgold.net.

I've been thinking again on the dilemma of villains.

Common wisdom has it that every story needs a central conflict. Conflicts come in many varieties, and certainly are not restricted to individual antagonists. All the same, most of the stories we see in mass media are structured around the opposition of a protagonist and an antagonist, although not all antagonists can be termed villains. A villain can easily be considered as a special category of antagonist.

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Crossposted to hazelgold.net.

Every now and then Icon manages to acquire a major international writer as a guest of honor. It always seems like such a great opportunity, but on the other hand, I'm often only faintly familiar with the authors in question and their work. This year was an exception. Having just recently embarked on my career as a professional writer, and being that I'm still struggling with the specific demands of writing proper short stories, this year's guest of honor events seemed too good to miss.

The festival takes place over three days during Sukkot and there are events all day long (and well into the night). Although I decided I couldn't afford to write three full days off for writing, I was adamant that I would make the most and pre-ordered tickets to three evening events. These events were a panel on the subject of "the search for a perfect language", a general short stories panel, and a one-on-one Q&A. Alas, I got ill on the second day and ended up missing the final event (the Q&A) which I was most looking forward to, along with the closing event where awards are announced.

The first panel was very interesting. The subject of language in science fiction is of perennial interest to me, not least because I'm myself bilingual. What I hadn't realized (not being a linguist) is that "perfect language" is actually a quite specific piece of terminology. It describes, as best as I could understand, a language in which it is possible to perfectly express the speaker's intent, without ambiguity. As a writer, obviously this seems like a terrible idea, because without ambiguity literature loses much of its magic. But, as a computer programmer, I'm a lot less worried.

All in all, it was very interesting and I'm very glad I got to hear it.

The second panel was a bit of a mess. I, like some others on the audience (and, I got the impression, also the panel moderator) got the feeling that the two Israeli panelists were dominating the conversation and injecting too many personal references and inner jokes. There was still a lot of interest to listen to, in between arguments about who won the most Geffen awards and short slips into Hebrew. 'Where do you get ideas from?' cropped up but also, more interestingly, some questions that were more about the process of transitioning the raw idea into a story-shaped concept.

I'm still sorry I missed the third event, but glad I went to the ones I did, especially the language panel. I'm even more glad that this gave me a good impetus to look up some of Ted Chiang's short stories online and find out for myself why he's so highly regarded. The stories I read are very high-concept based and feel like a distillation of the core process of creating science fiction. A novel scientific concept, a series of speculations, potential social implications and finally, their impact on the individual human.

A good week, despite my illness.

Crossposted to hazelgold.net.

I have played so much of Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (or "7KPP" as the fandom fondly refers to it) in the last 9-10 days, it is faintly embarrassing. Okay, more than faintly. I've been using the game as a kind of comfort food substitute and I'll admit it's been damaging my productivity (but not, as you'll see, my creativity). The upside to this is, I have a lot more to say on the subject, as I predicted I would in my first proper review. I now even have a special Tumblr tag, black-list-able, for all the spam I post while I'm in the middle of a new playthrough. I have hundreds of savegames. I've unlocked 63 achievements -- not all of them, but a lot.

The game has its ups and downs. Overall, I'd say there are a lot more ups than downs, but I am saying this especially because this is just a demo -- albeit a longer, more complex and fascinating, and far more replayable demo than about half the full games I've played. Part of my positivity relies on the assumption that the full game (or even the alpha, which I will get access to, come hell or high water) will satisfactorily resolve some of the taunting mysteries, confirm some of the suspicions that the fandom has been harboring, deliver a resolution both political and romantic, fix most of the typos, and have a much better interface. So no pressure.

Later, I will write a post about the taunting mysteries. Right now, I want to talk about one of the game's major draws: the characters. I previously did a quick rundown of my overall impressions of the delegates here, on my Tumblr. These are mostly powerfully emotional gut reactions, based more on my observations as a player than on any sort of analysis. So now I want to discuss the characters at more length.

( Serious lengthy discussion. )

So there you have it. Avalie is my very favorite and I think I would gladly play and replay the game just for her. Fortunately, there are plenty of other draws, enough to compensate for the literal pain of the temporary interface.

Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem is a combination diplomatic sim/dating sim, where you get to balance ambition and emotion while angling for a good match. As the title implies, you play a princess from one of seven kingdoms. The backstory explains extensively why you, a young woman, are sent alone to negotiate a marriage for yourself as part of an improbably elaborate peace conference/meat market.

I was so excited when I started this game, I could hardly focus on playing. I haven't even finished the demo and I have so much to say.

First: the game is fiendishly difficult. It has a "story mode" that makes things easier (and less fatal) which I haven't tried yet. It resembles Long Live the Queen in more than one way, in this case, in the fact that you must resign yourself to failing some things. You cannot master all skills, you cannot befriend or seduce all characters. Some people (in the game) are just smarter than you. One way this shows up very clearly is in the matchmaker scene.

I want to talk a little about the matchmaker mechanic, because I think it's brilliant. After delineating her personal history, her virtues and her weaknesses, your princess is assessed by a professional matchmaker. The game makes several skill and personality checks. No matter what choices you make (...I'm almost certain) the matchmaker will dismiss you as a disaster. This can be a little disheartening, but it serves a valuable function. On the face of it, it sets up the gameplay -- where you build up skills, knowledge and connections in an effort of impressing and making a good marriage. More subtly, this scene is here to remind the player that there are no correct choices.

"No correct choices" means that the game, in theory, isn't meant to have a single, successful path that counts as 100% victory. Success is subjective, to some extent. Death, obviously, is not a desirable outcome, but otherwise you forge your princess's goals and skills likewise, and it's up to you, the player, to make them compatible. Once again it resembles LLTQ in that it has a whole set of "princess" type skills and a whole set of "game protagonist" skills. The matchmaker is here to remind you that every choice you make has an upside and a downside.

Are you hoping to fall in love? You are a foolish romantic with your head in the clouds. Are you here to amass power? You have a grasping air about you, dear, and no one likes a cynic. Leadership skills come at the expense of charm and manners. Academic prowess comes at expense of finesse. Everything that makes you desirable to one prospect will also make you repulsive to another. No matter which nation you come from, some of the delegates (and marriage prospects) are your country's sworn enemies, and these rivalries are based on deep philosophical gulfs.

I... still have so many secrets to unlock. But this game makes me so, so happy. I could (and will!) write a critical post about the weaknesses of the writing and the worldbuilding, and I want to note in advance that the game is unfinished and the temporary UI is simply appalling. Despite its shining potential, the poor choices in layout and fonts may well make the demo unplayable for some players.

The full demo for Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem can be downloaded from their official site, here. Read alias_sqbr's non-spoilery review (which drew me into the game) here.

Crossposted to hazelgold.net.

One of the baffling and endlessly fascinating phenomena in pop culture is how devoted fans can become, not to a show or book, but to the ideology presented within. Even if said ideology is vague or formulaic, to the point where the preoccupation is pretty clearly with the thing in itself (as opposed to its philosophical implications). People list their religion as "Jedi" all the time, and not just as an in-joke. Despite that the Jedi order stands for such ultra-specific ideas (TV Tropes link) as "justice is good and tyranny is bad".

At this point in my fannish life, it's become pretty clear to me that, whatever capacity I might have had as a kid, I can't take this attitude seriously at all. Maybe my approach is just too aggressively Doylist (Fanlore link). I automatically default to thinking, "Why do the creators want so badly for me to believe in this thing?" I can't quite take it at face value. Morally-grey works become hard to stomach... because they're almost never as "grey" as their creators think. Authors are constantly subtly (or unsubtly) nudging their readers towards a certain belief, or conviction, or POV.

It makes certain fandom discussions uncomfortably interesting. And it makes playing RPGs very interesting. Over something like three years in Dragon Age fandom, I have completely failed to become a Fereldan nationalist. And I've developed an outright hostility towards Andraste (the Jean d'Arc/lady Jesus prophet of the game's fictional church). Why? Because I can.

But that's a different issue altogether, I suppose. Whatever game-makers (and show-makers, and writers) expect of their audience usually has very specific cultural undertones. Sadly, these are undertones of which they are overwhelmingly unaware. Mostly they seem to think that the philosophical and cultural underpinnings of their work are universally applicable to the human experience. People who were raised in a Christian secular society seem to have a really hard time with the idea that Jews don't believe in Jesus.

But I don't believe in Jesus. Even if I believed in God, and practiced the religion of my parents and grandparents, I still wouldn't believe in Jesus. And because Jesus and Christianity are beyond pervasive in mass media popular culture... given a chance to do so, I'm going to choose not to believe in space Jesus.

Broken Age: First heard of this game through alias_sqbr who warned that she can't explain what's great about this game without spoiling it (or something like that). This is accurate. ( Read more... )

Unrest: I'm not sure how I stumbled onto this game, but I'm sure glad I did. This is the game I recommended to marina at the birthday party a few weeks ago. The game revolves around a fictional city in a fantasy setting patterned on Indian cultural themes, and as the title implies the political unrest is the major plot element, around which all else revolves. ( Read more... )

Both these games are filed under the "story-driven" tag on my Steam account.

Sunless Sea: Oh, be still my heart. Speaking of setting as character, welcome to the unterzee! Fallen London's dark underground ocean, which extends from the city of London, to hell's headquarters, to the mouth of the void itself. To quote the tagline, 'lose your mind; eat your crew'. ( Read more... )

Dark Parables series: This one is faejilly's fault. I will never cease to mention this. It's a series of puzzle games on a theme of twisty fairy tales, which is hard to get bored of. There's about eight or nine games and they're all full-priced, so I can't quite justify playing all of them. But puzzle games are lovely and quite distracting, and the extra characterization generated by the odd crossover effect is added value.

Holy crap I rambled.

For years I've been trying to put my mind to an original fiction project. I want to be a novelist. I want to tell stories. My mind is full of extrapolations and ideas and allegories that I want to explore more deeply. I'm always up to my eyeballs in story ideas, because every time I'm dissatisfied with a piece of fiction my first thought is, "No, no, no, here's how I would do it..."

That urge never really goes away. It's also not completely satisfied by fanfic. ( Cut for long, long rambling about my writing mental blocks. )

Oh, I made myself sad.

The Women Being Awesome tag on AO3 is very popular, and for good reason. It's a great, searchable tag that's very useful for those times when searching a character tag yields only fics with minor appearances. If a work it tagged WBA along with your favorite character, you have pretty good odds of her taking a major role, being highly competent, and having an emotional arc.

My problem is I don't usually write about women being awesome. I write about women, put an emphasis on their stories especially when canon has not, expand what was implied, and generally try to go deeper than the source material. But, I don't think my stories fill the implied criteria of women being awesome. Awesome as characters, maybe, but that's a little ambiguous, isn't it? What if I write a story to highlight a woman being terrible? Majorly terrible.

Female villains (antagonists, foils, antiheroes, antivillains, supervillains and etc.) need love. Canon won't treat them well. Not if there's an option for the vilainess to reveal that her primary motivation for evil was yearning for the male hero's dick. Morally ambiguous female characters also get the short shrift, a lot of the time.

It's genuinely hard to write about women being awful under the mantle of strong female characters and good role models for girls. Or even heroines for women who feel like the candy-coated power fantasies marketed to the 18-35 male set will never really scratch their itch. I don't want to fill a tag for Superwomen with stories about Lexettes. I want women in power who are affected by power, changed if not corrupted by it, who want it and use it and sometimes misuse it.

That's what I write, and I think it would be unfair of me to label it something else.