Sometimes I have this urge to post multiple times in a day, after having not a lot to talk about over a week.
Kind of just figures, right?
Several years ago, I was aware of a WoW player named Mats Steen who'd passed away back in 2014 from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, and his parents were surprised when several of Mats' WoW friends showed up at his funeral. The events were picked up in a story first presented for the NRK (in Norwegian) in Norway in 2019, but translated and presented on the BBC in English.
It was a touching article, and a reminder that the friends we make in MMOs impact far more people than we may never know. People like Mats are the reason why I play MMOs: not for the shinies or the achievements or the story, but for the people. I'm afraid that too many players lose sight that it is people that make these games special, and not just your buddies on a raid team. It's all about the friendships you make along the way. However, I thought that was that, and the memory of Mats faded over time.
Then I was surprised to see this pop up on my YouTube feed on Tuesday:
From BBC Channel 4.
About a minute into the interview, I realized that yes, I remembered the story of Mats, but... What is it with the animation?
Then I realized that someone (Benjamin Ree) had made a documentary about Mats, and his main, Ibelin. I quickly searched for The Remarkable Life of Ibelin and found the trailer on YouTube:
How did I not know this was coming?
The documentary releases on Netflix in the US on Friday; I was concerned it might be only watchable in Europe. It's already garnered a bunch of awards and nominations at Sundance and other film festivals, so that's a very good sign.
And yes, I checked and we have enough tissues so that when I'm ready to watch it, I can.
Of course, I don't truly mean Wile E. Coyote here, but rather YouTube:
From tenor.com.
This afternoon after 5 PM EST, like clockwork, I discovered that uBlock Origin stopped blocking the YouTube "adblockers are illegal" message:
You know, this thing. No, I wasn't going to go take another screenshot for the same damn message.
So I quickly got on Reddit and found that likely all I needed to do was hop onto uBlock Origin's settings and do a Purge + Update:
Click on the extension
Select "Settings" (It's the Three Gear icon)
Select the Filter Lists Tab
Click the Purge all caches button
Click the Update Now button
Once you do that, you can go ahead and reload YouTube, and that ought to do the trick.
Once again, Acme Enterprises fails the Coyote once more.
From tenor.com. Again.
***
Okay, since you read this far, you're probably aware of the Lo-fi beats that the World of Warcraft YouTube account has been dropping lately.
If that first one sounded like Vangelis playing World of Warcraft Alliance music, this next one is like listening to an 80s television show or Brat Pack movie:
I swear I kind of half expected to see a montage sequence from Better Off Dead or Ferris Bueller when I heard the music.
So there you go. Some more toons tunes to chill to.
That little quote from the 2E DMG highlights a big problem in a lot of consumable media today. Every conflict has to have bigger and bigger stakes, and each movie or book or game's conflict has to be earth shattering to draw your attention and give the protagonists something to do. While I realize that some might blame this on the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe --or Star Wars, for that matter-- this issue of constantly raising the stakes has been a staple of SF&F for decades.
Works such as Lord of the Rings, Dune, and Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion stories have all had epic consequences that result in a heightened form of dramatic tension. Even Michael Moorcock's Elric short stories, while typically not so epic in scope, over the course of the cycle build toward a world shattering conclusion in the sixth collection, Stormbringer. You could even make the argument that stories that may not have such dire circumstances, such as Isaac Asimov's original Nightfall or The Martian Way, still present a conflict epic in scope.
Yes, yes, I know, it's right there in the name "Epic Fantasy". Duh.
The thing is, the SF&F genre and the media industry as a whole (movies, television, video games) has a big epic problem: everything needs to be epic in scope or in conflict.
And to borrow that oft used term from The Incredibles, if everything is epic, nothing is.
Yes, this one is back again...
I didn't realize just how pervasive this was until I started rummaging around the SF&F section of bookstores, looking for something new to read after being away from the fiction section of bookstores for several years. The shelves were full of massive tomes with taglines such as "Every age must come to an end" or "The greatest sagas are written in blood" and... I couldn't get excited about any of them.
That lack of interest has nothing to do with who is writing, and neither does it have to do with the setting. I'm sure that some people would tell me that it's because of "woke" culture or a "politically correct" setting or some other bullshit answer, but the thing is, I don't have issues with any of that. Yes, I read a lot of "Classic" SF&F back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s* so I have my street cred, and I have absolutely no issues with new voices or settings for Science Fiction or Fantasy. It's just that I'm tired of the same old "the world/universe/nation needs saving" Epic story trope, because in the end the stakes are of the same variety that I've seen countless times by now.
And video games aren't exactly helping.
I've said it before about World of Warcraft and it bears repeating now: I prefer the original, vanilla version of WoW because of the overall lack of an Epic plot to the extent the expansions put into place. Sure, there are storylines riddled throughout the leveling areas, but nothing so laser focused on an epic conflict to the extent that you see in the latter expansions. You've got Nefarian, C'thun, and Kel'Thuzad, but you didn't have two continents' worth of quests focused on the storylines behind those three. That lack of an overall epic narrative meant you could forge your own story, picking and choosing what to do and where to go, without having an overarching epic story to direct you.
Let's be honest here: video games and novels are one thing, and movies are quite another. I mean, look at the tons of movies and shows that are churned out year after year in the MCU alone, not to mention the DC Universe or Star Wars. Everything is epic in nature where the MCU is involved, and even a movie such as Captain America: The First Avenger Goes Fishing would somehow turn Steve Rodgers' catch of the day into an epic worthy of Ernest Hemingway.
I had no idea this existed... I SWEAR!!! From a YouTube video by Reel Hazardous.
But therein lies the blandness of it all: you've seen this story a few times, and it all starts to blend together. And trust me, given the amount of books, video games, and movies I've consumed over the decades, I've seen far more than just a few versions of the same trope.
I need to be perfectly clear: I'm not saying that "[insert content here] sucks", I'm saying that I'm tired of these stories. These books could be incredibly well written, the video games programmed and designed to an exquisite degree, or the movies insanely well crafted, it's just that I've seen it all before. And to get my attention something else needs to be done.
What doesn't need to be done is do what's been done to death in video games: the moving goalposts problem. You play a video game with an epic story, finally defeat the big bad, and then either in the final cutscene or a lead-in to the next expansion/installment in the series there's a revelation that "it wasn't this Big Bad who was behind everything, it's this NEW Big Bad!"
Or the "Princess is in another castle!" meme. From knowyourmeme.com.
Or you saved your town in this video game? Now you get to save an entire province! Then the next expac is "Now you have to save your country!" Then "the world!" Then "You now have to save the Afterlife!" (Oh wait, that's Shadowlands...)
That's a huge trap that authors and developers alike fall into, where the stakes have to ratcheted up more and more to keep people's attention. (After Infinity War, what then, Marvel? Multiverse Mayhem? Well crap, that's exactly what they're doing now...)
***
What's the solution? Hell if I know.
And besides, if I did know the way out of this, do you think that publishers and developers and producers would be beating a path to my door? Oh HELL no. Right now, the sound of dollars from the people who consume their content is louder than anything I can say or do. If I've learned anything in this world, content creators want a sure bet on where to put their money, and it's a lot easier betting on the same old same old than trying something new. Of course, game companies discovered that breaking their games up into pieces got them a lot more money than release it all at once...
Dorkly, don't ever change.
That doesn't mean that I've turned into a costume drama loving highbrow (or lowbrow, or midbrow-or-whatever the Hallmark Channel fits into) consumer, it's just that I want something more than what we've got right now.
It also doesn't mean I want to eschew standard novel formats and instead go with modern novel constructs; I had to read Virginia Woolf in an English class at university and that experience alone put me off of reading any novels designed to be "modern" for a couple of decades. The English professor who taught the class I read Mrs. Dalloway in warned us away from taking his Modern Novel class, because non-English majors sign up expecting to get to read modern popular novels, but that isn't anything at all what they actually read.
Probably the best way to put it is that maybe the sentiment "go big or go home" is missing the point: perhaps not going all out will result in a better story.
*And part of the end of the 00s/beginning of the 10s.
As in, "holy crap how are you still alive?" a lot.
I don't believe in the "that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger" nonsense, because I've lived through a winter that had me catch bronchitis, the flu (twice), strep throat, scarlet fever, and pneumonia. That was just ONE WINTER, that of my First Grade. Eventually, my doctor told my parents that if I caught one more thing it would likely kill me, so they pulled me from school and made an arrangement with my teacher for me to complete my First Grade schoolwork at home.
I, uh, was not a very attentive student at that time, and although I lived in fear of my father, I could get away with goofing off with my mother.*
But for a hyperactive kid, being cooped up is like a death sentence. You can't go outside, you can't run around**, and you can't make any noise. I did love reading, but there's only so much schoolwork type of reading you can do before you start to go crazy.
What kept me sane? My imagination.
There were three shows on television that captivated my attention --two series, one movie-- and I'd spend hours dreaming about them: Batman, Speed Racer, and The Adventures of Robin Hood.
***
The first, the 1960s live action Batman television series, was what I lived for on Saturday nights at 7:30 PM. Even my aunts and uncle were cued to that I loved that show, so when we'd visit my mom's family*** they made sure that the television was tuned to Adam West and Burt Ward. My mom had a pair of button down cardigan sweaters, one blue and one yellow, so my brother and I would wear them as capes, mimicking Batman (me, because I was the oldest dammit) and Robin (my brother).
Oh, I did. Believe me, I did.
In an era before The Dark Knight (the comic book), Adam West's semi-comic version of Batman was what I knew, and I loved his wit and his gadgets and ability to see through the villain of the week's plans. It seems so odd to me now that Batman struck such a chord with me, given that superheroes as a genre today aren't really my bag, given I'm kind of sick and tired of all the superhero movies out these days.
***
The second, Speed Racer, was more of a forbidden fruit for me than anything else.
Oh, not in the way you'd expect, mind you. My parents were fine with the early anime show. It was that Speed Racer was pulled from the local airwaves because it was "too violent".
I wish I were making it up, but there it is.
I mean, I've seen Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, and all of the old Popeye cartoons, and they were all vastly more violent than Speed Racer. But since Speed Racer involved car crashes, it was supposedly far more violent than those others. Parental complaints led to Speed getting pulled off our local independent station, and there was nothing I could do about that.
And oh yeah, somebody bitched about the word "demon" in the theme song. Yes, my hometown is right on the northern edge of the Bible Belt. Does it show?
But while it was on, I loved that show. I loved the Mach 5 so much that 5 became my favorite number. Add to that Speed's propensity to getting into trouble with the "bad guys" that always led to confrontations on the race track****, yeah I was hooked. I had no idea what anime was --I believe both Speed Racer and the few years later import Star Blazers were lumped into the name "Japanimation" back then-- but in an era before the dominance of NASCAR in the US, motorsports were dominated by the Indy 500 and Le Mans, and Speed tapped into that popularity with a car so far out that it was more James Bond than Mazerati.
***
I saved the best for last, and I referenced it in a comment I made over on Bhagpuss' Inventory Full: The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Since I was sick a lot, some of my earliest memories were of me being propped up on the couch where I could watch television when I was recovering. We only had one television at the time, and it was a black and white one*****, but it was my window into the world.
In those days, before Rupert Murdoch launched FOX as a fourth network, most localities in the US had at least one independent television station. Those stations were typically filled with old shows in syndication, cartoons in the afternoon that they could put on cheaply, and old movies. Tons and tons of old movies.
Like, oh, the 1938 Errol Flynn classic mentioned above.
Channel 19, before it became one of the first FOX stations back in the mid-80s, would have movies at 1 PM daily (ending at 3 PM in time for cartoons), and would have an average of three movies on during the weekends during the days. And it always seemed that whenever I was sick, The Adventures of Robin Hood was sure to be on in one of those slots. If you want adventure, patriotism, strong female characters (for the era), and more than a bit of swashbuckling adventure, Robin, Lady Marian, Little John, and the Merry Men were hard to beat. And for a kid watching the swordplay and archery in an era before D&D or the SCA exploded onto the scene, it was more than you could ever hope for.
You can't have a good movie without good villains. Before I knew him as Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone (center) was Sir Guy of Gisbourne. (From the DVD.)
It was little surprise, I suppose, that several years later when I was introduced to Lord of the Rings and D&D that I just hopped on board that train and haven't looked back.
***
It's not hyperbole to say that those early influences helped pave the way for my love of gaming. A love of adventure, heroism, and the medieval period are pretty much a straight line from those early influences to RPGs to video game RPGs and finally to MMOs. It probably also provides a background why I play the way I play; I don't explicitly think it, but my deference to letting others have loot first and helping others rather than asking for help could be easily traced from Batman and Robin Hood to today. From my perspective, it's just being a decent player, but for others it could easily be seen as being a 'goody-two-shoes' and 'overly chivalrous'. But you can't please everyone, I suppose.
Now, if you'll excuse me, there are some influences from my later childhood that I need to reconnect with as well....
*How times changed. When the mini-Reds were old enough for school, I was much more easy-going than my wife was. I swore I would not be my father, and I refused to engage in strict discipline. Thankfully, the mini-Reds turned out okay, but I was basically the "Good Cop" to my wife's "Bad Cop".
**We lived in an apartment that Spring while our house was being built, and the family below us had a newborn. So my brother and I weren't allowed to run around the apartment at all. Or bang on the metal container that held our Lincoln Logs like a drum.
***She was the oldest of six, so only she and her closest sibling in age were married. Her second sibling was still 3+ years away from her wedding.
****And that the mysterious Racer X was in fact Speed's older brother, there were definitely overtones that as a kid you never realized weren't in cartoons before.
*****We didn't buy our first color television until 1979. I remember that day well, because we bought the set at Sears, brought it home with the box in the trunk of my parents' 1972 Chevy Nova with the trunk lid tied down with twine, and when my dad turned on the TV for the first time, there was Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk in his full green skinned glory.
I'd been channeling my inner Leia when I first saw the trailer for Warcraft: The Beginning.
"I have a bad feeling about this" was my mantra whenever it would pop up on my blogger list as well as my Facebook feed. I remember how I really really wanted the Dungeons and Dragons movie* to succeed, but all it really did was become a punchline on how stupid the game must be to create a movie this bad. The mini-Reds would laugh at the occasional D&D Movie snippet that they'd find on YouTube, from Jeremy Irons' dreadful overacting to the actual use of the D&D metaterm "low level" in a description of a Mage in the movie.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
But still, I knew that there was a possibility that the Warcraft movie might turn out pretty good. For me, the major issue was going to be not whether they could find decent acting or direction, but whether the movie was going to be written primarily for the fans or for the wider audience. The former would go no matter what, but the latter were needed for sequels to happen. And for that to work, you needed to perform your world building gradually, following the example of Peter Jackson with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.**
The worst thing that could happen? That you'd be required to perform research in order to understand and enjoy Warcraft: The Beginning.
The reviews aren't looking so good at the moment, with Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer sitting at 33% positive critical reviews.
And that doesn't even include the bad review that Kotaku published.
The commentary that I've been reading isn't exactly helping matters. When you've got fans hollering about how people should have done their research or played the game in order to appreciate the movie, that's not a good thing. That's the equivalent of telling fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that they should have read all of the backstory in the comics before they went to go see Captain America: Civil War.
Gee, thanks, Comic Book Guy. From quickmeme.com
Things might change once more reviews are released, but right now it's not looking good for the Warcraft franchise.
Will I see the film in the theater? Not likely, as I rarely go to see movies in the theater***, but that doesn't mean that I won't hope for a decent turnout. But at the same time, the movie has to earn the turnout by being a good film that is accessible to the general public, and I'm not sure that Warcraft: The Beginning has what it takes.
*It it was at all possible, there were two sequels to the D&D movie. One went straight to the (then) Sci-Fi Channel, called Curse of the Dragon God, and the other... Let's just say that the other one --The Book of Vile Darkness-- is so bad that while it is listed in IMDB as a "TV Movie" I never saw it released onto television at all. If it did, I'd say it escaped more than was released.
**Even then, there were plenty of people who couldn't follow the details in the movie, but still liked it for the spectacle. And that was for an Academy Award winning trilogy. The problem with The Hobbit? Peter didn't follow the world building pace that he did in LOTR. Sure, a lot of the stuff was found in the LOTR Appendices, but it wasn't necessary to expand The Hobbit into three full movies.
***I typically don't have that much time to block off for a matinee, and that kind of leads into the second reason: it costs too much. I'd rather buy or rent the movie for little more than the cost of a theater ticket than have to deal with the decline in movie theater going etiquette. Oh, I've got stories to tell about theater and concert experiences.....
