A Big Problem of Epic Proportions

There are only so many times the characters can save the world before it becomes old hat.

--AD&D 2nd Edition Dungeon Masters Guide (1989), page 123.

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.

Meme Monday: Allergy Memes

If you're like me, seasonal allergies kick your ass multiple times per year.

The one major drawback to my son's graduation last week was that Meadville, Pennsylvania, where Allegheny College is located, is in the middle of their big pollen bloom for the Spring. And for me, that was, well, kind of hellish.

"Just when you think you're done with seasonal allergies, they drag you back in!"

--Michael Corleone, maybe

So in honor of those who scarf down a bottle of Zyrtec every Spring and Fall...

Yeah, kid, I feel it too.
From Science.abc.

From imgflip.

Don't get me wrong, Benadryl works.
Faaar too well. From izismile.

Yeah, Geralt, I get it. Really do. If
you're a hypochondriac, Covid offers
a whole new set of paranoid fantasies.
From Reddit via mematic.

The Lessons You Learn Along The Way

It's funny just how much our perceptions and playstyles are influenced by those first early hours playing a game.

For example, when I first started playing a Cleric on my recently concluded 20+ year D&D campaign, we faced an enemy that decidedly had the upper hand on us. Our Fighters and Rogue had whiffed repeatedly, and the enemy we were engaged with was getting ready for a killing blow against one of us. My Cleric was all out of spells, and the only thing he could do was make an attack with his spear (he was a Cleric of Zeus, hence the spear as the chosen weapon). My Cleric charged in, hoping just to get a hit in and distract the enemy, but I rolled a natural 20. Then I hit on the critical roll, and, well, the enemy dropped.

Out of that little fiasco, my Cleric learned that charging into battle with spear out was a good thing, so he began to use that early and often. Not exactly the smartest thing for your Cleric to do, but hey, it worked that first time and he just kind of ran with it.

This happened four years before
Leeroy Jenkins! From ifunny.co.

Fast forward to my first year of playing World of Warcraft, and I was in Souldat's small friends and family guild that was a holdover from Burning Crusade. Sometime when my Paladin was in his mid....20s (maybe?)... we had someone new join the guild. Seems the guy was originally Alliance and decided to switch to Horde, so Soul offered him a spot. No big deal, I thought.

A day or two later, Soul and I were on and the guy logged in. After a minute or two of pleasantries, the guy asked if we had any spare bags he could have. Quintalan wasn't a Tailor*, and I said as much, and Soul didn't have any spare bags either.

"Oh," the guy said, and faded into the background.

Soul whispered me a short time later saying he couldn't believe that this guy would want to mooch off of us like that. "We're Horde," he said, "not doing it yourself is an Alliance thing to do."

"I didn't know that," I replied.

"Yeah. Back when WoW started, most people played Alliance, and those of us who played Horde had to stick together because if we didn't we were going to get overwhelmed. It made us strong and self-reliant."

I had no reason to doubt the truth of it, so quietly I acknowledged his side of things.

While I still have no idea whether Soul's comment about how outnumbered the Horde were back in the day really was true or not, what I do know is that little exchange did impact the way I played MMOs for a long time. Namely it was to never depend on other people for help in game, and to do things yourself instead of asking for help.

Who knew Blanche Dubois was Alliance?
From UtterDigital.com and QuoteMaster.

The strange thing is that I've no qualms at all as far as giving assistance to someone in need --I mean, I've been known to assist members of the opposing faction if it looks like they're going to lose to a mob-- so the fact that I'm happy to give help but not receive it is kind of... odd. So if my questing buddy ever has wondered about the origin story of my reluctance to ask for help, now you know. 

***

Of course, I now play on the Alliance side, and outside of some quests from the Forsaken there's not much difference playing either faction in the various forms of Classic WoW.** But you know, that didn't matter. My mind was already biased.

In the almost 14 years since I've started playing MMOs, I've found those few offhand comments have had a huge impact on how I approach this genre. I still prefer to do as many things on my own as possible, and I've even taken that to an extreme by not using any assists from Wowhead or other third party player aids for quests. Well, within reason; I do set a mental timer for trying to figure out a quest, and if I exceed that timer I pull out Wowhead and bitch a little bit while I research. 

But that's me, and I think it's important to note that these internal biases are simply that --a bias toward a certain viewpoint-- that might not be, well, correct. I'm not talking about "politically correct", but rather "actually correct". Since I don't know what the status of Horde vs Alliance population was back in the day, I can't really say whether Horde was significantly outnumbered to any degree. I also can't make the assumption that the "do it all yourself" mentality would arise from being outnumbered; on the face of it, you'd expect any group that was outnumbered to share resources and information more than normal, because communication would be key (especially on a PvP server, like Stormscale-US is).

I have this gut feeling that the underlying event that influenced my playing behavior wasn't a real one. Oh, I'm sure that Soul probably believed what he was telling me, but I've a suspicion that he played that way and used circumstances as justification for that playstyle when it's entirely possible that the playstyle actually encouraged the opposite behavior among the Horde in those early days. 

Still, without any real data, it's all conjecture.  

Not this Data, but the data. /sigh
From memegenerator.net.

***

So what does this all mean?

Well, that our internal biases can be based on unreliable information, for starters.

That's a polite way of saying "what we believe in is frequently based on bullshit." Doesn't matter where the bullshit originated or who said/repeated it, bullshit is still bullshit.

Another point to consider is that everybody is susceptible to this problem. Again, it doesn't matter who you are, you can spew bad information quite easily if you believe in it.

The question then becomes how do you fix the problem with biases?

That, I don't know. I wish I did, but I've discovered that people don't like it when you point out the flaw in their own beliefs. Nobody likes to be told they are an idiot; no matter how nicely you polish it, it's still a turd that people will refuse to accept. And if you bring in religion or politics or race into the mix, you might as well drop some TNT onto the mess.

Maybe some compassion all around would be helpful, but there are always assholes who look to exploit any compassion for personal benefit. (Again, look at religion, politics, and race for numerous examples.) But maybe, just maybe, getting people to figure out the mistakes on their own would be most helpful, because the realization comes from within rather than being told what to do by someone else, which can make people resentful.

Why do I say that might work? Because it does for me. 

I haven't changed my self-reliant playstyle (much), but I am more open to reaching out for and accepting help than I have in a long time. I'm sure that my questing buddy is having a good laugh about this right now, because it sure doesn't seem like I've changed very much, but when I figured out what I know now the ego that fueled my playstyle kind of deflated and went, "Oh...." Which isn't a bad thing, because egos do deserve to be deflated from time to time.

So... baby steps, I guess.

*He was a Miner and Jewelcrafter, for the record. Originally Inscription, but Jewelcrafting was much more lucrative.

**Cataclysm, naturally, changed all that. Those changes to the story in the Old World are big part of the reason why I don't play Retail, but you knew all of that.

Meme Monday: Rogue Memes

Despite my love of Mages and Clerics, I do like playing Rogues.

My last Retail WoW main was a Rogue, Azshandra, who made a reappearance as both my first WoW Classic toon and my first new WoW Classic Era toon. I've also played Rogues --or their equivalent-- in Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, and Elder Scrolls Online.

I may take playing Rogues seriously, but not so seriously that I can't laugh at them. Or their memes.

Okay, this is the Dad Joke of memes, right here.
It's from several places on the net.

I do love the scouting capabilities
of Rogues, but I truly do appreciate
their innate ability to resist backstabbing
their teammates.
From Pinterest.

Rogues in WoW and other games
do have that ability to sap someone,
which can drive enemy players absolutely
bonkers. I know, because it used to do that
to me! From memesboy.com.

But far and away the calling card
of a Rogue is being able to move in
the shadows and stab people
to death when they least expect it.
From fakeposters.com

And one bonus meme:

Oh yes, this. Except when you leveled straight
back in Mists and went from Cata at L85 to
the first Mists of Pandaria zone in quest greens.
Oh boy, was that one ugly. From the
Otherworldly Incantations FB group.

The Wheel of Time Moves On...

...and ages pass.

When Souldat and I began this blog in 2009, the mini-Reds were 6, 8, and 11. 

They are now 19, 22, and 24.

This past weekend my son graduated from college, and armed with his Bachelor's degree in History, will be attending graduate school in the fall to work on his Master's degree.

In his time away at college, 
he got into paining minis.
(From John Kovalic's Dork Tower.)

And he plays FFXIV. When he asked if I was going to attend Gen Con this year, he mentioned that at least one of his guildies was planning on attending. (Heh.)

He put a version of this, from
Final Fantasy XIV, on his cap.

Congrats, kid. Onward and upward.

What the F is Filk?

If you're not familiar with the term "filk", it's a specific subgenre of music that references SF&F media, placing the SF&F topic into a musical framework. We're not talking about a soundtrack, or even something like Toss a Coin to Your Witcher...

...but typically a replacement of lyrics of an already existing piece of music.* Like oh, say, replacing the lyrics in the Beatles' song Penny Lane with an ode to Middle-earth:

From my copy of The Tolkien Scrapbook,
Page 144. Apparently a lot of people
on Goodreads don't understand that
The Tolkien Scrapbook's origins
are long before Tolkien himself was
ever taken seriously by academia,
much less the Peter Jackson films.

Filk appeared with the rise of the SF&F convention scene, and I suppose you could argue that the bastardization of the words "folk music" is where "filk" got it's name. My guess is that we're talking about, oh, the 1960s or so given the rise of folk music in the popular consciousness at the time. 

Despite it's age, some people have issues wrapping their heads around filk; even if they are inclined to accept cosplay there tend to be raised eyebrows at filk songs and performers. My suspicion is that because cosplay is primarily a visual medium --and let's be honest, there are a lot of attractive cosplayers out there-- it's easier to accept cosplay than filk. 

You get the idea.
From BlizzardTerrak
via Pinterest.

Now, if you like your football/soccer, you're probably familiar with the replacement --or insertion-- of lyrics specific to your team, such as that found with such creative editing of Classical Music or Hymns, so the basic concept isn't completely unfamiliar to people. This isn't the adoption of an existing song as your club's theme song, such as Cincinnati Bengals' Welcome to the Jungle, Liverpool FC's You'll Never Walk Alone, or Crystal Palace's Glad all Over by The Dave Clark Five,

but something like a full version of this sort of thing, taking the melody from Land of Hope and Glory to tell Nottingham Forest (among others) to go piss off:

***

You're probably wondering where the hell this post came from, and I'll be honest this wasn't what I had in mind when I sat down to write on Tuesday. (That post will come later.) In this case, I pulled up YouTube to listen to something --I was originally thinking of something mellow to get through my morning workload, such as French Impressionistic pieces, but instead this old chestnut appeared on my feed:

And so I went down that rabbit hole for the next half hour, listening to piece after piece, because when you start YouTube just starts throwing everything vaguely similar at you.

A lot of those pieces are listed as "WoW Parody" or "[insert franchise here] Parody", which I guess filk could fall under,

but I also would argue that the term parody makes light of what is clearly a labor of love. It's fine for the music to be self-aware and not take itself seriously, but I typically think of a parody as something that can be easily dismissed when people want to discuss "real music". Sometimes, however, the "real music" gets overshadowed by the parody to the point where the parody is more well known than the original piece it was based on, such as Weird Al's I Lost on Jeopardy eclipsing The Greg Kihn Band's (Our Love's in) Jeopardy. 

This isn't a plea for filk to be taken seriously --after all, it already has its own website at Bowling Green State University in northwest Ohio-- but more a celebration of the form. Or raising some visibility to it.

Locally we have a true community radio station, WAIF-FM 88.3 MHz. There are only a handful of community radio stations in the US these days where you can donate money, become a member, and actually get air time for your show/program. These are distinctly different than public radio stations, which are far more organized and tend to be affiliated with colleges/universities or other non-profit organizations. Community radio stations are just that; they take their mission very seriously, even if the programs themselves can skew very oddball at times. (I personally recommend listening to the Rockin' and Surfin' Show on Saturday nights; if you like your surf music, you'll love that show.)

From WAIF-FM.

And when I said anybody could put on a program, I meant anybody. Back when I first started working in IT in the mid-late 90s, I knew a guy from work who had a radio show on WAIF that was strictly filk music. You might think that a once a week hour long show might run out of filk music to play after a short time, but he was able to come up with new filk pieces on a regular basis. I've no idea when he stopped producing the show as it's no longer on their lineup, but it's still a nice reminder that there have been people out there, raising filk music's visibility.

So have a couple of pieces of filk music for your day...

It wouldn't be Christmas without

HP Lovecraft, I suppose...

For those Honor Harrington fans...

And it wouldn't be a filk session

without a Star Trek song, by way

of Kermit the Frog...

*That's not to say that some people don't expand the definition of "filk" to cover new pieces of music based on SF&F topics. Or RPG topics. Or video game topics. I mean, there is the band Harry and the Potters, after all.

Meme Monday: Video Game RPG Memes

If you're like me you have played your share of RPG video games. I'm old enough that I played Colossal Cave Adventure back in 1981 on a remote teletype machine at a neighbor's house, Tunnels of Doom on the TI-99 4/A Home Computer, and even programmed in video game adventures for said TI Home Computer in BASIC and Extended BASIC to play.* 

Ah, Tunnels of Doom. My old friend.
Now the question is whether I have a
working cassette tape player to save
my progress. From Necropraxis.

So there are memes out there. 

Lots and lots of memes. 

Here are just a few of them.

I am most definitely NOT a
speedrunner. I realize some people
derive enjoyment from blasting
through a game, but that is most
definitely NOT me. From imgflip.

And this is why I don't have my
"Show Helm" option selected if
at all possible. Well, also because
a lot of helm artwork is pretty crappy.
From Cheezburger.

This is one of the reasons why I'm
not a fan of this staple of the RPG
genre (and MMOs in particular).
From Reddit.

And speaking of staples, why is it that
the best item(s) in a video game tend
to drop at the end? You'd think that you'd
want to find the best weapon in the game to
then go and defeat the Big Bad.
From imgur.

*Thus starting my interest and eventual career in IT.