Eruditorum Press

Gaze not into the abyss lest you accidentally write a book

Swinging My Dick In My Hand (Super Mario RPG)

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One final guest post from Anna Wiggins. Also, just FYI, we’re currently $1 below the threshold for Class reviews on Patreon, so if you were enjoying those, you might want to toss me a buck.

It was always going to end like this. When life transforms into narrative, wyrd into orlog, endings become inevitable, foreshadowed in a way they never were at the time. This is the dread magic of stories. And tragedies, in particular, only ever end one way.

In the Spring of 1998, a fourteen year old trans girl, closeted even from herself, tried to end her life in a patch of woods in rural North Carolina. She had run out of hope, her every refuge invaded. No one came to save her, and she didn’t know how to save herself.

Super Mario RPG was released two years earlier, of course. She never even played it; in retrospect this is surprising. It was a Square-made RPG, manifestly her favorite software developer at this point. But it slipped past her radar, probably by being part of the Mario franchise. Playing it now, I think she probably wouldn’t have liked it. The combat system is turned-based, but with poorly cued proto-quick-time events thrown in. The RPG elements are pretty simplistic: three equipment slots, a handful of stats that monotonically increase, 4-6 magic attacks per character, a shared MP pool. It stays on the shallow end of the RPG pool, and feels more like ‘turn-based Mario’ than ‘Mario-themed Final Fantasy’.

By 1998, her older brother had a Playstation. The SNES was starting to collect dust, unused except for the occasional return to Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, or Final Fantasy III. She still preferred the old sprite-based art of the 16-bit era; the character and concept art of Final Fantasy III seeming entirely more palatable than the blocky polygons of Final Fantasy VII. More broadly, though, VII just felt less inviting to her. It had snowboarding and large-breasted characters serving explicitly as eye-candy for boys. These things feel out of place in her vision of what video games ‘for her’ are like.

So it would be facile to suggest that Super Mario RPG destroyed the refuge she had in video games, but it stands as an important symbol, at least. Video games fell distinctly into the categories ‘skill-focused’ and ‘narrative-focused’. RPGs were designed to be narrative-focused. It was ok to be bad at them, because the goal wasn’t to be the best, just good enough to watch the story unfold. Super Mario RPG had more narrative than most Mario games, certainly, but it was still part of a franchise that was solidly in the ‘skill-based’ category, the games her brother and cousins would play and boast about, loudly, to each other. She rejected it on principle. It was an invasion, this RPG from the other side of gaming, from the world of Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden and Sonic the Hedgehog. And arriving as it did at the end of the SNES era, it was like a death-knell for the sorts of games that had sustained her for so long.…

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Comics Reviews (November 2nd, 2016)

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Bitch Planet #9

Righteous and angry the way you want tis book to be, but… who’s Eleanor Doane again? I mean, the issue tells me somewhat, but clearly she’s a big part of the book’s underlying mythology, and, well, that’s always rough when a book’s as sporadic as this. This would work if it were coming out on an actual release schedule, but the “an issue every once in a while” is just killing it, and I’m increasingly contemplating switching to trade for it. 

Animosity #3

The meta-arc of this one is feeling cloudy – there’s a big jump between the second issue and the third, enough of one that I went back to the second to refresh my memory, which was a mistake because I’d forgotten just how clumsy the end of that issue was, making the jump even more jarring. But on a single-issue level this is golden – an unsettling and provocative look at animal-human relationships that’s an absolute joy to read. I suspect its problems quite fitting together will eventually overwhelm it, but for now this is a highlight. 

The Wicked + The Divine #23

An ambitious high-concept issue in which Gillen proceeds to get a bunch of real journalists to roleplay interviews with his characters and then write up those interviews as though they were real articles. There’s literal authorial self-insertion. Add to that some gorgeously lush portraits by Kevin Wada and you’ve got something that’s obviously a lot of fun, and that manages to seed hints for where the next arc of WicDiv is going as well. Shit like this is why this is one of the best books on the stands. …

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The Secret Song of Ayarynne Underqueen

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The Foreseen One

The first song tells of her birth. But this song comes from the Southern Lands, so it isn’t really a song. It tells of how the Underqueen was born in 2E 555 to the Devils of the Isles, but fled to travel Nirn instead. She was not the Underqueen at this time, and to the Devils she was their pre-ordained queen and saviour. She knew Mundus needed rulers (though she didn’t yet know what that word really means, because it is a Secret Word) and this is why she chose to Wander. It was said she spent lifetimes or ages wandering Nirn before returning to the Isles to claim her queendom, by which point many in the Isles had talked themselves into forgetting her as a Historical error. But some knew and remembered, mainly the very old and the very young.
 
But some other in the Isles remembered the Wanderers from the Before Time, and they were afraid of her return. The Devils feared her dangerous trickery would cause the Isles themselves to Wander, such that they could never again be charted on a map. And because the Devils of the Isles value Order and Mapmaking and above all else need to Be Seen, they cast her out and called her Unforeseen (because the Devils cannot hear the Wind-Whisper of Blessed Kyne) and would not honour her.

On Her Name and Deeds

Ayarynne (for this is what she was called at that time) was to become Queen of the Isles, but because she had sought the counsel of those outside the Isles and wished to reinstate the old mythogeneaolosophy of the giants before they had been elves, she was branded a heretic and a blasphemer and this is why she was then called the Witch-Queen. Queen Ayarynne knew that she was destined to rule, but that she would have to once again travel outside the Isles to do so. With her eyes set on the Imperial City’s Ruby Throne, she first journeyed east to seek allies among the forest dwellers and cat people of the wild kingdoms.
 
The Empire was in ruins, and pretenders to its name and corpse vied for the throne. Each wielded an army of necromancers who fought tooth and claw in service of Memory such that the Imperial Province of Cyrodiil would not be drowned and sunk under the rainstorms of Kyne. The Shaman-Queen of the Isles made her way across Tamriel to Cyrodiil herself, but she did not seek the crown for the same reasons the others did or that they might believe she would: She was guided by the Hawk, whose voice was hers, and she rallied her troops of elves and cats and men under her banner of wings. Under her own auspices, Queen Ayarynne found and wielded the Staff of the Sun’s Missing Eye, which remembered the Truth-That-Was-Not in Ald Mora and pointed her North. It was said by some that she knew in that moment where her destiny called her, but she spoke on none of it.
…

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Serious Bubbles (Steven Universe)

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Hi all,

So, it’s been a while since I’ve put something up on Eruditorum Press.  My bad.  Got caught up in work-related travel, and then there was the return of the intestinal bug, and, well… I apologize, because I’ve been sitting on this awesome Giant Woman podcast for two weeks now, where Shana and I talk more about Steven Universe.

Steven Universe! 

In this installment of Giant Woman we cover Bubble Buddies and Serious Steven the 7th and 8th episodes of Season One.  And as both of these episodes are quite good, so too is the conversation around them, although to be fair I blew it in my analysis of the Beatles’ song “Strawberry Fields Forever” as an influence on Serious Steven, as I completely neglected to mention that the song is a fusion of two different takes.  Seriously, where was my brain at?

As always, you can get your Giant Woman fix at the Oi! Spaceman library of podcasts right here.…

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Nightvisiting Review

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Something of a holding pattern episode, executing a bog standard premise whose primary virtue is clearly that it’s cheap and depends primarily on interior shots in which two people talk or street scenes in which static monster tendrils are strung about. This is, of course, not something to complain about – “the cheap one” is a thing Doctor Who has always had to grapple with. Sure, it ends up being the downside to the decision to drop the first two episodes together, in that you don’t really want your cheap holding pattern episode to come on your second week, but that’s a pretty minor complaint. And on the bright side, Class is intelligent enough to burn off “people are mysteriously visited in the night by their dead relatives” as the cheap midseason episode, which is more than can be said for Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or, the most obvious comparison, Torchwood.

On top of that, “Nightvisiting” has what can increasingly just be described as Class’s usual instinct to avoid genre defaults in favor of more interesting routes. For one thing, at no point are any of the main characters particularly tempted by the Lankin, so that at no point does the drama hinge on the fact that the audience knows genre tropes and the characters don’t. Particularly satisfying, after two episodes focusing pretty hard on his trauma, is Ram’s reaction to Rachel showing up at his window, which is basically to go “nope” and run like hell. But Tanya’s consistent and intelligent interrogation of the situation and eventual self-rescue is good stuff as well.

There are certainly some ways in which the script is sloppy. The idea that Tanya’s family constitutes the biggest reserve of grief in London on the two year anniversary of Tanya’s father’s death is… sloppy, though wisely buried in the denouement when things are happening quickly enough that you don’t notice. On the other hand, the sequestering of Charlie and Matteusz in the bedroom, lampshaded explicitly by Ms. Quill when they finally make it down to involve themselves in the plot, is hard to treat as anything other than a particularly clumsy bit of storytelling that serves to keep Matteusz at an odd remove from the main characters, dropping out of the story for an episode and then popping up having been thrown out of his house, as opposed to us getting to see him get thrown out. It’s odd, because there’s no obvious reason for him not to be given roughly the same weight that Tanya, Ram, April, and Charlie get, and yet he very clearly isn’t. It’s also a bit puzzling to do this as your third episode, such that your ghosts are all characters we’ve never seen before, which ends up being somewhat underwhelming. Tanya’s father is at least well-set up by the previous episode and the intro montage, but Mrs. Quill’s sister is an utterly damp squib.

But for everything that’s clumsy there are bits that are deft and intelligent.…

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Comics Reviews (October 26th, 2016)

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The Ultimates #12

Well, they solve the artist-swapping problem that’s been killing this book, but the solution – getting Christian Ward in to do the final issue – is an odd one. Ward’s great, but he’s great at weird cosmic psychedelia, and this is an issue pretty heavy on people sitting in hallways and offices of government buildings. With a ton of plot information offloaded to, basically, “see other comics.” And a setup to The Ultimates2, which I admit I’m not immediately excited by. The result is one of those very comicsy things, a final issue that fails utterly to bring anything to a satisfying conclusion. Still, the Ms. America stuff was nice, as it always is. 

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up The Marvel Universe

Finally got to check this out. Good, and at times delightful (the “draw Squirrel Girl” activity pages were brilliant), but I definitely came out of it feeling like an OGN was more Squirrel Girl than I necessarily wanted in a single dose. By the end it’s just not sparkling anymore, and the laughs felt fewer and further between than they did at the start. Not because the book isn’t still good, but because I just don’t think the Squirrel Girl style is suited to that sort of longform. This felt like a flabby and overlong issue as opposed to an OGN. Still good, but definitely not $20 of good. 

New Avengers #17

Apparently this is a Civil War II tie-in? This isn’t even a red skies crossover. This is just an issue of New Avengers. Of course, since Civil War II is a car crash and I’m kinda less than impressed with Bendis’s “let’s tell the female writer who’s being harassed off Twitter that it isn’t comics fault” schtick today not actually being a tie-in as advertised in the cover fails to lose this book any points. Which means it gets to stand on the strength of its gonzo Al Ewing plotting, which is a perfectly good thing to rely upon. Nice emphatic twists that point towards an exciting resolution for the story Ewing’s been telling for more than a year here, and that presumably sets up U.S.Avengers whenever that starts. 

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #12

A delightful wrap-up to the second arc, which maybe on the whole feels like it went on longer than it needed to (the first one did too, actually – six issues is a rough length for a superhero book). There’s really nothing but good things to say about a comic that involves a rampaging lego triceratops. But as it happens there’s top notch character work and some of the funniest responses to a profession of love in comics to boot. 

Ms. Marvel #12

A tight and charming done-in-one with a shockingly good guest artist in Mirka Andolfo. Kamala goes to visit family in Pakistan and, inevitably, ends up fighting crime. Good character beats, a delightful opportunity to see a superhero story in an unusual setting and dealing with different issues.…

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Big Window

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Once again, I have nothing for you.  What I laughingly refer to as ‘real life’ has been hectic for me lately, full of obstacles both expected and unexpected which have required some heavy duty navigation.  Plus, in terms of my online career, I’ve been working on so many projects simultaneously that none of them have come together on schedule.  Bad time management, thy name is Jack.  So, to fob you off again, here’s the second chapter of the novel I kid myself I’m writing.

Oh, and in case you missed it, I was recently a guest on the lovely They Must Be Destroyed on Sight movie podcast again, this time talking with Daniel and Lee (two of the nicest, smartest movie podcasters you could ever hope to listen to) about both versions of Nosferatu.  Spoilers: we all like both of them.  Get that here.  Quite pleased with my showing, though there were times during the recording when tiredness and alcohol consumption made me only semi-coherent.  But I’m often told I’m more palatable that way.

Chapter One of my ‘novel’ can be found here, if you need a refresher.  Though I think you should probably just re-read Phil’s Theses on Trump instead.

 

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“You got the book then.” said Iza’s father. “Good. Happy birthday darling.”

The massive man was sat in his massive chair behind his massive desk in front of his massive window. Iza could see the Walkie-Talkie, the Cheesegrater, the Gherkin and the Shard behind him, all glittering wetly in the drizzly sunshine like freshly-washed utensils on a drying wrack. He seemed entirely at home amongst them. Anybody else would’ve been dwarfed by the office and the furniture and the window, let alone the view. But Iza and Ria’s father was big. Broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, shaggy-bearded. His gigantic hands were like strange five-legged animals which seemed to have decided – for some reason best known to themselves – to live on the end of his arms. They moved almost constantly, as if they might conceivably decide at any moment to simply detach themselves and wander off to explore the rest of the world on their own.

“It’s not my birthday,” said Iza.

“Isn’t it?” His wide, sun-browned face crumpled into confusion. “Are you sure?”

“I know when my own birthday is,” she said. “I thought maybe you did too. Perhaps that was optimistic of me.”

“I do know,” he said, and recited it. He looked down at his desk calendar. “Why did I think…?” he asked himself. He looked like someone who’d just walked into a well-lit room and automatically flicked the light switch, and was now standing in the dark, wondering what had happened.

“Um, sorry,” he said. It was almost a question, as if there was an unspoken ‘Will that do?’ appended. For all his vastness, he seemed lost and helpless. Iza had seldom seen him this way before. She always thought of him as a great enthusiastic sheepdog of a man… which wasn’t a comparison original to her.…

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Nintendo Switch Reveal: First Impressions

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This past week Nintendo finally put over a year of rabid speculation to rest by revealing its next console, previously known only by its codename NX, as the Nintendo Switch: A high-end handheld game console that can be plugged into a dock for home play. Nintendo forwent the expected routes for hardware reveals, even the famously unorthodox Nintendo hardware reveals-In lieu of a press conference or media event of some kind, Nintendo revealed the Switch to the world by way of a 3-minute teaser trailer on their YouTube channel. Although the video re-confirms the system’s previously announced March 2017 release date, Nintendo later stated that this is all the information on the system we’re going to get until then, so let’s jump on the hype bandwagon and play armchair speculative analyst with the Nintendo Switch.

First of all, the trailer confirmed most of what the many rumour mills were saying about what we then knew as NX in the months leading up to the reveal, and I for one couldn’t be happier about what we saw. The Nintendo Switch is a handheld console that rather resembles a tablet computer, except with controllers on the side. Those controllers, called JoyCons, are detachable, and use an advanced form of motion control and force feedback similar to what was used on the Wii Remotes, except they can also double as traditional gamepad inputs by being snapped onto a kind of controller shell (and can I rave about how thrilled I am they finally got the controller layout right this time?). The system uses high-capacity cartridges instead of optical disks, which is going to be a godsend for storage and loading, and Nintendo has also kindly left us the headphone jack. Although Nintendo seems to be trying to sell this as a home console first and foremost, it really isn’t: While it does have a dock so you can play games on your TV, it doesn’t offer the system any additional processing power, so the Switch is fundamentally a handheld that can be played at home instead of a home console you can take with you. This is a great idea in my opinion, and for a whole lot of reasons.

I’ll get the uncomfortable truth out of the way right now. The home console industry is dying. From the start of this generation, publishers were extremely reluctant to support even the XBOX One and the PlayStation 4 with new releases, primarily wishing to focus on smartphones, tablets and, weirdly enough for anyone who’s followed the industry for as long as I have, the PC. A lot of this was initially due to the plateaued sales of the XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3 at the end of the last hardware cycle, but that hardware cycle was abnormally long and need not have been a barometer for how this generation was going to fare. Publishers started to take notice once the PlayStation 4 began selling like gangbusters and there’s been an uptick in support as a result, and yet even so…Home consoles on the whole have failed to get a real foot in the door in the three years since then.…

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Theses on Trump 16

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This essay is going to need some substantial (though obviously not total) revision, and keeping the original in circulation feels wrong. A revised version will appear in the generally available edition of Neoreaction a Basilisk that will come out in 2017. …

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C-Beams Glitter (Mega Man X3, Rockman and Forte)

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Hello again. Where are we now, January 1996? Best we start wrapping this up, I suppose.

In a sense I never left, of course. Let’s see. Summer of 1995 was the first year of CTY, the big nerd camp that was the defining social framework of late middle school/early high school for me. Place those three weeks between Civilization and Chrono Trigger. I was still playing video games, but favored the PC – I got a Playstation around the time of Final Fantasy VII, and would get a Nintendo 64 for Christmas at the end of 1996, in my first year of high school, but neither captivated me. I was starting to intellectually specialize – at CTY I’d taken what was basically a college-level intro comp course, and was beginning to think of myself as, if not “a writer,” at least “a guy who could write.” This coincided with the regression of my ability in math, previously my best subject, as the handwriting requirements of algebra and ADD-taxing nature of drilling a problem over and over again made the subject stop favoring me. Indeed, the best paper I wrote at CTY was a descriptive essay about how much I’d hated my 7th grade math teacher. (Meanwhile, I got on quite well with my 7th grade English teacher, and ran into her at the supermarket earlier this year.) From there I’d gradually deflect from aspiring towards fiction to realizing a greater strength in criticism, a bias I’ve yet to correct despite occasional efforts.

But my exile from the Super Nintendo era was short-lived. The summer of 1997 introduced me to the wonders of NESticle, and I dove happily into the suddenly opened archives of my childhood. Then, in the fall of 1998, I got my learner’s permit, and early in 1999 could drive. This being western Connecticut, the main available attraction was the same thing it had been since the 1980s evenings spent with my mother: the Danbury Fair Mall. Or, in my specific case, the Funcoland about a block further down Backus Avenue, where I dove into a more materialist phase of retrogaming by picking up a NES and, not long after, a SNES.

Which is to say that there was a period of my life these games belonged to. Both of them were admittedly on the tricky end. Mega Man X3 was late enough in the SNES lifecycle that it was a relatively rare cartridge that coust upwards of $40 – I didn’t get to it until college when I’m pretty sure I drove upwards of forty-five minutes to a Gamestop that had one. Rockman and Forte, on the other hand, was originally an emulation concern – I remember playing it on the eOne my mother had bought on a lark, which probably means in early 2000. (I remember being baffled by a bug where jumping would simply fail on occasion, which I finally, after extensive testing, traced to the cheap keyboard that shipped with the flagrant iMac knockoff, which was apparently wired so that a particular key combination that was common when playing a side-scroller with the arrow keys would lock out a handful of other keys.)…

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