Author: Wren

Dad of War: The Classic Road Trip

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While I never heard the classic line, “Are we there yet,” I did hear almost every single other variation of that thought while taking turns playing through the new God of War game with my roommates. My first experience with a road trip reference was when the game had just finished the opening sequence, as Kratos, the player character, and his son, Atreus, set out from their home. After a hunting trip and a brutal fight between Kratos and the game’s main villain, Kratos and Atreus head out to sprinkle Faye’s, Kratos’ wife and Atreus’ mother, ashes on the highest peak in all the realms of Norse mythology. Barely even a minute’s walk from their cabin, Atreus asks how much further it is until they get there. Classic.

Despite the fact that this game is the latest in a sequence of God of War games characterized by brutal, bloody fights that Kratos hacks his way through, this one takes a much more nuanced tone, in both combat and plot. There are still moments where you must brutalize a swarm of enemies before you can move on, but the swarms are smaller and the combat is focused much more on combos, abilities, and defensive style fighting, such as parries and dodges. Kratos is still every bit the badass he was in the other games, but one of the major themes of this game is Kratos attempting to control the rage that once defined him. He no longer uses the Chaos Blades he is known for, instead wielding the Leviathan Ax that previously belonged to his wife. It is clear that, as part of his move from Greece to the undisclosed parts of the Norse realm, he set aside much of his past in order to build a new life. This is a main part of the story, so saying anything further would be a spoiler. Instead, I’m going to end by saying that you really get an in-depth look into the character of Kratos, the god of war who tried to leave his past behind but now must come to terms with it as it begins to impact his present.

Since Kratos’ entire past is kept a secret beyond such details as the fact that he wasn’t born anywhere near where the game takes place, his son has very little idea of who his father is. Early dialogue and cutscenes show that Kratos clearly loves his son, but keeps him at arm’s length and is not terribly supportive or affectionate with Atreus. When Atreus is upset about his mother’s passing, Kratos does little to comfort him. After Atreus kills his first human, Kratos gives him the direct but not terribly helpful advice to “close your heart to it.” Atreus is a young boy and Kratos is entirely unsure of how to interact with him. Given Kratos’ past–the death of his first wife and son is what set him on the path to eventually become the god of war he is today–it makes a certain amount of sense that he would have trouble connecting with Atreus, at least in a way that Atreus desires given that he is not being raised in the Spartan culture that Kratos was. The very first extended gameplay you get beyond a few action cutscenes and walking bits is Kratos taking Atreus on a hunt for the first time. He starts it out by asking if Atreus was taught to hunt, making it clear he hasn’t been very involved in Atreus’ upbringing.

At the same time, it is made very clear that Kratos loves Atreus dearly, even if he has difficulty showing it. He tries to reach out to his son, to comfort him, but hesitates. He hides the scars on his arms from the world by keeping them wrapped in bandages, so it makes sense that he’d be afraid to touch his son for fear of hurting him since that’s all he’s used his hands for since his first family died. The first time he gives into his once-defining rage is when the main villain has gotten Kratos stuck in a crevice and says that he’s going to go check out what Kratos is hiding in his cabin. The villain doesn’t know it, but Atreus is hiding beneath the floorboards of the house and Kratos absolutely loses it when the villain inadvertently threatens his son. You see it again and again, and he even says it as you walk around the world in the later parts of the game. He would do whatever it took to keep Atreus alive. Throughout the game, as they walk around and go on adventures together, it becomes clear just how much Kratos loves his son and, as they start to get to know each other, how close they will become as they learn to understand each other. This was my favorite part of the game, watching a father and son bond as they traveled for a common purpose.

Speaking of their common purpose, the game sets up the classic God of War arc. It does an excellent job of re-framing the Norse mythology is a way that lends itself well toward the “kill all the gods” pattern of the past God of War games. The Norse gods are, for the most part, depicted as unrepentant assholes who keep stepping on the other races as they do whatever pleases them. Some of them are pretty messed up by their upbringing, like the villain, but most of them are simply jerks. While the game is focused around Kratos and Atreus being hunted down by the main villain for reasons that aren’t made clear until the end–and even then it’s all supposition on the part of Kratos and Atreus–the story makes it clear that there is much more to come. There’s even a secret ending that hints at what the sequel will hold. If the sequels are all as good as this one, I eagerly await them.

If you want a good RPG with a lot of fun fights, excellent character development, a fun plot, and a gorgeous world full of a variety of activities, I definitely suggest picking up God of War. The kicker is that the game was only released on the PS4, so you also need access to one of those. I don’t know that the game is worth buying a PS4, but I think it’s a good enough reason to upgrade to a PS4 if you need a new blu-ray or DVD player as well.

Ready Player One: The Movie

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I have a lot of mixed feelings about this movie. I enjoyed watching it, for sure, but I feel like I’ve got a few too many problems with it to really come up with a positive review as I look back on it. The effects were great, the movie did a great job of pulling me in, and the characters were a lot of fun to watch. At the same time, the plot felt very rushed and kind of oddly-paced, the main character basically Mary Sue’d his way through everything, and all the other characters pretty much just fell by the wayside in order to let the main character stand out when he really shouldn’t have.

To be clear, I had only read half the book before seeing this movie so I’m going to completely discard my feelings about the movie as they relate to the book. I’m going to focus on the movie as a movie and then, once I’ve finished the book, review the book in a separate post.

I really enjoyed the visuals of the movie. It looks like mostly CGI, which made a lot of sense given that most of the movie happens in a virtual environment. The effects team did a great job of mixing wondrous and mundane so that everything felt familiar and understandable while still feeling different and interesting. Subtle shifts in the environment, the variety of the characters depicted who WEREN’T just copy and pasted from some game, the movements and body language of the characters was superb, and the few mixed live-action/CGI shots were sewn together wonderfully. There were almost no awkward angles, the battles flowed like a mighty river, and the few scenes we got off the character’s while they were logged into the virtual world were hilarious depictions of the sort of odd way the virtual world translated to the real one. all together, it did an excellent job of keeping me invested in the movie aside from a few points when the plot or writing threw me off.

Despite those moments, I have to give the writers credit for taking a story that is difficult to tell without the slower pacing of a novel and turning it into something a coherent movie plot. The world takes a whole lot of introduction to make sense in the book and the movie manages to not only skip most of that, but make the world feel more real in one fell narratorial swoop. That being said, it feels like an incredible stretch that no one figured out the secret of the first challenge until our main character just got lucky and stumbled onto the answer. Because that’s what he did. He got stupidly lucky and just stumbled his way into the correct solution. He didn’t have a flash of insight, he got spoon-fed the answer by a robot. Being an avid gamer myself and knowing people who take gaming to the point of an unhealthy obsession, I can say that someone would have figured out the secret of the race in the first month.

In a similar vein, it was incredibly frustrating to watch a bunch of uber-gamers work together without so much as an argument or attempt to get one over each other. I can’t even get that level of cooperation out of my friends when I play Overwatch and that is a game literally designed to promote teamwork. Most of us gamers have a massive competitive streak and I have a hard time believing that not a single one of these top five gamers thought about going for the prize themselves. They eagerly stand aside for the main character and one of them, the main character’s romantic interest and the player who seemed to be his main competition, literally declares that the main character has to be the one to take their one shot at the prize. That’s seriously a (paraphrased) line from the movie. Its even repeated a few times and absolutely no one says anything against it. Every other player competing for the prize is some amazingly skilled and wealthy character who has spent a huge amount of time accruing items, weapons, armor, and skill, but they all stand aside for the leather-clad, pistol-toting main character who was so broke at the start of the movie that he had to slow down during races to collect the coins from dead characters in order to get enough fuel for his car to finish the race. Seriously. One of the characters turns out to be the leader of some kind of rebellion and they immediately stand aside to let the main character take the lead as soon as he shows up (which only happened because they rescued him). It was so grating to see a powerful, strong character immediately defer to this wimpy, useless main character.

Seriously, aside from knowledge of the subject matter relevant to their search, the main character had nothing going for him. He should have been outclassed at all turns and only isn’t because everyone around him does everything for him or he just gets lucky. He shouldn’t have won. Anyone who was obsessed with this competition as the movie said all the other characters were, should have been able to figure out what the main character did. That’s the trouble of solving intellectual puzzles in a movie: there’s no way to show the character straining or working hard without showing them fail and failures are trimmed down in most movies so that the director can save a few minutes for more action sequences or proselytizing from the movie’s moral authority.

Thankfully, all of the “good” characters shared that job.  No one person acted as the moral figure and the constant interaction between the characters kept things interesting when they were all around. Their banter was fun to listen to and they all did an excellent job of keeping the story moving along despite the awkward plot choices. The biggest problem I had, was that there was almost no awkwardness when the characters meet for the first time. Only two of them have been friends on the internet for very long, but they all seem to fall in together like they’ve been the best of friends for years. As someone who has had several of those “meet someone in the real world for the first time after really getting to know them in the electronic world” moments, I can say that they’re almost always awkward to some degree or another. It expedited the plot, but it pulled me out of the movie a bit.

There’s a lot to be said about all the references I saw and all of the ones I didn’t see, but I’m going to skip over that because finding the references for yourself is a significant chunk of the fun of the movie. I wouldn’t want to take that away from you. Which means I think you should see it. Probably not at full ticket price, but it is definitely worth the $5 for a Tuesday showing at a Marcus theater or however much a ticket costs at your local cheap theater whenever it hits the cheap scene. Or rent it when it comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray. Whatever you prefer since this really isn’t a movie you need to see on a big screen.

Coldheart and Iron: Part 14

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READ FROM THE BEGINNING

After a lot of stretching and a good amount of grumbling, everyone finally broke through the inertia of the last several days and started on their assigned tasks. Leaving two Wayfinders behind to guard our shelter, Natalie took us all north. Three people abreast, we started digging our way through the loosest snow on the top of the drifts and piles. I took point and we dug until we’d passed the powder before moving forward. It was awkward to have three people with snowshoes and shovels digging shoulder-to-shoulder, but we eventually hit our rhythm and started progressing more quickly.

Behind us, led by Natalie, five people dug out the rest of the path, scooping up the packed snow and tossing it back and to the sides were people on snowshoes used it to form barriers to prevent more snow from getting blown into the path we were digging. Anyone who wasn’t a primary digger was ducking into buildings we passed for supplies we hadn’t collected earlier or tidying up behind the heavy diggers.

Every fifteen minutes, the heavy diggers rotated, swapping out with the people who were just toting supplies around. Every hour, the front diggers traded jobs with the people using the heavy snow to border the path. Midway through my fourth shift, we reached the edge of town. There were still drifts beyond the borders of the town, but most of snow had been blown away in the high winds or had caught up against the edge of the town. Some of the drifts reached all the way to the top of the few two-story buildings where the town abruptly shifted from businesses on what used to be the main road to some kind of farmland.

Natalie called a break and I sat down to rest with everyone else, grateful for the chance to give my back a break from all of the shifted and moving. It kept my abs rock-hard, which I appreciated, but my back was starting to protest that I was too old for such heavy labor. Natalie paced around, checking the map she held in her hands against the landscape around us. As I watched her mutter to herself as her head swiveled around, one of the Wayfinder trainees to my right, a woman named Tiffany, nudged my arm.

“Water bottle, Captain.”

I took the proffered water bottle and drank a few small swallows, barely enough to wet my mouth. We had more work to do shortly and I didn’t want to get slowed down. Once I was done, I passed the bottle to my left and settled back against a snow bank to rest for the remainder of the break. A moment later Tiffany grunted.

“I have a hard time believe that map can mean anything in a world like this.”

After a moment’s pause to see if she was talking to someone else, I shrugged, keeping my eyes closed. “If you know what to look for, you can start to see things beneath the snow. Big enough landmarks are usually always visible.”

“How does she know which ones are which, though?”

I opened my eyes in time to see Tiffany waving her arms at the great white expanse that stretched to the horizon, dotted with white pillars and mounds haphazardly spread around. I looked over at Natalie, watching her take a finger off of her map to point at one of the less remarkable white pillars. “Practice, mostly. Plus, she’s got a knack for the kind of visualization required to see beneath the snow.”

“Sure, sure.” Tiffany nodded but then held up her hands in hopeless supplication. “I just want to know how she does it! Any explanation at all.”

“You’d have to ask her, then.” I settled back against the snowbank and closed my eyes again.

Before I had even finished settling into a comfortable position, I heard Tiffany’s voice raised in a half-shout. “Lieutenant Captain Natalie!”

I sighed and opened my eyes, watching Natalie look up from her map, the focused expression she wore being replaced with an annoyed one. “What?”

Tiffany, who’d been waving her hand, slowly dropped it. “Sorry, er, I was wondering how you could figure anything out using maps from years ago when everything is covered in snow.”

As she walked over, Natalie smoothed her facial expression. “I know where roads are and signposts that mark out locations and miles on roads make distinct snow piles. If I can find the roads and the mile markers, I can find out where the other landmarks are by comparing distances between the mile markers and my map.”

Natalie turned the map around to show the satellite imagery map she had marked almost beyond comprehension during our many trips through the Midwest. “I’ve got a lot of notes about how the storms like to pile the snow and the other Navigators in the Wayfinders all take similar notes that we upload to the net, so we can compare how the world around us changes as the snow slowly blankets the world.”

Tiffany, who had been trying to read the map and nodding along as Natalie spoke, caught herself still nodding fifteen seconds after Natalie had stopped talking. Once she stopped her nodding, she cleared her throat. “So, it’s all about your notes and your experiences?”

Natalie shrugged. “Mostly. Other than that, it’s instinct and the confidence to trust my gut.”

“So, I could learn to do that?”

“Of course.” Natalie smiled. “Do you want to?”

Tiffany nodded and stood up as Natalie gestured for her to follow. I watched them walk away from a moment before taking a deep breath to help me refocus on relaxing my sore shoulders and back. After what felt like far too short of a time, Natalie had us all standing again. We dug out the area around the end of our path to make a tall embankment using heavy snow so we had something to prevent more powder from getting blown down our path. After we’d erected the barrier, we turned and headed back, picking up the supplies people had taken stacked in the cleared area as we went.

By the time we got back to our shelter, it was mid-afternoon. After dumping off our supplies, taking a five minute break, and refilling our water bottles, we headed out to help the nomads finish digging the local paths. They’d finished more than we expected, but there was still enough work left to keep us busy until the sun was starting to go down. When we returned to the shelter, we found the laborers tiredly shuffling into their area. While the nomads went to their area and Natalie herded the Wayfinders into ours, I resisted the call of food and bed to go check on the Laborers.

When I got to the door, I found them all huddled around their cooking fire, talking quietly as a group. When I stepped around the wall, Trevor cleared his throat and stood up. “Can I help you, Captain?” The conversation fell silent as every single one of them, to a man, looked over toward me.

I shook my head. “I’m just here to check on your progress, see how you’re doing.”

“We made it to the store.” Trevor smiled wanly, his entire posture speaking to his state of exhaustion. “We spent the extra time we had widening the pathway a bit more so we can make use of the flatbed carts we saw just inside the doors.”

“Excellent thinking!” I mustered up all the enthusiasm I could. “That was a great idea.”

“All thanks to Steven, over there. He’s the one who spotted them.” Trevor gestured to one of the men on my side of the cookfire. “Other than that, everything went about as expected. Smooth sailing.”

I nodded. “Great. Then I will leave you all to your dinner.” I waved and stepped behind the wall, but pantomimed walking away so that my feet grew quieter with every step. After a couple seconds of that, I stopped to listen. Almost a full minute later, I heard the laborers start talking again. Even though I stood and listened for fifteen minutes, I couldn’t hear a word they said. Normally, they were quite loud and rambunctious, but tonight they stayed extremely quiet. Unsettled, I silently made my way back to the Wayfinder area for dinner and sleep. Before I let myself drift off, I made sure to mention what was going on to Camille and Natalie. They agreed it was weird, but the only productive suggestion was Natalie’s. Tomorrow, we would make sure there was a Wayfinder with every group of laborers, to keep an eye on them.

After a long night’s rest, the next morning dawned colder and windier than the day before, but a quick review of the paths showed the embankments were holding strong for now. Natalie started breaking us up into groups to gather more supplies and the day passed quickly. At the end of the day, all of the Wayfinders who had been watching laborers reported that they’d seen nothing out of the ordinary, though they were still a bit more sedate than usual. When I checked on them at night, they were just as quiet. It was a very weird sensation to hear more noise and commotion coming from the nomad area than the laborer area.

Our third day of supply gathering has us mostly focused on raiding the Menards for supplies and using them to turn the shelter into a proper supply depot. Labeled shelves, partially refrigerated storage for medicines that would benefit from it, waterproofing everything, and then finally doors and locks to prevent anyone but Wayfinders from getting in. The finishing touches lasted into the fourth day and then we took the rest of the day to rest, double-check stocks, and prepare for our departure in the morning. We all retired early, some of us sad to be leaving this shelter behind and the rest of us all too happy to finally be on the move again. I flip-flopped between the two groups, from one moment to the next, but I put it from my mind as dark fell and decided to just enjoy my last night of sleeping somewhere warm and dry.

When I work up, it wasn’t to the usual chirp of my water alarm. Instead, I felt a ring of metal poking me in the forehead and heard a voice speaking entirely too loudly for that time of the night. “Make any sudden moves and you and your people will die.”

Tabletop Highlight: Shout-Out to All the Games I Can Carry in My Pocket

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From a deck of playing cards to small sack full of stone tiles, I love games I can stick in my pocket or in the side pouch of my bag. I’m a big fan of being prepared and how can you call your Bastion of Nerdiness (built at a time when I was the only nerdy person where I worked and maintained because it felt really nice to have all that stuff with me at all times) fully prepared if you don’t have a game or games you can play with one or more additional people? Sure, you’ve got a first aid kit, clothing/cosplay repair kit, energy bars, and a basic survival kit, but no games to play? What kind of amateur preparation are you trying to do?

One of the reasons I was so excited to buy Tak through the Kickstarter was because one of the options was a travel pouch and a clothe board for the game. The whole idea was to create a version of the game people could carry around with them. Entire sets were built around the idea of being able to travel to a location and find someone else with a traveling set to play against. In the book world the game is from, it is apparently a common practice to make or purchase your own Tak set to bring to taverns in case you want to get in a quick game while you’re having your drinks. The pieces are so simple, even, that you could probably spend fifteen minutes walking around outside and find enough material to play a quick game with someone. I value my really nice pieces, the wonderful stone set I purchased as an add-on and the sleek, beautiful wooden sets I originally pledged for, but I enjoy the fact that knowledge of the rules is all I need to play a game because I can imagine a board and play using wood chips and flattish stones. I still travel everywhere with my full stone set, though. They’ll hold up better in my bag that the wooden pieces.

I also like to keep two decks of cards in my bag. It used to be three, but I almost never play Magic the Gathering’s standard, 60-card style anymore. I keep my Commander deck (99 unique cards plus a single legendary creature card whose colors dictate what colors I can used in my deck”) plus all the dice I need for a game (a lot, thanks to several counter-dependent plays) in my bag, along with a deck of normal playing cards. The Magic the Gathering cards are mostly for use with my friends since I don’t generally play much and usually only play because they wan to. I’d use one of their decks, but I prefer having my own to tinker with when the mood strikes me. The regular playing cards are great for everything from a friendly game of poker over lunch to a game of solitaire when I’m bored and trying to stay away from phone games that appeal to my addictive nature. There are so many games you can play with playing cards that they can be an almost ceaseless fount of entertainment. As long as you enjoy card games and the basic amount of psychology that goes with playing cards against other people.

Another game I’m going to soon add to my bag is Bananagrams. My girlfriend is a huge fan of the game and I’ve got to say that it is growing on me. It is a lot more fun to play when at least three people are playing, but you really only need two people. You also really need to love words because the whole point of the game is to use all of your letter tiles (like scrabble tiles, but without point values) to create words. If you run out of tiles, you say “peel” and everyone has to take a new tile from the pile in the center. Once all of the tiles who have been used, the person who says “peel” when there aren’t enough tiles for everyone to take one wins the game. It is a very simple game and dependent on your knowledge of spelling and how many words you know. Possibly the best part is that there generally isn’t a clear winner until the end because it is possible that you saying “peel” is going to give one of your opponents the letter they need to win the game while you struggle to figure out what to do with the “x” you just picked.

My life has improved since I started carrying games on me all the time, beyond just the general feeling of confidence that comes from seeing myself as prepared for whatever comes my way. For instance, I like to keep to myself most of the time, not because I actually dislike people, but because I’m so often unsure of what to say or how to act. Keeping games on me allows me to create a framework for longer social interactions and makes it easier to get comfortable enough with people to not feel so anxious about saying or doing the wrong thing. Anything I can do to lessen my anxiety has a positive impact on my life, even if this comes at the cost of adding a few extra pounds to an already heavy bag. My mental health thanks me but my physical health is a still waiting to see how all this plays out over the next few years before it comments.

Got any small games I should check out? I’d love to hear about them!

Morning Coffee

Wren 2 Comments

Harris woke to the scent of frying bacon, birdsong, and early-morning sunlight. He blinked his eyes, trying to adjust to the light from the window Linda had thrown open.

“C’mon, get up!”

Harris pulled the blankets over his head. Linda sat down on the bed, pulled the blanket back, and gave him a kiss on the nose. “If you wait too long, breakfast is going to get cold!”

Harris smiled as Linda pulled the sheet back, putting up only a token resistance as she hauled him out of bed. “Alright, alright.” Harris pushed himself to his feet and hugged his wife. “You win.” After putting on his bathrobe and new slippers, he followed his wife’s singing down the stairs to the kitchen. He watched as she flipped pancakes for a moment and then started making coffee. Five minutes later, they were eating.

“I’ve got a few errands to run, Harris, but I’ll be back shortly after one.”

“Alright. I’m going to work on getting our taxes filed after I clean up here. Should be done before you’re back.” He smiled at Linda.

He lifted his mug to take a sip, but the handle slipped in his hands and hot coffee poured into his lap. Even as he leapt out of the chair, part of his brain pulled at him and, instead of a coffee stain on his robe, he was looking at his bedroom.

The shades were drawn and the window was closed. The air smelled faintly of sweat. He looked around his room and tried to see it as he had when he was still asleep. He tried to remember his wife as she had looked that morning, but all he could remember was how her face had looked when she handed him the divorce papers later that day.

Saturday Morning Musing

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I started this year, 2018, by telling myself that I was going to put my writing first. Instead of sacrificing my writing time in favor of my friends, catching up on sleep, playing video games, reading books, or building relationships, I was going to write. Not all day, but for at least two hours a day. That seemed perfectly reasonable, since I was already sort of doing that anyway with my, at the time, two months of daily blog entries. Turns out, it is a lot harder than I expected. Not so much the writing time part, because I can make the time for it, but actually making it my number one priority.

When my roommate went to the hospital, I gave up all of my writing time for that day to visit him. I’ve given up multiple days each week to spend time with my girlfriend. I started playing D&D on Monday nights, which often means I’m too tired to write when I get home at 9:30 or 10. I’ve been going to foam fighting practice almost every week, which definitely leaves me too tired to write when I get back. I am prioritizing people and social interaction over writing rather consistently at this point. I do it without thinking. I have a natural tendency to put other people’s desires, or what I think are their desires, before my own, so it can be a difficult habit to break even on my best days.

I don’t really regret it, though. As much as I’d like to have a bunch of writing done or have rebuilt my buffer so I’m not writing blog posts the evening before they’re supposed to go up, I really don’t think I should have made my decisions differently. I want to prioritize writing above everything else, but the world is full of things that are actually more important than getting a thousand words written, no matter how much I want to have written those words. Honestly, I can’t even really say that I prioritize my writing over other things like resting or playing video games. If I’m too stressed or exhausted, I won’t be able to write well. I can sit down and produce words no matter what, but there comes a point when it is easier to just take a break to rest and try again some other time.

Recently, I haven’t been writing as much as I planned. I intended to write an extra thousand words every day this month, on top of maintaining my blog, but I’ve written exactly zero extra words. I sit down to write and wind up feeling too tired to get anything written but the stuff I absolutely need to. I only ever sit down to write at the end of the day because I’ve been spending my work days prioritizing work (as I should be, since it pays my bills and allows me to participate in society) and then I come home and wind up spending time with my roommates or making dinner. I can’t say these decisions are the wrong ones to make, it’s just that I find myself realizing that there’s not really anything to prioritize writing over.

I only play games and read when I’m stressed to the point of needing relaxation in order to sleep at all. I try to sleep enough every night because sleeping too little leads to depression spikes like last week’s and a haze that coats my mind is thought-slowing cotton. I can’t skimp on meals because the act of preparing and consuming a meal is very relaxing to my. I have been letting a lot of my cleaning go, lately, but that’s reaching the point where not doing it is stressing me out more than I’m benefiting from the extra fifteen to sixty minutes I gain from not tidying up my living space. I definitely can’t work less since I can barely avoid my life as it is. If I worked fewer hours, I probably wouldn’t be able to make ends meet or I’d be so stressed that I wouldn’t be able to do anything but desperately avoid thinking about my finances or panic about my finances.

I honestly don’t have much in my life that isn’t something I need to try to be healthy. I probably don’t need a girlfriend, but I really like having one and she’s an immense positive influence on my average mood throughout the week. I don’t really go on trips, I don’t waste time with things that don’t benefit me, like phone games or Imgur, anymore. I’ve cut out a lot of crap and tried to reinforce my life with things that positively influence me. I read more, now that I’m not browsing Imgur for hours every day and I get more done at work now that I’ve removed most of my handheld distractions.

I really should be seeing an increase in the amount of time I spend writing and the amount of writing I get done. I’m really not sure why I’m not, and I don’t even know where to begin trying to find out…

Setting the Scene

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This scene is not mine.

Don’t ask me whose it is, I just wandered through.
My life is elsewhere, but don’t ask me that either.

If you find it, let me know.
I’ve been looking awhile.

 

My aesthetic is rainy days and dark roads.
Fresh, rain-churned mud and speckles of water on glasses.
Music whose notes and words are engraved on your soul.
The patter of rain on glass; window and windshield.

A heart made of tangled knots and too many nots.
A soul pierced by a spike of its own design.

Weary eyes, tired bones, and joints that predict the weather.
Soft smiles, gentle kindness, and world-weary wisdom.

 

Don’t ask me who I am, there’s no answer to that.
If answers are all you seek, maybe your path lies elsewhere.
                                                   All I have are questions.
                                                   I will share those, if you want.

                         Please don’t go, though.
I don’t know where I’m going but I’d like to not be alone.

 

Maybe, if we stick together you’ll find your answers.
                                                   Me?
I’d like to know when I’ve got enough questions.

Overwatch Strategy: A Primer

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While the individual maps and various play modes make it difficult to have a general discussion about strategy in Overwatch, there is a common element to most of the normal and competitive game types. Throughout the match, each team is going to attempt to kill everyone on the opposite team. While each team has their own objectives (defend this location, conquer that location, guide a payload, stall a payload, hold on to this location for a certain amount of time), the opposing team stands in the way of achieving those objectives. The best way to get your opponents out of your way in this game, at least in the most basic terms, is to kill them or hurt them so much that they run away.

Beyond the basic terms, strategy splits into two useful levels: professional and amateur. If you really want to nitpick, there are a few more, such as “amateurs who imitate the pros,” “people who have no idea what they’re doing,” and “people who get super salty and play like there’s a berserker mode that makes them harder to kill.” I’m going to stick to pro and amateur for now because there really isn’t a lot of actual strategy that goes into playing those three levels.

Amateur strategy is probably the simplest to discuss because it relies on the same basic principles that professional strategy does, but leans on them almost entirely instead of using them as a trunk from which they can then branch out. In an amateur team fight, your tanks are going to be at the front of the line, the DPS will either be with them or trying to out-maneuver your opponents, your supports should be near the tanks to help keep them alive, and your defense characters should be either pushing the enemy tanks around or preventing your tanks from being pushed around. While it is entirely possibly to play out a team fight without much strategy, relying on the skill of the players as they clash in a giant muddle, it will quickly turn into a horrible grind where either everyone dies or one team just gets completely wiped out.

Because of the variety off characters that people use in the amateur scene, there isn’t really a strict guideline of how to play each level. There are particular strategies that work more often than not, but the deciding factor is often the skill of the individual players. As a result, a good strategy for an amateur match tends to be focused around playing to the strengths of your particular character. DPS should focus on their specialized type of damage (ranged accuracy, flanking, or pure numbers). Tanks should focus on taking or preventing damage using shields, picking out solo targets in mid-range, or living for a really long time despite taking tons of damage. Supports should heal, peal enemies off of tanks, and control the area around where their own team is located. Defense characters often wind up playing to the one of the strengths I’ve already listed, since most of their job consists of either teaming up with the tanks or taking down enemy tanks.

If everyone plays to their strengths and works as a team, then there’s no reason they shouldn’t win unless the other team is just better than they are. If they can communicate well, it is possible for them to play into some of the basic strategies successfully. Without the consistent skill of the pro or high-tier scenes, they aren’t as reliable as just playing well. Dive-composition is relatively easy to do, since it is just a very mobile way of playing and consists of playing characters to their strengths. The “standard” composition of two tanks, two DPS, and two healers is hard to go wrong with. The old “triple-tank” composition doesn’t work as well as it used to, but it has its niches. It requires consistent skill and good communication to pull off, though, so it rarely gets used in the amateur scene.

In the professional scene, at least right now, the overwhelming majority of matches use the dive composition with some slight variation in the second DPS and second healer depending on how the team plans to play after the moment of first contact. Usually a DPS and a tank from Team A will dive in, trying to take out the supports of Team B, and the tanks of Team B will fall back to counter the dive. At that point, if the diving components of Team A are still alive, which they usually are, the other DPS, tank, and one of the supports from Team A will start attacking the back of the tanks of Team B. If Team A’s dive works, then at least one of the supports for team B is dead, the tanks of Team B have taken heavy damage, and Team A is an advantageous position for achieving their objective.

There is some variety that happens in matches, given that a daring shift to a different strategy can upset the balance of a match and start the ball rolling for the team that changed things up. Since the level of skill is relatively level, the deciding factor is often what maneuvers each team tries and when they try them. Good timing and shot-calling is often what decides a match. Individual players can still tip the balance, but generally not in as decisive a manner as they can for amateur matches.

All that being said, there is one style of play that can completely shift everything. Though the basic strategy is the same, putting one of the DPS players on the Widowmaker character can shift the entire game. While having a single-shot, high-damage character means a big grind fight can turn against you, being able to quickly take characters from the opposing team out of the battle means that your team can commit more strongly without as much fear of being countered. Taking out an enemy support instantly means your team can focus on the one other support when you dive and quickly wrap up a fight that would have otherwise been drawn out and slow. Taking out their DPS means you have some room to breathe and take a few risks that would otherwise be way too dangerous to consider.

One of the biggest differences between amateur and pro matches is the way partial teams commit to fights. In a pro match, if they have time and are missing a character due to a snipe kill from a Widowmaker or because someone got trapped and killed quickly, they will simply wait until the full team is there before trying again. If a defending team is getting routed, they will often retreat, give the attacking team their objective, and gather to try to take out the attacking team in a quick counter attack. In amateur matches, generally players stick around until they are killed. This can work out, sometimes, because not all players are skilled enough to quickly kill their opponents in an uneven team fight, but it generally does not because the skill disparity required for this to work out is very high.

Pro players are much more cautious. They tend to back out more readily, take fewer unnecessary risks, and wait for their team before acting unless they’re specifically playing a character who is supposed to act alone. In amateur play, you often see tanks trying to go it alone when they very much should not be. A tank without any DPS or support will die super quickly unless they somehow manage to catch the entire enemy team unaware. Which can, of course, happen. Amateur matches are super inconsistent and anything cam happen in them. A lot of players, myself included, take stupid risks because we know that no one will expect it and the surprise itself is something that can be exploited. One of my best plays as a tank was when I snuck around the side, flanked the enemy team with a charging attack, and got the entire team focused on killing me (which they did), so the rest of my team could close the gap and murder them. I got one kill to make sure it was an even fight and my team would up winning because they knew what I was doing and I managed to shake up the enemy team. I wouldn’t recommend trying it yourself because it was more luck than good shot-calling that made it work out.

One of the most exciting parts of playing and watching Overwatch is that changing the composition of your team and using the element of surprise can tip a match decidedly in your favor. While there is a basic strategy used in almost all competitive matches, one change to the balance of a key hero or the introduction of a new hero can cause the old strategy to no longer work. I am excited to see how professional play evolves once they start incorporating the newest hero, a support character whose skills seem designed to counter the standard dive composition that all professional teams use.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Hilarity

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Over the weekend, I went to see Jumanji at the cheap seats theater with my girlfriend. Despite the fact that the movie was out, I managed to avoid spoilers or any of the hype so my only real expectation going into the movie was that I was probably going to enjoy seeing Jack Black do the most realistic impression of a teenage Instagram-addicted girl any older man has ever done.

I want to officially go on record as saying this is not only true, it was so entirely believable that I forgot that he wasn’t actually a vain teenaged girl whose only pursuit in life up to that point had been more Instagram followers and how to take the perfect selfie. It was uncanny, amazing, and I recommend checking the movie out for this alone. You will not regret it unless you are some kind of awful person who dislikes laughter, hilarity, and anything fun. I think you will like it so much that if you watch it and dislike it (and prove you are not an awful, fun-hating, potentially-a-robot-who-wasn’t-programmed-to-understand-humor person) then I will send you my address so we can duel with sabers at sunset.

There are a lot of other really enjoyable aspects of the movie as well. The update to “modern” times was a lot of fun. Instead of being a board game, the nightmarish magic of Jumanji transforms itself into a video game for some obscure console none of the actually modern protagonists can identify. All of the new players get sucked into the video game and have to beat it in order to escape. The game world is filled with a bunch of wonderful nods to the way video games work, including NPCs with limited dialogue options, weird bits of food that are only ever called “rations,” and a really clever way to show the players how many lives they have left.

Each off the four protagonists falls into the four main high school kid stereotypes off “vapid popular girl,” “popular jock guy,” “Smart unpopular girl,” and “nerdy awkward boy.” Eventually, you learn enough about the characters to realize that they’re not just their stereotypes. The jock isn’t dumb, he just needed help with one of his homework assignments. The nerd isn’t just awkward and scared of everything, he acts confident in the things he does to cover up his insecurities. The popular girl isn’t just vain, she actually puts a lot of work into living the life she wants and has some startling insights into how people think and behave. The unpopular girl isn’t just smart, she is so worried about people not liking her that she pushes them away before they get a chance to make up their own mind. The entire movie is filled with these little moments where the characters break their molds. (Spoilers, sorta) The popular girl gives up one of her lives to save an ally without a moment’s hesitation or consideration. The jock winds up talking the nerd through his confidence issues and shows his wisdom. The nerd faces his general fear off the world and protects the rest of the group. (Spoilers, definitely, though not in the way this sentence makes it seem) The smart girl sacrifices herself to help the group win the game.

The world of the game is fun, the villain is super creepy, and the missing child is so mid-90s it almost hurts. The character stereotypes (the video game characters that the protagonists become) are hilarious. The rock acts like a small frightened boy and the only reason he doesn’t steal the show is because it has been hidden in Jack Black’s back pocket from the instant he opened his mouth to talk like a vapid teenage girl. The NPCs are hilariously only concerned with their little programs, which means that a character can explode five feet from them and they will continue to, once the dust has started to settle, hawk their “rations.”

Every character gets a moment to shine and there’s never a slow moment. Everything is incredibly well-paced and the only time I was pulled out of the story enough to anticipate what would happen next was when they had beaten the game and were going through the end of the game. Though it is a fairly simple movie that is exactly what it seems like it would be, I can’t recommend it enough. It is definitely worth two hours of your time, plus the drive to wherever its showing. Or at least a digital rental once it has been released.

 

Coldheart and Iron: Part 13

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READ FROM THE BEGINNING

I spent most of the first full day of the blizzard napping after one last shift making my signature fruit-and-secret-sugar oatmeal. I had originally planned to sit with a group of the newer Wayfinders and trainees, but I fell asleep as they were telling stories. I woke up in time for lunch and managed to stay awake for another hour but, just like my father would do at every family party we’d ever attended, I fell asleep shortly after sitting down.

Camille woke me in time to help prepare dinner and we had another excellent meal, filled with laughter, good food, and warmth as we all sat in a large circle. After dinner and clean up, Natalie and I managed to find the time to perform a quick review of the storerooms, to double-check that all of our lists were accurate. It wound up taking a little longer than planned, but we wanted to be thorough. Once we’d wrapped up and Natalie had gone away to file the stock reports, I checked on the Laborers and Nomads. They seemed to be getting along well and were hunkered down for the night by the time I walked by.

The second day was a little more quiet and somber. The wind had picked up overnight, which meant the worse of the storm was approaching. There were no restrictions on noise, thankfully, but it was hard to be anything other than quiet. Knowing that the only thing keeping you alive was preparations you had finished a few days ago was frustrating because there was nothing you could do today to fix or improve things. I tried to keep spirits up, but only the Laborers seemed unaffected by the general mood, though I quickly figured it out that their cheer was because they had finished off the last of their smuggled alcohol when the tension started getting to them. Thankfully, no one got too belligerent.

Day three was almost silent as the screaming winds and the occasional thump of debris bouncing off the building cut through any attempts at conversation. Most of the Wayfinders tried to sleep through the day. The others played cards, cleaned their gear, or talked in groups of two or three. The nomads stayed in their rooms and the laborers stayed huddled on their cookfire for the entire day, slowly eating all of the extra food they had saved up from the rations we doled out every day. I got a couple naps in, but mostly I played solitaire while Camille, Natalie, and Lucas played poker for guard shifts.

By the end of the fourth day, restlessness had started to settle in, pushing some of the fear and silence out. People moved around more. Most of the Wayfinders were doing various workout routines to burn some energy and stay in shape while one of the more knowledgeable martial artists gave lessons to anyone who wanted to learn. A surprising number of Laborers showed up, as did all of the Nomads. I watched as the two groups mixed with the Wayfinders in the large, empty storage room Terry had set up as her classroom and was relieved to see that the Laborers practiced with everyone, not just each other. The Nomads stayed a little more insular, but a few of them had started to pick different partners by dinner time.

On the fifth day, the wind and noise started to die down. Everyone’s mood picked up, thought they still spent the day exercising or learning martial arts. A few people, the less athletically inclined, spent a lot of time between their practice sessions complaining about how sore they were, but they refused every offer to sit by the sidelines and play cards. A few of the older Wayfinders, including Natalie and myself, weren’t as stir-crazy, so we spent our day taking care of guard shifts and playing card games while watching the Laborers and Nomads knock each other on their asses. It was a good way to spend the day and, since we were crowded in a corner, it made sense for Natalie and I to sit close to each other.

The sixth day was punctuated by gusts of wind that carried a bit of debris around, slapping it into the building with a surprisingly loud noise. The tension was back, and most people stayed quiet in their own spaces. A few of the nomads and most of the Laborers were sore from the past two days of rigorous exercise, but it was mostly anxiety that kept the Wayfinders quiet. It is one thing to ignore constant wind and the almost ceaseless sound of bits of whatever peppering the sides of the building we were in, but the random gusts lulled people into a false sense of peace unless they kept their guard up the entire time. By the time we were going to bed, though, the wind had stopped and silenced reigned around us.

Day seven started out quietly, carrying over yesterday’s tension, amplified by everyone straining their ears for any sound that didn’t belong to the people around them. It was quiet enough for me to hear the creak of my joints as I went through my daily tasks. By dinner, everyone had started to relax again. The worst of the blizzard should have been over that morning and the lack of any major disturbance meant that the blizzard would end on schedule, in just three more days. All we had to do at this point was wait out the last of the snowfall and wind, and we would finally be able to start digging ourselves out.

The eighth day slowly, people now bored out of their minds and left feeling out of sorts as the tension they’d been holding onto for a week started to drain away. Camille and I broke into some of the stores that Natalie had set aside for turning this place into a base, expanding our meal supplies so we had enough to make dinner for the Laborers and Nomads as well. We had to recruit a few extra hands, the old Nomad woman, Mary, who turned out to be their matriarch and Trevor, to be able to make such a large meal, but bringing everyone together to celebrate making it through the worst of the blizzard did an excellent job of raising spirits.

The ninth day passed in a blur of activity as we started getting everyone ready to start the process of digging through the inevitable snow drifts piled against our door. Natalie handed out a few copies of her supply map that she had produced between cards and exercise routines and I walked Trevor and Mary through Natalie’s plans for gathering supplies and clearing a way out of town. We all went to bed early, everyone worn out from the busy day and the excitement they’d been feeling at the prospect of getting out into the fresh air again. It had gotten rather stuffy and a little smelly over the past couple days, and even cold, snow-filled air would be preferable to the scent of people who’d been working out.

The tenth day began quickly. Everyone was awake and ready to go by six, so we began the process of unblocking the front door, carefully peeling away the sealant so we could get a peek outside without letting out too much heat. When we finally glimpsed the outside world again, we were met with the usual light-grey cloud cover and gently falling snow that was adding to at least two feet of snow. The drifts we could see towered above us. Thankfully, the one near the door was off to the side, so we’d be able to dig our way out without needing to go through the deepest part of a drift.

I gave the order to finish unblocking the door and found Trevor and Mary watching nearby. I waved them over and took a few steps away from the door. “We’re going to focus on digging today. Supply gathering will start tomorrow, but I’d like to get paths dug before we get any sun that could turn the top layer of the snow to ice.”

“Could we really get sunlight that soon?” Trevor looked out at the grey sky doubtfully. “We just had a blizzard and you said it’s going to keep snowing for a few more days.”

“Yes, but there’s still a chance we’ll see a few breaks in the clouds.” I gestured toward the giant piles of snow. “Most of the moisture making the clouds is down here now and it will be a while before enough new moisture is gathered to return the clouds to their usual iron-grey color. We’ll get more sun in the next few days than we will in the three months between the return of the clouds and the start of the next blizzard.”

Mary nodded, her face grim. “We always like to do as many outside chores as we can during these days. The sunlight feels good after being trapped inside for over a week.”

Trevor shrugged. “Alright. I trust you. Paths it is. I’ll get my people ready.”

“Thanks.” I smiled and gestured to the map sticking out of Trevor’s breast pocket. “There’s a path going south toward a supply cache, an old Menards, and I’d like for your group to focus on that.”

“South?” Mary pulled out her own map. “Isn’t that going to take them toward the group of people you told us to avoid?”

“Yes, but they’ll be fine. The store is only a mile away and my scouts found no traces of any of them coming that far north.” I pointed at a point three miles further south, past the store. “This is as far north as we’ve found tracks of signs of their passage.” I looked up at Trevor. “As long as you guys stay fairly quietly, the snow will muffle you enough that your group can just shovel right up to the doors and walk away.”

“Excellent.” Trevor smiled and pulled out his map. “I’ll get us ready to go within the hour.”

“Just go straight south. This is the longest path we’ll be digging, so try to go as straight as you can. If you can go around a big drift, do it, but only if it doesn’t take you off the marked streets.”

Trevor bobbed his head in acknowledgment and turned away. He paused and turned back. “How big should the path be?”

I held my arms out to the sides, as far as I could. “About two and a half times the size of the widest person in your group. We want people to be able to pass each other without bumping into each other so we can quickly move supplies.” Trevor gave me a thumbs-up and turned away again.

As Trevor walked away, I gestured toward Mary’s map. “I’d like to get all of your people working on some of the local paths. Feel free to deviate as much as you need to, to get around the big drifts.”

Mary started tracing a few lines on her map with a finger. “Sounds good. I’ll make sure my people know what to do. We used to do similar things around our home, that I will say we relied more on snowshoes than completely clearing a path.” She folded up her map and looked over at me. “We’ll get it done.”

“As soon as the Wayfinders have dug our way out of town, we’ll swing back to help your people finish the local paths.”

Mary pursed her lips. “You think you’re going to be able to make it the mile and a half out of town and then back again before I’m finished?”

I gave Mary a giant grin, imitating Lucas’ signature smile. “Well, we’ve had a lot of practice.”

Mary chuckled and walked away. “Fair enough.”

I watched the Wayfinders finish their job of clearing the door and then, once it was finished, went back into our area to put on my insulated gear. One day of digging, four days of gathering supplies, one day of sorting, and then we’d finally be on our way again. As much as I enjoyed the security and warmth of our shelter, my feet had started to itch as soon as we started opening the door. Safety is always nice, of course, but I was ready to be moving again.