“I was here alone and Evan wasn’t going to protect me. He never had. He wanted things from me, like everyone else. But those things were never just what people said with words. Everything about it, instead, was meant to manipulate you to feel something you wouldn’t otherwise feel, and screw up your steady, rational thoughts.”
– Karin Lowachee: Warchild
Protagonist Jos struggles with the pervasiveness of childhood traumas years after the events.
Lowachee, Karin. Warchild. New York, NY: Warner Books, 2002, p. 329.
This wall ad by the Finnish game house Remedy deserves wider circulation:
“Mom always said that playing games won’t get you a job. From Espoo with love since 1995. Thank you Remedy crew, friends, families, Finnish dev community, fans and gamers around the world. This one is for you.”
Remedy (of the Max Payne and Alan Wake fame) designed this ad to celebrate their April 05, 2016, launch of a new game, Quantum Break, reportedly the most expensive entertainment production ever made in Finland.
The ad’s irony at one’s own expense sounds very Finnish to me. In Finland, it’s a little embarrassing to be successful or rich, and Finns don’t tend to draw attention to their achievements. At the same time, as a Finn, it’s very satisfying to see Finnish game companies grow up into mature businesses with large, world-wide audiences.
It’s also high time for people to recognize that storytelling is an integral part of human nature and that games are just as viable a medium for telling stories as are myths, songs, novels, image-based art, and the like.
“‘There is food in the wild,’ said Strider; ‘berry, root, and herb; and I have some skill as a hunter at need.’”
For this month’s dinner, we take up Strider on his offer and imagine what sort of a meal a ranger could have created in the wild at the best of times. This is what Strider might have cooked up for a party of hungry Hobbits if they hadn’t been running for their lives from ringwraiths: pan-braised game hens with root vegetables on a bed of green leaf and herb salad with fresh blackberries for dessert.
Cooking would’ve been done with a cast iron spider, and light-weight wooden plates and small utensils wouldn’t add too much to the burden. Small pieces of fabric and sacks provide storage, and a rough piece of firewood functions as a makeshift stool or table. Everything is laid on rich, deep blue wool blend that nods towards Aragorn’s high status as the heir of Elendil.
“On the verge of débuting his late, lamented sci-fi series ‘Firefly,’ which was cancelled after less than one season of Fox mismanagement, Joss Whedon remarked that his goal was not to create ‘grownup’ TV but to ‘invade people’s dreams’ – to create mythologies, which last so much longer than the mortal form of a TV series. Cult shows, such as ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Community,’ often have this quality: they shrug off the condescension that people have toward their ‘lower’ genres, using their constraints to find a greater freedom. When you look at a show like that from a distance, it might seem too narrow to contain much of interest. But it’s so much larger when you’re on the inside.”
– Emily Nussbaum
Two thoughts. One: Ha, Joss Whedon wants to do a George Lucas. Two: Just like, say, fly fishing might look narrow on the outside, there are hidden depths and intricacies in just about any hobby or interest. Not sure why it’s still such a surprise to those condescending types.
Nussbaum, Emily. “Fantastic voyage: ‘Doctor Who,’ ‘Community,’ and the passionate fan,” The New Yorker (June 4 & 11, 2012) 127.
Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.
The first trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is out!
ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY Official Teaser Trailer by Star Wars
I’m delighted to see Felicity Jones cast as a protagonist. I enjoyed her performances as The Unicorn in Doctor Who (season 4, episode 7, “The Unicorn and the Wasp”) and as Catherine Morland in the 2007 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. According to IMDB, also Alan Tudyk, Forest Whitaker, and Mads Mikkelsen are among the cast. Mikkelsen seems to have been busy with genre roles lately – first Doctor Strange and now Rogue One.
Rogue One is the first in a series of spinoffs outside the episodic Star Wars core collectively known as the Star Wars Anthology Series. If this trailer is anything to go by, the series should be a lot of fun.
At this writing, the release date is set to December 16, 2016. Can’t wait!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
A team of archaeologists has unearthed a potential new Viking site in Newfoundland, Canada with the help of satellites. Dr. Sarah H. Parcak, an archaeologist, space archaeologist, and Egyptologist, lead the effort to take infrared images from space to find new archaeological sites.
According to The New York Times, while searching the coastlines from Baffin Island (in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, west of Greenland) to Massachusetts, she found
“hundreds of potential ‘hot spots’ that high-resolution aerial photography narrowed to a handful and then one particularly promising candidate — ‘a dark stain’ with buried rectilinear features.
“Magnetometer readings later taken at the remote site […] showed elevated iron readings. And trenches that were then dug exposed Viking-style turf walls along with ash residue, roasted ore called bog iron and a fire-cracked boulder — signs of metallurgy not associated with native people of the region.
“In addition, radiocarbon tests dating the materials to the Norse era, and the absence of historical objects pointing to any other cultures, helped persuade scientists involved in the project and outside experts of the site’s promise.”
Point Rosee is approximately 700 km (approximately 400 miles) away from L’Anse aux Meadows, the only currently confirmed Viking site in North America. The Norsemen staying at L’Anse must have traveled further south, though, because butternuts and worked pieces of butternut wood – which are not native to Newfoundland – were found among the Norse objects at the settlement.
CBC News reports that evidence of a Norse-like hearth and 8 kilograms (approx. 16 pounds) of bog iron was found at Point Rosee during a dig in 2015. It isn’t yet known for sure whether the site was a temporary base camp or a settlement, or whether it even was associated with Vikings. If confirmed, Point Rosee would be the second known Viking site in North America.
The evidence is still clearly on the scant side. Digging at Point Rosee is to resume this summer, so maybe they’ll find more.
As a sidenote, isn’t it so cool that we now have space archaeologists?!
“Shooting people was such a stupid activity, why should everybody–anybody!–be so impressed? Silver wondered irritably. You would think she had done something truly great, like discover a new treatment for black-stem rot.”
– Lois McMaster Bujold: Falling Free
Silver, one of the genetically engineered, learning-oriented people known as quaddies, expresses her deep dislike of violence.
Beer brewers Night Shift Brewing in Massachusetts made a Baltic porter aged in apple brandy barrels. They call it Elevensies, and describe it as dark and of high gravity.
Elevensies beer by Night Shift BrewingElevensies beer. Screenshot from Night Shift Brewing
Sounds like it would’ve made a perfect partner for our Prancing Pony dinner. Maybe we can still find some…!
A movie version of Jane Austen’s never-before-adapted epistolary novel Lady Susan is coming out in a few weeks (released on May 13), and the trailer is finally here.
I’ve been waiting for it for a long time without any real idea of what it’ll be like, as I’ve never even heard of the writer / director Whit Stillman before. It looks absolutely hilarious! Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan seems perfect in every way; I’m also looking forward to seeing more of Jemma Redgrave, James Fleet, and Stephen Fry. Can’t wait! Fansquee!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Co-Geeking 
