Garrisons: Solving the Wrong Problem

Erik

Sometimes you put a lot of time and effort into solving a problem, only to realize that you were coming at the problem from the wrong angle and your solution doesn’t actually fix anything, or even just makes things worse. (Or at least I do. I do this all the time.) It’s what I think of as “solving the wrong problem.” Blizzard Entertainment, creators of World of Warcraft, has been solving the wrong problem in the latest expansion, and garrisons are the manifestation of that mistake.

151105agarrison
The Aliance garrison, where I’ve spent entirely too much of my gaming time.

It’s not that there aren’t problems to be solved. WoW‘s player base is getting older and a lot of us have less time to play, can’t sit down and play in long sessions like we used to, and aren’t as interested in investing lots of time and effort into chasing big goals, but we still want to play and enjoy the game. Garrisons were, in my opinion, a good-faith effort at solving this problem, but they came at it from the wrong direction.

This weekend is Blizzcon, Blizzard’s big event when they talk about what’s coming for their games and we’re going to hear all about the next expansion for WoW. I hope we hear something that addresses what garrisons got wrong.

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Pride & Prejudice & Zombies Trailer

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The first Pride & Prejudice & Zombies trailer has been out for a while, and it’s kicking butt bonnet!

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES – Official UK Trailer #1

The movie will be released on February 05, 2016. I’m generally turned off by zombies, but even still, I’ll certainly go see this one. And I’m looking forward to seeing Lily James (whom I know from Downton Abbey) and Lena Heady (Cersei in Game of Thrones) in action. Matt Smith’s Mr. Collins should also be something to see! 🙂

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Art for Early Editions of Dune

Eppu

Have you read Dune? If so, you might enjoy this early art by John Schoenherr:

Schoenherr Dune Dawn at the Palace of Arrakeen
John Schoenherr: Dawn at the Palace of Arrakeen.
Schoenherr Dune Stilgar and His Men
John Schoenherr: Stilgar and His Men.

 

Schoenherr Dune Defeating the Sardaukar
John Schoenherr: Defeating the Sardaukar.

Apparently, Frank Herbert said Schoenherr (1935-2010) was “the only man who has ever visited Dune.” Schoenherr’s paintings of Herbert’s Dune were published first in the Analog magazine and later in a fully illustrated version.

For me, along with John Christopher’s The Tripods, Dune is one of the SFF books I read in my (much) younger days and have kept re-reading over the years. Seeing this early art was certainly a treat!

Found via Dangerous Minds – go visit for more info & pics.

Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Happy Halloween!

Eppu

What’s a party without munchies? Make some mini monster eyeball treats for yours from donuts and candy with this how-to by Ashley Rose at Sugar & Cloth; photo by Jared Smith.

Sugar and Cloth DIY Mini-Monster-Eyeball-Donuts
Ashley Rose at Sugar & Cloth; photo by Jared Smith.

Happy Halloween!

Image by Jared Smith via Sugar and Cloth

This post has been edited.

Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!

November 2015: Nordic Book Club in NYC Reads Jääskeläinen

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Scandinavia House in New York City runs a new Nordic book club, and this November’s book is The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Finnish author Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen.

Jaaskelainen Rabbit Back Lit Soc

Novelist and short-story writer Jääskeläinen writes realistic fantasy (to translate his term reaalifantasia). The Rabbit Back Literature Society, published in 2014 in UK and 2015 in US, is Jääskeläinen’s first novel and the first of his works to be translated into English (from the original Lumikko ja yhdeksän muuta, 2006).

Here’s the publisher’s description:

“Only very special people are chosen by children’s author Laura White to join ‘The Society’, an elite group of writers in the small town of Rabbit Back.

“Now a tenth member has been selected: Ella, literature teacher and possessor of beautifully curving lips.

“But soon Ella discovers that the Society is not what it seems. What is its mysterious ritual, ‘The Game’? What explains the strange disappearance that occurs at Laura’s winter party, in a whirlwind of snow? Why are the words inside books starting to rearrange themselves? Was there once another tenth member, before her?

“Slowly, disturbing secrets that had been buried come to light…

“In this chilling, darkly funny novel, the uncanny brushes up against the everyday in the most beguiling and unexpected of ways.”

The only other piece of Jääskeläinen in English at this writing is Where the Trains Turn (orig. Missä junat kääntyvät, 2000), published in November 2014 by Tor.com.

Apart from Finnish SFF, the book club program for this fall contains Danish contemporary fiction and two Swedish crime thrillers. From scandinaviahouse.org:

“Read and discuss Scandinavian literature in translation as part of Nordic Book Club – ASF’s newest literary series. This season’s selections include Swedish crime thrillers, Danish contemporary fiction, and Finnish fantasy. Discussions typically take place the last Tuesday of the month in the Halldór Laxness Library at Scandinavia House and online at scandinaviahouse.org.”

Jääskeläinen’s book will be discussed on November 24, 2015, at 6 pm at Scandinavia House, 58 Park Ave (Manhattan). The entry is free.

Image: Pushkin Press.

Post edited for style.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Superfluous Ghosts

Erik

It is odd to find oneself arguing that a ghost story would be better without the ghosts, but that’s how I felt coming away from Crimson Peak.

Crimson Peak, as others have noted, is a Gothic romance. Ghosts are de rigeur for the genre. They give form to emotional traumas and compel the hero or heroine to uncover the horrible secrets behind them. The ghosts of Crimson Peak fulfill this role and prod the film’s heroine to expose the dark past in the house. Eventually. She takes an awful lot of prodding. In the meantime, the ghosts just take up screen time being ghostly and doing ghost stuff, none of it terribly interesting.

151029Crimson

“The ghosts are a metaphor,” we are told early in the film, except they aren’t. A metaphor is when one thing stands for or represents another, but there is nothing metaphorical about the ghosts of Crimson Peak. The ghost of the old woman in the bathtub with a meat cleaver in her head does not represent the lingering traumas of the past or the madness of the characters. It represents the fact that an old woman was killed in that bathtub with a meat cleaver to the head. The crumbling, bleeding house is a metaphor for the unraveling of the family that dwells there, but the ghosts are the most literal ghosts you have ever met.

The only purpose the ghosts serve in the narrative is to nudge our heroine Edith into uncovering the truth. They might as well just be standing in the hallway holding signs that say “PLOT-RELEVANT INFORMATION IN THIS CLOSET” or “ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS BATHROOM.” They are narrative shortcuts that save the heroine the bother of actually having to do much thinking. The most interesting part of the story is when Edith finally does a little investigating, but the ghosts do most of the uncovering for her and rob the story of complexity. I would rather have watched Edith do the work of piecing together what was going on at Allerdale Hall without the ghosts standing around holding their “THIS WAY TO THE PLOT” signs.

“It’s not a ghost story,” we are also told early in the film. “It’s a story with ghosts.” I give the movie enormous credit for its gorgeous visual design and for showing how well a period piece can incorporate active and effective female characters. But maybe it should have been a story without ghosts.

Image: Crimson Peak, (c) Universal Pictures 2015 via imdb

In the Seen on Screen occasional feature, we discuss movies and television shows of interest.

A Lock of Hair Swept off to the Heavens… on an Ostrich?

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Or: Some History behind Ostrich Riding, Part 5 of 7

Background: I ran into two historical images from California with ostriches used as transportation. That got me wondering about the history of ostrich riding. And that lead me down quite a rabbit hole.

I’ve divided my findings into separate posts (find them with the ostrich riding tag). Warning: serious early history and language nerdery ahead in Serious Academic Voice.

TL;DR – Tracing ostrich riding to a 3rd century BCE tomb find (a statue of Arsinoe II) from Egypt doesn’t hold up. The use of various ostrich products in human material culture dates back thousands of years. A few ancient depictions involve humans handling ostriches; however, extant sources don’t tell us whether ostriches were merely hunted or whether they were also tamed in the ancient world. The most promising source seems to be a description of a magnificent parade put together by Arsinoe II’s husband-brother Ptolemy II. This Grand Procession included eight chariots drawn by pairs of ostriches, and the ostriches may have been ridden by boys in costumes.

I had hoped to find a nice, neat selection of ancient texts putting the Greek word for ‘ostrich’ in context, but even a cursory look reveals that the history of the word strouthos is complex. At best, we can say that there are no immediate red flags either in the original Greek or modern English translations for Arsinoe II’s statue or Ptolemy II’s Grand Procession. The poem Berenice’s Lock was said to contain further evidence of ostriches as mounts in Ptolemaic Egypt after Arsinoe II’s death. Instead, what we seem to have is a case of poetic ambiguity translated with poetic license and taken uncritically as evidence.

Below is the long story.

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Take the Mirror Empire Quiz

Eppu

To mentally prepare myself for reading Empire Ascendant by Kameron Hurley, the middle book in the Worldbreaker saga, I took a quiz to find out which character from The Mirror Empire I might be.

Hurley Mirror Empire Cover

I am… Ghrasia Madah:

“You’re a pragmatic defender, with a dim view of stories and mythology, because you’ve been mythologized yourself, and didn’t much like the taste of the world afterward. A hero, a legend, most days you just try to stand very tall so that people don’t notice you aren’t exactly a physical match for the woman they read about in storybooks.

“You fall a bit too hard for young, whip-smart men with mother issues, but after twenty years married to two of the ‘right’ sorts of men, maybe this is nice change.”

I’ll take pragmatic, but otherwise it’s not very accurate. Ghrasia is a tough, no-nonsense, unpretentious, and persistent lady, though, which I appreciate.

Which Mirror Empire character are you?

Q&A is an occasional feature in which we share our responses to quizzes, questions, and quirky ideas for your entertainment.

Statue of Lenin Turned to the Dark Side

Eppu

In Odessa, Ukraine, a statue of Lenin fated for demolition instead got a new life – as Darth Vader.

Dumskaya Lenin Vader
Images: Dumskaya.net via Meduza.

The destruction of the statue was called for by a new law that requires the elimination of all landmarks and geographic names dedicated to communist figures. Artist Alexander Milov repurposed the statue and turned Lenin into the dark side. There’s more under Vader’s cloak than a covered-up Lenin’s coat, though: the statue’s head conceals a router delivering Wi-Fi to the immediate area.

Who woulda thunk that Lenin’s pose would be spot on for Vader!

Found via Meduza.

Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Feasts and Fools

Erik1 Comment

151026jackHalloween will soon be upon us. The origins of this holiday are obscure. It is often connected with the Gaelic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter, but Halloween, at least as popularly celebrated today in the US and some other countries, has wider connections. It is an example of a type of holiday found in many cultures: the “feast of fools.”

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