GameNerd: Super Hero Eras

Wonder Woman’s surprisingly enjoyable movie has me thinking about an RPG for supers that spans blocks of time.

Each PC has a character for each era, and for extra fun, you could rotate GM by era. You could possibly use something like the shifting stations in Night Witches to handle era shifts.

Everyone should agree on something like 3-5 eras. The simplest way to do it would be to start in the past and roll forward to the present, but I think there would be more fun in moving back and forth, so you can have a relationship established in the present, then go back to the 80s to work out *why* those two characters hate each other.

You could do the same character for each era, if your hero is long-lived/immortal, and show how the passage of time changes them. Or the mortal who ages out of the hero game and is eventually replaced by her sidekick. Or a chosen bearer of a power amulet in each era.

You could have stuff like:

WWI: Naive Wonder Woman leaves Themiscyra to come to Man’s World and experiences culture shock. A young Jenny Sparks/Spirit of the Century type runs away from school. An aged Sherlock Holmes leaves London after faking his death again. Perhaps a flying ace with a suped up plane.

WWII: Wonder Woman decides to stay out of WWII. Why? Is she horrified by what she saw in WWI? Or did she have a deep, meaningful relationship with a Weimar era lesbian that was destroyed by the Nazi rise to power, and she is either too heart-broken or consumed with more specific revenge. Also, her player is GMing this era. Captain America and Peggy Carter could show up here, too, along with the Howling Commandos, the Invaders (especially Namor – Imperius Rex!). You could drop in Magneto. This might be the first appearance of someone wearing the mantle of Dr. Fate or Green Lantern.

Swinging 60s: A de-powered Wonder Woman works for SHIELD as Agent Diana Prince, working for a middle-aged Peggy Carter with a young Nick Fury. Captain America is on ice while his player GMs. This might be a good time to pull in Howard Stark, Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, plus folks like John Steed, Emma Peel, James Bond and the man from UNCLE. Spies in a world of low-key superheroes.

Radical 80s: Wonder Woman has her powers back. Batman shows up on the streets of Gotham. Nick Fury is running SHIELD as Peggy retires. Superboy flies over Metropolis is a 3/4 sleeve leather jacket and big sunglasses. Natasha Romanov leaves the USSR for SHIELD. Vietnam vet Frank Castle’s family are murdered by the mob. Janet Van Dyne has a crisis of conscience in the face of MAD and takes her scientific knowledge away from defense contracts and directs it to building a super gynoid called the Vision to fight crime.

The Present: Cap’s off-ice. Wonder Woman is a political figure, on the outs with the US government. Bruce Wayne has retired and mentors Dick Grayson in the cape and cowl. Tony Stark finds his old Dad’s secret files. Up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…

I’d want to run this in something relatively rules-light like an Apocalypse World variant or something FATE-like. That way you don’t have to address power-creep or worry about balancing Peggy Carter with Captain Marvel (any of them). The aspects of the characters shift through the eras (look at the different versions of Atomic Robo in his FATE-based RPG) and you put a strong emphasis on relationships.

You’d need a set of unresolved time cards or something similar for questions raised – stuff like “Why does Diana hate Bruce in 1985?” so you can grab that back in 1963 and provide an answer. Some way to track the events implied by one timeline so you remember to follow up on them in another.

Appropriation, symbolism and magic. 

I have a symbolism problem. The problem is, essentially, that the symbols that have a strong resonance for me have meaning derived from a toxic culture. The meanings they have for me that seem so deep and magic(k)al are inextricably linked to cultural appropriation, sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia and all the other memetic toxins of modern WEIRD culture. 

It’s a problem because even if I could come up with a new symbol that is utterly without historical contextual problems, it would lack two things; first, the communication of an idea, and second, the conceptual relevance for me internally. The reason I want symbols is the conceptual weight and shared information tied up in the symbol. 

I first ran into problems with this when I started working out what I wanted from my own Pagan practice. I know I’m not going to recreate a historical Pagan religious practice that will satisfy my inner pedant for accuracy, and I dislike the idea of grabbing a god and redefining it for my own use. So, I tried meditation and divination as a way to grab stuff out of my own subconscious for use. I got a bunch of god-symbol-things to work with that felt really representative of parts of myself to work with.

They’re also a bunch of problematic ideas. It turns out that my unconscious mind has a lot of toxic masculinity, racism, etc. seething just below the surface, and tapping in pulled that out, too. For my own use, I’ve come to terms with that – as long as I acknowledge the problematic aspects and don’t start assigning cosmic significance to the kyriarchical shit the inside of my skull has accumulated by growing up in this world. 

It gets harder, though, when that starts being something I want to communicate with. I don’t have to tell anyone what the god-thing that represents love and dancing and joy looked like when it showed up the first couple times. But if I want to use that concept as something I put out in the world, I need a way to represent the underlying ideas without the problematic imagery my subconscious put on it. 

My current problem is around a symbol for something else. I’m an old post-goth, and as such, ancient Egyptian symbolism is something I have history with. Eye of Horus eyeliner and an ankh necklace used to be a visible flag for “people like me”. A tribal signifier for a subculture of spooky kids. I’ve been wearing ankhs on and off since somewhere around the end of high school, so let’s say at least 20 years, which is a lot of time on the scale of a person. I’m wearing one now, for that matter.

Beyond the “warning: this person probably likes the Sisters of Mercy” aspect, the ankh has further personal meaning. It’s a symbol for the concept of “mystery”, for “magic” and “wisdom”. Which is a pretty idiosyncratic meaning for an ancient Egyptian symbol representing eternal life. 

I can pick apart where it comes from, and how the ankh became both personally significant and where the meaning I have stuck on it accumulated. I like ankhs because they used to be what goths wore, and as a weird kid without a place to belong, that became my way of trying to connect to people I thought of as “like me”. 

Where did the goths get it? From a general association of Egyptian symbolism with death and the occult that goes back to… The fucking Victorians. Who spent a lot of time and energy ripping up everything old that wasn’t nailed down from, among other places, Egypt, and carting it back home. The popularity of mummies, hieroglyphs and the book of the dead all go back to the Victorian cultural imperialism and appropriation. This especially comes into play for the goths with Aliester Crowley, who was a) big on swiping Egyptian symbolism, b) big on talking about stuff from his supposedly secret occult societies and c) liked to talk about how Dark and Wicked he was. Early goth subculture liked referencing Crowley a fair bit, and I’m comfortable pointing some blame at him. 

So, I have this idea of what an ankh means for me that is rooted in a cultural context of a wealthy European country looting artifacts and ideas from “the Orient” and repurposing them for its own use. Redefining and claiming ownership of a culture for its exotic appeal. So, exactly the kind of thing that we talk about when we talk about why cultural appropriation is bad. 

There is an argument that there’s a loophole for ancient Egypt (along with the old gods of Greece and Rome), that it’s the artifacts of a dead culture and a vanished religion. The people of Egypt, after all, are primarily either Coptic Christians or Muslims. The ankh isn’t a symbol of thier faith. My unease remains, though, because the whole *reason* it has meaning for me is that my culture, a few hundred years ago, looted theirs. Egypt still wants the stuff in the British Museum back. 

Is there an expiration date on symbols? Can one claim that the two century pedigree of symbolism that gave me my gothic ankh of teen angst and spooky mystery is “enough” history on its own, or that Egyptian ownership of its history doesn’t come into play? It feels dodgy. 

However, I can’t throw off the weight of meaning of half my life. My subconscious keeps pulling out ankhs. My graphic design skills aren’t really up to coming up with something unique but still that simple to try to attach meaning to. Basically, if I don’t use an ankh, what can I use? I also use a raven/crow for similar meanings, but a) not as visually simple, and b) there are similar problems with appropriation with Canada’s First Nations. 
Maybe loot the symbols of my own culture? The ones we didn’t swipe from someone else. That pretty much leaves me trying to redefine Christianity (at which point I guess I go join the Church of Satan?) or Norse Heathenry, where I run into some reeeealy uncomfortable Nazi shit that I want nothing to do with. Furthermore, the idea that your spirituality is tied essentially to genetic descent is super problematic on its own. There are people who try to claim you can’t follow Odin unless you’re of pure Germanic descent, and now we’re right back at Nazis again. 

The question boils down to wanting a symbol with no cultural baggage but with relevance and meaning. Is it possible to come up with a symbol that doesn’t have a cultural context? Corporate ad departments work really hard at this. How many random connections of lines and circles remain untrademarked in this age of melancholy elephants? 

All of this is a really long whine about how I want a tattoo with an ankh in it that I think looks cool. I want the design on my body, but I don’t want to feel guilty about it. 

A friend gave me a suggestion to use as a test for appropriation; no matter what, someone will think you’re an asshole for it. It’s a spectrum with white people at Coachella in feather war bonnets at one end and yoga at the other. So, how many people are you comfortable with thinking you’re an asshole? They will always be some. There is no decent place to stand, no symbol without baggage. 

I guess the final question is, how much of an asshole do I think I would be for getting that tattoo, and how embarrassed will I be explaining it in 20 years? 

Fear and Authority

Bob Altemeyer’s excellent (free!) book The Auhtoritarians goes into a fair bit of detail about how the Right Wing Authoritarian (RWA) mindset works,  and how it happens. It’s a great book you should go read. 

The RWA followers are ruled by fear of a world that is changing out from under them. To deal with that fear,  they turn to authority figures to protect them,  and cling to rules and authority.  The Just World Fallacy tells them that bad things only happen to bad people,  and good things happen to good people.  So the authorities must be good and trustworthy,  because they have power,  and the poor and oppressed must be bad,  because they’re having a tough time of it. Fear and faith in authority create a group of people that do a lot of worrying things. 

My uncomfortable realization about myself is that the things keeping me from the ranks of RWA Followers is not my courage.  I’m terrified of the world and all its awfulness. What I lack is any faith that authority can be trusted. I’m equally,  if not more,  afraid of authority figures,  who in any case have more power to inflict harm on me.  

If we posit a two-axis grid of fear and trust,  I think one ends up with an interesting map of political groups.  It makes some sense,  for example,  for the anti-science left,  who distrust the authorities and are afraid of what the world is doing to human health (Vaccines!  Chemicals!) vs.  the anti-science right (climate change denial,  young Earth creationism) ,  who are also scared but back the rich and powerful. What you’re afraid of matters. 

The right wing side thinks the powerful can save us,  if we’ll just submit enough, while the fearful cowards like me on the left think the powerful are just something else to be afraid of. 

The crossover in traits,  for myself,  is a deep devotion to rules. Not,  in my case,  rules imposed by an authority,  but in observed rules. I look at the world an try to come up with rules to avoid danger. Don’t put your finger in the electrical socket.  Don’t piss off someone with the power to hurt you. Don’t startle predators. Find out what upsets the most dangerous people around you,  and don’t do any of those things. 

It’s not that breaking the rules will mean that you deserve what comes after,  but it will come anyway. The alternative is that bad things happen without any reason whatsoever,  and there’s nothing to be done about it. And that’s even scarier. 

Gamenerd: On Site Game Creation

An idea I have had for an RPG, swiping ideas from FATE and Prime Time Adventures, but trying to cast it into a diceless modality, so that, among other things, it will work at Ambercon.

Like many indie games, it requires a pile of index cards, sticky notes and some markers. Also, something to use as counters, like poker chips or shiny rocks.

The setting gets created along with the PCs, collaboratively, by coming up with aspects.

To begin with , everyone agrees on a genre like “Space Opera” or “Epic Fantasy”.

Starting with one of the players, and going around the room one at a time, each player comes up with;

  • Something about themselves
  • Something about the world
  • Something about another PC, especially relationships with their own PC

 These become aspects of the PC, an NPC, the world, or “rules”. Rules are things like “magic is based on the five elements ” or “only halflings can be paladins”.

Another player can’t start assigning aspects to a PC until that PC has a name and at least one aspect already, and the player can always refuse an assigned aspect, though it’s more fun to go with it.

The GM doesn’t come in until the second round to give the players a chance to find their feet. If a player is stuck, something like Background Cards or PTA’s random idea generator should be on hand. Tarot cards and a book on interpreting them isn’t a bad idea either. 

Players should have a few aspects along the lines of:

  • A Concept Aspect like “Space Mystic” or “Ascetic Swordswoman” that sums up the basic idea of the character in a few words. Every player should probably have one of these.
  • Relationship Aspects like “Carl is my baby brother. I’d do anything to keep him safe”, “MacDubh murdered my father” or “Secretly in love with Betsina”
  • Trouble aspects like “I can’t say no to candy”, “I never back down from a challenge”, or “I’m a coward”
  • Power aspects covering stuff like skills, gadgets and powers. So things like “The Singing Sword of Saragund”, “The Power To Cloud Men’s Minds”, “Seven Pointed Star Praying Mantis Style Kung Fu”, “My Strength is a Thing Out Of Legend” and the like.
  • No more than one absolute aspect. If the player feels it’s important to the concept, there’s the option of choosing an absolute aspect. For example, in the TV series Leverage, the  show bible had a rule that “Elliot never loses a fight”. This worked because, among other things, the thrust of the show wasn’t fighting, and fighting was that character’s niche. These aspects should be used carefully – there’s a big difference between niche protection and trying to make a character who’s immune to the story. Only one character should have this kind of aspect for a given niche.

While going around, the players and GM keep coming up with stuff about the characters and setting. The players grab index cards for things that are aspects for themselves, and the GM can use index cards or sticky notes to write down setting, rule and NPC aspects. I think for PCs it might work better to put each aspect on a single card, but the GM probably wants everything for an NPC on a single card. Rules and setting aspects might work better as sticky notes up on the wall where everyone can see them.

After a few rounds, stuff should start to come together . If the PCs haven’t set up antagonists as a result of their relationships with each other, then the GM can start adding in some things like “Wicked Vizier who was responsible for framing your father” or “Incorruptible Sherriff McCabe” so the PCs have some opposition.

The GM should be able to tell when things are solid enough to get started. Give every player some points. Probably something like one per player present? The GM will have a budget per act.

The actual game system runs on aspects and point bids. Since I’m trying to diceless, the simple conflict resolution is positively tapping an aspect wins, unless the other side is doing the same. Similarly, a negative aspect tap (something like “Can’t Turn Left” in a pose-off) loses, but nets the character a point. If no one is tapping an aspect, or everyone is, it comes down to bidding points. Whoever spends the most points gets to decide how the conflict gets resolved. All points spent go away. The resolution shouldn’t invalidate anyone’s aspects – this is where it goes tricky. If Player A picks a fist fight with another who has an aspect of “never loses a fist fight”, and Player A wins the bid, she needs to come up with a way to resolve the conflict that doesn’t involve the other character losing the fist fight.

Game play goes around the room with players in turn calling a scene and asking for players to join in their scene. Other PCs can spend a point to join a scene they aren’t invited to. The GM also gets to call scenes, and should use them to try to move the action along. The order should be fluid – “who wants the next scene?”

The Gm can add aspects to anything other than a Pc as needed. PC’s can add an aspect to something by spending a point. A player can only add an aspect some someone else’s character with permission.

To steal from Fiasco, there are three Acts. Each Act gives everyone a turn to call a scene. The Gm’s point budget resets each Act. I will need some play testing to figure out if the PC’s point budgets should, too. TODO: try to figure out some way to nudge the game into the classic screenwriter’s Three Act Structure (Introduction, Rising Action, Conclusion)?

The idea is that the whole game can be put together and run in a few hours in a convention slot. For a longer running game, later sessions could skip the initial setup and just go right into the three Acts. The GM might want to plan out a Season with spotlights ala PTA in that case, so the plot can come from different PC’s arcs each session. 

All apologies

What does it mean to be “sorry”? As a Canadian, I know that our greatest verbal tick isn’t “eh”, it’s “sorry” – when two Canadians bump into each other, both generally apologize. When someone suffers a tragedy, our first response is “Oh! I am so sorry!” “Sorry”, then, has two common meanings – “apology” and “condolence”. My nesting partner1 and I will sometimes say “I’m sorry(condolence)” or “I’m sorry(apology)” to be clear which we mean, to remove ambiguity between “I am sorry that you feel bad” and “I am sorry my actions resulted in you feeling bad”.

I’m interested in exploring, right now, the idea of apology. An apology is an expression of regret for one’s actions. When one messes up and does another harm, there’s a social expectation that one will provide an apology. Terms for people who cause harm and refuse to apologize tend to start with “jerk” and grow increasingly pejorative.

Which is, of course, one of the reasons for giving an apology – social expectation. One might apologize to soften the social stigma of being known as one who does others undeserved harm 2. Here, there’s a frequent clear difference between a person who apologizes because they actually feel bad about their actions, and a person who apologizes because they want out of the social pressure. The famous “non-apology” where one is “sorry if anyone was offended”, which refuses to take responsibility for the harm done by the action in question. The thing regretted in this case is the reaction to the person’s action, rather than the action itself. Consider the apologies from Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner here.

A second motivation for apologizing is to request forgiveness. “I regret that my actions caused you harm, and would like to be able to continue our relationship3.” I have heard, several times, people who have been victims of crime talking about the value of forgiveness for them. Forgiving the person who did them harm (their attacker, or the person who murdered their family member) is sometimes something that is done so that the victim can let go of the hate and anger and move on with their life. In the case of a pre-existing relationship, it may be so that the relationship can move forward without being entirely defined by the harm done.

Finally, there is the desire to be free of guilt. Much like forgiveness can be about letting go of hate and anger, apologizing can be about letting go of guilt and shame. Which is to say, apologizing because you want to feel better. This can link to forgiveness; in some cases, one wants to be forgiven to be given permission to stop feeling guilt and shame over the actions done. In other cases, the act of the apology itself can give that cathartic release. The trick here is that an apology generally needs to be offered to someone. Whether the apologizer needs forgiveness or not, I’m reminded of a bit of dialog from Buffy the Vampire Slayer;

Willow: But maybe if we talk about it, we could…

Oz: Look… I’m sorry this is hard for you. But I told you what I need.
So I can’t help feeling like the reason you want to talk is so you can
feel better about yourself. That’s not my problem.

If you’ve wronged someone, and it’s not a public issue, the first reason for apologizing isn’t relevant. If the person you’ve wronged doesn’t need to forgive you to move forward in their life, they don’t have any reason to want or need your apology. At that point, all the apology is doing is demanding permission from the person you’ve harmed to feel better about yourself.

And that’s not their problem.

Sometimes we hurt people we care about in the pursuit of our own desires, and there’s nothing to be done about it. It can’t be made right, and forgiveness is not owed. In the end, we all have to bear the burden of the sins we’ve committed until we’re crushed beneath the weight of all the ill we’ve done in the world.

1Trying out some new vocabulary here – the partner I live with.
2Leaving aside, for the moment, the definition of “undeserved harm” vs. “deserved harm” in the public eye.
3Whatever that relationship is; lovers, friends, coworkers, star-to-fan, etc.

Superjournalists?

I just had an idea (and I can’t be the first to think of this) for a comic book or superhero RPG; The Super Journalists.

In a world with superheroes, but that more closely works like the real world, superheroes aren’t really all that necessary for fighting crime, except for brawling with super-powered villains. The problems the police have in catching criminals, especially in the developed world, is not a problem of firepower.

But what if you have a super team that devotes themselves to investigative journalism? The invulnerable man documenting atrocities in the Syrian Civil War. A photographer who can take pictures with her mind and upload them to the internet from anywhere in the solar system. A writer who can protect the identity of his source on a metaphysical level. An interviewer who can cause a red glow around her interview subjects when they lie.

I wish I was a better writer, or a better GM, because I would love to see this idea fleshed out. It’s also possible that I have been watching too much of the new Aaron Sorkin drama The Newsroom, and that it is time to re-read Transmetropolitan again.

Grace, unconventional spirituality and Leonard Cohen.

This is another old Livejournal post I’ve dredged up because I want to have my essays here.

Grace

In Christianity, the concept of grace refers to an unearned gift or blessing from God. The term is most often used in connection to salvation. While various denominations disagree on the details, the general idea is that salvation is a gift which cannot be earned; nothing that we do on earth can be good enough to earn ourselves a place in heaven. There just aren’t any good works good enough to “deserve” salvation. We start our lives in a state of sin (original sin and all that), and if we’re keeping score, nothing can get past that initial deficit.

So, then, if anyone is Saved, it is because God has decided to extend that gift even though the recipient doesn’t deserve it. By the Grace of God, a sign of god’s Love for mankind. Various denominations have differing theories on how one can screw up salvation and reject God’s Grace.

In Catholicism, one needs to go through the Church as an intermediary to receive forgiveness for one’s sins. In Calvinism, salvation is predetermined – God has picked out who is saved and who isn’t, and no amount of hard work is going to change that. If God hasn’t picked you as one of the Chosen, it’s hellfire for you. (Which then leads to antinomianism, my favourite protestant heresy, but that’s another post for another day).1

I don’t believe in Salvation, and I don’t believe in god in the sense most people use the term. Hence, my personal use of the word grace has a different spin on it. For me, grace is still connected with love, and with my own unconventional view of the divine 2. As I’ve discussed on before (in more angst-ridden posts), I feel that love is something that one cannot “deserve”, something than cannot be earned. Nothing that one does can be good enough to compel the love of another. When I match gazes with someone and see that light flash in their eyes, all the good and evil I have done in my life are like a candle against the sunrise. It’s something one can screw up, but nothing one does can make it happen.

It’s not just “Love”, though that’s part of it. The concept is tied up with elements of “love”, “ecstasy”, “joy” and to a certain extent “forgiveness”, particularly in the sense of freedom from the guilt and shame associated with things long past. Which is to say that “grace” includes, for me, letting go of one’s attachment to past traumas and allowing one’s self to fully experience the wonder of the moment.

I have a couple personal symbols that are tied up in the concept of Grace, in the idea of Love and Joy and Ecstasy as unearned gifts. The celebration of that Grace, in the myriad ecstatic experiences of life, is both a transcendent connection with the divine and an intensely human act. It’s a sense of joining with something bigger than myself 3. I feel that Grace is something I should be thankful for, and something that should be actively celebrated and shared.

When I’m in a good mood, anyway.

The Sisters of Mercy

Leonard Cohen’s song “The Sisters of Mercy” (lyrics here) is one of my favourite Cohen songs4. It’s often described as a song about prostitutes, but I’ve never been able to figure out why. Some internet research tells me that it was used as a theme for prostitutes in a movie (“McCabe and Mrs. Miller”), but as far as I can tell, nothing in the song alludes to prostitution. Wikipedia makes a terse claim that the song refers to a night Cohen spent with two women in Edmonton.

What the song describes, to me, is an experience of grace. In a time of darkness, the protagonist spends an evening of comfort and joy. The “sisters” give him a gift of “love that is graceful and green as a stem”.

The metaphoric mixing between sex, love and religion is a common theme in Cohen’s work. It’s used heavily in this song, and perhaps that’s part of why I like it so much.

When I was a confused, bitter teenager who didn’t know how to connect with people at all, I had two friends, women, from whom I learned a little bit more about how to be human. We weren’t lovers at all, but one of them introduced me to Cohen’s music, including the Sisters of Mercy. In a sense, I feel that time in my life was the beginning of the process of self-transformation that brought me where I am now.

The last verse has a tendency to echo in my head;

When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon.
Don’t turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon.
And you won’t make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night:
We weren’t lovers like that and besides it would still be all right,
We weren’t lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

The people I love are fantastic creatures who bring grace and wonder into my life, and make my world a better place. If they do the same for someone else, that doesn’t take away from the gifts they’ve given me, so I think it’s great if they can do the same for someone else.

There’s something there, too, about the nature of grace – the gift the protagonist receives from the women is something specific in time. His happiness, perspective or tranquility isn’t dependent on them, and so he doesn’t rely on continued actions from them to make him happy. Hence his willingness to share.

That’s the way I’ve always read the song, in any case. Both a staunch defender of the patriarchy and a 2nd wave feminist might make a case that the protagonist is using the “sisters”, taking what he wants from them and then abandoning them, giving nothing in return. The idea of women as a source of grace is certainly laden with a lot of cultural essentialist baggage, and that’s something I occasionally wonder about.

I wonder what it might sound like to hear a song written from the other point of view, the two women?

1I’m not a religious scholar, so it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong here. If I am, I’d actually like to know what I got wrong.

2 Some day I might try to explain this in writing, but today is not that day. In brief, “thou art god” and “all things are true, even false things” are starting points.

3 And also something contained entirely within myself. It’s not religion if it’s not self-contradictory.

4 My favourite would be Famous Blue Raincoat.

Batman and Arrow

Legacies
I discovered, this weekend, much to my surprise, that the new show Arrow is quite watchable. It’s a sort of gritty, soap-opera friendly reboot of the Green Arrow character form DC Comics. In this version, he’s a rich kid, son of a wealthy industrialist, who is lost at sea and spends five years on a south east Asian island surviving and becoming a bad-ass.

When he gets back, he embarks on a scheme of bloody revenge against the corrupt businessmen of Starling City. It’s interesting watching the show in a post-Occupy world; Oliver Queen is a scion of the 1%, going after the 1%, theoretically on behalf of the 99%. Thus far, he is only going after the illegally evil 1%ers, though, the ones who use their money to traffic in drugs, extortion and assassination. While he’s talking about stopping the powerful from abusing their influence on those who lack it, the show stops short of having him attack the system that provides the mansion he lives in and the expensive gadgets he uses to fight crime. It will be interesting to see if the show is willing to cross that line.

B:tAS LogoI cannot help but contrast Arrow with a couple versions of Batman. My favourite version of Batman is, I think, the 90s Batman: the Animated Series. Like a lot of TV of that era (I’m thinking of Babylon 5, here), it had a lot of cheese, but also enough brilliant moments that I remember those more clearly than the cheese. Animated Bats is notable for the way the villains are written – most of the bad guys have a strong motivation, some past wrong that drove them to become criminals. In some cases, the show looks into the grey area between what Batman does (justice?) and what the bad guys do (vengeance?). In practice, though, what it boils down to is that most often, some evil rich guy screws over some poor schmuck, who cracks and puts on a costume to extract revenge, and Batman stops the villain while the rich guy walks away. The difference, when it is highlighted, between Batman and the bad guy, is that Bats isn’t willing to kill or endanger innocents. Arrow, on the CW show, is essentially a Batman: the Animated Series villain. Interesting contrast.

Christian Bale as BatmanThe more obvious and timely comparison, of course, is to the Batman of the Christopher Nolan movies. Both take a classic comic character and deliver a dark, gritty version. I think the Nolan Batman is a relatively subtle deconstruction of the idea of Batman. The Dark Knight Rises comes right out, several times, challenging the right of Bruce Wayne, child of privilege, to be the person meting out justice on his own terms. The three movies raise the question of whether or not Batman is inherently fascist, particularly using a traditional platform of inherited wealth to fund his battle. I think the biggest twist that Nolan brings to Batman, though, is making him a Dramatic Hero rather than an Iconic Hero. To paraphrase Robin D. Laws, an Iconic Hero encounters challenges, and by staying true to his Iconic Nature, defeats them while remaining unchanged. The Dramatic Hero, by contrast, is a character in a state of conflict. He encounters challenges, and is either changed by them or destroyed by them, even when he triumphs. Every Batman before has been, essentially, Iconic – even the classic Knightfall story line in the comics where Batman’s back is broken is essentially a premise threat story, where the drama is provided by putting Batman’s Iconic nature at risk before restoring it. Nolan makes Bruce Wayne into a person whose nature is changed by his experiences. The tension between his private war and the desire to move beyond the trauma of his youth define his personality, and ultimately rip Batman apart. I think Tim Burton’s Batman flirted with similar themes, but ultimately felt the need to cling to the idea of Batman.

I suspect Arrow’s Oliver Queen will prove to be Iconic as the show goes on – it’s too hard to maintain a Dramatic Hero’s arc on a show like Arrow without losing track of everything entirely. Which highlights another thing I liked about the Nolan Batman – it had a solid ending. It left things open for all sorts of followups, but really, Nolan wrapped up all of his threads. Arrow, being an episodic soap opera type TV show, will shoot for infinity, and try to find as many ways as possible to play with the premise without losing it.

Superhero Re-imagining – Rise of the Expies

I have been thinking about superheroes again.

I blame the Avengers. And the book Seven Wonders. And Mark Waid. And Cirque du Soleil, oddly enough. Cirque are the word leaders in good looking spandex outfits right now – they made the most recent Spiderman costume. They’re also the world leader in people doing amazingly athletic things in spandex (you may argue the Olympics have them beat – I disagree).

The recent-ish trend in comics is to acknowledge that, after 80 odd years of superheroes, there really aren’t any interesting new ideas left for superheroes. You really can’t come up with a new set of superpowers that hasn’t been done before. So the new approach is deconstruction and The Expy (warning! Tv Tropes link!). Alan Moore started the thing with Watchmen. Mark Waid did it recently with Irredeemable (Superman) and Insufferable (Batman). There are plenty of examples in between.

The deconstructed expy approach had some definite advantages. It lets the writer play with the tropes of the original, all the raw material of underwear pervert comics, without having to deal with the sacred cows of the original’s iconic stuff. As one reviewer of the Avengers noted, the original material suffers from time-shifting – characters from the 30s, or even the 60s, are overwhelmingly white, and there aren’t a lot of good roles for women. DC spent a lot of time trying to fix that (go Gail Simone!), then more recently decided to give up on diversity and double-down on the straight white male demographic. But you can only do so much with the originals – Batman will always be a rich white guy with emotional problems. Superman will always be a Christian white guy with traditional values. Captain America, symbol of the nation, will always be a white guy. Wonder Woman will always be a white woman who fights crime with a bathing suit and bondage gear. You can’t change the iconic elements of the character too far before the pop culture zeitgeist pushes back. The expy lets you change things in ways the originals can’t be changed, to tell new, interesting stories.

That’s the background I’m coming from right now.

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Authoritarian Apologism

(Originally posted here)

In a comment on a friend’s post, something that’s been bugging me finally came together in my head.

In various recent events (Peter Watts’ Squidgate, the g20 mess, etc.), there has been a bunch of commenters (live and on the net, natch) who seem to cheer louder the more it looks like the police have abused their power. These are the folks who say things like “if a cop tells you to do something, you do it *immediately* or you deserve what happens to you”, “if you haven’t worn a uniform, you don’t get to complain”, etc.

The general idea of Authoritarian Apologism is that anyone that gets beaten up by the police, or the border guards, or anyone with a bade or a uniform, deserves what they get. That those forces are always justified in whatever they do to their citizens.

I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that drives me so nuts about this position, besides the obvious. It finally clicked today – it’s the same logical fallacy that drives Rape Culture victim-blaming and shunning of people who are ill. It’s the idea that Bad things don’t happen to Good people. So when bad things happen to someone previously presumed to be Good, the Apologist makes the inference that the person must be Bad. Because the alternative is that Bad things *do* happen to Good people. And that’s terrifying – the Apologist naturally sees zirself as a Good person. If something bad can happen to some random writer, to some random jogger or random tourist, then it means that something bad can happen to *me*!

And a lot of people can’t face that. So they go to great lengths to come up with reasons why people deserve to be beaten by cops, to be raped by their “friend”, to get cancer or AIDS. I mean, of course that guy deserved to be arrested and held in a pen in the rain overnight with no drinking water – did you *see* what he was wearing? He was *asking* for it! Good thing I’d never do something like that, so I’m safe.

It’s all about Othering victims so that the Apologist can feel safe knowing that bad things only happen to bad people. It’s about fear, and letting that fear make your world ever smaller.