Month: June 2017

Reading Challenge #89: The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon

by

It’s reading challenge time again! This time I’ll be sharing my thoughts on #89, The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. This a relatively modern novel, as it was published in 1991. It is also a romance novel, a type of fiction I probably have not willingly read since around 1991. I had plenty of warning. It’s right there in the description on Amazon that this is a time travel romance novel. I’m not sure why I was surprised that it ended up being exactly that. I guess deep down I am still an optimist.

TW: discussion of abuse, torture, sexual assault

This novel follows Claire, an English nurse who is on a second honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands with her husband Frank in 1945. They’re rediscovering each other after being separated by the war. After a few days of exploring the highlands, Claire and Frank discover a group of the local women holding a mysterious ceremony in a ring of standing stones. Shortly after, Claire touches one of the stones and is magically transported back to what we eventually learn is the year 1743. Once there, she immediately becomes mired in the conflict between a local clan and the British. Specifically, British captain “Black Jack” Randall, who happens to be her husband Frank’s ancestor.  And of course, because this is a romance novel, she falls in love with one of the clansmen, Jamie Fraser.

I don’t even really know where to begin in my assessment of this book. I guess I should be open up front and say that, as I suggested above, it has been a long time since I read a romance novel. I think if I chose to read one on my own now, I’d want it to have much more romance and much less torture, rape, and abuse. I’d also like the characters to make more sense. I suppose this is why I like to read light sci-fi and fantasy that sometimes happens to have romance in it, rather than books that make fun sexy times the main attraction. That said, the prose in this work is fairly good, it’s the content that turns me right off.

Claire gets sexually assaulted by Captain Randall almost immediately upon being transported into the past. Her would-be saviors don’t treat her much better, and the first half of the book is an anxiety-ridden whirlwind of wondering whether all the unwanted sexual attention will eventually lead to rape. Thankfully it doesn’t. At least not until the point at which she is forced to marry. There’s a pretext plot point where Randall orders that she be turned in for questioning, and the only way to avoid this is for her to be legally a member of the clan. So she has the choice to marry one of the two eligible bachelors that are traveling with their group, the strong, handsome, etc. Jamie or Some Other Guy (TM). I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I consider being coerced into marring someone and forced to consummate the marriage is rape, but of course this being a romance novel it turns out that they have amazing sexual chemistry and there are all the requisite fireworks and hearts. Did I mention that mr. 20-something virile highlander man was a virgin? But somehow everything was still amazing and perfect? I think that’s the point where my eyes rolled right out of my head and I lost the ability to take this book seriously anymore. A+ marks for pandering to your presumed readership base I guess?

Anyway Claire spends the entire first half of the book looking for chances to escape from whoever happens to be capturing her at the time in order to get back to the standing stones and try to return to her own time. She even gets a beating from her husband as a result of one such attempt. Perhaps because the author specifically sought to make me vomit in my own mouth, of course Claire struggles against the beating but eventually comes to understand how it was the good and just and necessary thing. Please excuse the retching noises I’m making, I’m sure it will pass eventually. Eventually she ends up telling Jamie the truth about where and when she is from, and they return to the standing stones. Again I must really be an optimist because somehow I was hoping she’d return back to her own time or maybe bounce back and forth to carry out the time-traveling affair with Jamie but no. When she got her chance to go home to indoor plumbing and modern medicine and a non-abusive husband, of course she chose to stay in the 1700s.

Now is the part where I admit another place I was wrong. Because this book had time travel nonsense happening, I guessed that in the end Claire would get raped by Captain Randall and end up being her future husband’s great-great-whatever grandmother. It seemed like the sort of nonsense thing that would be likely in this kind of story. Fortunately we were spared that. Unfortunately, what actually happened was also completely awful. Because it turns out our big bad villain is actually gay or bi, and has the hots for Jamie. In a heroic gesture Jamie sacrifices himself, letting Randall have sex with and tourture him in exchange for letting Claire escape. Please imagine that I’ve written a 3 page diatribe about how awful it is to equate gay sex with evil and torture. I am still actually too angry to write coherent words about it here.

There’s some other awful nonsense after that horrific climax, including a mind-boggling scene in which Claire attempts to save Jamie’s life by literally drugging him and forcing him to relive his rape and torture. I don’t even know how that was supposed to work, but of course by the end they’re having magical sex in the middle of a french monastery because romance novel I guess. Somewhere in there are also hints about what the hell is up with the magical time-travel enabling standing stones. Claire befriends a witch who seems to have some knowledge of this, but she literally ends up being burned to death for being a witch before she can explain anything. Claire finds out she was from the future of her own future (1960s to Claire’s 1945, I believe). Nothing else ever comes of that. There’s also a scene near the beginning of the book where a strange ghostly man was staring at Claire in the window which I naively assumed meant there would be multiple time travel shenanigans but that was left completely unexplained. While I’m slightly curious whether any of the time-travel questions get answered in subsequent books, there’s no way in hell I will force myself to read more in this series to find out.

As romance novels go I’m sure this one is just fine, as long as you don’t mind the sexual assault. There’s slightly more than the barest pretense at a reason for the protagonists to fuck. Of course there is a lot of abuse and blood and sickness and lack of agency in between those steamy sex scenes, so that might make it less than stellar after all. It certainly got enough people to like it to warrant being made into a tv series though. When I look at this book objectively I can appreciate its spot on the list. In a genre dominated by men it is refreshing to see a novel by a woman and aimed squarely at other women gaining support and acclaim. However I do not like romance novels, and I do mind sexual assault and regular assault, and the way this book equates “gay” and “evil”, and the lack of payoff on the whole time-travel front.

I can’t help but compare this to the Doomsday Book, another time travel novel ranked lower than this one on the challenge list. The Doomsday Book gave me characters and story that I cared deeply about, and the time travel was explained reasonably well and was more than just an excuse for the protagonist to go back in time to have sex with Scottish clansmen. I cried real tears at the end of the Doomsday book, while I nearly cried tears of joy just because this one was over and I never have to think of it again. If you want a time travel novel please do yourself a favor and read The Doomsday Book.

TL;DR:  Unsatisfying time travel by means of magic and with no resolution. It is a romance novel and meaningful character motivation is secondary to excuses for sexytimes. Full of sex but also various kinds of abuse and assault. I hated it.

The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon

Rating: 2/5 stars

Verdict: It was very much not my thing at all, but I can sort-of understand why so many people liked it. For the love of all that is good please read The Doomsday Book instead.

Next up: Something I’ve been looking forward to: The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn!


Reading Challenge #89: The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon

RoboSquids Vs Stockade

by

RoboSquids Vs Stockade

I am taking a break from my regular E3 regurgitation and commentary…  to talk about what might be the last ride of the RoboSquids for awhile.  This coming Friday is the launch of Stormblood and with it a lot of us will be working on leveling and get settled into that game.  As a result our time for screwing around on low level characters in World of Warcraft is going to be limited.  As a result we decided to tackle the one that we had all been dreading…  the Stormwind Stockades.  Now normally folks just queue up for this dungeon and ignore the fact that like Ragefire… the dungeon entrance is embedded in a faction capitol.  To recap our rules…

  • Level lock at the minimum level for each dungeon
  • Use whatever means necessary in-between levels
  • Attempt all raids even if we superfail
  • Must compete all dungeons at level before moving on
  • No heirlooms in dungeons
  • Must get to the dungeon naturally and zone in
  • Gear cannot be solved by money
  • Blue quality or higher gear can only come from questing, robo-squid group random drops, or bosses at or below our level lock

I emphasized the rule that is the problem here.  At level 20 we had to make our way into Stormwind and get to the zone in for the stockades on our own.  There were four of us… myself, Grace, Mor and Ashgar.  Like with the Deadmines we ultimately chose to enter through the Grom’gol airship and then run up to Stormwind from there.  Two of us chose to take the land route of… Stranglethorn > Duskwood > Westfall > Elwynn and then go through the front door.  Myself and Grace chose to hop on our water striders and try and make it up the coast and then enter through the docks… thinking that might end up missing some of the guard density.  My ultimate goal was to get to Lions Rest which is the shrine that was erected to replace the big empty area that was formerly the park.  My thought was that potentially this had fewer guards and I could then get closer to the dungeon entrance and potentially rez hop my way in.

RoboSquids Vs Stockade

The funny thing about this entire trip is that I had no clue that the graveyard assigned to horde players…  is the Eastvale Logging Camp.  I posted a screenshot for reference, each time we died we had to run where my arrow is currently all the way to wherever the hell we died in Stormwind.  Simply running across Elwynn forest each time ate a bunch of time.  While we were doing this run I decided to start streaming it… and looking back it took roughly 50 minutes for all four of us to make our way into the instance area.  We started a race of sorts as we tried to rez our way across Stormwind… and without really meaning to I won.  I had an absolute lucky break in that I could rez up on a significantly higher vertical surface and bypass a lot of the dock area.  Similarly I also had a lucky rez around the Lion’s Rest area and was able to get into the instance area in about 35 minutes.  Grace who also took the dock route joined me at about 44 minutes and then Mor not that long after… and Ashgar having the roughest time getting inside.  Ash however took one for the team early on as he attempted to use the spirit healer at the instance hoping to hop back up right there.  However whatever faction code is in place caused him to resurrect back at the Eastvale Logging Camp.  The funniest part of the night however was the fact that it took us 50 minutes to run there… and 10 minutes to actually do the instance.

After finishing up the Stockades we decided to go ahead and make the push to Blackfathom Deeps.  The ultimate goal would have been to go ahead and finish up the level 20 dungeons and allow us to start leveling towards the next cap of 24.  However moments after all four of us zoned into the instance…  we got disconnected.  Last night the servers as a whole had a significant issue, where folks either could not log in, could not see their characters…  or simply could not finish loading into the game.  Just about when we were going to give up I managed to log into the dungeon…  and shortly after Grace and Mor were as well.  Ash unfortunately was stuck in a disconnect loop, so we opted to start clearing trash hoping he could eventually make it in.  We had cleared to the first boss and were starting to clear the way to the second boss…  when Grace disconnected.  What was worrisome was the fact that she no longer was responding on Discord as well, meaning whatever issue was happening was on her end… not the server.  At this we finally decided that the world was trying to tell us something, and that we should just call it for the night.  The frustrating part however is by the time Grace got back in moments later…  it seems like the servers as a whole had stabilized.  We are not really sure how we are going to do the RoboSquid content going forward, but we might need to set up an almost raid night happening once a week or something.  At this point we have run…

  • Ragefire Chasm
  • The Deadmines
  • Wailing Caverns
  • Shadowfang Keep
  • Stormwind Stockade

Five dungeons down… only One Hundred Fifty Nine instances left to go…

Stormblood This Week!

by

I have this weird mix of excitement and apprehension over the early-access launch of FFXIV Stormblood this weekend. On the one hand, I’m always glad when the stars align and all or most of my friends are actively playing the same game at the same time. On the other hand, I’m feeling pretty apathetic about FFXIV and MMOs in general lately. Sure, I had a brief burst of enthusiasm after the last live letter when we got to see cool things like the summoner getting to summon MFing Bahamut. However this has been tempered by the usual mix of positive changes, nerfs, and sidegrades that mean I’ll be relearning whatever class I decide to main. Because of course I still have not completely decided whether to be a scholar or astrologian this time around.

I wish I could steal some of the excitement my friends are feeling about this expansion. The sad truth is that I care even less about the Garlean empire and Doma than I did about the annoying pompous elves of Ishgard. I’m cautiously optimistic about the underwater content that’s been previewed. If you have been reading this blog for any length of time you know I’m a sucker for beautiful sea creatures and underwater zones. The general consensus in gaming, though, is that underwater zones are really hard to get right, and a lot of people hate them. Hopefully FFXIV does them justice.

I’ve been playing tons of WoW lately and you might think that means I’m not excited about Stormblood because I think WoW is “better”, but you’d be completely wrong. WoW is currently scratching an itch that is more about nostalgia and inertia than any sort of compelling gameplay. In fact the most joy I’ve gotten out of it recently has been from ignoring what I’m “supposed” to be doing and just faffing about on alts. This makes me suspect that my return to FFXIV could be smoother if I try not to care about getting through all the content quickly and instead focus on enjoying whatever happens to capture my attention. Unfortunately if I want to capitalize on the brief time when all my friends are around and active, I’ll want to level quickly and be available for dungeons, trials, and raids. I don’t want to miss out on that all-important first-time-seeing-the-instance fun. That fear of missing out doesn’t mean I have to power level, because my friends are mostly adult people with jobs and families and things that mean we can’t all play for a week straight. It does mean I should probably pick one job and move through the leveling story with a purpose so I don’t get left behind.

There’s no easy choice for me between SCH and AST but at least I know I’ll still be maining a healer either way. And regardless of my apathy about the expansion itself I am genuinely excited to hang out with my friends and kill internet dragons or whatever their Doman equivalent is again.


Stormblood This Week!

E3 2017: Bethesda, PC Gaming, Devolver

by

Bethesdaland

I am lagging behind a bit in my posts since I am still limiting myself to one of these a day… and whatever I happen to be able to write during my normal morning writing period.  Bethesda is traditionally the gaming showcase that I look forward to the most during E3.  In the past they have announced a lot of really awesome stuff like Fallout 4… and then turned around and announced that they were going to release said game within six months.  Bethesda traditionally is the master of the hype cycle, and while there might be rumors swirling around a game… it won’t actually be confirmed until it is nearly ready to launch and there is a clearly defined pathway to release.  This year however it feels like a lot of the amazing announcements were lacking.  There were several items that were mentioned at other shows…  for example they talked about Elder Scrolls Online Morrowind… that was just literally released on the 6th so it doesn’t feel like that really counts.  Similarly Quake Champions was one of their big reveals for last year, and it has been in some state of beta for awhile now so it also feels very “been there done that”.  Some of their big announcements this year…  were also things we already knew about  Doom VFR and Fallout 4 VR.  The problem with both is…  I don’t have a VR setup nor am I really planning on getting one in the near future so that doesn’t terribly interest me.  If I was getting something in the VR space it would probably be the PS4 VR option given that it is a hell of a lot more plug and play and seems to have a wealthy of interesting titles developed for it.  Similarly Skyrim Switch was announced… more or less during the Switch reveal, but we finally got some real details and confirmation I guess.  Here is a run down of the things that I did think were worth mentioning from the show.

The Evil Within 2

If you have ever wanted to be afraid of milk…  watch this trailer.  I own copies of Evil Within but I have never actually gotten around to playing it.  It is on that long list of things that I want to play but never seem to find time to actually do.  In theory I should have been using this time when my wife is travelling to play a whole slow of immersive single player games.  Whatever the case this game looks really awesome, even though I had hell actually following what was happening.  It seems like this is a continuation of the events from the first game.  If you are into that sort of thing it seems like this might be right down your alley.

Dishonored Death of the Outsider

At first we thought this was a DLC sort of like the previous two that were released for Dishonored, however this is apparently an entire stand alone game.  Once again it follows the Daud side of the story, and apparently brings back Billie Lurk.  I am thinking maybe we will see the same sort of options that you have with Dishonored 2 where you can focus on playing either of the characters, but I might be wrong.  Not a whole lot of information is actually out yet about the game, but what we were treated to was a really awesome teaser trailer.  It seems like we are going to go Outsider hunting, since they blame that entity for all the chaos that has happened.  I know I will be playing it, because I loved Dishonored…  but I have also found that I don’t get into the non-Corvo games nearly as much as the mainline series.  It is kinda cool though that we are functionally taking two paths at all times to this story…  the Story of Corvo and the Story of Daud.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

E3 2017: Bethesda, PC Gaming, Devolver

This title release has been a hotbed of conversation among the AggroChat crew… namely in that I am amped as can be and Kodra and Tam are disappointed.  Me getting into the reasons here is going to be super spoilery about the first game… and since I still think everyone should play the first game…  I am largely going to refrain.  Suffice to say I am pumped in every possible way about the release of this game and it pretty much gave me everything I could ever hope for going going into it.  The thing about New Order that I enjoyed the most was seeing this jacked up re-imagining of the world.  I am a sucker for alternative history novels, and this game fed right into it…  especially given the what would have happened if we lost World War II thing has been played so many times in fiction.  On the other side… I have been playing Wolfenstein since 1992 and have played through every iteration of the game including all of the parts of the actual chronology leading up to this game.  For those who are curious… and want to start at the beginning…  best as I can piece it together you have Return to Castle Wolfenstein > Wolfenstein (2009) > The Old Blood > New Order > New Colossus.  The only one I really have hell placing in that order is Old Blood… and it could fit directly before New Order or could even be before RtCW.  Anyways the whole point is I am deeply invested in this franchise and have been for years.  New Order was a strict departure from the largely mindless kill all the Nazis gameplay, but definitely in a good way.  It introduced a compelling story to wrap around the core of the game…  but in the end I was still largely there for that core gameplay of leave no one standing.  Generally speaking all I am looking for out of a sequel is a chance to dust off the characters I have bonded with… and take them out on another adventure.  If New Colossus provides me with this… it is going to be everything I could have hoped for.

Creation Club

I am supremely uncertain of how I feel about this announcement.  Bethesda has been working on a way to sell mods for awhile now, and even though they claim this is not paid mod support…  it is definitely paid something.  Time will tell what this actually looks like in the final version, and what the economy is like.  However immediately it is reminding me of the paid creator system in the SOE games.  That actually produced some really awesome stuff that allowed talented 3D artists to sell new and interesting weapons.  The prime difference there is… that was a previously closed game that was opened up through their creator system.  Bethesda games however traditionally are open to mods and if you have the will you can find pretty much anything already for the games.  You want to run around Fallout in Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine armor?  Sure there is a mod for that.  Things like that however cannot officially exist in either the in game mod support or the creation club, because no one has consulted with the license holder to pay for offering that.  It seems like Bethesda is damned determined to make this system happen regardless, so I suppose we have to take a wait and see approach on it.  I do think it would be nice of the mod creators themselves have a way to actually get paid for their work.  In World of Warcraft there are lots of addons that I have chipped in a few dollars to support the author in creating it, because their work greatly improved my game play.  Similarly I have no problem chipping in some money to support a Fallout or Skyrim mod…  but I would prefer that the money go to the creator and Bethesda not get to take a cut.

PC Gaming Show

The PC Gaming show since its inception has been this really awkward show that never really felt like it could hang with the big kids.  That is not to say that Sean ‘Day[9]’ Plott does not try super hard to steer the train and keep it from completely falling off the tracks.  This year however… felt almost like a proper show.  There were a lot of changes that happened this year that maybe lead to that.  Firstly it happened during the middle of the day instead of being something happening relatively late in the evening.  Secondly they swapped the primary sponsor from AMD to Intel.. and potentially Intel cares way more about a polished presentation.  Thirdly the number of support as far as medium to big reveals went up significantly.  Now for me personally… there was not a lot about the show that I cared deeply, however there were definitely some reveals that I could see going over well.  Firstly the release of a remaster of Age of Empires seemed to get a bunch of notice, but for me personally I never played the games in that series that much.  Similarly there was the reveal of a new Xcom 2 expansion… but that also is not really my style of game.  A whole bunch of people seemed to be really happy with the reveal of Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord…  but again not exactly my type of game.  I have never wanted to be a single soldier in the middle of an otherwise RTS style battle.  The trailer that did stand out to me that I was the most interested in… was Ooblets which seemed to be this weird amalgam of Pokemon and Harvest Moon and adorable as hell.  The Last Night seems awesome…  but I won’t be buying it because I don’t want to support anything that creator does after the bullshit he has caused in the past.  Ylands also looked kinda cool.. but I feel like I have an overabundance of good sandbox games.  It is going to have to do a hell of a lot to stand out from the pack for me.  Battletech… I was a backer and am purposefully trying not to play it until it officially releases.

Devolver Digital

This show… was like the parody anti-show of E3.   They didn’t actually announce anything… or in truth show anything.  It was sort of the Tim and Eric of E3 Shows and while I personally found it funny there are a lot of people who did not seem to be in on the joke.  Among the AggroChat crew it was less in on the joke but instead that they simply didn’t appreciate the style of humor.  Buckets of fake blood are not their thing.  For me I found it entertaining and watched the entire thing…. but they were trying super hard to be edgy.  I wouldn’t suggest actually tracking down the video and watching it since it really ads no value other than an attempt at shock.