Month: August 2014

Rising to the Challenge

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Yesterday I talked about some of the reasons I play games, but I feel like I left out a major one: I love the feeling of overcoming an obstacle. Often games will layout for us clear goals that we must meet in order to achieve victory. Rarely in real life are these goals as plainly laid out as they are in video games. Your win conditions are clear and you need to figure out how you are going to get there.

So is true with Blaugust, a month long challenge to write a blog post every day. Before the start of this I knew I was getting into an uphill battle, with GenCon landing square in the middle of this competition, but I managed to power through (albeit with a couple barely passable posts), and now that I’m in the home stretch it feels great knowing that I can beat this challenge.

So when I see Belghast talking about how it upsets him that I seem forced into posting, I feel obligated to intercede on Blaugust’s behalf. Yeah some days are harder than others, and this final stretch has had an unusual snag due to some con crud, but if it were so easy to do, I wouldn’t feel the sense of accomplishment for achieving it.

The journey is more rewarding than the prize

Blaugust comes to a close this Sunday, and I will likely take a week off blogging to recharge, but that’s not to say Blaugust has made me hate blogging. In reality, it’s taught me so much about what it takes to run this, and I’ve got an idea of what content people like and what content gets a pass (apparently I’m the only one who really loves math for math’s sake). It’s taught me about how to project my voice out there and get over the fear of not being good enough. I spent so much time on early blog posts and now I will start typing until something comes out.

This has absolutely been a great experience from me as a blogger, but almost as important it’s been fun for me as a gamer. Blaugust is a competition to see if I can manage for one month the level of dedication that it takes to write a post a day, and it’s been tough but it’s also been fun. I’ve met so many awesome people like Doone, Maevrim, Blue Kae, Alternative Chat, Cannot be Tamed through this process and I look forward to keeping up with the twitter-sphere as it goes forward.

Wrapping it up

I feel like this is one of those cases where if it were easy it wouldn’t be as satisfying to complete. It’s the type of game where I need to ramp up from the easy mode to make sure the game is pushing back at me enough that I feel the satisfaction of victory. It’s not even the most grueling challenge I’ve ever taken in a game, though given the “match” has lasted a full month, it might be the most marathon-esque challenge I’ve ever partaken in. Still, I’ve had a blast and I know that personally I will be right there for next year’s Blaugust when it all begins again.

For more stuff on Blaugust, check out the Nook!

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On Retcons

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Superhero comics, particularly Marvel and DC, have a number of peculiarities that come from effectively being incredibly long serial works.  You get the strange effect of having an ongoing setting that has been built up over the course of decades by a great number of authors.  Individual characters can go through periods of wildly different characterization due to changing times, changing writers, and the demands of the company as a whole.

One of the most uniquely comic-booky of concepts is the retcon.  Short for retroactive continuity, a retcon occurs when an aspect of established continuity is changed after the fact.  You can into a lot of debate over just what counts a retcon.  Is it any change to the past at all? Does it matter if it’s done by the same writer who created the element being changed, or by a different writer?

I view retcons as story changes that actively modify past stories and directly contradict continuity as it previously existed.  It’s not a perfect definition, but mostly it works.  Superman’s return after his apparent death wouldn’t be a retcon because he was never intended to stay dead; Barry Allen‘s return from the dead is, since his death was meant to be permanent.

What got me thinking about this is a series of retcons that have been going on over the past few years in Marvel Comics around Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D.  Specifically, Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Warriors comic that ran from 2009-2011 and the current Original Sin event.  Both have resulted in major changes, but where I ended up happy with Secret Warriors turned out, I’ve been more and more disappointed with Original Sin as it goes on.

I think in both cases a lot of the impetus has been a desire to bring the comic book versions of Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. more in line with the movie version.  Where movie Fury is Sam Jackson, the comic book Fury is a white guy who fought in World War II and became a super spy in the 60’s.  He’s kept young by a serum called the Infinity Formula.

Without spoiling too much, Secret Warriors ended with Nick leaving S.H.I.E.L.D., breaking his triple-agent girlfriend out of prison, and riding off into the sunset.  It was a great send-off that retired the character after giving him one more great story.  I was sad to see Nick go, but I was okay with it.

Spoilers for Original Sin after this point.

Original Sin brought him back to reveal that he’s been secretly murdering aliens and monsters for decades to preemptively protect Earth from them.  The Infinity Formula wore off, so he’s an old man now.  He’s apparently murdered the Watcher.  And his best friend was actually killed in 1966 and all his appearances since then were actually a robotic replacement.

If the final issue of the story doesn’t end with Fury dead, I’ll be shocked.  Everything about this story just feels like an attempt to not only ensure he’s no longer usable, but also no longer liked.  I’m sure once this is finished, it’ll be a long time before we see him again.  What makes me sad is that he was already set aside, but in a way that seemed appropriate to the character.

Eventually though, decades from now most likely, someone will decide they want to bring him back.  And they’ll do it, because in comic books death is never permanent.  Just ask Barry Allen.

Source: Thalen Speaks
On Retcons

Quiet Day

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I’ve been trying to think of something at all interesting to write about and I’m not coming up with much of anything, so I will begin writing things and see how it goes.  Today was devoted primarily to a half-birthday party for some good friends’ 6-month old daughter, and dinner with my parents.

A half-birthday party is not a thing I would have ever thought of, but apparently it’s become a thing?  Obviously the baby’s not going to remember it, so it’s mostly just an excuse for a party.  This one was our standard circle of friends getting together, but this time there was cake.  The baby was the center of attention, but really that’s pretty normal in any case.  She’s remarkably adorable.

Once we got home from all of this, we intended to relax a bit.  Instead, in the process of taking out the trash, a glass spaghetti sauce jar was dropped and shattered.  Tiny glass pieces scattered all over.  Thankfully it was empty and had been rinsed out.  But still, picking up glass, sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping the floor took quite a while.  Hopefully we got it all.

Apart from that, I was able to log into FFXIV for a bit.  I advanced the story slightly and am now 36 in my primary class (bard).  Mostly I worked on filling today’s supply orders since they’re good for a nice chunk of crafting experience.

Source: Thalen Speaks
Quiet Day

AggroChat #19 – Adventures in GenCon

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This week we have our full cast as we welcome Kodra back from GenCon.  He talks about all of the LARPs that he played and the conclusion of his journey into the My Little Pony card game competition.  Then we talk some MMO design especially as realted to the awesome community that has flourished in Final Fantasy XIV.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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