The ending to the intro of Emily Wilson's translation of the the Iliad goes hard. Yes, this is a wall of text post, but its worth your time. The whole intro builds to this moment:
"But over the past century, in the wake of the two world wars and amid shifting attitudes towards masculinity and heroism, The Iliad has received renewed attention. Recent interpretations often view The Iliad as a poem less of glory than of mourning. In its attentiveness to the visual as well as auditory qualities of the world, The Iliad can feel entirely at home in our own image-focused media landscape. Twenty-first-century readers and listeners may see the inequalities in the poem’s social worlds with particular clarity. The emotional intensity of the poem’s representation of conflict feels in tune with the anguish and partisanship of our era.
We are now in a period of crisis not for a specific nation but for humanity, inhabiting a planet that is becoming less and less habitable. A new kind of heartbreak can be felt in The Iliad’s representation of a city in its last days, of triumphs and defeats and struggles and speeches that take place in a city that will soon be burned to the ground, in a landscape that will soon be flooded by all the rivers, in a world where soon, no people will live at all, and there will be no more stories and no more names.
You already know the story. You will die. Everyone you love will also die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand this unfathomable truth again and again, as if for the very first time."
...and then she just dives into her translation notes as if she didn’t just toss you an existential crisis on some random Thursday in March.
The Hierophant reversed is tax audit of the Major Arcana.
The Hierophant reversed is tax audit of the Major Arcana.
The Hierophant (by Emily Lubanko) represents institutions and hierarchy, and all the good and bad that can lead from them. Institutions (both formal and informal) are how we build pyramids and power plants, but they can also systematically destroy by extracting every ounce of creativity, wealth, and life from, well, everything. Institutions are tools: it’s how they are wielded at every level that makes the difference. Never forget that people in the institutions are the ones making the decisions, and good or bad, they can be held to account.
Reversed, the Hierophant brings out the worst in institutions. If you are living in the United States,
it's very Trump administration chic. Our collective power is used for grievance, violence, and pain. On a personal level, you are getting crushed by the state. Power structures can’t focus on everyone all the time, but for whatever reason, they are focused on you or people like you. Maybe it's time to duck until this all blows over, but more likely, it's time to figure out how to escape or fight.
The Allbright (by Annalise, from the Allyman’s Booster Pack#2) is going to lead you out of this. She is the knowledge, light, and hope all rolled into one. She is never far from those willing to ask for help. She carries the knowledge of the past with her so that she can aid you with your quest. Institutions wear you down to compliance, and to them, hope is a dangerous thing.
There are a million ways to fight the machine. Think of all the things that people have done to fight institutions: subtle and overt. Even the smallest, safest changes can begin to throw sand in the gears of the Hierophant’s machine.
Temperance is back, but this time right side up. Again, this is the Flux Arcana version. It’s just a bit more death-like than the RWS standard. Temperance in this spread says you are looking at issues from both sides and holding the potential paradoxes of life. The card shows all those wonderful metaphors of balance. The feet are on the ground and also in the water. Water is poured between two vessels, etc. When thinking about what to do and how to hold compassion for others, many viewpoints are a wonderful tool to navigate the nuances of life.
But then there is the Queen of Swords (from Lubanko Tarot), back from her restful vacation. She stands juxtaposed to Temperance. While she appreciates the wisdom of viewing the world from all angles, she is the one who draws up boundaries and eggs you on to make a decision. You know yourself, you’ve done the research, and it is time, she says, to make that call. Yes, that means choosing a perspective, making a choice, and taking a chance. As the blood on our queen can attest, making a decision can hurt. But it’s well worth it. She tells you that the only way to lose is not to play.
In short, you have done the analysis and put yourself in an open mindset, and that has served you, but now is the time to make a call. Pick a decision that you have worked on but not yet made, and make it. Sometimes, a good choice now is better than a perfect one tomorrow. Now is the time to work through any “analysis paralysis”.
The Magician stands amidst climbing roses and blooming lilies, a robust cultivated garden they have created. A symbol for eternity is engraved over their third eye.
One hand is raised to the sky, holding a wand. The other points to the ground, where the power it draws from other worlds can be manifested. Holding the "magic" wand, the Magician can cultivate new realities. On a table before the skeleton are a mug, a coin, a knife, and a cane; the suits of the deck. These symbolize that the figure has all the materials they could need for alchemy.
This is a card of power, creativity, and initiative. It is often called the Artist's card, and as an artist it is the card I most identify with.
When the Magician card appears, think about:
how you are using your skills or could use them better
what actions you can take
if you are giving the task at hand all your focus or if you're multitasking
what effect unseen forces or magic are having on your life
If you read cards reversed, when The Magician appears it might be calling you out on:
Print Club for January is a page of skulls I drew thinking about ancestors.
I imagined everyone who came before us watching us rush and strain and panic — and all of them saying at once: please take your time. There’s nowhere to get to. There’s nothing else to be.
Just thinking about how 24.6 million pigs in the state drink ~5 gallons/day or 123 million gallons/day total. More than the 85 million used in the entire city of Des Moines at peak. (And how we don't talk about how the pigs are where the nitrates come from)
Iowa communities have been told to conserve water during the summer months. Some have dry wells, other systems fight polluted water sources.
This is being billed as a ban on "lawn watering" but it's not just that. It's no watering your vegetable or flower garden unless you stand there with a hose (for some reason that's allowable). And no splash pads or spray grounds, even as we expect a heat dome and a heat index of 103 on Saturday.
Do you know how long it takes to water even a small garden with a hand-held sprayer hose. How long I would have to stand there. I have a soaker hose irrigation system covered with mulch for additional water retention and even that's not allowed. Can't take kids to the splashpad or even fill up a kiddie pool. once again, big ag profits while we pay.
Every time I talk about how Dungeons & Dragons as a culture of play (i.e., as distinct from any particular published iteration of the game called Dungeons & Dragons) tends to put the GM in the position of doing all the actual work of making the game happen, and how the idea that only the GM has any responsibility for understanding and carrying out the rules is a big part of this, I always get jokers going "well ACTUALLY that's not true because I don't use the rules as written when I run games – I just make up the mechanics as I go."
Buddy, the notion that inventing a whole new game on the fly to suit the exact preferences of the group is an entry-level skill that ought to be expected – even demanded! – of any GM, regardless of their experience level, is itself an expression of the idea that responsibility for understanding and carrying out the rules rests solely with the GM.
Like, there's a reason D&D as a culture of play thinks it's normal for GMs to be miserably overworked and treats GM burnout as a funny joke; if it didn't, we'd have to acknowledge that something is askew.
(It's kind of perplexing that there's so much pushback to discussing this. I'm not singling D&D out as exceptionally bad. It's more common than not for popular multiplayer games to have toxic cultures of play; for many genres of video games it's practically proverbial. Heck, even for tabletop RPGs, acknowledging toxic cultures of play surrounding particular games isn't a novelty – just ask anyone who's old enough to remember what the culture of play surrounding Vampire: The Masquerade was like back in the 1990s, or any fan of the various Warhammer-adjacent RPGs today. Bring this up in the context of Dungeons & Dragons, though, and suddenly the idea that tabletop RPGs have discernible cultures of play is treated as something radical!)
I think what I'm sceptical of is that the culture of play that's being described has very much to do with the ruleset of D&D, which is the other part that gets brought in. I feel like a lot more of D&D's culture of play is about it being the default and it having the social dynamics of the default, rather than anything you'd find in the Player's Handbook.
Certainly, D&D's present culture of play doesn't originate from any particular feature of its rules, but there are a couple of areas where the dysfunctions D&D's culture of play – and specifically, its notion that understanding and carrying out the rules are the sole responsibility of the GM – get into a vicious feedback loop with its published rules.
The first is that much of D&D's putative universality is a reflection of the fact that dumping all the work of understanding and carrying out the rules on the GM renders the labour required to hack it to accommodate various premises invisible to the players.
A GM will often say "hey, I want to run a game about X, and I think system Y would be perfect for it", only to be met with insistence that the GM should "just" hack D&D to run it instead. This is almost always vastly more work from the GM's perspective than using an off-the-shelf system, but if you're coming at it from the position that the rules are solely the responsibility of the GM, asking your GM to do a very large amount of work in order to spare you, the player, a very small amount of work can start to sound reasonable.
(Heck, in my experience, some players genuinely don't realise hacking D&D for very unusual premises takes any work at all, because that side of things is completely outside their experience – the GM's labour has been rendered so invisible to them that they think it just works!)
The second is that the text of the 5th Edition in particular has a nasty habit of going on extended game-mechanical tangents which just sort of peter out with an encouragement for the GM to figure it out on their own, and offer no helpful conclusions.
There are several reasons for this, ranging from 5E's corporate mandate to be an "evergreen" D&D which appeals to fans of all previous editions equally meaning that it can never take a firm stance on what kind of game it wants to be, to lead developer Mike Mearls' bizarre belief that GMs need to be granted explicit permission by the text to make their own rulings, and that deliberately vague or incomplete rules are how the text grants this permission.
Whatever the root of it is, the upshot is that there's a lot of fairly foundational shit in 5E where the Player's Handbook says "ask your GM for the details of how this works", and the Dungeon Master's Guide, after much digression, says "I don't know, figure it out yourself". There's a chicken-or-egg argument to be had about whether this causes some players to be reluctant to engage with the rules, or merely puts roadblocks in the path of players who'd prefer to get their hands dirty, but there's definitely a self-reinforcing cycle in play.
@my-smial has told me of one way this frequently comes up with the Critical Role people; while D&D 3E offers the player a bunch of tables listing the monsters they can get from the "summon monster" spells, the 5E version simply tells players that the DM will tell them what they can summon.
So the players are constantly using summon monster; when the DM asks what they're summoning, they respond "it says you'll tell me!" and the DM's head hits the desk. Time to improvise a game balance ruling! Is summoning this monster more or less powerful than a lightning bolt? Quick, you're in the middle of combat!
Whereas in 3E, when players want to summon something, they can consult the table, pick the monster they want, and find it in the Monster Manual; no DM thinking required.
This would be bad enough if the 5E DMG had tables - or at least explicit instructions - on appropriate summons. But as far as I'm aware, it doesn't discuss the spell at all! That means it's entirely on the DM, sans guidance, in a game with a lot of options and a wide range of power levels. Whether you improvise it every time or put in the prep work to make your own version of the 3E tables, it's a lot to ask as the baseline requirement of being a DM. But I guess it's simpler from the player perspective!
Reblogging this again because D&D 5E was my introduction to tabletop games, and I have dabbled into DM-ing a few times in the past with it.
I say dabbled because even though I want to run something for real, I never have the energy or time to pour into making anything more than a one-shot.
I love what I've played of the game since I was introduced to it, but I'm not at a place where I can DM a campaign the way the game expects me to, and that's a crying shame. I'm certain there's a way for me to put some really cool sessions together, but the energy and time commitment expected of me is too large in scope.
This is without getting into trappings that many a DM experiences at some point. Stuff like the vicious cycle of worldbuilding, where you get stuck spending time and energy on details in the world that are going to be overlooked by players 90% of the time. That feeds into the habit of overpreparing, where you meticulously craft a specific encounter only for the players to go off the rails and now you have to make a new encounter on the fly.
This is part of why, for a while, I was researching other systems of play in the same vein. Pathfinder 2E, Old School Essentials, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Knave ... I even went so far as to look into older editions of Dungeons and Dragons to see if there was a system that could simplify the GM process while still scratching that DnD itch.
At the end of my journey looking through those systems, I came away with some lessons:
These games are a collaborative effort through and through. Having a good game in any system requires the whole table be willing to work together to have a good time, and expecting one player to take on the lionshare is a good way for the table to fizzle out.
Having a clear idea of the kind of game you want to play is great, but don't get so attached to that idea that you aren't willing to work within any system at all. At that point even 5E won't satisfy you.
At some point I still want to DM for 5E because there are things in that system that I do legitimately enjoy. For now though I have to go with something that isn't as demanding.
Y'know provided I can ever get time and a group to play
i think all quiet on the western front and the lord of the rings are in direct conversation with each other, as in theyre the retelling of the same war with one saying here’s what happened, we all died, and it did not matter at all and another going hush little boy, of course we won, of course your friends came back
someone should remake lord of the rings as a grandfather telling a fantasy story to his grand child with flashbacks to world war one showing the dead boys and men the characters were based on. grandpa why didn’t they just fly. because they didn’t. they didn’t.
I will never get over how Tolkien & Lewis took the horrors of war and spun them into fantasy.
Shivering in the trenches dreaming of cozy hobbit holes, shaking as bombs pockmark a forest and imagining each shallow mud-filled crater contains a new world—that maybe there are still as many beautiful things in the universe as there are bombs—that maybe the world is bigger than this moment and this ugliness and one day this will be a peaceful forest again full of small ponds.
I mean look at these photos of the shell craters in Sanctuary Woods, near Ypres Belgium and tell me it’s not the Wood Between The Worlds:
I am rarely inspired to write reviews, but middling art that could be great triggers me. Let me take you to a new dark age, in which enlightenment is replaced by superstition, rhetoric, and blind prayer. A time when humanity stands on the brink of annihilation. No, I am not talking about a conservative administration, it’s Warhammer 40k.
SPACE MARINE II is the second installment of a series I wanted to play 13 years ago, but didn’t have a PlayStation 3. Despite the resurgence of the series, SPACE MARINE is not available to run on my PS5. I’ll have to settle for the second installment. But alas, not much has changed. Here is a planet, it is in trouble, and instead of sensibly bombing the enemy, our troops, and the civilian population to zero, someone in the Imperium has decided that a rescue is in order. Enter you. Because this is grim-dark fantasy, it’s never to save civilians, it’s always for some secret, dangerous, and unpredictable weapon—time to bravely save some fancy equipment.
Gameplay
Let’s get the dumb stuff out of the way. Controls are standard: Light attack, heavy attack, parry, pew pew, and grenades. The executions are slightly too long for my taste. Very God of War with guns. The extra pistol shots are cute, but in all, it's fine. It works, nothing super innovative. I am sure if you are awesome at the game you can make it look good.
Story
Let’s talk about the story. You bought this for the vibes anyway. I find the most compelling stories are ones where outnumbered, outgunned everyman overcomes their trials and tribulations to succeed. What does it look like when a conscript with their trusty lasgun saves the day? In short, I like to root for the underdog.
In SPACE MARINE II this is not the case. You play as a titular SPACE MARINE named Titus. You are a walking brick shithouse of a soldier, capable of mowing through the enemy as if they were nothing. A single swipe of your chainsword can turn several creatures into a red paste.
Despite being unstoppable, Titus, your avatar, has a problem. At the end of the first game, his ability to save the day and resist the forces of Chaos was, according to the Imperial Inquisition, evidence of chaotic corruption. After a century or three of exile fighting in the Death Watch, he is eaten by a Tyranid. Game over.
Or is it? After a small intro, Titus is brought back with a new body and put on probation. He is a SPACE MARINE again. Titus is now more of a SPACE MARINE than the other SPACE MARINES as his new body is a “Primaris” a better version of the classic “firstborn” marine. I had to look this all up.
Despite my love of the underdog, I am down for the occasional power fantasy. However, this power fantasy is a walking contradiction. Titus isn’t acting on his own accord. He is merely the agent for the contradictory, failable, and paranoid Imperium. You can crush waves of Tyranid Gaunts, but only when and where you are commanded. Presumably, deviating from standard procedure pisses off your probation officer. This runs afoul of the power in the power fantasy. Part of being the most powerful ass-kicker in the room means that you don’t have to listen to anybody (see Doom Eternal, ”You can’t just shoot a hole into the surface of Mars”).
This creates a contradiction that makes for an unsatisfying story. You don’t feel like you are overcoming anything difficult beyond pointing the bigger gun at the bigger Tyranid, and you don’t get to live out a true power fantasy, you just want approval from the people in your organization.
Adding to your list of burdens, you are also at the beck and call of the Adeptus Mechanicus, a caste of IT professionals that make everything in the Imperium work. They also get into trouble searching the aforementioned artifacts.
Thus Titus is running from Macguffin to Macguffin doing as he is told like a good boy until it is revealed that the true enemy isn’t the swarm of Tyranids, but Chaos. Because it’s always Chaos. In the same scene, Titus concludes the Adeptus Mechanicus must be fucking around with a Chaos-based artifact (it is same one Titus encountered in SPACE MARINE, I guess?). So, after the dramatic reveal, Titus needs to call the boss of his SPACE MARINE chapter. The Tyranids are quickly defeated off-screen so you can make that intra-dimensional equivalent of a phone call to tell your dad you don’t like what IT is doing at work.
On a personal level, Titus has to keep his probation secret from his buddies who keep asking him reasonable questions like “How do you know all this?”. This comes to a head when Titus complains to his team about his Captain not giving him more mission-pertinent information. One of his buddies pops the same question to Titus: “You know you keep information we believe pertinent from us, just like the Captain is keeping from you.” You can almost hear the therapist hopefully say, “I feel like we are getting close to a breakthrough.”
Titus then tells his buddies to shut up.
That is as close as our heroes get to communicating important and relevant information that could save their lives. If you have made it this far, it slowly begins to dawn on you that most cockups in the Imperium could be stopped with direct communication and a few “I feel” statements. That’s girm-dark for you.
The game wraps up from there. Daddy shows up, and you all work together to defeat chaos in a few set-piece battles that are not as epic as the game is telling you they are. I do respect the developer for making it weird. In the end, Titus uses his special resistance to Chaos to save the day and is told that he is a good boy. As a reward, he gets to go on an off-screen special mission.
In short, the story is fine. But the worst kind of fine. The kind that could have had a well-written plot, fully developed characters, and an interesting enemy, but ultimately chose to recycle tropes from that universe. I may be a filthy Warhammer casual, but I know a Necron temple when I see one. I had a fleeting amount of excitement thinking we would get to fight Necrons. Nope.
But there are moments. There are these tiny moments that show the developers cared about the source material. The Imperial Guard bow to you when you walk by, there are tiny little rituals whenever any important computer is used. The Astropath cutting themselves with a small bone before sending a message was a particularly interesting moment. As well as the “empty” armor when you execute a member of the Thousand Sons. Late in the game, the SPACE MARINES argued over whether to execute some guardsmen who were stunned by a powerful Chaos warp spell. As a testament to the fractured Imperial bureaucracy, the SPACE MARINES eventually decided that these executions were, administratively, outside their jurisdiction.
But those story moments don’t make up for this odd mix of a power fantasy without the power and a midtier story.
Bottom Line: Should I buy this?
Great question. This review is for me. I am reconciling my feelings from being vaguely disappointed. If you love Warhammer, go for it. You’ll like it. Otherwise, it’s merely fine. Buy it on sale if you want to play it.
I am rarely inspired to write reviews, but middling art that could be great triggers me.
gamechangershow
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
dailybridgerton
