#‘no one is allowed to die on my watch’ is like a central tenet of Batman

[cologona]

The mistake Bruce makes in UTRH is one he’s well known for- it’s hubris. As experienced a vigilante as Batman is, as clever and strong and resourceful.. he isn’t God. Sometimes the risks he takes to win perfectly wont work out, and it’s worth asking at what point is taking the risk itself a moral wrong rather than a right?

The shock value of UTRH’s ending is very important to me. Imho not only does the finale need to be a tragedy, it needs to make the reader recoil. Judd Winick didn’t know if Jason was going to be kept around or allowed to die when he wrote the story, so in lieu of there being any consequences for Batman’s decisions in-universe (that’s just not how the comics work) the impact has to be on the reader.

And well. We’re currently 3 reboots and counting past UTRH where it’s not even canon anymore, Bruce has done plenty of other wacky shit, and yet this batarang is still a primary topic when it comes to Jason-Bruce dynamics. It’s fantastic.

The Batarang-Incident with Jason and Bruce honestly shows just how much DC writers hold shock value over proper characterization.

You mean to tell me that an experienced vigilante would choose to disarm a person with a gun by injuring them (and thus risking the chance of them pulling the trigger due to shock), instead of getting the gun away from them in the first place?

And you mean to tell me that this experienced vigilante (who has also been shown using his Batarangs to disarm gunmen by destroying their guns multiple times before) would take one look at the person who he considered a son — despite all of their recent fights — and risk a possibly fatal wound ?

Yeah, it's not adding up.

[alittlewhump]

Unbidden - Act 5, chapter 3

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Content warnings: fantasy religion, death mention

Morgan's golem eventually warned him of people approaching. He didn't need to look to guess it would be Blaise and Icharion. It had not been an especially dignified departure. Blaise would have questions, and would have dragged him along with her to satisfy the sentry. Morgan took a steadying breath and raised his head. This conversation might as well happen now. He made a cursory effort to wipe the tears from his cheeks, not that it would make it any less obvious that he'd been weeping.

Icharion was the first to speak once they had rounded the corner and spotted him. "It was cruel of Master Ordan to lie to you as he did," he said stiffly. That didn't sound right at all. Morgan hadn't known Icharion especially well, but he hadn't been one for that sort of reflection. It was the sort of sentiment he would expect from Blaise, though. He glanced over and saw her watching him intently.

"We both know that cruelty was not the Master's intention," he said, addressing Icharion. "And we both know he was in the right."

Icharion exhaled. "I told you," he said to Blaise. She elbowed him.

"There's nothing right about what he did. Don't sell yourself short," she said to Morgan. "You've gotten so much stronger since we met. Just look at everything we've done together."

"That has nothing to do with it," Morgan replied.

"I told her, she wouldn't listen-" Icharion was silenced by another elbow to the ribs.

"Explain it to me, then," Blaise said, crouching in front of Morgan to look him in the face. "Because it sounds like this Ordan just sent you out to die without even telling you what you did to deserve it, and I really don't understand how the two of you seem to think that's justified."

"You know we don't perceive death the same way you do," Morgan reminded her. She nodded grudgingly. "Master Ordan's primary concern is the maintenance of our Order. Our numbers are few enough, but even a small tree can benefit from pruning its weakest branches." That had been one of the master's favourite metaphors. He'd usually used it in the context of seeking out weakness within oneself, but it seemed apt enough here too.

"Yeah, that's pretty much what he said, but you aren't weak." Her voice was rising, the frustration clear on her face.

"I am weak in the ways that matter to the Order," Morgan explained. The heat of shame prickled at his neck. He had no desire to enumerate his failings to her here, in front of someone who could verify the precise degree of his inadequacy. But Blaise was a force to be reckoned with, and he couldn't let her focus her anger on the Order. They were important, even if he was not, so he tried to explain. He started reluctantly with the most fundamental issue, the lowest bar he'd failed to surpass.

"In order to uphold the Balance, we must be objective in our judgment. And we cannot do that if we are beholden to emotions. It's some of our most basic and essential training, and I have never been able to master it properly." He could hear the bitterness creeping into his voice, feel the familiar weight curling in his gut. Even now he was failing.

"So, let me get this straight. You have feelings, like a regular person, and for some reason you think that's so bad you deserve to die for it." Blaise cocked an eyebrow at him. "It's not like that's something you can just turn off."

"I should be able to. It's one of our central tenets. We must be able to separate ourselves from our emotions so we can remain clear-headed. I truly thought I had myself under control when I set out, but... oh." He trailed off as the pieces finally clicked into place, tracing an unmistakable pattern back to its origin. It had felt like it had finally started getting easier by the time he'd left on his quest. The doubt he'd had in himself had been erased by the Master's assurance that he was ready. And he had found it to be possible, if not exactly easy, right up to a very specific point.

Proper control had been impossible ever since the fight against Andariel. Whose venom had caused a lasting change in his sense of pain, lingering even after all physical traces of the wound were gone. Permanent, Jamella had said. And Cain had also mentioned that Andariel could cause emotional sensitivity. So this, too, would be permanent. A heavy feeling settled over Morgan, coming to rest behind his ribs. The rest of his shortcomings were insignificant in comparison to this. There was no hope of redemption. It would take years more dedicated training to overcome this weakness, if it was even possible. And he had nowhere to train, no mentor to correct him when he inevitably strayed. He couldn't return to the Order, not after the story Ordan had woven. Icharion's reaction would be amplified a hundredfold. Why had he-

"Speak, Morgan. You're inside your own head." Icharion's voice was not unkind, but Blaise shot him a dirty look.

"I was clearly mistaken. I just don't understand why Master Ordan lied about the request," Morgan said, voice so low it was nearly a whisper. "He only had to ask. I would have gone willingly." If the goal had simply been to remove him, that could have easily been accomplished in a number of simpler ways. Everything else made sense. Morgan looked up at Icharion, half hoping to find an answer, half dreading what it might be.

"Politics, most likely. Any expulsion from within the Necropolis must be approved by the council, and Jostan is too troubled by our numbers to let anyone go, no matter the reason. No one would have believed you decided to go of your own volition, and Ordan has too many eyes on him to stage a convincing accident."

"Ah." Morgan looked back down. That explanation made sense enough, he supposed. He had simply been so intolerable, so far from adequate that it had forced the Master's hand. The man was fiercely loyal to the brotherhood, if rather unyielding in his views. His decisions were unswayable, and clearly he'd decided - he'd seen - that there could be no place for someone as weak as Morgan in the priesthood, no matter how earnest his devotion.

"Hang on," Blaise said, "when you talk about 'going', do you actually mean-"

"Dying, yes," Icharion interrupted. "It is an honour to lay down one's life in service to the Order." It was an honour he would never know, Morgan realized suddenly. That twisted like a knife.

"You're really not convincing me that any of this is okay," Blaise said.

"You don't need to believe the truth," Icharion replied. "It will be true all the same, with or without your approval."

"Blaise," Morgan said quickly, "wait." She looked ready to explode, glaring murderously at Icharion. Morgan tried to find the right words, ones she might take heed of. "Master Ordan was right. I cannot serve the Order of Rathma. I am not capable of meeting their standards. He saw that and acted in their best interest because that is his duty. The only fault here is mine. I should have seen it too." Should have recognized the truth and gone long ago, saved them all the trouble.

"That's stupid. The whole time I've known you, everything you've done has been in the name of the Balance. I've watched you work yourself nearly to death for it, and you're telling me that's not good enough? Bullshit."

"I've no doubt his intentions are pure," Icharion said with surprising gentleness, "but effort alone cannot overcome inability. Not all people are capable of all things. Few are suited to our work, fewer still are able to carry it out."

"Bullshit," Blaise repeated, but it was quieter this time. "That's not fair."

"It is important work," Morgan said. "It cannot be entrusted to those unfit to do it."

"And you really believe that includes you? Even after all the shit you've been through for it? After how hard you've worked?"

"I do." Morgan closed his eyes against the surge of emotions that swelled up at the finality of that admission. He had no choice but to accept the truth. It was nothing new, after all. Hardly the first time his best efforts had proven to be insufficient. That didn't do much to soften the blow. At least his ineptitude was likely to have prevented him from doing any real damage to anything in his efforts, he thought dully.

"I could witness your departure," Icharion offered after a time, breaking the silence. "We are far from home. The rules would allow it." It was an unexpected gesture, permitted but not necessary by the laws of the Order. Morgan studied his face for a moment. He found nothing; of course Icharion could make himself unreadable, like a priest ought to be able to do. There was an undeniable thread of kindness in the offer, though. At least it could be done properly. That would be a small comfort.

"I would appreciate that very much," Morgan said, getting to his feet. Blaise sprang up as well as Icharion drew his sword.

"Whoa, whoa, hang on a second here. Somebody tell me what's happening. I'm not going to let-"

"It's not that kind of departure," Icharion interrupted her. "Sit back down." Blaise bristled.

"It's just a ceremony," Morgan reassured her. "An oath. Nobody dies." She seemed slightly mollified but did not sit down, instead crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes. She would let them proceed, then.

Morgan fished out a vial of oil from his chest pocket. Uncorking it, he pinched the tip of Icharion's proffered blade with his thumb and forefinger and squeezed several drops of blood in to mingle with the oil. Then he poured out the contents in a rough circle around himself. The circle glowed faintly as he imbued it with intent. He had never seen this particular ceremony, but the steps were as familiar as all the others he'd ever committed to memory.

"On my heart's blood I swear I shall never again interfere in the Order of Rathma, nor in the affairs of the dead." The words left a heavy feeling in his chest, but it was a little better than the jagged hurt that already sat there.

"On your heart's blood it is witnessed," Icharion replied, "and so are you bound." He traced a line under the circle with the bloodied tip of his blade. It drew in the light from the circle, which faded to nothing as he dismissed the magic with his free hand. Morgan wiped his fingers on the hem of his shirt.

"Thank you for that," he said quietly. Icharion nodded an acknowledgement as Morgan handed over the rest of his ceremonial oils. He no longer had a use for them. A thick, protective numbness was starting to settle in, blunting the world's edges.

"So that's it? You're just... done?" Blaise hadn't moved, still regarding them suspiciously.

"It is a very straightforward oath," Icharion pointed out as he wiped his blade clean and returned it to its sheath.

"Oh, fuck off."

"I will continue to do my part in the effort against Baal," Morgan clarified, the words feeling far away and hazy. "But on my own behalf, now. I think I'd like to join you in battle tomorrow." He could still work toward a purpose, still make himself useful. He needed that. To hold him together.

Blaise slung an arm around his shoulders. "I'll be glad to have you by my side." Morgan leaned into her gratefully. "And I think the barbarians are going to like your golems. If you're still..." she broke off, glancing over at the one still standing watch.

"He cannot raise the dead, but the earth is still fair game," Icharion confirmed. "Now if you're quite finished, I'm going back inside." He turned and left without further comment.

"You should go back with him," Morgan said. He pulled away from Blaise, but her hand lingered on his shoulder.

"Hey," she said softly, "are you... okay? I mean, fuck, obviously not, this is... I know the Order is important to you. Can I help? Somehow?" Once again, she was looking at him with earnest concern. He should have felt something about that, probably, but the numbness was there instead.

"I don't know," Morgan replied. "I'm going to finish checking the wall for damage," he found himself saying, "and then I think I'm going to meditate." Being fully rested would be a good idea. He'd been getting so much sleep recently, he didn't need any more and he certainly didn't want to risk the nightmares. But he found he didn't want to be conscious either. Though the specific techniques had been developed by the Order, the act of meditation was hardly exclusive to them. It wouldn't interfere with anything. He could still have that little peace, at least.

Blaise squeezed him gently. "Think about eating something too." That was probably also a good idea, but less appealing. He nodded anyway. "I'll leave you to it, then," she said, then followed Icharion's path back toward the gates.

There was still more to do, Morgan reminded himself as he walked slowly around the wall. Tyrael had bidden them to slay Baal. He still had a purpose, for now. Between that and the numbness, it was enough to propel him through the rest of the day's actions. His body patched a few more damaged spots in the wall, and put some food into itself, and found a bed to lay itself in, and then it rested as his mind drifted in meditation, carefully focused on absolutely nothing at all.

[razieltwelve]

Thunder and Paperwork (RWBY AU Snippet)

Note: This is a followup to I Am Become Death.

X     X     X

Death was in the middle of an intriguing conversation about the myths and legends surrounding the ancient origins of the Grimm on Remnant when a vast mushroom cloud began to rise on the horizon. The fact that the mushroom cloud was wreathed in lightning and radiating divine power like a beacon left in her little doubt as to whom was responsible.

“What is that?” Weiss shrieked, leaping to her feet and pointing out the window. The mushroom cloud had expanded, turning the entire western sky into a sea of ash and lightning.

Death took a moment to savour Weiss’s expression. Her Weiss had often had the exact same expression, usually after Zwei had done something obnoxious. “I think I know who is responsible.” She turned to regard Team JNPR who had arrived not long ago. “I think it would be a good idea for us - all of us - to go meet her.”

“Uh… that’s pretty far away,” Ruby said, before adding. “Which means that mushroom cloud is pretty big.”

“She could crack a planet in half if she felt like it.” Death raised one eyebrow. “And do you not think I could reach that place in an instant if I wished to? I am Death. I have overseen the passage of countless aeons. I have walked the roads to eternity and beyond. I am privy to knowledge that would shatter the minds of lesser gods, never mind mortals. I can get us there in an instant if I wished to.”

Yang rolled her eyes. “You know, you really do like being dramatic, don’t you?”

Death shrugged. “When you get to my age, it’s the simple things in life that keep you going.” She raised one hand and prepared to snap her fingers.

“Wait!” Yang shouted. “You’re not about to kill us, are you?”

Death chuckled. “While I could indeed kill everyone in this room with a snap of my fingers, I’m not about to do that.” She snapped her fingers. “Anyway, here we are.”

They had reappeared in the midst of a vast wasteland of blasted, melting rock that seemed to go on forever. Huge clouds of dust and debris billowed outward, and tendrils of electricity crackled through the air. Naturally, the first thing Team RWBY and Team JNPR did was run for shelter.

“Oh…” Death sighed. “That’s right. Mortals.” She snapped her fingers again. “There. I’ve granted you some measure of power to enhance your durability so that you don’t die while we’re here.” She paused. “Although you might want to watch where you’re stepping. Nora has a tendency to be a little destructive.” She gestured, and the melting rock around them instantly cooled into a shimmering, glass-like material. “If you see a volcano, stay away from it.”

“Nora?” Nora perked up. “There’s a goddess version of me?”

Death smiled indulgently at the redhead. “Why, yes, there is. In fact, she is one of my oldest and dearest friends even if she can be quite troublesome.” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “She’s actually responsible for more accidental smitings than any other god.”

Ren sighed. “So… you’re saying she goes overboard and blasts things without necessarily thinking it through?”

“That is a fine way of putting it.” Death stepped neatly to one side as a bolt of lightning struck the ground where she’d been standing, revealing a taller version of Nora. Much like Death, this Nora radiated divine majesty and power. Electricity crackled over her form, and she wielded an immense hammer with the sort of casual ease that spoke volumes about her strength.

“Aw… you dodged,” Goddess Nora whined. “I was just trying to be friendly.”

“You were going to tackle me with enough force to pulverise a mountain.”

Goddess Nora stuck out her tongue. “As if that would have actually hurt you.” Her gaze swept over the group. “So… we’re stuck in another world somehow with different versions of ourselves and… oh.” She pointed. “They have a Ren here.”

Nora - normal Nora - immediately grabbed Ren. “My Ren!”

“Hah!” Goddess Nora threw her head back and laughed. “Your Ren? I approve! Never share your Ren! I never did.” She winked and vanished, only to reappear beside Nora. “Although… I do have a few suggestions about what you could do with your Ren…”

Goddess Nora had barely started speaking when Yang hastily put her hands over Ruby’s ears as everyone else except Death turned varying shades of red. Even Blake, acknowledge connoisseur of smut and filthy literature, could scarcely believe what she was hearing - even as she took mental notes.

“Is that even possible?” Nora squeaked.

Goddess Nora struck a pose. “On my name as Nora, Goddess of Storms, Smiting Things, and General Awesomeness, I swear that as long as you’re flexible enough and he’s got the stamina, it’s not only possible but also extremely pleasurable and definitely repeatable. Why, my Ren could go for hours.”

Nora turned to Ren. “I’m going to up my flexibility training. You need to improve your stamina.”

Ren’s mouth opened and closed. “…”

“Anyway,” Goddess Nora said. “Why are there Grimm here? Didn’t we throw them into the Abyss aeons ago? I mean… I killed the ones I saw, but I can sense many more of them on this world.” She paused. “And what world is this?”

“This world is called Remnant, and I am still working to understand how we arrived here,” Death replied.

“Hmmm…” Goddess Nora pointed. “Look! They’ve got a Weiss here too!” She nudged Death and gave her a grin “Are you going to claim this one too?”

“Hey!” Ruby jabbed one finger at Goddess Nora. “Don’t tell her to claim my Weiss!”

“Your Weiss?” Weiss shrieked. “Since when am I your Weiss?”

“Give it two years tops,” Death muttered.

“What?” Weiss squawked. “What?”

“She seems kind of more squawky than your Weiss,” Goddess Nora said. “A bit crabbier too.”

“I am not crabby!” Weiss blurted.

“There must be a breach,” Death said to Goddess Nora, calmly reaching out with one hand to prevent Weiss from getting any closer to Goddess Nora. “Somehow, they’re getting from the Abyss to this world. However, I haven’t been able to locate the breach, and using my powers to do so could be… unfortunate. I could break their universe.”

“Which would be bad,” Yang pointed out. “Very, very bad.”

Death gave her a bland look. “Even if your universe imploded, I would be fine.”

“I would probably be fine,” Goddess Nora said. “And if I got worried, I’d just grab Death’s leg and I’d be okay.”

Yang’s face twitched and she seemed to be strongly considering standing next to Death just in case the universe imploded in the next ten seconds.

“What we need,” Death said. “Is a god who specialises in systems and order. They would have powers more suited to identifying the breach since it would stick out to them like a sore thumb.”

“Systems and order?” Goddess Nora frowned. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Glynda anywhere, have you?”

“No.” Death turned to Ruby. “In the meantime, perhaps we should go speak to that headmaster of yours. He sounds as though he would know more about the origins of the Grimm.”

X     X     X

In a certain bandit camp…

Weiss, Goddess of Bureaucracy, was feeling particularly crabby. She had been in the middle of approving more gods to watch over mortals since the recent outbreak of plague had thinned their numbers somewhat when she had suddenly reappeared in an unfamiliar world. To make matters worse, a bunch of bandits had the sheer audacity to point their weapons at her.

“Are you pointing a sword at me?” Weiss asked. “Do you even know who I am?”

The leader of the bandits, a woman with dark hair and crimson eyes, laughed. “Do you know who I am?” She smirked. “You must be out of your mind, Schnee, if you don’t know who I am.”

“Schnee?” Weiss pushed her chair away from her desk - both of which had made the trip with her - and stood to her full height. “It is very clear that you do not know whom you speak to, mortal. Allow me to educate you.” Her power flared and mountains of books fell from the sky, crushing the majority of the bandits. “I am Weiss, Goddess of Bureaucracy. You know those laws the gods are supposed to follow? I wrote them. You know those laws that mortals have to live by? I wrote those too. And you know that paperwork everyone has to fill out for everything? I devised it.”

The bandit leader gaped at her crushed comrades and took a slow step back. A huge stone tablet with one of the central tenets of Divine Law thundered into the ground behind her before vast chains made of glowing light and forged into the words of yet more laws bounds her to the stone. “What… are you?”

“You must be deaf as well as stupid.” Weiss rolled her eyes. “Honestly, banditry? What kind of career is that. All you do is make you make trouble.” More bandits rushed at her only be strangled to death by seemingly unbreakable sheets of paper. Weiss scowled. “Hmph… don’t think you’re getting off so lightly.” As the bandits’ souls rose from their bodies, they were confronted by pile after pile of paperwork that needed to be filled out in triplicate. “You don’t get to go to the afterlife until you finish filling those out, and don’t even think of trying to flee. You can’t go anywhere - at all - until you’re finished.”

“What… the…”

“Since you’re the leader of this… band of idiots,” Weiss said. “I suspect you know more about this world than them. Tell me everything, like why Grimm from the Abyss are here.” She smiled thinly. “Or stay quiet.” She raised one hand and more paperwork appeared. “And I can have you filling out paperwork for the next ten million years.”

X     X     X

Author’s Notes

I think it’s worth pointing out here that Death and Goddess Nora come from the same AU. However, Bureaucracy Weiss comes from a different AU. The bandit leader is, of course, Raven who for once in her life cannot escape paperwork.

You can find me on fanfiction.net, AO3, and Amazon.

[news4dzhozhar]

I FIRST MET Dzhokhar “Jahar” Tsarnaev in seventh grade, on the basketball court at the Cambridge YMCA in Central Square, where I played on weekdays & in a Saturday league. He went to the gym to use the weight room & shoot around. I disregarded him  —  he sucked at basketball.

Basketball helped me feel like an American, instead of a Muslim whose single mother dragged him here from Morocco looking for a better life, then worried constantly that we wouldn’t find it. Before basketball, I didn’t really fit in. I wasn’t particularly smart or witty. Worse, I had started second grade in Cambridge the very same month that the Twin Towers fell. On the playground, kids would call me “sand [expletive]” “Saddam Hussein’s son,” or “Abu,” after Aladdin’s monkey. One kid nicknamed me “Unicef,” which was brilliant, in a way: It rhymed with my name & alluded to my African heritage, financial situation, & emergent unibrow. When we were a little older, kids would come up to me, place fake “bombs” on my body & then run away making ticking noises. I got into a fair amount of fights until my mother, who worked three jobs, told me I had to stop. Even if it meant saying nothing when bullies taunted me, I had to exercise self-control. It felt completely debilitating.

My mom always made me stay in the apartment until I finished my homework. But she agreed that as long as I kept my grades up, I could play basketball after school. I began spending hours on courts across Cambridge. This freedom allowed me to meet a slew of people who helped me develop as a young man & truly feel a part of the culture of Cambridge. As I improved, I gained confidence, sociability, & friends.

I met Jahar again in high school, when we enrolled in the same lifeguarding course in my sophomore year, his junior year. Lifeguards were paid well for minimal effort: You sit in a chair & watch people swim, or so we thought. We were actually terrible swimmers, but our teacher stressed that if we failed during a rescue attempt, people could die. So we learned how to breathe while swimming with our heads in the water, & swam endless laps to get in shape. We took turns “drowning” at the bottom of the pool, holding our breath & waiting to be “rescued.” Jahar & I learned to trust one another in the pool — and that trust soon extended beyond class. After we became certified, a group of us from the class applied to be lifeguards at Harvard University during the summer of 2010. To our surprise, we each landed positions.

Jahar & I became part of a small group that would gather at “808,” a tall apartment building off Memorial Drive overlooking the Charles River. After dark, we frequented a party spot nearby that we referred to as the Riv. We were all classmates, peers, co-workers, & good friends who shared common interests. We called ourselves the Sherm Squad. We didn’t know that “Sherm” referred to Nat Sherman cigarettes dipped into liquid PCP (I didn’t even know what PCP was). All we knew was the word Sherm had a negative connotation. We used it to mean someone who messed up a lot; we called it being a Sherm. I felt Jahar & the Sherm Squad accepted me unconditionally; they became my home base of friends, almost an adopted family

My real family’s life centered on Islam. I was raised to follow the teaching of the Koran & the five pillars of Islam, which boil down to self-discipline, love for yourself & toward others, & growing your relationship with God. We typically went to the mosque on Prospect Street twice a week, plus whenever my mother forced me to come to some event she’d volunteered for. I never looked forward to it. Men & women separate when they enter the mosque, which drove home my lack of a father or other male role models (I have an older brother, but we haven’t talked in years). So I would sit by myself or with someone else I knew who didn’t want to be there, engaging only when the call for prayer was sung.

One Friday near the end of sophomore year, my mother yelled at me to go to prayer.

When I walked in, I did a double take  —  Jahar was sitting there, listening intently to the imam. We had been hanging out all that year & he had never mentioned being Muslim. I picked my way through the large crowd sitting on the patterned carpet & squeezed into a spot next to him. “What are you doing here?” I whispered. “You’re not supposed to be here!

He chuckled and whispered back: “I’ll tell you after.”

After we prayed, he told me his family were also Muslim immigrants who expected him be a model Muslim. We both were trying to maintain an image as wholesome Muslim youths at home while being normal American teenagers away from it.

Balancing our family & American lives was stressful. As a junior, I played point guard on Cambridge Rindge & Latin School’s famed basketball team, and Jahar, a senior, was the wrestling team’s co-captain. During the fierce month of Ramadan or on the fast day before Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, we might endure grueling sports workouts on empty stomachs & no water. At least we could complain to each other.

Maintaining separate Muslim & American lives sometimes meant keeping secrets from & even lying to those closest to us about our other life. We were shamed just for being Muslim by strangers, the media, & even some of our peers, just as our Muslim families shamed us when we were caught committing a sin. Jahar & I shared countless hours toking herb, hanging out, & hitting social events. We lived near each other, & often walked home together from parties. We’d hit Cambridge Street, dap each other up with a handclap and bro hug, then head off to our Muslim lives.

He was fun to be around  —  always cracking jokes, coming up with things to do. He was smart, warm, respectful & a good listener; and many of us admired his ability to “code switch,” moving effortlessly between social crowds & people of different races. He was also adept academically, holding his own in honors & Advanced Placement classes. He was generous, too. Whenever I ran short of funds, he’d give me money for lunch & crack “Stop being a broke boy!” in a way I found endearing.

Sometimes, when we were hanging out, he’d get calls from his older brother, Tamerlan, telling him to get home. Jahar mostly heeded these requests without question. (He admired his older brother, and I envied their seeming closeness.) At one point, Jahar told me that his family was arranging a marriage for him & he was considering it. All I could say was, “Well, it’s your life, bro.”

* *

IN SENIOR YEAR, my priorities were playing basketball, finding the right college, my fantasy basketball team, girls, watching the Celtics, partying with friends, the prom, & making sure to get my homework done. In the secular, diverse melting pot that is Cambridge, I had my American life at school & my Muslim life at home. Adhering to the tenets of Islam, especially the daily prayers, was a struggle, & it didn’t help that Jahar, one of my main confidantes, was off at college.

My mother still expected me to act like a strict Muslim, even though by now I was really only going to the mosque on the major holy days. She forbade me from attending “unwholesome” social gatherings, including school dances & any event held at the home of a female. I was not to swear, use drugs or alcohol, or flirt, among other vices. My mother knew little of what I actually did when I left the house, since I usually climbed out my bedroom window after she had gone to bed. But she often guessed at what I was up to, & frequently berated me as unworthy.

I was much more interested in my American life, where religion was immaterial. You were judged on your social standing, whether your personality added life to the party, and how you expressed yourself through fashion or music. When Jahar was back from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on breaks, it seemed like we picked up right where we left off, cruising the city with the homies in his green Honda, looking for a party. My future felt bright. I was going to attend Bentley University, & become an entrepreneur. I had fulfilled my mother’s American-immigrant dream of getting into college & building a real life in America.

* * *

DURING MY FRESHMAN YEAR at Bentley, I realized that I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in school. I took a leave during second semester & went back to Cambridge.

I was at a friend’s house on April 15, 2013, when the bombs went off on Boylston Street. We ended up on a nearby rooftop, watching the commotion — the helicopters scouring the city & flashing police lights everywhere. I felt angry & under attack. I wanted the monsters who had committed this atrocity to get what they deserved.

On the 19th, I was at another friend’s house and still up at 3 a.m. when I got a call. “Turn on the news!” my friend said. They were broadcasting a photo of the possible suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing. “Just look at the picture, fam,” he said to me.

I looked at the blurry image on screen. “What am I supposed to be looking at, bro? I don’t know who that is.”

“Yo, doesn’t he look like Jahar!”

I thought that was outrageous. I fell asleep on the couch, & the next morning I woke up to see my friends huddled around the TV. I had never seen kids my age so absorbed in the morning news. I wondered if maybe a late spring snowstorm was approaching. They told me Cambridge residents had been asked to stay inside, and it did sort of feel like a snow day.

Suddenly, Jahar’s face appeared on the screen — there was no mistaking him this time. He was the bombing suspect still at large, the anchors said. Aside from the sound crackling on the TV, the room was dead silent. I felt like 10,000 volts of electricity were coursing through my body. It had to be a mistake. The Jahar I knew wouldn’t even do something mean, let alone commit an act of terrorism.

One of the girls’ cellphones rang; the call was from a TV newsroom where her sister’s friend was working. As our friend answered questions, her name appeared on the screen & we heard her voice come from the television. Within minutes, the doorbell rang. Our high school principal came into the house, along with two FBI agents wearing bulletproof vests. The FBI agents said they were looking for Jahar, and collected our cellphones. They had us sit in the living room & pulled us into the kitchen one by one to question us.

It didn’t take long for one of the FBI agents to step in the room and say, “To save time, which one of you knew him the best?” I raised my hand. In the kitchen, they asked what I knew about the bombing  —  nothing  —  where I thought Jahar was, whom he might try to contact. I answered their questions as best I could, and then they left.

Much later on that surreal day, a group of us were walking around Central Square, saying almost nothing. A pizza shop had its TV on & that’s where we saw a news update: A body had been found in a boat in Watertown, it said. Though we’d later learn he’d been captured alive, at that moment we believed our friend was dead. I remember a man riding toward us on his bike screaming like some sort of modern-day Paul Revere: “They caught him! They caught the bomber!”

This infuriated us, and we started screaming insults & epithets at him. I’ll never forget his shocked expression. That’s probably how most people reacted over the next few days when some of us defended Jahar, saying he was a good kid. But really, that’s the Jahar we knew.

* * *

SOON WE KNEW THE FACTS of the despicable acts Jahar committed with his brother, Tamerlan. We witnessed the heartbreak & loss suffered by those they hurt & by the families of those they killed. Jahar left behind an ocean of pain that is still washing across my city, & my country, sowing hatred & division between people who hardly know each other’s lived reality. Jahar wounded those he grew up with as well as millions who practice a religion he perverted with his crime. He made suspects of everyone who knew him.

Jahar put our safety & freedom in direct peril. Cambridge gave way to the real world, a place where I found myself feeling clueless. Like many of my friends, I did not have easy access to a lawyer. Later, I would realize I didn’t have access to what I needed even more: medical advisers, counselors, or therapists. Some of our mutual friends made bad choices & ended up in jail.

In the fall of 2013, I returned to Bentley to start my second semester, but I was still struggling to cope with the aftermath of the bombing, the FBI calls & questions. I felt guilty I even knew Jahar, after what he’d done. I was ashamed about what had happened to his victims  —  I still feel terrible for them. It feels awful that innocent people were hurt by a person I cared so deeply for.

That November after the bombing, three days before midterms, the FBI interrogated me for five hours, as far as I could tell simply because I had been friends with Jahar. I had nothing to tell them; I still felt betrayed by him, & knew he deserved the full brunt of the judicial system. After that interview, I found myself completely unable to focus on my studies. I asked my professors for extensions, but all of them made me take my midterms. I failed several of them, & soon after I took another leave.

This time I entered a downward spiral of addiction, insomnia, severe stomach pains, & depression, which fed off each other. I didn’t sleep more than a couple of hours a night for months. I felt paranoid & distrustful in every social interaction. Every aspect of my American life I had had to figure out on my own, and it seemed as though I hadn’t figured out anything at all. I felt like I had fallen behind my peers, unable to compete with their intelligence, their access, their privilege.

I was exhausted from maintaining multiple, often conflicting identities as a Muslim-American, from not being Muslim enough for my family, but too Muslim to feel secure in a hostile, post-9/11 environment. It was soul crushing; I felt I had lost touch with the person & identity I fought for years to establish. It got to the point where I could no longer follow a normal conversation. I lost around 25 pounds, and the ability to play basketball, which had been my sanctuary.

CONTINUED AT THE LINK

[frauzet]

Thoughts on Imperial Society

Canon is more than a bit woolly on Imperial society, and during writing I often wonder how things are supposed to work. 

The SWTOR Encyclopedia states several points that seem to be somewhat contradictory:

“Mandatory service demands, that all Imperial citizens pledge themselves to the Imperial war machine. Many enlist with the military, while others become engineers, serve as intelligence analysts, or join the Ministry of Logistics to manage the vast demands of the Empire.”

“Compulsory military service is one of the central tenets of Imperial society. Those who are not Force-sensitive are auomatically enlisted as soon as they become adults, and remain in the Empire’s service until retirement or when death or disability renders them unable to contribute.”

“The Empire is ruled, protected, and supported by three pillars of government. The Ministry of War oversees military efforts, the Ministry of Logistics ensures the civilty of the vast Imperial society, and the Ministry of Intelligence watches for threats both in and outside its borders.”

So everybody belongs to the military, but then there have to be people that don’t?

Trying to think of ways an all military Empire might work started to give me a headache. I checked the Wikipedia entry for Ramstein Air Base, because that seemed like a good example for an all military environment.  

“Ramstein AB is part of the Kaiserslautern Military Community (KMC), where more than 54,000 American service members and more than 5,400 US civilian employees live and work. U.S. organizations in the KMC also employ the services of more than 6,200 German workers. Air Force units in the KMC alone employ almost 9,800 military members, bringing with them nearly 11,100 family members. There are more than 16,200 military, U.S. civilian and U.S. contractors assigned to Ramstein AB alone.“

Besides 54,000 military members we have 11,600 civilian workers, and a lot of family members. (The 11,100 are for the 9,800Air Force members alone, if I interpret that right.) These numbers do not account for the German infrastructure used by military members in the surrounding regions, nor the supplies and funding needed from home. So how many more civilians does it actually take to keep this base running?

In the Empire, too, someone has to work to feed the military, someone has to produce ressources for equipment, build equipment, or come up with a lot of credits to buy these things elsewhere. This is where the Ministry of Logistics comes into play. According to the encyclopedia, its job is to guarantee the health of the Empire’s economy, to keep the population well fed and supplied with the tools necessary to serve. The ministry manages trade routes, mining operations, and agricultural worlds. It delivers resources and supplies to the military, manages a non-military transportation system, operates civilian shuttles and speeders, the space stations, and galactic trading hubs. The ministry oversees the nationalized industries. And it oversees the Empire’s slave population. “Logistic officers see that cruelty toward slaves is balanced with encouragement and reward, thus minimizing revolts and maximizing efficiency.”

Either the Empire needs the major part of its population to be slaves, or there are some unaccounted parts of the population that do the work, that’s overseen and managed by Logistics. If all the work was done by droids, why would the Empire even need slaves? Who are these civilians, whose shuttles and speeders need to be managed, besides Imperial children and retired military members? Visitors from outside the Empire? Maybe there is a hirarchy in the Emprie similar to that in ancient Rome. Sith and Imperial citizens are at the top. Slaves hold the lowest position in the hirarchy. But inbetween there are parts of the population that are neither slave nor Imperial. Not all inhabitants of conquered worlds are made slaves, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense for Corellian politicians to work with the Empire. 

So in my headcanon there are Sith, Imperial citizens, citizens, and slaves. A slave can be freed to become a citizen. Because of exceptional service a citizen can be granted Imperial citizenship. Imperial citizens can marry citizens. Their children are automatically Imperial citizens. Since slaves can’t enter legal contracts, slaves can’t be officially married. Children of slaves are slaves. Treason and other serious crimes result in the loss of Imperial citizenship and citizenship. 

 The ratios between these groups differ on various planest. I assume the number of Sith is highest on Korriban and other worlds with Sith academies, also on Dromund Kaas. There will be much more Imperial citizens on Dromund Kaas than citizens, while on more recently conquered worlds the citizens are the majority. So far I haven’t found any additional sources that give me a tangible idea on the overall ratios that would be needed to make the Empire work. For now I’ll go with ~50% Imperial citizens, ~30% citizens, ~20% slaves, and a neglectable percentage of Sith. 

A war that spans several decades takes its toll not only on resources but also on population numbers. The Empire wouldn’t be the first fascist regime to encourage its citizens to have many children. I assume the birth rate would easily be twice as high as ours. Because in case of Imperial citizens not seldom both parents still are on active duty, the Empire needs a lot of facilities to take care of and educate its children. Many children visit boarding schools. To assure proper indoctrination of the young, teachers and higher ranking personnel are Imperial. Handpicked promising children of selected citizens are also allowed to enter Imperial boarding schools and become Imperial citizens after proving their worth to the Empire. Any Force-sensitive in the Empire, no matter who their parents are, has to enter the Sith Academy to become Sith or die trying.

For Imperial citizens and citizens, except citizens from recently conquered worlds, military service is mandatory. Everyone of them, men and women, receive basic training. Imperial citizens, according to their proficiency, afterwards either enlist with the military, or join the Ministry of Logistics, or the Ministry of Intelligence. Again I am unsure what ratios would make the most sense. Operatives for Imperial Intelligence often are recruited and assigned to special academies while still at a young age. Some are even bred for their job, like Watcher Two. They skip mandatory basic training in favor of more specialized Intelligence training.  After basic training most citizens return to their work supervised by the Ministry of Logistics. Exceptional candidates are chosen for service within the military, with the option to rise in the ranks and become an Imperial citizen. Higher ranks are reserved for Imperial citizens. Similar options present themselves for citizens working for Logistics, where for instance scientists may gain Imperial citizenship and a leading role in research after achieving a major breakthrough.

Bloodlines are very important in the Empire, especially for families with Force-sensitive members. Family is highly valued, and marriage is a valuable institution, adultery frowned upon. Having many children is highly respected. Those who can’t have children of their own are encouraged to adopt children from the growing number of war orphans. While lineage matters in order to arrange for favorable marriages, it doesn’t matter in service to the Empire. As the encyclopedia states, “There is no advancement through wealth or manipulation and no honor or influence is granted by birth alone--save for those attuned to the force, who then become Sith. Those who serve well, advance. Those who fail gain nothing.” Of course it’s nonetheless safe to assume that being born into a high ranking family affords privileges that are able to give you a considerable headstart.

I have a lot of questions left, but this is enough trying to sort my thoughts for one post. I hope I managed to make them somewhat readable and understandable.  Thanks for bearing with me. Additional input, constructive criticism, and discussions are welcome. I may take some time to respond, though.

[ciathyzareposts]

Missed Classic 84: The Pesach Adventure (1993)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Happy Passover! For the last five years, we have had an annual tradition of a Christmas adventure, a special one-off look at a festive game for the holiday season. I love playing and documenting these games, but the truth is that Christmas is not a holiday that my family and I celebrate in the traditional way. While I was raised with Christmas, my wife was not, and we have decided together to not make it an integral part of my son’s upbringing. We still celebrate the Yuletide with my family, but his only idea of Santa Claus comes from watching Christmas episodes on Youtube Kids.

A few years back, my wife challenged me to find and play a Jewish-themed adventure game. At the time, I didn’t realize that it was such a tall order. Jews account for only 2% of the United States population today and so naturally there is a smaller audience for games about Jewish holidays. Now that we have made it to 1993, I can finally play the first known game about a Jewish festival: The Pesach Adventure! (“Pesach” is the Hebrew name for the holiday. Fun fact: English is rare in that it uses different words for Easter and Passover; using the Hebrew name makes it clear you are referring to the Jewish holiday.) Don’t get used to annual Passover games (or Hanukkah, Purim, Sukkot, or anything else) because this is the only game about a Jewish holiday that I know of until the modern era.

If you are unfamiliar with Passover, never fear! I’ll start today with a brief overview of the holiday and its history before jumping into the game itself. If you only want to hear about the gameplay, feel free to skip it. Passover is a beautiful holiday and one of the most important in Judaism, even if it has been overshadowed in the popular culture by a certain winter present-giving holiday.

“Let my people go!” – Moses

Passover 101

Many Jewish holidays can be defined by the expression, “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat!” Passover is no exception. Trying to summarize the history and traditions of the holiday in a couple of paragraphs will be difficult, but I hope you can get the flavor. I apologize in advance for any errors, omissions, or if I seem to make light of any tenets that you hold dear.

In Judaism, one of the most important stories is the Exodus from Egypt. While the book of Genesis tells of the patriarchs and the mythic underpinnings of the world, Exodus begins with the Israelites in bondage in Egypt, before revealing the story of Moses and his encounter with God, leading to the miracles that allow the Israelites to flee captivity and begin to cross the desert towards Israel. (It will take forty years and three more books– Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy– for them to reach it, but that is a story for another day.) It is difficult to explain how central this story is in Judaism. Throughout their lives, Jews are asked to think of themselves as if they have personally been delivered from Egypt. This is not only to impart a sense of gratitude, but also an obligation to help those less fortunate and lift them out of their own personal enslavements. You are likely familiar with these stories already as they include the Ten Plagues, the Golden Calf, the Ten Commandments, and the occasionally funny notion that it took 40 years to cross 150 miles of desert.

Passover celebrates the first part of that story: God reveals himself to Moses who returns to Egypt to negotiate with an unnamed (and likely ahistorical) Pharaoh for the freedom of his people. Pharoah does not let them go willingly so God sends, through Moses, a series of increasingly punishing plagues beginning with blood (the contamination of the Nile), an infestation of frogs, and then of lice. Each plague is more terrible than the one before, but still Pharaoh’s heart is hardened and he does not relent. (In fact, his own magicians duplicate the plagues, which certainly would not have made things any easier for anyone.) Eventually they reach the worst plague of all: the death of the firstborn. God commands the Israelites to mark their doors with lamb’s blood so that the death would “pass over” them. For the Egyptians, it did not matter whether you were royalty or a slave; all firstborn sons must die. This drastic measure forces the Pharaoh to relent and free the Israelites, but they must leave so quickly they do not even have time to bake bread for the journey. Once they are gone, he has a change of heart and sends the army after them all the way to the Red Sea (or Sea of Reeds, or any number of other translations). In that dramatic confrontation, Moses performs his most memorable miracle as he parts the sea and permits the Israelites to cross, before drowning the Egyptians that followed. It’s not a “fun” story. Later rabbinical commentary addresses this by saying that God himself mourned the death of so many Egyptians and chastised the angels for celebrating the deaths of “His children”.

Drown like an Egyptian?

One key facet of this narrative is that the Israelites had to carry unleavened bread with them, essentially crackers which would later become known as matzah. Once they were safely on their way, God revealed Himself at Sinai and started issuing rules. Lots and lots of rules. Several of those rules included commands to remember and honor the Passover (Exodus 12:14, 13:3) as well as the “feast of the unleavened bread” (Leviticus 23:5). Once the Temple was built in Jerusalem, Passover was honored yearly through a family meal consisting of a sacrificed lamb as well as matzah and bitter herbs (maror). Eating these “foods of affliction” connected these early Jews to the original Exodus and laid the foundation of our modern Passover Seder.

Many years later (around 30 CE), these traditions were still being followed when a certain former carpenter sat down for a final meal with his friends. There is some debate whether the Christian “Last Supper” was an example of a Passover “Seder” or not. I have had some religious teachers say “yes!”, and that our traditions began even prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. Others draw a firmer line between the literal eating of a Passover meal (which would have included lamb) and the metaphorical Passover Seders that would come later. I could go on for some time, but suffice it to say that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all state that the Last Supper was a Passover meal, while John states that Passover came after Jesus’s death. I’ll leave working that out as an exercise for the reader.

After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, everything changed for Judaism. With no more Temple, there were no more sacrifices. Scholars wrestled with and codified Jewish laws and customs into several works. One of these was an early haggadah, instructions and prayers for the ritual Passover Seder, now emerging as something distinct from the previous sacrificial practice. Perhaps the most notable of these rabbinic works is the Babylonian Talmud. One of my rabbi friends called this the “New Testament of Judaism”; it is 2,711 pages of Hebrew and Aramic text that covered all aspects of Jewish life but also transformed it from a religion of literal animal sacrifices into one of metaphor that could spread throughout the world. One of the tractates (“Pesachim”) specifically deals with the traditions of Passover, the rules about leavened products (chametz), and many other customs that are still followed today.

And that is where we finally get to the modern holiday of Passover. While only the most observant still follow all of the rules to the letter, most Jewish families keep some aspects of the tradition. Prior to the holiday, a family is supposed to rid their households of chametz, bread products and things connected to them, to honor that original flight into the desert. In traditional homes, this is taken quite literally with a mad scramble to clean every crumb in the house. On the day of the holiday itself, the family gathers for a ritual meal. (Outside of Israel, for reasons that are too complicated to get into, the ritual meal is held on the first two days rather than just the first day.) Throughout the meal, the family follows a formula recorded in a haggadah which describes which prayers to give, what rituals to follow, and onward through the eating of the passover meal itself. There are many such haggadahs today, each following the same formulas but interjecting their own voice or explanations into the proceedings. At the center of the passover experience is the Seder Plate that includes all of the symbolic foods, including a shankbone to symbolize the sacrifice. During the meal, there is a point where a piece of matzah is broken and hidden for the children to find later. This is the afikoman, which will be important as we play the game, and the kids need to find it in order for the meal to end. It’s a fun activity after a long night of praying, eating, and retelling the story of the flight from Egypt.

Bob Newell circa 2016.

Building the Adventure

The story of The Pesach Adventure starts where you might expect: with a realization and a bit of free time. As we have already seen, by 1993 there was no shortage of Christmas-themed adventure games. I’ve played six of them already and am nowhere close to running out. And yet, in all this time there had never been (as much as I am aware) an adventure game about a Jewish holiday. The closest may be Game of the Maccabees (1983), an action game for the Commodore 64 and other systems which could (if you squint) be called a game about Hanukkah. In early 1993, Bob Newell, an MIT-trained electrical engineer, programmer, and interactive fiction enthusiast came to precisely the same realization. He was living in Bismarck, North Dakota at the time and as far from the center of American Jewish life as it is possible to be. And worse for him (although lucky for us), he was also ill and home sick from work for a couple of weeks with time on his hands.

Let me pause there because while we have already looked at a few tools for building “amateur” adventure games in the 1980s (most notably “The Quill”, used for A Spell of Christmas Ice, and “AdvSys” used for Elves ‘87), the state of the art by 1993 was considerably more advanced. The “Adventure Game Toolkit” (AGT) was getting long in the tooth, but newer options such as the “Text Adventure Development System” (TADS) were maturing (TADS2 was released in 1992) and “Inform” (released in 1993) was just around the corner. These systems were complete enough that a competent and professional-quality game could be written, tested, and released in weeks rather than months with little care needed by the developers to build their own engines or cross-platform compatibility. Sure, text adventures were long in the tooth already, but as Curses (1993) would soon reveal, there was still a market and a community for the next generation of interactive fiction. Newell, whether he realized it or not, was one of the pioneers in this new generation of game designers. He selected TADS2 as his environment and set out to plot and write his holiday-themed text adventure.

“Game of the Maccabees” just screams “Hanukkah”, doesn’t it?

Beginning as he was in late 1992 or early 1993, Newell had a choice of holidays to cover. Purim was the first possibility, falling that year in early March. That holiday features costumes for the kids and heavy drinking for adults (the religious commandment is to “drink on Purim until that person cannot distinguish between cursing Haman and blessing Mordechai”; Haman and Mordechai are the villain and hero of the Book of Esther respectively), but it is not a major holiday in quite the same way. Shavuot, a holiday celebrating the granting of the Ten Commandments at Sinai, fell in late May but that holiday is barely observed by all but the most religious. Passover in April, would be the ideal choice for a game both because it is celebrated even by most secular Jews, but also because it already included game elements: bedikas chametz, the search for hidden leavened products, and the seder-night search for the afikoman. Although Newell had been raised in New Jersey, he patterned his game not on his own upbringing but rather on Jewish life as presented in the works of Chaim Potok, a well-known author who beautifully (and sometimes tragically) depicted the lives of Jews living in New York.

With a plot and setting established, Newell set to work and completed the first pass of the game in an astounding two weeks, sharing it with a few “beta” testers and uploading the completed game to local BBSes in February 1993. He asked his players to share the wealth and “upload like a meshuggah!” to get it the broadest audience in time for Passover. The game was not freeware, but rather “charity-ware” where you were requested to donate $5 (around $9 in today’s world) to a tax-deductible charity of your choice. A walkthrough and teaching materials could be purchased from Newell’s company, Avi Gobbler Publishing, for the low, low price of $2 plus a self-addressed stamped envelope. Initial playtesting on the game wasn’t perfect; by his own admission he made the game too difficult for his target audience of schoolchildren. He formulated plans to expand the game for a 1994 release, but ultimately never completed the work.

“Courting Jane”, his first novel, is a Hawaiian time-travel Regency romance; several words that I never knew that I would use together in a sentence.

Newell relates that he received very little feedback on his game, except for one email from a young developer that was inspired to write interactive fiction of his own. That developer was Nathan Cull. While that name may be unfamiliar to most of you, he was an award-winning interactive fiction designer of the late 1990s. I already had an (ahem) “secret” plan to play his Frobozz Magic Support (1996) as part of an “Inspired by Infocom” series I hope to do following my Infocom marathon.

Following work on The Pesach Adventure, Newell’s career and other interests led him away from game development, although he continued to have a strong connection to Judaism as well as games in the abstract. For the former, I have to congratulate him for completing dav yomi twice! Each of those is a seven and a half-year cycle of Talmud study. In 2005, he founded The Checker Maven, a weekly newsletter devoted to checkers and draughts. In 2007, he briefly returned to gaming by creating GGZC, a front-end for playing interactive fiction on Linux. He has also studied and written about board games, Linux, Emacs, and other things. He runs a local Jane Austen society, was president of the Hawaii Chess Federation, and clearly manages to keep himself busy. After his retirement from electrical engineering, he wrote and published two novels, as well as a collection of short stories about checkers. He’s a fascinating individual and I am glad that I have been able to meet him as part of this series.

Time to play the game!

It’s educational. How hard can it be?

Playing the Game

It’s the night before Erev Pesach. Tomorrow night is Seder night, a time of year you always enjoy. You and Imma and the rest of the family have worked really hard to get the house clean- Pesach clean, Imma always calls it. You live in a good, observant home, and Abba and Imma have removed just about all of the chametz in preparation. Of course, you and your family always spend some time on this night searching the house for chametz that might have “escaped” Imma and Abba’s watchful eyes. Abba and Imma are full of tricks, and they’ve made a game out of this. It’s fun, though, and every year you look forward to this night.

Your job is to go through the house and grounds, making sure everything is in order for Pesach. You’ll need to say the right blessings, find the right objects, and remove the things that shouldn’t be kept around over Pesach. Good luck!

I don’t even finish the introduction before I start to worry: If this game is a treasure hunt, just with chametz instead of loot, I’ll be fine. But if I have to “say the right blessings”, I’ll be up a creek because frankly I don’t know them. I am less concerned that I may be called upon to make judgements about what is and is not Kosher for Passover since I am unafraid to use Google, but knowing the correct blessings may be another matter altogether.

My concern is amplified immediately because the first action of the game is to answer a trivia question asked by our Abba (father): what is the Hebrew name for the search for chametz? I have no idea so Google comes to the rescue with the term “bedikas chametz”. Fortunately, it is correct and we can start the game properly. (Insightful readers may observe that I knew this term only a couple of pages ago, but the introduction and research was done after playing the game so as to minimize spoilers.)

“Abba” is pretty much every Hebrew learner’s first word as it uses only the first two letters of the Aleph-Bet: אבא

We start the game in the dining room:

Dining Room 

You are in the dining room. You can see that Imma has begun to prepare the large table for the Seder. There is a chandelier hanging over the table, and a buffet sideboard set up. Through the window, you can see into the back yard. A doorway to the south leads to the kitchen, and a doorway to the west leads to the living room. 

Nu, was ?

Exploring the room, we quickly discover a flashlight under the table and a prayer book on the buffet. Inside the prayer book is a bracha (blessing) which I read for a further five points. With luck, that will be the extent of the blessings I was supposed to say. I head south to discover that the dining room is pitch black. I try to turn on the flashlight, but apparently I cannot do that because it’s too dark. What the heck? I have to head back to the dining room to turn it on before resuming my journey… to the kitchen.

Let me interrupt myself here because I did not fully realize what was going on. It initially seemed asinine that the kitchen (and every other room) would be dark and unexplorable without a flashlight. I live here! I know where the light switches are! The real life bedikas chametz isn’t just a weird type of spring cleaning, it is a “game” where the search is to be conducted by candlelight using a feather to dust the evil crumbs out of their hiding places, not to mention the deliberate bits of chametz that your parents hid around the house just to make sure you were paying attention. The fact that we have to use the flashlight makes perfect sense in that context and I suspect a player familiar with the tradition would have known that already. I’m not the target audience!

And since I interrupted my narrative once already, I’ll interrupt myself a second time to point out that the command prompt in this game is a bit strange: “Nu, was?” “Nu” is an interrogative word in Yiddish, sort of like “well?” or “so?”. I do not know what the “was” means in this case. In context it’s obviously something like “what’s next?” but I welcome any Yiddish speakers to elaborate.

Not having grown up hating matzah, I don’t mind it so much.

Kitchen 

You are in the kitchen. There is a doorway leading north to the dining room, a stairway going down to the basement, and a sliding door leading east to the patio outside. There is an old refrigerator here, as well as a kitchen table, a cupboard, and a storage drawer. You can also see Imma’s stove here in the kitchen, and the big double sink. One side is for meat, the other for milk- this IS a good kosher home, you know- Imma takes pride in that.

I discover my first mini-puzzle in the kitchen. Inside the refrigerator are two boxes of matzah, one red and one blue. Reading the labels, I learn that the blue one is Kosher for Passover while the red one is not; it will have to go! But what do I do with the chametz that I find? The introduction didn’t say. I continue searching through the drawers and cupboard to locate a plastic sack; the game is kind enough to let me know immediately that it is the correct receptacle for our discoveries. There’s also a spoon in the sink, a broom in the drawer, and a nearly-empty pack of matches on the table. A pile of crumbs on the stove offers a surprising challenge, but I figure out that while I cannot sweep them directly into the sack, I can sweep them into the spoon and then dump them into the sack. I later learned that this use of the spoon (with a broom substituting for the feather) was also part of the ritual and would have been well-understood by the target audience. Even though I’ve now collected two bits of chametz, my score has not gone up any further. Am I doing something wrong?

It’s a little thing, but I love the detail that this is a traditional Kosher kitchen. A properly Kosher household would have needed two sets of nearly everything, one for preparing and serving dairy and one for preparing and serving meat. I’ve even been to homes with two dishwashers! Although I expect that many people are aware that pork and shellfish are not Kosher, those two examples make up only the tip of a huge set of rules and customs around what can be eaten when and which utensils you can use. It’s a nice detail and a reminder that interactive fiction can put you in someone else’s shoes. I’d better hurry up because Abba is already getting upset that the search is taking too long, and I’ve only explored two rooms!

Maintaining a kosher kitchen is much easier for vegetarians.

I won’t narrate every room with the same level of detail, but you can see the pattern already: as we traverse the house, we must carefully search through (and under) every object in every room to find all those little bits of chametz. Time pressure becomes the hardest part as Abba will stop the search after 100 turns. This means that I have to iterate over the house in multiple playthroughs to find everything then plot out the optimal path. More on that in a bit, but here’s what I find when I explore our household:

Beneath the kitchen is the basement with three rooms. There is an oil can at the bottom of the stairs. Off to the west is my bedroom (graham cracker crumbs!) while the furnace is to the east. Hidden in the furnace is a bag of beans. You might be surprised to learn that while beans are not leavened, it is tradition among many Jews that rice, corn, and similar foods are not kept on Passover because of the risk that they have been stored in (and contaminated by) facilities containing flour. 

Outside the sliding-glass kitchen door is a patio and a small yard. A grill outside seems like a perfect place for crumbs to hide, but it is empty. Instead, I manage to nearly blow up the house by starting the gas and not being able to turn it off. Not very safe! A shed in the yard has a rusted door, but we would be poor adventurers if we didn’t know to use the oil can. Somehow there are cookie crumbs for me to clean on the lawn mower. I can also lose a point if I come back into the house without shutting the door; I end up starting over just in case that would prevent a win.

The living room is off to the west and its sofa, reclining chair, and table offer many places to search. We find cake on the table and a cracker under the sofa cushions, but there’s also a key that we can discover if we sit on our father’s favorite reclining chair. What could that be for?

The remainder of the first floor consists of a hallway leading out to a small yard and the street. Like any good Jewish household, there is a mezuzah on the front door. Heading outside, we learn that we are in Brooklyn! Other than spying a trash can outside and another chance to lose a point by not closing the door when we come back in, I discover nothing of interest.

Jewish households, even non-observant ones, often will have a mezuzah near the door. 

Working our way upstairs, we find my two siblings’ rooms. My brother’s room has a locked closet containing a pile of scandalous… er… religious magazines, but he’s only using them to hide a box of cookies! Similarly, my younger sister has hidden a candybar in her bed, and not even a properly Kosher one. Into the sack for both!

In the bathroom, we find a piece of pie crust hidden in a butter dish in the shower. 

The final room is my parents’ bedroom, a place where curious little ten-year olds probably shouldn’t go very often. Looking in the mirror on their dresser reveals a gum wrapper on the floor. Since the gum was packaged with flour (which we can see in the ingredients list), it is chametz and has to go! 

As I stated above, all of that happened over several playthroughs because the 100-turn limit is shockingly limiting for a game that has tons of objects to “search”, “look in”, “look under”, and “move” in every room. I set myself the task of building a “script” to move around the house as efficiently as possible to collect every treasure, but even that requires a bit of cheating as we cannot read the labels or search things. I have to pick up the spoon, for example, before I look into the sink. The game knows it is there and let’s me do it, but wrecks the suspension of disbelief. Even by being as absolutely efficient as possible, it still leaves me with only a handful of turns at the end to solve the final puzzle: what am I supposed to do with this stuff once I collect it?

My first thought is to toss it in the trash outside, but for some reason that doesn’t seem to work. I end up Googling to discover that the typical ending of this ritual is to burn the chametz (usually the next morning), so I resume trying to work the grill. This is one of those embarrassing cases where the command was just “light grill”, but I spent more time that I care to admit trying to “light match”, “remove match from matchbook”, and that sort of thing. Once the grill is lit, I stick the sack on the flames and… lose.

Abba tells me that not only did I fail to find all of the chametz, I also burned something that I wasn’t supposed to. I search through every object that I found and none of them seem ambiguous as to their Kosher for Passover status. I eventually work out that it was the sack itself that I was not supposed to burn, but I can dump the contents out onto the grill easily enough. I still lose, but this time only with a message that I did not find the chametz, not that I burned something incorrectly. A little more mucking around and I realize that the sack was too full for the last couple of items. I have to modify my script to dump our findings on the grill the first time we pass as well, giving me enough room for the rest. Once I burn everything, I win!

I did it!

Winning the first part of the game advances the story to the next day. Our family has celebrated the Passover Seder and we are getting close to the end where the kids have to search for the afikoman, the special piece of matzah that a subtle adult hid during the meal. Unfortunately, this is where I become stuck as I cannot find it. My two siblings, now implemented as roving NPCs that search the house on their own, never find it either. This whole bit unfortunately feels less like an endgame puzzle and more like an incomplete part of the game. Even though it’s now Passover and the meal is nearly at its conclusion, room descriptions have not been updated and many of the explorable items from earlier in the game are broken or not present.

I give up and decide to cheat. The TADS2 development system prevents easy cheating by encoding the text, so I cannot learn anything by using a hex editor like I did playing A Christmas Adventure. With that avenue closed, I look at various paths to decompile the game or otherwise learn its secrets. I’ve been playing with a DOS executable version but eventually discover that someone archived a .GAM version of the game which would have been playable on any system with a TADS2 interpreter. With that in hand, I manage to get an old TADS2 decompiler to work and voila! I have something close to the source to the game.

I discover the issue: the afikoman is placed in a random room at the start of the endgame. The other kids move around the house randomly and you have to try to find it before they stumble on it. Unfortunately, the routine appears to have a bug where sometimes the prize can be placed in an inaccessible room. I play the game over again and this time the ending is simple as the afikoman is just sitting on the floor in my bedroom. Just by luck, I get there before the other kids and win!

I won for real!

Time Played: 3 hr 55 min

Final Rating

We’ve reached the end of our first– and likely our last– Passover special. I hope that this has been an enjoyable and educational trip. The game itself isn’t perfect, but it is well-written and provides a look at an aspect of Judaism that I was unaware of. It’s also a fantastic little slice of life about an observant Brooklyn family on one of the year’s most important holidays. Interactive fiction has the power to take us many places and I love that Newell’s game took us to a place that so few games go.

That said, for a game targeted at ten-year olds, it doesn’t quite hit the mark. Mr. Newell says as much in his release notes:

News flash: beta testing, in addition to shaking out the usual bugs, revealed that the game as it now stands is both too simple- for an adult with adventure game experience- and too hard- for children with no such experience. A new, expanded version is in the works, with a much richer story line and environment. It won’t be done in time for Pesach 5753 but we hope to have it out for Pesach 5754.

That is a great summation of how I feel about the game. Solving the timing puzzle was challenging even today and there was surprisingly little slack. A more kid-focused game might have removed the time limit or made it easier to find all of the objects, but in the end I struggled more with the traditions around an unfamiliar holiday (or rather, an unfamiliar tradition in a familiar holiday) than I did with the search or optimization. Unfortunately, Newell did not come back to the game the following year.

Before I do the numerical score, let me remind everyone that these reviews are based on an adventure game ideal that is somewhat like the world’s most perfect Monkey Island game. A low score doesn’t mean that a game is bad or unappreciated, merely far from an arbitrary (and imaginary) benchmark. Since this is a holiday game, our normal PISSED rating scale just won’t do. Rather than crack out the EGGNOG, I’ll be using our new and suspiciously-similar “MENSCH” rating system. I’m sure you’ll see how it works very quickly.

The less said about this “suspiciously similar” Hanukkah tradition, the better.

Mental Challenges and Solutions – There are only two traditional adventure puzzles in this game, but there is a lot to be said for the slow searching and the determination of what products to keep or throw away. I struggled to work out the trick with the crumbs, broom, spoon, and sack, but perhaps that would have been more understandable to the target audience. For me, the most glaring issue remains the tight timing and the necessity to plot out every action carefully. That sort of puzzle was okay in 1980 with Zork and Colossal Cave, but by 1993 there were better ideas. I also have to deduct some for the hour that I wasted trying to search in vain for the afikomen. There is a lot here that is great, but I wish Newell had come back in 1994 to strike a better balance. My score: 2.

Engagement and Objects – The TADS2 interpreter is powerful and provided a near-Infocom level of functionality with very little overhead. I was shocked how easy the code was to read and understand! That said, the game lacked a bit of polish with commands like “search room” not working anywhere except the one room where you have to use it, plus rough edges around the flashlight, using the spoon, and figuring out how to turn on the grill. I also found bugs where the game would not completely reset state when you saved/restored the game, resulting in things like the flashlight not working. My score: 2.

Narrative and Neighborhood – Newell was right: bedikas chametz is a great topic for a short kid-focused adventure game and it is nice to play with low stakes. Even so, there isn’t much of a story here and no plot progression. That said, I love the setting, the design of the house, and all of the fantastic details that Newell littered throughout the prose. The game is elevated by these inclusions and I only wish that Newell had had more time to polish. My score: 3.

Sound and Graphics – As a text adventure, we have neither sound nor graphics. Sadly, we have the usual “penalty” here. My score: 0.

Circumstances and Emotion – The “atmosphere” category in our rating system continues to bedevil me, but I love so much about the game even as it frustrates me. It feels right, like a real lived-in space by a real Jewish family. I love learning that Abba has never quite gotten around to fixing the cracks on the stairwell, or that I selected the basement room for privacy but regret the long walk to the bathroom. Newell has a talent for prose details that are in evidence here and I may check out one of his novels to see how he matured over a few decades. My score: 4.

High-Concept Text – Although I love those details, the text is sparse at times and I was let down quite a bit when the rooms were not updated for the final afikomen search. It’s difficult to let that slide when the endgame should feel like a culmination of what came before, not as an incomplete epilogue. This category also factors in NPCs, but the two siblings are not sketched in anything more than the most basic way and exhibit no individual personality, especially relative to all that we learned about them by exploring their rooms. Again, I am positive that Newell could have improved this had he continued with a 1994 version. My score: 2.

Let’s add all of those up: (2+2+3+0+4+2)/.6 = 22 points! I will grant a bonus point for being a rare and beautiful look at an Orthodox Jewish family and for reminding us that interactive fiction can take us to unexpected places.

This score fits right along with some of our other holiday-themed games such as Crisis at Christmas and Elves ‘87, both of which share some fundamentals with this game in terms of being a largely amateur (as in non-professional, not poorly made) effort and built to a deadline. I am positive that Newell could have learned from this in later games, had he chosen to do so.

I’d like to thank Mr. Newell for his patience in providing commentary and background on a game he wrote on a lark twenty-seven years ago! Several of his books are available on Amazon, including Courting Jane, a time-travel romance featuring a modern day Hawaiian man courting Jane Austin; Hanai, a retelling of Austen’s Mansfield Park in contemporary Hawaii; and a short story collection.

If you enjoyed my commentary on the holiday, you are welcome to check out my now-defunct blog, Coat of Many Colors. I spent a few years writing about bible stories, mostly in Genesis, and the posts are all still there waiting to be read. I gave it up in 2015 thanks to a lack of readership, comments from well-meaning readers that made me uncomfortable, and a newly discovered hobby writing about and researching games. Check it out.

And finally, I hope all of you are staying safe in our current worldwide health crisis. It seems the world is now divided between people that are stuck at home with too much time on their hands, and people so busy that they are unable to think or breathe. I fall into the latter category as my wife and I balance homeschooling / child care against two full time jobs that are suddenly remote, and all without resorting to excessive use of “screen time”. I count my blessings, but my writing time and energy has been significantly curtailed. I have a few things half-baked which I will try to finish, but depending on timing I may need to either delay Space Quest V or delegate it to another reviewer. Expect a few more one-off posts like this as I burn off my backlog and we’ll see how the world fares in a few weeks.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-84-the-pesach-adventure-1993/

[eddiejpoplar]

The 2019 BMW 3 Series Is a Proper 3 Series Again

FARO, Portugal — Look for the squiggliest line on the navigation screen, and then go there. It’s a great system for finding a road worthy of testing a new sports car—a road where you can prod and poke a vehicle into revealing its strengths and weaknesses. The car on this day is the seventh generation of BMW’s most important sedan, the 3 Series.

Considering this car’s historical pertinence, the road itself is doubly important. The nav-system squiggle reveals itself in real life as a single lane of asphalt gouged into a mountainside. It is open to two-way traffic but offers few pullouts and zero guardrails; a poorly placed tire will drop you into the abyss.

The four-cylinder 330i sails up the switchbacks and quickly demonstrates that worries about misplaced wheels are unnecessary. The chassis is surpassingly easy to aim, even in tight spaces. There’s lightness to it, something the previous generation lacked. Not that the footprint is smaller, as the car has grown slightly in all proportions except weight. But it’s easy to find a satisfying rhythm through undulating turns.

More than a few pundits and purists have found the traditional joys of the 3 Series less present in recent years. The sports-sedan recipe BMW perfected and which every other automaker benchmarked—call it the E30 spirit—became muddled with conflicting demands: more tech, more comfort, and more performance. Call it mission creep. Or BMW bloat.

After two days driving around southern Portugal in the 330i and a brief racetrack foray in the M340i xDrive, we can say the 2019 BMW 3 Series has rounded a different type of corner. This is a sedan freed—mostly, anyhow. And this is fortunate timing: As demand for non-CUVs plummets, even longstanding sedans have to earn their keep, lest they go the way of Cadillac’s CTS/ATS and almost all of Ford’s four-door cars. The SUVs from BMW and every other maker are lurking, waiting for a slip-up so they can gobble more market share.

The 330i will be first out of the gate, coming to the U.S. as a 2019 model in March. Though it has more standard features, pricing remains the same: $40,250 for rear-wheel drive, and $42,250 for the xDrive. The $56,000 M340i xDrive will follow in the spring.

For this new generation 3 Series, dubbed G20 in BMW-speak, its maker reworked the 330i’s four-cylinder, gaining 7 horsepower for a new total of 258 and bumping torque by 37 lb-ft to 295. The M340i’s twin-scroll single-turbocharger straight-six got a similar tweaking, with 62 more hp and 39 more lb-ft of torque raising output to 374 hp and 369 lb-ft.

While BMW also redesigned the exterior and interior, and piled onto the list of digital and semi-autonomous features (we’ll come to that in a moment), company engineers say the most central tenets of the new 3 are the retuned suspension, and the calibrations between hardware and software systems. “Getting everything to work together more beautifully,” as one described.

Plying the 330i on Portugal’s open expressways and along backroads, those elements indeed come through brightly. The engine is plucky enough to make short, hard passes, but this is an automobile that likes momentum. It is tangibly lighter than the outgoing model, losing 121 pounds in some configurations; official curb weight is 3,583 pounds. Driving hard into corners, brushing the brakes, and then adding in light throttle around the apex is a treat and settles the car down nicely for the next turn.

The suspension, which includes hydraulic dampers on base models and stiffer bushings, results in greater fluidity but less of the bounce, chop, and harshness found with some of the outgoing 3 Series’s setups. Negotiating a roundabout is a telling exercise. In cases where you’re exiting straight across the other side, you can enter quickly, throw the car right to cut the half circle, and then flick the wheel sharply to the left to send it straight again. The BMW deftly handles these swift directional changes with no slough or front-end push. Zing! (The cars we drove rode on either Michelin Pilot Sport or Pilot Sport 4S rubber and thus had plenty of grip; the former are more comfortable.)

The revised turbo four never feels overly wound even when flogging it in low gears, and there’s little of the previous engine’s harsh vibrations. Torque is modest, but it’s a happy four-banger; even the sound from inside the cockpit is punchy, settling into a mid-range bass in Sport Plus mode.

And while there’s no way to bring to the present BMW’s magical steering feel from the days of hydraulic systems, this generation’s electrically assisted steering is neither overweighed nor rubbery. There’s a measure of feedback, and it allows you to position the car exactly where you want it. The narrow A-pillars help in this regard, too, while the greenhouse feels airy and the seating position is a pleasure.

All that makes a thin strip of mountain road far more fun than in any other present-day BMW other than the M2. Tires sing on the asphalt as my passenger looks out the side window down to the tops of trees far below. A manual gearbox might have made it better, but forget it: There are “no manual transmission plans at this time,” says a BMW rep. Happily we never meet an oncoming vehicle, which would have resulted in an uncomfortable and pucker-inducing reversing maneuver.

The path eventually tees into a wider, two-lane road. At the top of the mountain we come to a hard stop. A collection of milk cows and goats amble down the road, driven by a sour-faced herder. The goats split around the sedan, twisted horns just underneath our window sills. If they are impressed by the new exterior design, they give no indication.

They might not be the only ones who are a bit underwhelmed. The 3 Series’s head-on perspective is best, with a taut, creased hood that’s fronted by a double-kidney grille that actually folds back up along the roof. It’s three dimensional, but takes up less real estate than the average modern grille, lending it a focused appeal. The double headlights, available in standard LEDs or adaptive LEDs with a laser feature, are long and narrow and get a cool little kink in their bottom edge.

The 330i looks pleasant enough car in profile, but its shape is perhaps best described as benign. Inside, the interior is pleasantly reworked in philosophy and materials. Remember that BMW “luxury” plastic coating the dash in previous models? The stuff where all hope and delight went to die? Well, it’s still plastic, but in a far more pleasant and handsome treatment. And BMW generally reduced the level of superfluous design, resulting in cabin aesthetics that are far less busy and which flow more harmoniously.

Still, if you hoped for actual simplicity, and imagined German engineers could display forbearance and dump unnecessary tech, well, despair now. Many of the most annoying elements in BMW’s upmarket models are all still found here. The nonsensical shifter is one example; it makes you look down to figure out what gear you’re in. At one point, I watched my co-driver push the lever all the way up into reverse and prepare to exit the car.

Our test models also came with the gesture controls introduced on the 7 Series. This parlor trick allows you to turn on music or adjust volume by using Bollywood-dance-like hand motions in the space near the dash. The problem is that, if you’re a hand talker, unwanted music can suddenly—and very loudly—fill the cabin. When this was mentioned to an engineer, he shrugged and said in a very German Engineer Way, “You need to learn to control your body motions.” Conversely, our stance remains that a luxury vehicle should conform to its passengers’ desires, not vice versa.

BMW also proudly touts the new Intelligent Personal Assistant, its name for the advanced voice controls. You can adjust temperature and set locations on the navigation system. But the system will also answer questions for you. For instance, as per BMW press materials, one question you might ask is, “How does the High Beam Assistant work?” (We suspect nobody will ask that question, phrased that way, ever.) You start things off with, “Hey, BMW” or similar, and then hope for an Amazon Alexa–level of humanlike back-and-forth. What you will get instead is a stilted, robotic voice summoned from the cloud that will very occasionally respond in the way that you hoped. BMW promised it will be improved eventually via a remote software upgrade, but in the meantime you might find yourself most often suggesting, “Hey, BMW, can you contact me when your personal assistant isn’t super annoying?”

There is a spate of semi-autonomous features, including a nifty trick that will automatically reverse the car from a parking space the exact same way you drove in, and which also includes the ability to drive hands-off for long periods of time in highway situations. However, it didn’t work in Europe, so we weren’t able to test it.

There was yet another bright spot on the horizon: laps at the Portimão racetrack in the M340i xDrive. The prototype cars were not road legal, and they were still in camouflage livery. Still, it gives us an idea of the driving dynamics when pushed with vigor. The M340i gets an M Sport suspension and electronically controlled M Sport rear differential. Our test cars had 19-inch Michelins. Following behind ex-Formula 1 and current BMW Motorsport driver Timo Glock with the car set to Sport Plus with traction controls loosened, the 340 shows great willingness to pivot, allowing just enough lateral play. The front-end grip is tenacious and still offers lots of feel despite also receiving power from the all-wheel-drive system, a neat accomplishment.

Coming into one of the track’s slowest turns, which leads to an uphill, we slow way down and turn in early, and then give a wallop of gas just past the apex. The rear swings around neatly, pointing the nose in the direction we want, and the front wheels pull us out of the slide. It never feels less than controlled, but it is thrilling.

One of our favorite bits of the track is a long, sweeping downhill that leads toward the front straight. It is off camber and unsettles cars with an uncomfortable combination of overworked front tires, higher speeds, and shifting weight. “This corner was built to drift!” Glock shouts over the radio, and then he does exactly that in his M2 Competition pace car, leaving a plume of smoke in his wake.

The M340i’s front end shows its willing to hang onto the correct driving line, but the nature of the car telegraphs something else. I’m no Timo Glock, but the BMW is willing to play. And so we whirl the wheel just a bit, add in a bit of gas, and hang on. Because the 3 Series really is a sedan that’s free once again.

2019 BMW 330i Specifications

ON SALE March PRICE $40,250 (base) ENGINE 2.0L DOHC 16-valve turbocharged I-4; 258 hp @ 6,500 rpm, 295 lb-ft @ 1,550 rpm TRANSMISSION 8-speed automatic LAYOUT 4-door, 4-passenger, front-engine RWD sedan EPA MILEAGE N/A L x W x H 185.3 x 71.9 x 56.7 in WHEELBASE 112.2 in WEIGHT 3,583 lb 0-60 MPH 5.6 sec (est) TOP SPEED 155 mph

IFTTT

[jesusvasser]

The 2019 BMW 3 Series Is a Proper 3 Series Again

FARO, Portugal — Look for the squiggliest line on the navigation screen, and then go there. It’s a great system for finding a road worthy of testing a new sports car—a road where you can prod and poke a vehicle into revealing its strengths and weaknesses. The car on this day is the seventh generation of BMW’s most important sedan, the 3 Series.

Considering this car’s historical pertinence, the road itself is doubly important. The nav-system squiggle reveals itself in real life as a single lane of asphalt gouged into a mountainside. It is open to two-way traffic but offers few pullouts and zero guardrails; a poorly placed tire will drop you into the abyss.

The four-cylinder 330i sails up the switchbacks and quickly demonstrates that worries about misplaced wheels are unnecessary. The chassis is surpassingly easy to aim, even in tight spaces. There’s lightness to it, something the previous generation lacked. Not that the footprint is smaller, as the car has grown slightly in all proportions except weight. But it’s easy to find a satisfying rhythm through undulating turns.

More than a few pundits and purists have found the traditional joys of the 3 Series less present in recent years. The sports-sedan recipe BMW perfected and which every other automaker benchmarked—call it the E30 spirit—became muddled with conflicting demands: more tech, more comfort, and more performance. Call it mission creep. Or BMW bloat.

After two days driving around southern Portugal in the 330i and a brief racetrack foray in the M340i xDrive, we can say the 2019 BMW 3 Series has rounded a different type of corner. This is a sedan freed—mostly, anyhow. And this is fortunate timing: As demand for non-CUVs plummets, even longstanding sedans have to earn their keep, lest they go the way of Cadillac’s CTS/ATS and almost all of Ford’s four-door cars. The SUVs from BMW and every other maker are lurking, waiting for a slip-up so they can gobble more market share.

The 330i will be first out of the gate, coming to the U.S. as a 2019 model in March. Though it has more standard features, pricing remains the same: $40,250 for rear-wheel drive, and $42,250 for the xDrive. The $56,000 M340i xDrive will follow in the spring.

For this new generation 3 Series, dubbed G20 in BMW-speak, its maker reworked the 330i’s four-cylinder, gaining 7 horsepower for a new total of 258 and bumping torque by 37 lb-ft to 295. The M340i’s twin-scroll single-turbocharger straight-six got a similar tweaking, with 62 more hp and 39 more lb-ft of torque raising output to 374 hp and 369 lb-ft.

While BMW also redesigned the exterior and interior, and piled onto the list of digital and semi-autonomous features (we’ll come to that in a moment), company engineers say the most central tenets of the new 3 are the retuned suspension, and the calibrations between hardware and software systems. “Getting everything to work together more beautifully,” as one described.

Plying the 330i on Portugal’s open expressways and along backroads, those elements indeed come through brightly. The engine is plucky enough to make short, hard passes, but this is an automobile that likes momentum. It is tangibly lighter than the outgoing model, losing 121 pounds in some configurations; official curb weight is 3,583 pounds. Driving hard into corners, brushing the brakes, and then adding in light throttle around the apex is a treat and settles the car down nicely for the next turn.

The suspension, which includes hydraulic dampers on base models and stiffer bushings, results in greater fluidity but less of the bounce, chop, and harshness found with some of the outgoing 3 Series’s setups. Negotiating a roundabout is a telling exercise. In cases where you’re exiting straight across the other side, you can enter quickly, throw the car right to cut the half circle, and then flick the wheel sharply to the left to send it straight again. The BMW deftly handles these swift directional changes with no slough or front-end push. Zing! (The cars we drove rode on either Michelin Pilot Sport or Pilot Sport 4S rubber and thus had plenty of grip; the former are more comfortable.)

The revised turbo four never feels overly wound even when flogging it in low gears, and there’s little of the previous engine’s harsh vibrations. Torque is modest, but it’s a happy four-banger; even the sound from inside the cockpit is punchy, settling into a mid-range bass in Sport Plus mode.

And while there’s no way to bring to the present BMW’s magical steering feel from the days of hydraulic systems, this generation’s electrically assisted steering is neither overweighed nor rubbery. There’s a measure of feedback, and it allows you to position the car exactly where you want it. The narrow A-pillars help in this regard, too, while the greenhouse feels airy and the seating position is a pleasure.

All that makes a thin strip of mountain road far more fun than in any other present-day BMW other than the M2. Tires sing on the asphalt as my passenger looks out the side window down to the tops of trees far below. A manual gearbox might have made it better, but forget it: There are “no manual transmission plans at this time,” says a BMW rep. Happily we never meet an oncoming vehicle, which would have resulted in an uncomfortable and pucker-inducing reversing maneuver.

The path eventually tees into a wider, two-lane road. At the top of the mountain we come to a hard stop. A collection of milk cows and goats amble down the road, driven by a sour-faced herder. The goats split around the sedan, twisted horns just underneath our window sills. If they are impressed by the new exterior design, they give no indication.

They might not be the only ones who are a bit underwhelmed. The 3 Series’s head-on perspective is best, with a taut, creased hood that’s fronted by a double-kidney grille that actually folds back up along the roof. It’s three dimensional, but takes up less real estate than the average modern grille, lending it a focused appeal. The double headlights, available in standard LEDs or adaptive LEDs with a laser feature, are long and narrow and get a cool little kink in their bottom edge.

The 330i looks pleasant enough car in profile, but its shape is perhaps best described as benign. Inside, the interior is pleasantly reworked in philosophy and materials. Remember that BMW “luxury” plastic coating the dash in previous models? The stuff where all hope and delight went to die? Well, it’s still plastic, but in a far more pleasant and handsome treatment. And BMW generally reduced the level of superfluous design, resulting in cabin aesthetics that are far less busy and which flow more harmoniously.

Still, if you hoped for actual simplicity, and imagined German engineers could display forbearance and dump unnecessary tech, well, despair now. Many of the most annoying elements in BMW’s upmarket models are all still found here. The nonsensical shifter is one example; it makes you look down to figure out what gear you’re in. At one point, I watched my co-driver push the lever all the way up into reverse and prepare to exit the car.

Our test models also came with the gesture controls introduced on the 7 Series. This parlor trick allows you to turn on music or adjust volume by using Bollywood-dance-like hand motions in the space near the dash. The problem is that, if you’re a hand talker, unwanted music can suddenly—and very loudly—fill the cabin. When this was mentioned to an engineer, he shrugged and said in a very German Engineer Way, “You need to learn to control your body motions.” Conversely, our stance remains that a luxury vehicle should conform to its passengers’ desires, not vice versa.

BMW also proudly touts the new Intelligent Personal Assistant, its name for the advanced voice controls. You can adjust temperature and set locations on the navigation system. But the system will also answer questions for you. For instance, as per BMW press materials, one question you might ask is, “How does the High Beam Assistant work?” (We suspect nobody will ask that question, phrased that way, ever.) You start things off with, “Hey, BMW” or similar, and then hope for an Amazon Alexa–level of humanlike back-and-forth. What you will get instead is a stilted, robotic voice summoned from the cloud that will very occasionally respond in the way that you hoped. BMW promised it will be improved eventually via a remote software upgrade, but in the meantime you might find yourself most often suggesting, “Hey, BMW, can you contact me when your personal assistant isn’t super annoying?”

There is a spate of semi-autonomous features, including a nifty trick that will automatically reverse the car from a parking space the exact same way you drove in, and which also includes the ability to drive hands-off for long periods of time in highway situations. However, it didn’t work in Europe, so we weren’t able to test it.

There was yet another bright spot on the horizon: laps at the Portimão racetrack in the M340i xDrive. The prototype cars were not road legal, and they were still in camouflage livery. Still, it gives us an idea of the driving dynamics when pushed with vigor. The M340i gets an M Sport suspension and electronically controlled M Sport rear differential. Our test cars had 19-inch Michelins. Following behind ex-Formula 1 and current BMW Motorsport driver Timo Glock with the car set to Sport Plus with traction controls loosened, the 340 shows great willingness to pivot, allowing just enough lateral play. The front-end grip is tenacious and still offers lots of feel despite also receiving power from the all-wheel-drive system, a neat accomplishment.

Coming into one of the track’s slowest turns, which leads to an uphill, we slow way down and turn in early, and then give a wallop of gas just past the apex. The rear swings around neatly, pointing the nose in the direction we want, and the front wheels pull us out of the slide. It never feels less than controlled, but it is thrilling.

One of our favorite bits of the track is a long, sweeping downhill that leads toward the front straight. It is off camber and unsettles cars with an uncomfortable combination of overworked front tires, higher speeds, and shifting weight. “This corner was built to drift!” Glock shouts over the radio, and then he does exactly that in his M2 Competition pace car, leaving a plume of smoke in his wake.

The M340i’s front end shows its willing to hang onto the correct driving line, but the nature of the car telegraphs something else. I’m no Timo Glock, but the BMW is willing to play. And so we whirl the wheel just a bit, add in a bit of gas, and hang on. Because the 3 Series really is a sedan that’s free once again.

2019 BMW 330i Specifications

ON SALE March PRICE $40,250 (base) ENGINE 2.0L DOHC 16-valve turbocharged I-4; 258 hp @ 6,500 rpm, 295 lb-ft @ 1,550 rpm TRANSMISSION 8-speed automatic LAYOUT 4-door, 4-passenger, front-engine RWD sedan EPA MILEAGE N/A L x W x H 185.3 x 71.9 x 56.7 in WHEELBASE 112.2 in WEIGHT 3,583 lb 0-60 MPH 5.6 sec (est) TOP SPEED 155 mph

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[tune-collective]

Boys Meet World: Love Finally Finds Japandroids on Life-Affirming 'Near to the Wild Heart of Life' (Critic's Take)

Boys Meet World: Love Finally Finds Japandroids on Life-Affirming 'Near to the Wild Heart of Life' (Critic's Take)

Everyone who attempts to hang on the highs of adolescence longer than traditionally deemed acceptable is ultimately forced to face the very scary question: When does this stop being romantic and start to just be kind of sad? No one’s self-ascribed glory days last forever, and the only thing more heartbreaking than giving up on your ideals and dreams too early is holding onto them for far too long. Eventually, you take one wrong look in the mirror, or in the faces of the similarly minded people you surround yourself with, and suddenly everything you knew to be right and true in the world seems to flip — from there, it’s pretty tough to ever get all the way back. And at that point, you just hope that there’s still something else out there beyond fire’s highway.

Vancouver power duo Japandroids, who release their long-awaited third album Near to the Wild Heart of Life today (Jan. 27), have been one of the world’s most exciting rock bands for nearly a decade now, largely because their music has always teetered on the precipice of this moment. They were never that young, at least as we knew ’em — by 2009 debut album Post Nothing, Brian King and David Prowse were already about a half-decade out of college, though they still thrashed and threw down like a couple of undergrads. Even then, the weariness was setting in: “We used to dream/ Now we worry about dying,” went the chorus to breakout crit-hit “Young Hearts Spark Fire.”

The true thrill came from how Japandroids acknowledged the sun setting on their youth, but still raged against the light’s dying like true believers in rock’s power to grant immortality. And the stakes doubled for 2012’s highly acclaimed Celebration Rock, recorded in the duo’s late 20s after ulcer scares nearly robbed King of a lot more than his innocence. The album was a triumph, more fearful and more resolute than ever, shot through with a now-or-never urgency that made for emotional and instrumental catharsis more explosive than the firework sounds that opened and closed the LP.

The worldview of Japandroids before Wild Heart was based on obvious and agreeable central tenets: going out, drinking, smoking, yelling. But most of all, it was based on devotion to one another: The rush of Post-Nothing and Celebration Rock tapped into the quintessentially young feeling of your group of friends — maybe just one friend in particular — being your entire world, of everything being “We” by default, of any other way of life being virtually unimaginable. Because they played as a guitar-and-drums duo uninterested in roster expansion, because so many vocals were delivered in unison, and because pronouns were more often plural than singular, the sense of solidarity was absolutely intoxicating for two albums.

But the longer Japandroids took to return for LP3, the less the formula seemed repeatable for a third time — could Brian and Dave, now solidly in their 30s, really spend a third LP seeking teenage kicks and have it feel more inspiring than depressing? Or would there finally have to be something else?

Near to the Wild Heart of Life arrives with that something else in tow — the duo has found love, in a place that wasn’t nearly as hopeless as they might’ve feared. Which isn’t to say that Japandroids’ first two albums were heartless by any stretch, but they mostly treated opposite-sex interaction as an adolescent combination of fantasy and curiosity, something to be talked up (“We run the gauntlet, must get to France/ So we can French kiss some French girls”) more often than actually achieved.

Celebration Rock‘s “Younger Us” was inarguably the duo’s greatest love song to date, and it was of course an ode to each other, with the kind of pinpointed moments of true friendship (“Remember that time when you were already in bed/ Said ‘Fuck it,’ got up to drink with me instead?”) to make you waste a whole night digging for dumb college photos on Facebook. But the “pain from an old wound” element of the nostalgia in “Younger Us” pulls no punches; the song’s emotional wallop comes from its open admission that those days of peak fraternity are now firmly in the rearview, and only getting farther away.

From the first track of Wild Heart, it’s clear that Japandroids’ world has expanded beyond one another. The title-track opener is a narrative that posits itself as a sort of origin story for the band itself, telling the tale in wide, apocryphal pen strokes of how King left his hometown to conquer the world and “make some ears ring with the sound of my singing.”

But break the song down by verse and it reads as the story of how King learned to move beyond Prowse and his old life, with his “best friend” instructing him “You can’t condemn your love/ To linger here and die,” and ultimately getting his buddy “all fired up/ to go far away.” (Indeed, in real life, King moved from Vancouver to Toronto before the album’s recording.) Then in the second verse, the singer receives further encouragement and a kiss “like a chorus” from a female bartender, and in the third and final verse, he’s visited by an ambiguous apparition (“My body broke out in a sweat/ From seeing you in dreams”) that seems to be prepping him for that something even bigger than friendships and hookups.

The majority of the ensuing album finds King embracing that thing called love — the more conventionally romantic kind — in a way seen only in flashes through the duo’s first two albums. “Be the beast, but free what burdens me/ And I’ll love you ‘cause you love me/ All life long, till I’m gone,” he sings on “True Love and a Free Life of Free Will,” an eternal commitment echoed in second-side centerpiece “Morning to Midnight” (“But if you’ll hide me and heal me in your sanctuary/ I’ll stay forever”), statements from a place in too deep to remember what life was like on the outside.

Wild Heart‘s most seemingly inconsequential track, the swirling two-minute interlude “I’m Sorry (For Not Finding You Sooner)” unfolds as the key to maybe the whole album, as King follows the titular apology with the explanation: “I was looking for you all my life.” Of course it’s not literally true, it just feels that way when you’ve found the person that finally allows your entire life to make sense, and you can’t help but look back in frustration on all the time you wasted beforehand.

It’s not just the lyrics that offer a newfound sense of contentedness and spiritual calm, either. The group’s production has flattened significantly from the first two albums, no longer allowing King’s guitars or Prowse’s drums to froth over the top like a beer poured from the tap without caution. The tempos have slowed, too — the title track still blisters and “North East South West” makes you want to grab a hockey stick and rush the ice like the third Sedin twin, but the majority of the album is more early U2 than early Replacements, more open plains than dingy basement. Even the chant-along vocals have chilled, with the howled “OH OH OH OH-OH-OH”s and twenty-two syllable “WOAHHH-AH-OHHH”s from their previous album replaced with Gallagher Bros-like “Yeahhhhhh, yeahhhhhh“s and ghostly “Sha la la la la la“s. The result remains thrilling, but it’s a different kind of excitement — with lower peaks but a wider base, less heart-stopping but also less ephemeral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3KtKAySDBs

On Celebration Rock, the duo began the album asking themselves “Don’t we have anything to live for?,” answering the question: “Of course we do, but until that comes true — we’re drinking / and we’re still smoking.” Now, on Wild Heart emotional climax “No Known Drink or Drug,” they’re testifying that neither of those titular vices “could ever hold a candle to your love” — not so much an open repudiation of those cheaper early thrills as an unapologetic acknowledgement that they’ve since located a better deal. The considerable power of Near to the Wild Heart of Life is in its explicit presentation of Japandroids as living proof that those who fear the story of their adult lives will end up as one long ellipsis can still have chapters, even entire books to go. True love and a free life of free will can make the nights of wine and roses last forever.

Source: Billboard

http://tunecollective.com/2017/01/28/boys-meet-world-love-finally-finds-japandroids-on-life-affirming-near-to-the-wild-heart-of-life-critics-take/