#and please nobody take offense to this its simply my own opinion based on my own interests in media but i find the idea that he hides

[mokutone]

On the subject of dog nose kakashi, there’s a headcanon I’ve seen that the reason he wears the mask is because it helps block out smells so he can focus. I like that one combined with him hiding his fangs to protect his mother’s identity for whatever reason and to hide his ethereal beauty because it makes him stand out too much lol and now to also hide his dog nose!!

i have seen a lot of these headcanons, and they are cool and valid!

my personal take is honestly less that he wants to hide any one specific feature of his face (whether inherited clan attributes like teeth or nose) or facial differences, ethereal beauty, etc,

the one i give most personal credence to is probably the blocking out smell, but even then i'm sometimes wishy washy on whether i go for that hc depending on my mood

but here's something interesting and dog related, i got it from another stanley coren book "How to Speak Dog" again, i have mixed feelings on his writing, but his studies and conclusions are interesting and worthy of note if anyone is interested in dog science and communication. anyway here's the fun tidbit, it's talking about why dogs tuck their tails as a gesture of fear.

"In essence, the dog is making its presence less obvious by preventing the release of the odors that identify it as an individual. Some scientists have suggested that the tail-between-the-legs action is the canine equivalent of an action seen in insecure human beings—especially children—who hide their faces when brought into the presence of a dominant or potentially threatening person."

(worth noting that stanley doesnt use dominant here in terms of the weird stupid wolf hierarchy thing)

anyway. my point is that i don't really see kakashi trying to hide his face as anything specific to his face at all—his students certainly do, and all theorize about what could be so "horrible" beneath his mask that he "needs to hide it", but imo what he's hiding is not physical, it's emotional, hiding his face because he is ashamed/insecure, etc.

i know this might seem a little odd since he's worn this mask since he was a kid, before his fathers death, before obito, rin, etc, and he may have seemed outwardly arrogant as a child, but Sakumo was clearly somebody who carried a lot of shame and guilt, not just for the one incident but as a matter of course, and children can often take on that worldview. similarly, arrogance is also usually a protective mechanism to keep the individual from having to confront the inadequacy they fear, etc etc

[traincat]

I saw your posts about Spider-Man on twitter but I’d rather message you anonymously because I’m shy; anyways, I saw your reaction to that video of Zendaya, Tom and Jacob to the is Spider-Man Jewish question. And their reactions pissed me off so much. They were all so dismissive of the questions and actually laughing at it. I myself am Jewish and was really excited to see so many people talking about Peter being Jewish and now I keep flashbacking to that horrible video 😡

Please don’t be shy! I don’t bite first. But I completely respect your right to be anonymous, particularly on this subject, which has garnered some heated discussion on several sides. If you saw my tweets I’m fairly sure you know my stance on it. I’m going to elaborate anyway for the unaware, free of twitter’s character limit, as to why the MCU Spider-Man cast’s reactions to being asked if Spider-Man is Jewish was frankly very inappropriate.

For those who haven’t seen the clip, it’s here. (Please don’t harass OP for posting it more than they’ve already been harassed for daring to point out the antisemitism in the clip, I just don’t feel like finding the whole Wired video.) I have multiple problems with this, starting with the fact that I personally feel like it’s a setup. The focus of this -- both from the critical and defensive sides -- has very much been on the actors themselves, but I want to walk it back a little bit, because while their reactions to the question were undoubtedly both ignorant and hurtful (there’s nothing inherently humorous about asking if a character is Jewish, so I’m not sure why Zendaya was laughing), ultimately I think the larger problem is why this was allowed on the internet in the first place. The actors themselves may be young -- though I will point out they are all adults and professionals, and this isn’t the first interview for any of them -- but their managers aren’t, and it’s hard for me to believe that if a company with as much range and influence as Disney didn’t want religion discussed in promotional material for the film that they couldn’t have that material blocked. It’s less difficult but much more questionable for me to believe that nobody saw these young stars’ reactions to the question “is Peter Parker Jewish?” and no one decided that the content needed to be refilmed so it came off less mocking or that it should be cut entirely. Let me be really very frank: a group of non-Jewish actors should not have been asked this question, even if their reactions were respectful and inclusive towards the Jewish identity, because their opinions don’t matter. The opinions of Jewish creatives matter. These actors most likely (or, based off their reactions, definitely) don’t have the tools needed to recognize the Jewish coding within the character the way a Jewish creative does, and their opinion on the subject doesn’t matter compared to that of a Jewish person. Take, for instance, Andrew Garfield’s insightful comments drawing on his own cultural experiences as a Jewish person, or Phil Lord of Into the Spider-Verse’s description of Peter Parker. This is not a flat out condemnation of Tom Holland, Zendaya, or Jacob Batalon, but it is fair to say that none of them are experts I would call upon to discuss the Jewish history of Spider-Man, given that none of them are Jewish or, based on the linked interview, apparently have given Judaism and the history of superheroes any serious thought. Which, again, is not their job or a faction of their identity, so I can’t exactly blame them for it. It’s disappointing that they are not more open minded and better spoken on the topic, but not surprising that they aren’t.

That being said: their reactions were completely inappropriate and borderline antisemitic. Let me make it perfectly clear that you don’t have to be acting with malicious intent to be antisemitic; antisemitism is ingrained in our culture, in our jokes, in our popular media, and it is incredibly easy to fall prey to it without realizing what you are doing, and these three young and very influential stars reacted to the notion of Peter Parker being Jewish as if you’d asked them if he was Martian. I’ve seen a lot of people attempt to excuse the comments by saying that the actors were “taken aback” or “surprised” by the “randomness” of the question, but there’s really nothing random about it when Andrew Garfield was quite outspoken about Peter Parker’s Jewish identity and when Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse had Peter B. Parker very notably have a Jewish wedding, which for me lends some doubt to Zendaya’s claim that she’d “never heard anyone ask” that particular question, all the while giggling like something was funny. It’s quite possible she’d never heard it before, but that means she’s divorced herself from greater discussion involving other adaptations of the story, including discussions that took place six months ago when Spider-Verse was in theaters. I’ve also seen plenty of people attempt to let Tom Holland off the hook for his comments, saying that he only said “I don’t know” when in fact he prefaces that with “I don’t think he is.” 

Let me be very clear: that these young actors lack of knowledge about the Jewish coding of Peter Parker and the long Jewish history of superhero comics isn’t the problem. They are being paid to portray roles, not to know everything about the history of those roles they are portraying. The problem is the language they employed when the question came up. It was dismissive, it was insulting, and it was antisemitic, whether or not that was the intent of the speakers. Again, you don’t have to be actively malicious to be antisemitic. “Is Spider-Man real” was treated with respect while “is Spider-Man Jewish” was hurriedly and thoroughly dismissed. Let me be very clear: I would not have a problem with this clip if Tom Holland had simply said “I’m not sure”, or if Zendaya had said “I hadn’t heard that before, but that’s interesting,” or anything along those lines, being inclusive about the idea of Peter Parker being Jewish even if they weren’t hardline approving of it. The fact was there was no support for the concept of Peter Parker’s Jewish identity, only giggly or confused dismissal, and that is not the way to treat any marginalized identity, and I frankly can’t believe that people would rather side with the actors in a moment of ill-spoken and insulting dismissal of Jewish people -- acting as if it’s a total impossibility that Peter Parker could be Jewish -- than with the Jewish people who rightfully feel hurt by their insensitive comments. They’re fine, people. They still got paid far more than anyone taking offense at their careless words. They didn’t go down a hundred points in the secret Jewish gold stock market. They probably didn’t even notice the backlash from Jewish fans among their 18,000 other social media notifications. Nobody is quote-unquote “canceling” them for being ignorant of Jewish history in superhero media and pop culture and for speaking carelessly. Perhaps there should be greater consequences, like, at the very least, a public apology for their careless language and laughter, but honestly, that’s very unlikely, so you don’t need to defend them. They’re probably fine.

I said this on twitter, but I’m going to say it again: a lack of knowledge about Peter Parker’s Jewish coding or the long history of Jewish creators and subtext in superhero comics, especially when Marvel was getting its start as we know it now, is not a bad thing. It is not bad to not know this. If you didn’t know this, you’re not a bad person and you shouldn’t feel bad or guilty for just learning it. We all have things we are unaware of or that we don’t possess the cultural tools to recognize. That’s part of having an individual human and cultural experience. The problem becomes when this is brought up and instead of being interested or at the very least inclusive in their language, young influential stars dismiss it outright. Tom Holland’s “I don’t think he is” could have easily be “I didn’t think he was, but that’s an interesting point to look into”, whereas Zendaya claiming she’d never heard that could’ve easily been “I didn’t know that.” Simple as that. Minor changes, but a world of difference. These stars may be young, but they are professionals, and they should be expected to act in a professional manner. Instead, they chose in the moment to dismiss it entirely. And like I said, this is not entirely their fault, because I do think that upon their reactions either a reshoot should have been ordered with their handlers giving them tips for more inclusive and less offensive language, or that the question should have been cut entirely if it wasn’t going to be taken in good faith or discussed seriously. But it wasn’t. This was viewed as appropriate discussion and aired. And, as inappropriate as the actors’ words were, and as much as I personally believe they should apologize for those statements, that is not their solely their faults. Someone should have corrected them for their own good and for their own growth. There should have been people looking out for their images who should have said, “hey, this doesn’t look good, this is coming off like you’re dismissing the Jewish identity and experience.” But there weren’t, because the Jewish interest is not viewed as marketable, and therefore insults to Jewish people -- intentionally malicious or not -- are not viewed as things that need to be managed. And that is deeply unfortunate and very telling of how people in Hollywood, an industry that wouldn’t exist without Jewish people, currently views Jewish people. And I have to say, I expect better of young professionals in 2019 than when faced with a question about marginalized identities like Jewish people to either dismiss or laugh through the inquiry instead of paying it the minimal amount of respect by at least pretending to entertain the notion, even if they don’t personally believe it.

Ultimately, I have to say, none of this is surprising if you view Disney as thoroughly managing their own brand (and know that their own brand is heavily antisemitic), when Spider-Man: Homecoming contained several depictions of Jewish people that either unsettled me or struck me as inappropriate. The first is the black hats on the subway who glare at Peter -- poor little MCU Peter, who people are endlessly willing to woobify and excuse -- and then, in his school, the kid in full Orthodox attire, when a child at that level of religious dress would never have been at that school because a secular school could not properly address his religious needs and when the New York Orthodox community is famously insular. No, everything the MCU did in Spider-Man: Homecoming, in my personal opinion, reflected the harmful opinion that you can “spot” a Jew, by having men in full Orthodox dress glare at Peter Parker on subway, by having a child in his multicultural school in full Orthodox dress instead of simply wearing a yarmulke or a Star of David necklace like, say, Kitty Pryde was famous for during her debut. There’s nothing wrong with highlighting the Orthodox community, but when that is all the Jewish representation in your film, with no plot reason for doing so, it strikes me as distinctly odd, as if you’re trying to separate the Jewish contingent from the rest of your audience. When Marisa Tomei, who looks a certain kind of ethnic, is identified in-universe as “the hot Italian woman”, lest anyone think her Aunt May and therefore Peter Parker might be Jewish. The message then becomes: you can spot a Jew. And you can’t. That’s harmful. That’s what led to me in my grandmother’s rented apartment while she was dying while her nurse ranted to me about her landlord the “evil Jew”, afraid to say anything in case she harmed my grandmother while I wasn’t there. That’s how that ends up. So I’m sure Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon didn’t view their comments in the moment as harmful, and I’m sure the people who are defending their naivete and ignorance about Jewish culture and the Jewish history of comic books are only trying to speak out towards their favorite actors, but there are real consequences towards this type of language and this type of behavior and this lack of respect for the Jewish identity, and this isn’t something that can just be brushed off. And those are my thoughts on the subject.

The MCU already took careful decisions to erase to the Judaism from Spider-Man, notably following Andrew Garfield’s open declarations about Spider-Man’s Jewish identity. Now its actor are following suit. It’s hard for me to pretend it is a total coincidence, especially following Into the Spider-Verse’s Peter B. Parker with his Jewish wedding scene, voiced by Jake Johnson, who is from a Jewish family, which came out barely half a year ago. It’s both fine and normal to be unaware, especially if it’s not your background, of the Jewish history of Spider-Man. It is not fair or appropriate, especially if you are not Jewish, to dismiss the notion that the character could be Jewish without any kind of consideration, and it is especially not fair to laugh at the notion. I don’t have a lot of faith that the actors involved will learn from this, but I sincerely hope that they do and that they behave better in the future, because they did hurt and insult a lot of real Jewish people whose feelings should not be ignored. 

[gaynoctgar]

Thoughts about Prompto’s arc in “Brotherhood”

The real title, for now, is something like “Prompto being formerly fat was not even remotely necessary and was offensively handled” or “Haley rants about Brotherhood because it’s so fatphobic”

TW: eating disorders, fatphobia.  

It’s also incredibly long, but I really want to share my thoughts.

Update: 10-4-2018: inspired by comments and tags, I added more examples of dialogue that exemplifies the problem

Update: 22-4-2018: accounting for the new “official profiles”...it got worse, everyone.

Oh Prompto.  Prompto Argentum.  My beloved, sweet, beautiful bi boy who could have had a much more satisfying arc.  They really tried, didn’t they?  They tried to give you a touching backstory and instead exposed their fatphobia.  And as for the bi part, well, that’s another essay in and of itself....stay tuned everyone. 

Yes, this is one of those posts.  That’s why I put all of this under a “Keep reading.”  It’s just something that has been subtly bothering me for a long time and I thought I’d give this short essay format a try.  There will be a TL;DR at the end, I suppose, but please read through this if you are interested in this aspect that I feel is both underexplored and overexploited about my most favorite character in anything ever.

A bit about myself before we begin: I am rather chubby.  I’m 5’4” (162cm) and 220 lbs (100 kg), and I have struggled off and on with eating disorders since I was in high school.  I do realize this makes me “obese,” but this essay isn’t about that.  Rather, it is about how fatness and obesity is often portrayed in media as a character flaw, or something to overcome, and my own feelings about why this is harmful. To be clear, I want to make two major points with this: 1) Prompto being “formerly fat” is not something that was even remotely necessary for his character arc and its inclusion and resolution are nothing short of fatphobic and; 2) the fact that Prompto receives his character development via losing weight in Brotherhood is emblematic of every problem I have with how media chooses to include fat people.

These points are incredibly intertwined, so let’s start by exploring what was intended by the episode.  I want to be clear and demonstrate that I fully understand what the episode intended to show, and I will continue to acknowledge what the likely intent was.  This essay/rant is critiquing the execution.

If the point of Brotherhood was to suggest that Prompto had a lonely childhood until he met Noctis, that’s great!  I understand that that’s what Brotherhood was showing.  HOWEVER. I have been sickened, from the moment I saw his episode, with how his journey to lose weight was correlated with his journey to “be good enough” to be Noct’s friend.  Let me be clear.  I understand that we are supposed to interpret this as a character flaw on Prompto’s part, and we see in the gayest scene the rooftop motel scene that losing weight did not resolve Prompto’s self-confidence.  I know that.  What I am saying is that him losing weight was in no was necessary to include, at least not in the way that they did.  There are some ugly implicit implications here, not least of which is that eating nothing but salads is, I would argue, just as unhealthy as what he was doing before. The show treats it as a positive good that Prompto appears to be starving himself and thinking obsessively about losing weight, and that is what I am taking issue with.

I, personally, detest the “formerly fat” trope and all its incarnations.  Wouldn’t it simply have been enough to say that Prompto was painfully shy (he was) and very lonely (he was)?  Why do these feelings have to be justified via his body?  Was there no other way you could justify Prompto simply being too shy to talk to Noct? Noct’s the prince, Prompto is a commoner who feels that he’s nothing particularly special…would this not have been enough?  Doing it the way that they did implies that being fat is a moral and character flaw that needs to be corrected in order for you to be seen as a hero. That is what I am taking issue with.

And yes, I realize that the “weight loss journey” is jump-started by the fact that babby Noct says “heavy…” when trying to help Prompto to his feet.  Believe me, I understand first-hand how much that hurts. I faced many similar instances in my own life.  I can’t blame him for saying it, he’s a kid, but I do want to point out that Noct never apologizes for this.  You could say “he didn’t realize he was wrong” but maybe you could have had a scene where Noct wonders why the cute boy with the camera is avoiding him, and Ignis can say something like “well, did you do or say anything that might have upset him?” and Noct can actually apologize for hurting Prompto’s feelings.  This is not unreasonable to expect.  When I was a kid and people were avoiding me, my mom always asked me to think back on why that might be.  It’s part of growing up and learning that your words and actions have consequences.

TO BE FAIR: I do think the motel scene was an attempt to rectify all of this in the game.  While Prompto formerly being fat is not explicitly mentioned, he is mortified that Noct remembers him back in elementary school.  Now, I love Noct, but he’s stupid sometimes, and not very intuitive. This is, however, in his character, and I will allow it because the very next thing he says is “You should have said something sooner.”  This shows Prompto (and the audience) that Noct doesn’t give two shits about how Prompto looks, now or ever, and I am happy that this was included.  However, there is no given reason behind why Noct couldn’t simply talk to Prompto himself beforehand.  Like I said, Noct is an idiot, and also a lot more shy and awkward than he lets on. But this moment was sweet between them, even if you don’t ship promptis, and I do think it is fair to mention it.

However, coupling all of this with the fact that the “character sheets” show us that Prompto does, canonically, have a fear of gaining weight, as well as these little snippets of dialogue…

Prompto: Hey, let’s hit up the Crow’s Nest!

Ignis: If you wish to put on weight? Certainly.

Prompto: *sighs* Yeah, I know…

(I swear to god every time I get this dialogue I SCREAM at Ignis, how is this even remotely okay to say to your friend who you damn well know has problems with his weight and there’s no way you don’t know this--)

EDIT: The addition of this quote is based on the tags from @gentiuna, I knew I was forgetting something!

Noct: Why is your face so fat?

Prompto: I’m NOT fat!!

(I swear to Jesus you’re on thin fucking ice with me Noct, that’s not even remotely funny and you need a time out to think about what you’ve done--)

This one I have only gotten once in my ~400 hrs of play but I swear I didn’t make it up; if anyone finds the specific words, I will correct it:

Ignis: talks about food and how it’s “anything your heart wants” or something

Prompto: Yeah, it’s the wanting that’s the problem.

I think this was intended to be a nod to Brotherhood but (and @bernielu can back me up on this) I SCREAMED when I heard it. How is that REMOTELY okay?  Nobody even REACTS to this, or asks if Prompto is okay, or ask him why the FUCK he would say that.  

This is when it becomes pertinent, I think, to discuss my own experience with eating disorders.  I have wonderful friends and family, and I’m well on the road to recovery, but back when I was in high school, I just straight up wouldn’t bring food to lunch.  Retroactively, I realize they all brought extra, hoping I would get just hungry enough to pick at the scraps (I usually did), and that was their way of helping me and showing me that they cared.  It can be hard to want food sometimes.  As offensive as I find its inclusion, I do think that’s an accurate way of representing how it can feel: you know that food is good, and you know that you are hungry, but it’s wanting to eat it that’s a problem.  Here’s my issue: that should have raised everyone’s red flags, and the fact that nobody, NOT EVEN NOCT, WHO WE CAN EXPECT TO KNOW ABOUT THIS, says ANYTHING about this, and the game writes it off as another one of its Infamous Banters ™….it’s not looking great.  It’s not looking like representation, to me.  It’s looking like erasure and fatphobia.  

Babby Prompto is supposed to be viewed with pity but also, I think, with disdain: by the audience and by Prompto himself.  I’ve noticed in many fics that the fans like to almost romanticize this aspect of him, and explore that he has an eating disorder which is…I don’t’ like it because most of these fics come to the same conclusion: Prompto ends up skinny anyway and it’s just a quirk about him.  This is what I meant when I said that I feel this is overexploited, earlier in the essay, but also underdeveloped in the sense that they basically, in my opinion, show this as something that Prompto had to “get over” to be a real protagonist. They don’t go into how fucked up Prompto’s psyche must be from this.  It’s just kinda…ignored.  

UPDATE 22-4-2018: I’ve got to get this off my chest, the new “Official Works Profile” for Prompto made all of this worse.  It literally outright states that, after rescuing Pryna, Prompto “decided “to become the right sort of person for a Prince” and worked to change himself. It also refers to Prompto having a “pudgy youth” as if that were a bad thing.  It also says “Incidentally, Prompto’s photography hobby developed when he was dieting and took photos to record his weight loss progress.” Not gonna lie, this one made me physically ill.  There was literally no reason for that other than to imply that being fat is somehow immoral.  Why is Prompto’s “personal resolve” equated to losing weight? Why couldn’t it simply have been to be more outgoing? I’m fucking ANGRY, I’m done being polite about this.

My solution, then? Well, one of two things: 1) don’t make Prompto fat to justify his bad childhood if you know you’re just gonna make him thin and completely ignore that he was ever different, which is my preferred solution, or 2) have at least one character be bigger and that’s just how they are and it’s not made into a plot point or anything.  

A final note: I KNOW people can and do drop tremendous amounts of weight, and I want to be clear that I am not suggesting this is bad or that people shouldn’t do it.  A person’s weight and their relationship to it is their own business, and as long as people have a healthy relationship with their body, I’m not one to judge.  I know that we are supposed to see Prompto’s weight loss as heroic and a strong example of his dedication to Noctis.  And sure, we get that.  But maybe I have convinced you that the development we get comes at the cost of fatphobia, at least in terms of how it was portrayed here.

TL;DR: Prompto didn’t need to be fat to develop his character, and its inclusion and treatment in the narrative of Brotherhood suggest an uncomfortable degree of fatphobia.

If you stuck around for the whole thing, thank you so much for reading my thoughts.  It’s something that has been bubbling up in me for months, and now I am finally able to put it in words. <3

[diceperado]

Character Creation Ramble: The Power Armored Elephant in the Room

I’m going on a ramble about how characters in my opinion shouldn’t be created and what went wrong recently in our Dark Heresy campaign. There’s a lot that has to go unsaid simply because otherwise I’d be here all night. TL;DR, be considerate of others as you roleplay and mind the tone of the game.

It’s obvious that long campaigns are difficult to run successfully to begin with, and trust me, it’s even more difficult when characters are often in mortal peril. Not only do you sometimes die and get forced to make a new character from scratch, but you also need to create a character that works well both mechanically and socially and fits the tone of the game. As much as we’d like to, it doesn’t always work out so well. 

We’ve been playing a Dark Heresy 2nd Edition campaign for around 30 sessions. We started off with five characters. The sixth one, our interrogator, joined the game along with the first replacement character. So far in total we’ve had four characters replaced thus far. Our warrior psycher Angus was replaced by Deynor, the charismatic naval officer, after Angus died in a shuttle crush. That’s fine, though. Deynor was much better mechanically speaking. The second one to die was Omar, our bear hybrid doctor, who frenzied and tried to take down a far superior mutant crook. He could have technically survived, but the player decided that the moment was a great dramatic way to conclude that character. The third character to leave the game was Rhaban, the smuggler slash professional whacko. He was to insanity what a sponge is to water, so he was retired before he became (more of) a danger to himself and the rest of the group. The fourth character to leave the game was Deynor who, apparently, thought that covert operations didn’t suit his ambitions as a former officer, and instead asked for a transfer to more straightforward duties. Point is, there things happen, and with a colorful cast of characters and a lot of mission variation it can be difficult to make a character that can deal with what the game has to offer… but…

The latest character brought in to replace Deynor is the first one that absolutely does not (in my opinion) fit in with the campaign. Here’s why. From the very beginning our party has tried to maintain its covers through various ordeals and be as subtle and investigative as it can. That’s my perception at least, and although our rate of success isn’t the best in that regard, being sharp and sneaky has gotten us through more than simply shooting up a place ever has. In short, we’re not a full blown kill team, and my impression is that most of us don’t want a game like that either. It may not have been stated out loud at every turn, but it’s clear to anyone who’s paid attention to the game.

The thing is, the new guy is a hulking man running around in power armor and adamantine chains, boasting a decorative brazier and wielding a power fist. He has almost zero social and investigative capabilities and is adamant about bringing his power armor along. He rolls stealth against a negative target value. He’s simply not suited for an investigative campaign, and yet, he’s there.

Now, you might be asking how such a character came to be in the campaign in the first place. Shouldn’t the GM always block concepts that don’t fit the game? Wouldn’t other players offer better suggestions? To answer the first question, under normal circumstances, yes. To answer that second question, not as often as you’d like. Both me and the GM were there to help out via Discord, and boy, things got way out of hand for a number of reasons…

First, the player playing the character just isn’t a very good for the game being played. It’s not just that he’s a combat oriented player. That in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. It’s that he has almost no consideration for the game as a whole. This has shown in both of his earlier characters, Angus and Deynor, in different ways. Angus was a mechanical mess and a joke character, an obnoxious Scottish stereotype in space that tried to be a warrior and a biomancer psyker, but failed miserably at both. I don’t know how he got a pass to begin with. Deynor was mechanically sound, both a soldier and a socialite. He was somewhat good in both areas, but the player isn’t very good at social gaming. Deynor either completely excluded himself from social affairs, blatantly sucked up to higher-ups to get attention or talked down to, belittled and/or insulted suspects and other NPCs during negotiations where we absolutely needed to tread carefully. In other words, Deynor went to waste. There are other reasons why the player bothers me, mainly that he’s been absent a lot unannounced and pays little attention to the game, but that’s a story for another time perhaps. 

 After the player asked for permission to switch to a new character, the GM decided to oversee it and even asked me got help out and give suggestions. The chat begins and problems emerge right of the bat. The initial concept for the player’s new character was a dual wielding psychic warrior or some other mess like that. I don’t know where that idea sprouted from, but it was quickly shot down, because we already had multiple decent fighters and because we had an untouchable in our team. To those not familiar with Warhammer 40K lore, untouchables are anti-psykers and continuously counter and weaken psychic powers by just being in a psyker’s proximity. The second concept was an actual interrogator (not the Inquisitorial rank, but the job) with great skills at torture and extracting information. Naturally, nobody wants to play through a detailed torture scene, so that gets shot down as well. I would have suggested a social character, but again, that would have been a complete waste. So, at this point we’re kind of running out of options. The GM is getting tired, I’m experiencing (unrelated) nausea and the two of us are honestly kind of sick and tired, and more focused on getting some sort of a mechanically sound character done than on what actually gets done.

One constant remained throughout the process. The player wanted a melee fighter first and foremost, so we agree to go with it, probably due to sheer fatigue, despite the fact that the party needed an investigative character, not a fighter. Dark Heresy actually doesn’t have that many ways to differentiate one melee fighter from another, so we begin brainstorming about how to make him different. I suggest more defensive talents that would help him protect his team mates, and the GM lists offensive talents that would be useful. The thing about combat talents in Dark Heresy is that if you focus on combat, it’s going to eat up most of your experience. By the time we’re done, there’s little to nothing to put into skills, and since experience costs are determined by aptitudes, unlike in the first edition, buying social talents would have cost a shit ton of XP. Finally, we get to equipment. I’m completely out of the loop. Somehow the player talked his way into getting heavy power armor and a power fist, both weapons that clearly mark a person as a member of the Inquisition.

So there we are. The player is satisfied, and the GM and I are dead tired and patting ourselves on the back. We did it. The character’s mechanically sound and suits the player. It’s only afterwards that we realized we hadn’t considered the tone of the game. A character like that sticks out like a sore thumb and can basically hit hard and nothing else.

I know I’ve been rambling for far too long, so I’ll try sum up why I think this happened despite everyone’s best efforts and the aforementioned reasons. First and foremost, I don’t think the player in question really understands the game. Despite its war gaming origins Dark Heresy is supposed to be an investigative game first. As I understand it, the player comes from a D&D background, and while D&D can certainly be more than just killing things and playing out power fantasies, it’s not how many people play it. Second, he doesn’t understand that roleplaying is a group effort. Everyone at the table is equally responsible for keeping the game fun. Thus, you can’t play a tabletop RPG like a video game and just mess around, unless that’s precisely the thing people asked for (it wasn’t). Third, we surrendered way too easy. There is such a thing as being too nice.

Now what do I think we should have done? I’m not sure. I’d like to see him leave the campaign to be perfectly honest, but he’s not exactly being a dick either, just inconsiderate and unthoughtful, so straight up kicking him out is a hassle. We also could have talked with him about where the game is headed, maybe even have the whole group chime in. You can’t really expect a player to create a suitable character if they don’t know what’s going on. That’s a story in its own right for another time. Lastly, we should have asked more about why he wants to make certain kinds of characters, I suppose.

Of course, this is simply what I’ve seen based this campaign. The player isn’t the worst I’ve seen, nor are his characters the most disruptive I’ve witnessed. I’ll get to those in the next serious post, probably. I don’t know how the person games in other groups and other systems, so while I’m not exactly fond of his style, I do believe there’s a place for the that type of power-focused gaming. I just don’t think that place can be found in this campaign or this group. 

My point is that when creating a new character or even as you’re just settling in with a new gaming group and a campaign, mind the tone of the campaign, mind your fellow players, mind the GM, and please, please pay attention to the game.

[flauntpage]

Have We Learned Nothing? – A Sixers Column

Bitch, whine, moan.

Sob, fret, complain.

Gripe, grumble, cry.

That’s what I heard from MANY – not ALL – but MANY Sixers fans on Saturday night, the entirety of Sunday, and also Monday morning when I reluctantly opened Twitter.

I’m willing to bet that the loudest complainers were anti-Process types who just came back to the bandwagon this year, set unrealistic expectations for a squad featuring a rookie point guard, second-year center, and second-year power forward, then went off the deep end spitting nonsense after a team with zero playoff experience failed to meet the outrageous goals that THEY THEMSELVES set.

Take a breather.

The Sixers are down 3-0 to a better team with a better coach as of May 7th, 2018. Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, and Brett Brown have disappointed under the brightest glow of the still-nascent spotlight. There’s no disputing that. I think everyone is in agreement that the coach and the two stars have underwhelmed, though I’d also extend that to Dario Saric and Robert Covington and a number of the veterans who have actually been here before. Nobody is blameless.

Does that mean that the players suck and the coach should be fired and the general manager should resign? No, of course not. It means that the more experienced team with the more experienced players (minus future superstar Jayson Tatum) simply took round one in what will inevitably become the Eastern Conference’s premier rivalry over the next half-decade.

That’s it. That’s the explanation. That is William of Ockham’s razor. 

Yet here we are, doing what Philadelphia always does, and proclaiming the franchise dead and buried and flattened to the point of no return.

“They’ve been EXPOSED!” is a local favorite.

Can we please stop using that word? He got “exposed.” She got “exposed.” We say it as if coaches and players and executives can never evolve or learn or adapt, as if once a flaw is exploited, it always remains.

There are a million examples of people who were once “exposed” but figured it out and turned it around. Doug Pederson and Nick Foles come to mind. How about LeBron James? Jared Goff? 2004 Drew Brees vs. 2003 Drew Brees? Even Sergio Garcia won The Masters.

Of course the counterpoint to that is Byron Maxwell, so I’ll give you that one, but let’s continue with the Eagles theme.

These knee-jerk, “fire everyone” types are the same fans who became so irrationally flustered when the Eagles hit the wall after starting 3-0 with a rookie quarterback and first-year head coach. That pair, Pederson and Carson Wentz, won the franchise its first Super Bowl the very next season. Same thing with the cross-section of fans who complained about Earl Thomas vs. Brandon Graham for YEARS. “Why did we draft THIS GUY when we should have drafted THAT GUY!” Blah blah blahhhhhhhhh! Well, the guy you loved to hate just secured the Lombardi trophy. Jason Kelce basically wrote this column for me when he highlighted every criticism of a championship squad.

Have we learned nothing?

It’s obvious that we as a group of media, fans, and Philly people in general lack the simple ability to evaluate recent history and apply it to likewise scenarios. It’s like a provincial version of “Batman Begins,” where instead of pouring that hallucinogen into the Gotham water supply, the villain instead creates a drug that forces all Philadelphia sports fans to grow up with advanced-stage nearsightedness.

Here’s the thing; the best trait of the Philadelphia sports fan – unconditional support and emotional attachment – is also the worst trait of the Philadelphia sports fan, because it results in a recurring and collective lack of critical thinking and temperance.

I said at the beginning of the season that I felt like 2017-18 was a developmental bridge. This was the campaign that was supposed to connect the end of “Process” era to the beginning of the competitive era. The goals were to establish Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, and Markelle Fultz as cornerstone players, qualify for the postseason, and get that crucial April and May experience under your belt. They hit all but one of those goals (Fultz).

A final and related goal, in my opinion, was to head into this offseason with a full understanding of what you currently have and what you are also lacking, which I’d have to label as incomplete because of Fultz debacle. If Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid are known quantities now carrying crucial regular and postseason experience, then Fultz is still sitting on the basketball tarmac and waiting for takeoff.

I think one of the problems is what I mentioned earlier, the fact that people who are just returning to the Sixers are expecting immediate success. The contrast is that the Sam Hinkie/Process supporters are extra-patient by default, so it creates a large disparity, or maybe a wider spectrum I would say, that separates each respective end of the Sixers’ fan base. Lost and forsaken in the expansive middle is the calm and rational fan who says, “you know what, I’m disappointed right now, but they’ve taken a lot of steps forward this year.”

The Sixers have talked about adjusting expectations this year, the idea that their goals changed as they figured out that they were better than advertised. First it was playoffs, then it was home court, then it was 50 wins. I appreciated that from a competitive standpoint but didn’t find it to be healthy in regard to practicality. I’ll go to the grave believing that expectations must be set at the beginning of the season and can’t be placed on a sliding scale, because progress is best documented in larger chunks that incorporate a more robust sample size or body of work.

Look at the treasure trove of information Bryan Colangelo and Brett Brown now have, RE: what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed. This ass kicking is so valuable to the Sixers because it puts their glaring weaknesses on display for everyone to see. If they didn’t know it before, they now understand exactly what teams are going to do to slow them down and bottle up Ben Simmons. They know that they need players who can create their own shot on offense. They know what Embiid has to do to improve his low post game. There’s data and film on turnovers, rebounds, transition opportunities, dribble hand-offs, horns, SLOBs, and every play imaginable.

They’ve got the entire summer to figure out.

If Bryan Colangelo blows the offseason, or you see a lack of improvement next year, then you absolutely start thinking about the head coach and the strategy that’s currently in place. As far as I’m concerned, this was year number one for the coach and year number two for the GM, and the latter has much more on his shoulders than the former.

All of that said, this season was a wild success. You’ve got two young superstars, a couple of key supplemental pieces, and a road map for the future. To say otherwise is total horse shit, no matter whether you were pro-process, anti-process, somewhere between ambivalent and apathetic.

We all just need to be a bit more like Andy Reid. We need to “do a better job” of taking the erudite long view and suppressing our hereditary knee-jerk myopia, because it’s utterly rudimentary and pointless and makes us look like jabronies.

    Have We Learned Nothing? – A Sixers Column published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/