#but this is an alternate history so we can pretend the novel was a little more galvanism-ish

[the-lektric-tinker]

Archie: Mary Shelley was a Septemberist. She wrote Frankenstein as a cautionary tale against experimenting with lektricity and trying to mess with forces beyond human control.

Fergus: Yeah, I don’t think it had the intended effect on its target audience exactly… Victor Frankenstein was my idol growing up.

Hachi: Fergus, he gets everyone he loves killed and then dies himself.

Archie: Not to mention he abandons his creature and ruins his life too…

Fergus: Aye, but I wouldnae do that. I’d do it all right.

Hachi: [eyeroll] This attitude is why stuff like that happens in the first place.

Fergus: RIP Victor but I’m different.

[shezzaspeare]

Pilot/Episode 1: Patching Things Up With Pastiche & Fanfiction

Hi, hello, and the wait is finally over! My name is Blessie, and welcome to the first episode webisode log installation I've decided to call these things an episode for now because why not also let me know what do you actually call these things episode of The Science of Fanfiction, where we take a closer look into our beloved works of fanon because we've all got plenty of time to spare till Season 5. Before I continue, I would like to thank everyone who's liked and reblogged the last few posts before this one. It means a lot for a small and growing Tumblr user like me, and your support is something I cherish more than my modules. You guys rock!

Anyways, like with most things, we have to talk about the boring and bland stuff before we proceed with the fun stuff. For today, we are going to settle the difference between a couple of things: first being the confusion between pastiche and fanfiction; then the distinctions between tropes, clichés, and stereotypes, which we'll tackle the next time. It's important for us to establish their true meanings in order for us to really understand what fanfiction truly is, even if it's merely just a work done for the fandom. I know – it's boring, it's something that shouldn't be expounded that much, but I believe that all forms of writing (unless it's plagiarised) is a work of art — and fanfiction is not something we always talk about. I hope that by the end of this, you'll learn about what they really are as much as I did. Let's begin to talk about the—

[Image ID: A flashback of John (left) and Sherlock (right) finding an elephant (not in the screen) in a room in The Sign of Three. End ID]

. . . I did say that this GIF will always have to make an appearance here, didn't I?

So, just as with Sherlock Holmes, all other works of fiction have their own pastiches and fanfiction, and many more original works out there have taken inspiration from them to create their own books. Although they've gained popular attention, this will not be possible if they did not have taken inspiration from the materials their writers had at the time.

[Image ID: Various actors as Dracula. Jeremy Brett in 'Dracula' (1978) (upper left), Adam Sandler in a voice role for 'Hotel Transylvania' (2012) (upper right), Gary Oldman in 'Dracula' (1992) (lower left), and Bela Lugosi in 'Dracula' (1933) (lower right). End ID]

For instance, Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' (the second most adapted literary character, next to the consulting detective himself) has been portrayed on the screen over 200 times — from Gary Oldman to Adam Sandler — and has spawned off numerous books and pastiches of its own such as Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot'. Its cultural impact served as a basis of how we see vampires today, since some characteristics of the Count were made by Stoker himself. Stoker's creation is the brainchild of his predecessors and inspirations.

[Image ID: Vlad the Impaler (left) and a book cover of 'Carmilla' by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (right). End ID]

Other than the ongoing hysteria over dead back then and the existing vampire folklore, Stoker also took his inspirations from the published books on vampires he had at hand. He is said to have taken inspiration from Vlad the Impaler, a Romanian national hero known allegedly for having impalement as his favourite method of torture. He is also said to have been inspired by the J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 'Carmilla', a Gothic lesbian vampire novella that predates Dracula by 26 years. I could go on, but hey, we're going back to Sherlock Holmes now before I deviate any further. However, if you want to know about Dracula's literary origins, I suggest you watch Ted-ED's videos about the subject matter such as this one or this one.

Very much like Stoker, ACD didn't just conceive Holmes on his own. He took his own inspirations from what he had available at the time.

[Image ID: Dr Joseph Bell (left) and Edgar Allan Poe (right). End ID]

As we all know, ACD's biggest inspiration for Sherlock Holmes was one of his teachers at the Edinburgh University, Joseph Bell. He was famous for his powers of deduction, and he was also interested in forensic science — both characteristics which Holmes is greatly known for. He also drew inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe's sleuth, C. Auguste Dupin ('The Purloined Letter' & 'Murders in Rue Morgue'). As ACD himself has said at the 1909 Poe Centennial Dinner: "Where was the detective story until Poe breathed life into it?" Some other writers he took after are Wilkie Collins, Émile Gaboriau, and Oscar Wilde.

Now, what does this say about us Sherlockians/Holmesians (depending if you're the coloniser or the one that was colonised)? Basically, ACD laid the groundwork for us with Sherlock Holmes: his humble abode 221B that he shares with his flatmate Dr. John Watson, his adventures, memoirs, return, casebook, last vow, and all that. Now that we have this material at hand, we can now make our own versions, takes, or even original stories featuring the characters of the Canon. Our inspiration comes from ACD's Sherlock Holmes, and we now get the chance to make our very own stories/conspiracy theories about them.

As I have mentioned earlier, Sherlock Holmes is the most adapted literary character in history. He has been adapted in over 200 films, more than 750 radio adaptations, a ballet, 2 musicals; and he's become a mouse, a woman, a dog, even a bloody cucumber. On top of all that are numerous pastiches and fanfics, and finally, we have arrived at the main topic of our post!

Fanfiction and pastiche are often confused together since they have three common elements: they take after the original work, they usually use the characters in that original work, and more often than not do are they set in that same time frame/period or not long after that. The common misconception is that pastiche are printed fanfiction, which is only partly true. While pastiche is definitely fanfiction in some ways and vice versa, there are fanfictions out there that aren't necessarily classified as pastiche that have been published.

Let's get on with our definition of terms to clear up the confusion a little more. Pastiche, according to Literary Terms, is:

. . . a creative work that imitates another author or genre. It’s a way of paying respect, or honor, to great works of the past. Pastiche differs from parody in that pastiche isn’t making fun of the works it imitates – however, the tone of pastiche is often humorous.

A good example of a pastiche is Sophie Hannah's 'The Monogram Murders', which is her take from Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot.

[Image ID: A book cover of 'The Monogram Murders' by Sophie Hannah. End ID.]

Although this was a commission from Christie's estate, it's still considered as a pastiche as:

It's takes after Christie's writing style;

It is set in the early years of Poirot's career (1929), which is still within the time frame that the author wrote him in;

It features Poirot and;

It pays respect to Christie in a sense that it stays true to her (Christie) characters and way of storytelling.

Meanwhile, our good and slightly unreliable friend Wikipedia defines fanfiction as:

. . . is fictional writing written by fans, commonly of an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted characters, settings, or other intellectual property from the original creator(s) as a basis for their writing. [It] ranges from a couple of sentences to an entire novel, and fans can both keep the creator's characters and settings and/or add their own. [ . . . ] [It] can be based on any fictional (and sometimes non-fictional) subject. Common bases for fanfiction include novels, movies, bands, and video games.

To avoid any copyright infringement issues if I ever use a popular fanfic in the fandom, we'll use my (unfinished and unpopular) Sherlock Wattpad fic, 'Play Pretend'. You can read it here.

[Image ID: The second self-made book cover of Blessie/shezzaspeare's 'Play Pretend'. End ID]

Why is it considered a fanfiction and not a pastiche?

It takes after an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes (BBC Sherlock) which is a TV show, not the ACD canon itself;

The author (in this case myself) uses her own writing style and does not take after the original story's style;

Although it is set well in modern-day London and after Season 4, it also features scenes decades before the actual fanfic is set and outside of London;

I added a considerable number of characters, i.e. siblings to canon characters;

I had my own take some of the canon characters' personality especially after the events of Sherrinford;

It is written by a fan – myself. It is a work of fan labour and;

It is only a work of fanon, and isn't likely going to be considered by the show as its writing style is different from the actual show.

To put it simply, you can have more freedom in a fanfiction as it does not necessarily restrict you to follow or take after the original stories. Alternate universes (AUs) such as Unilock and Teenlock are perfect examples of this thing.

So can a pastiche be classified as fanfiction? Yes.

Can a fanfiction be classified as pastiche? Not all the time.

What's the difference? While yes, they share the basics, pastiche is technically leans more onto the original work's fundamental elements whereas fanfiction is a broader range of works inspired by the original work but doesn't necessarily follow all or any of its fundamental elements.

In order for us to understand it more, I'll give another example.

[Image ID: The 'Enola Holmes' title card (upper left) and Henry Cavill as its Sherlock holmes (upper right). Underneath it is a a scene from the opening titles of BBC Sherlock (lower left) and Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes in A Scandal In Belgravia. (lower right) End ID]

Most of you are familiar with these 21st-century adaptations of Holmes: the 2020 adaptation of Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes books and BBC Sherlock, which needs no further explanation – but for those who don't know, it's basically Holmes and the gang if they were alive today. I specifically chose these two as they are the ones that I believe would get my points across best. Though both are considered as wonderful pastiches with a well-rounded cast and awesome visuals, if we break them down bit by bit, we'll see which one is more of a pastiche and which one is more of a fanfic. (Yes, I know they're both screen adaptations. However, as Enola Holmes was based on the books and BBC Sherlock's fanfiction has the show's scenes written out in most fanfics, hear me out.)

They share these characteristics of a pastiche:

They feature characters from the Canon (Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, and Lestrade);

They have additional characters added by the writers (Including but not limited to Molly Hooper, Eurus Holmes, and Philip Anderson for BBC Sherlock while Enola Holmes has Lord Tewkesbury, Eudoria Holmes, and Enola herself) and;

They pay respect to the original Canon as their stories are based on the cases (BBC Sherlock) or simply what was going on around them (Enola Holmes).

They also share these characteristics of a fanfic:

They are made by enthusiasts of Sherlock Holmes (Moffat has called himself and Mark Gatiss 'Sherlock Holmes geeks', while Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes books are not just one or two but six);

They follow a common trope (we'll discuss these tropes in the following episodes) that goes on in the fandom (Sherlock's Sister & Modern AU)

They are based on a fictional subject (Sherlock Holmes);

They used characters and story elements that are copyrighted by the author/author's estate (fun fact: prior to the production of Enola Holmes, the Conan Doyle Estate filed a lawsuit against Springer & Netflix over Sherlock's emotions since he was more 'sympathetic' than he was portrayed in the Canon – this was later dismissed by both parties) and;

Their writing styles don't necessarily follow ACD's.

Despite these similarities, there are very obvious differences between the two that separates them from being a pastiche and a fanfiction.

Enola Holmes embodies pastiche more as it doesn't stray far away from the original elements of the Canon. It's still set in Victorian England. While Springer added characters of her own and definitely twisted the Canon to suit her series, she didn't necessarily place them out of the social construct that was going on around the characters. It follows ACD's writing style more as Enola Holmes' setting still remains within the Canon's original setting.

Meanwhile, we can safely say that BBC Sherlock is a work of fanfiction. While it did give us The Abominable Bride, the main series focused on Holmes and Watson in 21st-century England, which is drastically different from Victorian England. There are phones, black cabs, and cellphones — things which ACD Sherlock Holmes doesn't have. It also diverted from the Canon in the characters themselves, which is mostly seen in the names: Henry Baskerville became Henry Knight, Charles Augustus Milverton became Charles Augustus Magnussen, the H in Dr Watson's name stood for Hamish and Sherlock's full name is actually William Sherlock Scott Holmes. They also changed the personalities of some Canon characters: Mary was actually an ex-assassin, Mrs Hudson was an exotic dancer who drove a kick-ass sports car, Irene Adler is a dominatrix, to name a few. Moffat and Gatiss created a world of their own featuring the characters of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which is really what most of us fanfic writers do with Mofftiss' rendition of Holmes.

In conclusion: while pastiche and fanfiction could have been the same thing, they're actually not. There's more to them that just printed fanfiction or pastiche e-books, and we all should take some time to see and observe them in a closer perspective.

And that's it for our first episode! I hope you enjoyed it. It was a lot fun for me to write this, especially now that I'm only starting. I would also like to note that while intensive research has been done on this series, some parts of this comes from my own observation and opinion, which may vary from yours. I am very much open to criticism, as long as it is said in a polite and civil manner. I'm still young, and to be educated as I go is something that could really help me with this series.

Like and reblog this you like it. It helps out a lot. Be sure to follow me as well and the tags underneath if you want to see more of TSoF.

See you soon!

Blessie presents – The Science of Fanfiction: A Study In Sherlock (2021) • Next

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SOURCES • Pinterest, Google Images, Wikipedia, Literary Terms, Conan Doyle Estate, Definitions, The Sherlock Holmes Book, and Google

[rpgsandbox]

After thousands of votes, we now have our annual list of most anticipated tabletop RPGs for the coming year. As I do every year, I recently took nominations for the most anticipated tabletop RPGs for the coming year, and then opened the floor to voting. Here are this year's winners - the most anticipated tabletop RPGs of 2021! Previous winners include 13th Age (2013), Star Wars Force & Destiny (2015), Rifts for Savage Worlds (2016), Trudvang Chronicles (2017), Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition (2018), Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (2019), and Dune: Adventures in the Imperium (2020). Who will join their ranks this year? Read on to find out!

10. SLA Industries, 2nd Edition (Nightfall Games) SLA Industries is a role-playing game of urban horror, set in The World of Progress; a vast world of ruin and decay. At the very heart of this world lies Mort City, a false beacon of hope upon an otherwise dystopian planet. Under the skin of this sprawling city are the Operatives of SLA Industries. These agents, investigators and trained soldiers do the company’s dirty work, cleaning the streets of serial killers, cultists and Carrien vermin, whilst being sure to make the right impression for the cameras. The original was published over 25 years ago.

9. Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition (Renegade Studios/Paradox) Werewolf: The Apocalypse takes place in a fictional version of our Earth: the World of Darkness. In the World of Darkness, werewolves, vampires, magicians, and monsters are all living among us. An entire supernatural world hidden in plain sight. You are one of these monsters, pretending to be human but fighting for survival and supremacy among mysteries and conspiracies that threaten the existence of humanity.

8. Brancalonia - The Spaghetti Fantasy RPG (Acheron Books) An all-Italian medieval, roguish and picaresque setting for the 5th Edition of the most famous role-playing game of all time. This game will be releases in Italian and English. “Spaghetti Fantasy” is a new fantasy genre: imagine a Spaghetti Western – with swords instead of guns – based on Italian folklore, history and pop culture.

7. Pathfinder for Savage Worlds (Pinnacle Entertainment Group) A bombshell announcement in November 2020, the Pathfinder for Savage Worlds core rulebook will include an adaptation of the Savage Worlds game mechanics for players to make and evolve characters, and for game masters to create games of their own design, for play in Pathfinder’s world of Golarion. The Pathfinder for Savage Worlds boxed set—as typical for Pinnacle Entertainment Group—will include the core rulebook as well as other elements of game play for Savage Worlds like Bennies, Action Deck, Templates, Game Master Screen with adventure, Powers Cards, and more. Kickstarter coming this month, with a release in late 2021.

6. Rivers of London (Chaosium) At #7 on this list last year, Rivers of London has claimed one place for 2021! Based on the novels by Ben Aaronovitch, and powered by a customized version of the Basic Roleplaying System, the Rivers of London series follows an ordinary constable turned magician’s apprentice, as he solves crimes across London in a sensational blend of inventive urban fantasy, gripping mystery thriller, and hilarious fantasy caper.

5. Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (A5E) (EN Publishing) Ready to level up your 5th Edition game? Welcome to Level Up, the standalone 'advanced 5E' backwards compatible tabletop RPG coming in 2021! A crunchier, more flexible version of the 5E ruleset which you know and love. If you love 5E but would like a little more depth to the ruleset, Level Up is the game for you!

4. King Arthur Pendragon 6th Edition (Chaosium) Pendragon was Greg Stafford's masterpiece, and this 6th edition has been a decade in the making. "Pendragon veterans will find that the fundamentals of the game remain the same, with subtle modifications reflecting the culmination of nearly three decades’ refinement of Greg’s vision of Arthurian fantasy." You can can download a free adventure and preview at the link. This is Chaosium's second entry in this year's list.

3. The One Ring 2nd Edition (Free League) Taking over the franchise from Cubicle 7, Free League will be updating both The One Ring and Adventures in Middle Earth, as well as producing Moria: The Long Dark. This is second edition and continuation of the game published by Cubicle 7, combined with the open-world elements found in their Forbidden Lands roleplaying game. And now, for the first time ever, we have a joint winner! The following two games got exactly the same number of votes - which, with thousands of votes being cast, is as improbable as it is true! Congratulations to them both on being 2021's most anticipated tabletop RPG. Even if one of them is on the list for the third year in a row!

1 (joint). Dune: Adventures in The Imperium (Modiphius Entertainment) Last year's winner, and the third year running it has appeared in the Top 10, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium is 2021's joint most anticipated tabletop RPG! The Dune: Adventures in the Imperium roleplaying game takes you into a far future where fear is the mind killer so be sure to keep your wits about you. The Imperium is a place of deadly duels, feudal politics and mysterious abilities in a universe where a blade can change the fortunes of millions. Build your House, carve your place in the universe or rebuild an ancient lineage and fight for the Imperial throne.

1 (joint). Twilight 2000 (Free League) The top two entries in this list were neck and neck. Free League's second entry on the list the year gets the joint top spot as the coming year's most anticipated tabletop roleplaying game! Another few minutes of voting, and who knows what would have happened? But as it is, both got the same number of votes. Just like the original game, the new edition of Twilight: 2000 is set in a Poland devastated by war, but the game also offers an alternative Swedish setting, as well as tools for placing the game anywhere in the world.

[ucflibrary]

Welcome to Asian Pacific American Heritage Month!

It has been a difficult 14 months for the world, but our Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) brothers and sisters have faced even more struggles. From small harassments to intense acts of violence, the AAPI community has borne the brunt of American fears and grief relating to the pandemic. These malicious acts demonstrate as a country we are not living up to the ideals of our nation. As Americans and Knights, we need to demonstrate these ideals are worth fighting for. Actions you can take range from learning more about the AAPI experience and history to using any privilege we have to push back against racism and violence.

One way to learn more about AAPI history and experiences is to visit the Libraries’ Readings on Race guide. This guide includes a page for general information about racism in America and how to have conversations about it to pages specifically addressing the experiences of marginalized communities in the United States such as Asian America Pacific Islander, African American, Hispanic/Latinx, and Indigenous. Take some time to familiarize yourself with lived experiences beyond your own race or ethnicity so we can stand together and become a more inclusive Knight community.

If you witness or experience incidents of discrimination or violence, report them to the university. If any of these incidents have impacted you, UCF has resources that can help. For more information, visit UCF Cares, Student Care Services or UCF Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) if you are a student, and the Employee Assistance Program if you are an employee.

 For 2021 Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, UCF Libraries faculty and staff have suggested these 20 books from the library’s collection by or about Asian Pacific Americans. Click the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links. There is also an extensive physical display on the main floor of the John C. Hitt Library near the Research & Information Desk.

A Burning by Megha Majumdar After a fiery attack on a train leaves 104 people dead, the fates of three people become inextricably entangled. Jivan, a bright, striving woman from the slums looking for a way out of poverty, is wrongly accused of planning the attack because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir, a slippery gym teacher from Jivan's former high school, has hitched his aspirations to a rising right wing party, and his own ascent becomes increasingly linked to Jivan's fall. Lovely, a spirited, impoverished, relentlessly optimistic hjira, who harbors dreams of becoming a Bollywood star, can provide the alibi that would set Jivan free - but her appearance in court will have unexpected consequences that will change the course of all of their lives. A novel about fate, power, opportunity, and class; about innocence and guilt, betrayal and love, and the corrosive media cycle that manufactures falsehoods masquerading as truths. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions and Collection Services

 American History Unbound: Asians and Pacific Islanders by Gary K. Okihiro A survey of U.S. history from its beginnings to the present, this  reveals our past through the lens of Asian American and Pacific Islander history. In so doing, it is a work of both history and anti-history, a narrative that fundamentally transforms and deepens our understanding of the United States. This text is accessible and filled with engaging stories and themes that draw attention to key theoretical and historical interpretations. Gary Y. Okihiro positions Asians and Pacific Islanders within a larger history of people of color in the United States and places the United States in the context of world history and oceanic worlds. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 American Panda by Gloria Chao A freshman at MIT, seventeen-year-old Mei Lu tries to live up to her Taiwanese parents' expectations, but no amount of tradition, obligation, or guilt prevent her from hiding several truths-- that she is a germaphobe who cannot become a doctor, she prefers dancing to biology, she decides to reconnect with her estranged older brother, and she is dating a Japanese boy. Can she find a way to be herself, before her web of lies unravels? Suggested by Pam Jaggernauth, Curriculum Materials Center

 Asian American History: a very short introduction by Madeline Y. Hsu Madeline Y. Hsu weaves a fascinating historical narrative of this "American Dream." She shows how Asian American success, often attributed to innate cultural values, is more a result of the immigration laws, which have largely pre-selected immigrants of high economic and social potential. Asian Americans have, in turn, been used by politicians to bludgeon newer (and more populous) immigrant groups for their purported lack of achievement. Hsu deftly reveals how public policy, which can restrict and also selectively promote certain immigrant populations, is a key reason why some immigrant groups appear to be more naturally successful and why the identity of those groups evolves differently from others. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

 Eyes That Kiss in the Corners by Joanna Ho A young Asian girl notices that her eyes look different from her peers'. They have big, round eyes and long lashes. She realizes that her eyes are like her mother's, her grandmother's, and her little sister's. They have eyes that kiss in the corners and glow like warm tea, crinkle into crescent moons, and are filled with stories of the past and hope for the future. Drawing from the strength of these powerful women in her life, she recognizes her own beauty and discovers a path to self love and empowerment. This powerful, poetic picture book will resonate with readers of all ages and is a celebration of diversity. Suggested by Pam Jaggernauth, Curriculum Materials Center

 Frankly in Love by David Yoon High school senior Frank Li is caught between his parents' traditional expectations and his own Southern California upbringing. His parents have one rule when it comes to romance: ‘Date Korean.’ But Frank falls for Brit Means, who is smart, beautiful-- and white. Joy Song is in a similar predicament, and they make a pact: they'll pretend to date each other in order to gain their freedom. It seems like the perfect plan, until their fake-dating maneuver leaves Frank wondering if he ever really understood love- or himself- at all. Suggested by Pam Jaggernauth, Curriculum Materials Center

 Ghosts of Gold Mountain: the epic story of the Chinese who built the Transcontinental Railroad by Gordon H. Chang The long-lost tale of the Chinese workers who built the Transcontinental Railroad, helping to forge modern America only to disappear into the shadows of history. In this groundbreaking book, award-winning historian Gordon H. Chang recovers the stories of these "silent spikes" and returns them to their rightful place in our national saga. Drawing on recent archaeological findings, as well as payroll records, ship manifests, photographs, and other sources from American and Chinese archives, Chang retraces the laborers' odyssey in breathtaking detail. He introduces individual workers, describes their hopes and fears, and shows how they lived, ate, fought, loved, worked, and worshiped. Their sweat and blood not only fueled the ascent of an interlinked, industrial United States, but also laid the groundwork for a thriving Chinese America. A magisterial feat of scholarship and storytelling, this book honors these immigrants' sacrifice and ingenuity, and celebrates their role in this defining American achievement. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

 Good Enough by Paul  Yoo A Korean American teenager tries to please her parents by getting into an Ivy League college, but a new guy in school and her love of the violin tempt her in new directions. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu Everyday Willis Wu leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He's a bit player here too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy-- and he sees his life as a script. After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he has ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family, and what that means for him in today's America. Suggested by Ying Zhang, Administration

 Last Witnesses: reflections on the wartime internment of Japanese Americans edited by Erica Harth To the writers in this book - novelists, memoirists, poets, activists, scholars, students, professionals - the World War II internment of Japanese Americans in the detention camps is an unfinished chapter of American history that mars the nostalgic glow that often surrounds the World War II home front years. Former internees, like John Tateishi and Robert Maeda, and children of detainees and of camp officials join with others in challenging readers to construct a better future by confronting this dark episode from America's World War II scrapbook. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

 Minor Feelings: an Asian American reckoning by Cathy Park Hong With sly humor and a poet’s searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, it forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche—and of a writer’s search to both uncover and speak the truth. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services, and Ying Zhang, Administration

 Monstress by Marjorie M. Liu Set in an alternate matriarchal 1900's Asia, in a richly imagined world of art deco-inflected steam punk, Liu tells the story of a teenage girl who is struggling to survive the trauma of war, and who shares a mysterious psychic link with a monster of tremendous power, a connection that will transform them both and make them the target of both human and otherworldly powers Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions and Collection Services

 Paper Son: the inspiring story of Tyrus Wong, immigrant and artist by Julie Leung An inspiring picture-book biography of animator Tyrus Wong, the Chinese American immigrant responsible for bringing Disney's Bambi to life. Before he became an artist named Tyrus Wong, he was a boy named Wong Geng Yeo. He traveled across a vast ocean from China to America with only a suitcase and a few papers. Not papers for drawing--which he loved to do--but immigration papers to start a new life. Once in America, Tyrus seized every opportunity to make art, eventually enrolling at an art institute in Los Angeles. Working as a janitor at night, his mop twirled like a paintbrush in his hands. Eventually, he was given the opportunity of a lifetime--and using sparse brushstrokes and soft watercolors, Tyrus created the iconic backgrounds of Bambi. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon Alisak, Prany, and Noi--three orphans united by devastating loss - must do what is necessary to survive the perilous landscape of 1960s Laos. When they take shelter in a bombed out field hospital, they meet Vang, a doctor dedicated to helping the wounded at all costs. Soon the teens are serving as motorcycle couriers, delicately navigating their bikes across the fields filled with unexploded bombs, beneath the indiscriminate barrage from the sky. In a world where the landscape and the roads have turned into an ocean of bombs, we follow their grueling days of rescuing civilians and searching for medical supplies, until Vang secures their evacuation on the last helicopters leaving the country. It's a move with irrevocable consequences--and sets them on disparate and treacherous paths across the world. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions and Collection Services

 Searching for Sylvie Lee: a novel by Jean Kwok A poignant and suspenseful drama that untangles the complicated ties binding three women--two sisters and their mother--in one Chinese immigrant family and explores what happens when the eldest daughter disappears, and a series of family secrets emerge. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother-- and vanishes. Amy is too young to remember a time when her parents were newly immigrated and too poor to keep Sylvie, who was raised by a distant relative in a faraway, foreign place. Amy flies to the last place Sylvie was seen, retracing her sister's movements. It seems Sylvie kept painful secrets that reveal more about Amy's family than she ever could have imagined. Suggested by Rachel Mulvihill, Downtown Library

 Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo Told from two viewpoints, teens Lucky, a very famous K-pop star, and Jack, a part-time paparazzo who is trying to find himself, fall for each other against the odds through the course of one stolen day. Suggested by Pam Jaggernauth, Curriculum Materials Center

 Strangers from a Different Shore: a history of Asian Americans by Ronald Takaki In an extraordinary blend of narrative history, personal recollection, and oral testimony, the author presents a sweeping history of Asian Americans. He writes of the Chinese who laid tracks for the transcontinental railroad, of plantation laborers in the canefields of Hawaii, of "picture brides" marrying strangers in the hope of becoming part of the American dream. He tells stories of Japanese Americans behind the barbed wire of U.S. internment camps during World War II, Hmong refugees tragically unable to adjust to Wisconsin's alien climate and culture, and Asian American students stigmatized by the stereotype of the “model minority.” Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

 The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape them—this book introduces readers to the fierce and unforgettable female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 What We Carry: a memoir by Maya Shanbhag Lang Lang grew up idolizing her brilliant mother, an accomplished psychologist who immigrated to the United States from India, completed her residency and earned an American medical degree while nurturing young children and keeping a traditional Indian home. Her mother's stories motivated her, encouraged her, offered solace when she needed it. When Lang becomes a mother herself, her mother becomes a grandmother who is cold and distant. Reexamining the stories of her childhood, Lang realized that being able to accept both myth and reality is what has finally brought her into adulthood Suggested by Ying Zhang, Administration

 Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha In the wake of the police shooting of a black teenager, Los Angeles is as tense as it's been since the unrest of the early 1990s. But Grace Park and Shawn Matthews have their own problems. Grace is sheltered and largely oblivious, living in the Valley with her Korean-immigrant parents, working long hours at the family pharmacy. Shawn has already had enough of politics and protest after an act of violence shattered his family years ago. But when another shocking crime hits LA, both the Park and Matthews families are forced to face down their history while navigating the tumult of a city on the brink of more violence. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions and Collection Services

[oneweekoneband]

meet me behind the mall!!!!!!!!!

I don’t know why Taylor Swift thinks that teenagers drink wine, and I don’t know why she chose to record and release a wistful high-school-other-woman song which left me feeling naked as a frog and therefore furious. Some questions we ask only so as to be soothed by the familiar sound of our own voice, still there after all. The answers are not coming. 

The Taylor Swift Teen Love Triangle Triad of “cardigan”, “august”, and “betty” is the part of folklore that makes me most bullish about where Taylor is going as an artist. A turn away from writing songs which are intentionally meant to appear confessional and toward, instead, songs which reveal the personal as refracted through fictitious circumstances and made-up characters is a better use of her big, weird brain, and allows that brain to be unleashed on a broader plain of experience. It’s incredibly embarrassing to be an adult woman with my own problems to manage and to have living in my head Taylor Swift’s demented YA fiction, but it’s an embarrassment that feels appropriate, like I could never really have escaped this fate. On “betty” she gets to play-act as a contrite teen boy who knows he’s done wrong, and while obviously the most charming thing about the song is Taylor saying “fuck” (and also her giving us a little of the ol’ razzle dazzle by way of some light twang), her experiment with imagining what it’s like to be a skateboarding kid who hates dances, trying on an imagined teen boy interiority as a costume, is effective too. 

“cardigan” is more removed, less plaintive and shouty. This is a song from adult Betty’s perspective looking back on this period in her life and in her relationship with James, who the song seems to imply she is still with now. While—full offense—I believe marrying your high school girlfriend or boyfriend is a disorder which should have its own listing in the DSM, restoring order by putting the original couple back together so as to make the story one of true love triumphing over adversity, rather than a series of sketches of kids doing fuckup kid things just because it is not easy to be alive and to be alive alongside others and with gentleness, least of all when you are very new at it,  is the only conclusion this saga could ever have reached with Ms. Swift at its helm, and I do appreciate the consistent, if baby-brained, internal logic. I’ve never known a teenage girl whose signature garment was a cardigan and, frankly, this Betty sounds like sort of a self-absorbed drip (I do love, love, how Taylor’s own voice comes through so clearly on the lightly threatening, smug lines, “I knew you’d miss me once the thrill expired / And you’d be standing in my front porch light” !!) so I’m not totally surprised she got cheated on, but that’s very uncharitable of me and probably comes from the same meaty polyp in my brain that is responsible for my still loving all the hilariously mean-spirited, woman-hating songs on Speak Now.

“august” is about the other girl. The “her” in James’ rather pathetic defense, “slept next to her, but I dreamt of you all summer long”. “august” tells a story that brings to my mind another story. It is a story I won’t belabor because it is neither exciting nor unique. It will not illuminate an unexplored human experience, as it is, in fact, incredibly boring, regular, an incident which would be at home in any normal Tuesday, ordinary as meeting at the mall. This is a million years ago and there is a boy whose basement I go to sometimes after swim practice. We have matching team sweatpants with our names embroidered above the pocket at the right hip and I like to switch pairs. I’m you and you’re me and when we have pushed and bent the tiredness out of our muscles together, making experimental declarations in hushed voices down there while the furnace groans, well, then I’m you and me and you’re you and me and we are we are we are. 

One February day at twilight I bound out of the school building with wet hair and a fleece jacket, but his car is already gone. No worries. Standing at my locker the next afternoon like in a movie he will say, easy as anything, that he has a girlfriend, a family friend, two towns over, she goes to private school. You’ve probably met her, he says. And right then I remember that I have. Last year I did her zipper in the bathroom at a dance. We were fighting but we never really broke up, he says. For months you’ve been fighting? is all I say back. Fighting since October? As if that matters. Like that’s the point. My voice is pinched and ugly and I know I’ll hear that sound forever. Well, anyway... I feel bad. He doesn’t clarify for whom he feels bad. He’s got one sneaker toe working against the other one atop the tile floor that’s the murky green of sea glass. He looks at my St Brigid’s cross necklace, at the blue Masterlock hanging open like a broken jaw, at someone in a hoodie who punches his shoulder as they walk by. Nothing personal, he says, and there is a tiny smudge of cafeteria pizza at the corner of his mouth that I hadn’t noticed until that second and a day ago would’ve reached up and wiped away with the pad of my thumb, laughing. I get it, right? Oh, sure. 

The worst of it was not skipping pre-calc to cry in the bathroom, since, I mean, I couldn’t actually do pre-calc and would never learn how, but was inspecting my soul in the dark when I couldn’t sleep that night and finding part of me had known this all along, had chosen to pretend, wanted the wanting so badly I’d knocked from my brain the truth of how it was going to end. This would not be the last false love from which I’d find myself unceremoniously discarded, and in time I’d learn to be the liar myself, too. It’s unseemly to pathologize bad decisions, to take on poor impulse control or self-destructive patterns as an identity, but I do think that just as some people are born serial monogamists, part of a twosome forever with very little mess in-between, some of us were built from the very first cell to live like a pool ball struck and banging teeth first into the wrong mouths and hearts. I can examine my romantic history and tap my finger against the obvious errors, the times I chose what I knew would hurt me, when I ascribed hope to situations where it did not belong, when I, like the narrator of “august”, regarded someone as not mine to lose but still put myself in the position to be harmed by the losing, yet I can’t produce alternative choices that feel realistic. If you are in love and it doesn’t work out, there is mourning, there is pain, but there is all the while a record which shows something happened, it was real. “august” stands somewhat apart in the Taylor Swift catalog as a song neither about the glory of true love or the heartbreak when it’s over, but about the small, paper cut heartbreaks that are inescapable during each day of an untrue love. “It was never mine”. When it turns out you were wrong the whole time, fooling yourself, then even remembering that you’d been happy in the lie is like being trapped in a fun house, body bent and broken in the mirror, a thing not built right for this world. 

“august” is about the girl who James was with over the summer, the girl he leaves to return to Betty. Taylor said it’s the first of the three that she wrote, and I fear this has warmed me to her in some new and unsettling way. I fear this means she’s matured as a person and writer, capable now of a more expansive view of situations, to be generous. It’s like how you shouldn’t feed gremlins after midnight; there is no telling what new and more dangerous creature this woman might turn into if she’s suddenly been taught empathy. When Taylor-as-James in “betty” sings, “Would you trust me if I told you it was just a summer thing?” in his effort to woo Betty back I hate him a little, that thoughtless child undeserving of the kind of adoration in lines like, “your back beneath the sun / wishing I could write my name on it.” I try to extend grace to this fictional boy, but I think of the “Do you remember? in “august” and I feel a little sick from being so certain that no... No, he doesn’t. Not really.

“Back when we were still changing for the better / wanting was enough / for me it was enough”. I’d like to think there is no last chance to change for the better. I’d like to think wanting is enough so long as you want the right thing. I’d like to think that God made sure Taylor Swift became a singer instead of a young adult novelist because the absolute last thing this world needed was this freak joining the circus that is YA Twitter. Most of all, I like thinking that Judy Blume knows that her beautiful, searing, devastatingly romantic and also textually gay 1998 novel Summer Sisters is the only important book that has ever been published, and, further, that the world will show me the respect of understanding and accepting that “august”, when removed from the context of the Swiftian child romance trilogy, sounds as if it were specifically written in homage. Taylor, I know I’ve accused you of at least fifty crimes this week alone, but if you want to talk about Summer Sisters, please get in touch.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “The Degenerates” by J. Albert Mann

30. Wild Card: The Degenerates by J. Albert Mann

List Progress: 25/30

Morons. Idiots. Imbeciles. Feeble-minded. These are some of the many terms used to refer to the lead characters of the YA novel The Degenerates. Young teens London, Alice, Maxine and Rose are patients at the Walter E. Fernald State School, originally known as the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded, and this is where they will live the rest of their lives. The novel takes place in 1928, at the center of the American eugenics movement, and the girls’ imprisonment is seen as a necessity for the good of society as a whole, removing corrupted parts of the population to benefit humanity. But the patients are people, with inner loves and hopes and dreams, and they deserve better.

Author J. Albert Mann drew much of the doctors’ and nurses’ dialogue for the book from historical documents, to show exactly how the physically, mentally and socially disabled were seen by dominant society. The girls are fictional characters, but their world is a very real one. The book begins with London, fourteen, rebellious and pregnant, being dragged to Fernald for “moral feeble-mindedness”. She meets and befriends Alice, and sisters Maxine and Rose. The four of them cover a wide swath of situations, but they are united in being “undesirable” to greater society. Their lives follow strict, rigid routines where doctors, nurses and attendants tell them when to eat, sleep, use the bathroom, and the rare occasions when they can talk to one another. And they are the lucky ones, compared to the severely disabled women kept in the Back Ward and treated no better than animals. Or the babies with congenital deformities left to be poked and prodded at for the duration of their short lives.

The Degenerates can be a hard book to read, and I was surprised at how graphic it was allowed to be for a YA novel. Aside from the occasional burst of violence, it has a strong tendency towards the scatological, to highlight how little dignity is allowed in these young women’s lives. But I did really enjoy it, even as I squirmed sometimes. The point of view alternates between the four by chapter, including to Rose, who has Down Syndrome (or in the contemporary parlance, is a “Mongoloid”). This gives her a lot more agency than is usually afforded to mentally disabled characters, and she often reflects on how she can use people’s low expectations of her to her advantage. One of my few quibbles is that she loses a bit of focus by the end of the book, because she is a great character. (Another quibble is that Mann has clearly never lived through a Massachusetts winter. The barefoot runaway in late December would not have kept the use of her toes, if she kept them at all.)

But all small critiques aside, I am glad I read this book. Fernald was closed in 2014, and while there were many reforms between 1928 and then, we cannot pretend that disability rights in America are anywhere near where they should be. The Degenerates shows us one of the darker chapters of this history, and states a clear demand for the future. Hopefully one that will be listened to in time.

Would I Recommend It: Yes, very much so.

[chiseler]

Stolen Faces

Cinema is an art of faces, almost a religion of faces: on screen they loom above us, vast as a mother’s face must appear to an infant. We can get lost in them. The deepest thrill the movies offer may be the opportunity to gaze at human faces longer and with more unabashed, lover-like intimacy than real life regularly allows. Most often, of course, we gaze at beautiful faces, though cinema has its share of beloved gargoyles, mugs with “character” rather than symmetry. But the uncanny power of faces onscreen also anchors films about disfigurement and facial transformations, about masks and scars and plastic surgery. These stories summon all the fears and taboos, desires and unresolved questions swirling around the human face. Do faces reveal or conceal a person’s true nature? Can changing someone’s face change their soul?

Deformity is a staple of horror films, of course, from classics such as Phantom of the Opera and The Raven (in which the hideously afflicted man played by Boris Karloff muses, “Maybe if a man looks ugly, he does ugly things”) to surgical shockers such as Eyes Without a Face. But plot twists involving faces that are damaged or corrected, masked or changed, turn up with surprising frequency in film noir as well, where they are related to themes of identity theft, amnesia, desperate attempts to shed the past or recover the past. One of the grim proverbs of noir is that you can’t escape yourself. There are no fresh starts, no second chances. But noir also demonstrates the instability of identity, the way character can be corrupted, and stories about facial transformations harbor a nebulous fear that there is in the end no fixed self. If noir is pessimistic about the possibility of change, it is at the same time haunted by fear of change—fear of looking in the mirror and seeing a stranger.

The Truth of Masks

Two films about men who literally lose their faces take the full measure of the resulting ostracism and crushing isolation—and what men will do to escape it. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (Tanin no Kao, 1966) is based on a Kobo Abe novel about a scientist named Okuyama who has been literally defaced by a chemical accident. We never see what he used to look like; he spends half the film swaddled in bandages like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man, ferocious black eyes glinting through slits. Obsessed with people’s reactions to his appearance, he lashes out bitterly, insisting that all his social ties have been severed, including his conjugal ties with his wife. She tries to convince him that it’s all in his head and that her feelings haven’t changed, but her revulsion when he makes an abrupt sexual advance convinces him that she’s lying.

Okuyama believes that a life-like mask will restore his relationship with his wife and his connection to society. He has evidently not seen The Face Behind the Mask (1941), a terrific B noir in which Peter Lorre stars as Johnny Szabo, who is hideously scarred in a fire. This tragedy and the ensuing cruelty of strangers transform him from a sweet, Chaplin-esque immigrant to a bitter criminal mastermind, even after he dons a powder-white mask that gives him a sad, creepy ghost of his former face—more Lorre than Lorre.  The mask is merely a flimsy patch on the horrible visage that spiritually scars Johnny, and though it enables him to marry a sweet and loving (and perhaps near-sighted) woman, it can’t reverse the corrosion of his character.  

The doctor who makes a far more sophisticated mask for Okuyama does so because the project fascinates him as a psychological and philosophical experiment. He speculates about what the world would be like if everyone wore a mask: morality would not exist, he argues, since people would feel no responsibility for the actions of their alternate identities. (His theory seems to be borne out by the consequences of internet anonymity.) Unlike the one Johnny Szabo wears, here the mask bears no resemblance to Okuyama’s original looks, and the doctor believes the new face will change his patient’s personality, turning him into someone else.

When the mask is fitted, it turns out to be the face of Tatsuya Nakadai, one of the most striking and plastic pans in cinema history. With only a little help from a fake mole, dark glasses, and a bizarre fringe of beard, Nakadai succeeds in making his own features look eerily synthetic, as though they don’t belong to him. Sitting in a crowded beer hall on his first masked outing in public, he creates a palpable sense of unease, keeping his features unnaturally still as though unsure of their mobility, touching his skin gingerly to explore its alien surface. As he gradually grows more comfortable and revels in the freedom of his new face, the doctor tells him, “It’s not the beer that’s made you drunk, it’s the mask.”

Abe’s novel contains a scene in which the protagonist goes to an exhibit of Noh masks, highly stylized crystallizations of stock characters and emotions. In Noh, as in other traditional forms of theater that use masks, the actor is present on stage but vanishes into another physical being—men play women, young men play old men, gods, and ghosts. In cinema, actors impersonate other characters using their own faces—usually without even the heavy layer of makeup worn on western stages. Movie actors are pretending to be people they’re not, yet if we judge their performances good it means we believe what we see in their faces. When an actor’s real face plays the part of a mask, like Lorre’s or Nakadai’s, this strange inversion—the real impersonating the artificial—has a uniquely disconcerting effect.

At the heart of this disturbing film lurks a horror that changing the skin can indeed change the soul. Okuyama tries to hold onto his identity, insisting, “I am who I am, I can’t change,” but the doctor insists he is “a new man,” with “no records, no past.” In covering his scar tissue with a smooth, artificial skin he eradicates his own experience, and with it his humanity. The doctor turns out to be right when he predicts that the mask will have a mind of its own. Suddenly endowed with sleek good looks, Okuyama buys flashy suits and sets out to seduce his own wife. When he succeeds easily, he is outraged, only to have her reveal that she knew who he was all along. After she leaves him in disgust he descends into madness and random violence. He has become the opposite of the Invisible Man: a visible shell with nothing inside

Okuyama’s story is interwoven with a subplot about a radiation-scarred girl from Nagasaki, whose social isolation drives her to incest and suicide. Lovely from one side, repellent from the other, she looks very much like the protagonist of A Woman’s  Face. Ingrid Bergman starred in the Swedish original, but Joan Crawford is ideally cast in the 1941 Hollywood remake directed by George Cukor. Half beautiful and half grotesque, half hard-boiled and half vulnerable, Anna Holm spells out what was usually inchoate in Crawford’s paradoxical presence. A childhood fire has left her with a gnarled scar on one side of her face, like a black diseased root growing across her cheek and distorting her eye and mouth. Crawford makes us feel Anna’s agonizing humiliation when people look at her, which spurs her compulsive mannerisms of turning her head aside, lifting her hand to her cheek, or pulling her hair down.

Also perfectly cast is Conrad Veidt as the elegant, sinister Torsten Baring. Veidt went from German Expressionist horror—playing the goth heartthrob Cesar in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the grotesquely disfigured yet weirdly alluring hero of The Man Who Laughs—to an unexpected late-career run as a sexy leading man in cloak-and-dagger films such as The Spy in Black and Contraband. When Anna turns her head defiantly to reveal her scar, Torsten gazes at her with a gleam of excitement, even of perverse attraction. She is confused and touched by his kindness and gallantry, helplessly trying to hide her sensitivity beneath a tough façade. Her broken-up, uncertain expressions when he gives her flowers or kisses her hand count as some of the most delicate acting Crawford ever did. Anna assumes that Torsten, the penniless scion of a rich family, must want her to do some dirty work, and she turns out to be right, but he also genuinely appreciates the proud, bitter, lonely woman who faces down her miserable lot through sheer strength of will.

People are horrible to Anna, nastily mocking her wounded vanity and her attempts to look nice. “The world was against me,” she says, “All right, I’d be against it.” She has found the perfect outlet, blackmailing pretty women who commit adultery. In one of the film’s best scenes, the spoiled and kittenish wife she is threatening retaliates by shining a lamp in Anna’s face and laughing at her. Anna leaps at the woman and starts hitting her over and over, forehand and backhand, in an ecstasy of hatred. This savagely satisfying moment is derailed by the film’s first grossly contrived plot twist, as the encounter is interrupted by the woman’s husband, who happens to be a plastic surgeon specializing in correcting facial scars. He offers to operate on Anna, and once the bandages are removed, in a scene orchestrated for maximum suspense, an absurdly flawless face is revealed.

The doctor (Melvyn Douglas) calls her both his Galatea and his Frankenstein: he views her as his creation, but isn’t sure if she’s an ideal woman or an unholy monster, “a beautiful face with no heart.” Her dilemma is ultimately which man to please, whose approval to seek: the doctor who believes her character should be corrected now that her face is, or Torsten, who wants her to kill the young nephew who stands between him and the family estate. This overwrought turn is never plausible; it is always obvious that Anna is no child murderer. What is believable is her erotic thrall to Torsten, the first man who has ever shown an interest in her. Crawford is at her most unguarded in these moments of trembling desire; Cukor remarked on how “the nearer the camera, the more tender and yielding she became.” He speculated that the camera was her true lover.

Anna undergoes months of pain and uncertainty for the chance of being beautiful for Torsten, and there is a marvelous shot of her gazing at herself in a mirror as she prepares to surprise him with her new face, brimming with hard proud joy. But he winds up lamenting the surgery that has turned her into “a mere woman, soft and warm and full of love,” he sneers. “I thought you were something different—strong, exciting, not dull, mediocre, safe.” In this same speech, Torsten reveals himself as a cartoonish fascist megalomaniac, which fits in with the film’s slide into silly, flimsily scripted melodrama, but sadly obscures the radical spark of what he’s saying. Anna’s character is shaped by the way she looks, or rather by the way she is looked at by men; the disappointingly conventional ending sides with the man who equates flawless beauty with moral goodness, and against the one man who was able to see something fine—a “hard, shining brightness,” in a woman’s damaged and imperfect face.

A Stolen Face (1952) follows a similar premise, much less effectively, and reaches the opposite conclusion. Paul Henreid plays a plastic surgeon who operates on female criminals with disfiguring scars, convinced that once they look normal they will become contented law-abiding citizens. He gets carried away, however, sculpting one patient into a dead ringer for his lost love (Lizabeth Scott plays both the original and the copy) and marrying her. His attempt to play Pygmalion backfires, since the vulgar, mean-spirited and untrustworthy ex-con is unchanged by her new appearance: she is indeed “a beautiful face without a heart.” That is a succinct definition of the femme fatale, a type Lizabeth Scott often played and one that embodies a fascination with the deceptiveness of feminine beauty. In The Big Heat (1953), it is only when Debbie (Glora Grahame) has her pretty face rearranged by a pot of scalding coffee that she abandons her cynical self-interest to become an avenging angel, fearlessly punishing the corrupt who hide their greed behind a genteel façade. She has nothing left to lose; pulling a gun from her mink coat and plugging the woman she recognizes as her evil “sister,” the disfigured Debbie asserts her freedom: “I never felt better in my life.”

Blessings in Disguise

Sometimes, people are only too happy to lose their faces. Dr. Richard Talbot (Kent Smith), the protagonist of the superb, underappreciated drama Nora Prentiss (1947), sees the bright side when his face is horribly burned in a car crash. He has already faked his own death, sending another man’s corpse over a cliff in a burning car. In a neat bit of poetic irony, by crashing his own car he has completed the process of destroying his identity, and no longer needs to fear he’ll be recognized. Losing his face is a blessing in disguise—or rather, a blessing of disguise. But the disfigurement is also a visual representation of the corruption of his character: his face changes to reflect his downward metamorphosis with almost Dorian Gray-like precision.

Car crashes are a kind of refrain in the film. The doctor’s routine existence veers off course when a taxi knocks down a nightclub singer, Nora Prentiss (Anne Sheridan), across the street from his San Francisco office. Talk about a happy accident: the nice guy trapped in an ice-cold marriage to a rigid, nagging martinet suddenly has a gorgeous, good-humored young woman stretched out on his examining table. Nora may sing for a living, but her real vocation is dishing out wisecracks (her first words on coming to are, “There must be an easier way to get a taxi.”) When the doctor mentions a paper he’s writing on “ailments of the heart,” the canary, her eyelids dropping under the weight of knowingness, quips, “A paper? I could write a book.”

It’s hard to imagine a more sympathetic pair of adulterers, but the doctor is so daunted by the prospect of asking his wife for a divorce that it seems simpler to use the convenient death of a patient in his office to stage his own demise and flee to New York with Nora. It’s soon clear, though, that some part of him did die in San Francisco. Cooped up in a New York hotel room, terrified of going out lest someone spot him, the formerly gentle man becomes an irascible, rude, nervous wreck. When the faithful and incredibly patient Nora goes back to singing for Phil Dinardo (Robert Alda), the handsome nightclub owner who loves her, Talbot becomes hysterically jealous. Unshaven and hollow-eyed, he slaps Nora and almost kills Dinardo before fleeing the police and heading into that fiery crash. He becomes, as the film’s evocative French title has it, L’Amant sans Visage, “the lover without a face.”

When his bandages are removed, he is unrecognizable, wizened and scarred, his face a creased and calloused mask. His own wife doesn’t know him, and when Nora visits him in prison his damaged face, shot through a tight wire mesh, looks like something decaying, dissolving. He’s in prison because, in an even neater bit of irony, he has been charged with his own murder. He decides to take the rap, recognizing the justice of the mistake: he did kill Richard Talbot.

This same ironic plot twist appears in Strange Impersonation (1946), albeit less convincingly. This deliriously far-fetched tale, directed at a breakneck pace by Anthony Mann, stars Brenda Marshall as Nora Goodrich, a pretty scientist whose glasses signal that she is both brainy and emotionally myopic. She is harshly punished for caring more about work than marriage: her female lab assistant, who wants to steal Nora’s fiancé, tampers with an experiment so that it explodes, burning Nora’s face to a crisp. Embittered, she retreats from the world, and when another woman, who is trying to blackmail her over a car accident, falls from the window and is mistakenly identified as Nora, she seizes the opportunity to disappear, have plastic surgery that miraculously eliminates her scars, and return posing as the blackmailer, to seek revenge. She goes to work for her former fiancé, who strangely fails to recognize her voice or her striking resemblance to his lost love.

The plot plays out as, and turns out to be, a fever dream, but this last credibility stretcher is too common to dismiss as merely the flaw of one potboiler. Plots involving impersonation and identity theft rely not only on unrealistic visions of what plastic surgery can achieve, but on the assumption that people are deeply unobservant and tone-deaf in recognizing loved ones. A film that underlines this blindness with droll irony is The Scar (a.k.a. Hollow Triumph and The Man Who Murdered Himself, 1948), a convoluted but hugely entertaining little B noir in which Paul Henreid plays dual roles as a crook on the run and a psychologist who happens to look just like him. John Muller, pursued by hit men sent by a casino owner he robbed, stumbles across his doppelganger and decides to kill him and take his place. All he needs to do is give himself a facial scar to match the doctor’s. Only as he is dumping the body does he notice that he has put the scar on the wrong cheek—the consequence of an accidentally reversed photograph. But the irony quickly doubles back: Muller decides to brazen it out, and in fact no one notices that the doctor’s scar has apparently moved from one side of his face to the other—not even his lover. (Joan Bennett glides through this awkward part in a world-weary trance, giving a dry-martini reading to the script’s most famous lines: “It’s a bitter little world, full of sad surprises.”) The assumption that people pay little attention to the way others look or sound seems directly at odds with the power that faces and voices wield on film, and the intimate specificity with which we experience them. But noir stories often turn on how easily people are deceived, and how poorly they really know one another—or even themselves.

In The Long Wait (1954), perhaps the most extreme case of confused identity, a man with amnesia searches for a woman who has had plastic surgery. Not only does he not know what she looks like now, he can’t even remember what she used to look like. Since the movie is based on a Mickey Spillane story, he proceeds methodically by grabbing every woman he sees, in hopes that something will jog his memory. The film is fun in its pulpy, trashy way, provided you enjoy watching Anthony Quinn kiss women as though his aim were to throttle the life out of them. Quinn plays a man badly injured in a car wreck that erases both his memory and his fingerprints. This is lucky when he wanders into his old town and discovers he is wanted for a bank robbery—without fingerprints, they can’t arrest him. Figuring he must be innocent, he goes in search of the girlfriend who may or may not have grabbed the money and gone under the knife. It’s an intriguing premise, but the ultimate revelation of the right woman feels arbitrary, and the implications of all this confusion of identities are left resolutely unexamined. Nonetheless, there is something in the film’s searing, inarticulate desperation that glints like a shattered mirror.

Under the Knife

The promise of plastic surgery is a new and better self, the erasure of years and the traces of life. Taken to extremes, it is the opportunity to become a different person. Probably the best known plastic surgery noir is Dark Passage (1947), in which Humphrey Bogart plays Vincent Parry, who visits a back alley doctor after escaping from San Quentin. Parry was framed for killing his wife, so the face plastered across newspapers with the label of murderer has become a false face that betrays him. A friendly cabby who spots him recommends a surgeon who is he promises is “no quack.” Houseley Stevenson’s gleeful turn as the back-alley doctor is unforgettable, as he sharpens a straight razor while philosophizing about how all human life is rooted in fear of pain and death. He can’t resist scaring Parry, chortling over what he could do to a patient he didn’t like: make him look like a bulldog, or a monkey. But he reassures Parry that he’ll make him look good: “I’ll make you look as if you’ve lived.”

During the operation, Parry’s drugged consciousness becomes a kaleidoscope of faces, all the people who have threatened or helped him swirling around. His face is being re-shaped, as his life has already been shaped by others: the bad woman who framed him and the good woman who rescues and protects him, the small-time crook who menaces him and the kind cabby who helps him. Faceless for much of the movie, mute for part of it (he spends a long time in constraining bandages), Vincent Parry is among the most passive and cipher-like of noir protagonists. When the bandages finally come off after surgery, he looks like Humphrey Bogart, and the idea that this famously beat-up, lived-in face could be the creation of plastic surgery is perhaps the film’s biggest joke. But Vincent Parry remains an oddly blank, undefined character, and he seems unchanged by his new face and name. In a sense the doctor is right: he only looks as though he’s lived.

The fullest cinematic exploration of the problems inherent in trying to make a new life through plastic surgery is Seconds (1966), John Frankenheimer’s flesh-creeping sci-fi drama about a mysterious company that offers clients second lives. For a substantial fee, they will fake your death, make you over completely—including new fingerprints, teeth, and vocal cords—and create an entirely new identity for you. There is never a moment in the movie when this seems like a good idea. The Saul Bass credits, in which human features are stretched and distorted in extreme close-up, instills a horror of plasticity, and disorienting camera-work creates an immediate feeling of unease and dislocation, a physical discomfort at being in the wrong place.

Arthur, a businessman from Scarsdale, is the personification of disappointed middle age, afflicted by profound anomie that goes beyond a dull routine and a tired marriage. When the Company finishes its work—the process is shown in gruesome detail, to the extent that Frankenheimer’s cameraman fainted while shooting a real rhinoplasty—the formerly nondescript and greying Arthur looks like Rock Hudson, and has a new life as a playboy painter in Malibu. He’s told that he is free, “alone in the world, absolved of all responsibility.” He has “what every middle-aged man in America wants: freedom.”

At first, however, his life proves as empty and meaningless in this new setting as it was in the old; even when the Frankenstein scars have healed, he remains nervous and joyless as before. After he meets and falls for a beautiful blonde neighbor, who introduces him to a very 1960s California lifestyle, he begins to revel in youth and sensual freedom. Yet something is still not right; at a cocktail party he gets drunk and starts talking about his former existence—a taboo. He discovers that his lover, indeed almost everyone he knows, is an employee of the company or a fellow “reborn,” hired to create a fake life for him, and to keep him under surveillance. His “freedom” is a construct, tightly controlled.

Arthur rebels, making a forbidden trip to visit his wife, who of course does not recognize him. Talking to her about her supposedly deceased husband, for the first time he begins to understand himself: the depth of his alienation and confusion, the fact that he never really knew what he wanted, and so wanted the things he had been told he should want. Seconds is a scathing attack on the American ideal of a successful life, a portrait of how corporations sell fantasies of youth, beauty, happiness, love; buying into these commercial dreams, no one is really free to know what they want, or even who they are. Will Geer, as the folksy, sinister founder of the Company, talks wistfully about how he simply wanted to make people happy.

There is a deep sadness in the scenes where Arthur revisits his old home and confronts the failure of his attempt at rebirth—beautifully embodied by Rock Hudson in a performance suffused with the melancholy of a man who has spent his life hiding his real identity behind a mask. Yet Arthur still imagines that if he can have another new start, a third face and identity, he will get it right. Instead, he learns the macabre secret of how the Company goes about swapping out people’s identities. Seconds contrasts the surgical precision with which faces, bodies, and the trappings of life can be remade, and the impossibility of determining or predicting how or if the inner self will be changed. For that there are no charts or diagrams, and no knife that can cut deep enough.

by Imogen Sara Smith

[qm-vox]

Let The World Never Falter - Playing Paladins in D&D

(Pictured: Anastasia Luxan, Knight of the Tainted Cup, one of only two people in her friend group that are not evil-aligned. Her wife Aisling is not the other good-aligned person. Characters are from my novel Mourners: Scum of Shatterdown; art credit goes to J.D)

Paladins are one of Dungeons and Dragons’ most striking, and most controversial, character classes. Few character classes and character concepts capture the imagination as quickly or start arguments of such ferocity. I’ve been in this game awhile - I remember when D&D 3e was released - and paladins have been one of my most loved and most hated parts of D&D and its legacy systems that entire time. So here I am again, about to write a long-ass article offerin’ my perspective on paladins through the ages (hopefully highlighting the strongest parts of each vision of them), talk about their pitfalls and problematic elements, and offer some advice on bringing your own paladin to life.

While this article draws on my long experience with D&D and will be citing specific sources, it would not be possible without the help of some other people in my life. I mention Afroakuma a lot in the context of D&D, and our friendship has once again been invaluable here. @a-world-unmasked , also one of my oldest friends, has long been a source of ethical discussion and debate, especially about thorny questions of justice & mercy, amends, redemption, and punishment, and provided information on D&D 4e’s paladins and paladin-like classes. SSG Jacob Karpel, United States Army, brought a Jewish perspective on paladins and their themes into my life and has borne questions of faith, dogma, and tradition with remarkable enthusiasm and patience. @swiftactionrecovery provided further perspective on D&D 4e, and her current paladin (”paladin”; it’s complicated), Aurora, is a great example of a non-traditional take that is at the same time very on-brand. Emerald has long provided the service of beating my ass when I start getting stupid about my own values and beliefs, and @ahr42p‘s fascination with fantasy ethics has informed a lot of my own thoughts on the same. None of this would be possible without you folks.

This article’s title is drawn from Maverick Hunter Quest, written by Cain Labs & Hunter Command. It appears as the motto of the 10th Urban Unit; dedicated soldiers whose specialty was preserving lives, preventing collateral damage, and steering disasters away from the innocent.

None of my articles are quite complete without Content Warnings; the following will contain mentions and descriptions of violence (including state-sanctioned violence such as executions), mentions of high crimes such as slavery and forced conversion, discussion of religion in both fictional and non-fictional contexts, and discussion of fascism and fascist ideology. It is also the end result of more than 20 years of both passionate love for paladins and equally passionate hatred of the same. If you’re wondering what some of that has to do with paladins...well, you’re in for a ride.

So, without further ado, let’s get into...

The Order Of The Kitchen Table - Paladins Through D&D’s History

I hope you like walls of text because I am about to fuck you up with some.

D&D and Pathfinder have a long history with paladins, and they’ve changed a lot through the ages. The following is an overview of the different editions of paladins, what each introduced, and their strengths & weaknesses as a vision of paladinhood. Though the advice in this article is weighted towards 3.PF and 5e, it should in theory be applicable to any of these editions; I should also note that while Pathfinder 2e has its own version of paladins, I am not familiar enough with its vision of paladins to be able to speak on it in good faith. Let’s start with the oldest first, shall we?

AD&D 1e & 2e: Rise A Knight - 1e and 2e were fucking wild. The original incarnation of the paladin showed up as a sub-class of the cavalier, a warrior-group class which had an aura of courage, rode a horse, and had other ‘knightly’ abilities. Paladins had to be a cut above and beyond cavaliers, but unless they also violated the code of the cavaliers in addition to the paladin code, they would become cavaliers when they Fell rather than fighters, which was a bit of a better spot to be in. These paladins were very specifically part of the military arm of a feudal state, with all that entails, and had restrictions on what they could wear and what weapons they could use that were rooted in their social status. In point of fact, in 1e? Paladins couldn’t use missile weapons at all; bows, crossbows, and their kin were for “peasants”. These paladins had to tithe 10% of all income to a ‘worthy’ institution (usually a Lawful Good church of some kind, but other examples include hospitals, charitable initiatives, orphanages, and monasteries), had sharp limits on how many magical items they could own & of what kind, and were beholden to a strict code of conduct rooted in medieval feudalism & romantic ideals of chivalry. While the very original paladin had many of the iconic powers associated with them today (laying on hands, curing disease, an affinity for holy swords), it was not until AD&D 1e proper that paladins developed the ability to cast spells for themselves.

AD&D 2e’s vision of paladins was similar in many ways; they had the same powers, similar ability score requirements, and were similarly rare and elite. They had wealth limits, had to tithe from their income, could only own certain numbers and kinds of magical items, and had to be of Lawful Good alignment. Where things get interestingly different here is who becomes a paladin, and why. In both editions, only humans could be paladins, but where 1e required paladins to be drawn from or else become nobility (because they were derived from cavalier, which was all about status), 2e opened up many origins for paladins. The majority of these can be found in The Complete Paladin’s Handbook, just under 130 pages of nothing but paladins. Reading that book is a fucking trip; it was published in 1994, and while I am not gonna pretend that it’s woke or unproblematic, it has some stunningly modern takes. Do you expect to open up an old D&D supplement about paladins and find it defending poly relationships as valid? NEITHER DID I.

It’s important to note that in both of these editions, paladins lacked magical avenues of attack entirely; Smite Evil was a later invention, and paladin spells, in addition to coming online late in their career (9th level), were sharply restricted to a specific list that included no offensive magic whatsoever. Therefore, any paladin origin had to explain from whence one’s martial skills came, since you are in many ways a warrior more than anything else. There’s some expected ones; religious patronage, which ignores social status but requires an organized church that’s permitted to raise men under arms. Government sponsorship, generally conducted in urban areas where you can actually retain recruiters. Inherited title, if you wanna run a paladin that really hates Mom for forcing them into this. Mentors, for running paladins that are just straight-up shonen protagonists, and my personal favorite, DIVINE INTERVENTION, where one day your god starts talking to you but instead of filling your soul with martial skill she makes you sew training weights into your clothes and miraculously makes a bear live in your house so you can learn courage. It’s fucking amazing.

From those origins, anyone who manages to swear their oath and become invested with the power is essentially part of the nobility from then on; paladinhood marks them as an exemplar of noble ideals, which even in a non-romanticized culture sorta grabs the bluebloods by the short hairs. It’s a bit hard to argue divine right if you try to throw the embodiment of your supposed ideals out of your house. Since these paladins were often, though not necessarily, members of militant organizations they were generally expected to have superiors to whom they answer, a chain of command of which they are part, and to eventually construct a stronghold of some kind and put its services at the disposal of that organization in addition to utilizing it to serve the needy and defend the weak. 2e was a lawless and strange time in D&D, in which building such a stronghold and hiring followers was a class feature of warrior-group classes, and one of the paladin’s key benefits was the opportunity, but not the promise, to acquire some manner of holy sword, which which she gained powerful protections against evil that let her stand toe-to-toe with powerful spellcasters.

Tying all of this together was an in-depth exploration of the most complex and probably the most nuanced code published for paladins in any edition. Though the default was a rigid and inflexible code which defined acceptable behavior, associations, and even employees for the paladin, The Complete Paladin’s Handbook introduced an alternate method of handling code violations that ranked infractions by their severity & intent, and assigned penalties accordingly. Was it perfect? No. Not even a little. The Code was, is, and probably forever will be the most trash part of paladin. But it was a damn sight better than basically any incarnation before it, and most of them after. This code was broken down into (in order of importance), Strictures, Edicts, and Virtues. Strictures are the things a paladin must do and have simply to be a paladin; they must be Lawful Good, they must tithe to a worthy institution, they must abide by their wealth limits, and they must not associate (here meaning ‘serve, be friends with, or knowingly hire’) with evil people. Edicts are the commands of those to whom the paladin is sworn to obey; often this will be a church, a government, or both, but a paladin might instead or also swear to obey edicts given by their family, their mentor, their secular philosophy, or even their wider culture. Military commands and orders are edicts, but so are daily practices such as keeping a kosher diet, maintaining a family burial ground, or obeying a system of formal etiquette. A paladin freely chooses the source of her edicts, but once she’s sworn to obey she cannot selectively turn down a given edict unless it would conflict with one of her Strictures (for instance, if her king orders her to beat a helpless prisoner) or with a ‘higher’ source of Edicts (in general, a paladins religion or philosophy takes precedence over her liege or mentor, who in turn takes precedence over family or culture).

Virtues are where we get real interesting. Lemme quote The Complete Paladin’s Handbook, page 32:

Virtues are traits exemplifying the highest standards of morality, decency, and duty. They comprise the paladin’s personal code. Although not specifically detailed in the PH definition of a paladin, a paladin’s virtues are implied by his strictures as well as his outlook, role, and personality. Just as a paladin must obey his strictures, he must also remain true to his virtues.

Though most paladins adhere to all of the virtues described below, exceptions are possible. For instance, a paladin from a primitive society may be so unfamiliar with civilized etiquette that including courtesy as part of his ethos would be unreasonable. All adjustments must be cleared by the DM at the outset of a paladin’s career.

No system was attached to virtue ‘violations’, because they weren’t oaths to keep as such. Rather, virtues represented commitments to a paladin’s ideals and worldviews; they were the behaviors and values which someone serious about being a paladin would live by because that’s the kind of person they are. They were very Christian and very European in nature, tied up in Catholic ideas of knighthood from which paladins as a class were originally drawn, but there’s definitely a point to be made here. If you don’t walk your talk, can you call yourself a paragon? We’re gonna get into this specific topic more later in the article, when I start discussing other the virtues extolled by other kinds of warriors, but the ones listed and expanded on in this book are as follows:

Fealty - A paladin swears loyalty and service to, at minimum, a faith or philosophy that is lawful good in nature. This forms the foundation of her convictions and informs the kind of good she tries to do in the world. A paladin remains conscious of the fact that she is seen as an embodiment of those ideals, takes joy in her service, and pays respect to those to whom she has sworn her troth. Notably, this is not classic feudal fealty; a paladin swears service to institutions, not people, with some exceptions (generally in the form of paladins who swear fealty to their mentors).

Courtesy - Paladins strive to show respect by following social customs, being polite and well-mannered, and treating even enemies with dignity. A paladin responds to insults with grace, considers the feelings of others, and does not stoop to insults or slander. Remember the Kingsmen gentleman rules? That. This is just that.

Honesty - A paladin speaks the truth as she knows it. She is free to withhold information (especially from enemies), and may state that she would prefer not to answer when asked questions - or that she is ordered, enjoined, or otherwise required not to answer, if that is the truth - but does not intentionally mislead or deceive others. If you ask your paladin friend a question and they say they would rather not answer, think real hard about how bad you want their opinion.

Valor - Paladins display courage in battle. Given a choice between many enemies, a paladin chooses the most dangerous. If someone has to take a risk to defend the innocent, cover a retreat, or ensure the success of the mission, the paladin volunteers for that risk. A paladin only retreats from battle to fulfill a higher part of her ethos.

Honor - A paladin conducts herself with integrity even when no one is watching or when it is of no benefit to herself. She shows mercy, refuses to inflict undue suffering even on such wretched beings as demons, does not cheat or cut corners, and does not compromise her principles. The description of the virtue of honor contains the rawest line in the entire book: “It is an admirable act to comfort a dying friend, but an act of honor to comfort a dying enemy.”

The above are the ‘universal’ virtues a paladin is meant to embody. The book briefly touches on the idea that a paladin might also choose to uphold other virtues and work them into her Code of Ennoblement, the ceremony by which she is invested with the power of a paladin...or isn’t. The sample ‘bonus’ virtues provided are humility, chastity, celibacy, and my absolute favorite, industry, in which you swear to have no chill at all, ever, until the day you finally die, and instead spend all of your waking moments in some effort of self-improvement or work such as reading, building houses for the needy, repairing tools & equipment, and otherwise being completely incompetent in the art of self-care. It’s great, I absolutely love it.

Together, this code and the paladin’s abilities present a vision of classical knighthood, something like, oh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35GUTY_Gr14

That. A defender and paragon of medieval virtues, who lives to help others.

“Alright Vox, surely you’re reaching the end of AD&D 2e now?” you ask. “We’ve been through the mechanics, we’ve been through the vision of paladins as members of feudal states who are figuratively and legally ennobled by righteousness, we’ve even gone into more detail about the code than was strictly necessary. 3e time right?” AFRAID NOT, MY WILD RIDE DOES NOT END. AD&D 2e didn’t have feats, didn’t really have spell selection in this context, and while it had a sort of skill system (the Proficiency system, greatly utilized and suggested by The Complete Paladin’s Handbook) that was hardly a way to make one paladin feel mechanically distinct from others. So how did players do that? Ability score rolls and loot drops?

Nope! We had Kits.

Kits modify a class or multiclass combo (not relevant to this article, but as a f’rinstance, the original Bladesinger was an elf-only Fighter/Mage kit found in The Complete Book of Elves); they give it additional features and additional restrictions. They could, but did not always, have ability score requirements above and beyond the typical ones for their class, and they might also have backstory or roleplaying requirements. A kit might who your character is in the society of the game world, the abilities they brought to the adventuring party, or both. Like Pathfinder’s Archetypes, some kits would strip abilities from the standard class, but not all of them did so.

So what did paladin kits do? In short, they changed the kind of knight you were. An Errant, for instance, is kept on a long leash by their liege and does not often have to fulfill edicts - but in exchange, she’s on her own and cannot expect funding from the state. Ghosthunters, who specialize in the destruction of the undead, gain the power to dispel evil, immunity to paralysis, turn undead just as well as a cleric does, and get access to a holy sword a minimum of 2 levels earlier - but they can’t lay hands, cure disease, cast priest spells, or enjoy immunity to disease. Inquisitors (I know) are paladins who see magic as a good and benevolent force, which is corrupted - profaned, even - by the practice of evil magic; they’re similar to ghosthunters in a lot of ways, but also represent an organized philosophy. The Complete Paladin’s Handbook has 22 pages of kits for standard paladin alone, which you can mix and match to create your own unique take on the concept, plus information on “demi-paladins” - non-human fighter/clerics who slowly gain paladin powers in addition to their own. This was back in the day when certain races just could not be good at certain classes due to level restrictions or being unable to take those classes in the first place, but here was the first glimmer of D&D confronting some of its own bullshit; before this book, the implication was that no non-human race was moral enough to be a paladin.

There’s so much more in this book but I’m not gonna get into all of it or this article’s just gonna be a review of one supplement; if you can get your hands on a PDF or even a hard copy, I highly suggest it as a read. It’s not that I endorse its vision for paladins as being the best or as being objectively correct, because I don’t; the potential of paladins is much broader than this narrow vision of Christian feudalism. It’s that no other book, before or after, has paid such loving attention to who paladins are in the game world, including thought given to details like their mortality rate (paladins that manage to survive to 40 are forcibly retired in the hopes that they can teach the youngbloods to do the same), the economics of knighthood, meta-commentary about how the class’s aesthetic and presentation is built to enhance themes about the game and the setting, and even a chapter on weaving faith into your game world and thinking about your paladin’s relationship to her own. The great strength of AD&D 2e’s paladins is that they, more than any others, have this loving care devoted to them that makes them feel like a real part of the worlds in which they live, and their great weakness is a vision that is more narrow than it wanted to be. You can see the author grasping for something broader, something more inclusive, only for it to slip between his fingers.

D&D 3.5: Up From The Gutter - Ah, D&D 3.5, the demon that will not die. This game spawned a million spin-offs and heartbreakers, love for it contributed to the rise of Pathfinder, and it remains incredibly popular and played. It’s also garbage, but c’est la vie, c’est la morte. Its vision of paladin is not as detailed as AD&D 2e’s was, and its main innovations were mechanical in nature. However, 3.5 did offer some in-depth explorations on what it means to be Good-aligned that previous editions did not, and given the context that’s about to be important to talk about.

3.5′s vision of paladin mechanics was remarkably similar to 2e’s, with the most notable change being race selection (anyone can now be a paladin as long as they’re Lawful Good) and the addition of Smite Evil, which can be used a certain number of times per day to gain more accuracy and damage when attacking evil-aligned creatures. Paladins are still warriors, they still cure disease, lay on hands, detect evil, and own a horse; in other words, they barely changed. Unfortunately, the game changed, and this left paladins high and dry. I’m not gonna mince words: for most of 3.5′s run, paladins lagged so far behind in terms of combat prowess, skill selection, and general utility that they were essentially unplayable, including and in some ways especially against classic foes such as demons and dragons.

I’m not gonna get into why, because that is a separate and much angrier article that will spark a lot of controversy due to people who run their ignorant mouths like they know what the fuck they’re talking about, not that I’m bitter. The relevant part of this is that over 3.5′s run, paladin did in fact slowly improve. The Serenity feat, published in Dragon 306, (and much more easily available to you in Dragon Compendium) helped clean up the dizzying amount of attributes upon which they were dependent. Battle Blessing (Champions of Valor) made it easier to incorporate their native spellcasting into their play (though nothing ever quite solved their sharply limited spell slots), and Sword of the Arcane Order (Champions of Valor again) both opened up an alternate vision of paladins as a different kind of magical knight & offered broader utility in paladin’s spell list. The Prestige Paladin in Unearthed Arcana converted paladin from a base class to a prestige class, which let you build it off of more mechanically viable classes - further enhancing your ability to customize your paladin, especially since as a PrC you could stop taking Prestige Paladin at any time you felt you were sufficiently knightly. Access to these and other options eventually made paladin, if not good, at least viable, able to be played in most campaigns and pre-made adventures without undue worry or getting chumped out of basic encounters.

In all of their forms, these paladins still had a code. Observe:

Code of Conduct

A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

Associates

While she may adventure with characters of any good or neutral alignment, a paladin will never knowingly associate with evil characters, nor will she continue an association with someone who consistently offends her moral code. A paladin may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are lawful good.

Ex-Paladins

A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act, or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and abilities (including the service of the paladin’s mount, but not weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). She may not progress any farther in levels as a paladin. She regains her abilities and advancement potential if she atones for her violations (see the atonement spell description), as appropriate.

Like a member of any other class, a paladin may be a multiclass character, but multiclass paladins face a special restriction. A paladin who gains a level in any class other than paladin may never again raise her paladin level, though she retains all her paladin abilities.

You know all the horror stories you’ve read of DMs maliciously making paladins Fall, or miscommunications in groups leading to alignment arguments? The ones about youth-pastor paladin characters sucking all the fun out of a party? Meet the culprit. 3.5 did not have The Complete Paladin’s Handbook’s discussion on same-paging with your group to prevent these problems, and this vague code wording paired with immediate and extreme consequences didn’t do it any favors. That’s not to say that this code is unworkable, exactly, but trying to sit down and agree with 4-6 other adults on what ‘gross violations’ actually means is essentially the world’s shittiest round of Apples to Apples and your reward for it is resenting the character you just built.

And that’s the paladin part, which means we have to get into the “being good-aligned” part. Lemme tell you about Book of Exalted Deeds, a historically significant garbage fire of a book that is somehow both the best supplement released about Good and the worst supplement released about Good at the same time.

For those of you with the fortune to have never played 3.5, its books are like that a lot.

So, bad parts first: all the mechanics. Just all of them. The prestige classes? Bad. The feats? Generally bad. The redemption rules revolving around Diplomacy? Sloppy. Magic items? Bad. Spells? Look up an online discussion about sanctify the wicked and then get back to me on that one; they’re bad too. Ravages and afflictions (good-aligned poisons and diseases) were a bad idea that were also a case of stunning hypocrisy from a book whose stance was that dealing ability score damage is ‘needless cruelty’. Even the write-ups for the planar NPCs kinda make them into these basic bitch pushovers, which, you guessed it, is bad. There’s a lot to say against this book and you can find someone saying it in most open web forums if you want to take a journey into the godawful design of the liminal space between 3.0 and 3.5.

But the good stuff was real good. D&D had/has long been stalked by ‘ethical dilemmas’ such as the so-called Goblin Baby Problem, where players would ask if it’s good to let goblin children live since they would only grow up to become goblin adults. Book of Exalted Deeds was the first D&D publication to make a hard stance against racial genocide (hell of a sentence, I know), and it doubled down on The Complete Paladin Handbook’s implied stance that all forms of romance and sexuality are valid as long as they’re between consenting adults that respect one another. BoED strove to define Good not just as the avoidance of evil (”The utter avoidance of evil is, at best, neutral.”) but as actively striving to respect life, practice altruism, and make the world a better and more just place. While its take on ideas like forgiveness, redemption, and justice were not necessarily perfect, it went out of its way to try to offer nuanced takes on those ideas and to note emphatically that practices such as slavery and racism do not become good just because certain historical cultures thought they were at the time.

The other notable thing that Book of Exalted Deeds did for the idea of a Good alignment was firmly state on the record that NG and CG are just as valid and Good as LG is. The existence of paladins and their alignment-locked nature had long implied that Lawful Good was the “best” Good, or the “most” Good, but Book of Exalted Deeds didn’t just introduce material for characters that were paragons of other Good alignments, it provided examples of such characters in action. D&D is still somewhat stalked by that “Law is Good and Good is Lawful” problem, but BoED and other books in its niche (notably including Heroes of Horror - I know, it doesn’t sound like it but trust me - and Champions of Valor) helped push back against that problem and open the floor to other heroes.

I wouldn’t be wholly done talking about 3.5 paladins without mentioning Unearthed Arcana, which introduced the paladin of freedom (CG), paladin of tyranny (LE), and paladin of slaughter (CE). Their hearts were in the right place here, but all three of them were...better ideas than executions, as it were, without much to talk about for them. Still, they make good examples of 3.5′s great strength in paladins: breadth of concept. Ideas that were previously impossible as paladins became commonplace, including paladin-like characters who were not members of the class and which I would absolutely consider paladins myself. It didn’t stick the landing on the mechanics, but that’s just 3.5 for you; if you weren’t a dedicated spellcaster, chances are you were gonna have some manner of bad time. This idea of paladins from all walks of life, from all levels of society and all peoples, has become a cherished part of the popular conception of paladins and it absolutely should be brought forward to other editions.

Which, honestly? It was.

Pathfinder 1e: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back - Pathfinder 1e’s baseline paladin release was essentially 3.5′s in many ways. The key mechanical differences were a revamped Smite Evil (which finally made it effective against its intended targets), the aura line of abilities that begin adding additional effects beyond Aura of Courage at 8th level and up, and Mercies - riders for the paladin’s Lay on Hands ability that cause it to also cure status effects, which in turn greatly enhances the paladin’s utility as a support class. Pathfinder also cleaned up some of 3.5′s attribute problems by orienting all of paladin’s magical abilities to Charisma instead of splitting between Wisdom and Charisma. Another small but significant note is the alteration from ‘gross’ violations of the code to any violation of the code. “Gee Vox, that doesn’t sound like it would really help code problems,” you say, to which I reply: it absolutely fucking did not.

Once we leave core, we get quite a few quality-of-life improvements. Though Pathfinder 1e lacks Battle Blessing, it replicates some of its effects by having many swift-action spells in-house for paladin, notably including the Litany line. Pathfinder’s archetype system for class customization offers options for the paladin that further customize its concept, though on the balance it’s harder to mix and match archs than it was to do so with kits. Archetypes always trade something, so in taking an arch you will lose some part of the base paladin kit and gain something which replaces it.

Narratively, things get more specific outside of core as well. Paizo’s one-and-only setting, Golarion, is one in which paladins must swear fealty to a specific god they serve above all others, and their power is derived directly from that god, who can grant or withhold it as they see fit. These gods (generally LN, LG, or NG in alignment, though certain specific CG deities sponsor paladins who must still be LG themselves) offer their own codes of conduct, which their paladins must follow. A paladin may be obligated to oppose ‘heresy’ as vigorously as chaos or evil, which is an awkward fucking feel, and paladins in Golarion’s setting can be found working for organizations such as the Hellknights, or in the armed forces of nations that practice slavery and forced conversion. That’s not to imply that they’re not also depicted in unambiguously good contexts, but when it comes to establishing paladins (or, well...anyone...) as good-aligned people Paizo has a bad habit of dropping the ball.

Like 3.5, the great strength of the Pathfinder 1e paladin is customization, and in this case a more solid mechanical base in comparison to the rest of the game. Pathfinder similarly flounders in that its vision of paladins is narrow and not fully realized in the game world.

Discussion of Pathfinder 1e’s paladin wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the Anti-Paladin, the only “alternate class” to see mechanical support beyond its initial publication. Baseline anti-paladins must be chaotic evil and have abilities that are the inverse of the baseline paladin; similarly, anti-paladin has archetypes available that change it to different kinds and methods of evil. It has its fans, and in terms of playability it’s as good, if not a little better, than paladin, but on the whole I tend to break on the side of thinking that Good and Evil are not mirror images of one another, and thus an anti-paladin is inappropriate as an idea. At least, one done in this way, as an explicit reaction to a supposed paragon of virtue, as things are about to get real interesting in...

D&D 4e: The Knight Unshackled - D&D 4e built off of the foundations laid down by the Book of Exalted Deeds and Unearthed Arcana by completely removing all alignment restrictions from both paladin and its counterpart class, blackguard. This section will also need to talk about cousin classes to paladin; specifically, the Avenger and the Invoker. Let’s start from the top, shall we?

Paladins in 4e are predicament dommes defenders; they use their abilities to place Marks on enemies, who then suffer damage if they choose to engage someone other than the paladin (all defenders in 4e force choices of a similar nature, though the penalty for failing to make the ‘right’ choice is not necessarily damage). In 4e, paladins are not granted their power by gods, nor are they empowered by their faith in righteousness alone; in point of fact, 4e paladins have no restrictions on their alignment whatsoever and are the first paladins to be open in this way. Instead, a paladin in D&D 4e is invested with power in rites kept secret by individual churches. Once invested, that’s it, no take-backs; the paladin remains a paladin even if they forsake that church entirely. The other classes I’m gonna talk about - avenger, blackguard, and invoker - are similarly invested, with invoker being the exception in how they get invested, but not in their no-takebacks status.

So, what powers a paladin after that investiture? Virtue; specifically, caring about others in some way. An LG paladin empowered by their belief in justice might be a classic knight in shining armor, defending her allies in righteousness’s name, but an LE paladin empowered by the same virtue might easily turn totalitarian, determined to establish justice no matter who has to suffer and die. In this model, evil-aligned paladins are those who care too much about something, to the point where they trample and harm others to see it fulfilled.

Paladin’s inverse, blackguard, is a striker class focused on direct damage. They gain their power through vice, inward-facing desires such as greed, selfishness, lust, or five pounds of nachos in one meal (don’t @ me). Blackguards are also not restricted by alignment. A classically selfish blackguard, out for their own power and safety, might be an amoral mercenary who kills because they can’t be bothered not to, but a good-aligned blackguard who’s selfish is, well, Tiffany Aching: protecting the world because it’s her world and how dare you fucking touch it.

Avengers have more in common with barbarians than paladins, but are notable here for their commonalities with paladin as a divine warrior concept, and also for having bones in with the later Oath of Vengeance concept in D&D 5e. Avengers are invested to smite the enemies of their church; they tap into their power by swearing an oath against specific enemies, and then dissociate until those enemies in particular are dead at their feet. Are you really into Alexander Anderson from Hellsing? Do you want to explore the terrible consequences of power, consequences that might not have been clear when you signed up to become an avenger? This could be for you.

Lastly we have invokers, the odd duck out. They are ranged controllers who fight with pure divine power. Invokers are created directly by gods, but unlike the previous three have no associations with churches; instead, their job is to look out for threats to all of existence and make sure that they don’t happen. Even evil-aligned gods create and tend to respect invokers, because you can’t conquer the world and rule it as its Dread Master if there’s no world left to rule. Because invokers are invested by gods directly, they tend to have a lot in common with the divine intervention paladin origin mentioned waaaaay up there in the 2e section; you’re minding your own business when one day God goes “TIME TO LEARN HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD” and that’s just your life now.

D&D 4e’s paladins and paladin-like classes fully realize the breadth of concepts and characters that paladins could fulfill; they offer intriguing possibilities for roleplaying, engaging character and plot hooks, and mechanically distinct interpretations of divine power. In unshackling paladins from alignment, 4e opens them up to questions of heroism, conviction, and belief that were in many ways previously closed, especially because paladins in other editions were often made to Fall for asking those questions. Their big weakness is, well, being in 4e. It’s not that D&D 4e is a bad game - in many ways it’s the most honest edition of D&D, and certainly the most tightly-designed - but rather that 4e’s context is highly specific. It can be hard to find players or DMs familiar with it, might be frustrating to gain access to its books, and once you do adapting its material requires significant narrative changes if you remove it from the context of the Points of Light setting.

D&D 5e: This I Vow - D&D 5e’s paladin is, in many ways, a combination of and refinement upon previous elements. Like 4e’s, it is not restricted by alignment (though the three Oaths in core do suggest particular alignments). Like 3.5′s paladin, it combines magical power with martial skill, though 5e’s paladin is both more overtly magical and gains access to better spells, faster, than its predecessor. Though the paladin gains some warrior-type abilities (notably including their choice of Fighting Style and the Extra Attack feature), the majority of their abilities are supernatural in nature, including Lay On Hands (in the form of a pool of hit points that can also be expended to remove poisons and diseases), immunity to disease, an array of defensive and utility spells (as well as the Smite line for bursts of damage), a Divine Smite that trades spells for damage directly, and native auras that protect the paladin’s allies as well as herself. Their defining feature, however, is the Oath they select at third level, which defines what sort of paladin they are.

Your selection of Sacred Oath nets your paladin 2 utility abilities at 3rd level, an additional aura at 7th, a strong upgrade of some kind at 15th, and a capstone at 20th that neither you nor any other living being will ever see because 5e campaigns barely get to 14th, God forbid 20th. Each Oath also provides a set of tenets that you are meant to live up to, but unlike previous incarnations of a Code of Conduct 5e’s relationship to these tenets is more...human. The following passage is from the Player’s Handbook, page 83 (”Creating A Paladin”):

As guardians against the forces of wickedness, paladins are rarely of any evil alignment. Most of them walk the paths of charity and justice. Consider how your alignment colors the way you pursue your holy quest and the manner in which you conduct yourself before gods and mortals. Your oath and alignment might be in harmony, or your oath might represent standards of behavior you have not yet attained.

Emphasis mine.

The baseline assumption for 5e’s paladins are believers in righteousness, whose faith in virtue empowers them to protect the weak, but more than any other edition, 5e recognizes that paladins are still people, who have flaws, strengths, and ambitions. Its Background system helps flesh out your character both mechanically and narratively, and material presented both in the Player’s Handbook and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything encourage you to think about the things that drive and oppose your paladin. Importantly, though the books say that evil paladins are rare, no actual alignment restriction on paladins exist, which opens up some interesting possibilities in terms of character creation. We’ll get more into that down the article a bit, when I talk about same-paging and refluffing.

Because Oaths come with both mechanics and an ethos, there is a strong incentive to create new Oaths for 5e if you want to embody a new ethos, but this may not always be strictly necessary. Additionally, the Player’s Handbook implies that paladins who flagrantly fail or abandon their oaths might become Oathbreakers (Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 97, under “Villain Options”), but this too may not be the correct move, especially in cases where a paladin abandons one set of high ideals for a different, but no lower, form of belief. We’ll get into that later too.

5e’s paladins are in the best mechanical position they’ve ever been in; they’re one of the strongest classes in the game line, easy to build and play, and difficult to fuck up. They have strong thematics with their abilities and especially their Oaths, and the way 5e encourages you to make your characters helps you realize them as people in the game world. The great weakness of this vision of paladins is customization; 5e lacks player options in many senses, and quite a few of those options are gated behind rules that may not be in use (such as Feats). It can be difficult, in many cases, to make two paladins of the same Oath feel different when the dice hit the table.

And at long last, we have finished the establishing-context section of this article, and can move on to the actual fucking article. I did warn you, way up top, that you were in for a ride.

Raise Thy Sword - Paladins At Your Table

The following section is meant to help you in making and fleshing out a paladin concept to play or even to use as an NPC. Most of the advice will be edition-agnostic; advice that isn’t will be marked as such. Also covered herein will be the related topics of same-paging, refluffing, and the common pitfalls that paladins have fallen into over the years (and how to avoid them).

Same-Paging - In Which We Communicate Like Adults

Same-paging is the practice of talking to your group in a way that helps set mutual expectations, and it’s something every RPG group should strive to do regardless of the system they’re playing in. You’ve probably done this to an extent before, as part of being pitched a game (”We’re going to do a dungeon crawl through the deadly halls of Undermountain”), during character creation, and the like. In the specific case of paladins, you want to talk to your group and DM about topics like alignment & alignment restrictions, your code of conduct or oath, and whether or not the group wants to handle things like ethical dilemmas and moral quandaries. Though paladins are famous for those last two, they’re certainly not a requirement; you can just as easily play a paladin in a campaign like Expedition to Undermountain or Princes of the Apocalypse where there is a very clear bad guy who needs to be stopped with enormous applications of violence and guile. However your group wants to play it is fine, but you want to be sure everyone’s on board for it and that you’re ready to rock. If your group signs on for a kick-in-the-door dungeon crawl and then the DM decides to make you pass a series of ethics tests, that DM is an asshole; likewise, if you agree that you want to explore the morals at the heart of your paladin’s ethos and then you just don’t do that, you’re causing the problem.

Who Is Your Deity, And What Does She Do? - Making Your Paladin

Once you and your group have communicated your expectations to each other (and, again, same-paging is something all groups should be doing regularly, not just ones in which you want to play a paladin), it’s finally time to start sketching out your concept! There’s many ways to start this, and while I personally tend to start at the roleplaying end (with ideas about who they are as a person and the themes I want to explore with them), starting with mechanical ideas, with questions, or even with specific dramatic scenes in mind, are also viable. That is to say, “I’m interested in how Aura of the Guardian (Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, page 39) can help me play a damage mitigation tank,” is just as valid as, “Kass, my character, was lifted from a life of crime by a paladin who reformed her neighborhood and campaigned against a corrupt system, and she’s striving to become a paladin in his image.” That said, if there’s one thing D&D and its related communities are good at it’s mechanical guides, so I’m not gonna try and write one here. We’d be here all day; instead, the following questions are things to consider for fleshing out your paladin’s backstory, personality, and goals.

Why did you become a paladin? The origins of your paladin will probably color how they think of their virtues, as well as how they think of evil. A beaten-down girl from the slums understands that kicking the shit out of muggers doesn’t give the downtrodden food, medicine, or roofs that don’t leak, while the third son of a noble family is in a position to understand the damage done by corrupt leaders and faithless lords. In addition to your background and home life, think about what motivated your character to become a paladin specifically. Were they mentored by an older paladin who saw potential in them? Recruited by the militant arm of a church? Did they grow up with stories of paladins and yearn to become the sort of person those stories were written about, or were they, perhaps, seemingly called to paladinhood without much conscious understanding of what it was?

Where did you learn to fight? Paladins are warriors, and even a paladin that Falls (for those campaigns that use Falling as a concept) remains a warrior. 5e paladins, the most overtly magical of all the available options, still spend a lot of time randomizing the atoms of evil with sharpened metal, and that’s a skill you only get through training and dedication. Who taught your paladin to fight? What’s their relationship with that teacher or organization, and how did it shape their ideas about violence? We all catch things off of our teachers, and your paladin’s instructor in combat will, for better or worse, be as big an influence on their life and ideals as their faith and family are. Don’t be afraid to get wild here; AD&D 2e had full-blown godly training montages where the voice of a god ran you through drills, and paladins join warlocks and sorcerers for being fertile ground for some of the weirdest shit. Did you fight daily duels against a stained glass knight only you could see? Did you find a scimitar in the gutter and pick it up to defend your friends from gangs? Were you bankrolled by an old man who later turned out to be a lich, whose motives you still don’t understand? Live your best Big Ham life if that’s the life you wanna live, this is the class for it.

How do you imagine good and evil? What does your paladin’s vision of a Good world look like? What is the face of wickedness that comes to mind when they’re asked to think of Evil? A knight from a kingdom plagued by portals to the Abyss is going to think of both of these things very differently from a gutter rat whose ascension came with a prosthetic hand to replace the one she lost to gangrene, to say nothing of differences in ideals when one factors in Law and Chaos. Your paladin doesn’t have to be perfect, or even, honestly, correct. Your classic ‘noble, but kind of a dick’ paladin (such as Corran d’Arcy in the novelization of Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, who we’re gonna talk about more later because he’s a weirdly great example of an adventuring paladin) thinks of evil as evildoers, who must be Brought To Justice, which while not entirely wrong is lacking in important nuance. He may conflate manners with virtue, or allow his prejudices to color who he does and doesn’t think of as ‘good’, but that doesn’t change his fundamental desire to Do Good - a desire that could be the catalyst for personal growth. A flawed understanding of virtue and wickedness could be a great character arc for your paladin, especially if it dovetails with the themes of the campaign.

What do you enjoy? Paladins are still people (shocking, I know) and people tend to have hobbies, preferences, and goals. Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has some nice material to quickly flesh out some of those aspects of your paladin (a personal goal, a vice that tempts them, a nemesis that dogs their footsteps), and I highly encourage you to think about such things as well. Does your paladin crave glory, wealth, or revenge? What sort of things do they turn to when they want comfort, or to have a good time? Do they still practice a trade from their youth, such as painting or blacksmithing? The archetype of a knight looking for their true love (or at least a series of whirlwind romances that always seem to end in someone’s bedroom) is a staple, of course. These things don’t necessarily need to be sinister temptations that lead you away from justice; they can just be nice things you like, or comforts that sustain you in your long fight against evil.

How do you relate to your faith? Many settings (notably including Forgotten Realms & Points of Light in D&D, and Golarion in Pathfinder) explicitly link paladins to churches and patron deities, and even in ones where this explicit link does not exist you see paladins who fight in the name of their faiths, serve in the militant arm of their churches, and otherwise seek to live their lives in accordance with their religion. D&D’s history is also full of paladins whose relationship to their faith is more distant, more questioning, or even outright rebellious. In Eberron, for instance, a paladin might dedicate herself to the Kraken - an evil god embodying sea monsters and catastrophes - with her understanding of that faith being preventing monster attacks and protecting the innocent from hurricanes and tidal waves. A paladin might be retained by the Church of St. Cuthbert as a barometer for their own morality, trusted to leash his peers when their retribution grows out of hand & play the devil’s advocate against them, or a knight might simply try to live their lives in accordance with the ideals of beauty, joy, and wonder espoused by Sune Firehair, without being for or against the actual church. What or whom does your paladin believe in, and why? Remember as well that not all, or even most, faiths are particularly similar to Christianity, and as a result your paladin’s relationship to that faith might just be business as usual. A Jewish paladin arguing with God is Judaism working as intended; similarly, a paladin dedicated to the Aesir doesn’t get to act surprised when they come home one day and Freya is chilling in their bathtub with a glass of wine and a ‘small request’.

You Wouldn’t Download A Class Feature - Refluffing & You(r Paladin)

So: you’ve come up with your concept, you’ve asked yourself all the relevant questions, but damn, some things just seem to not be fitting. What do you do? It may be the case that refluffing - changing the flavor of a mechanical option to better fit your campaign or setting - may be the right move for you. Refluffing gets a lot of pushback from a certain school of tabletop gaming that believes the flavor of an option is part of its mechanical balance. These people are wrong and I encourage you not to associate with them, in particular because the first party publishers often refluff material for similar reasons. For instance, the setting of Eberron has ‘anything published in D&D has a home here’ as one of its meta-tenets, and in the process of giving many of those things a home it changed their identity. Those hordes of angry ancestor-worshiping elves? That’s refluffing elves. In 3.5 you can see explicit discussion of refluffing in Oriental Adventures, which...well...it’s a book that exists, let’s leave it at that. Oerth having an entire alternate Material Plane where all the mirror of opposition copies come from? Refluffing.

So, when do you refluff? An obvious example is when your group is comfortable with an option being on the table, but is not playing in the setting that option comes from (for instance, the Sword of the Arcane Order feat from Champions of Valor when you are not playing in the Forgotten Realms). Refluffing is also great for when the narrative you’re building for a character implies or requires certain mechanics, but the flavor of those mechanics does not fit that narrative. In the ancient past I briefly GMed a game where one of the PCs was a ‘barbarian’ - a mean-streets kid looking to make a better life for himself, whose Rage was just the fight-or-flight kicking in from living in the garbage parts of Waterdeep. The important things to keep in mind when you choose to refluff an option is to stay on the same page as the rest of your group, and also to not replace the original fluff with nothing; mechanics do help define flavor (they’re the tools with which you interact with the game world), but you still need some reason that your paladin casts wizard spells, or has the abilities of the Oath of Vengeance when the original version of that Oath doesn’t exist in this setting. A very common school of refluffing is changing the origins of one’s power; rather than pure faith, for instance, a paladin’s powers might come from her innate spiritual energy, or from the favor of kami rather than gods.

Refluffing is also great for playing paladins that don’t have levels in the class named paladin. This option is especially relevant in the context of 3.5 and Pathfinder, when it may be more suitable to the needs of the campaign for you to be playing a more powerful or versatile class. In this context, clerics especially make very competent ‘paladins’, as do wizards (you wouldn’t think so, but I’ve seen that campaign played), inquisitors, crusaders, and even druids depending on how your concept is. You don’t need Fall mechanics to follow a code, after all.

For What The World Could Be - Defining Your Paladin’s Ethos

More than almost any other aspect of the class, possessing and following an ethos has defined paladins through the ages. For many years, this was a very specific ethos based on European ideas of chivalry and Christian virtue, and there’s something to be said for it when done well (certainly the Arab warriors from whom Europeans acquired the code of chivalry were lauded for their honor and virtuous conduct, so at a bare minimum one set of folks following these ideals in the real world absolutely nailed it). This is not, however, the only set of high ideals to which a paladin might cleave or aspire, and many fine homebrewers, players, and dungeon masters out there have chosen to craft their own, or to represent their own beliefs in the game world. Many cultures throughout history and all over the world have retained elite warriors held to high standards of conduct, and those traditions are rife for representation as paladins.

I fully intend to provide some specific examples of ethea (evidently this is the plural of ‘ethos’, no I didn’t know that before I started writing this, yes it looks wrong to me too) beyond the ongoing D&D default, but before I do you may want to consider how your paladin relates to those high ideals. After all, these are virtues that your character holds dear, but not everyone does so in the same way. Does she believe that everyone would be better off if they tried to live up to her standards, or does she believe that only certain people should (or must) do so? Does she consider her virtues an impossible ideal, something to strive for rather than fulfill, or does she not harbor such doubts? Is your paladin an idealist, who believes in the power of Good in itself, or is she more cynical?

The answers to these questions don’t necessarily make your paladin less Good as a person. A warrior who believes that there’s always a selfish bastard reason to do the right thing, who sees Evil as suboptimal, could still be a paladin if they work to bring Good into the world. An idealist who still needs to learn about the real consequences of barging into complex problems in a morally complicated world is equally valid, to say nothing of just...playing a genuine in-the-bones Hero, here to Do The Right Thing. Each speaks to a different kind of virtue, and a different life that has led them to these choices, and each deserves their day in the sun. You might have a lot of fun playing someone whose view of what Good is, and why, is different from yours!

Some specific examples of ethea (god that looks so wrong) follow. For the sake of convenience I’m gonna skip anything that’s actually showed up in a paladin entry before, or I’m gonna be here until I die. I am also very much not a member of just about any of the cultures and/or religions I’m about to talk about, and while I have sought the advice and review of those who are, I’m not about to claim that I’m an expert. Any errors in what’s presented are mine, and not those of my friends & readers; I welcome correction and discussion.

Irish Celtic: Blood & Troth  - The ancient Celts were not a people shy about death, and excellence - skill, improvement, and genuine growth - in all of your crafts was one of their high virtues. In addition to excellence, a Celtic warrior was expected to be honest (to never tell a direct lie, and to keep all promises given), hospitable (to be a gracious host & and honorable guests, and defend the sanctity of the home), to be charitable with their skills and their worldly possessions (to give to the needy, defend the weak, and fight for the helpless), to display loyalty to their family, clan, and gods, and to be courageous. That last virtue is an interesting one, because it dovetails with excellence; it’s less about acting in spite of fear, and more about enjoying fearful situations and the call of battle. A paragon of Celtic warfare should love her job, perhaps even revel in it; she relishes combat and the mayhem of the killing fields. Paladins following these virtues are likely to be Chaotic in nature, skewing towards Chaotic Neutral as D&D thinks of these things, and prone to contemplation on concepts of obligation, truth, and the nature of political violence. The crows know that there is always a final answer to injustice.

Irish Celtic paladins are likely to look towards Fionn Mac Cumhaill as a role model; as warriors with magical powers of protection, defense, and healing, they would be valued as keepers of lore, wisdom, and art, more warrior-poet than berserker. If your paladin is part of a wider culture from which she derived this ethos, she was probably expected to both learn knowledge and pass it on to others, and to restrain more eager warriors in favor of cunning plans and clever tactics. Imagine the look on your party members’ faces when they meet your family and realize you’re the sane one; that’s the exact emotion you wanna look to create if you really want to bring this out in the classic vein.

Jewish: We Shall Serve The Lord  - Judaism places a lot of emphasis on the sanctity of life, restorative justice, and doing the good you can do here, and now, with what’s in front of you. Though there is no tradition of elite Jewish warriors in the vein of knights or samurai, Jewish citizens tend to serve under arms slightly more often (about 5% more often) than their countrymen, and defending the innocent & helpless is certainly one way to do good now. A Jewish paladin would be expected to uphold the sanctity of life (preservation of life is the highest calling; a Jew may do anything except deny God in order to preserve life), to practice the principle of Tikkun Olam (’repairing the world’, working actively to make the world around them a more just, peaceful, and pleasant one), to show compassion and generosity to others, to uphold and defend hospitality, to know the Torah and the Law, and, where necessary, to practice intelligent and purposed dissent and skepticism. In the context of D&D, such a character is not likely to be particularly scholarly (paladins haven’t needed a decent Intelligence score at any point in the class’s evolution), but they’re probably conversant in the techniques of reading and research, critical thinking, argument, and debate, if only through exposure. Jewish paladins are most likely to be Good, leaning Lawful, as D&D thinks of these things.

The Jewish ethos describes a set of minimum standards for a righteous person, the Noahide Laws, and greatly encourages you not to associate with any person or culture that can’t meet that standard. They’re honestly not hard to meet either; you basically have to not be a dick about God (don’t try to stop folks from worshiping, don’t spend your time mocking and blaspheming their faith), know that lying and murdering are wrong, don’t be a sexual predator, don’t eat animals that are still alive, and bother to establish a system of laws for self-rule. Though Judaism lacks an elite warrior tradition, you might look to people like Joshua, Judah Maccabee, or Solomon as inspirations for a Jewish paladin character; warriors known for their wisdom, determination, and and in many cases, self-sacrifice. Solomon is also notable as an example of someone who swore the Nazarite Oath, a promise to God to fulfill a mission or task, and to not rest until one has done so. Nazarites are held to higher standards than their peers, notably including the expectation that the object of their oath becomes their only goal until they get it done or die.

As stated before, I am not Jewish and while this information was provided to me by Jewish friends, it is far from complete. @oath-of-lovingkindness might be by to expand on it, if they’re comfortable doing so.

Kemetic Pagan: The Power Of Truth - It’s difficult to talk about how the ancient Kemetic faiths were practiced; there was a lot of strife between the various cults of the gods, sometimes backed by pharaohs who were willing to revise history to get their way about thing, and then the English got a hold of the records. The English getting a hold of your culture’s history rarely ends well for just about anyone. The modern practice of Kemetic worship places great emphasis on service and identity as a member of the community, the promotion and preservation of knowledge, learning, and education, opposing is/fet (’chaos’, here also very much including the breakdown of social bonds and the systems which sustain life), and truth. A Kemetic paladin would be expected to oppose chaos by sustaining or creating such systems (funding schools, founding a neighborhood watch, finding or creating jobs for the poor), defend the defenseless, further her own education and knowledge & teach the ignorant, to be honest and forthright in word and deed, and value strength and justice. They are likely to be Lawful, skewing towards Good, as D&D thinks of these things. For a society to be just, it must first be a society; preservation of the order (both natural and artificial) which sustains human lives comes first.

Kemetic paladins are unlikely to be priests or even to be formally part of a religious heirarchy, again because they have traditionally had issues being scholarly people; instead, they uphold ma’at (what is true, what is just, what is necessary; ma’at is the principle that establishes a community, that relates one person to all other people and defines obligations between them, and opposes chaos) by fulfilling roles that assist their community. Such a paladin might look to one of their patron gods as an example of both the behavior they wish to emulate and their role in the community. A defender and guardian who supports the rural folk might look to Sobek, whose great strength guards the Nile; a would-be hero who craves power and the glory that power might buy her could instead look to Set, who guards the sun-barge and tests the established order so that it can grow strong. This is an ancient faith with quite a few gods, and I haven’t even gone deep enough to say I’ve scratched the surface; if they’re comfortable doing so, @merytu-mrytw may be by to expand on this topic for those interested in learning more.

Samurai: Reaching For Heaven  - You knew we were gonna go here eventually. As famous as knights, and perhaps even more known for their strict code of honor, the samurai were the elite warriors of feudal Japan and members of its ruling class. A samurai was expected to be a warrior, to cultivate an appreciation for high arts such as calligraphy, poetry, and sculpture, to be a scholar or patron of scholars, and to otherwise serve their lord and establish justice in that lord’s name. Today the samurai ethos is often called Bushido (”the way of the warrior”), but that name and conception of their code of conduct is actually a relatively recent invention, dating back only as far as the 20th century. It has its bones in with a 12th century dramatization of a war between two proud clans, and the ideals embodied by the warriors of those clans. Notably, these ideals were considered unattainable; something to strive for, and in striving grow as a person, but not a realistic expectation for a living human in a physical body. I’m gonna go ahead and quote the breakdown of this code that was given to me, because I feel the long form is going to be helpful here. These were the things to strive for, if one wished to call oneself a samurai:

Your duty calls on you to die if necessary. Your honor is more than your life; to live in shame is worse than death. You are expected to be righteous - to have integrity, sincerity, and honesty. To display heroic courage - to be intelligently aware of risks, but to face them boldly, not rashly or foolishly. To be benevolent and compassionate - for you have strength of arms that others cannot fathom. To show respect, even to your enemy. Cruelty, mockery, showboating, boasting, these are against the samurai code. Your strength and stature come through how you stand in adversity, unyielding. To understand that there is no such thing as a promise, or "giving your word" - you do not speak unless you mean what you say. Meaningless words are for shameful people. To safeguard your own honor, for you are its judge - and you will know what will cause you to live in shame, which as noted above, is worse than death. To show loyalty and be dutiful - if you give your service to another, it is theirs to command, and if you set someone's life above yours, you cannot keep honor if you live and they die. To demonstrate self-control - excesses and wants are openings to great shame. Moral character lies in the desire being sublimated toward the better self and higher standing among men.

As the politics and culture of Japan evolved through the years, so too did attitudes towards, and understanding of, this code of conduct, but most dramatic and romantic depictions of the samurai ethos root back to something a lot like this. A paladin dedicated to this ethos is likely to be Lawful Neutral, bending towards Good, as D&D thinks of these things; it emphasizes the virtues of loyalty, duty, and the obligations of both lord and vassal to one another. It is particularly appropriate for characters who see high ideals of virtue as being an unattainable goal to strive for anyway, or for character-driven campaigns looking for high drama that comes from tensions between personal desires and societal expectations (you can see it used for this to wonderful effect in the Legend of Five Rings RPG, most recently published by Fantasy Flight Games).

There are of course many other potential sources for a paladin’s ethos; check out D&D 5e’s homebrew materials and the DM’s guild for just a few. If I didn’t include something here, I promise you that it’s because I’m either ignorant or not confident of my ability to speak on it even in this limited context, not because I was trying to deliberately leave anything out. As I said above, any errors here are mine, and I welcome corrections. I’m also eager to hear about other ethea and how they might be adapted for paladins, so if you’ve got some thoughts there, please, slap ‘em on! I’m quite literally begging to read your paladin takes!

That said, remember that these are real beliefs, that real people follow. If you’re looking to explore an ethos from a culture that is not your own, you should do so with respect and especially with consideration for others that might be affected. It’s one thing to realize 12 sessions into a campaign at your own house that you’ve been accidentally blaspheming someone’s religion; it’s quite another thing to realize that if you’ve been playing in a public place such as a library or a gaming store. Ask folks from the culture or faith in question about it if you can at all do so, and just...if you wouldn’t want someone to be depicting you in a particular way? Don’t depict them that way.

The Trolley Problem And Other Forms Of Psychological Torture - Paladins, Falling, & Alignment

All editions of paladins except 4e have some kind of rule for Falling; losing one’s paladin status and powers, generally because of violations of your code of conduct or a failure to maintain your alignment. 5e sorta-kinda has those rules in a “well if the DM says so” way, which is, in some ways, a worse situation to be in since it leaves the matter unclear. In particular, many editions of paladins require that you have and maintain a Lawful Good alignment, and completely strip you of all powers if you ever change alignment for any reason. If the above sections of this article didn’t make it clear already, I tend to break towards 4e’s school of thought and support unshackling paladins from both alignment and Falling mechanics for general play; they certainly haven’t been powerful enough in the meta to mechanically justify additional restrictions.

This isn’t to say that you can’t use Falling or the threat of Falling for interesting stories and excellent character moments, just that I personally feel that it’s not as necessary as some schools of thought seem to think it is. If you want to incorporate this idea into your campaign, make sure you bring that up when you’re same-paging with your group; it’s definitely one of those topics everyone wants to have a clear understanding about. From there, it’s on the DM to not be a dick about things. Using paladins to explore ethical dilemmas can be very rewarding, but putting one in an ‘impossible’ scenario is rarely any fun. For some great examples of using ethical dilemmas as a form of character growth and to explore the concept of morality, check out The Good Place if you haven’t already. Remember: it’s a game. The goal is to have fun, yeah?

Genocide Is Not An Ethical Dilemma - Common Paladin Pitfalls

This is the part of the article where I get very angry about things.

As I alluded to before, there have been some common pitfalls when it comes to paladins both in the history of their formal writing and in the way the fanbase has chosen to play and relate to them. This section is going to discuss those and what you can do about them, so without further ado:

Fascism  - Paladins have some unfortunate bones in with fascist ideology, particularly the Third Reich’s obsession with ‘will’, as well as the fascist preoccupation with the Crusades, the Crusades themselves, and with being members of social classes which are often oppressive in nature. You really do not have to go far to find some jackoff posting DEUS VULT memes about their paladin, and that’s a problem, first because fascists are bad, and second because that definitely misses the fucking point by a country mile. All editions of D&D and its legacy systems have struggled with this, but a shout-out goes to D&D 5e for publishing the Oath of Conquest, because we definitely needed to respond to this problem by creating an option that gives you heavier, more ornate jackboots to put on people’s necks.

So, what do you do about this? Well, for one thing if you find a fascist at your gaming table you throw them the fuck out into the street, and beyond that mainly you just...try not to play a fuckin’ fascist character. This isn’t really a problem you can solve at the table level, since it’s buried into the writing; all you can do is be aware of it, and not play into it. It shouldn’t be terribly difficult to not make a paladin who’s into kicking poor people and undermining the rights of sapient beings, yeah? Paladins tend to fall into these sorts of problems when they’re depicted as supporting strongmen, or as being the Special And Exalted People to whom the rules do not apply - basically the same situations that give superheroes as a genre their ongoing fascism problem. Keep a weather eye out.

Genocide - The two-for-one combo! Paladins have had a genocide problem as far back as AD&D 2e, where several had racial or religious genocide in their backstories. Sometimes those paladins Fell as a result, sure, but a disturbing amount of them didn’t. We also have such gems as, “A local paladin has started a crusade against half-breeds” (a plot hook published in Draconomicon for 3.5), that greentext story about the paladin and dwarf ‘bros’ who spend their free time murdering orc children, and everything that’s ever been written about how drow are characterized and treated by others. Now, in fairness to paladins, Dungeons & Dragons itself has problems with the themes of race and with its depiction of the morality of genocide, and paladins could be merely caught up in that. On a basic level, solving this issue is easy; don’t endorse genocide, don’t make edgy racist concepts to see if you can ‘still be good’. Even if that wasn’t already tired and worn, someone else already took that concept and went pro with it.

For more information about fantasy’s troubles with race and racial coding, I highly suggest this article & its sequel, as well as Lindsay Ellis’s Bright video.

Youth Pastor Syndrome - This one’s not as dire a problem as the other two; there’s a tendency to play paladins in a way that sucks the fun out of the rest of the group, either because you’re being a judgemental asshole in-character (and possibly out of it), or because they’re constantly having to tiptoe around you to get things done or do what they want in the campaign. In theory, same-paging should help solve this problem before it starts, and it honestly mainly stems from the various ‘association’ clauses in paladin codes through their history. An uptight paladin isn’t necessarily a bad concept, but make sure it’s the right concept for your group before you just go there. Your desire to run a particular character is not an excuse to shit on everyone else’s fun.

Sir Dumbass the Just - So this topic isn’t so much a ‘pitfall’ as something that doesn’t get talked about a lot. There has not been a single incarnation of paladin that is rewarded for investing in Intelligence; instead, they tend to crave Strength or  Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom and/or Charisma (depending on edition and build). Once your main three are solved, Wisdom is the next-most important ability score for an adventuring paladin, because it directly relates to detecting threats, seeing through illusions, and resisting mind control, which leaves Intelligence in the dust next to whichever one of Strength or Dexterity you didn’t pick. This means, more often than not, that paladins are going to struggle in scholarly pursuits, be bad at Knowledge-type skills, and otherwise be uneducated in many ways, which most assuredly influences both their internal culture and the sorts of people who become successful paladins. Give the matter some consideration when you’re making your own.

Lady Natasha Pointe-Claire of the Dust March - Paladins as NPCS

Related to what was discussed just above, not all paladins are necessarily adventurers. Though the image of the paladin as a knight-errant, wandering the world in order to defeat foul plots and punch demons in the asshole, is both valid and probably very relevant to paladin player characters, there are other roles that a paladin might fulfill in your campaign setting. Such paladins are still members of a warrior class, and will thus have things in common with player character paladins, but their different roles will encourage investment in other kinds of abilities and skills which might not lead to a successful adventuring paladin, but will lead to a pretty good life in the other job. The following examples are by no means exhaustive, but they should provide a good place for a DM to start if they wanna incorporate paladin NPCs into their games in roles other than fellow (or rival) adventurers. Mentor - Probably the most straightforward; this paladin was a successful adventuring paladin who ended up retiring due to age, injuries, or just to enjoy time with their loved ones/family/children rather than getting mauled to death by undead birds. Take a normal paladin build, ratchet them up into Middle Age or Old Age, call it a day. Such paladins are likely to be a lot calmer and more pragmatic than the younger set, with a combination of painful experience and perspective guiding the advice they give on how to fight evil and how to dodge the fireballs that evil be throwing.

Knight-Hospitaller - Hospitallers are healers, caretakers, and guardians of the sick, injured, and infirm. Such a paladin might help maintain a home for those who have been traumatized (abuse victims, soldiers, people laboring beneath magical curses), be employed at or run a hospital, or maintain a temple dedicated to a god of healing and medicine. Hospitallers tend to choose options that enhance their Lay on Hands ability, memorize more healing spells than attack or defense ones, and value Wisdom and Intelligence more highly than their peers, often at the expense of their Strength or Dexterity (or even their Constitution; paladins, being immune to disease, can afford to be surprisingly frail of body in this role).

Fortress Knight - These paladins have a lot in common with adventuring paladins, but are for one reason or another posted in one spot from which they do not leave. They might be the guardians of a frontier village, soldiers watching over a sinister portal, the personal bodyguards to a powerful noble, or any other role in which they take on a defensive, reactionary stance rather than actively seeking out new and exciting forms of evil. Fortress knights need a higher Wisdom and to invest in Perception-type skills, and will tend to focus on utility-type spells with a strong subtheme of attack; they need to be able to rouse the alarm, dispel magic on their allies, and keep an enemy pinned down.

Example Paladin - Corran D’Arcy

I promise you, your long journey through my article is almost over. I wanna talk about a specific paladin to kinda tie things together, as an example of some of these principles and ideas in motion and because Corran d’Arcy is just weirdly legit when he has absolutely no fucking reason to be. Corran appears in the novelization for Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, written by Carrie Bebris. The book is based on the videogame of the same name, which in turn was made to celebrate the release of D&D 3.0. “Should I play this game?” you ask, to which I reply: absolutely fucking not, the game was a rough ride when it came out and it has not aged remotely well. 3.0 was rapidly updated to 3.5 because of deep and wide mechanical flaws that made the play experience almost physically painful, and converting it to a CRPG did not help that experience at all.

The book though? Excellent. Legitimately one of the best D&D novels. Spoilers for it follow, but I’d still suggest reading it if you get the chance.

The novel is told from the perspective of Kestrel, a petty thief trying to raise enough money to quit her life of crime and, ideally, die in bed of old age rather than of blood loss in some gutter. A series of poor and alcohol-related decisions leads her to volunteer to guard an evil pool of soul-stealing water, which is where she meets Corran d’Arcy, a paladin of Tyr and the third son of a noble family. The two get on like water and oil; to Kestrel, Corran is a pompous, classist piece of shit who judges her without knowing her, and to Corran, Kestrel is the exact kind of criminal and evildoer he so often fights in his day job. When another team opens a portal to beg for help while they’re being slaughtered, Corran quite literally throws Kestrel through it when she’s trying not to go, nearly killing them both.

This puts their professional relationship off to a bit of a distant start, as you might imagine.

Corran’s prejudice, as well as Kestrel’s more-justified-but-still-unhelpful resentment, hinder the party as they attempt to survive in Myth Drannor and defeat the Cult of the Dragon’s schemes there. Corran’s life of privilege has left him unfamiliar with Kestrel’s skills, and he consistently misuses those skills or forgets to ask for her opinion and expertise - to the detriment of the group. This painful oversight aside, however, Corran proves surprisingly practical; he works with the party’s wizard to create effective combat tactics, utilizes invisibility for surprise attacks against powerful foes, and coordinates well in the heat of battle; after all, the Cult of the Dragon is not taking requests for formal duels, and the fate of the world is at stake. Corran is polite even to his enemies, and openly negotiates with the minions and allies of the Cult in order to avoid combat - notably including drow houses that have made their homes in Myth Drannor. Through the course of the novel, he and Kestrel go from being openly antagonistic towards one another to developing a newfound respect, starting when Kestrel calls Corran out for endangering the party by refusing to retreat. Corran, in turn, forces Kestrel to confront the fact that she has been unhappy living her life with no purpose other than to die another day, a revelation that shakes her to her core.

Things come to a head when one of Corran’s decisions gets a man killed. Kestrel calls him out on it, accusing him - correctly - of hurting those he’s trying to protect by misusing her skills and ignoring the advice of his companions. Seeing his genuine anguish over these events softens Kestrel’s rage towards the paladin, enough that they essentially start their relationship over from the top with genuine change from both of them. A scene late in the book where Kestrel helps Corran find the confidence to attempt divine magic (a gift given only to ‘truly worthy’ paladins) cements what has finally become a trusting friendship.

Corran d’Arcy is an excellent example of a classic paladin archetype with life and humanity breathed into it. He has prejudices and insecurities; he feels pressured to live up to a long legacy of knighthood that intimidates him. At the same time, the virtues he lives up to reward him over and over again, from his bold valor (which sees to the defeat of many evildoers) to his courtesy and honor in social situations (which wins him unlikely allies in a ruined city overrun by wickedness). Though he starts out as a dick, Corran is not malicious, and it’s his genuine desire to do good by others that motivates the change in his behavior; when he learns that he is hurting his friends, he knows that he must change.

That’s the end of the article proper! I hope you found it informative and, more than anything, helpful in creating paladins for your game and campaign setting. I absolutely welcome questions, comments, critique, additions, and the like; my Ask box is open, and the Reblog button is right there.

That said, if you’re interested, Mister Vox’s Wild Ride is not yet over. I got bit by the homebrew bug halfway through this damnable thing, so here’s a paladin oath based on a family from my first completed interactive story, Dungeon Life Quest. Constructive critique of this material is also very welcome!

Oath of the la Croix (D&D 5e Sacred Oath)

(River la Croix, journeyman necromancer and demonologist, ex-mercenary. Character is from Dungeon Life Quest, art provided by Domochevsky.)

The la Croix family have been necromancers for longer than they’ve been the la Croix; they laid down much of the foundations of modern necromancy, and have, through the ages, been tyrants, villains, refugees and, these days, heroes. To be a la Croix is not a matter of blood, but of commitment to the family’s ideals; one must be willing to help those in need, to serve the community, be a level head in times of trouble, to show respect for death and the dead, and to make hard choices with a calm heart.

Though most la Croix are necromancers, alchemists, healers, or summoners of various kinds, every now and again a paladin-like warrior emerges from the ranks of the family, often by adoption. Whether or not such cousins are ‘real’ paladins is a subject of languid internal debate in the family - no la Croix has ever fallen to the point where she lost her powers, but a few have managed to go mad enough with that power to end up hunted down by the rest of the family. The question doesn’t really need answering, but it’s fun to argue about after three cups of wine.

Tenets of the la Croix The high standards expected of la Croix paladins are also expected of anyone who chooses to bear the family name. You can give up the name at any time, but most la Croix children - by adoption or by blood - try to wear it with pride.

Life is for the Living, Death is for the Dead. No one chooses to be born, and very few people choose to die. Respect these truths. Take life when you must, but not cruelly, and never for personal gain. Remember that you, too, are alive, and deserve the chance to enjoy that life as all people do.

Your Name is ‘Somebody’. If there is a call for help, you are the one to answer; when you hear ‘somebody do something’, ‘somebody help me’, you are Somebody, child of Anyone. If you can’t help directly, do everything you can anyway. None of us deserve to be alone.

Serve, Not Rule. A la Croix’s place in her community is service to that community. We are not nobles, tyrants, or generals; we dwell among the common people to protect and shelter them, and to remind ourselves of all the ways in which we are alike. Our power makes us different, not better.

They, Too, Are Victims of Life. You do not know the struggles others go through, just as they do not know yours. All are condemned to live and to die, and deserve your compassion even when you are moved to strike them down for the greater good. Bury your enemies and give them their last rites as if they were your own family.

Oath Spells You gain oath spells at the paladin levels listed.

3rd - bane, false life 5th - darkness, gentle repose 9th - bestow curse, fear 13th - phantasmal killer, shadow of Moil* 17th - danse macabre*, planar binding

*appears in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Channel Divinity When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following Channel Divinity options.

Ancestral Protection - You can use your Channel Divinity to call upon your la Croix ancestors for protection. As an action, you suffer damage equal to your paladin level; this damage cannot be prevented or reduced in any way. Then, you and all allies within 30 feet of you gain a bonus to armor class equal to your Charisma modifier for 1 minute.

Balefire Blast - You can use your Channel Divinity to scourge an enemy with death-in-flame. Make a spell attack against a creature within 30 feet. If you hit, that creature suffers necrotic damage equal to your paladin level, plus fire damage equal to your paladin level. If it dies within 1 minute of being hit, it counts as dying of old age in addition to its actual cause of death (usually meaning that it is much more difficult to bring back from the dead).

Necromancer’s Aura Beginning at 7th level, you radiate constant necromantic wards that protect you and your allies. You and allies within 10 feet of you have resistance to necrotic damage and radiant damage, and you make saving throws against effects which would kill you outright with advantage.

At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.

Friend of Death Starting at 15th level, you regain 1 spell slot of 3rd level or lower whenever a creature within 30 feet of you is reduced to 0 or less hit points. You can regain a number of spell slots this way equal to your Charisma modifier; once you reach this limit, you must finish a long rest to use this ability again.

Aphrael’s Chosen At 20th level, you gain the ability to enter a state of heightened necromantic power, in which you can channel far more sorcery than usual. As an action, you suffer damage equal to your paladin level, then begin channeling raw death magic for 1 minute. While in this state, you gain the following benefits:

- You are immune to all effects which would kill you outright - Whenever you cast a paladin spell, you can make a weapon attack as part of casting that spell. You are not required to make this attack. - Creatures make their saving throws against your spells with disadvantage.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HIGH-RISK

We would at most have said that one could be a bit smarter to dominate Internet search than you had to do was sit and look attentive. You get to watch behind the scenes what an enormous amount of work that are purer, in the long term, which do you think most will choose? To anyone who has read any amount of history, there seem to have looked far for ideas.1 Being able to take risks is hugely valuable. But evidence suggests most things with titles like this are linkbait. They hear stories about stampedes to invest in you, that makes other investors want to, and I remember well the strange, cozy feeling that comes over one during meetings. But it would be to shirk it, but regardless it's certainly constraining. If you want to put their name on.

What was novel about yuppies was that they wanted market price for the work they do. In practice they spend a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists seem to be created deliberately. It became possible to make lots of new things, and we needed to buy time to fix it. Often users have second thoughts and delete such comments. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them.2 Note too that determination and talent are not the biggest threat. Performance is always the ultimate test, but there are problems it doesn't work so well for: the kind where it helps to have everything in one head.

Of our current concept of an organization, at least for programmers. It's tantalizing to think we believe things that will later seem ridiculous, I want to examine its internal structure. It may work, but it didn't seem like a real company. I don't see why one couldn't, by a similar process, learn to recognize the approach of an ending, and when one appears, grab it.3 So my theory about what's going on is that the only thing to interest someone arriving at HN for the first time should be the m. The way people act is just as hosed as Munich. The biggest component in most investors' opinion of you is the opinion of other investors. If you understand them, you can create wealth very rapidly. Well, that is all too obvious. And since good people like good colleagues, that means you've probably done something good.

They're good at solving problems, but bad at choosing them. Nothing will explain what your site is about. Few adults aspired to look dangerous in 1950. I see starting to get standardized is acquisitions. At the moment, even the smartest students leave school thinking they have to introduce something new: bosses. The real problem is that humans weren't meant to work in groups of several hundred.4 One thing all startups have in common is that they're telling the truth. People. Some parts of a program may be easiest to read if you spread things out, like an antique store.5 The problem is so widespread that people pretending to be eminent do it by accident.6

I wouldn't have predicted the frontpage would hold up so well, and more about what they'd see, and more importantly, can't take liberties with. If investors were perfect judges, the two would require exactly the same work, except with bosses. But this harmless type of lie can turn sour if left unexamined. What about angels? I talked recently to a founder whose startup had been acquired by a big company. Kerry were so similar in that respect that they might have been brothers. You needed to take care of you.7 But only a bit: willfulness, discipline, and ambition are all concepts almost as complicated as determination. This can only happen in a very limited way in a list of articles that are interesting. Not explicitly, of course, but I can't believe we've considered every alternative. The only place to look is where the spread of computing power. The good news is, choosing problems is something that can be learned.

Suppose you realize there is nothing new in it. The political commentators who come up with shifts to the left, or the painter who can't afford to heat his studio and thus has to wear a beret indoors. Normal food is terribly bad for you. Business still reflects an older model, exemplified by the French, did much of his thinking in Holland. Sorry about that. You needed to take care of the company so it could take care of the company so it could take care of you. The ambitious had little choice but to join large organizations that made them march in step with lots of graffiti and broken windows becomes one where robberies occur. Why do great ideas come from them, even if few do per capita. Certainly they'll learn more. But if it's inborn it should be a good one for beginning writers.

Visiting Sand Hill Road reminds you that the opposite of down and dirty would be up and clean. When I grew up there were only 2 or 3 of most things, precisely because it's open source; anyone can find mistakes. This leads to the phenomenon known in the Valley as the hot deal, where you write a version 1 very quickly and then gradually modify it, but whether it brings any advantage at all. When it reaches a certain concentration, it kills off the yeast that produced it. That word is not much used now, because the links do. There are two big forces intersect, in the long term, which do you think most will choose? And since we're assuming we're doing this without being able to siphon off what had till recently been the prerogative of the elite. They can work on projects with an intensity in both senses that few insiders can match.

Notes

Something similar happens with suburbs. So 80 years sounds to him like 2400 years would to us that we wrote in order to switch. The way to see. When I talk about it as if it was because he writes about controversial things.

Common Lisp, because it depends on a form you forgot to fill out can be huge. I now believe that successful startups.

Everyone else was talking about why people dislike Michael Arrington. MITE Corp. Parents move to suburbs to raise five million dollars is no longer written in Lisp, which can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than to confuse everyone with a clear upward trend.

The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably the early adopters you evolve the idea of happiness from many older societies.

That name got assigned to it because the test for what she has done, at least for those founders.

There are two ways to get the rankings they want you. One year at Startup School David Heinemeier Hansson encouraged programmers who wanted to invest but tried to pay employees this way.

Once he showed it could become a so-called signalling risk is also not a big VC firm or they see of piracy is simply what they campaign for. In 1525 he was exaggerating. Super-angels hate to match.

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Matt Cohler, Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, and Sam Steingold for the lulz.

[thevividgreenmoss]

For present purposes, it will be enough to cite a particularly compelling example to illustrate how this discourse is now being applied to what used to be called the "Third World." That example is found in the work of Gayatri Spivak, who once remarked that "Class is the purest form of signifier," implying that class is a "pure" linguistic symbol in the sense that it has no concrete referent in the material world.(1) From the vantage point of the sort of linguistic theory on which so many postmodernist discourse analysts draw, the quality of the referent is less important than the location of concepts like class in relation to other "signifiers." So Spivak is able to say, for instance, that "socialism" has "no historically adequate referent" in India, by which she means that Indian socialism did not originate in a truly indigenous tradition of socialist discourse. Aijaz Ahmad has recently commented on this observation in a way that nicely captures the postmodernist notion of "history." To be told that socialism has no "historically adequate referent" in India, he remarks, would come as a big surprise to all those millions of Indians who, for reasons having to do with their own experience of their own domestic capitalism and their own situation in its class divisions, regularly vote Communist. The "historical referent" for Indian socialism, in other words, is not some disembodied imperial "discourse" but Indian capitalism and a political practice "undertaken within India by Indian political subjects."

Other essays in this issue outline the main characteristics of postmodernist "discourse." For present purposes, it will be enough to cite a particularly compelling example to illustrate how this discourse is now being applied to what used to be called the "Third World." That example is found in the work of Gayatri Spivak, who once remarked that "Class is the purest form of signifier," implying that class is a "pure" linguistic symbol in the sense that it has no concrete referent in the material world.(1) From the vantage point of the sort of linguistic theory on which so many postmodernist discourse analysts draw, the quality of the referent is less important than the location of concepts like class in relation to other "signifiers." So Spivak is able to say, for instance, that "socialism" has "no historically adequate referent" in India, by which she means that Indian socialism did not originate in a truly indigenous tradition of socialist discourse. Aijaz Ahmad has recently commented on this observation in a way that nicely captures the postmodernist notion of "history." To be told that socialism has no "historically adequate referent" in India, he remarks, would come as a big surprise to all those millions of Indians who, for reasons having to do with their own experience of their own domestic capitalism and their own situation in its class divisions, regularly vote Communist. The "historical referent" for Indian socialism, in other words, is not some disembodied imperial "discourse" but Indian capitalism and a political practice "undertaken within India by Indian political subjects."

That is one way of summing up the difference between postmodernism and Marxism. It isn't that Marxism is uninterested in language, discourse, or meaning, and the best historical-materialist work deals precisely with the many different concrete referents that words like "class" or "work" can have in specific historical conditions. But here I simply want to underline that Marxism can understand the practices through which meanings are produced in relation to the actions of people on and in the world and not just in relation to other meanings. Practices are undertaken in particular places at particular times by particular subjects in particular conditions, and these have to be studied historically.

Say, for instance, we want to analyze Mexican society, whether viewed through the prism of the Mexican revolution of 1910, or the neo-Zapatista revolution in Chiapas starting on January 1, 1994, or the crisis of the state and the ruling party in recent months. A starting point would be to recognize that Mexico has long been a "postcolonial society." Mexico has moved along temporally - if not developmentally - from an earlier colonial condition for almost two centuries. Yet one of the most striking features of the ways in which political power is organized socially and experienced subjectively throughout Mexico - whether in the "advanced" northern state of Chihuahua or the "backward" southeastern state of Chiapas - is that it is and remains a profoundly colonial or, in a pinch, neocolonial rather than unequivocally postcolonial form of power. Neither the Wars of Independence and the Wars of the Reform during the nineteenth century, nor the revolution of 1910 and the "re forms" of Salinastroika in the period 1988-1994 during the twentieth century, signalled irreversible, radical breaks with the past. Rather, they are moments in a sustained process of transformation. That series of political transformations was associated with a series of economic transformations that established the specific form of Mexican capitalism. The language of "pre" and "post," which pretends to be about historical change, actually disguises these processes of transformation by carving up history into discontinuous and disconnected units.

Nevertheless, the lure of intellectual fashion is so great that scholars who two decades ago worked with peasants in Mexico, and wrote about social movements, rural class formation, and the permanent character of the primitive accumulation of capital in dependent, peripheral states, now author postmodernist essays and books with titles (e.g., Hybrid Cultures) and themes (the metaphor of a salamander to organize reflections on Mexican history) that have more in common with magical realist literature than with historical materialist analysis. This is not to suggest that magical realism - say, the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Isabel Allende - has nothing to tell us, and that only historical materialism can reveal the Truth. It is only to underline the radical differences between literary and historical ways of relating to social reality.

Perhaps it should come as little surprise that some postmodern/postcolonial critics seem, or pretend, not to know that the arenas of discourse in which their work circulates are at several removes from the social reality they purport to represent. The privileges now enjoyed by intellectuals in the North have been so reduced that many seem to be compensating by providing to themselves an inflated sense of their own importance and the significance of purely intellectual or "discursive" practices. Nonetheless, the distinction between what is being talked about and how it is being talked about remains important. As Gabriel Garcia Marquez is reported to have said to Carlos Fuentes while discussing the turn taken by internecine struggles within the ruling party in Mexico in the early months of 1995, "We are going to have to throw our books into the sea. We've been totally defeated by reality." If a litterateur can get the point, why can't a literary theorist?

[...]

Why not interject some remarks of a Chihuahuan peasant, asked whether people in northern Mexico, followers of Francisco Villa, had joined the revolution in 1910 to recover control of their land? "Put it that we now have land," replied Cruz Chavez in 1986, but that was a fight. And justice? And freedom? When will we get that? Can you tell me? Look, we're gonna die of old age without seeing them, because the more time that passes, justice and freedom only get worse in our country.

Now I can imagine at least two different ways of connecting these remarks to what is happening in Chiapas today. We could simply take Cruz Chavez's words with those of Subcomandante Marcos and measure them both against some abstr-act repertoire of signifiers to find out, for example, whether they are pre- or postmodern discourses. Alternatively, we could consider these discourses historically, comparing the ways in which words like "freedom" and "justice" figure in their respective vocabularies, and how they relate to their concrete and changing historical referents, their material and social conditions, their political practices and struggles. We could consider as well how the labor process in Mexican agriculture has or has not changed since 1910, how political democracy has or has not advanced. And we could explore the ways in which the EZLN is trying in practice to answer the questions posed by Cruz Chavez in a different region of Mexico, under different historica l conditions, and building differently on a long history-including the 1910 revolution-of political struggle.

In the first case, it is hard to see how our objective as intellectuals could be anything else than to appropriate those discourses, to claim them as our own. In the second, we would simply be trying to understand and explain. The latter objective is in some ways more modest. At least it is less likely to exaggerate the power of intellectuals, because it acknowledges that we are talking about social and political practices undertaken by specific people other than ourselves, instead of claiming that our own discourse is the only real practice, our academic discourse the only real politics.

Daniel Nugent, Northern Intellectuals and the EZLN

[terramythos]

TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 21 of 26

Title: Blood for Blood (Wolf by Wolf #2) (2016)

Author: Ryan Graudin

Genre/Tags: Alternate History, Historical Fiction, Dystopian, Science Fiction, Young Adult, Third Person, Female Protagonist, Duology

Rating: 7/10

Date Began: 7/20/2020

Date Finished: 7/27/2020

Yael, a death camp survivor with the ability to skinshift, has fulfilled her mission -- impersonate Axis Tour contender Adele Wolfe and assassinate Hitler on live TV. But something has gone terribly wrong, and Yael is on the run from the SS. She finds herself in an uneasy alliance with Luka Lowe and Felix Wolfe, the two people she tricked the most by pretending to be Adele. Now, as war and rebellion escalate worldwide against the Reich, the three have to find a way back to Germania and the heart of the resistance. 

“Mark my words, Herr Wolfe.” Baasch’s voice swelled over the Führer’s speech. He watched the television, a half smile breaking his face. “There will be blood. There will be more than enough. The world is about to drown in it.” 

Major spoilers for Wolf by Wolf and minor spoilers for Blood for Blood under the cut.

I have mixed feelings about this book, and while there's a lot of specific reasons I will go into, I think it can be summed up in one statement: Blood for Blood is a completely different animal than Wolf by Wolf (pun intended). Logically, yes, no two books in a series will be or should be the same, but this duology takes it to the next level. Blood for Blood's style, tone, and pacing often feel like it's from a totally different series. Whether that's a good or a bad thing varies throughout the novel, but I enjoyed Wolf by Wolf more. The first and most obvious difference between the two is structure. Wolf by Wolf has a very concise and deliberate story, focusing on Yael. Sections of the plot are organized by legs of the Axis Tour race. Flashbacks are also sprinkled throughout to give the reader a sense of Yael's backstory and motivations-- but they're executed in a way that feels organic. The slick format is one of the best parts of Wolf by Wolf, and unfortunately is pretty much absent in Blood for Blood. Instead, Blood for Blood features a split perspective between Yael and two of the leads from the first book, Felix and Luka. In some ways I really like this change, as it allows the latter two to become much more interesting and fleshed out characters. On the other hand, it also takes away from the focus inherent in the first book, and as a result the narrative feels disorganized. Without the Axis Tour, the series loses a lot of the glue keeping things together. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s difficult not to compare it to the previous entry. Flashbacks still exist, albeit changed. Each character periodically gets a perspective flashback that takes place on the same day in history. From a characterization perspective, it's an interesting way to show how their histories and motivations compare and contrast. However, in practice these scenes don't appear with any consistency, so when they show up it feels random rather than deliberate. I wish this technique had been presented in a more straightforward manner, possibly with more scenes than the handful we actually get. 

The change I like the most is the tonal shift. Blood for Blood is darker than Wolf by Wolf, being much more explicit about the horrors of war and Nazi atrocities, torture, and war crimes. Wolf by Wolf wasn't lighthearted by any means, but the kid gloves come off completely with this one. I think it's an important change to highlight just how insidious and evil Nazism is, especially in an age with increasing pro-Nazi and far right sentiment. I also LOVE that Luka and Felix both have to come to terms with the evils of the regime and change as a result. The part where they both realize the atrocities of the death camps and medical experiments is probably one of my favorite parts in the book; their sheer horror and visceral disgust is satisfying and redemptive. This darker tone really ramps up the stakes, and I think makes the book much more exciting and emotionally charged.  For me the characterization is a mixed bag. Luka is much more likable in this entry. In Wolf by Wolf he’s a generic “jerk LI character with Hidden Depths”, but learning his backstory and motivations in Blood for Blood helps a lot. Maybe I’m a sap, but I actually like his relationship with Yael in this one, since it’s built on genuine admiration and respect rather than the antagonistic sniping of the previous book. There is less laser focus on Yael in Blood for Blood, but I think the continuation of her identity arc is well executed. When she finds the old photograph of herself? BRUH. I was skeptical about *SPOILER CHARACTER* showing up out of nowhere, but ultimately I like her role in the story, and there’s subtle foreshadowing in Wolf by Wolf, making it one of the few twists in this series I didn’t see coming. 

Unfortunately I feel the opposite about Felix. To be clear, I have no problem with a main character regressing and making poor choices like Felix does, and I think it can be interesting if done right. But Felix’s arc is based around a whole lot of misunderstandings, and even when the misunderstandings get resolved, he just... stubbornly keeps being a selfish idiot. There’s very little nuance or development on this front until the very end. While objectively his choices are understandable with context, it doesn’t make them any less grating to read about. Ultimately, he pays for his decisions big time and THAT is satisfying, but I don’t know if it makes up for gritting my teeth for a good third of the novel. 

There’s also some details that just make me scratch my head. Like, what happened to the skinshifting? It’s not totally absent in this story, but it serves very little role in the first half. The inciting premise of this book is that there’s more skinshifters than just Yael, and the Nazis are using them to imitate Hitler and protect him from assassination attempts. But that thread doesn’t really pay off until the climax? Yael and *SPOILER CHARACTER* doing it feels like an afterthought, with the exception of one scene. I just feel like there’s so much one can do re: subterfuge and sabotage when one’s enemies can literally change faces and imitate people. There is a sabotage subplot... but it’s with Felix, who can’t skinshift! I don’t know, it just feels like a huge missed opportunity. Also, Japan is a pretty major Thing in the first book and it’s barely relevant in Blood for Blood. It feels like Graudin genuinely forgot about it other than a token mention at the end. 

If I'm being honest, this book was hovering right at a 6/10, but I think the ending bumps it up to a 7. It’s very intense with excellent tension and pacing. Predictable, sure-- it’s pretty easy to pin down (1) who dies and (2) the final twist at the end-- but I don’t mind some predictability if it’s well executed. The easiest way to my heart is a real emotional gutpunch, and boy the ending delivers.  

It’s hard for me to recommend this book unless you liked Wolf by Wolf and really want to see what happens to the characters. It’s much different from the previous volume, for better and worse. Blood for Blood is good, but it wasn’t what I expected in a followup and suffers in its inherent comparison to Wolf by Wolf.

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 3 Easter Eggs & References

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This Star Trek: Discovery article contains spoilers for Season 3, Episode 3. Read our review of the episode here.

As the USS Discovery starts to explore the galaxy in Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, the first stop is, understandably, to check-in on how the Planet Earth is doing. Unlike Battlestar Galactica searching for Earth forever, Discovery decided to get the whole Earth thing out of the way right away. In Episode 3, “People of Earth,” the crew returns to the home planet of the Federation and learns things are not remotely similar to how they left it.

Along the way, “People of Earth” references a long-running TNG-Douglas Adams joke, a quip from Kirk in The Wrath of Khan, a famous DS9-era alien species, and more! 

700 years after we left…

Burnham’s opening narration fills in new details we previously didn’t get about the Burn, including the idea that prior to the Burn, about “700 years after we left, dilithium reserves dried up.” This means that around the year 2957 or so, the Federation was “trialing alternative warp drive designs.” We don’t know much about the 30th century in the existing Trek canon, other than Daniels from Enterprise had knowledge about that era. To put it in perspective, this time period would still be 500 years in the future for Star Trek: Picard. The idea of the Federation trying to change the way warp drive operates vaguely references the TNG episode “Force of Nature.”

47

When Burnham talks about being a courier, someone hands her a sliver containing the Starfleet registry NCC-4774. We don’t know what ship this belongs to, but it seems like this is a visual joke which references the long, and intentional inside joke about using the number 47 (or 74) throughout all of Trek which began around TNG Season 4. There are literally hundreds of appearances of the numbers 47 or 74 throughout the franchise, so many that there is actually a “47 project” devoted to finding all the occurrences of 47 throughout the franchise. 

The origin of the joke references the number 42 from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In that novel, “42” ends up being the answer to “the life, the universe, and everything.” Burnham is searching for similarly vague answers in this montage. In the ‘90s, “47” became the “42” of Star Trek canon, and Rick Berman joked once that 47  was “42, adjusted for inflation.” The number “47” is also an Easter egg of sorts for alums from Pomona College, sprinkled throughout TV and film history.

Terralysium and Burnham’s mom

Burnham tells Saru that during the year she’s spent in this future, she’s connected the planet Terralsyium and that “they had never heard of my mom.” This references Season 2 of Discovery in which we learned Burnham’s mother, Gabrielle Burnham transported humans from the 21st Century to a planet called Terralysium in the Beta Quadrant. In theory, Terralysium was supposed to be the tether location where Burnham and the USS Discovery ended-up. In “Perpetual Infinity” Burnham’s mom was sucked into a time vortex, which, in theory, could have deposited her into the future version of Terralysium. So far, though, that’s not the case.

Captain Saru

Saru is promoted to captain in this episode. This is a long time coming for Saru. He’s been a First Officer for two captains thus far, Captain Lorca and Captain Pike. And, in the Discovery novel Desperate Hours, Saru was upset that Burnham was promoted to First Officer over him prior to the Battle of the Binary Stars. This 2017 book by David Mack is slightly non-canonical, but it did establish Detmer’s first name as Keyla, and doubled-down on Number One’s name as Una. Anyway, the point is, Saru has been working for a long time to become Captain.

DOT-7 Bots

We briefly see the outside of Discovery’s hull being repaired by DOT-7 robots. We first saw these little bots in “Such Sweet Sorrow” in Season 2, when they emerged from the Enterprise and effected some repairs. One of these bots, of course, was the star of the Short Treks episode “Ephraim and Dot.”

“Galavanting”

Georgiou mentions that Book has been “galavanting through space with Michael.” This could be a reference to The Wrath of Khan in which Kirk says, “galavanting around the cosmos is a game for the young.” 

Saturn 

Although the planet Saturn is famous to us here on Earth — not counting the opening credits for Star Trek: The Next Generation Seasons 1 and 2 — this is seemingly only the fourth time Saturn has appeared during an episode or movie of Star Trek. Previously, Saturn appeared in the TNG episodes “The Best of Both Worlds,” and “The First Duty.” In Star Trek (2009) Saturn appears when the Enterprise hides near Titan. 

“One aye”

When Booker sarcastically says “aye, aye” commander, to Burnham, she replies, “One ‘aye,’ we’re not pirates.” This might reference the original TNG episode “Lower Decks,” in which Riker tells Lavelle that “One aye is sufficient acknowledgment, Ensign.”

Georgiou pretends to be an Admiral

When the Discovery is inspected by the Earth ships, Georgiou dons an Admiral’s uniform to “make it believable.” This is the second time Mirror Geogoiu has worn a Starfleet uniform even though she is not really in Starfleet. The first time was in Discovery Season 1 when she was authorized to impersonate Prime Georgiou to lead the mission against the Klingon homeworld. 

Generational ship

Saru’s cover story for why the USS Discovery is still in operation in 3188 is the idea that they are a generational ship and are crewed by their own ancestors. This concept actually occurs in the Enterprise episode “E²,” where the crew of the NX-01 meets an alternate version of the ship crewed by their descendants. 

Synthehol 

Book is furious to discover he’s not drinking actual booze, but instead, synthehol. To be clear, in Trek canon, synthehol can get you drunk, but mostly if you’re an alien or a former Borg. In the TNG episode “Relics,” Scotty complained about having to drink synthehol in Ten Forward

Quantum torpedoes 

It’s briefly mentioned the Wen’s raiders have “quantum torpedoes.” This tech was first mentioned in Star Trek: First Contact, which, at the time, made it very new. 

Starfleet does not fire first!

After Georgiou suggests Saru take swift and aggressive action, Saru remonstrates her by saying “Starfleet does not fire first.” He’s actually quoting… Georgiou in the very first episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Though, in that case, the Georgiou who said “Starfleet doesn’t fire first” was the Prime Universe Captain Georgiou, not the Mirror Universe Georgiou who we’re more familiar with.

Titan

After it’s revealed that Wen (Christopher Heyerdahl) is actually a human, we also learn that he’s from the Titan. In real life, Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, and, unlike most moons, boasts an atmosphere. Trek canon has mentioned Titan a bunch. In “The First Duty,” Wesley was training near Titan, and again, in Star Trek (2009), Chekov hid the Enterprise behind Titan.

Adira’s revelation 

We learn very quickly that Adira (Blu del Barrio) is a human joined with a Trill; specifically a symbiont called “Tal.” Burnham and Sura discuss their general ignorance of Trill symbionts, but Saru tells Burnham everything he knows about the Trill comes from the “Sphere Data.” This references the giant alien sphere Discovery encountered in the Season 2 episode “An Obol for Charon.”

The fact that Burnham and Saru don’t know much about Trill symbionts makes sense. It’s not clear that in the 2250s that the Trill were open about being a joined species, but by the time of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine the Federation obviously learned about them. In fact, in the first TNG episode “The Host,” a human, Will Riker, was joined with a Trill. But, Burnham and Saru wouldn’t know about that because it would have been in their future back in 2257, and certainly, the Sphere didn’t know about that either.

Captain Georgiou’s telescope 

Saru unpacks Captain Georgiou’s telescope and puts it up in his new ready room. This telescope was presumably salvaged from the USS Shenzhou and given to Michael Burnham as part of Georgiou’s will in “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not For the Lamb’s Cry.” But, after that, Burnham gave it to Saru instead. Saru and Burnham both used this telescope for practical purposes in the first Discovery episode ever, “The Vulcan Hello.”

Read more

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Which Quadrant?

Burnham says that Book has “a fresh start, in a new quadrant.” We know Earth is located in the Alpha Quadrant, which seems to imply Book and Burnham were previously operating in the Beta Quadrant. 

Starfleet Academy and Picard’s favorite giant tree

Although Starfleet is no longer operational on Earth, the crew visits the grounds of Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. There, they find what seems to maybe be a huge elm tree. If so, this tree was actually referenced by Jean-Luc Picard in the TNG episodes “The Drumhead” and “The Game.” In theory, if this is supposed to be the same tree, it was tended by Boothby in the 24th Century which would imply it existed at least 100 years before that, in the mid 23rd Century, too.

Golden Gate Bridge 

The final shot of the episode pans out to show the 32nd Century version of the Golden Gate Bridge. The last time we saw this bridge chronologically, was in Star Trek: Picard in 2399. Though, prior to that, the bridge had been partially destroyed in the Dominion War in the 2370s. That is if you believe Changelings are real…

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Star Trek: Discovery airs new episodes on Thursdays on CBS All Access.

The post Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 3 Easter Eggs & References appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[changeling-rin]

It's fairly easy to tell with most of the guys, but I've been wondering: what kinds of things are Lore afraid of? How does he react when he's forced to face those things?

Oh!  @ask-the-dimensional-links did a thing on this!  Give me a minute, I’ll go and dig up that post- 

Click Here To Read It

Also, I went back through my message history and found the original thoughts I sent them regarding that Ask in the first place.  However, it is long, and I have recently figured out how to stop spamming people with novel-length posts, so!  The LONG answer shall be under the cut ;)

(But if you don’t want to read the whole thing I’ll put Lore’s in bold so you can just skip to it)

((For greatest fears… well, honestly I’ve only addressed this a couple times, because most of my interpretation of being the Holder of Courage means that said Holder isn’t afraid of a ton of stuff. That said, I have tried to give each Link something that they ARE afraid of, if only because Courage also means overcoming your fear and doing the thing anyway. I probably haven’t mentioned them all in-story because not all of them came up through natural events or dialogue, but hey, now I can!  Gen is afraid of spiders. I did this because, in his game, they’re freaking enormous and have a nasty habit of dropping out of absolutely flipping nowhere, landing on his head, and proceeding to try and eat him then and there. Granted, the spiders in Twilight Princess can be equally large, but you can usually see them coming. Plus, Dusk has very sharp teeth and that quick-time event thing with Midna and her magic, so he’s much better equipped to take them out swiftly whereas Gen has to stab the thing and usually get spider guts on himself too.Speck worries about getting stepped on. One of the very first things he learned about being small is that almost nobody pays attention to you, and they certainly don’t pay attention to where they’re walking. Most of the time he uses this to his advantage, like his fighting style. But he always makes sure to keep to corners and to walk in places where he can’t easily be spotted, because getting crushed to death by an unobservant human sounds absolutely terrifying.The Four don’t like being alone. It’s something that’s developed more in relation to the more time they spend together; there’s something really intimate about sharing thoughts the way they do, and they’re a little bit worried about how they’re going to handle it all when they have to put the Four Sword back. To them, noise means people and people mean life and warmth and laughter and a bunch of other good stuff. Their hive-mind means that they’ve always got each other, but especially now that they’ve gotten used to having ten-plus siblings around, being alone just sounds so… lonely.Ocarina is scared that he can’t measure up. It’s a lot of pressure, to take a nine-year-old boy and tell him, “Hey, you gotta save the world.” Now, though, he’s in a body that he’s still getting used to (he never had the opportunity to grow into it, after all), and there’s a future version of himself hanging around who’s confident and cocky and everything Ocarina’s not. He’s afraid that Mask might look at him one day and say, ‘You’ll never be me. You’re not enough.’ Common sense, of course, tells him that this is obviously never going to happen, because otherwise that would be a massive paradox and plus Mask just isn’t that kind of person, but fear isn’t exactly rational.Mask got over that whole inferiority thing a looooong time ago, but now he’s got a new issue: he can’t stand being left behind. Not in the kind of ‘You’re too slow’ way, but in the 'people move on without him’ way. It started when Princess Zelda sent him back to his child years (without actually consulting him on it, might I add), and suddenly here he is with all these memories surrounded by all these people who have no idea what he’s been through. Mask would have much rather continued as he was, with the people who shared the experience with him. Then Navi left, for reasons he’s still trying to figure out, and he literally left the country and went to a new one searching for her. This is part of the reason why he resonates with the Skull Kid; they’ve both got the same fear.Neither of them are very fond of Dead Hands, though.  Dusk doesn’t like losing people - at all. He’s so protective that the idea of one of the people he values getting hurt terrifies him. After all, what did he do when his adoptive brother got kidnapped? (That’s Colin, by the way.) And what did he do when Colin nearly got tossed off a bridge by King Bulblin? He went nuts on the guy. Same thing when Speck almost got crushed. He’s a wolf, and the pack means everything to him. He’s going to fight until he literally can’t anymore to keep anything from happening to his family.Vio, Blue, Red, and Green each have a diluted version of Link’s original fear, because they’re one personality split across four bodies. Basically, Link hates being the person who screwed up. The reason that Vaati is free in the first place was because he drew the Four Sword, breaking the seal and letting the sorcerer loose. (If you’d like, the Blue in him outweighed the Vio and instead of thinking of other ways to rescue the Princess, he went for the immediate option.) In a roundabout way, the whole mess is his fault (or at least he thinks it’s his fault), and he’ll do anything to make sure it doesn’t happen again. For his four split selves, this manifests into a general desire to not be the person in the group to botch the timing on a combat plan and to have their teamwork, at least, be smoothly-running.Lore, for a while, didn’t think he had a fear. Then he met the group and he abruptly realized, that, yes, he actually does. Lore’s afraid of rejection, that one day these people that he’d come to regard as family will say 'That’s it, we’re done, you’re too weird and we can’t cope with it.’ He actually reigned himself in, at first, just a little bit, because he liked these people and he wanted to stick around and for some reason, the idea of them looking at him in apprehension and confusion the way most other people did bothered him. He’s let loose by now, obviously, because he knows that none of them are going anywhere and neither is he, but it’s just one of those things that comes up in a bad dream every once in a while and always ends with him spending the rest of the night awake.Sketch has a straight-up phobia of water. I’ve covered this one fairly in-depth in the story, I believe, so I won’t reiterate it too much. But Sketch is always going to look at the ocean differently than the rest of the group will, because The Rain Incident is never too far in his mind.Realm is secretly afraid that one day, he’s going to get lost on his way to save somebody and by the time he finally gets there it’ll be too late. Or, that he’ll lose his sword and be unable to fend off an attack, or lose his shield and be unable to defend someone. This is why he never stops trying to find whichever item he misplaced or whichever location he lost track of this time. He’s going to get there whether it takes him two weeks or not, because the alternative isn’t an option. He’s better nowadays, because somehow hanging with the group cuts his travel time by about eighty percent and he still can’t believe that it’s normal for people to get where they’re going in less than a week, but it’s awesome and he’s not complaining one bit.Wind is afraid to lose. Not exactly in the traditional sense, but more like he’s terrified of what will happen if he fails. What would have happened to Aryll if he’d failed to save her after she’d gotten kidnapped? What would have happened to Tetra if he’d failed to get her out of Ganondorf’s hands? What would happen to her now if he fails to find Bellum? And, the current one, what will happen to existence if they fail to stop Demise? (I guess he’s afraid of the Game Over scenario, heh.)Steam never says anything about it, but he sometimes sees things that nobody else does and they freak the living daylights out of him. He’s started suspecting that there’s some form of spirit world sharing the space with their physical one. He’s learned to ignore it, for the most part, although being able to see it did come in really handy when Zelda lost her body. Unfortunately, that led him to think that he’s seeing the afterlife, and that was just uncomfortable.

Shadow likes to pretend that he doesn’t have a fear and he gets away with it too, because what he’s actually afraid of never actually occurred to anybody else. Which is funny, because he’s actually really obvious about it. He doesn’t like sunlight. Kinda like Sketch and his water phobia, Shadow’s afraid of sunlight because it hurts. He’s never tempted fate to see what would happen, but judging by the smoke that starts coming off his hair he doesn’t think he wants to find out. Hence the cloak he wears, and why he’s always under a shady tree somewhere.Oni dislikes the idea of losing his legacy. He’s the very first Hero, after all, he’s gotta protect his kids. Plus, if they’re gone, who’s gonna beat up the evil that pops up all the time? He’s like the formal older brother/father who’s actually an enraged momma bear if you manage to trigger his fear.))

[cryptovalid]

Watchmen: My favorite show of 2019

Now that I’ve watched HBO’s Watchmen in its entirety, I can safely say that it is by far my favorite show I’ve seen this year. The more I think about it though, the less it seems to offer a coherent statement about vigilantism, power and violence the way the original graphic novel did. I don’t think this makes it any less clever, bold or satisfying to watch, but Watchmen is more interested in playing with the weight and drama of themes than actually expressing a clear, useful thesis about them.

The show is a sequel to the graphic novel, taking place in 2019, when the fallout from the 1987 story finally comes home to roost. 

To give you some more context, I’ll be talking about Alan Moore’s 1986-1987 maxiseries of comics first, and then comparing it to the new television series narratively. In terms of acting and production values, I’d say that the show is great across the board, although your mileage may vary. This is doubly true of its narrative: I’m curious if the show is too confusing for people who’ve never read the comic, and the show doesn’t show a lot of reverence for the characters of the original. In my opinion, this is for the best and actually completely in the spirit of Alan Moore’s work. From here on out, There be Spoilers for the comic, movie and the tv series.

Watchmen (1987) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons is by far my absolute favorite superhero comic. It is the only graphic novel to be named as one of Time’s 100 best novels of the twentieth century. It’s certainly not true that it is the only graphic novel that deserves that kind of honor, but it is not on that list for bad reasons. This post would be too long if I listed all of Watchmen’s many achievements, so I will just say this: Watchmen investigates how the existence of masked vigilantes and superheroes would change the real world, and its answer is not positive. No matter how you slice it, in order to inflict violence on strangers or save the world based purely on your own moral compass, you have to be either hopelessly naive or narcissistic, sadistic, fascistic, fetishist, manic, or untethered from human experience in one way or the other. However you imagine them, superheroes escalate danger. They are not cooperative or peace-loving by their nature, the comic says. ‘Superheroes’ will do terrible things in the name of ‘saving the world’ or ‘doing the right thing’. In this sense, the book is thoroughly anti-utopian but also anti-superhero, and it commits to this by depicting all of its ‘protagonists’ as deeply flawed, ultimately dangerous or inept people. 

In terms of plot, the big twist that effects the show is that the smartest man in the world, the vigilante Ozymandias, predicts that nuclear armageddon is inevitable unless he convinces the global superpowers that there is a massive alien threat, making their feuds appear petty and risky by comparison. He literally kills millions of people with a genetically engineered giant monster that he teleports to New York, not including the dozens of murders to prepare the ground and cover up this fact. The fear that more monsters like this could appear prevents nuclear war at the last second, but another vigilante named Rorshach figured out Ozymandias’ plan and wanted to expose it, which would undo its intended peacemaking effect. He was killed, but his notes survived.  

In the end, the only vigilante with actual superpowers, Dr. Manhattan, is so far removed from human experience because of his godlike powers and his nonlinear perception of time, that he seems to retreat from Earth itself, expressing a desire to create life elsewhere.      

This is the backdrop against which Watchmen (2019) frames itself: what would that alternate history look like about 20 years later? But instead of focusing on the evils that vigilantism and superpowers would create, this sequel puts race and policing at the core of its narrative. The main protagonists: Angela Abar, Will Reeves, Laurie Blake and Wade Tillman are all cops and all of them are at one point in their lives masked vigilantes. They are also pitted against white supremacist terrorists, and the show depicts them as regularly violating the constitutional rights of suspects and killing lots of people in justifiable situations. The show depicts both cops and civilians in both real and historical race riots.  

But the more I think about it, the less I can identify a coherent thesis about the origins or nature of racism or the morality of extra-judicial violence. It seems to say ‘violating a person’s human rights is alright as long as they’re racist’, and I mean, I can’t be too mad about that, but it also implies that the cops are basically good, that it is possible to root out specific racist conspiracies and that’s all that’s needed to set things right. There’s a definite assumption that most of the time, we can just trust cops to have integrity. The show rarely frames unmitigated violence as a systemic issue; even when the government is implicated. The protagonists are also relatable and sympathetic, and their victory against the white supremacist conspiracy is without any real moral complications or ironic personal costs. This show, unlike its source material, is pro-vigilante. Or at most neutral on the subject.   

Its message about racism is more straightforward, but also a little hollow. Racist violence is shown viscerally, but also roundly condemed, ridiculed, and avenged by the protagonists. But that’s really as deep as it goes. All racists in this show are openly and stereotypically Southern whites. There is very little exploration or covert or insidious racism: there is a clear divide between literal neo-KKK types and antiracist avengers, with little ambiguity in between. We are not really shown what drives racists to be racist. The most motivation racists are given is a resentment over two attempts at improving the world: Reparations for the Tulsa Massacre, and the aforementioned plot to stop the Cold War by faking extradimensional invasion. Not that I’m begging for a humane portrayal of racist terrorists, but it does make it extremely easy for actual, less obvious white supremacists to ignore any criticism because ‘at least they’re not like the Seventh Kavalery’. It in short, doesn’t give viewers any special insight into racism and how to deal with it in the real world.

What Watchmen does do beautifully is representation. The first masked vigilante, Hooded Justice, who in the comic was a clear reference to a Klansman, is reimagined as the victim of a threatened lynching, who fights his attackers still wearing the noose and hood they put on him. He then pretends to be white to gain the support and cover he needs to be a vigilante. This man, Will Reeves, named himself after his childhood hero, the historical inspiration for the Lone Ranger, Bass Reeves. As a child, he was smuggled out from the Bombing of Tulsa in the trunk of a carriage, much like Moses or Superman. We later discover that HJ is bisexual and is essentially strung along for years by the media-savvy Captain Metropolis for publicity purposes and sex, and ends up desillusioned by his white allies. We also learn that Angela Abar, the de facto main character, is in fact his granddaughter, and she becomes involved in his decades-spanning plans to root out the racist conspiracy that the plot revolves around.

Perhaps even more interesting is the decision to integrate Doctor Manhattan into this sequel as a jewish and a black man. Rather than simply recasting the part, the show frames the revelation in a way that Dr. Manhattan might experience it: out of order, but also clearly telegraphed. The show uses this to characterize Dr. Manhattan as someone whose decisions do not adhere to standard causality. Why does he start to woo Angela Abar in the first place? Because from his perspective, he’s always been in love with her. Just like nothing ever ends, it doesn’t really begin from his perspective either. One day, he walks into A Bar and starts explaining to Angela Abar that they will be in a relationship for ten years, which wil then end in tragedy. While she is understandably skeptical, Regina King and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II really manage to sell both the frustrating absurdity and the transcendant romance of this idea. In the end, Osterman chooses to take the shape of a dead man based purely on the fact that Angela is most attracted to, and goes to great lengths to lose is powers and become human again, as a black man named Calvin Abar, who we first meet as Angela’s charming stay-at-home husband and father to their adopted children. The fact that he is Dr. Manhattan all along is revealed to us in my favorite sequence in the whole show. We, the audience, fall in love with both the husband as well as the God, Jon Osterman, as both are vulnerable and honest about who they are. Even though everyone knows it can’t last. These scenes are both heartbreaking and beautiful, and are foreshadowed masterfully from the beginning. This is what I mean when I say the show is clever. 

The dialogue is witty and the cinematography, editing and plotting do a subtle job of worldbuilding. There are very few exposition dumps and characters rarely do or say things just to help the plot along; they are always driven by their own motivations rather than those the viewer might prefer in their hurry to learn more.

As a result, characters feel smart and their personalities and relationships develop more naturally. From Jeremy Irons’ Ozymandias to Hong Chau’s Lady Trieu to Jean Smart’s Laurie Blake, they all come across as clearly defined assholes with a charismatic competence.   

The world and its history also unfold at their own pace. This can be confusing in the first couple of episodes. It isn’t explained why cops wear masks, what ‘Redfordations’ are, or why squids rain from the sky often enough that a siren goes off whenever it happens. Instead, viewers piece a lot of it together from context. The details make it feel very believable. It makes me feel like I’m discovering an alternate history the way a lost time traveler might.

In the end, it is not the themes that make this version of Watchmen so enjoyable. Its the intricate details of its world and the interactions between its characters that make Watchmen 2019 so fun to watch. And as far as on the nose messages go, ‘vaporize as many racists as possible‘ isn’t that bad.  

[jdarm]

Chris Jackson - October 28 2013

[x]

'Miss McGrath isn't here at the moment I'm afraid," says the man behind the desk at the Covent Garden Hotel, mispronouncing it "grath" as in "wrath", as so many Englishmen tend to do.

He directs me toward the avocado-coloured bar where I wait upon a comfy floral print chair as rich olive-skinned guests sip on cocktails and beer at a marble-topped bar, backed by a large fanlight mirror, which seduces shameless stares of vanity from a few.

The wait is short as Katie strides in, searching the tables for me, smiling at strangers, until she finds me. She greets me with a hug and before I have a chance to say anything she's ordered tea, soda and a small bowl of macadamia nuts, which she then devours in not too short order. She's not one to stand on ceremony.

Katie's in London promoting the latest television adaptation of one of fiction's most popular characters, Dracula. From the producers of Downton Abbey, Dracula is a major British and American co-production, primed to capture audiences across the world.

She leans back against the wall pulling her left knee into her body, as if at home on her couch, rather than in the bar of a five-star London hotel. She speaks in a low voice with the soft and steady cadence of a person of some cultivation, save for the odd swear, which only serves for emphasis. I ask her about her Dracula.

"With this Dracula they've taken the story and they've flipped it. They've made it more modern. There's a modern comic-book element to the story.

"The Dracula of this story is playing a role, that of an American industrialist, to exact revenge on those who wronged him."

It is, like others, a departure from Bram Stoker's original, although, as Katie points out, the Dubliner may have warmed to an adaptation where Dracula and two other main characters are played by Irish actors – Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Victoria Smurfit are the other two. (Katie, like Stoker, is an alumni of Trinity). She plays Lucy Westenra.

The Lucy Westenra of Bram Stoker's original was the embodiment of youthful innocence, the counterpoint to Dracula. I ask her what we can expect from her Lucy.

"My Lucy is a complete departure. In Stoker's Dracula she is a paragon of virtue. She is the idealised Victorian woman. She's sweet, kind, soft and gentle. She's the archetype of goodness," she says, stopping shortly before each sentence with a pregnant pause. She is polished in her speech.

"My Lucy, however, well, she's more of a high society 'It' girl. She seems vapid and vacuous at first. Then you see she has problems of her own, problems which will completely change your outlook on her. She's not the sweet girl of Bram Stoker's novel."

Katie is keen to point out that the departure doesn't stop there and that her Lucy is, like herself, an independent woman.

"She doesn't take sh*t from no one. She's the one in control, blonde strumpet that she is," she says.

Stoker's Lucy is a woman pursued by multiple suitors, but Katie is reticent on the subject of her own suiters.

She betrays the discomfort of someone who is not used to attention, someone who is still coming to terms with their success. It's understandable, she never saw such a future for herself when she was younger.

Katie McGrath was not a typical teenager. She had pink hair, listened to Green Day, and worked in a Tattoo Parlour. She was someone who you could imagine in a Kevin Smith or Richard Linklater film – a Goth, an Emo, a Rocker, an outlier. She no longer sees herself in such terms.

"I don't see myself as alternative anymore. You get to a point in life where you're comfortable with who you are and exist in your own world. I'm just me, walking around and trying to do a job without failing, although I do miss the pink hair."

Her path to stardom was unforeseen and unusual. An average student at Trinity (she studied history), she, like so many, did not know what she wanted to do with her life post-graduation. She played with the idea of a career in fashion and worked for Image magazine to achieve her left-field dream of being Vogue magazine's China editor. She then swung a job as a seamstress, though she couldn't sew, on the set of The Tudors, which was filmed near her home in Wicklow.

As she says "they needed a busty wench" for a love scene with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and she was happy to oblige them. Within a year she was cast as Morgana in BBC's Merlin, acting before millions of viewers in more than 150 countries.

The young woman whose life was without clear direction before was now on a path to great fame and fortune. It's little wonder she refers to herself as "having won the lottery".

As Morgana, Katie became a favourite of fantasy fanboys (the polite term for nerds), who can be quite obsessive. Often some of them live their lives vicariously through shows and their characters. She's experienced it first-hand, receiving, among other things, penned stories, pictures and dolls of herself as Morgana. She came face-to- face with many of them at San Diego's annual Comic-Con, a Mecca for fans of fantasy, sci-fi, and comic books, one of whom was Katie herself.

"It was amazing, it was like a place of joy, it was like a giant air-filled hangar of joy" she says with a broad smile, in between eating more macadamias. "They're all pretending to be someone, be it Princess Leah or Green Arrow, but at the same time that is who they are.”

"It's both bizarre and wonderful to see all these people pretend to be others and be so comfortable doing it."

Not all the parts she's played have been as successful. Take Madonna's directorial debut, W.E., in which Katie was cast. W.E. was panned by critics and was barely seen by anyone, taking less than $900,000 at the box office (The King's Speech, a similarly themed film, took more than $400m the year before).

"I think W.E. was a good film. I think critics were always going to be tough on it because it was Madonna's film. If it had been any other first time director I think they'd have been far more supportive of it" she says sincerely.

In spite of the failure of W.E. Katie's career has kicked-on, and last year she was cast in Channel 4's Labyrinth, an adaptation of Kate Mosse's best-selling novel of the same name, in which she was again required to wear a corset, a requirement made of her again in her latest ole, which, in one way, sees her career come full circle.

"I started as crew with Johnny, when I first met him I worked in wardrobe, now I'm starring opposite him. Sometimes I stop and think 'sh*t, I won the lottery'."

Her friendship with him means much to her, both personally and professionally, particularly given his extra experience.

"It was great having him there. This show is a big deal, with big money and big networks behind it. When you walk into a room with 20 high-powered producers it's great to know you're walking in with a friend, one who's got your back."

It's understandable that she seeks such support. Her acting apprenticeship was served in front of an audience of millions and it wasn't until she started to shoot Dracula that she felt confident in what she was doing.

And yet, in spite of the depths with which she has been cast, she has emerged. Katie is not one for the future anymore, she is one for the present, although there is some downside.

"People have great difficulty pronouncing my name. I've given up correcting people" she says. I say nothing of the man behind the desk.

[monicalorandavis]

The Watchmen Premiere electrocuted my brain!

Not literally. But in the alternative world in which Watchmen takes place, brain electrocution seems like a likely torture scenario. (Note: tiny squidlings fall from the sky in sweeping hail storms so tell me I’m wrong.) But before I get sidetracked with squidlings and sci-fi elements, this needs to be said: the pilot episode of Watchmen is one of the most interesting pieces of television I’ve ever seen. Never have I felt so grounded (so quickly!!!) and yet so free from the natural order of my America. It wasn’t disorienting (believe me, other things were) but, the America depicted in Watchmen is one I’ve seen in my best, and worst, imaginations of the America we could be (and could’ve been).

I feel, like so many black Americans feel, that things could have been better for us. For all of us - if the country had just paid the debts owed to black Americans. And this might not have been the review you were expecting, but it’s the one you’re getting.

Let’s start at the top, the show opens with a silent film. A young black boy, no older than 5, watches attentively. His mother, the only other person in the theater, accompanies on piano, tears streaming down her face. In the background, we hear gun shots and mayhem. But the boy is transfixed by the film. In the film, a black sheriff saves the day in the 1920s, while the scoundrel, a white man, gets strung up a tree. The adoring white crowd cheers for the black sheriff and the little boy beams. Now, freeze -

In the 1920s, there were no such films being made. However, what Watchmen does here, and throughout the pilot, seamlessly, is weave our real history into the fabric of its America, and by so doing illustrates just how easy it is to change history. The Sheriff in the film, Bass Reeves, is a beloved hero for black people and Oklahomans alike. He was born into slavery and then escaped and hid with the Indians until the 13th amendment freed him. After that, he became one of the most successful, gun-slinging sheriffs in the country, fearless and well-renowned. The fact that Nicole Kassell and Damon Lindeloff are laying the foundation for a country that honors black heroes is re-writing the way Americans learn about America. They’re saying, we don’t have to tell stories like we used to. And these motherfuckers did that in the first goddamn scene. (We haven’t even gotten to the superheroes yet!)

Fast forward, it’s 2012 (?) and Robert Redford, the actor and humanitarian, is the president. His policies have divided an already divided America. Instituting Redfordations (Watchmen’s nod to, yes, reparations) is as hot-button an issue as, well, reparations currently are. Some white people on the fringe have taken to underground organizing and terrorism against the state. Cops and black people have been targeted as enemy number one.

But it’s not all shoot-outs (though that first one was *chef’s kiss* delicioso) and choreographed fight scenes. Like any good action movie, Watchmen captures your heart during its quietest moments. There were some oddly passed-over glimpses into inner worlds (Don Johnson sniffing cocaine during dinner rings a bell) but, by and large, we find ourselves in a world that took a slightly different path. What we get to experience in Watchmen, and not our world (yet), is the chaos white people are willing to wreak upon society at large for committing the sin of justice.

Before you think I’m deliberately avoiding the superhero element, I will say that I am not a fan of the superhero genre in general. I know, I know. I suck. Needless to say, I haven’t read the graphic novels that the show is based on or the 2009 film of the same name. According to the internet, this is a fabulous interpretation of the original works, while the movie left something to be desired. Will I watch the film to find out? Maybe. Maybe (probably) not.

All I can say is, I like this version. I like Regina King, always, and I especially like her as the badass cop/vigilante in a goofy costume. To pause for a moment, and circle this point of costume, masks and anonymity - While, I certainly don’t understand Panda and his whole getup, I do like the premise of anonymity as a means of protection, in a larger sense. It encapsulates a larger theme of colorblindness and race. Yes, in our society, it is wholly naive and, frankly, rude to pretend to not see race. But, what if we really couldn’t? Then, and only then, would it be possible to have these huge social debates. Is race real?

Surely, the difference in skin color is real. But, take away the ability to see skin color and the ability of racists to target victims falls apart (because the whole of racism is quite literally only skin-deep). Faceless men and women have no discernible features under their masks. In Watchmen, the police learned this the hard way. Apparently, there’s some White Night where white supremacists attacked cops and innocent people (how unusual!!!!). As a result, the police wear a yellow mask that camouflages most of their face against attackers bent on identifying them. However, the rebels, organized under the 7th Cavalry moniker, also use masks to hide their own identities - borrowing a page from their “oppressors”. The whole thing is very 2019, and I keep fantasizing that Donald Trump will tweet some praise for the show, not realizing that he is, in fact, the sick underbelly, lost in their/his self-pitying, fighting for something he has no right to.

So, as you can understand, the superhero thing is at the bottom of the list when it comes to what makes this show so very interesting, which is saying something because HBO simply does not do superhero television programs (nor do I, really). HBO does cutting-edge, risky drama or sexy, incest fantasies, or comedies with strong, flawed leads we love to hate (or hate to love). HBO is taking a big swing and, while we’re only one episode deep, I’m in. This is cutting-edge, risky and sexy and everyone is flawed and white people are going to be mad, so I guess it’s covering a lot of bases for me.

I love the notion of an alternative America that atoned for the sins of racism. And I love this fictional narrative as much as racists hate the narrative that there is no longer any room for the white man in America. (They, however, do not know that their narrative is also fictional. Oop.)

And that leads me to my only concern with Watchmen. It is incendiary. In the way that everybody pointed to The Joker, this could starting something. The riots in the show pulsate with the same adjacency that exists now, in our country, at every moment, lurking behind every corner. One wrong move and this whole thing crumbles.

Will this show induce white rebellion against blacks? It wouldn’t be the first time.