#sometimes it seems like people are 'against' the flags for the principle of inclusion when... that's the least bit of what's 'wrong'

[shalom-iamcominghome]

hi, I've never heard of the progress pride flag, could you show what it is/tell a bit about it? thank🤍

Quick note that I'll be speaking a bit about the queer scene in the U.S., so this may not be applicable internationally

The progress pride flag, before I delve into this a bit further, is this:

This was created around 2018 as a reinterpretion/reimagining of the Philadelphia pride flag:

Essentially, these flags were both created with inclusion in mind. The black and brown stripes were made specifically to call to mind inclusion of queer PoC (though there are interpretations of the black stripe also representing the people we lost in the AIDs crisis). In the U.S., there has been a long-standing history of racism within the queer community - many PoC within the community don't feel safe or welcome within the broader queer community.

As time went on, there was also inspiration to explicitly call attention to the inclusion of trans people, as well, largely for the same reasons. With that in mind, Daniel Quasar created the progress pride flag. What's cool about it is the chevron/triangle represents progress moving forward.

And in 2021, the most recent progress iteration was made:

The first thing many people notice is how cluttered this flag looks. I'm not someone who uses this flag often, however, I think inclusion is often messy and often is explicit like this. You can have any opinions about these flags as you can - but I'd encourage everyone to remember the flags stemmed from real struggles that marginalized people within the community faced from the people who were supposed to be our own.

Using these pride flags does not inherently mean someone is actively being inclusive to every type of queer person. Using flags alone is not activism. However, I think these can be good calling cards to be aware of as a way to potentially signal, "hey, we're normal about queers who aren't made visible within the community!"

[emmybluefire]

Accounting for Powerful Characters in RP Events

Story Time

So, towards the last couple hours of my shift at work, a rather concerning thought occurred to me: 

“I roleplay a dragon for a reason. But every time I enter the city, or attend an RP event, I’m not allowed to use it. Period. At this point... I might as well be playing a generic mage. That kinda sucks...”

And to be honest? I got a bit angry about it. To the degree that I even started verbally ranting about it to myself in the form of mutters. I just sat there asking myself: Why? Why is it that whenever I enter a RP event, I can’t play my character to the fullest extent? I’ve worked so hard to balance out them out. To make them fun, make them memorable... and yet, people still have yet to get the full experience. 

Dilemma

Every time I try to cast something like “Spellsteal” or “Counterspell” or even use the most basic of dragon abilities: “Dragon’s breath” I’m told “No. No, you can’t because it’d solve the problems in the event too quick! And it would be very unfair to others!” It’s almost like people just- don’t account for powerful characters. Ever. No, that would make things “Too Complicated” or “Too Easy.”

But that’s when this thought occurred to me: “Powerful characters being ‘too special’ and ‘A sign of bad RP’ and ‘A red flag that indicates an asshole player’: These thoughts have been so ingrained in our collective server conscious for so long that even guilds who say they’re alright with powerful characters still don’t account for them in their events.”

This often leads to someone having to constantly annoy the DM asking: “Hey. Is this okay? Can I do this or would it be too much?” and detract from the RP at large. And let me tell you, that’s not fun at all. You feel bad for annoying the DM, and the DM winds up constantly distracted from actually running the event. That needs to change.

Disclaimer

Now, before I get too far into this: I would like to say I understand the opposing argument. One character being more powerful than the others would, In fact, make things unfair to other players. It could, in fact, make things too easy. A character that can solve a complex problem with one spell does tend to remove the challenge the DM worked so hard to develop all too quickly. Games like D&D, 5e especially, face this challenge all to often once the characters get to certain high levels. It’s a problem so many people are unsure how to tackle. At least, in a conventional setting...

On one hand: You need to let your characters play true to how they would. On the other: It really sucks when your hard work is surpassed so easily. Many DMs are unsure what to do, and so leave things as is, and silently vent to their closest friends in the background afterward.

My post today isn’t here to argue against this argument. My post today is here to offer potential solutions to these dilemmas all DM’s and event runners face every day. So, without further Ado: “How to Account for Powerful Characters.”

“Flex Raiding”

This one is my first and foremost solution. The one that I, as a DM or Event runner, would personally turn to as my first solution. In MMOrpgs like “World of Warcraft” , the RP environment is so diverse, vast, and random that it’s rather hard to cater to everyone’s preferences. You have people who like playing silly mundane characters like Old Men, Young Warriors, Book Binders, or even just your average run of the mill Civilian Drunk. But in the same environment you also have people who like to play more grandiose characters like Grand Archmages, Grizzled War Veterans, Elemental Lords, Dragons, and things like that. Sometimes more than one pour into the same pot, so to speak. So when you run a guild or dungeon group that contain characters from all ends of the spectrum, it’s hard to find one particular “Rolling System” that would accommodate for all of those and have it still be fair. 

My solution? Don’t. Instead, here’s what you can do:

In some MMOrpgs, there’s a mechanic called “Flex Raiding” , it’s when the raid or dungeon scales to the number of players doing it at once, and the levels of each player’s character. One can, in some ways, apply this same principle to roleplay events.

Write a version of the event that would come to being if your entire group consists of “Powerful Characters” , A version of the event for when your group consists of just “Mundane Characters”, and a version for when you have a mix of both. It doesn’t have to (And shouldn’t) just be: Army faces hoard, and bellows into them head on.

This can manifest in ways such as: Your antagonists anticipated facing powerful characters, and prepared accordingly. Perhaps they tamed large, hulking creatures from the deep, and placed them among their ranks to aid the hundreds of soldiers. The powerful characters must focus on them to succeed, while the mundane characters keep the armies busy. Or perhaps they managed to cast a large defensive spell that makes it hard for even the most powerful characters to enter, and the mundane must find creative, mechanical ways, like siege engines, to get past it.

Your antagonists trapped the protagonists, and now the soldiers must defend the casters for as long as they can while they pool their powers together. Encounter ends once the casters succeed in casting a very large, devastating spell that annihilates all enemies around them, or the soldiers fail to defend the casters, and must retreat.

Or perhaps it is just a generic battlefield scenario, and all you have are the mundane characters to appose them. The limit for this is truthfully the sky. Your imagination. BE CREATIVE WITH YOUR ENCOUNTERS!

You prepare accordingly, and you’ll be able to run an event where everyone is able to play their part, and their character to the fullest extent. The downsides to this obviously are the level of preparation you have to do in order to make a viable “Flex Raid” ... and obviously the complexity. But if you get used to doing this, it’ll become much easier than it sounds.

Share the Spotlight

All (Well Written) Characters have strengths and weaknesses. Even the most powerful ones. All characters are an aspect of the player’s creativity. Everyone knows that. You could have a really powerful archmage, but they have a crippling phobia of rats. That very same powerful archmage could also be a ritualist caster, meaning that their really powerful spells take time to cast, taking them out of some attack rounds. Without that time, they’re just a generic mage. Little things like that. Of course I’m describing my own character here, but in that situation, your other party members could very much help you out. 

You enter a dungeon that’s infested with rats, and now the archmage is too shaken up to cast. In that situation, the spotlight would turn to the druid who’s able to talk to said rats and remove them from the scene, while one of the more soft-spoken characters work to snap the archmage out of it.

The warrior suddenly finds himself in the middle of an enemy tavern after failing at a stealth roll. At this point, the spotlight would shift to the bard and rogue who’d step in and form a charming distraction or convincing lie to make the patrons look the other way.

The party is asked to come up with battle plans for the impending war ahead but none have any idea how. All, save, for the warrior. He’s fought in wars before. Hell, he was once a general! He knows how to do this. The spotlight shifts to him as he lays his hands over the map and is very quickly able to find a choke point to slaughter the enemy from.

The party is surrounded by a hoard of encroaching goblins, and all seems lost. But at the last second, their draconic ally catches up to the rest of the group and bellows a large cyclone of flame onto the unsuspecting hoard. The spotlight then shifts to the dragon as the party now has an opening to escape their predicament.

Little things like that would help to make roleplay events far more dynamic, all inclusive, and fun for everyone involved. Powerful, OR mundane. Sharing the spotlight with everyone, gives everyone a chance to shine in one way or another. The downside to this one: Depending on the nature the groups you play with, this may require quite a bit of improvisation. But if you’re good at that? Well, what the hell is stopping you? XD

Creative Bosses

Ah yes. The Classic boss. The biggest, toughest, most badass motherfucker in the entire antagonist group. Perhaps even the one leading them all too. I mean, it is in their title right? “The Boss” Well, here’s the thing. MMOrpgs and turn based RPGs often execute them in a way that: “We need a bigger challenge? How do we do that... hmmm.. MORE HEALTH OF COURSE!” ... This, my friends, is a mistake. Especially when there’s much more powerful characters in the group you’re running with. Said characters would, “realistically” just melt through that ungodly amount of health.

All adding more health to a boss does is create conflict among a group, and prolong an event for far longer than it should be. Come on guys. We all have lives, we cant spend ten hours a week of it playing through an event that gets almost nowhere. Instead, what I’d suggest is to consider the following questions: 

-“What makes this ‘boss’, the boss?”  

-“What is happening to them that’s making them so impossibly powerful? Can it be stopped? How do you get around it?” 

-“Does ‘power’ always have to mean magical ability?” 

-“Do they utilize all the resources at their disposal? What’s stopping them form doing so if not?”

Considering these, and applying the answers to your “boss” makes them much more interesting and dynamic. It gives the players something to strive for, something to work together on as a group to figure out and take advantage of.

Your boss could just be a normal human war general, but who’s power come’s from his political influence and the men he has at his disposal. This makes the players strive to expose his corruption and unseat him from his political standing. The men at his disposal could also make it difficult to get to him as well. Get past those obstacles, and suddenly he just becomes a normal human that can be overpowered and arrested just like any other.

Your boss could also be a young, power-hungry elven sorcerer who’s only been studying for about a decade. But in that decade he somehow came across forbidden lore and is now attempting to conduct a ritual that makes him physically invincible. The players could find out about this and find him in the middle of this ritual. To stop the ritual and take away his invincibility, you can’t just cast a “Spellsteal”. The overwhelming power of such magic would tear anyone apart without proper anchoring. So to stop him, you have to destroy his ritual components and the magical crystals he’s siphoning from while he tries to stop you. The boss fight, at that point, would just be avoiding his attacks and his minions until you shatter all the crystals, and the ritual itself is the thing that destroy’s him. Not you.

Conclusion

Accounting for powerful characters, when done right, can be just as hard as it is fun and dynamic. All it requires is, if you’re willing to have a powerful character in the group, is to mold the event accordingly, and work to understand the strengths and weakness of each member. If they don’t show up then have a backup writ on hand for the non-powerful characters. It just takes a bit of care and consideration. I suppose the TL;DR to take away from all of this is: Be creative, consider the circumstances, and create rolls each character in your party has a chance to fulfill. That way nobody feels left out, or held back.

Thank you all so much for reading. As you can tell, I did a lot of thinking into this. I’m open to discussion, and questions should anybody have some. But overall, I feel I’ve said all I need. After all, the goal of this post wasn’t to tell you--step by step--how to account for a powerful character. Just ideas and suggestions to guide you on your way to greatness! ... Being over-dramatic of course XD. But yes. All of you, have a good day or night wherever you may be!

[theampreviews]

Dragged Across Concrete

When I sometimes attended my Film Studies classes at University one thing stuck with me from the Script Writing class; an economy of writing was critical to the success of your screenplay. It was a mantra echoing the sentiments of William Goldman’s “Arrive Late, Leave Early” approach to scene writing (as detailed in his books Adventures In The Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell?). To his mind this prevents an audience getting “antsy”. It’s a notion S. Craig Zahler wholeheartedly disregards.

If Zahler’s first two films, Bone Tomahawk and Brawl In Cell Block 99, could be described as leisurely in pace (both clock in at 142min), then Dragged Across Concrete, with its hefty 159min, is positively lethargic (which, for context, is still only 10mins longer than the last Avengers movie and 5mins shorter than Blade Runner 2049), and will likely push most multiplex audiences to their limits. Holding it to The Goldman Standard; this could be the least economical screenplay ever filmed, but it’s all the better for it.

Going into this film you need to understand that you’ll have to bed down and submit to his tempo, which is at times almost static. Zahler builds scenes of great magnitude that draw his viewers in, enveloping them like a sphygmomanometer (I had to Google that), applying ever more pressure until it’s almost unbearable. Virtually scoreless throughout, there’s precious little to distract from Zahler’s writing, but thankfully he’s still one of the most refreshing wordsmith’s out there. He might not pack his dialogue with pop-culture references as Tarantino can do (someone he’s rather erroneously compared to), but his way with words is just as pleasing to the ear. It’s hard-nosed, pulpy writing that exists purely in a world of his creation - his actors chewing on his dialogue like a T-Bone. He can also show a man eat an entire sandwich in silence and have it pay off.  

The most satisfying part of Zahler’s writing is that everything matters. There’s nothing throw-away about anything he shoots. The space he affords actors within the scenes allows them, and us, to take it all in without relying on cinematic shorthand to move things forward. No matter how long a scene is, it feels right, even (or especially) if that feeling is one of discomfort. The narrative drive of the film is relatively linear, we know exactly where we’re headed from early on, it’s in how Zahler stretches everything to breaking point in getting there that generates an anxiety that makes you shift in your seat; not the run-time. He can cut to the chase, but don’t be surprised if that chase is a leisurely tail across a freeway - the antithesis of Friedkin’s To Live & Die In L.A. but just as enthralling.

The other key attraction to a Zahler movie is his now notorious use of extreme violence. Whilst it would be disingenuous to say he has toned that down here (this is still far beyond much that you’ll see in your average movie these days), it is used more sparingly and dwelt upon less so than in his previous two. If Bone Tomahawk was sparse but unflinching in its depictions of depravity, and Brawl In Cell Block 99 relished the gonzo splatter effects of old, this time Zahler uses short, sharp jolts of violence to provoke the mind rather than overwhelm it. Often shots of explicit detail are cut away from so quickly that you’re still processing what you saw well into the next scene. It can have a disorientating effect, but one that makes you consider what you saw rather than simply have it thrown in your face.

Zahler also expands his eye for Old White Males, something I know many roll their eyes at, with his casting of Mel Gibson. Adding to the ranks of Kurt Russell and two time cast members Vince Vaughn, Don Johnson, Fred Melamed and Udo Kier, Gibson fits into Zahler’s aggressive, grim fatalism with ease. Some might consider this a role Gibson’s publicist might have urged him to avoid.

Since his original “cancellation”, Gibson has sought refuge in B-Picture pulp (Get The Gringo, Machete Kills, The Expendables 3) and couple of Father roles casting him as avenger/protector to wayward daughters (Edge Of Darkness, Blood Father) which all points to him acknowledging his new found villain status whilst also embracing a need for redemption (even the seeming outlier of Studio Festive Comedy Daddy’s Home 2 dines out on his asshole persona). Here though, the role of Brett Ridgeman felt too close to the bone for some; a bitter, mean son-of-a-bitch with a heavy-handed disdain for minorities. Be that as it may, Gibson is perfection and should be recognised for what is close to a career best - certainly it tops the list of performances in this second half of his career. Equal part hang-dog weariness and brittle rage barely concealed below a haggard surface, I can’t think of many others that could embody the character this wholly.  

Gibson and Vaughn’s Anthony Lurasetti are police officers who find themselves suspended without pay for Ridgeman’s abusive arrest of a Hispanic drug dealer; an act captured on a cell phone and spread throughout local media. The idea that Zahler frames their subsequent descent into “crime to make ends meet” as right-wing apologist rhetoric for the "forgotten majority" has made many uncomfortable, and I don’t doubt for a second that this is by Zahler’s design. Do I think he holds those beliefs? I wouldn’t know, but this film is not one for the Red Hat brigade if that’s what concerns people, but it does wave those common red flags without flinching (look to the “Black Panic” scene in which Gibson’s daughter is tormented by black youths on her way home, Gibson’s character bemoaning his lowly wage forcing them to live in such a “shit hole” with a young daughter and disabled wife).

As counter-point, the third main protagonist Henry Johns, played by a revelatory Tory Kittles, offers another staple of the genre; the recently paroled felon in desperate need of cash (imagine Denis Haysbert’s role in Heat given more screen time) providing a cultural juxtaposition to the craggy old cop routine (he and his partner Biscuits even “whiting-up” at one point). Whilst he rises a notch or two above the others in the morality stakes, he’s no Magical Negro; his purpose is not to elevate or educate his white co-stars, he has as much stakes in the game as either (sharing a financial need for care-giving with Ridgeman), and just as much blood on his hands (and sometimes more...). 

The Heat nod was clearly intentional, as Zahler cited that as a reference point in his Q&A, along with Dog Day Afternoon and Point Blank. Lofty comparisons they may be, but as a homage to those films, Dragged Across Concrete holds its own, albeit through the filter of a filmmaker that clearly loves exploitation cinema as much as any. Swimming in those waters, Zahler toes a fine line as to what audiences will find acceptable in both content and execution, and I think he’s pushed back against that line a little further here than he has before. It’s a provocative film without being insolently button-pushing and I’m sure it’s one that will divide audiences for some time (all but guaranteed to be a future Cult Favourite though).

There’s a scene that precedes the pivotal bank robbery that proved contentious to some during the screening I was at. We’re introduced to a character (one of the principle cast members) who we assume will form a large part in the film going forward, only for her screen time to be short lived and inconsequential to the plot. It makes for a quite harrowing and frustrating vignette, prompting one audience member to ask Zahler to account for its inclusion, a question met with spattered murmurs of approval around the auditorium. Zahler, clearly relishing the fact that this scene had struck a nerve, went on to explain (accurately) how everything from that point is framed in an entirely different way. It may have elicited anger from some of those watching, but he’s right in how that scene causes a shift in how you view the film and the protagonists going forward. He also acknowledged that, had he made this film under the watchful eye of a Studio and without his Final Cut deal, that scene would be the first thing any Producer would make him cut.

In a world dominated by audience pandering franchises, I think Zahler’s singular voice is one that needs to be preserved in tact, no matter how acquired a taste it may be.