It's the Magic: Top Ten Picks from New Phyrexia (not really including the ones last week).

New Hotness

I like charge counters. I probably shouldn’t, but I really do. This set seems to play with them quite a bit and I like that. It’s one of the reasons I like proliferate so much. Granted, I like working The Battlefield, and to a lesser extent, The Stack. Hands, graveyards, libraries, and command zones? Not so much.

Nice idea. Not evocative, but a cool new thing. Evroken.

Timewalking Archive Trap: Hitler & 80's

Hitler

While I was watching a movie with some of my friends today, we were watching a preview for Valkyrie and we started talking:
Movie: "If they catch you, they'll tear you to pieces."
"...or they'll shoot you."

"You saw it?"

"Yeah, he and I saw it together."

"How was it?"

*Shrug* "Predictable. Hitler lives."

"Yeah. Guess that sucks about historical movies; you usually know how they end."

"It'd be great if there was a deleted scene where Hitler does die."

"It's Hollywood; they could just make that the ending and make the alternate ending what really happened."

*In movie announcer voice* " 'Inspired by the true events of World War Two: Hitler Dies Before WWII.' "
"They'd make a sequel!"
"And sell Hitler action figures with little coffin accessories-"
"Oh, and when you close it and hit the button, the Hitler spins around so when you open it again, it's a dried up Hitler-corpse."

"Nah, I'd use the horror ending; credits roll and a Hitler's hand thrusts upwards from his grave."

"Hah! Better: they're taking him away in the body bag, and he busts out with a fist to knock a guy out."

"No, no: Hitler salute that slices through the bag and catches one of the...dead body hauling guys...right in the windpipe"

"...and then he goose-steps the other one in the crotch."

"Then, he tears through the body bag like Boris Karloff, then stumbles towards the edge of the clearing. There, closes with the camera and we see that he's totally a zombie. He stops and gives another Hitler salute towards something off screen...pan back and there's the real Hitler with a bunch of Hitler guys and soldiers who mysteriously disappeared for the last 30 minutes of the film."

"Then?"
"Sequel city."

The 80's

The 80's were so Eighties that someone once said, "Let's make a movie about Batman?"

And then someone else said, "Who should be Batman, the Dark Knight? The Crusader in a Cape? The living scourge of Gotham's Underworld?"

"Michael Keaton," said the other guy, "He was Beetle Juice."

"Radical! And for this this gritty exploration of a city wrapped in eternal night, this man driven to avenge the grisly deaths of his parents deaths and his homicidally maniacal archnemesis...music?"

"Prince!"

"Hell yeah! This will totally fucking beat Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade!"

Ten Months Later...
$400,000,000!
(And it totally beat Indiana Jones.)

So if anyone ever asks you how eighties the 80's were, the correct answer is, "I'm Batman."

Truth

I don't believe in secrets, but there are things left unsaid.

André was like the younger brother I never had. It was the summer of 2002. There were 40 of us, plebes, in 4th Company[1] whenever we had a new member arrive. The subtext was that we shouldn't mind where he came from; he was one of us now and nothing more was said of it. I knew from my enlisted experiences that new arrivals in training were either the result of a rollback due to a training deficiency, or a simple administrative shifting. 

I disregarded the former; The Academy's lack of a year-round class-up cycle like RTC or NNPTC meant that you couldn't knock someone back from, say Alpha Company in Week 1 to Echo Company in Week 5. Every Company was on the same schedule, so I simply assumed that one company had lost some administrative overhead for the summer and the powers that be simply dispersed a few plebes to lighten the load.

So we were resting on a grassy hill on Hospital Point after some pointless exercise or other (probably enjoying bag lunches, given the 'resting' portion of my recollection) when I noticed the new arrival sitting alone. The scene I remember involved myself approaching a withdrawn André and striking up an awkward conversation.

I was wrong. It turns out he was moved to our company for disciplinary reasons. He’d chosen to go to The Naval Academy because it was close to where his family lived in western Maryland. He was quite the civilian and had started his time at The Academy on the wrong foot. It was weeks later, after that discord had snowballed until he was severely disciplined and almost kicked out, that he was moved to our company to give him a clean slate. This naturally repulsed me. My only real failings up until that point were a single, destructive, unrequited love and an errant ability to judge people more as I got to know them better. Naturally, I was unempathetic, but polite.


Yet we became friends. My judgment of his past gave way to his friendliness and indifference to my condescension. Our meeting was a curiosity; over the subsequent months, I was the moody critic who barely tolerated company. He was the lighthearted, good hearted one who rarely held a grudge, and even then did so poorly.

I wouldn't say that we were inseparable. I vaguely remember a moment of doubt just before the start of the school year where I was contemplating whether or not I’d sign up to be his roommate. He’d long since bonded with the company as if he’d been there all along and I was feeling the first of nearly-lifelong urges to slough off old things to begin anew. Also, I was worried; wisdom and revelation had taught me that truth didn’t matter and rumors did not discriminate; if the privacies of my life were to be exposed, our association would only injure him.

Ultimately, I couldn’t be so abstractly cruel; denying his friendship without offering a reason. I wouldn’t be so, not even to save him. A failing. Though nothing went wrong; this isn’t a sad story. It’s a story of what was and why. No matter the outcome, good luck is no justification for recklessness.

Recriminations aside, for those two years we were the best of friends; the kind born from contradictions. Hispanic/Caucasian suburbia and plain old white trash. Wide-eyed optimist and eagerly world-weary cynic. Kind and proud. We spent time with his family, perhaps my first real taste of America’s middle class North. I found it lovely and promising, but alien. In 2004, when The Academy was snowed in, we ventured across Tecumseh Court, freezing in our warmest uniforms, braved the icy steps to the enclosed tunnels of the science, and claimed the scant remains of the Rickover Hall basement sandwich vending machine. There was a prom night in there that I think I ruined in the service to honest doubt and my own stellar…unbelonging to his world, but that’s a tale for another time. We laughed at our room's third man, John, during the ensuing hilarity of Isabel.  We built a Herndon Tree together and spent more than our stated limits on gifts.

For my part though, there was always a divide I would not, could not cross. He was family, but ultimately there were parts of my life that didn’t our friendship. I laughed uncomfortably at the perfectly untimely creation of USNA Out and rolled my eyes at the gods themselves when I was handed a victim book at the Holocaust Museum informing me of the significance of pink triangles[2]. There was never any particular reason to burden him or to compromise myself. Nature, upbringing, and training told me that truth was not the rational choice, but his openness and honesty made lying was no choice at all. Instead, there was a deliberate silence.

And two friends, between truth and lies.
---
[1] Actually, Bravo Company at the time, but let's keep this simple.
[2] In case you thought my luck with randomization was limited to dice and cards.

Playing Favorites excerpts, pt 19

Every Tuesday I post excerpts from best selling at not selling super blog, Playing Favorites.

The Midnighter(Warren Ellis/Mark Millar)
Jenny Sparks(Warren Eillis/Mark Millar)
The Batman
Booster Gold (Geoff Johns)
Damian Wayne (Grant Morrison)
Steve Rogers(Ultimates Vol 1 & 2)
Cloud 9 (Dan Slott)
Superman(All-Star Superman)
Rorschach
Deadpool (Cable & Deadpool)

I guess that's it. It's strange that it’s these guys. There are a lot of other characters out there that are great and have some really good books, but fundamentally, these are the characters I like reading about. They're a motley crew--well, less motley than my original list. One homosexual, two females, two non-Americans (if Damian counts, even though I'm sure he would be an American citizen if Bruce Wayne is on his birth certificate), an alien, a time-traveler, six different tax brackets and two effective amnesiacs, but it is a whole loaf of white bread. Guess I can blame the comics industry for that. Sounds convenient.

That said, with the exception of All-Star Superman and Rorschach, most of these characters have a compatible feel to them that would let them interact in some way. I mean, you'd have the killing versus no killing sides, which would be Batman versus...well everyone but Booster Gold, I guess.

Though I would read the hell out of a Batman/Booster Gold team-up versus a Jenny Sparks lead Authority consisting of Midnighter, Deadpool, Cloud 9, Ultimate Cap, and Damian Wayne.

Going Public

I'm asking about a name (poll on the right) because in three weeks, ads for this site will be put into circulation on a few small webcomics via Project Wonderful. For maybe the first time since Derek was kind enough to put me on Reddit, people I've never met will probably be reading.

Words of Power

A new name is what draws people in and gives them an impression what to expect, however wrong or right. "Sluggy Freelance" doesn't say anything, but somehow it does something. I've got a few new names for the blog on the tablet:

VanVelding: It's the URL and what I generally go by on the internet. It's everything in one mysterious package. Turns up my stuff on search results. Is that a benefit? Mostly.

Honestly, the most shameful thing here is the lesson about storing screen caps as .jpgs.

Number Four Tested Well: It refers to both the overwrought process of finding a name (four is quite popular) as well as being a fairly odd sentence outside of context. It has a sound of clinical detachment to it. However, I may just like it because of all of The Prisoner I've been watching. Pretty unique in terms of search results.

Automated Compromise: I like it, but apparently it's already a computer term. It's a snappy title I've wanted to use for something for a while, so I might be overlooking the fact that it's a two-words-that-don't-go-together title that's so common these days.

Powered by Indifference, Focused by Caffeine: A long, evocative title that's got a simple reversal that subtly funny while still being memorable. Long is good because I'm tired of short names for things and I'd rather have a definitive concept behind the name that makes it stick. It also conveys the low-powered, unfocused expectations I'd like to set up here.

No, too obvious.

Not quite...

There we go.

Anyway, I'm letting you guys (or anyone else really) vote, but since my last comment was from Derek a week ago, I'm not counting on "innate drive to participate" to get results. For the first hundred votes, I'm going to give $5 per vote to The Red Cross to help out in Japan, and about $1 per vote after that. Granted, if I even get fifty votes, I'll know either someone's been practing their amateur hacking or telling friends. I'd rather you just told friends.

Preparation

So by making myself public, I have to really reign in my internet presence. I've googled both my real name and VanVelding a couple times and with the exception of some My[Confined]Space shenanigans, and a Yahoo Answers thing, it's gone pretty well. Most of my hits are for people using my Bob Kelso and Deadpool Peanut images, which I don't begrudge, so I'm cool.

On the other hand, people like shitty images more than you expected.

That said, I've referred to myself as Kris entirely too many times on this site for me to go back and redact it and, really, referring to myself as VanVelding is incredibly pretentious. The persona associated with this site (and I guess everything I do on the internet ever from this point forward) has to be Kris VanVelding. If I can, I'll even try to score both of those domains.

Me Week

So the are many things you guys know about me that an outsider obviously wouldn't. It's not that presume anyone is intensely interested in the background of a guy who's on blogger for its own sake, but context is worth some explanation. That probably calls for a few more Green Box issues, but in a simpler way, it means that the week after next will be Me Week, where each day will have a blog that's Kris-centric in a new way instead of the regularly Kris-centric blogs, where I pretend to talk about something else.

[Picture of me here. Don't forget this. This will be a professional blog in a few weeks and you don't want to look like an ass in front of three additional people Kris.]

Somehow, showing your picture on the internet is verboten. Well see-boten, or something.

However, my perspective on me comes from me. If there's any particular fact that a regular person on the internet might need to enjoy this blog, I'd be open to hearing about it. I know Jordan did an amazing piece in a game he ran where he had a PC that was everything I hate. It wasn't much more than my own rants made into a person and directed back at me in a game of Vampire, but it was still pretty epic[1] and shows insight into a more distilled view of my preferences than I can usually conjure up.

Why

But why publicity? There's no profit in it. Ego is the first thing I expected of myself as well, but I think it's more than that. Exposing oneself to the beating heart of the internet is fraught with naught but danger. Well, nine parts danger and one part success.

Probably more than nine parts danger for every one of these.

Here's the deal; my friends are supportive folks that give me respect (except my roommate, but he gets a pass because I have to live with him). No, it's that ego mass of criticism that I want to tap. Don't get me wrong; I want people to like what I write--

--well, no. I want write something that people like. Not everyone; I could write porn if I wanted everyone to like what I'm writing (again, depending on the porn).

No, it's not approval I want. I guess I'd like a crucible that can burn away the irrelevancies of what I'm doing and leave truth; truth in its purest form.

Even if that truth is that I quote Star Trek.
---
[1] Yes, "Epic," used unironically after 2009. On Thursday, I'm calling something "Legendary" and not even smirking a little bit.

Good News, Everyone

No snark today. Just good news.

Sunday Morning Soapbox: All That Other Stuff

 
Free speech. If nothing else, preserve it for the LOLs.

My country is great. You know I love it. I love its ideals. I love its freedoms. I love that whenever the world has to drop bombs on some assholes, there’s this moment of “who’s got shit over there to drop bombs,” and while we might sigh and act like it’s really inconvenient for us we know that question’s rhetorical because invariably, “The United States” is the answer. It won’t last forever, but that’s how it is now and I love it.

However,

freedom is sometimes treated by my fellow citizens (including politicians) to act like it’s a golden ticket to believe whatever damned fool thing they want. What’s more, they act like it’s a license to make others behave the way they “should.” Freedom isn’t the liberty to deny or repress, to be irresponsible or complacent. Freedom is an obligation.

It is an obligation to truth, not what you want to believe, but real, factual, critical truth. It’s an obligation to education and making decisions. Freedom is not best served by enjoying the experiences of life in all their real, sensual present glory, or to turn away and hide from the darkest experiences of humanity, but to prepare the mind to understand the world around us, not as we want it to be, but as it is. The ability of those living in a world of comfort and ease who do not understand in the slightest how it came to be or is sustained are doomed to let it fall through their grasp and know only to cry to the heavens like ignorant savages whenever it inevitably does. The conveniences and luxuries in the modern world, indeed are a swirl of leaves in an eddy, a strange island of order between strong gusts of wind.

Freedom is an obligation of character, which is the heart of my statement here. How you feel about a person, how you judge that person, and how you treat that person are all very different things. I try to treat everyone I interact with on a daily basis with the same level of professional service. There may be a few Filipinos who combine a general inability to express themselves with a poor command of English, but I try my best to give their issues the same level of attention as any American, despite the fact that those interactions are often quite frustrating. Sometimes I don’t. It’s not that I’m a bad person, or a racist, or ethnocentric[1], but sometimes I do things that aren’t great. You can get angry at me for that, even if you know that’s not how I act all the time. I get pissed at things my friends do all the time; I’m not pissed at them really, more at what they’re doing.

 

It's sad I wish I should photoshop this well.

Making people angry on accident isn’t a mark against your character, nor should it be. People are entitled to feel an emotion without feeling that emotion on principle. We’re all just slightly-balding apes here and emotional responses are hardwired into us. Mistaking those knee-jerk feelings for more contemplative ones, or trying to fortify them with reason only makes an irrational response linger and is a mark against your character. Being angry at someone is fine and having someone angry at you is also fine. Those things aren’t judgments; they’re just biology.

Which isn’t to say that judgment isn’t biology or that feelings are divorced from judgment. No, you can, and probably should, hate people who are genuinely bad people. That said, you don’t really have to. I’ve had fine conversations with someone, knowing they’re a reprehensible example of humanity. On the other hand, there are some fine people (like my grandfather) that I almost never talk to.

Back when I was a Nuke, there was an engine room upper level operator that I just could not stand being around. He knew his shit, was generally friendly, and was a good guy. I hated every single watch I had with him and I treated him like the senior enlisted that he was. Life is strange, but there’s a big difference between how we feel about people, how we act towards them, and the kind of person we know that they are. Having character and being able to make these distinctions is an integral part of freedom. You may not like someone or agree with them, but you have to put aside the emotional factors and personal factors to realize that everyone is afforded the same freedoms as everyone else. This bleeds into my next point.

Freedom is an obligation to justice. On the surface, it’s simply a call to treat those as you wish to be treated, which shouldn’t have to be written down but is intuitive. Justice is more than punishment for wrongdoers; it’s ensuring that labors and contributions are rewarded just as much as it fails to reinforce parasitism and inaction. The blatant inability of governments to provide equal opportunities to those they serve is the exact cause of the unrest in the Middle East right now and not, as you might have guessed, overextending their armies for a double-attack into Southern Europe.

I think this is how the DHS runs all of their threat scenarios.

Freedom cannot be a noun. It cannot be something you hold or sit on or keep on a shelf or take out on holidays. Freedom is a verb. It is acted, and perhaps that’s its paradox; it is actions that define freedom, specifically breadth of actions and the broader those actions, the greater freedom is. In fact, freedom cannot obligate a person to anything (by definition). What obligates one is the perpetuation of freedom. If you are free, then you may do as you please. If you wish your children to be free, equal, and rewarded for their labors, then, then you have to curtail your own freedoms.

Then you have to reach out aggressively ensure that justice is carried out, that equality is delivered, that truth--and not some branded version of it in warped service to an ideology--is sought and served, not enforced with harsh words, or batons, or bombs, but with knowledge. You can make every savage on the planet act like a civilized man, but you can never make him understand civilization.You can kill every selfish deviant on the planet, but a new crop will grow up and learn to survive.

The perpetuation of freedom is based on education, and truth, and justice, exclusion, self-righteousness, or force.

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[1] Remarkably, I will be surprised if I don’t get labeled as anti-American and ethnocentric for this whole post, but hey, worst case scenario, I’m just a wrong guy on the internet.