No country for old men

ah stranger danger

Ok, when I was reviewing Claymore, my problem was my total lack of emotion that I felt from the series as a whole; it was good, just not profound. So I figured, for the summer I’d better review something that got a real emotional response out of me, and that tends to happen if a movie is really popular but isn’t really good (it being good requires me to like it, clichéd egomaniacs joke there). So, as the title indicates, I’m going to be attacking one of the most popular films of the last few years, “No Country for Old Men”. No Country for Old Men, a 2007 film made by the Cohen brothers, it guys who made Fargo.

The movie takes place in Texas where a hunter/cowboy person named Llewelyn Moss who comes across a botched drug deal, and finds two millions dollars. However, the mafia finds out who he is and send a man named Chigurh to kill him, (yes it’s a play off sugar), who is the poster boy for disturbing serial killers, but nobody seems to be able to catch on. Chigurh tracks Moss while mowing down all of the Mexican gangsters who get in his way with a shot gun that has a silencer on it (did I mention this movie takes place in 1980), eventually fighting moss with shot guns in the middle of a city, where nobody seems to notice. And then another operative shows up to make a deal with moss, and then Chigurh some how he knows where he lives and kills him and…ok no this stuff is absurd. The plot is just nonsensical violence, broken up by long scenes of people staring at things. But the plot is nothing more than a series of fights and Chigurh implausibly avoiding getting caught.

Now the film is cinematically impressive, and I think that is the main reason why this was so well accepted. If you look at it from a fully cinematic viewpoint, this thing will blow your mind, and most of the praise for this film comes, justifiably, from the extremely high quality of the film. The landscape shots are mind-blowing, and the editing ins profound, the props look and feel realistic in the characters hands, and the audio effects are superb, giving the effect that you are actually at these locations feeling what the characters feel. In fact, it reminded me of “The Shining”, in the sense that the tension and the emotions comes from the feeling that you are present at the location. And it has that same great quality of the tension being in the atmosphere of the scene, rather than any particular event, like the first coin toss scene in the film, all of the emotion is in what will happen next, and the expectations and eventually defying the viewers expectations. They both also have a talent for generating a lot of fear and suspense in fairly normal situations, without a climax (shut up Freud), and still be horrifying. Like the scene in “The Shining” where the boy I standing by the forbidden hotel room and is considering opening it but doesn’t? Even when the boy eventually chooses the anti climatic solution and doesn’t open the door, the tension is still there, and the scene is still far more suspenseful than any actual monster hunt, and that is because it taps into some very inner primal fears. Very few American movie goings have actually been chased by a monster or been chased by a psychotic hit man, but many of us know the primal fear of what is on the other side of a creepy door into the scary room, or been alone in a passage way when you suddenly feel a sense of fear, or have run into a really creepy guy at work. When the movie choices showing suspense in simplicity, it is brilliant. However, the effect is ruined by the sheer absurdity of the evens that occur. Does nobody in this city know how to use a phone, when you see a shotgun fight in a hotel room, police do something about it. It wastes its best quality in its absurdity, and just becomes a well-made action movie. One thing the movie does deserve massive credit for is that it has a total lack of background music. None, the entire movie goes without any background music at all, which gives it massive kudo points in the grand scheme of things. Now, I’m not against background music as an idea, and I think it can be used to great affect (The Shining again). But I like movies experimenting with new things, and in terms of drama, I think the lack of background music worked almost entirely in this movie. And lets be honest, technically speaking, this is nothing short of a masterpiece. However, that doesn’t excuse the actual biggest fault of the movie, and that’s well…the story.

The film, based upon a book of the same name, is a film trying to be a deconstruction of the typical western, as well as the clichéd Hollywood format, by showing that life isn’t fair and evil triumphs over good. Now, I think that is a good message, it is easy to get disgusted with he sappy, corny, and sickenly clichéd happy endings that always seem to come out in Hollywood movies. Now I don’t object to happy endings, but I do get sick with the extremely implausible happy endings, where everything works out in an utterly implausible manner (Disney is particularly guilty of this). One of my top dislikes of films that are painfully optimistic or painfully idealistic (I don’t mind idealism, but it has to be contrasted with reality for me to take it seriously, Pan’s Labyrinth did this very well) without a sense of realism. Sappy, overly sweet endings in particular are a personal pet hatred of mine (again, Slumdog pulled this off well by making the characters earn their happy ending), cause its sappy, cliché, and horribly false. However, and I’m sure you can see what I’m building up to, some films go too far in the other direction, in trying to show how dark, unfair, and unjust the world is, they make everything so absurdly horrible and life so dismal that it just comes off as absurd, cause people realize that it isn’t accurate. Anything by Frank Miller (Sin City, I’m looking at you), suffers from this, as well as racism and crappy writing, because the violence, sex, drugs and cursing is so gratuitous and over the top, that it is just as unrealistic as a description of the Native Americans and English settles living happy idealistic lives. The trap that film makers fall into, and No Country for Old Men is a painful example of this, is that it is so absurdly dark and cynical, that its message of “this is the harsh reality” comes off as just silly rather than moving, most likely because the directors are desperate to show off the unfair nature of the world they just go straight into the realm of impossibility. Cynical works can be effective, if they feel like they could actually happen, “Song of Ice and Fire” is a good example of this cause dark as the world may be, its feels like a retelling of Historical England, which was pretty dark. But the most cynical, dark and idealistically shattering thing I’ve ever seen was in a work that contained no blood, no cursing, no fighting and no sex. The English TV show, “Yes Minister” and its sequel Series “Yes Prime Minister” depict a far darker reality than the over the top violence of “No Country for Old Men”. Both shows are basically dramas about how politics actually work in England, with the weak willed but idealistic minister Hacker butting heads with the cynical and corrupt secretary Sir Humphrey. Within the show, many good ideas and competent solutions to the nations various problems are proposed, but are shot down, delayed, or tainted by the inefficient, back biting, and corrupt British Government (this corrupt isn’t limited to Britain, France and the US are shown quite negatively as well). The show very accurately shows why blind idealism doesn’t work so well in the real world, and it does this so effectively cause it feels real. The reason why it is so chilling is because you know, that to an extent, the politics of the show are real, and the way politics works is real. The cynicism, the corruption, the incompetence and the nepotism all take place in our own government; the show just displays how it works. “No Country for Old Men” makes the claim it isn’t a typical Hollywood movie, but in a sense it is, the plot armor is instead protecting the villain instead of the hero. Chigurh by rights should have been killed or caught long before the ending. I mean, in the opening he kills a cop with a pair of hand-cuffs, and a random man on the street, and considering his name and appearance, not to mention the body trail he leaves behind, he shouldn’t be that hard to track. I mean, now inept to the police have to be to not notice two shot gun fights in the middle of a city and a motel? And then he comes backs to the motel, and murders another man; does anybody go outside their houses in this town? Not to mention his seeming omnipotence, always knowing where his enemy is, such as the second assassin who appears with a lot of build up, and is then quickly killed off (just like how Halloran is killed off in the Shinning after a massive build up, which I thought was great), but Chigurh somehow both knows he is in town, and where he is staying. Not to mention how a guy with a shotgun fighting men with machineguns never seems to get hit by any bullets.

Now people mention that he is like some kind of unstoppable force or deity, but the thing is, it feels cheap. The man is a hired hit man by a gang sent to retrieve money, that man being the symbolic incarnation of fate just seems petty. And in the film he gets called out for being a human being near the end. So the whole angle of painting him as some sort of angle of Death just doesn’t feel right, he is clearly a human and clearly a sociopath, not some person who ought to maintain judgment over life and death. And its not even random chance, cause despite his flipping a coin, he is the one who chooses who has to get that choice. And the whole concept of him being some sort of force of nature falls flat when he is killing Mexican gangsters for cash. The whole concepts has been done before and done better. Take the classic Swedish film “Seventh Seal”, which his about the man who plays chess with death. He is also running away from an unstoppably dark antagonist who is the metaphorical representation of death and inevitability. However, it has a context, the knight has played chess with death and is targeted for death, and it takes place during the time of the Black Death. And there is this whole theme about fate vs. faith vs. despair, so it’s all part of the story. In “No Country for Old Men”, the whole “unbeatably avatar of death” angle feels out of place, cause it has no real part of the story. The protagonist is marked for death but apart from materialistic money dealings…um, why? Why is fate against this guy, he hasn’t really done anything that seems to justify the fates aligning against him, and it doesn’t seem to mesh well with the whole story, cause it doesn’t relate.

In short, while the movie is impressive, it ruins all of its best moments just by not being well written. The best parts of the movie are I admit, but, there are only a few scenes where both the technological genius combines with actual good writing. The best example of course, are at the end, and are both massive spoilers, even more so than everything else I’ve said, so if you ever plan of watching the movie and care about these sort of things, then stop reading now, leave the blog alone, then come back when you finished. For you people, my final words are going to be “It isn’t at all worth the hype, and suffers from some truly painful writing, but is certainly worth watching simply for the quality of the film itself alone. I wouldn’t put it on any “best movies list”, but it does deserve some of its praise for the technical achievements, and all of the actors, but in the end, just watch Fargo”

For those of you who’ve seen it, or don’t care about spoilers, here are the two scenes that I think actually deserve praise. The most shocking of course is that the main character dies…off screen. The last scene we see him in is seeing the Mexican Gangsters (opposed to Chigurh) coming to his door and his preparing himself for a fight. Then we cut away, and when we cut back Chigurh finds Moss’ corpse surrounded by dead gangsters, and then moves on. Basically, its like the film just skipped over the massive fight where the main character brings down like half the gang before being shot and mortally wounded, having a brief flashback to his wife or something, then with his last dying strength unleashing his full fury upon the remaining gangsters and dies looking up at the sky taking about yada yada yada we’ve all been here before. It’s a standard cliché in action movie, and the fact that the movie actually skipped it actually legitimately shocked me. Up until now, while there were a few “oh, didn’t see that coming” moments, this was the only time I actually was pretty shocked, cause we’ve grown to expect the main character dying in a final blaze of shotgun cocking (shut up Freud) glory, that the final 20 mins of the film being nothing but a long shooting happy moment is kinda taken for granted, so I will give the film points for simply skipping over all of that and spending the final 20 mins of the film doing something a bit more plot related, not to mention how much that shocked the audience. It also kinda makes a point on how the final explosive final, isn’t actually that needed in a film, by not showing it, the entire concept is kinda made to look silly and unneeded, so kudos to the film for spending its ending on something more time worthy. And in that, we get the second good part of the film, the final 20 mins. Now these aren’t actually good, just unlike the rest of the film, something is keeping your attention apart from the film quality and the actors, and is the first time Chigurh gets any real humanization in his confrontation with the wife where somebody finally calls him out for being a psycho. And then getting hit by a car, which is the only time the world actually seems remotely unfair (the other driver doesn’t seem eager to talk to him through, normally the driver is worried bout the whole insurance angle), and the symbolism made sense, cross roads being the crossroads of life ect ect. But these too scenes don’t make up for the movie as a whole. In the end…wait I already told you what I thought. Oh fine. Worth watching, but shockingly forgettable.

From
EE

evil PCs

Come on i could totally see it

Evil PCs

Right, since I Still haven’t gotten my computer back, and editing isn’t done, lets talk about of the more misunderstood issues of D&D, evil PCs, or evil parties. Now, almost all of the official D&D material condemn the very idea of evil PCs, and are strongly against the very idea of it. 4^th edition pretty much out right forbids it (insert one of my many criticism of 4E here), and while none of the other editions go that far, they are all strongly opposed to the idea. Now, this prejudice has two basic arguments behind it, and both of them are fairly justified. The first one is that people don’t know how to play evil. And, while I think this is a fallacy, it has some basic logic behind it. I know that the first evil characters in my games simply acted psychotic, randomly killing NPCs, kidnapping women at the various inns, and randomly betraying the main party. You know, basically Belkar in Order of the Stick, but not as a comedic character. And when you get an party of Evil PCs, you get a band of psychotic armed warriors pillaging, raping and murdering everything that gets in there path…a bit like General Santa Anna actually, but less classy (I’d say Andrew Jackson in Florida, but I make fun of him a lot, and his ghost is eventually going to beat me to a pulp). People just play evil with wild abandon and go crazy, playing evil people so ridiculously over the top that they resemble villains from children’s cartoons (I’d reference Captain Planet, but then it would seem like I’m ripping off Yahtzee….wait) rather than legitimately evil people. Now as I said, this is generally logical, but I still think it is a fallacy that evil parties don’t work because they inevitable give way to backstabbing and infighting. Now I think that evil parties have that option open to them, but if you think about it, psychotic evil people aren’t actually good representation of evil. A truly evil person would pretend to be good and use that to take power. I mean, one of my few complaints about the otherwise amazing Baldur’s Gate series is that evil characters will leave your party if your group’s reputation got to high. It didn’t make sense, why would evil people object to getting discount prices and being declared heroes by the common people. But more upon this later.

The second main argument against evil parties is that the game is designed for heroic fantasy, with good guys defeating the forces of evil and helping people across the world. Considering the sheer depths of evil that exist within the game, demons, devils, evil gods, and the depravity that they can steep to, it is really hard to sympathize with them, and the feeling that good guys should go out and put them down is natural. And I’m not saying that the truly evil creatures should be removed, on the contrary, I like how the supernatural forms of evil are utterly inhuman, because it provides some cool contrasts to humanity, people get use to the truly vile evil, that they ignore the more “tone down” evil, the evil of normal men and women. Against the truly evil creatures, the idea of supporting evil characters seems…revolting and justifiable so. Playing a servant of hell who is determined to destroy all humanity and devote of goodness isn’t really that cool, its…icky. I mean, when ever I played the villain in very early parties, I just felt, well, ill trying to be evil. Murdering innocents for fun, hurting people for its own sake, and destroying the forces of good, its hard to feel good with yourself. Maybe this is just me, but I just found the “typical” evil, approach, IE fighting against good the way good fights against evil, just sickening. Destroying a village of innocents, desecrating a temple to a good god, slaying good heroes, it didn’t make me feel cool or empowered it made me feel…wrong. But that was the only way to play evil characters right, because evil has to be in opposition to good. So the idea of playing evil is not only dysfunctional, its disturbing right?

It wasn’t until later that I realized it is very narrow minded to a simply assume that evil was as polite and understanding to manifest just as open attackers of all things good and decent. Because, if you haven’t noticed by my articles on the subject, being good is tough. There is a pretty high standard set, especially if you consider real life morality and bring the alignments of historical figures/cultures into play, good is a pretty high standard, one which people can slip easily. A man can be evil for assassinating political rivals, killing civilians in time of war, torturing terrorists for information (hey, no subtly political jab there…nope). So, while the extreme and truly dark evil still exists in D&D, the more “human” way of playing evil characters exist. I’ve always been a fan of flawed characters, or villain protagonists, as long as it is clear that the characters are in fact flawed, and not being glorified. Within the elements of Role playing game, playing flawed and not perfect characters is something that I think is perfectly workable. Playing as a roman legionnaire, a Viking warrior, Spanish conqueror, or a pirate are all interesting concepts, but most of those are evil because they are products of their culture. But they can still have honor, friends, loved ones, and a sense of duty.

Even with more openly evil/amoral PCs, there is nothing that keeps the group from being friendly with each other, or even having some ethics. Darken (webcomic) is a very good example of this. Even if the character are all tragic heroes, a sense of comradely and personal loyalty. Hell, if you think about it, most real life mercenaries were (and are) pretty dark folk, but they get along with each other, Evil Adventures are basically just bandits with shiny stuff. Evil characters aren’t by default psychopaths and won’t pathologically murder each other, through the option to do is often what keeps DMs from encouraging it. Here is the thing through, the reason why people play evil immaturely is that it is the only way we are told evil functions. In a moral system as strict as D&D, evil is a very broad category, but D&D always shows evil as nothing more than psychopathic. Now I’m not saying that Evil needs to be show more positively, it is evil for a reason, but I do feel like the complexity of evil needs to be shown. It isn’t just for the serial killers and sociopaths, it is where all of the fallen dwell, from those who are simply not particularly ethical, such as dubious sellswords, to misguided warriors, to simply the ignorant. Nobody in real life is wholly evil.

From

EE

This means war

A friend of mine has just brought back her blog, where she plays to review various manga/anime/video games if she will get around to it. However, since we are friends in real life, and this being the internet, i have to make the appearance of us being at some sort of war or riverarly, so when i think of something clever, i'll get back to you. Until then, check it out

http://rantsofafangirl.blogspot.com/2009/07/rofl-re-grand-opening.html
from
EE

Aligniment of V (from OOTS)

Wait, no i meant the elf who...actually thats pretty good

Now I started my article on racism in D&D, and I still haven’t gotten my computer back, but I realized that talking about racism is such a delicate issue in any context, so I’m going to take awhile to edit that one. And seeing as there is a thread on this on OOTS forum, I figured I might as well contribute. The alignment of everyone’s favorite elf of unknown gender, Vaarsuvius. Now for the rest of the article, I am calling her V, because I don’t want to spell that out a million times. And I will be referring to V as a girl, because I think she is female, just go with it. Oh and spoilers, so heads up now.

So throughout most of the comic, I’d peg V as neutral. She certainly isn’t evil*, as proven by Miko, and she helps the order do various good deeds, but she has always been ambitious and power-hungry, and as seen by the dirt farmer incident*, isn’t especially eager to help others, even if she isn’t a cruel or vindictive person. She can be rather petty however, assaulting and abusing Belkar*, which, through somewhat justified, is a little extreme. She also attempts to blow up (non fatally, but that’s D&D for you) Miko* and the horse seller*. So I’m guessing neutral, through good is still a possibility, as she does act guilty about conning people, even if they brought it upon themselves*.

But to cut to the chase, the thing everybody has been talking about, what is her Alignment currently after the Azure City debacle. Well, basically, I’m going to go with…Evil. I don’t know which one, but I imagine NE or LE, but Evil certainly. First*, the murder of the Lord Kubota. Killing a prisoner is, in D&D, always evil. It doesn’t matter if he was a sociopath and a murderer, killing for vengeance is evil. And the fact is, Kubota may be ruthlessly ambitious, but he isn’t a sociopath, he cared about his ninja until she betrayed him, he is just a ruthlessly ambition selfish man, we’ve seen many of those throughout history. More to the point through, he had surrendered, and it is wrong on so many levels to kill a prisoners. There is a very good reason why the UN forbids the shooting of POWs, and even disregarding real world ethics, murder is defined as evil, the fact your killing an evil person does not make it any less evil. Now, people say in defense of V that killing an unarmed prisoner is justified because he was a threat, thus making it just normal D&D killing opposed to murder. The thing is, the idea of threat is determined by if they are a direct threat. If Kubota had drawn a knife on Elan, or tried to flee, then killing him, while heavy handed, would be justified. But Kubota was a political threat, boasting that he could get out of his trial. The thing is, people assume that Kubota is 100% right. He also predicted he would be able to kill Hinjo and take over the fleet, and was wrong about that. We have no way of knowing what Hinjo would have done. Hinjo is, shall we say, far smarter than Elan, and might have found a more politically suitable solution to the problem. Or Kubota could have lost the trial, it wasn’t certain. It’s like killing every criminal who bragged they could escape the US justice system, sure some do slip through, but a lot of them get caught. To make matters worst, V didn’t even do it because she thought Kubota would escape, she murdered him because it would be a hassle to go through a second trial. And then hinted she would kill Elan if he snitched but changed her mind. But we have evil action, and not even the humility of a decent intention.

Then we have the fiend incident.* Again, evil. Now, in D&D, any sort of contact with fiends is evil, summoning a fiendish hamster to give treats to orphans is still evil. Now, V committed not one, but three evil acts here

1) She asked the imp to summon the fiends to make a deal. Now, this one isn’t really that evil, she was desperate and didn’t actually summon them so much as let them know that she was willing to deal, but she did still get an imp to try to get her an evil deal.

2) Her accepting the deal, even if it was a normal deal, is quite evil, just by accepting a deal with fiends is an evil act in itself. However, the other thing about this through, her back wasn’t totally against a wall. One of the friends offered a legitimate solution to her problem, one that wasn’t evil and effective. But V took their deal anyways, most because of ego.

3) Finally, knowing that there was another solution, she took the deal knowing that her soul would be used by the three fiends for evil purposes, and that is willing allow her own power to aid the forces of evil. And as she is going to grow more powerful, she will be stronger in aiding the forces of evil. What’s more, she took the deal knowing that the three fiends would try to unit the evil outsider races as a group, to fight the forces of good, something that nobody wants. And it is noteworthy, when her mate asked if she could just end the spell early so her soul would not be in there power as long, but she kept it up none the less, because she was high off the power.

Finally, the most infamous evil deed is Familicide, killing every creature related to the dragon that tired to kill her family, effectively wiping out ¼ of all black dragons in the world. Now this is the one that bugs me the most when people defend this action as not being evil, saying that it was good cause V killed a lot of evil creatures. Here is the thing, killing evil creatures isn’t a good act. Killing in D&D is never a good act, it is at best neutral, and that’s when it’s in self defense. Now, I know that Black Dragons in D&D are “Always Evil” in alignment, but first off, nobody actually follows that rule, cause t doesn’t make sense (dragons aren’t evil outsiders nor spiritual creatures why are they always evil?), Forgotten Realms doesn’t follow it, Ebberon doesn’t follow it, I don’t even know if Dragonlance follows it. But in OOTS, maybe they do follow the always evil description, the thing is, that doesn’t justify murdering them. They don’t have the evil outsider subtype like Demons and Devils, so they aren’t evil due to their make up (killing Demons and Devils is always justified as they are literal embodiments of evil), and so they are not hundred percent evil. The Book of Exalted Deeds notes that they are redeemable, even if it is difficult. And being evil isn’t a crime; a paladin who walks through town killing anyone who has the evil alignment is still evil, because that is murder. Killing a whole species, including babies, that’s genocide. I mean, literally murdering ¼ of a race is by definition genocide. And even if you accepted every dragon was hundred percent, irredeemably evil, half dragons are murdered too, as shown in the comic. Half Dragon’s alignments are more viable, and thus you can have as many good half dragons as evil and neutral, and even the evil ones can be redeemed. Thus that is murder. Now some people have said killing 500 evil dragons for 4 good half dragons is a good deal, but the thing is, good doesn’t work on that utilitarian level. Murder is murder, each good/neutral dragon or half dragon that died is a separate murder. In fact, every single victim of that spell is a separate murder, it isn’t a single evil action, and every single death is a separate stain on her alignment.

Finally, and I know this pales in comparison to the rest, she didn’t do it for any reason other than sadism. Raising the dead dragon simply to force it watch the death of its family, that’s just sadistic. Even if V just wanted to protect her family from vendettas (which is silly, cause Tiamat isn’t going to like the death of her children), she didn’t need to raise the dragon for it. And murdering an enemies family to protect yourself from reprisals has been an excuse for murder and infanticide throughout history (Rome, I’m looking at you), that isn’t a justification.

In short V is, of this writing (comic 667), is evil. If this will change remains to be seen (I just wish somebody could link this).

from

EE

Good Vs.Nice

He will save your life, doesn't mean he will be nice about it

Right, so last time I talk about how people with an Evil Alignment can still be friendly, polite, and even loving (and how that is what makes them scarier), so now I’m going to talk about good characters, and how they aren’t required to be nice to everybody. Now I want to say how there is a stereotype that good characters are a bunch of painfully nice flow children who frolic in the sunlight while petting puppies and sniffing flowers. Not to mention that they never swear, they never kill people even when people are charging at them, and they believe everything that people tell them too. Except…that isn’t really a stereotype. It’s more like an insult, used by people trying to justify/defend more dark/edgy characters, by trying to make good people look silly. That being said, the assumption of good characters being absurdly nice is a bit of a common assumption, which makes sense because people who care about ethics and morality are more likely to be you know…nice. But it can get tiresome for good characters to always have to be generic perfect poster children for kindness, manners and dental hygiene, especially if that is the only assumption for what they can be. Non conformity aside, it is important to note that being a good person, IE having a good Alignment doesn’t mean you have to be happy, polite, or even nice. Being good is based upon actions and intentions more than mannerism or personality, so somebody could be a real jerk, but still be good, if they do good things.

You could have a good person who not only a jerk, but outright mean. He can snap at people, be dismissive of other’s feelings, and be a raging egomaniac, but he can still have good intentions, and do good things. Clint Eastwood’s character “The Stranger” in “Fist Full of Dollars” is a good example of a total jerk that still is good, same with the Yojimbo played by Mifune from the Japanese film of the same name, which the former is based on. This is of course back before Clint directed the westerns and thus they were still good. Both characters were total jerks, but were still good people. On the flip side through, some people do good things, but for the wrong intentions, even if they aren’t evil intentions. A depressed knight who simply does his job out of a sense of duty opposed to any sense of actual decency is an example of that, a charity worker who is in it for the fame and glory, a lawyer who cares about the money. House, from the show by the same name wouldn’t be good, because he doesn’t care about other people while being a jerk, through he isn’t evil certainly (CN). However, an antisocial, rude, and egomaniacal man can still be a good person. Hell, from many accounts, Gandhi was really hard to put up with in person, but he was certainly a really good person from everything I know about him (granted I haven’t studied Indian history in depth sadly, so I only know the popular legend of Gandhi, but everything I know about him is really good). Another example is Eugene from Order of the Stick, Roy’s father (if you haven’t read it, skip to the next paragraph). Basically, he is a jerk; he is insulting, arrogant, snappy, manipulative, ill mannered, insensitive and has no qualms about taking advantage of his son’s life. But the thing is, in the comic he hasn’t done anything actually evil (until comic 664 at least, http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0664.html), he is just, well mean. He withholds information, but that doesn’t lead to any evil actions, just pisses off his son, he is nasty, but that isn’t evil, just jerkish, and he didn’t follow his blood oath to kill Xykon, that isn’t evil through, just cowardly/lazy. In short, while a nasty and mean spirited old man, people forget that we only see the bad side of him, he must have still done good things. Another example from OOTS would be Miko, at least pre fall. She is also mean, ill spirited, and a bully, but that isn’t what pushes her to the edge of the good alignment line, that is more the fact that she is close minded, fanatical and an extremist. However, that doesn’t actually make her lose her paladin status, just makes her on the verge. However, once she snaps and loses her paladin status, I’m pretty sure she ceases to be good, because she was barely good to begin with. However, until she crossed that line, she was still good, just a…socially inept bully. Now, I planned to go into the alignment of V from the same comic, but I realize that should be its own separate sub article.

Now being rude or mean isn’t exactly evil, but an argument has to be made for verbal abuse however. Being nasty and short tempered isn’t evil, just anti social, but considering how we know that psychological damage can be inflicted through words, as well as long term mental trauma, the issue gets a bit more complicated. For example, is neglecting your kid evil? A good deal of mental scaring can come from children who’s parents didn’t give them attention or properly raise them, but there is a vast difference from a parents who work all the time and can’t give there kids the time they need, and parents who simple ignore there children and snap at them, and leaving them without proper care. Or a parent who criticizing there kid sarcastically for bad grades and one who puts their child down for all types of trivial things for the sole purpose of hurting her/him. Sadly, child abuse is a massive and extremely complicated issue, so I think that as a general note, it is evil if the verbal abusing knows that the other person will be hurt by his/her comments. But even then, it is an extremely complicated and delicate issue, so I think that is a more case by case basis. On verbal abuse through, there is also a difference between being snarky to a comrade and being outright cruel. However is verbal cruelty really evil? I mean, the popular girls in everybody’s high school who torment the guys for looking funny, or subtly hurt other girls. Are they really evil, or are they just being mean/bitchy? Again, that is more a case by case basis.

Now apart from verbal abuse, there are other actions that are rather grey, but aren’t exactly evil. For example, and lets just prove Freud wrong as quickly as possible, sex. Now if you look at many Christian/Islamic/Jewish faiths, (Puritans for example), sex is an necessary evil, cause it is a vice and sinful ect. But D&D evil isn’t about vice. Vice itself isn’t actually evil in D&D, or most vices at least, it’s when it hurts others that it become a problem. Not to mention plenty of real world religions, philosophies, and ideals are pretty open minded about sex. So sex isn’t evil, but what about adultery? The Ten Commandments famous forbid it (for an Atheist, I bring religion up a lot it seems), not to mention numerous other faiths/beliefs, but in D&D is it actually evil? No. Being a ladies man and sleeping around isn’t evil, it just can lead to evil things if not controlled but there is nothing inherently evil. Now and again this is the whole “Good and Evil don’t = right and wrong” a lot of people, including various deities might not agree with it and will condemn premarital sex, adultery, polygamy, or for that matter, homosexuality as evil, or corrupt or impure, not to mention some players may find upsetting personally, or characters (personally I find polygamy revolting), but within D&D non of those are evil. Somebody might cheat on there wife cause they are a jerk, or because they are stuck in an unhappy relationship and have et somebody. Somebody might honestly fall in love and have sex before marriage, or manage a solid relationship with multiple women (or men I suppose), or a loving homosexual relationship. None of those are evil in any sense of the word, through again, some people within the world would object to any or all of them. However, it is worth noting, killing or harming somebody simply because they practice one of the above. For example, a priest might not allow a gay couple join his church, but he can’t kill them simply for being gay. Sleeping around isn’t evil either, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. was an infamous ladies man, and that guy a was amazing. It is worth noting however, that rape, pedophilia and (according to the Book of Vile Darkness) necrophilia are always evil.

Drinking is another one that can be iffy. Now I think the Book of Vile Darkness said that drug use is evil, (I don’t own it, so not sure there), which makes drinking kinda of odd as it is a pretty damaging substance. Especially for the underage, but drinking and driving isn’t an issue in D&D, so yeah. Basically, ignoring the fact that other drugs are evil, but alcohol isn’t, whatever, drinking itself isn’t evil, it just can easily lead to evil, such as abusive drinking parent, or rape during a party. But drinking itself isn’t evil, it can just lead people to do evil things (note, being drunk doesn’t excuse people from doing evil deeds).

Now I wanted to go into the final thing, racism, but that almost an article unto itself, so I’ll put that up later.

From
EE

Can evil have friends?

Evil can be nice as well

Since my other computer is being fixed, which has my reviews, I’m going to go into a brief Alignment article.Basically, while lurking on the OOTs forum, I ran across this

“And Tourniquets. Evil creatures or persons cannot have REAL friends. I don't believe in that. Friendship can only happen if you are a good person. Being evil forbids you to sacrifice yourself for sake of a friend, for example.
I'm not saying that evil persons cannot have relationships with good or other evil persons. What I'm saying is that they cannot befriend any other person. A relationship between evil persons, at best, will never be anything more than a degenerated kind of friendship, because evil persons do not have enough "goodness" in themselves to be able to look forward the good of any other person. Sometimes, not even of themselves.
That happens because evil is nothing else than the absence of the good. That means the evil person is someone who lacks practical knowledge, and sometimes theoretical too, of what is good. If you lack that knowledge, in practical ways, that means you cannot mean to do good to anyone. I acknowledge that evil persons may have pleasure in the company of some other person, good or evil, but having pleasure in the company of someone does not equal true friendship, but a degenerated or partial form of it.”

I figured I’d address two issues in terms of D&D evil. Can evil have friends, and can evil be effective PC players. The first is simply a response to the above statement. The idea that evil can’t have feelings of love or comradely is a fallacy. Evil, unlike good, isn’t a moral code. It’s the lack of a moral code. Good people are obligated to commit certain deeds, protect the innocent, not resort to torture, and uphold the standards of good ect. The details vary on Law/Chaos but in general good has some sort of centralized code. Evil in contrast isn’t a sort of code; you don’t fail to be evil because you have friend or pet kittens. A serial killer who lives in a hole and comes out only to kill and eat passer bys isn’t “more evil” than a brave and honorable fighter who wants to protect his family, loves his wife, sends presents to his family, and also systematically wipes out families of natives for the land he wishes to settle (Andrew Jackson anyone). Ok the former is a far worst person and is certainly more evil in terms of the damage he does and how many negative traits he possess, but in terms of being evil, both of them are clearly of the Evil Alignment, through the latter is a far more decent human being, genocide notwithstanding. To be evil, you don’t need to constantly kick puppies and laugh at old ladies to stay evil, unlike good there is no set quota for evil deeds you need to do to stay evil, you just need to have committed enough to slide you into evil (which varies depending on your beginning alignment and the deeds in question, but ten is pushing it I think). A man who murdered his elder brother because he felt he was more qualified to rule (regardless of weather or not that was true) is still evil, even if he spends the rest of his rule doing nothing at all bad, as long as he has not admitted that his prior action was wrong or repented for it, he is still evil. Committing good acts, like giving to charity and healing the sick, don’t turn an evil person good, other wise he could function on some sort of weird scale, where he could slaughter dozens of innocents one day, and then pet half a million puppies and suddenly be good. Unless you’re in Fable of course, but again, I’m trying to talk about an alignment system that actually makes sense (say what you will about 3E, it makes sense with the exception of a few loop holes, through it is understandable if you don’t like it).

So, onto the actual quote, that isn’t describing an evil person. That is describing a sociopath. Now, I’d be one to argue that almost all sociopaths are evil (mental illness and alignment are a different issue I’ll tackle later), but not everybody who is evil is a sociopath. Considering how sociopaths are a tiny percent of the world’s population that would make ethical issues a lot simpler, a lot more black and white, and a lot more juvenile. I mean, if evil can’t have friends, then a lot of really horrible people in history are going to seem funny.

Breaking Godwin’s Law (look it up if you haven’t heard of it), lets talk about the S.S., IE the elite Nazi troops who were the ones who actually ran the death camps during WWII. For example, the Einsatzgruppen was a unite charged with rounding up Jews, Poles, Gypsies and other “unpure” peoples, gathering them up and slaughtering them near ditches, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Now, clearly, both within D&D context and without, evil men, but they were not all sociopaths. Yes, they were cruel mass murderers, and I in no way intent to justify there crimes, but if you read there diaries, letters, or even watch the interviews with those who are still alive, they were people who had families, friends, loved ones and…moral values, horrible and twisted as those ethics may be. While it is easier for people to assume the SS were simply sociopath monsters who had no friends nor loved ones, in fact from all accounts, there was a sense of comradely among the lower level Nazi troops (while the upper ranks were full of infighting and inefficiency). They did horrible things, and their actions still stand as some of the greatest atrocities of world history, but they weren’t simply a bunch of soulless serial killers who drank the blood of children from birth. They had friends, families, loved ones, but were also evil murdering bastards. Hell, Himmler was by all accounts, a really friendly guy in person and a family man, as well as being one of the most evil people in human history. Mao was apparently a pretty nice guy in person, and very loyal to his comrades, but also takes the cake as the greatest mass murderer in human history. In fact, if you look to history, most of the worlds cruel conquerors were pretty nice people to there friends. The Khan, killed millions of people over his long career, modern estimates put his list of victims at 15 million (through that is almost certainly exaggerated greatly) and contemporary ones put it at even higher (again, more absurd). But he was far more democratic than most states around him, running dictatorship based more upon merit than birth, integrating massive amounts of people, and promoting religious tolerance and the preservation of learning, leading to on of the most advanced, if somewhat short lived, empires in the world. Julies Caesar committed Genocide, mass slavery, and unjust conquest in Gaul alone, and yet was an honorable man, who loved his first wife greatly (through it didn’t stop him from cheating on her) and famously, was very loyal to his friends…which turned out to be his great failing. Hell, almost all of the great Roman, Greek, and Middle Age Heroes would be evil by D&D standards, even many of American’s historical figures, especially in the early days would be evil, Polk was a warmonger, Grant was corrupt, and Jackson was both (through more competent than the latter two), and we aren’t even getting into the Confederacy. Basically the point I’m trying laboriously to get to (kudos to anybody who can catch who I stole that line from) is that being evil in D&D doesn’t keep you from making friends. Evil people can have friends, loved ones, and beliefs they hold strongly. They just also have to have committed evil actions without repenting. And in order to make this more accessible to non D&D people, I think in any moral system, you should never ever assume that people who are evil have to be sociopaths; it’s just demonizing people you don’t like, and building up a Black and White morality. Things aren’t that simple, everybody thinks they are good or justified, and even the Nazi’s believed in what they did.

Next, either Evil PCs or can good people be jerks, if I don’t get my computer back with my reviews.

From

EE

I'm camping

My article on No Country for old men is delayed, i'm camping. Be back Monday
from
EE

Claymore......yeah

Her hair being a plot device losses its effect when the manga is in black and white

Right, first review of the summer, where hopefully I might be able to make more of these, were off to a somewhat niche start. So lets start with a manga if just finished reading, Claymore. Now, the most basic premise is a bunch of women warriors using large swords to fight against monster in a dark and crappy world.  Now, when I first heard that I feared for the worst, because I figured, in my typical cynical fashion, that the manga would simply be an endless series of fights involving a wide range of scantly clad women who run around with massive swords that could be used as bridges and destroy demons, in such a fashion that we audience is bombarded with a seemingly endless line of panty shots and cleavage.  So I was somewhat pleasantly surprised when it turned out that the series dodges the temptation to indulge in mindless fan service, and the various female characters not only wear reasonable clothes, but also don’t get their clothes tore off regularly, which is a plus, and they also use reasonable sized claymore (a two handed Scottish Sword for those who don’t know…not really what it is, but that’s what people call it). 

            Anyways, the problem about explaining the premise of this series is that it goes against my normal style of doing things.  Normally, I’d snarkly explain the premise while pointing out the various unanswered questions and plot holes while I’m at it, like saying

            “The story takes place in a world which is seemingly made up of one island without any other context.  This world is plagued by demonic creatures called “Yoma” that are apparently the next step on the food chain above us.  They are nigh unkillable, and hunt humanity, but apparently despite being able to work together and having quite a large population, not to mention unbelievable hard to kill, they haven’t wiped out humanity or even any of the small nations in the world.  They are hunted by these women who have been injected with Yoma blood, called “Claymores” who are super solders able to hunt and kill them.  They are run by the shadow organization called…the organization.  Who create the claymores and use them basically as a mercenary force, accepting contracts from various towns to clear out Yoma…, which is kinda horrible when you think about it.  The organization seems content to allow these demons to wander around and do there thing unless someone pays them, and doesn’t seem to take an active role in actually you know…stopping them.  The Claymores use Yoma power to fuel their own abilities, from regeneration, to speed, to fighting ect.  Apparently using it is an addiction, something like an organism, and so many Claymores give in to the sensation and turn into ‘Super Yoma’ or ‘Awakened ones’, who are much more powerful than normal Yoma and have a much more diverse appearance.  These guys are also left on their own, and the Organization doesn’t seem to do very much to prevent the creation of more, in fact seem pretty ambivalent towards them.  The Claymores are ranked between 1 (the best) and 47, and even through most of them get killed or go batshit crazy, the organization never seem to really care.  The heroes go on a series of seemingly endless series of fights with no rhythm or reason.” 

            That is what I wanted to say.  However, this is ruined for me, because about half way through the plot, all of that is revealed.  No seriously, (actually it is morel like ¾ through the currently translated plot, but I imagine this series is going to last for awhile), it actually has a reveal that makes perfect sense and ties up almost all of the loose ends.  Pretty well actually, and it isn’t something that you’d be expecting, but make sense after you hear it.  So I suppose…that works out.  I admit that if I hadn’t been basically threatened by my friends to keep reading it, I would have dropped the book without ever getting to the big reveal that explains the entire premise in context, but once I found it, the entire series felt…I don’t know, better.  It went from a boring action flick to something with a bit of a premise.  So much for mocking the plot, but there is plenty other stuff to go into.  The thing about Claymore is, I want to spoil it, and as I really didn’t really feel really connected to the plot until the massive spoilers, I am really tempted too.  But I suppose enough people would like it to prevent me from doing so.  But basically, the story isn’t really that attention grabbing or engrossing until like half was through.

            Ok, the story follows a Claymore named Clare, the weakest and most pathetic of the group, at least at first (I’m not spoiling anything trust me).  She goes around killing Yoma, and the story reveals the almost comically dark world that she lives in.  Since I can’t really go into the plot, I will say that it starts off as a series of random adventures but then moves into...ah, screw it.  Look, until you get the more advanced plot points later in the series, the series just isn’t that interesting.  It is well drawn, with some cool characters and decent writing, but not enough happens to catch your interest until they develop it.  So basically, here is the non-spoiler run down.  Claymore is a show that has a good deal of thought into it, and has some really fun fight scenes.  And the story is pretty good; it does a lot with a limited premise.  However, t suffers from some really bad storytelling at times.  The story is told mostly through exposition, and flash backs (the whole one eyed twin story happened so fast that you couldn’t really feel any attachment) between the many fight scenes.  The fights themselves are interesting, but get old quickly, and near the end of the story, many (but not all) of the fights feel like they are just going through the motions.  The characters are all distinctive, but they are introduced then leave so quickly, it is hard to get attached to them, and only the ones with the most extreme personalities (like Helen, my favorite character) actually stand out.  Now I know every character is given a different hair cut, but the faces are all too similar and as they wear very similar clothes, it is absurdly hard to tell people apart, as the personalities are distinctive enough to really tell them apart. Through the story does get kudos for showing women with realistic breast size.  No, I'm not being perverted, I think it is really good to have women who aren't supermodels (well, they are but not as much, but thats not the point) as characters, its alot more realistic and might help with self esteem issues

            When I first finished reading the series, I was pretty optimistic about the whole series; I came away feeling pretty good about the whole series.  But while I was actually reading it, it was kind of forgettable.  I was doing monotonous stuff online, and I wanted something to keep me easily entertained, and Claymore in that respect did far better than I expected, I got a cynical interesting story with a strong plot and next to know character shields (seriously, anyone can die it seems).  But the story telling is so expeditionary (is that a word?) and the characters, while not flat, don’t make enough of an impression to really keep me engrossed in the series.  Even as I was writing this, I just couldn’t sum up anything to say about it, it just didn’t really resonate.  I was left feeling kinda impassive about the whole thing.  Unlike some series, Claymore doesn’t really resonate in my mind after finishing it.  I’m really not that impressed by it, through far from disappointed.  I don’t feel very much suspense for any of the characters (except Helen, Knife Thrower dude and the Man in Black…cause they are hilarious).  But it was still a good read, and will easily own most mangas out there, even if it doesn’t get to EE’s top list of manga.  Now great, but still a good work on its own right, it just is forgettable.

            I’m sorry that I couldn’t end this with some sort of decisive option of the series, it’s just that, once looking back on it, I could find very little to say.  I guess it was just never really close to me as a series, it left no emotional effect rather than a vaguely positive “yeah that was pretty good”.  So here is my recommendation.  If you want a dark, intelligent manga with decent fights, good story and some nifty characters to kill time with, then I recommend Claymore.  It isn’t going to change your way of looking at things, but it will be fun to read at least

From

EE

FINALS ARE OVER

Ok, today is officially, my last day of Jr. Year. I haven't written...anything for the last like two and a half weeks, because of finals. I love you guys, and i love writing, but i am not going to risk failing a final because i've been writing. But i'm done, last day of school, i am free. So now i can get working on teh back log of reviews i have crushing me
from
EE