Saturday, April 30, 2016

Working with Player Choice, Catalyzing Chaos

In the mind of the game master, the world they created is a glorious clockwork machine filled with carefully constructed intrigue, adventure and drama.

Players, by their nature, want to play! They want to explore new worlds through the medium of the tabletop experience. Through all five of the player senses: touch, taste, sight, smell, and hitting things with medieval cutlery, players want to interact with everything. They are also people, as such they act about as predictably as the dice they wield.

Players may completely ignore the city the game master created, after having spent many sleepless nights researching civic infrastructure, and instead insist on setting sail upon the nearby sea. By some small slight or misspoken word, the players may just slay that all important NPC with a backstory that took up several three ring binders! They generally don’t do this maliciously it is simply in their nature to act in a way most exciting for them.

Some game masters might be utterly demoralized by this, harboring animosity for derailing what they had felt was a truly majestic story. This might come out as petty cruelties.  Or perhaps as despondent acquiescence to whatever the players feel like doing leading to a meandering adventure that eventually leads no where.

Myself however, I invite it. For me there is no greater pleasure than a collaborative story.

Being a game master is essentially a combination of author and actor, one must gain proficiency in both to run a successful game. This includes improvisation, in fact I would hazard to say that improvisation is key to the success of a game. Your players are essentially improvising every step of the way so it only seems polite to meet them in this.

Allow me to recount an example from my most recent game, a Halloween session of Call of Cthulhu. The players were all engaged in tea and desserts aboard the orient express. Seated at their table were two NPCs, an occult minded dilettante and a land owning hunter. The players felt they had reason to be suspicious of both of these characters and tailed both in their own ways.

Unknown to the players, the hunter was a restless spirit, given unnatural life by way of a boon of the underworld. This semblance of life had a time limit which I was keeping track of by way of an hour glass. The players of course had no idea what the hourglass was measuring, simply that I had turned it over when play began. I had intended the hunter to return to his cabin on the train and perform the rite that would keep him enfleshed. Having done this, he would participate with the players in the fight that would happen soon after against a monstrous creature assaulting the train. In this way, I hoped to keep the players somewhat more loyal to someone they had fought alongside as a greater reveal later when he turned on them.

What I had not counted on was a series of terribly good rolls as the players silently stalked the hunter and then jumped him in his room. They knocked the hunter unconscious and forced him to waste what time he had left to his spell. Upon waking they had intended to question him, which is when he transmogrified to his true, putrid, inhuman form.

In the first half hour of the game one of the major antagonists had been revealed and his method of disguising himself, the pips of a magically enchanted pomegranate, were stolen from him.

I hadn’t planned on this by any means, I had assumed the hunter would be found out far later in the adventure after some pre-arranged slip up or by way of deduction. His scenes and short narrative arc involving his villa had to be scrapped and needed to be filled in immediately as this was meant to be a one session game.

But I was so immensely pleased, because it meant I could start the game out in a far stronger way than I had intended. The players put themselves in occult danger immediately, facing down the hunter in his undead, cervine form in the tight confines of the sleeper car. Without knowing it the players had created a far more exciting scenario for their first scene than I would have written! Now they would be injured and rattled from the experience of seeing a man twist and decay before tearing through the window into the dwindling light of dusk.

I’ve had so many incidents like this, such as a dungeons and dragons session where my players were exploring a swamp and the random monster table demanded I send frogmen to attack them. My players were charmed by my descriptions of the beasts and decided to befriend them instead of kill them. They made good rolls so I let it happen. I felt like the frogmen needed a good reason to have attacked the players and reasoned that perhaps there was some clan war going on. The players had inadvertently stumbled into the middle of it and the frogmen that attacked them were starving and desperate.

What followed was a team of adventurers sharing their food with the beleaguered frogmen and giving them assistance in their war. On the fly I assigned two other major clans to be antagonists and gave the players the benefit of their surrogate clan being very amenable to trade and goodwill with the nearby city. The war wrapped up by the end of the session and now the players had some treasure, experience, contacts in the fledgling frogmen settlement and even a frogmen hireling!

In the games I’ve run there are some fundamentals I’ve always stuck to:
  • Learn what your individual players think is fun or cool then make that happen.
  • Every critical success should yield something exciting. Player wants to woo the red dragon with his charisma to try and get out of being fried? He rolled a 20? Well now that player has to deal with the intimate interests of an ancient red dragon, I certainly hope he keeps scrolls of fire resistance handy.
  • Avoid saying no whenever possible, this tends to make players feel stifled and slowly will breed resentment.
  • Use redirection whenever possible in the place of just saying no. Tell the players what they can do rather than what they can’t do.
  • Be ready for your players to be creative, to ask weird questions, to do weird things. Try to practice your improvisation with writing exercises, read as much as possible in the genre you want your game to exemplify.
  • Also be ready for your players to obsess over incredibly inconsequential stuff and immediately write off vitally important details. If necessary, just switch them around, they will never know the difference and you don't need to waste time having heart palpitations over it.
  • Understand what you think is fun, what you really want to get out of the adventure, let that be your guide for how you run the game rather than the specific crunchy details.
  • Make any detour your characters drag themselves into feed your story. Try to imagine the threads of your story, your villains or your heroes, how far out do they spread?
  • Never feel like the fantastic set pieces you create are wasted if the players don’t get to them. You can always adjust the details and fit it in somewhere so don’t worry about losing that gorgeous prose you prepared or that really exciting character you’ve been rehearsing for days.
You are the game master, the storyteller, the dungeon master and ultimately the host. The only way for the players to have fun and ultimately to experience your story is through you. Your players have to contend with the challenges you lay before them, but for you the challenge is to engage with your players and create a fun experience with them. It can be a little more difficult than rolling to hit armor class zero but for me the rewards have always been incredibly satisfying. 

The Beginner's Tabletop Game Guide



Tabletop gaming is a beloved pastime for gamers and roleplaying enthusiasts – an outlet for creative problem-solving, character development, and old fashioned monster bashing. But for someone looking to either join a tabletop party for the first time, or start a game of their own, the endeavor is overwhelming.


I remember my first foray into the possibility of playing Dungeons and Dragons. It was a late night after a cast party – a character sheet covered in a hideous spill of math and statistics, and not enough brain cells to process it from lack of sleep and sugar high. Stat after stat we tried to render, having to stop and desperately search a slim packet of rules for something we understood. In the end, we admitted defeat and went to play video games instead, and I learned a valuable lesson: tabletop is a difficult hobby to get into, or enjoy, without experienced players to take your hand and show you the way.

And so I became Professional Fangirl.

Nine years after that unfortunate evening, now with years of successful campaigns and friendships forged around the dungeon map, I have the opportunity to give back what was offered to me: the know-how to make the beginning of a tabletop adventure manageable and fun.

The first thing that any aspiring tabletop player should know about this hobby is that it is not something you can get away with doing on-the-fly. As much of the rules of tabletop gaming are ALWAYS secondary to enjoying yourselves, they exist to maintain balance, and, in many ways, enhance the challenge and storytelling possibilities of a campaign. Even the best players need to consult rule books from time to time, and even the best storytellers can continue to find inspiration in mechanics and obscure skills and feats that will challenge players and make the campaign engaging. To avoid frustration and overwhelming everyone involved, please allocate time generously to letting the rules of character creation, combat, and role-playing sink in. While this is not always the case, I usually plan to have a first session (about four hours) dedicated purely to character crafting. That way, everyone involved has access to rule books and time to iron out any kinks before the game truly begins.

Disclaimer aside, it is also important to mention that there are a wide variety of tabletop games with unique and vivid settings. If traditional fantasy ala D&D does not appeal to you, you might enjoy the cyberpunk universe known as Shadowrun. If a modern setting with a magical twist is more up your alley, try White Wolf’s Mage: The Awakening, or perhaps Werewolf, or Vampire: The Masquerade. The world of Celtic mythos opens with Changeling, and the steampunk realm of Tephra also offers options for people who are squeamish at the thought of the quintessential fantasy with dragons. These settings come with their own sets of rules, materials, and varying degrees of difficulty in learning, but, with a little doing, all offer endless options for adventures to suit anyone's tastes. This small list has only a few of the many games you could explore, but they all have a few things in common: dice, rule books, and character sheets.

When Borders was going out of business in my hometown, I took a gift card and plunged into the sales frenzy. My curiosity piqued once more as I saw a pile of D&D manuals on sale. The urge to try my hand at tabletop had emerged again since that fateful night of confusion, and as I rifled through the good nine or ten volumes, all with different titles, I had the sinking realization that, once again, I had no idea what I was looking at. Monster Manual, Players Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, all these titles meant nothing to me. Which did I need to start a game? Which were optional? They were expensive – even on sale – so once again, I gave up. I used my gift card on chocolate and manga.

So here we go. You ready?

The comprehensive guide for what a fledgling tabletop game needs, doesn't need, and where to get them!


Dice:

Whatever game you have chosen to take your group into, most have different systems – which means a different set of rules and tools you use to play. Many of these systems are defined by what kind of dice they use. The more infamous system is called d20, which means, in short, it is a system that mainly utilizes a twenty-sided die. White Wolf games utilize a d10 system – 10 sided dice. Shadowrun uses a d6 system. Naturally, the first thing you want to procure will be your dice.

The average person has probably seen a d6 in their lives, whether in games of Yahtzee or Monopoly, but it is not common to run across, say, a d4, d8, or that elusive d20. You won't find them at Walmart. It's one of those little mysteries that people who are outside of the hobby run up against.

The answer: the internet.

Chessex is the largest producer of officially-weighted tabletop dice. They sell what is referred to as the “basic set,” which is the collection of 7 dice that covers most of your tabletop needs. Inside will be a d4, d6, d8, d10, percentile die, d12, and a d20. This set is designed for any d20 system, like Dungeons and Dragons, GURPS, Pathfinder, and others similar. Aside from being rather beautiful, these dice are the backbone of your campaign.

Keep in mind that, more often than not, you may need multiples of the same dice – especially if you're playing a White Wolf game. These d6 or d10 systems tend to rely solely on one kind of die. If your first game is Werewolf or Shadowrun, buy many d10 or d6. The d20 systems tend to be more conservative when it comes to how many dice are needed for each player.

While it is not necessary for every player to own their own dice, its speeds combat up, and it is more fun to have a personal set all your own rather than constantly trading around a communal pool. The most cost-effective way to get a whole party the dice they need is to buy a Chessex “Pound o’ Dice,” which will have many of each denomination in various colors, and is only $20 on Amazon. For those fortunate enough to have a comic or gaming store in their area, dice, as well as many other supplies, can be purchased (at full, painful price) there.


Rule Books:

No matter what system you're interested in, all will have a core set of rules that dictate character creation, lore, combat, and other facets of gameplay that players and storytellers alike should adhere to.

This is your table top bible: the Player’s Handbook, or PHB. It is the first book you will want to buy, and is really the only one that is necessary to run a game. Yes, there are an overwhelming number of books for alternate settings, special monsters, and even premade adventures, but these books will not have the necessary information to run the actual meat and bones of your campaign.

Now, when buying rules books, it is very important to find out what version of the game you are buying. Everyone likes to save money, and so finding rule books used online or at used book stores is easy, but if you have never purchased a tabletop manual before, you can easily buy books and supplements that do not match each other.

Tabletop has been around for a long time, and old systems have been revamped. Rules have been changed. New content has been added. Dungeons and Dragons is the best example of this. It has been through many incarnations: the original, advanced D&D, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder, 4.0, and the most recent incarnation: 5.0. Picking up a rule book from 2.0, a setting from 3.5, and a monster manual from 4.0, will be not only be a headache, but downright impossible for you to use together.

So which system should you use? Well, in my experience with D&D, at least, there is a general consensus: 3.5 is beloved for not only its breadth of materials, but also its very in-depth rules. The drawback is it is complicated and has a huge amount of information to learn. It also requires many additional books and supplements if you want to get to experience that depth.

The system that shows a great deal of promise in simplification of the system, as well as incorporating unique customization in your starting books, is 5.0, the most current edition. Because it is a new addition, you are unlikely to find reasonably priced used versions of the 5.0 PHB. 3.5 has been out for years, and is much cheaper and easier to get a hold of.

In the end, which edition you choose to play is purely a matter of taste. Just keep in mind that whatever game you play, whatever edition you play, all the supplements you use must match the version that your rule book is.


Character Sheets:

The last essential for a table top game is the character sheet. Rolling a character, aka creating them with all of their statistics and gear, is a process – a long one if you haven't done it often. Having an organized place to record stats and be able to find them mid-game is essential. Most PHB’s in any system will have a character sheet in the back of them. Making copies of it for yourself and for your fellow party members is a good idea.

For the people who purchased a used book, or are playing a system that has no unique character sheet, once again the internet saves the day. There are many fans sites and source pages that have free downloads of character sheets and spell lists. Fill them up, mark them silly, and update them often. Years later, I occasionally pull out my old character sheets and enjoy the memories that come with them.

Welcome to tabletop, and to Professional Fangirl. In coming installments, I will expand upon my guide for new players, breakdown character creation, party compositions, storyteller tips, and much, much more. Happy International Tabletop Day, and may you find adventures worthy of you wherever you go.


#TabletopDay - My fav tabletop games



 Do you like freaking enormous games that take all day to play, an hour to set up, and that you'll probably play wrong for a while but you'll still love?? The Arkham Horror is for you! The base game is already big--so big that I wound up buying more dice to play it regularly*. But now there are several expansions that make it even more epically huge (which I haven't gotten to play yet, much to my woe), and it's easily and all-day thing if you want it to be.

But it's so cool, you guys. Even though the last time I played I wound up mostly Lost In Time And Space.

Here's what I most love about it:

  • It's a whole story--there's so many things to track and follow and work around
  • It's not competitive, it's collaborative--there's no point in being mean to the people you're playing with because it's all of you against the board, and the board will probably win anyway, so work together
  • It's got lots of little tokens and bits and stuff to mess with and read and move around
  • Dice!
  • It's freaking gorgeous, dudes.



If you're in the mood for a faster game that involves jokes about sheep and wood, this is the one for you! It's not complicated, how it goes is mostly about how well you pick your original placement, but it's super satisfying collecting resources, trading with neighbors, and building things up. There's a number of expansions, too, so you can get bigger and fancier stuff going on, and it's easy to learn.

Also, it's all modular--the board changes every time you play!


Back when we were kids, we lived overseas in places where there wasn't often TV and where cable hadn't been invented yet. We read books, or we played games--all those classic family games like Monopoly, Candy Land, Life, Trivial Persuit. But my fav was always Parcheesi.

It's cooler than Sorry, though basically the same sort of game. It's less likely to be missing pieces than Chinese Checkers. Our copy had really nice wooden pieces that felt nice in our little-kid hands and looked like candy. It's easy enough for kids to play, but fancy enough that adults can play, too, without feeling dumb. It just always felt really classy to me, and I still love it.


What're your favorite games? Share in the comments and I'll start a list of games I need to check out!

 *Well, my friend bought them for me. They have my name on them. I love them.

#TabletopDay - The meanest game of Uno you will ever play


Uno is one of those games you learn when you're a kid because it's easy and it's fun and it's not too fussed about how many people play it. It's also mean. Like, seriously, the only physical fight I've ever gotten into was over a three-person hand of Uno--the other two, my best friends, teamed up to skip or reverse on me for twenty minutes straight and the only time I got a go was when I had to pick up cards, so I kicked one of them. She hit me, so I hit her back, and then she bit me and tore my nightgown with her steel-enforced teeth. 

Good times.

Anyway, Uno is also one of those games where you have lots of house rules* AND one where there's lots of variation-decks so you can mix it up.

My brother and I recently created the meanest house rule ever, and it will murder your game and make all your friends hate you, and it's awesome.

It's this:
  • If someone drops any Draw card on you, you can avoid having to draw those cards by playing ANOTHER draw card that matches, and the next person has to draw the cards listed on BOTH cards. 
The best part of this rule? There's no limit to it. When we were playing, we had a hand that circled twelve times and the last person had to draw more cards then there were in the draw deck, and we wound up adding a second deck to the game!

It's hilarious, you guys, everyone waiting for the time when there's no more Draw cards and someone has to pick up the whole deck. Everyone holding so many cards that they can't find the ones they're looking for because their hands are too small to fan them out properly. The wails of the lost as they take forever to get through all the cards they're holding.

It's the best house rule ever.

What're your best house rules?


*Ours are: You keep drawing when you don't have a match until you find one you can play, no matter how many you have to draw. If you go out of turn, you have to draw five. Sometimes we have random stupid things you have to say every time someone plays a certain card; depends on how dunk we are.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

10 things a show needs to produce an awesome fandom


1. Good content that the fans can't get anywhere else
A show that doesn't have it's own clear identity isn't going to inspire that much caring or feedback from viewers to make them into fans. If it's a knockoff, it'll just get written off as "not as good as __", and people will be able to tell if it's happening just because something else was popular elsewhere. That's pandering and it's pointless. People have so many choices in TV now, there's no reason to have two shows that are the same.

2. The idea that the fans are smart enough to keep up and figure stuff out
You've got to trust your audience, not talk down to them, not tell them how to feel about things. One of the biggest things Sleepy Hollow did in it's finale this year (other than pointlessly killing a main character who happened to be a woman AND a poc) was spend a whole act trying to convince us that the stupid thing they'd done was okay. No. Let your fans feel what they feel. And give them stories that are worth keeping up on.

3. A certain "openness"--space for the fans and their ideas inside and around it
Openness in the story for people to fill in gaps themselves. Openness in the show for different points of view. Openness to fan theories and opinions (though not slaves to that). Openness to fanworks and meta. Accessibility of story points, moral stances, and character motivations. You want the fans to feel like they're part of it, not passive consumers with no right to think or say anything

4. Good social media presence
It's great when the actors and writers, creators and producers live-tweet a show with the fans. It's more great when the show's official accounts support fans, answer questions, provide sneak peeks and behind the scenes info, and basically are useful and not just places to sell things. Being on multiple social media accounts at once helps, too!

5. Reliability
Which leads to trust. Trust that the characters will be clearly defined and respected, not bent and deformed for whatever whim the writers or the network wants to follow. Trust that promises made in the story will be paid off, and it's not any sort of 'baiting or intentionally misleading. Trust that there will be good continuity, and not random storylines that are introduced and left dangling forever. Trust that the people making the show know what they're doing!

6. A feeling of collaboration, not competition
A competitive fandom is a fandom that will tear itself apart, so it's better to bring a sense of togetherness and inclusion, and that comes from both the show (or movie or whatever) itself, and from how the official powers handle the people watching.

A feeling of safety around fanworks would be cool, too--no big lawsuits, no weird behavior about them. Either leave them alone, or be respectful.

7. Some sort of positive feels--funniness, joy, playfulness, shippiness, etc--regardless of how the rest of the show goes
A show that is 100% serious all the time is a) exhausting to watch, and b) unrealistic. People crack jokes and snark at other people and say funny things for any number of not-funny reasons. A show that slogs through it's own story like it's a trial will not inspire fans to love it, nor will one that insists on denying it's own best parts as being awesome. Characters who never laugh are no fun. Characters who never fall in love--or at least have the opportunity to-- will be hard to make emotional connections to for a lot of people.

There has to be a break from the heaviness of reality or serious story or dire circumstances for everyone to get a break and get to know the characters.

8. Awareness of the genre-history it comes from, and respect for it
Shows don't happen in a vacuum. Everything had something else before it that either inspired it or gave it something to react to. You have to know your history to do it right, because the fans will definitely know it.

To go back and poke at S2 of Sleepy Hollow: It was insulting because the writers a) didn't seem to be taking any of the things that were the backbone of the show seriously, and b) were directly ripping off shows like Buffy without any understanding of the context or the appeal of the things they were blatantly stealing. Contrast that with Supernatural, which usually respects the stories it's building on and also makes them their own.

It's the difference between acting like your viewers are idiots who won't notice, and respecting that they will and giving them a new take on it.

9. Respect for the fans as actual people and not pawns or product
It's people who carry a show, not numbers on a graph. Treating people like promo-slaves is what bit The 100 in the butt when they killed off Lexa; don't do that. Interact with them one on one, not like a giant media conglomerate telling people what to think and do.

10. Network support
Advertising, so that people know you're there and when to find you. Good media events--especially at cons and related things where the people who make the show can interact directly with the people who watch it. Trust from the producers and network people that the creators and writers know what they're doing and can get it done, so they don't have to try to get it done while navigating interference and meddling. A willingness to let a show find it's feet before dropping the ax on it--XFiles, one of the biggest hits Fox ever had, wouldn't have lasted one season now, with how rough that first season is. A minimum of preemption and no schedule-rearranging without a really good reason and a lot of thought put into it--like NOT putting it up against much bigger shows. No snap decisions!


What do you think creates a good fandom?

10 things you're missing out on if you're not watching #12Monkeys



1. An amazing story that's totally Binge-able
As of this moment, there are fifteen episodes. Thirteen for the first season, and two so far in the second. That means that you can watch all of them in one day, if you're really dedicated, and get the full extent of the series without ads or breaks or waiting on anything! It's immensely re-watchable; these writers have put in all sorts of hints and clues and foreshadowing that you pick up more and more of when you rewatch, but the benefit of watching all at once is that you can track all the storylines without gaps between them. It's basically one big story pretending to be episodic, and though jumping in the middle could be confusing, there's so much story crammed into so few episodes, you can start from the beginning and be caught up in a week. (Watch on Hulu or on the Syfy site for the views to count!)

2. Complexity that works
We're two episodes into season two, and there's no signs that it'll be anything less than mindboggling. Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett took the framework of the movie--scavenger from a dying future goes back in time to stop a plague--and blew it up to epic proportions successfully.

There's story happening in our time, in the future, in various points in the past. There's characters who exist in more than one time-frame, even if they're not time travelers, and there's time travelers on both sides of the good-bad divide. There's moral ambiguity starting with "if I kill this one guy, I save billions" and upping the ante through "if I save this one person, it's worth the whole world dying" vs "can I let this one person die if it means saving the world" and onward. There's a lot of character development in just about every character shown on screen, both in real time and in flashbacks--and even, occasionally, in alternate realities. There's time loops, and imposed cycles, and conspiracies, and multi-generational plans in play--and there's Cole, smashing through it like a bull in a china shop, hoping to make things right.

And the world itself! The present day world we know is stranger than we think. The future is a near-perfect apocalypse that's still happening, which feels innovative to me. When was the last time any apocalypse wasn't a postapocalypse? All points they visit are carefully made as real as each other, so that no matter where in time they are, no matter how strange it gets, everything has the same level of clear reality.

And it works. It's like a symphony, it works so well. Or one of those puzzle boxes that's so well made it feels like a gift.

3. The best use of time travel in, like, ever
The best thing: time travel has a cost--it makes you sick and you have to weigh every time you do it against risk and reward, and the only cure so far is literally creating paradoxes inside your own body, which is dangerous, to say the least.

Sometimes time travel is more of a vehicle, getting people from one place to another, but as season one unfolded and into season two, it's more and more an intrinsic piece of the story's structure. Things happen out of order because people who aren't time traveling are stuck in a straight line, past to present to future, and people who are time traveling can hop all along that line, regardless of the usual order of things. People on both sides are working with time and against time while also working against each other, trying to bend history to their own will--and it sometimes works, but mostly it causes more trouble that they then have to work out. It's the main process for several long-games to happen and to play out.

They give us clear indications of which times we're in and there's always a reason for why we're there, and the show as a whole literally couldn't happen without time travel. It's about time travel, not just featuring it.

4. Awesome female characters as complex as the males
The main villain is a woman.

Cassie is the female lead, and as S2 happens, she has switched places in the moral grey-areas with Cole--which is amazing, letting her be as violent and single-minded as he was, something ladies on TV don't get a lot.

The biggest wild card on the show is Jennifer, who is either insane, or the sanest person on the show, depending on where her story goes, but who exists at both ends of the time-travel and is definitely up to something.

The creator of the Splinter Project is wonderful, semi-sociopathic, damaged, brilliant Jones, who is some sort of post-apocalyptic life goal, since I'd be about her age in 2044.

And the only one of the enemy agents we've seen directly so far is a woman.

It's kind of amazing, having so many women around who aren't only love interests, or arm candy, or bit players. There's love in there, but they're also damaged and striving and have goals of their own. They're not defined by the men around them. They're smart and resourceful and as able to take care of themselves as everyone else.

5. An epic love story--literally
Cole and Cassie--Casserole--is a ship that sails itself, but in between them meeting and any confessions they might have in the future, there's plenty of time for story, and it's Big Story. Cole comes back from the future specifically to meet Cassie, Kyle Reece style. Cassie believes in him so strongly that she goes off script to save him more than once. Now that Cassie is compromised, Cole is staying by her side to make sure she's alright, despite differences in opinion about how the mission should work. In season one, Cole saves Cassie's life three times, because her dying always results in history going bad. Their love is literally what is saving the world in those cases. It's a ship for the ages!

6. Anything can happen
Because of the time travel and the way they can rewrite history, they can do insane things like kill a main character three times and fix it. They can have scenes and episodes in any time period they want. They can interact with each other out of order, and characters can interfere with each others' pasts and futures. The entire world can literally be changed, and it will make perfect sense within the story.

It's brilliant!

7. Kicking a squeamish TV system in the shins with awesomeness
TV as a whole doesn't seem to like things like complexity, male-female equality, gleefully being smart and assuming your fans are too, and taking risks with characters and plot and reality. You know, the stuff that the target audience is specifically looking for, and that critics love. By watching 12 Monkeys and making it more popular all the time, you're poking holes in that dumb idea that lowest-common denominator is the best way to go! By not watching, you're proving that only cheap, stupid shows get views.

So watch the good ones and improve TV as a whole!

8. Stopping the Standard Fate Of TV Scifi in it's tracks
Ask any scifi TV fan about shows they're still mad about, and most of the list will be shows that got messed with, ruined, or cancelled before they could tell their whole stories. That's become a cliche--but also a trap. People want good shows, but they don't trust that regular TV will take care of them, so on channels like Fox, lots of the potential viewership just doesn't bother watching. And that means that the show gets cancelled anyway--a self-fulfilling prophesy. Syfy really should be the exception to that, being specifically for scifi, but it's a channel like any other, and even if ratings are an inaccurate way to judge viewership these days, they still want the ratings.

The only way they can get them is if WE watch the shows we want TV to keep making. The only way we can break the cycle is to give them such good ratings that scifi proves that it can support an audience over many seasons the way a show about doctors or lawyers can, even if the numbers aren't as high as those.

Let's not let 12 Monkeys be the next Firefly; let's make it the next Star Trek--seven years and a slew of movies and books!

9. Some of the best fandom and creator-fan interactions around
The 12 Monkeys fandom is a great one, full of smart, talkative people who understand both the show and the genre it comes from. Better yet, the actors, writers, and creators on the show do their best to be very interactive, answering questions and giving hints and reblogging links. It's (so far--knock on wood) a remarkably adult and drama-free fandom with lots of ideas and thoughts and opinions, and it's a great fandom to belong to.

10. Hope
A lot of scifi drama lately gets mean. The heroes can't actually make any headway. People die for no reason (cough - Walking Dead - cough). Things are needlessly grim and violent. The overall tone is nihilistic and soul-crushing, focusing on how pointless everything is.

12 Monkeys isn't like that. The show itself is aware of how cool all of this stuff is, and while it gets a little dark and very dramatic, it doesn't go down the grim-for-grim-sake path. And at it's core, it's not about how people can't change anything, or how Big Events ruin lives. It's about characters interacting with each other and finding better ways. It's about how mercy and love are better than slavish fate. And that's amazing after BSG showed everyone such a dark version of scifi.

12 Monkeys isn't sappy, it's genuinely emotional. It's not mean, it's about being better than meanness. It takes the story about making the world better and looks at it from all sides and strives to actually do what it says. And the existence of the show can make the genre better, too, if we keep it alive.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Sami on Hunters 1.3 - In which we learn about Reagan


Hunters airs at 10pm on Syfy Monday nights!

I think it's still being damaged by being after the feels-stravaganza that is 12 Monkeys; it's very hard to jump right from whatever happened in the last few minutes of Monkeys into Hunters that is very much a slow-burn and much less...I don't want to say interesting, because it's very interesting, but it isn't as complex so far, and it doesn't hook me as strongly or as quickly. I continue to basically not care at all about whatever the case of the week is.

This week, it was blah blah blah terrorists funding themselves with drugs blah blah excuse to get into the jungle. There was a child soldier who could have been useful, that they shuffled off much the way they shuffled off Emme, who is also a teen girl who could be useful. There was a guy called Alejandro who was smart enough to figure out that they weren't looking for normal drug people, who then had to be killed because apparently murder is okay if you're in the ETU? Like, it's problematic whenever they try to talk about anything A-Plot on this show.

But there was also a huge focus on Reagan, and I liked that. She grew up thinking she was human until she almost killed someone as a child, then her dad showed her she's alien but apparently didn't tell her how to handle it--she wound up trying to cope by using all sorts of drugs and sex, but since she says in the non-flashbacks that alcohol doesn't work, I'm going to assume the drugs are minimal, too. She has to flee her house at sixteen with no understanding of what she is, and then gets "recruited" by the ETU in a way that sounds more like "do this or die in jail" and "we totally knew who you were all along and were looking for a chance to prey on your insecurities for our own ends". It didn't make me like him more, but did make me feel bad for her.

She's a total badass in modern times, and it's rough seeing her being such a mess in the past. I don't think bossman really cares that much about her, either, and that makes it worse.

Meanwhile, she and Flynn are on better terms. He's still trying to learn about her to understand his wife, who they're not chasing down today, and it feels like a set-up for a ship...which could be cool, if his wife wasn't his main driving point. Maybe after they find the wife and deal with her story in some way. Reagan and Flynn would be a lot less gross than her and McCarthy, who was blessedly absent this week. I think Flynn is basically a good guy, even if they seem to have forgotten that he has PTSD to deal with.

The Hunters had left the camp where they were brewing what looks like actual drugs and creepy alien-taken-from-humans drugs (that's the first the team has seen of that connection, I think), and killed most of the people that were just people, but there's still a monster in the woods. It's stalking them, and it's the reason they kill Alejandro--he freaks out when he figures out that monsters are real. 

But it also gives some of the very rare humor the show feels like it needs to allow--when the boss is all "abort" and Flynn fakes interference and goes "report? we'll finish the mission and then report!" and stops taking calls. I think he could be really fun, if they'd let him. And I think the show could really use the slight breaks from all the scowling and bickering and brooding. It would give the team members something in common, too, because they're not doing a very good job of team-building, and it's making them kind of the suckiest elite team ever.

I hope they start getting ahead of things soon, too, because they're always fumbling around in the dark and not getting much of anywhere. 

I missed Emme this week; she's still an underused resource. I missed the kitten*. I did not miss McCarthy being the grossest person ever, but I think he's probably behind the attack that drove Reagan out of her house at sixteen. It seemed like there's a division between the ones who want to blend in just to blend**, and those who want to blend in just to later come out and blow stuff up, and she grew up on the hiding side. Maybe McCarthy's weird interest in her is because she was pointedly hidden--she's biologically or culturally or historically important. That would be super cool, and it would be very important that she's  on the human side, if that's the case.

Hunters could be so cool. There's this whole pile of awesome, progressive ideas that I haven't seen on any other show. But they seem to be tangled up in a contest to be more gritty than they need to be, with a lot of shock-value choices that keep coming at me so that they aren't as shocking as they could be and ARE more annoying than they're intended to be. And in the meantime, their good ideas keep being underused.

On the other hand, this episode feels like things are coming together, a little, and that's a good sign. If they can get on the ball before the mid-point, they've got a chance! 

Here's what I'm seeing around all the messy gratuitousness:
  • A kickass lady-lead who is alien but wants to be human: she's not happy with what she is and keeps trying to drown it, but that's where all her literal power is, and she's probably important to her own people in a way we don't know yet.***
  • A male lead who is founded on manliness--he's an ex marine--but who is compromised by the trauma of that life so that he can't do it anymore, and then is thrust into a world where those skills are needed but he should have to find other ways to the same results.
  • Music as a weapon.
  • A girl who has perfect recall and doesn't have standard human reactions to things, who could really be an asset.
  • A shifty boss who has a hardass boss of his own, neither of which seem to care all that much about the actual team they're running, and a crew of scientists who look to be poised to get stuck between team and leadership.
  • Aliens who communicate with synaesthesia!
  • A mole in the agency!
I don't care about the terrorism angle. But there's lots else to play with! Go play, Hunters!


 *They showed too much of the kitten in the first ep for it not to be convenient to the story later! Bring back the kitten!^
^Or have I been spoiled by 12 Monkeys, where Everything Matters, and I'm over-estimating this show?
**I feel like her parents should have raised her with some coping mechanisms--"you have sensory problems, things will seem too loud or too bright, here's how you deal with that". Save them the trouble of "oh no, my daughter almost killed a kid"...
***Is she the only female Hunter we know? Would we be able to tell if the others were male or female? Do they always pick the human gender that corresponds?

Monday, April 25, 2016

Prepping for the "Limitless" season finale!


Hello everybody!

Finally I found some time to post here on this awesome blog, which I have used many times to decide whether or not I should watch a show and now I'm co-blogger! When Sami asked me, I was so super honoured! Now I've never really wrote about things like these before, so bear with me.

So let me introduce myself. I'm Lothwen, nail polish and nail art blogger at Manis & Makeovers - which is how I came into contact with Sami, she creates the most beautiful nail polishes, most of which are inspired by fandoms and other things I love. I've had the privilege to swatch many of her creations and when I got a Limitless-inspired polish, I knew I wanted to post it here in honour of the season finale! Let's have a look at "On NZT":



You know, when Brian takes NZT, his world becomes doused in a golden glow? This polish is that NZT-effect times a million! It is a gold flakie polish with different sized golden glitters and holo particles. It can be used as a top coat, or as I did here, two-three coats on its own. It doesn't even require top coat, it has a lovely finish on its own!




That was the nail polish part of things.

Now about Limitless; when will CBS finally announce the show's renewal? I mean, come on, it's a great show! It is the perfect amount of humour, mystery, drama, detective work and romance with a hint of nonsense all mixed up beautifully into one of the best new shows of the season! I don't know if you follow The Cancellation Bear, but he recently told us the good news that the show is more likely to be renewed than cancelled, so I'm just going to hold him to his word!

What will happen in the finale? Oh gosh, I see a cliffhanger coming... Will Brian find Piper? Will Mike and Ike be in this episode (I missed them last time). (Editor note: Me too!) The last episode ended on a scary note - the DEA agent, who was working with the CJC, turned out to be in Sands' pocket and made sure Sands got out of prison. All of Morra's people - AKA The Legion of Whom - got car bombed and the way seems paved for Sands to acquire world domination... OOPS! 

Perhaps Brian, the FBI and Morra all need to team up in an effort to obliterate Sands... Well it would be nice to see Bradley Cooper agian, I like him in this sleezebag-that-you-just-can't-hate role, lol!

I can't wait to see tomorrow night's episode, and let's all hope it won't be the last!

Circling back to the nail polish, I did some Limitless-inspired nail art with it as well, which I posted on my blog, so if you're interested, just click the pic below! Thanks for listening to my rambling!



You guys, we have a job to do: "Call to Action: 12 Monkeys, Wynonna Earp, and Hunters Could Use a Show of Support | Cancelled Sci Fi"

Call to Action: 12 Monkeys, Wynonna Earp, and Hunters Could Use a Show of Support | Cancelled Sci Fi:

"12 Monkeys (Syfy): This show was never a stronger performer in the ratings in its first season and it has returned at its lowest numbers yet in its second year.  It has already used the Escape-the-Network-Executioner-Free card that Syfy tends to give all its first season shows, and it is likely on a short leash at this point.  As a cable entry, it may have international financing / partnerships helping it, though a show of support from fans could definitely give it a boost.  Syfy has been paying close attention to the digital viewing lately as well, so if you watch it on their website, that will be counted (as opposed to watching it live during the linear broadcast or on the DVR which is only counted for Nielsen families).  And buzz on the social networks has been helping cable shows of late as well.  If fans of this show want it to stick around for a third season, they need to get active and make sure Syfy knows they are out there.  
 Agent Carter (ABC): It was not included in ABC’s first round of renewals and Haley Atwell has been cast in an upcoming pilot.  Plus, Agent Carter‘s executive producers have said that chances of a third season look “bad”.  But then a rumor has emerged that ABC has decided to bring the show back for a third season, so perhaps the network is at least considering it.  All the more reason for fans to make noise in support of the show to convince the network it deserves a third season (or at least have that promised cross-over with Agents of SHIELD to resolve the show’s storylines). 
Limitless (CBS): Don’t drink the Kool-Aid CBS Boss Leslie Moonves is offering by claiming all of the network’s freshman shows will be renewed. New entry Angel from Hell has already been axed and Limitless is currently performing below where that show was when it was sent to the Network Executioner (in a large part due to constant preemptions). Plus, Limitless is certainly more expensive to produce. Fans need to make a strong show of support and let CBS know they are out their before that network (which is known to have an aversion to sci fi shows) squashes this promising new entry. 
Stitchers (Freeform): This show never saw high ratings in its first season and has returned even lower in its second year.  Of course it appeared on the schedule without much prior notice, so that’s not much of a surprise.  The overnights are probably not as important for this show, and “stickiness” on the social nets could go a long way toward helping it into a third season.   I know it has a very vocal fanbase, and they need to get active now to bring attention to this one. 
Wynonna Earp (Syfy): This show has performed the best of Syfy’s Spring debuts, but only just slightly.  The same comments for 12 Monkeys above apply to this one, though Syfy may still let it play its Escape-the-Network-Executioner-Free card.  But fans should get active on the social networks and with digital viewing to make sure that Syfy knows they are out there."
And there's other shows there, too! We're in a golden age of TV for those of us who like the speculative-fiction shows; we can't let all of these new, awesome, barely-reached-anything-like-their-full-potential shows go in the same year!



My whole life, there's been like one or two shows a year that I just loved; right now, it's at least one show every night of the week, and I don't think that should end because of a ratings system that's drastically and dangerously flawed, and doesn't show how people actually watch TV anymore. We've got points to make, you guys,



Let's do it.



'via Blog this'

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Sami on GeekCraft Expo RDU


This past weekend, me, our very own Paula P, and my brother David went to table at the local GeekCraft Expo! I've never done a show on this side of the table, and never been to one of the GeekCraft shows before, so I had no idea what to expect. I was SO NERVOUS setting up, but I'm so glad that Kim took a chance on me and let me join! It was awesome!


So often, in fact, that I didn't have time to take many pictures. These were sent to me by Paula! There were tables set up in several rows--not a big space, but a lot of variety inside it, everything from adorable tiny top hats, to chain maille, to awesome cupcakes. You can see the whole list of dealers here.


It was so exciting to be able to sell my stuff directly to people! So many people didn't know that home made nail polish was a thing, and it was so flattering and vindicating when people laughed at the names I'd given them. Everyone was so nice and so enthusiastic! I wish my helper had been able to come*, so that I could have wandered around and taken a look at more of what other people had to offer, but the sellers I talked to couldn't have been nicer or more friendly, and the customers--I had no idea that NC was so nerdy before I saw how many people came through the show!

The Expo was very well run, set up and taken down without a hitch as far as I could tell, and the people in charge did really well with social media promotions--lots of people came looking for us specifically because they'd seen us on the FB page and on Instagram! It was a long and exhausting day, but in the best way possible, and I'm so glad we did this!

*My niece, who had a play that weekend and couldn't make it.