A Hard Monday
Uffdah, as they say around here. Mason is back at school after three weeks hiatus, and every SINGLE Crossroads parent seemed to have forgotten how to use the parking lot. I'm lucky I'm not still there (or responsible for some car/child accident!)
This weekend, Mason spent part of his time at KidCON, which is naomikritzer's gaming gathering of friends. Mason came back really wanting to play Munchkin with us. We have a basic set, and I've now been tasked to pick up a booster packs, if they have them, at MarsCON. It was, admittedly, a lot of fun and totally got me jonesing for my RPGing days. And Mason is the kind of person--not unlike myself--who actually ENJOYS hearing the tales of campaigns past, so I got to tell him about Fred Fumble, the Moon-Moon of the elf world, who routinely stumbled into his campaign mates and did THEM damage during a fight. Fred's other name could have been Friendly Fire Fred.
It makes me wonder.... am I still one phone call away from a game? If I asked around, could I find a D&D/RPG going down RIGHT NOW to hook up with???
I used to joke that RPGs were my drug of choice, because if you go down the "Are you an Alcoholic/Drug Addict?" AA/NA pamphlet check list, "Do you have a hidden stash?" etc., my answers were often YES, if bent to include words like "of dice" or similar. Do you think about gaming when you're not gaming? OMG YES. Do you schedule your life/change plans with others so you can game? OMG YES. Have you ever skipped work to game? OMG YES. The big one was always, "Could you get your drug of choice with one phone call/within the hour?"
Could I? I used to be able to. I had at least two friends on speed dial that were GMs who I probably could have talked into gathering something RIGHT NOW. Actually, I bet I could... I still know gamers and their husbands/partners.
The other thing we did over the weekend was finally watch "The Wolverine." True confession time: I can't remember every single detail of the Japan Saga. I'm not even sure I ever read the Claremont & Miller original 4(?) issue miniseries in 1982 or if I caught up with Logan and Yukio later when Buscema penciled. I have only the vaguest memories of those issues, and they kind of go like this: Yukio = kick ass; Makoto Mariko = tragic love interest (wife?); Silver Samurai = cool and adamantium. The rest is lost to the annals of time or have been replaced by Bleach trivia.
Even with so little, I still feel like the movie betrayed my SACRED MEMORIES.
I will say, the filming on location, that was beautiful. I wanted to live in all the houses they were in, particularly Mariko's bolthole in Nagasaki. I also wanted her to feed me the nabemono she cooked Wolverine when they were there.
But the rest? How did they make a cool arc so uncool?
I mean, Japan is just cool. I don't know how you mess up Japan. They even go to a love hotel and it's not nearly as funny and awkward and 'WTF, Japan?' as it should be. There is talk of honor, but, I think, ultimately, it's hollow....particularly for the one person it should never be: Wolverine.
Shawn, half way through the film, turned to me and said, "They're making Wolverine nothing more than a brutish thug." Casual fans of Wolverine might say, "And?" Isn't that his character? No, it's really not, nor has it ever been. Shawn is a much, MUCH bigger Wolverine fan than I am, but I can tell you the simple Marvel formula that sums up what Wolverine is about: Wolverine is a beast struggling to be a man.
Wolverine stories, when they're at their best, tap this core issue. I feel like (and I may be misremembering since I, frankly, remember almost nothing,) Claremont's Japan Saga and subsequent Japan arcs deal with this in a unique way--the idea of Wolverine as a ronin, as a masterless samurai. They said those words in "The Wolverine" but they never meant them. The writers of "The Wolverine" seemed to think this meant ronin = wild, lawless thug. When, in fact, ronin should equal a lost soul that desperately craves honor and a code to live by. This is a good analogy for Wolverine's constant struggle to tame his inner demon. Claremont knew that (I think.) Or, if he didn't, subsequent writers who took on the Japan Wolverine really hammered that into my subconscious.
"The Wolverine" screwed this up a number of ways. They did that thing modern superhero movies often get wrong, they focus on the super and not the HERO. At one point Wolverine comes across one of the baddies and LITERALLY thows him over a hotel balcony. We see that he's survived the fall by landing in a pool, but Yukio says, "How did you know that pool was there." Wolverine says, in full-on badass mode, "I didn't."
But, see, right attitude, WRONG MOVE. Of all the Marvel heroes, Wolverine is most-likely-to-thoughtlessly-slaughter, but a good writer makes him suffer those moments because Logan/Wolverine doesn't WANT be only a beast. Similarly, there's a moment when Wolverine sticks his chopsticks upright in the rice bowl and Mariko explains the chopstick taboo to him (which has to do with funerals and being considered bad luck/bad taste), but then he does it again.
I mean, okay, Wolverine is a brute. This is one of the reasons I never entirely cottoned to him as character in the comic books. However, I always felt that Mariko/Japan was one of the things that civilized him in a very sympathetic way. I mean, it's classic, right? The love of a woman tames the wild man. I'm pretty sure that started with Enkidu and is a total trope, but it's a good one... and it works with Wolverine, IMHO, because sometimes the love is slightly more platonic, like his relationship with Kitty Pryde. And with Mariko/Japan there was (at least in my head) this lovely combination of love and HONOR.
The movie didn't seem to even try to go there, which is weird, because it was kind of slow in places. If they were going to skip the character stuff, just SKIP IT, and go right into the ninja pile up, you know?
Ah, well, opportunities lost. Once again, Hollywood neglected to call me. I'm not sure what they're thinking when they don't tap me, honestly.
In other news, if you're curious about the other members of my writers' group, Wyrdsmiths, today on our blog Kelly McCullough is the featured interviewee. Check it out: http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/2014/03/kelly-mccullough-writes-fantasy-science.html
This weekend, Mason spent part of his time at KidCON, which is naomikritzer's gaming gathering of friends. Mason came back really wanting to play Munchkin with us. We have a basic set, and I've now been tasked to pick up a booster packs, if they have them, at MarsCON. It was, admittedly, a lot of fun and totally got me jonesing for my RPGing days. And Mason is the kind of person--not unlike myself--who actually ENJOYS hearing the tales of campaigns past, so I got to tell him about Fred Fumble, the Moon-Moon of the elf world, who routinely stumbled into his campaign mates and did THEM damage during a fight. Fred's other name could have been Friendly Fire Fred.
It makes me wonder.... am I still one phone call away from a game? If I asked around, could I find a D&D/RPG going down RIGHT NOW to hook up with???
I used to joke that RPGs were my drug of choice, because if you go down the "Are you an Alcoholic/Drug Addict?" AA/NA pamphlet check list, "Do you have a hidden stash?" etc., my answers were often YES, if bent to include words like "of dice" or similar. Do you think about gaming when you're not gaming? OMG YES. Do you schedule your life/change plans with others so you can game? OMG YES. Have you ever skipped work to game? OMG YES. The big one was always, "Could you get your drug of choice with one phone call/within the hour?"
Could I? I used to be able to. I had at least two friends on speed dial that were GMs who I probably could have talked into gathering something RIGHT NOW. Actually, I bet I could... I still know gamers and their husbands/partners.
The other thing we did over the weekend was finally watch "The Wolverine." True confession time: I can't remember every single detail of the Japan Saga. I'm not even sure I ever read the Claremont & Miller original 4(?) issue miniseries in 1982 or if I caught up with Logan and Yukio later when Buscema penciled. I have only the vaguest memories of those issues, and they kind of go like this: Yukio = kick ass; Makoto Mariko = tragic love interest (wife?); Silver Samurai = cool and adamantium. The rest is lost to the annals of time or have been replaced by Bleach trivia.
Even with so little, I still feel like the movie betrayed my SACRED MEMORIES.
I will say, the filming on location, that was beautiful. I wanted to live in all the houses they were in, particularly Mariko's bolthole in Nagasaki. I also wanted her to feed me the nabemono she cooked Wolverine when they were there.
But the rest? How did they make a cool arc so uncool?
I mean, Japan is just cool. I don't know how you mess up Japan. They even go to a love hotel and it's not nearly as funny and awkward and 'WTF, Japan?' as it should be. There is talk of honor, but, I think, ultimately, it's hollow....particularly for the one person it should never be: Wolverine.
Shawn, half way through the film, turned to me and said, "They're making Wolverine nothing more than a brutish thug." Casual fans of Wolverine might say, "And?" Isn't that his character? No, it's really not, nor has it ever been. Shawn is a much, MUCH bigger Wolverine fan than I am, but I can tell you the simple Marvel formula that sums up what Wolverine is about: Wolverine is a beast struggling to be a man.
Wolverine stories, when they're at their best, tap this core issue. I feel like (and I may be misremembering since I, frankly, remember almost nothing,) Claremont's Japan Saga and subsequent Japan arcs deal with this in a unique way--the idea of Wolverine as a ronin, as a masterless samurai. They said those words in "The Wolverine" but they never meant them. The writers of "The Wolverine" seemed to think this meant ronin = wild, lawless thug. When, in fact, ronin should equal a lost soul that desperately craves honor and a code to live by. This is a good analogy for Wolverine's constant struggle to tame his inner demon. Claremont knew that (I think.) Or, if he didn't, subsequent writers who took on the Japan Wolverine really hammered that into my subconscious.
"The Wolverine" screwed this up a number of ways. They did that thing modern superhero movies often get wrong, they focus on the super and not the HERO. At one point Wolverine comes across one of the baddies and LITERALLY thows him over a hotel balcony. We see that he's survived the fall by landing in a pool, but Yukio says, "How did you know that pool was there." Wolverine says, in full-on badass mode, "I didn't."
But, see, right attitude, WRONG MOVE. Of all the Marvel heroes, Wolverine is most-likely-to-thoughtlessly-slaughter, but a good writer makes him suffer those moments because Logan/Wolverine doesn't WANT be only a beast. Similarly, there's a moment when Wolverine sticks his chopsticks upright in the rice bowl and Mariko explains the chopstick taboo to him (which has to do with funerals and being considered bad luck/bad taste), but then he does it again.
I mean, okay, Wolverine is a brute. This is one of the reasons I never entirely cottoned to him as character in the comic books. However, I always felt that Mariko/Japan was one of the things that civilized him in a very sympathetic way. I mean, it's classic, right? The love of a woman tames the wild man. I'm pretty sure that started with Enkidu and is a total trope, but it's a good one... and it works with Wolverine, IMHO, because sometimes the love is slightly more platonic, like his relationship with Kitty Pryde. And with Mariko/Japan there was (at least in my head) this lovely combination of love and HONOR.
The movie didn't seem to even try to go there, which is weird, because it was kind of slow in places. If they were going to skip the character stuff, just SKIP IT, and go right into the ninja pile up, you know?
Ah, well, opportunities lost. Once again, Hollywood neglected to call me. I'm not sure what they're thinking when they don't tap me, honestly.
In other news, if you're curious about the other members of my writers' group, Wyrdsmiths, today on our blog Kelly McCullough is the featured interviewee. Check it out: http://wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/2014/03/kelly-mccullough-writes-fantasy-science.html