Eldritch Ætherium II

"Welcome to the Lost Road across the Empire of the Daggers of the Dead"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

One thing I mentioned back on volume I of this mix was that most of the music there came from just a few sources: those first albums I discovered which were specifically designed for D&D or other TTRPG gaming.  Another thing I mentioned was that gaming music is much easier to find these days, primarily due to the explosion of actual play D&D shows.  I still have a great fondness for the journey I put together on volume I, but in many ways volume II is the better set just because I had so much more variety to draw from.

Of course, many things are the same: Midnight Syndicate and the Shards of Eberron album are back, as are zero-project and Nox Arcana, and there’s a Renn-Faire-sounding bridge from Dead Can Dance.  Still nothing with any real vocals to speak of, so we’ve got another volume title cobbled together out of song titles, and once again I’ve tried to arrange the tracks so as to suggest an adventurous journey.  But there are differences as well: we stray from Midnight Syndicate’s Dungeons & Dragons album for the firs time, for instance, and Shards and zero-project give us one fewer track each.  And no V Shane this time around: oh, I’m sure we’ll see him again eventually, but there were just many better options this time around.

Part of that is because I discovered shows like The Adventure Zone and Critical Role.  The former mostly features music composed by Griffin McElroy, a lot of which is synthy and yet still works in a fantasy setting.  However, it is Australian musician (and also a fan of the show) Rachel Rose Mitchell who provides our TAZ track here: it’s the iconic “Voidfish (Plural),” where she takes a relatively simple tune from Griffin and elevates it to something ethereal and wondrous.  But it was really CR that gave me the biggest push musically: “Welcome to Wildemount,” an utterly amazing track by Irish PhD student (in music composition) Colm McGuinness is the song they play during their breaks, and “Elmshore” (from the videogame Pillars of Eternity) is one of Matt Mercer’s favorite tracks to play during quiet moments of the game.  And, once I started searching for music related to Critical Role, I found more tracks by Colm McGuinness, as well as some by Ian Peter Fisher.  McGuinness is one of those artists who plays all the instruments himself and then mixes them all together to form tracks that sound like they were produced by a full orchestra.  Fisher is a bit of a traditional electronic composer, and I suspect that he’s merely renamed some of his compositions to use Critial Role placenames,¹ which no doubt increased his visibility; still, that doesn’t mean the tracks aren’t fantastic.  The explosion of popularity for D&D also means that even more people are explicitly writing music to game to, such as Adrian von Ziegler, whose Bandcamp page contains hundreds of such tracks.  V Shane has a lot of competition these days.

I was also inspired to branch out into other cinematic music.  I’ve included here selections from The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and the televison show Grimm.  Howard Shore’s score for the first of these has a tendency to slide into the operatic,² but there are some good choices; the score for the last of these (by moderately well known composer Richard Marvin³) has just a very few gems among a plethora of decidedly average television background pieces.  On the other hand, the problem with Ramin Djawadi’s excellent Game of Thrones music is just that it’s too iconic: I’m taking a risk here with the main GoT theme (as I’m doing with the main Grimm theme, and the well-known-to-CR-fans “Welcome to Wildemount”) that listeners will be jarred out of this journey and into other worlds, if they’re at all familiar with the originating shows.  But I’m hoping that I’ve managed to recontextualize the tracks, at least partially; you, the listener, will have to be the judge.

For other cinematic choices, I’ve picked a track from Epic Soul Factory as well as another pick from the orchestral remix of Legend of Zelda songs.  We last saw ESF on Mystical Memoriam, where I discussed their cinematic music as possibly being a portfolio for soundtrack composing; this track (“The Lost World”) is an obvious nod to Jurassic Park.  As for the 25th anniversay Legend of Zelda CD, there’s something about giving the full orchestral treatment to a Ninentendo soundtrack that just gives it a depth that is nearly breathtaking.

The journey here is titled in a similarly whimsical fashion to our first volume; this title didn’t come out to be quite as long, but you can expect future volumes to get longer and longer to the point of silliness.  Or even more sillierness, as the case may be.  I’ve always loved the way “Welcome to Wildemount” just explodes into being, so it was the natural choice for an opener, unrolling the promise of fantastical vistas before our eyes.  From there, we begin traveling to “The Lost World,” perhaps camping overnight where friendly natives play us the local folk tune “Kecharitomene.” Then, early in the predawn light, we set off on “The Road to Zadash,” arriving finally on the quiet and mystical “Elmshore,” where something wondrous seems just around the corner.  After another fiddle-laced interlude (“Mephisto”), we cautiously enter into an expedition “Across the Talenta Plains,” a tense and exotic affair where danger seems imminent even as we marvel at outposts with many strange wares.

Then we get to our first real battle, providing us with some “Alternative Therapy.” Then a quiet, restful moment (“Kamimukae”) bridges the conflict with the arrival at “The Age of the Empire,” which seeks to impress us with its military might.  But we move on from there to “The Blooming Grove,” an enchanted place which is merely a “Prelude” to the barren, wintry “Structure.” But this is where we learn “How to Kill an Ogre,” which starts out soft and slow and eventually builds to a confrontation with the “Orc Hunters of the Shadow Marches.” Of course, that just leads to a stealthy flight and explosive encounter “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony.” But then, from the darkness, a light appears: the kaleidoscopic pulsing of “Voidfish (Plural)” that lead us “Aboard the Stormcrow,” where the dark, echoey strains signal an uncomfortable journey into more danger, which is brief but explosive (Grimm’s “Main Title”).

The cello-fueled calm “Before the Storm” is dramatic and uplifting, but then the celloes turn dark and take us across more sweeping vistas (Game of Throne’s “Main Title).  But it’s the martial march across “The Devil’s Daggers” to fight an “Army of the Dead” that is the true climax of our adventure.  After some quiet reflection on “The Final Battle,” the “Ballad of the Goddess” provides an uplifting and emotional release, until our next adventure.

Eldritch Ætherium II
[ Welcome to the Lost Road across the Empire of the Daggers of the Dead ]

“Welcome to Wildemount” by Colm McGuinness [Single]
“The Lost World” by Epic Soul Factory, off Xpansion Edition
“Kecharitomene” by Loreena McKennitt, off An Ancient Muse
“The Road to Zadash” by Ian Peter Fisher [Single]
“Elmshore” by Justin Bell, off Pillars of Eternity [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Mephisto” by Dead Can Dance, off Aion
“Across the Talenta Plains” by David P. Davidson, off Shards of Eberron [RPG Soundtrack]
“Alternative Therapy” by Midnight Syndicate, off Gates of Delirium
“Kamimukae” by Faith and the Muse, off :ankoku butoh:
“The Age of the Empire” by zero-project, off Fairytale 2
“The Blooming Grove” by Ian Peter Fisher [Single]
“Prelude” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“Structure” by Love Is Colder Than Death, off Teignmouth
“Game Ogre: How to Kill an Ogre” by Richard Marvin, off Grimm: Seasons 1 & 2 [Soundtrack]
“Orc Hunters of the Shadow Marches” by David P. Davidson, off Shards of Eberron [RPG Soundtrack]
“At the Sign of the Prancing Pony” by Howard Shore, off The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [Soundtrack]
“Voidfish (Plural)” by Rachel Rose Mitchell [Single]
“Aboard the Stormcrow” by Adrian von Ziegler, off Fable
“GRIMM: Main Title (Season 2)” by Richard Marvin, off Grimm: Seasons 1 & 2 [Soundtrack]
“Before the Storm” by Colm McGuinness [Single]
“Main Title” by Ramin Djawadi, off Game of Thrones: Music from the HBO Series [Soundtrack]
“The Devil's Daggers” by Nox Arcana, off Carnival of Lost Souls
“Army of the Dead” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“The Final Battle” by Dark Sanctuary, off Royaume Mélancolique
“Ballad of the Goddess from Skyward Sword” by Koji Kondo [Single]

Total:  25 tracks,  79:31

(Note that there a number of links to YouTube videos this time around; there’s just several tracks here where that’s the only place you can find them.)

As far as the unlikely candidates go, I was very pleased to find quite a few tracks that, while not designed for use in gaming or as cinematic backdrops at all, they just seemed to work perfectly here.  The dark neoclassical songs of Dark Sanctuary⁴ are a natural fit, and “The Final Battle” provides just enough Renaissance feel to work well here.  Goth masters Faith and the Muse often provide useful little bridges, such as the one I used on Fulminant Cadenza I,⁵ and “Kamimukae” is no exception: it’s a contemplative, string-driven piece that abuts perfectly up against the more expansive selection from zero-project.  Love Is Colder Than Death is a German darkwave band (named after a German film) who, just as their name suggests, produce wintry, goth-infused ambient and ethereal; “Structure” is one of the tunes that most epitomizes their sound.

But the real find here was realizing that when Canadian dreampop virtuoso Loreena McKennitt produces an instrumental track, it inevitably sounds like it belongs on the soundtrack of a fantasy film.  My first pick of hers, “Kecharitomene” is a mostly string-based track (Discogs tells me that it’s actually not a fiddle, but rather a hurdy-gurdy), with some tablas for percussion, and some sort of piping.  The combination is half Romany, half Arabic, and half Celtic.  Best yet, it starts out very sedately, but each round gets a bit louder and more dramatic, until the penultimate one, which easily conjures images of frenzied dancing around a campfire, and then slides effortlessly back into the original slow burn, which are now the dying embers.  It’s a beautfiul track that fits gorgeously between the opening dramatics of “Welcome to Wildemount” and “The Lost World” and the mystical beauty of “The Road to Zadash” and “Elmshore.” I suspect we’ll see a selection from McKennitt on every volume of this mix from here on out.

Next time, it’s time to get to back that upbeat brass that kicks so much ass.

⇐ Eldritch Ætherium I

Eldritch Ætherium III ⇒

__________

1 For instance, you might find the same song of his with two different names, one of which contains the CR reference, and the other of which has a generic name such as “Fantasty Travel Theme.”

2 Specifically, that Carmina Burana/The Da Vinci Code territory that we talked about last time.

3 Marvin also scored Six Feet Under, one of the early triumphs of showrunner Alan Ball.

4 First encountered on Shadowfall Equinox II.

5 For a full-length demonstration of their prowess, see Penumbral Phosphorescence.

Isolation Report, Week #37

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

This week (I think—time is still a bit mushy here in quarantine land) Biden said he wouldn’t personally pursue prosecuting Trump’s crimes (to be fair, he did graciously allow that others might do so).  I 100% expected this, of course, but it still pisses me off.  Democrats always do this.  They try to take the high ground, and the Republicans eat their lunch.

There are two very important reasons which this more than a terrible decision: it’s just plain dumb.  The first reason is a strategic one.  The Republicans control over half of many of our government institutions, even though they represent far less than half the population.  In fact, the Republican party is now in third place, behind both Democrats and independents.  Part of that is because the Democrats suck, of course.  But the point is, being less than 30% of the country doesn’t keep them from controlling at least half of everything.  Why?  Well, they’re smarter than the Decmocrats, and they’re far more ruthless.  To have proof of crimes committed by a political opponent and not pursue prosecution for them?  There’s no universe in which Republicans would do this ... hell, they don’t even really need proof to pursue prosecution against opponents.  They sort of do it on principle.  And the problem is this: even if the Democrats decide that they don’t want to be as ruthless as the Repubs (although, counterpoint: how’s that working out for ya, Dems?), they at least have to be as smart.  Letting Trump leave the White House and doing nothing to address the many illegal acts he’s perpetrated is basically rolling over and showing your belly to the Republican party.  Do you imagine that they’re going to feel bad and just leave you alone?  ‘Cause, I’m here to tell you, they’re just going to disembowel you and leave you to rot.

But above and beyond the stupidity, there’s a bigger moral issue here.  Trump is a man who has never faced any consequences in his life.  Susan Collins of Maine (who managed to win her re-election bid despite this amazing bit of doublespeak) said that Trump’s impeachment taught him “a pretty big lesson”: yeah, and that lesson was, do whatever the fuck you want.  There are no consequences.  There were no consequences when you were mean to people, there were no consequences when you cheated people, there were no consequences when you dodged your military service, there were no consequences when you siphoned so much money off your businesses that even your casinos failed, and, now that you’ve taken graft and corruption and nepotism to a national scale, you know what?  Still no consequences.  But once you leave office ... then there will be no consequences, apparently.  Because that’s the American Way: petty criminals get locked up for years; really big criminals get supported by politicians using phrases like “too big to fail” and “we just want to move on.” Democrats, think carefully: is this really the message you want to send to people?  Do whatever you want, we don’t care, we just want to move on?

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve fully predicted this from the beginning.  Trump will never spend a single day in jail, and probably not even a single day in court (nearly an exact quote from a previous virus isolation report).  Still, this is one of those times when I’d be overjoyed to be proven wrong.  Prove me wrong, Dems.  I’m begging you.

Meanwhile, the virus is not still raging: it’s actually getting worse.  I envy you people that are experiencing a second or third wave: for us here it’s all one big wave ... we haven’t left the house for anything significant for the better part of a year, and I would be absolutely stunned if there is not a “virus isolation report week 52” in my not-too-distant future.  Oh, sure: there’s vaccines out there, but even the folks on television who are normally all about letting big pharma inject them with anything at all as long as it has the “V” word stamped on it are saying that maybe it would be a good idea to wait for some larger trials, for some studies for side effects, for some independent verification.  Because, you know, as deadly as this virus is, it isn’t the most deadly thing you could have in your body: it is still possible for the cure to be worse than the disease.  As much as I hate being stuck inside, I think I’ll personally wait for a pretty wide concensus on safety for anything I want to inject into my children.  And, unfortunately, that just takes time.  There’s only some much you can rush it before you just end up with untrustworthy results and you’re back where you started.  So, while multiple vaccines are certainly welcome news, it’s the beginning of the next phase of waiting, not the end.

So, we soldier on, isolated for Thanksgiving, isolated for Christmas, isolated for New Year’s—although, to be fair, we typically spend those holidays by ourselves anyway.  There are 5 of us (counting only the humans), and we’re plenty capable of generating sufficient family drama without inviting extended family to help with that.  There are some parties that we would normally attend that we likely won’t get to (unless perhaps there are some smaller versions within our personal social bubble), but not a whole lot will change.  But, I gotta tell you, I miss going to out to sit down in a restaurant.  I miss going to work and seeing my coworkers.  I miss playing hooky from work and sneaking off with my family to the occasional museum or zoo or aquarium.  I miss going to the comic book and gaming stores, and to the movies, as rare as that was for us even before the pandemic.  When I do go out, I look at the retail locations that have closed, and I realize that even once things are “back to normal,” they won’t be normal.  And I’m bummed.

But surviving.

D&D and Me: Part 8 (Resurgence of the Game)

[This is the eighth post in a new series.  You may want to begin at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

[Last time, I talked about playing with my children in the long years between D&D 3e and its newest edition: 5e.]

Dungeons and Dragons is currently undergoing an explosion of popularity that, to many of us old-school D&D nerds, is nigh on incomprehensible.  There are many competing theories on why that is, but (as befits a believer in balance and paradox) I naturally believe that they’re all true at once.  That is, it’s not any one reason, but rather the confluence of all the factors that are fortuitously aligning right now.  And there’s a whole of reasons that people are putting out there, but I think we can discard some of the minor ones, and group all the rest into 3 broad categories.

When D&D was fresh and new, parents didn’t understand it, so they did what parents do with everything that their children start to become obsessed with: they blamed it for all their kids’ troubles.  Before it was D&D, it was heavy metal music, and before that it was television, and before that it was rock-and-roll, and before that it was comic books, and before that it was cars and motorcycles, and before that it was books.  After D&D’s time under the magnifying glass was done, parents moved on to blaming videogames and then just screens in general.  Of course most of us are smart enough to know that eventually there will come a time when parents will beg their kids to spend time with screens, just like we now beg our children to spend more time with the same books that our however-many-great-grandparents were told to “put that down and get your butt outside to play!” Much is made of the period of D&D history that, in retrospect, we refer to as “the Satanic Panic,” but honestly it was no different from anything else kids get obsessed with.

But the main thing to note here is that, while the parents were decrying the game and claiming it was a gateway to real witchcraft and demon worship, their kids were loving it, and finding that it opened the doorways into more imaginative worlds than anything else they’d experienced before.  And while perhaps only a small percentage of those children would grow up to become authors, and movie makers, and television show creators, enough kids were playing D&D that even a small percentage was significant.  Big reason #1 why D&D is enjoying this amazing resurgence of popularity right now is simply that right now is when the generation raised on D&D is hitting its creative peak.  They are producing The Big Bang Theory and Community and The Dresden Files and, most significantly, Stranger Things.  Even in shows where D&D just gets a casual mention (say, iZombie, where one episode has detective Babineaux going undercover into a D&D group to solve a murder, hating every second of being immersed in “this nerd shit”), these days that mention is almost always positive (e.g. Babineaux eventually finds himself addicted to the game and ends up playing it in several later episodes).  Major celebrities (like Vin Diesel and Stephen Colbert) have come out as fans, while some slightly lesser known folks (like Deborah Ann Woll and Matthew Lillard) are out-and-out starting to refocus their careers onto D&D playing and/or merchandising.  And this happened fairly quickly: less than 20 years ago, “playing D&D” was included on lists in women’s magazines of things to watch out for in a prospective mate.  But, over the past decade, D&D has begun to instill a measure of nerd cred that is hard to come by otherwise, and being a nerd—of any gender—is suddenly cool.  Why?  Primarily because the media portrayals of nerd-dom have changed, and that’s primarily because the nerds are now in charge of those media portrayals.

But let’s not overlook the impact of D&D 5e either.  4e was a failure: although neither Wizards of the Coast (owners of D&D) nor their parent company Hasbro, nor Paizo (publishers of Pathfinder) ever officially released sales numbers, it was an open secret, going by sales numbers that could be tracked (e.g. on Amazon) that Pathfinder was eating 4e’s lunch.  For the first time, even if only briefly, D&D was not the best selling TTRPG.  And Wizards knew it, and they knew they had to fix it, and they were not shy about it.  They completely stole Paizo’s idea of having a public playtest, and they set out to research what were the best parts of all the previous editions so they could Frankenstein them into one game.  Critics will say they succeeded, producing what many refer to “everyone’s second favorite edition of D&D.” But fans, on the other hand, will say they succeeded: D&D 5e is “just the best bits” from all the other editions (yes, even 4e), with all the annoying crap left behind.

Now, mostly when people talk about this, they’re talking about the rules.  And, sure: every edition has had some good rules, and plenty of stinkers, and having a ruleset that is only the best bits is pretty frigging awesome.  But there’s way more than just rules going on here.  First off, 4e was the first time that anyone producing a new D&D had tried to appeal to non-RPG players.  See, 2e was for all the people who liked 1e but thought it could be better, and 3e was for all the people who liked 2e but thought it could be better.  But producing a product that appeals to only that subsegment of your market that thinks your product could use some improvement will, by defintion, produce a smaller and smaller market segment for each edition.  At some point you gotta figure out how to bring in new players.  3e tried to do that, a little, by using the Open Gaming License to get all the former competitors to D&D to make content for D&D, and that worked, a bit.  4e tried to do it by incorporating many of the lessons that MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft—who, let’s be honest, pretty much owed their existence to D&D in the first place—were innovating on, such as roles within the party (tank, striker, controller, leader), balancing factors such as DPS¹ and healing, etc.  This was far bolder, but it had significant downsides: the existing players who didn’t care for MMORPGs certainly weren’t attracted, and D&D was never going to be a better MMORPG than an actual MMORPG, so even the MMORPG fans were limited in their enthusiasm.  But 5e took a different approach: stop trying to make D&D something different ... just make it friggin’ easier to learn.  The biggest barrier to starting to play D&D is not what the game is: what the game is is a fantasy world where you are the hero and you can do (or at least attempt) any action you can imagine.  That pretty much sells itself.  No, the barrier to starting to play D&D is the baroque ruleset.  Oh, sure: it’s complex for very good reasons—it’s attempting to model all of a reality, and it’s a reality that has to include magic and dragons and all sorts of stuff physics can just ignore—but the D&D newbie doesn’t care about all that.  They just care that trying to figure out how to play this stupid game involves reading hundreds of pages of rules and more math than they’ve had to deal with since high school.  5e made all that much simpler.  Now, don’t get me wrong: 5e is not a simple game, by any means ... compared to sitting down to learn the rules of Sorry! or even Monopoly, D&D requires way more mental load.  But it’s much simpler than ever before, and that’s significant.

And one more really important thing about the new edition of D&D: for the first time, there was an openly gay man in the lead designer spot.  And, in my opinion, that’s the main reason that D&D has become so much more inclusive.  Gone are the chainmail bikinis and outright topless female monsters.  Gone are assumptions that all PCs will be male, or even either male or female.  NPCs are protrayed as male, female, non-binary, straight, gay, trans, bi, and asexual.  Racial representation has come a long way as well, although certainly there’s still more progress to be made there.  But for the first time a new edition of D&D didn’t just welcome in straight white dudes: it welcomed everyone.

The final big reason that D&D has become a cultural phenomenon in recent years—and many would argue the most important one—is the rise of Internet streaming.  YouTube, Twitch, podcasts ... suddenly it’s easier than ever for anyone to put out some sort of media of them doing things they like and other people with similar interests can find them.  More importantly, people can now discover new interests by watching or listening to things online.  This has led to an explosion of all sorts of things: my little girl doesn’t dig the idea of wearing make-up because anyone in her family taught her about make-up: she’s fascinated by it because she watches make-up tutorials on YouTube.  Do you want to watch videos of people making up weird dances?  You can do that.  Do you want to watch videos of people making bad “puppet” shows by just moving their stuffed animals around and making them talk?  No problem.  And, if you want to watch videos of people playing games, you have an amazing plethora of choices.

Now, I have to admit that I’ve always felt that watching other people have fun playing games was kind of stupid.  Why would I watch someone play a videogame, let’s say, when I could just play the damned game myself?  But of course, by that logic, the entire sports industry becomes meaningless: there’s literally a multi-billion-dollar business in having people play games so other people will watch them.  But I think the sports analogy is actually kind of instructive here: sure, watching an NBA game can be pretty damned exciting, but that doesn’t mean that watching any random game of people playing basketball will be fun.  There are many factors to consider: the talent of the players, the production value of the presentation, the knowledge of the commentators, and so on.  And so, eventually, I came to realize that I didn’t actually not like watching all people play videogames, I just didn’t like watching most people play videogames.  And the person who changed it all for me was Jacksepticeye.  I happened to wander through the room when one of my kids was watching him play ... hell, I don’t even remember what game it was, but the guy was hilarious.  He wasn’t trying to make me love the game, he wasn’t trying to make fun of the game, he wasn’t trying to do some artsy or clever commentary on the game: he was just playing the game, and having fun, and being damned entertaining while doing it.  Since then, I’ve found a few other “let’s play”² YouTubers who are pretty good, though I suspect Jacksepticeye may still be the best.

And, at some point, it naturally occurred to me that, if I could enjoy watching someone else play a videogame, when I don’t even like videogames all that much, surely I could enjoy watching someone play D&D, which I absolutely adore.  And, as it happens, there are a lot of choices out there, just like there are a lot of choices for the videogame genre.  In fact, the whole streaming thing (both for D&D and every other topic) has a major downside of making it so easy for people to create content that, at this point, it can be very difficult to pick out the gems from all the dross.  But there really are some gems out there, let me tell you.  For best all around video production plus some amazing acting, I think the prize has to go to Relics and Rarities; if you prefer your streaming in podcast form, it’s really tough to beat the OG Adventure Zone.  But of course the elephant in the room is Critical Role.

If you’re not familiar with Crtical Role, it’s a bit difficult to describe just how big it is.  It’s natural for us to think that, if we’ve never heard of a thing before, it can’t be but so big ... right?  Let me see if I can illustrate why you’re wrong about that with 2 little anecdotes.

D&D has become so popular lately that it’s very common for the D&D Player’s Handbook³ to be Amazon’s #1 best seller in not only the “fantay roleplaying books” category, but even in the entire “fantasy books” category, at least for short stints.  And this has happened several times through the past few years.  Well, just before the pandemic really got under way this year, the D&D folks and the Critical Role folks got together to produce what’s called a “campaign setting” for the current season of Critical Role.⁴  For some period of time earlier this year, the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount was not the best selling book in fantasy roleplaying, nor even the best selling book in fantasy: it was the best selling book on all of Amazon.  Period.  Before it was even released.  How can that be, you wonder?  How can there be more people buying Critical Role D&D books than buying D&D itself?  Because Critial Role has gained an appeal far beyond just D&D players, and even far beyond just this country.  The CR cast members have done conventions, with or without live shows, in LA, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, Austin, San Diego, the UK, Australia, Sweden, and many more, and everywhere they go, they draw a huge crowd.

Okay, last little Critical Role story.  The first season of Critical Role ended when everyone’s character got all the way to 20th level; they’d been playing for about 5 years at that point (the last half of that online) and were ready to start over with new characters.  But they thought they still had more stories to tell about their original characters: after all, what about those first 2½ years before the stream started?  Surely fans would love to hear some of those stories.  Since the CR cast is composed entirely of professional voice actors, it only seemed natural to do it in animated form: they’d hire an animation studio, voice all their own characters, maybe hire some of their other voice actor friends to chip in too ... it would be amazing.  But no studio was interested in such a thing: make a show out of your home D&D game?  Crazy talk!  So CR did what all creators in that situation do these days: they went to Kickstarter.  Just to fund a one hour special, they figured they needed $750K—animation is expensive!—and they figured it was a big ask, but, hey: if things went well, maybe they could do a sequel.  So they notified all their fans to be ready and they put up a 45-day Kickstarter campaign to raise ¾ of a million dollars.  They hit their goal in under 45 minutes.  They blew through every stretch goal they’d thought of ahead of time in the first 24 hours.  The one-shot special turned into a 12-episode series, which would eventually be picked up by Amazon and is already greenlit for season 2.  Because, you see, by the time the 45 days were over, they had raised over eleven million dollars, making them then (and still, I believe) the highest-grossing campgaign in Kickstarter history for the entertainment category.⁵  Suddenly this little D&D-based company was being interviewed not just by Wired and Syfy, but by Forbes and Fortune.  This is what streaming has done for the hobby.

And all these things helped reignite my personal spark as well: I was excited to try out the new edition, I was encouraged by all the new postive media portrayals, and I got really sucked in to a number of these streaming D&D shows, including all the ones I mentioned above, plus several others.  They’re not all great, by any means, but the ones that are great are just astounding.  I have always believed that roleplaying is storytelling, and here’s a huge crop of people playing a new edition of the game who all believe it too ... and better yet, are using the hobby as a brand new medium to tell some exciting new stories.

Next time we’ll examine the origins and inspirations of the Family Campaign, which will take us right up to the present day.

__________

1 That’s “damage per second,” if you don’t speak MMORPG.

2 For some reason, videos where you watch other people play games, especially videogames, are called “let’s play” videos.  Still not sure what the origin of this curious phrase is.

3 That’s the most important rulebook—the one that every player needs.  Most of the other books only the DM needs.

4 A campaign setting is a description of a fantasy world so that you can set your D&D games in that world.  Most D&D campaign settings are worlds original to D&D, but it’s not unheard of to take an existing property and turn it into a D&D setting.  For instance, Lankhmar.

5 Which record they took from the MST3K reboot, who in turn took it from the Veronica Mars movie.

Isolation Report, Week #35

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, election day here in the US is finally behind us.  It was quite a stressful time, even though things played out almost exactly as was predicted.  Oh, sure, people are belly-aching about the polls being wrong, but all the polls said was that there was a 90% chance that Biden would win, and he did.  The polls never claimed it wouldn’t be a close race.  We read that into the polls.  We humans are shitty at understanding probabilities, and somehow we imagine that 90% means it’ll be a walk in the park, when all it really means is that, if you do it 10 times, you’ll only lose once.  And everything else was spot on: that the count would take several days to complete, that we wouldn’t know the winner right away or for days, that Trump would be ahead on the night of, and that Biden would close the gap as more and more mail-in ballots were counted.  All of that happened exactly like pretty much everyone said it would ... but, I gotta tell ya: there’s a big difference between intellectually accepting those things to be true and living through them.  Even though every single event happened exactly as predicted, we still sat around biting our nails, unsure of how it would all come out.  Blame 2016 for that: our capacity to dare to hope has been severely curtailed.  But now that phase is over: Biden won the popular vote, as almost everyone knew he would, and he even won the electoral college, as most said he would, but it was a nail-biter all the same.  Next up: can he win all the court cases?  And, assuming he does so, can he successfully evict Trump from the White House?  Neither of those is assured, although I think he has a pretty good shot at the second one if he can manage the first.

Trump (and/or his people) have done an amazing job of setting up the Supreme Court to support him in whatever cockamamie case he brings to have the election overturned.  Right now there are 6 conservative justices and only 3 liberal ones (and all the moderates have been skillfully excised).  If such a case comes before the current court, I think we can absolutely count on the 3 liberals (Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) to vote against such a thing, and I think we can count on the two most recent Trump disasters—being, as they are, utterly unqualified to do much of anything else—to vote for him, and we can probably also throw in Thomas, who never met an argument he couldn’t settle in favor of the most right-leaning option he could find.  That leaves Chief Justice Roberts, Alito, and Gorsuch (the first Trump nomination).  Two of those three would have to vote to do the right thing, and, while all 3 are conservative, all 3 are also known for breaking ranks on some important issues: none of them are puppets, in other words.  So there’s a decent shot.

Then the trick will be to attempt to undo all the damage that Trump has caused, and I’m of mixed emotions about the ability of Biden and his team to accompllish that.  In case I’ve not been clear, I’m mostly liberal, and almost entirely progressive, but I am not a Democrat.  The Democrats are exactly half of what’s wrong with the American political system, and I have very little faith in their desire to effect real change, much less their ability to do so.  It’s looking more and more like they will not have the Senate on their side to do that either, and that makes it all the more up in the air.  Best case scenario we end up with a perfectly split Senate, which means Kamala gets to cast any tie-breaking votes, but that’s only if everyone votes along strict party lines, which, you know, they don’t, always.  There are several Democrats who are way more conservative than the majority, and a few Republicans who are more liberal than the majority.  One senator could conceivably hold up legislation for everyone if they demand something extra for their state, or just need to get their ego stroked.

So it’s by no means a sure thing that anythihng useful (much less exciting) will get done.  But at least it (probably) won’t get worse, which is the main thing I feared from a Trump re-election.  I said in a Facebook post, and I will repeat it here: people crying doom and destruction over Biden becoming president are only guessing at what he’ll do, or in some cases (but not that many) assuming that he will do what he says he will.  In neither case are they likely correct.  On the other hand, we already seen what Trump will do.  The damage is pretty bad: the environment has suffered setbacks that my children will have to deal with for years, the education system, park system, and post office will likely take years if not decades to recover, and, mostly significantly, the Supreme Court is now poised to take away my children’s rights to reproductive freedom, marriage equality, and employment protections.  These are not things I think Trump may do ... this is what he’s done thus far.  And, with Bill Barr behind him, telling him that Article II of the Constitution says he can do whatever he likes, it’s not like it would have gotten any better.  So I’m happy Trump lost and probably—hopefully—won’t be President again, but I can’t say I’m all that thrilled that Biden won.

My birthday was two days after election day, and my father called me supposedly to wish me a happy birthday.  But mostly just to yell at me for supporting the socialist takeover of our country.  The most amusing part of the call was when he called me out for not knowing what the Democratic platform was.  I responded by asking him if he knew what the Republican platform was.  “We’re not talking about the Republicans!” he hedged.

Of course, it’s not particularly surprising that my father knew the Democratic platform but not the Republican one, nor that I knew the Republican one but not the Democratic one.  Because my father didn’t really vote for Trump (who he describes as “an idiot”): he was just voting against Biden.  Likewise, I was voting against Trump (naturally), but I didn’t even have to vote for Biden: since I live in California, I had the luxury of voting for whoever I thought would actually do the best job.  I voted for the Green Party candidate, whose name I didn’t even know before I received my ballot (and didn’t bother to retain after filling it in).  I considered the Libertarian fellow as well, but I actually did read the platforms of all the third party candidates, and the Green Party sounded the most like my own views, so that’s who I voted for.  Of course, the majority of Americans think that a vote for anything other than a Democrat or a Republican is a “wasted vote” ... the Democrats and Republicans have worked together quite effectively to make us all believe that.  And, since we all believe it, it’s true.  So, if I lived in Ohio or Florida or Pennsylvania or Michigan, I would likely have a much tougher choice, but there are some advantages to living in a state where the color on the news maps is known well before the election even starts.  So my father and I voted against rather than voting for, and that’s fine.

My dad tried to explain to me why electing Biden was so bad.  But, other than the obvious assertion that he might die and then “that woman” would be President (oh, the horror!), the best he could come up with was that Biden was going to get rid of the oil companies.  This, of course, is hilarious for a number of reasons:

• It presumes that I believe Biden has enough balls to actually try to take on the oil industry, which I absolutely do not.
• It presumes that, even if he wanted to, he would somehow, as President, have the power to abolish the oil industry, which of course he would not.
• Most ridiculously of all, it presumes that I would have some sort of problem with getting rid of the oil industry.  Being as they are responsible for raking in billions of dollars in profts while paying no taxes (often actually receiving money from the government instead), that they are the primary polluters of the planet, and that they have worked tirelessly to retard our growth into more energy efficient industries (such as by killing the electric car), I would be more likely to dance on the oil industry’s grave than mourn its passing.  But somehow my father missed this memo.

But of course mostly that’s just a smokescreen for my father’s fear that a strong, liberal black woman from California (which is at least four strikes against her in his book) might be President someday.  I sincerely doubt he’s alone in this viewpoint either.  The racists (and sexists, and homophobes, and xenophobes—my father is all of those and more) have been much more comfortable showing themselves over the last 4 years, and I’m sure they’re not looking forward to having to crawl back into their holes again.  Many of them won’t.  And, I know that eventually most of these idiots will die and their minority will actually be small enough to ignore, finally, but it seems to be taking a really long time, and I’m sort of losing my patience.

If Biden does step down for health reasons at some point, Kamala becoming President could be quite a good thing.  I certainly have more faith in her than him for at least trying to get some big changes accomplished.  But I’m not holding my breath.  For the most part, things will go on as they always have ... well, as they used to back in the days before Trump anyway.  Sadly, right now that seems pretty nice.  I hope that doesn’t continue to be the case, because “business as usual” was already pretty shitty, as the continuing instances of police brutality continue to demonstrate, in shocking and tragic ways.  But I guess I can be happy that, while I’m not holding my breath for any real change, I’m no longer holding my breath that we might descend into further chaos either.  It was not particularly pleasant having to hold one’s breath from Tuesday until Saturday, but at least now it’s over.

Probably.

Bleeding Salvador II

"Happy and Dopey and Dirty in Places"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Sometimes second volumes are just part two of the initial mix development of the mix, when I just had way too many ideas to all fit on one volume.¹  Sometimes the first volume was going to be the only volume, so volume II is breaking all new ground.²  Of course, sometimes a mix is right in the middle: with Bleeding Salvador, I had a few tracks left over after volume I, but certainly not enough to make a whole volume II.  So it took a while to accumulate more great tracks with weird, surreal lyrics, but I finally got there.

Returning artists from last volume include the Beautiful South, whose “Woman in the Wall” was our original mix starter, the Cramps, and They Might Be Giants.  The Beautiful South returns with “From Under the Covers,” a lighter tune but still with some great imagery; the Cramps’ “Human Fly” isn’t quite the powerhouse “Goo Goo Muck” was, but still some great lines—e.g. “I got 96 tears in 96 eyes”—and TMBG once again gives us two great tracks: “Boat of Car” and “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Clothes.” They’re both short, so I figured you could handle two.  Especially when they contain such gems as this:

All the people are so happy now
Their heads are cavin’ in;
I’m glad they are a snowman with
Protective rubber skin.

And of course King Missile’s “Part Two” was always going to appear here; the joke on The Way to Salvation was that half the story of “The Boy Who Ate Lasagna and Could Jump Over a Church” appeared on side 1, and you had to wait till side 2 to hear the conclusion.  But I went a step farther and made you wait till volume II to get it.

I felt it very appropriate to kick off this volume of surreal lyrics with perhaps the greatest WTF song of all time: “Hotel California,” by the Eagles.³  The individual members of the Eagles have been asked many times over the past nearly-fifty years what the lyrics of this song actually mean, but all the answers can probably be boiled down to “we were on a lot of drugs back then.” Drugs were likely a factor in our closer as well, although to imagine that Jim Morrison was no more than the sum of all the drugs he consumed would be dangerously short-sighted in my view.  Both “Hotel California” and “Riders on the Storm” have been subject to all sorts of interpretations throughout the years, and they illustrate some of the best characteristics that surreal lyrics can offer.  Different people will always get different things out of them, and be convinced that they “definitely” mean this or that, but you can also just turn your brain off and enjoy them thoroughly without trying to figure them out.

Continuing through the seventies, “The Fat Lady of Limbourg” was pretty damned weird when Brian Eno included it on his second solo album in 1974.⁴  Shivaree’s version, coming along some 30-odd years later, is both less and more strange simultaneously, being a bit more melodic, but also throwing in more random sound effects and giving the whole thing even more of a patina of Twilight Zone (aided immensely by Eno’s lyrics, of course).  A 70s original, Squeeze’s “Cool for Cats” is just an exercise in double entendre and other clever language.  Sung by Chris Difford⁵ in full cockney accent, the lyrics are full of allusions to rhyming slang, old English TV shows, and other Londonisms; it’s probably only truly surreal for us Americans.

Our volume title also comes from the seventies: specifically, 1979, when half of the remnants of 10cc, now renamed Godley & Creme, put out their third studio album, including the ultra-weird opener “An Englishman in New York.”⁶  I know of no other song which so thoroughly embodies the classic line from Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead: “half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn’t mean anything at all.” Is there deeper meaning in Godley’s disturbingly detailed description of a “crucifix clock” in which “two miniature Romans, running on rails, appear every hour and bang in the nails”? how about ”‘Ode to a Burger’ by Keats at his worst”? or “shhh, Howard Johnson is moving his bowels”?  Much like the volume title, most of this song seems like it must mean ... something.  But, what that might be, you really have no idea.

As for other obvious candidates, I’ve always had a soft spot for Michael Penn’s “Brave New World” ever since I first heard it (mostly likely on the Saturday Night Live episode that his brother Sean was hosting).  Besides containing great, bizarre lyrics like this:

Buster and his company look good in black;
They’re looking for a way out of the cul-de-sac:
Tearing through the phone book and the almanac,
They all have dusty noses ’cause they sniff shellack.

it also appeals to the poetry nerd in me for the feat of rhyming across the bridges.⁷  R.E.M.‘s “Swan Swan H” was another obvious choice, starting as it does with “Swan, swan, humminbird, hurrah.  We are all free now.  What noisy cats are we.”⁸  Jane’s Addiction is another band who often uses challenging imagery, though often it’s so buried in hard rockin’ tunes that you don’t notice.  I’ve always loved the spare, stripped-down sound of “Summertime Rolls,” where the opening imagery of falling into a “sea of grass” while children run over you is particularly evocative (another great line is “her nose is painted pepper sunlight”).  I even stole the grass image for a story I wrote once.⁹  Other personal favorites that just had to end up here include “The Morning” by the Call (“I am standing at the edge of my mind; if I look in, I might fall in”) and “Stuart” by the Dead Milkmen (“Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick! Everybody knows the burrow owl lives in a hole in the ground! Why the hell do you think they call it a burrow owl, anyway!?”).  The former is a convoluted song of longing; the latter is a sometimes difficult look at small-minded small-town intolerance that still manages to be funny at times.

Bleeding Salvador II
[ Happy and Dopey and Dirty in Places ]

“Hotel California” by Eagles, off Hotel California
“The Fat Lady of Limbourg” by Shivaree, off Who's Got Trouble?
“Boat of Car” by They Might Be Giants, off They Might Be Giants
“From Under the Covers” by the Beautiful South, off Welcome to the Beautiful South
“An Englishman in New York” by Godley & Creme [Single]
“Cool for Cats” by Squeeze, off Singles: 45's and Under [Compilation]
“The Morning” by the Call, off Reconciled
“Brave New World” by Michael Penn, off March
“Part Two” by King Missile, off The Way to Salvation
“Human Fly” by the Cramps, off Bad Music for Bad People [Compilation]
“Summertime Rolls” by Jane's Addiction, off Nothing's Shocking
“Swan Swan H” by R.E.M., off Lifes Rich Pageant
“Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car” by Iron & Wine, off The Shepherd's Dog
“Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes” by They Might Be Giants, off They Might Be Giants
“JD” by Mocean Worker, off Candygram for Mowo!
“Magic Alex” by the Red Sea Pedestrians, off See Through the Eyes of Osiris!
“Stuart” by the Dead Milkmen, off Beelzebubba
“Harvey” by the Electric Swing Circus, off The Electric Swing Circus
“Riders on the Storm” by the Doors, off L.A. Woman

Total:  19 tracks,  73:03

It’s probably not too much of a stretch to imagine we’d eventually see Iron & Wine here.  When we first saw him on Slithy Toves I, I pointed out that nearly all his songs have quite surreal lyrics; when he resurfaced on Slithy Toves II, I talked about his “juggernaut heart.” Here he gives us a “Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car,” where he reports “I was still a beggar, shaking out my coat among the angry cemetery leaves.” No clue what this one is about, but it’s a beautfiul track.

My all time favorite transition on this mix is from Mocean Worker’s sort-of instrumental “JD” (which just barely missed being slotted onto Cantosphere Eversion) to “Magic Alex” by the Red Sea Pedestrians.  We first saw Mocean Worker (remember: “Mocean” rhymes with “ocean,” thus making the name a pun for “motion worker”) on Salsatic Vibrato V, where I pointed out that it was the moniker of the son of a jazz producer; the father’s initials are “JD,” which I suppose might be a coincidence, but then again probably not.  There aren’t really enough discernible words here to figure out what MW is trying to tell us, but it’s a trippy little bridge nonetheless.  And it flows surprisingly well into alt-klezmer folksters RSP, who here bring us a departure in “Magic Alex,” who they describe as “the Greek wizard of electric paint” and “a real rock gardener, the son of the secret police.” Of course, to be fair, this album (See Through the Eyes of Osiris!) is pretty much a departure from the more straight-ahead-folk of A Lesson in Cartography, which I discovered while searching for updated versions of “Willie the Weeper.”¹⁰  But “Magic Alex,” with its electronic, almost sci-fi, sound effects, is a departure from the departure.

Finally, the most unexpected track here is probably from the Electric Swing Circus, a band I discovered while searching for new (to me) electro-swing for Salsatic Vibrato.¹¹  So it doesn’t seem like they’d be a particularly good fit here, and honestly most of their output isn’t.  But then there’s ... “Harvey.”

If you ask people what the best classic black & white movie of all time is, I’m sure you’ll hear a lot of votes for Casablanca and Citizen Kane, and perhaps a few suggestions of African Queen or Rebecca or The Maltese Falcon or Psycho.  But, for me, it is and will always be Harvey.  Jimmy Stewart is certainly a talented actor, and you may prefer It’s a Wonderful Life or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but for me, those all pale in comparison to Harvey.  Stewart has a mischeivous side that was rarely allowed full reign, but it gets just that in this lovely movie about a man who most consider simple, because he believes he’s constantly being accompanied by a 6’3” invisible rabbit.  The movie is named after the rabbit, not Stewart’s character, and that is significant.  The movie is heartwarming and funny and says a lot about how the “normal” people have a lot to learn from this eccentric man-child and his “imaginary” friend.  Now, there’s actually no indisputable evidence that ESC’s “Harvey” refers to the movie (or perhaps to the play on which it was based), but the fact that Harvey is referred to as a pooka and this beautiful refrain:

So, here’s to you, Harvey,
The weaver of dreams,
The stopper of clocks, the unpicker of seams.
Raise a glass to old Harvey,
Look him straight in the eye:
If you say you can’t see him, you’re living a lie lie lie ...

make it very clear, at least to me.  The idea of an overgrown invisible rabbit as the weaver of dreams, the stopper of clocks, and the unpicker of seams makes real an abstract magick in my brain that makes me relive my enjoyment of this classic film every time I hear it.

Next time we’ll return to the intersection of my music interests and my gaming interests.

⇐ Bleeding Salvador I

Bleeding Salvador III ⇒

__________

1 Prime examples of this would be Smokelit Flashback II and Salsatic Vibrato II.

2 We just saw an example of this last time in this series, with Wisty Mysteria II.

3 It almost made it on volume I, actually, but I felt it would have a bigger impact as the opener to a new volume.

4 This would be post-Roxy-Music, but pre-inventing-ambient.

5 One of only 3 Squeeze singles he sang, as it happens.

6 Not to be confused with the Sting song of the same name; Godley & Creme’s predates Sting’s by nearly a decade.

7 By which I mean, there are 3 verses and 3 bridges, and the first lines of every bridge rhyme with each other, but not with any other lines in the song.

8 And also being from the best R.E.M. album of all time, Lifes Rich Pageant.

9 Another fun fact: I once wrote an English paper in college contrasting the organic imagery and playing with grammar that Farrell and Stipe did in their music.

10 For the record, RSP’s version is pretty damned good.

11 As of this writing, we’re one volume away from seeing ESC on that mix, but we shall get there in the fullness of time, I’m sure.