Joker analysis

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

I finally got around to watching "Joker". I hadn't been keen on seeing it when it came out due to two reasons. One was that the trailers left me utterly cold, and then, after they hit, there was this instantly toxic discourse about it sparked by the director himself in a vainglorious attempt of self-aggrandizing and sparking a sales-boosting controversy. He succeeded in that, I am sad to report. But my wife was in cinema back then and liked the movie, and so we've taken the DVD release as an occasion for a movie night so she can show me the thing.

Tyrion and Cersei, parent ersatz

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Another thing that came to me while listening to NotACast's disection of ACOK Sansa III was the question of how the hell Joffrey could be reigned in by the two misfit siblings if they had actually had more ability for self-reflection and cooperation. It's a long shot, I know, but it reminds me of my BLAP about Tyrion and Tywin getting along. Yes, unlikely, and yes, it would be a different story, but how could they actually go about it if they were so inclined? 

Robb Stark attacks through the Ardennes with elephants

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

Otfried Preußler's time capsule of the "Little Ghost"

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

When I was a kid, I grew up with the children books by German author Otfried Preußler, particularily "The Little Witch", the "Highwayman Hotzenplotz" saga, "Krabat" and "The Little Ghost". These works were written and published mostly in the 1950s to 1970s, so it's safe to assume that my parents grew up with them as well. "The Little Witch" fell out of favor since, but the stories of the highwayman Hotzenplotz and the Little Ghost enjoy a remarkable longevity, spawning reboots even to this day, although they're firmly consigned to kindergarten and lower elementary school kids.

Locke&Key Review

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

Back in December, I wrote a primer on the Locke&Key graphic novels when it was announced that they'd be made into a Netflix series. Said series has no aired in its full batch of 10 episodes, as is custom on Netflix. I watched it completely, and so I feel uniquely qualified to give you a spoiler-free review of it, burning with anticipation as you are. That sentence contained two exaggerations, for those keeping count.

Hyper-capitalism in gaming: a case stuy

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

Some of you may be aware that I'm an avid player of the miniature games "X-Wing" and "Armada", both set in the Star Wars universe, produced by Fantasy Flight Games, and a lot of the board games of the same company as well. The company, founded by Christian T. Petersen in the late 90s, is one of the big success stories of the hobby market and grew into a multi-branched, highly polished operation that brought out great games, had a widely famed consumer service and boosted the hobby market by giving special deals to brick-and-mortar stores at the expense of online distribution and to foster a healthy community and tournament scene. Accordingly, it grew to fascinating size. 

Why Indiana Jones couldn't be made today

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

I'm coming back to thinking about Indiana Jones these days. There are two reasons for this. On the hand, I never quite wrapped my head around the reasons for the failures of "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", and on the other, I'm not entirely sure about the quality of the first three movies in terms of their topical sensibilities. Allow me to explain. 

Musings on Epic: Listbuilding the CR90

After covering the Rebel Transport last time, we're going into their main combat ship this week. The Corvette has two distinct features: it's main weapon is going until Range 4 and is put on side-arcs, and it can Target Lock beyond range 4. This is important, because effects that allow you to lock usually are restricted to range 1-3. I find it harder to maneuver the firing arcs into position with a CR90 than with a Raider; however, the CR90 has an easier time to keep firing once the enemy is past you. Just some things to consider.

Musings on Epic: Listbuilding the GR75

After we established some basics on the mechanics of Epic gaming, I want to finally turn to list building. At first, we'll take a look at a ships available for the Rebel faction (and, by proxy, the Resistance): the GR75 Transport. Be advised that the Resistance has much reduced options in some cases; I will mention this for the categories. For each ship, we shall look at the available upgrades in turn. I will steal a page from the Space Cats Peace Turtles podcast for rating the upgrades and establish tiers, without any specific order within the tiers. We go in descending order from S-Tier to A-Tier over to B-Tier, C-Tier and F-Tier. With all that preliminary stuff out of the way, let's evacuate some bases with the GR75!

A contorted view on "The Rise of Skywalker"

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

I'm in a bit of a conundrum, to be honest. It's well documented that I really, really like "The Last Jedi". Therefore, a movie that sets out to ignore the largest possible amount of storytelling from that movie gives me bad aches. I feel that right now, I'm not able to give "The Rise of Skywalker" a really fair shake and that I need to watch it again with perfect knowledge of what happens in the plot and without any hopes and preconceptions attached to it. For now, the phantom pains are contorting the picture.

Musings about Epic: Action stations!

After we covered the basics of how Wings and Huge Ships actually work, it's time to get down to some more detailed stuff. So, what comes after executing a maneuver? Say it with me: taking an action! Unless you're stressed, overlapping an obstacle etc. of course. Duh, you might say, what about it? Nothing in the rules changes what actions I can take. Wait a bit, I reply. As everything Epic, action selection has to cope with the format.

Musings about Epic: Flying huge ships

Back in X-Wing 1.0, Huge Ships were by generally consensus "not good". One of the reasons for their lackluster performance, aside from the clunkyness of the Epic rules in 1.0 in general, was that they were simply to weak, unable to deal enough damage or generally to do what they were designed to do. In 2.0, this problem has been remedied. Huge Ships perform well enough to be used in battle, and in this article, we'll go into the basics of how this works.

Musing about Epic: Flying in wings

This is the first post in an intended series about the Epic game format of Fantasy Flight Games' "X-Wing Miniatures Game". Your feedback will determine what will become of it, so please, chime in and talk about it!

When you try out the new Epic game format for the first time, the biggest change - apart from the new 500 points limit in standard games - is the mechanic of wings. Wings allow you to move several ships while assigning only one dial, therefore cutting down the time needed to play considerably. Apart from making Epic much more playable than in 1.0, however, wings have several repercussions that one needs to be aware of when you're building your lists and flying them.

Locke&Key: A primer

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

Netflix has announced that they will show a first season for the adaption of the graphic novel "Locke&Key" starting in February. For those unfamiliar with it, "Locke&Key" is a series of six graphic novels (at least in the edition I own) that tell a full story from beginning to end. It's a mild horror-fantasy story.

A review of "Tiamat's Wrath - Book 8 of The Expanse"

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

More nuclear reactors in Westeros

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

Revisiting Fire and Blood

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look! 

As already mentioned in my latest podcast with "The Laws of Ice and Fire", Clint, I used October to reread Fire and Blood for the first time since its arrival. I have been lukewarm on all the fake histories of Westeros, as our previous podcasts (Princess and the Queen, Aegon's Conquest, Rogue Prince, Fire and Blood) indicate, and stayed largely away from the discussion in the fandom. Since it's the only new material that came out these past years, that also meant staying away from a lot of the discussion, period. Now I wanted to see if my opinion changed.

Repairing GOT storylines

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

A lot of people have signed petitions to re-do Season 8 of the hugely successful TV adaption "Game of Thrones". For reasons I can understand but emphatically do not share, they disliked the last batch of episodes and where the series ended up. However, I think these people are mistaken for another reason. The moment where we need to repair storylines is not seasons 7 and 8, which for me set the show on the right track again. If I could have a do-over, I would remake certain storylines from seasons 5 and 6, which for me are where the show really faltered.

How the story of Star Wars changed over time

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look!

There is this weird thing going on regarding the main plot of Star Wars. And when I say "main plot", I mean the movies, just so we're clear on the whole "Extended Universe" nonsense. Look at the prequels, for example. Buckets full of abuse have been heaped on them for their storylines, some rightfully so ("I hate sand"), some less. Sean and I did a podcast about that back in the day (BLAH 57, to be precise). 

A Dark Season 2 Guide to Germany

This post comes out of a series of writing I do on ASOIAF meta and other topics of popular culture over at the Patreon of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. If you like to read stuff like this, chime in just 1$ and you get access to everything I write. If you throw in 2$, you even get access to the audio version. For 5$, you get access to the mini-podcasts I'm doing with illustrious co-hosts answering questions by listeners of the podcast. At 10$, you get exclusive access to the Boiled Leather Audio Conversation bonus podcasts. Give the Patreon a look! 

On recommendation of my illustrious co-host, I watched the second season of Dark, and as with the first one, I'll provide you with a guide of miscellany about Germany as we go along. Given the time-sensitiveness of new shows on Netflix, I'll publish this one right now, so the next BLAP will be out at the beginning of August.