Hello, friends! Got a good amount of gaming in this past week, beginning with Pendragon, where I had a lot of storytelling fun. Unfortunately, my dice apparently miss Dungeons & Dragons so kept rolling 20s which, while a critical success in D&D, are a critical failure in Pendragon. On Monday night, I rolled at least three 20s across two different dice in a matter of five minutes. I should probably find a pick-up game of D&D in which to use up all this luck, lol.
Alas for my Pendragon character tho, these rolls mean that Dame Tamura has fallen into melancholia after accidentally wandering into faerie, emerging after several days only to find that the rest of the knightly host has left her behind. Worse, this will take about five weeks of in-game time for her to resolve. Serendipitously, I may not be able to attend my Virginia group’s next session, lol. I’m glad I at least had the chance during our last meetup to try out our host’s new and very thematic Round Table (pictured below, with the Saigon Golden Crepe I’d been craving for dinner.) Bonus: this round table was way more comfortable for me as a short person to sit at than the prior, taller gaming table.
Also pictured above is the replica of the World Cup I got to hold over the weekend! It’s likely the only trophy I’ll be earning in either Pendragon or Learned League, which is now back in session with Season 110. I have not been doing well so far this season but it’s early days still, and hopefully I will improve over the rest of the month. It’s been super nice to get back in the habit of chatting with my friends about trivia daily tho. It genuinely helps keep me awake at my desk longer so I can get a little more work done before fatigue sets in.
It’s perhaps unrelated that I did finally find the energy this week to play the word puzzle game Swap Wand User by passerine. It’s a text-based game that took me about forty minutes to complete. You essentially swap jumbled-up words of similar lengths in order to uncover the sci-fi story: it’s very nicely done, and free to play online! I did have a little trouble when the game abruptly switched to dark mode for the second half, as my astigmatism made it painful for me to power through to the conclusion. It was ultimately a satisfying ending but I do wish I’d had the option to switch to or stay in light mode instead.
Which was actually a suggestion I made to Leon Richardson while playtesting his new text-based game Commandment, currently in beta. Leon generously took the time to program a light mode for me, which I’ve linked to above (you can also access the default dark mode by deleting the “lightmode/” in the address bar.) I’m currently working my way through the Central Court of the game and look forward to reporting back on the rest of it in next week’s newsletter!
Oh, and as promised, my eldest and I went to see The Odyssey in IMAX on Wednesday, tho I’ll be putting off reading Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s epic till next week because I don’t yet have the time. Having read her blisteringly negative reviews of the film however, the only conclusion I can draw after actually watching it is that Ms Wilson just doesn’t understand cinema. She complains that Christopher Nolan cut too much and didn’t explain enough, but it’s a three-hour movie not a ten-hour miniseries. And while I agree that the dialog is often clunky, the actors don’t do their jobs just by saying things. This is an expressive cast who are exceptionally capable of emoting with their faces and bodies the things that they don’t need to explicitly say. Mr Nolan actually did such a great job with subtext that it made me wonder exactly how much graphic content — in terms of violence or otherwise — Ms Wilson would need in order to be happy with this dramatization. Her criticisms about the “confused” themes are also weird, particularly in her petulant demand for more divine presence. I thought it was pretty clear (and clever) that Mr Nolan was saying that the most important aspects of the Greek gods are how the human characters believe in them. He’s not there to argue about whether they exist or not because expressions of divine essence are not something you can disprove.
I also thought he was smart to downplay the romanticized embroidery of everything but the physical natures of many of the antagonists: so much of the original Odyssey is obviously a big fish tale that can be (and has been!) explained away. And yes, Mr Nolan absolutely modernized the story in parts, with my personal favorite being the clear analogy between the mythical Laestrygoneans and the real life border control troops who try to kill and maim people only looking for the basic means of survival. Mr Nolan is allowed to shape the story in this way and others because his movie is an adaptation not a translation, Emily. I definitely agree with critics who say that he’s probably spending too much time recently on the theme of men who break the world and regret it, but I do think it would behoove more critics who act like they’ve been personally offended by a piece of art to think that maybe it wasn’t created primarily for their sensibilities.
And yes, that may seem rich coming from me, when it’s pretty clear that I was personally offended by her vituperative reviews in the London Review Of Books and The Atlantic. Crucially, I’m not mad because her reviews are works of art — they’re not: they’re just whining in essay form — nor because I really love the movie or Chris Nolan. The movie was fine. Mr Nolan does above average work. But as a professional media critic, it kills me that people are going to look at her academic bona fides and think that what she wrote in those two outlets on this subject are what good reviews are supposed to look like, when her essays were just a series of self-contradictory tantrums couched in inflammatory language. Both of her reviews were so poorly written and thought out. I’ve honestly seen better two-sentence reasonings for Did Not Finishes on Goodreads.
And look, everyone is entitled to their terrible opinion, I get that. All reviews are personal responses, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either an idiot or a liar. But not everyone should be allowed to pretend that they can actually do this job with discernment and big-picture clarity, and then deserve to be paid for it and published. Fewer still should feed the narrative that any critiques they draw are primarily misogynistic or, sigh, “dogpiling the smol bean” instead of firmly merited. If her combative writing style is acceptable in academia, then she should stay in her academic lane and stop bringing my actual profession into disrepute. I’m sure she’s a great classicist. What she’s not is a competent, much less anywhere close to responsible, media critic.
Anyway, my kid and I had fun at the movie, and were surprised at how many senior citizens were in the audience with us. IMAX was an excellent way to watch it, tho it still felt weird that I could feel the soundtrack in my legs. Matt Damon was as wooden as the dialog but both he and Robert Pattinson had some really excellent moments of dry comedy that sailed right over the heads of most of the people we watched it with. Lupita Nyong’o was just splendid. I didn’t care for Samantha Morton’s performance or the exceedingly non-canonical ending but probably liked this movie better than anything else I’ve seen of Mr Nolan’s barring Memento. Also, it’s weird that people think that (highlight for mild spoiler; apologies if it doesn’t render correctly) Antinous’ sin (or “shame”) here was draft-dodging instead of failing to honor his promise to take care of Sinon’s family (end spoiler.)
Tl;dr The Odyssey movie is entertaining and Emily Wilson is being incredibly ridiculous about it.
Anyway, I did read some fun things this week, including the second novel in Matt Dinniman’s blockbuster Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. I adored the first book in the series, so was genuinely impressed by how this sequel managed to be even better! I really don’t want to give any spoilers but if you enjoy video games and sci-fi and questioning the motives of corporations and overclasses, then this is definitely the book for you. Also, I am low-key obsessed with Princess Donut, but honestly, what reader isn’t? I finished the book’s 400-ish pages in less than a day, I was so swept up by the experience.
I also really enjoyed Joy McCullough’s Kestrel Takes Flight. I’m always iffy on the whole novel-in-verse concept, but it works really well here, tho more on an emotional level than one of pure craft. The Middle Grade story revolves around eleven year-old Kestrel, whose mom spirits them away from her grandfather’s house in San Diego to live on a ranch in Montana instead. It’s a smart, sensitive character study about realizing you’re the victim of emotional abuse and what to do about it, with helpful tips for readers who might find themselves in a similar situation.
Oops, midnight slipped by without me noticing and I am worn out, so I will see you in six, friends!
Currently Playing (Music): Haydn’s 99th Symphony; my Declan Rice and 2026 Energy playlists; The Magnus Archives; BTS’ Arirang; Ariana Grande’s petal; CMAT’s EURO-COUNTRY.
Currently Playing (Games): Metazooa by Trainwreck Labs; Learned League trivia; NYT Connections & Wordle; Gremco Industries’ Parseword; Irox Games’ Bongo Cat; Greg Stafford’s Pendragon; Michael Szerencsy’s Outliers; Hyper Cats’ Studios’ Haru Cats; Alexander Pfister’s Oh My Goods!
Currently Reading/Writing (Games): Ghosts Of Saltmarsh.
Currently Reading or Just Read (Books): All Aboard For Murder by Ellen Byron; Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman; Honey by Imani Thompson; Camp Catastrophe (Dante N Ferno #2) by Brian Gordon; The Five Of Us by Sian Gilbert; Kestrel Takes Flight by Joy McCullough.
"This is an expressive cast who are exceptionally capable of emoting with their faces and bodies the things that they don’t need to explicitly say."
I haven't seen the film, but I don't get this. How on earth are you supposed to understand what a character means if they don't say it, any more than you can with a person in real life unless you know them extremely well?