LYCANTHROPE WEEK - DIRE WEREWOLVES

Today's lycanthropic template actually comes about because my first idea for sample werewolves could be summed up in two words: "Giant Werewolves". But when I poked around at the idea for a bit, I realized that it was kind of unsatisfying for giant werewolf hybrids to shrink down into perfectly ordinary wolves. Clearly dire werewolves were called for.

Remember, these templates are designed to streamline and simplify the process of creating lycanthropes for 3.5:

(1) Create a stat block for the base creature.

(2) Apply the lycanthrope template in order to create the stat block for the humanoid form.

(3) Apply the hybrid template to the humanoid form in order to create the stat block for the hybrid form.

DIRE WEREWOLF TEMPLATES

TOTEM GIANTS

Successful superhero film franchises have tended to follow the same pattern since Superman 2: The first movie is a tightly-focused origin story with a thematically cohesive script, strong arcs of character development, and a satisfying totality. Then the second movie, bred out of the success and excitement of the first film, throws it all away by trying to cram everything cool about the hero into a single film -- you end up with a smorgasboard of villains, a half dozen half-finished character arcs, and a completely unfocused grab-bag of special effects.

The Dark Knight made itself the major exception to this trend by relentlessly paring itself down into a thematically, dramatically, and cinematically cohesive and focused whole. The result is the best superhero movie ever made, and I'm hoping the example it set will improve future superhero franchises (in a genre where copy-cat approaches seem ridiculously popular). (Ironically, Batman Begins is the film that suffered from the "we need to cram everything cool from the comic book into one movie!" problem as it groped its way towards rebooting the franchise.)

At first glance it seems as if Iron Man 2 doesn't learn the lesson The Dark Knight has to teach. At first glance it seems plagued with all the symptoms of superhero sequel-itis: Lots of villains. Lots of different plot threads. Lots of sound and fury.

But upon reflection, I think this is because Iron Man 2 is pursuing a separate solution to the same problem.

Most superhero movies pursue a conflict structure of Man vs. Man (a natural consequence of the superhero vs. supervillain archetype). This is why the "let's have eight different super-villains!" sequels generally don't work: They're eight different movies all competing for the same screen time.

And if you attempt to analyze Iron Man 2 through that lens, it seems to fall prey to the same problem: In looking for a Man vs. Man conflict, the eye is inexorably drawn towards Whiplash. And the "Whiplash as antagonist" story is deeply flawed: Stark think he's dead less than halfway through the film and isn't disllusioned until the final act. Which means that for most of the film, there isn't a Whiplash vs. Iron Man conflict.

But the movie works because it isn't Iron Man vs. Whiplash; or Iron Man vs. Justin Hammer; or Iron Man vs. Senator Stern; or Iron Man vs. War Machine; or Iron Man vs. Poisonous Palladium.

Instead, the film's structure is Tony Stark (Man) vs. World.

The difference in structure is subtle, but it makes all the difference in the world.

Which isn't to say that the film's narrative structure is flawless. The movie has particular problems when it's being saddled with handling exposition for the upcoming Marvel films. And although the novelty of seeing this kind of tight cross-continuity being brought to film is kind of exciting, I suspect the value of this novelty will quickly wear thin (much like it's worn thin in the comic books themselves).

At the moment, I would say that Iron Man 2 isn't quite as good as Iron Man. But it's a pretty close match. And given the high quality of Iron Man, that's entirely to Iron Man 2's credit.

MOVIE WEEK - THE BIG WRAP-UP

ALICE IN WONDERLAND: I found Burton's decision to film a sequel while advertising it entirely as an adaptation to be brilliant, disorienting, and surreal -- much like the film itself. It also gave Burton the freedom to make Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which, ultimately, is what I wanted to see. The Alice in Wonderland story has achieved the status of modern myth, in my opinion, and that makes it fair game for creators looking to express their own vision through its form.

SHREK FOREVER AFTER: I found the original Shrek to be a merely passable film with a charm that was largely negated by its creators scrawling "I HATE DISNEY" over it in large, crude letters. On the other hand, Shrek 2 capitalized on the strengths of the original, resulting in a film that was superior to it in every way and exceedingly enjoyable in its own right. On the third hand, Shrek 3 was so incredibly bad that I literally can't remember anything about it. And on the increasingly improbable fourth hand, I enjoyed Shrek 4 quite a bit. It was a well made and funny film. Not as good as Shrek 2, but as good as Shrek would have been if it wasn't for Dreamworks settling personal grudges.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: On the other hand, this is the movie that makes it clear that Dreamworks Animation is on the right track. It's tight and it's fun. You know how awesome you always thought dragonriding would be? How to Train Your Dragon shows it to you.

TOY STORY 3: Pixar once again proves that they are masters of subtle, powerful, profound, and joyous storytelling. I think you could make a very strong case that this is now the best trilogy of films ever made. 

(The question now isn't, "Will there be a fourth?" The record-breaking box office assures us that there will be. The question is, "Can they find a new story to tell?" It seems to me that the films have exhausted the potential experiences of a toy, but I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised.)

ONE-PAGE RIP-OFF

I received an interesting e-mail this morning from Tabletop Adventures:

The One-Page Dungeon Codex 2009 contains the winning entries from the One-Page Duneon Contest, including my own Halls of the Mad Mage (Best Geometry). I wasn't getting this e-mail because of my contributions to the book, however. I was getting it because I'd downloaded a copy of the PDF.

Following the link to KickStarter, I found a pledge system: For $3 you'd get an acknowledgment in the book. For $30 you get a printed copy. For $300 you get 10 copies.

What's a little hazy, however, is exactly where this money is going. The project promises that the PDF will "become available as a special printed product", but what does that mean, exactly?

Are they just talking about the copies being provided to pledgers? While they're charging about $30, a quick investigation at Lulu reveals that you could print up a color copy of the book for about half that. That's a pretty awesome profit margin for Tabletop Adventures.

(And if they're not using Lulu, then they're using a service like it. The minimum pledge threshold for this KickStarter project isn't sufficient for anything larger than that.)

Are the pledges being used to fund a larger print run? Which they will then sell? If so, that's an awfully one-sided business model they're pitching to you. They're basically asking you to provide the investment capital and then they'll pocket all the profit.

Despite what you may be thinking, this post isn't about freelancer rage. By submitting the Halls of the Mad Mage to the contest I released it under the Creative Commons license. They're free to do whatever they want to with the module (along with everyone else in the world) and I'm not entitled to see a single penny of they money they make along the way. (Although the fact that they've turned a fun little community contest into a profit-generating enterprise will certainly influence my decision on participating in future versions of this contest.)

What I'm warning you about is a company trying to rip you off as a consumer.

So if you want a printed copy of the One-Page Dungeon Codex, here's what you want to do:

(1) Download the free PDF.

(2) Go to Lulu.

(3) Set-up the PDF as a personal print job.

(4) Buy a copy for yourself.

This, it should be noted is perfectly legal: You have a copy of the work you are legally entitled to own (the PDF). Making additional copies of that work for your own personal use (even using third-party services like Kinko's or Lulu) is legal. What you can't do is distribute additional copies of that work to other people. (So don't do that.)

And you'll pay about half the price that Tabletop Adventures is looking for. Heck, you could even print up a hardcover edition of the book and still end up paying less.

Not so long ago I wrote some essays in response to Ron Rosenbaum's The Shakespeare Wars, leading off with one entitled "Thus Diest Common Sense". Now I find myself writing a reaction to another recent book about Shakespeare, and once again common sense has found its way into the title.

In this case I've been reading Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? This is a rather excellent piece of work by James Shapiro which explores the totality of the "authorship question" (the conspiracy theory which claims that Shaksepeare didn't write Shakespeare) from a refreshing angle: Instead of merely exploring the idea itself, Shapiro explores the history of that idea -- the ways in which literary criticism, Shakespeare studies, and the "anti-Stratfordians" have evolved over the past four centuries. The result is a compelling and intriguing narrative in which Shapiro aptly makes the case that the "authorship question" is the natural reaction to the excesses of Shakespearean scholarship: If you raise Shakespeare to the level of a deity, it's little wonder that people will have difficulty seeing the mortal man of William Shakespeare as being a suitable candidate for godhood. And if you insist on trying to patch the holes in Shakespeare's biography by forcefully extracing autobiography from his plays and poems, then you open the doors for people to say, "Shakespeare can't have written these plays because somebody else has a biography which has more in common with Romeo or Prospero or Hamlet." (Or whoever the subjective critic chooses to pick as the "most autobiographical" of Shakespeare's infinite variety of characters.)

Along the way, Shapiro deftly deflates one "anti-Stratfordian" claim after another with a mixture of rigorous, thorough, and essentially irrefutable scholarship. The result is extremely entertaining, and I recommend the book highly.

Unfortunately, the book is not without flaw. Shapiro occasionally falls into the same traps of fallacy and assumption which plague the pseudo-scholarship of the Oxfordians, Baconians, and Marlovians. For example, on page 177 he writes:

Shapiro's general point is true: If the play was actually written as allegory in the way that Looney described, then it would be politically dangerous to have written it.

... which would rather neatly explain why Oxford would choose to write it under a pseudonym, right? Rather than "defying common sense", the scenario makes perfect sense.

Shapiro is also pulling another fast one when he claims that "Lord Burleigh was dead by the time Hamlet was written" because the Oxfordians re-date the composition and performances of all the plays to support earlier dates. (They have to. Oxford died in 1604 and Shakespeare kept writing plays until at least 1613.) Now, it's absolutely true that the Oxfordian efforts to re-date the plays contradict the existing historical record and, frequently, the texts of the plays themselves. But it's not fair to simply ignore the totality of the Oxfordian theory while you cherry pick bits of it out of context.

Does that mean that I think Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare?

Let's not be ridiculous. Even if Shapiro, upon rare occasion, fails to provide the best possible rebuttal of the Oxfordian's claims, it doesn't change the fact that the theories of the Oxfordians (and Baconians and Marlovians) are complete nonsense.

For example, one of the favorite Oxfordian claims is that there's no contemporary evidence identifying William Shakespeare as the guy who wrote the plays by William Shakespeare. This is absolutely true... as long as you ignore the dozens of published plays bearing his name on the title page; the contemporary references to Shakespeare writing the plays by critics, fellow authors, and members of the public; Master of the Revels accounts referring to Shakespeare's authorship; and the effusive memorials and eulogies dedicated to Shakespeare's memory and his work shortly after his death.

As long as you ignore all of that evidence, it's true that there's absolutely no such evidence.

The truth is that we have more historical evidence of William Shakespeare writing the plays bearing his name than we do for virtually any other Elizabethan playwright. (The exception would be Ben Jonson, who had the advantages of being a tireless self-promoter, living an extra twenty years, and becoming England's first Poet Laureate.)

The truth is, this whole "anti-Stratfordian" nonsense should be dumped into the same bucket of nonsense in which we find flat-earthers, creationists, 9/11 conspiracy nuts, and people who think we faked the moon landings.

DEALING WITH OXFORDIANS

If you happen to find yourself in a discussion or debate with an "anti-Stratfordian", here's what you do:

(1) Ask them exactly what sort of objective evidence would convince them that William Shakespeare wrote the plays of William Shakespeare.

Then ask them to provide such evidence for their favored candidate.

Occasionally you might find one of them trying to pull a fast one on you. For example, they might say, "Proof that Shakespeare owned a book." You might point to the contemporary references to Shakespeare's literacy. Or you might point out that the entire argument that Shakespeare didn't own any books is predicated on the fact that his will doesn't itemize them... but his will doesn't itemize a lot of stuff. It doesn't mention tables or chairs, but that doesn't mean his family ate off the floor. The books would have been either given to his sister Joan (who got the house she was living in and everything in it) or to his daughter (who received another batch sum of property).

But Oxfordians are likely to be impervious to such arguments, so you may need to fall back on Plan B: "Oh? Really? Anyone who can be demonstrated to own a book in Elizabethan or Jacobean England should be considered a viable candidate for writing Shakespeare's plays? That's going to be a mighty long list!"

(2) This is why most Oxfordians prefer not to deal with objective evidence. Instead, they found their theory on a close reading of the plays: By insisting that the author of the plays must have been basing them on autobiographical details, they can "demonstrate" that Oxford (who had three daughters) is more likely to have written King Lear (who also had three daughters) than Shakespeare (who only had two).

Such a claim is, of course, completely nonsensical.

But let's run with it: Oxford didn't have two sons. Ergo, he couldn't have written the character of Kent in King Lear, so those sections of the play must have been written by somebody else. We have no evidence that Oxford was ever a woman who dressed up like a man and ran away to the forest with her cousin, so obviously he can't be responsible for Rosalind in As You Like It. I think it safe to say that Oxford never even met a Fairy Queen or a Fairy King, so A Midsummer Night's Dream is right out. 

This isn't particularly informative, but it sure is a lot of fun!

JULY 2010:

PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3

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