Classes&Cogitations, 3: The Power of -BLANK- Compels You!

D&D Clerics' niche has in roleplaying terms been divine magic, and in practical terms healing. Wizard = fireball, cleric = cure wounds. Offense vs. defense. Done deal. As the game grew around them, clerics have declined in appeal vs. classes which can offer cure wounds PLUS turning-into-bears or cure wounds PLUS lockpicking.

 

But first you need to decide on the difference between arcane and divine. The best distinction I would impose is that divine power stems from the world, the universe/multiverse as it is, while arcane alters and warps its nature. As a side effect, this does paint divine as intrinsically shifted toward lawful and arcane toward chaotic, but if you look at roleplaying history (bards vs. paladins, for example) it does basically fit the class warfare narrative we can assume would permeate a magical world. After all, gods are already in power, large and in charge, making the rules by which others must live, and mages are nobodies trying to climb the magico-social ladder. It does also fit the cleric core function of healing, returning things to their proper function. Power over the afterlife (resurrection, necromancy) would still fall on the divine side of that line, if you assume afterworlds to be the nigh-absolute stomping grounds of divinities, where players can only operate with permission. It does also imply the abjuration school should be moved over to the cleric side, or at least that part that negates magic.

But even if you manage to settle that question, distinctions within the divine magic classes remain tenuous. The original cleric fit D&D's roots as medieval strategy wargaming, and was pretty solidly a christian-inspired priest with a license to kill. Druids as their pagan counterparts received a more slapdash treatment representing the wild days before organized religion, ignoring the word "druid" represents a culturally rooted priesthood in itself, which had less to do with wild animals than the passing of seasons and natural cycles. Shamans, if/when implemented, should have picked up the shapeshifting angle, but I'll deal with those classes some other time. Don't get me started on monks.

To resolve the overlap, I refer you back to my comments on prestige classes: either start with one basic class and branch out or establish clearly delineated base classes with less branching. A druid would be a cleric of Cernunnos/Freya/Hestia/Dionysus/whatever, but if you insist on keeping some divine spellcasting nondenominational, clerics themselves need to play up the worship angle to stand out. Very early in this blog I addressed their weird relationship to their deities, usually represented only as a spell battery to be tapped at the cleric's whim, as a talisman to be rubbed for spell-per-day, placing no restrictions and making no demands of the player. But if you're dependent for your mojo on some sapient cosmic entity, its personality should impact your own available choices!

If you notice me shifting the definition of clerics more towards paladin alignment restrictions, that's hardly accidental, but that and bards will come next time. I will say that I've never liked clerics' universal access to heavy armor, which segues nicely to my final point: god personalities.

I've ranted on this topic before. RPG gods tend to be rather dull, with rare examples shining for defining a range of proper action, not merely spheres of influence over the natural world. If clerics are to refocus on theistic worship as representatives of one personified cosmic force, then everything about them should be amenable to that deity's restrictions, from spells to armor to quest options. The "basic cleric spell list" needs to be severely truncated to separate spell domains more widely and shift availability to individual deities. Just one or two bonus spells don't really convey the difference between Poseidon and Set. Healing, while it should probably remain a cleric universal for pragmatic reasons, need not all be equal. There's room for slow regeneration, shielding, lifesteal, reactive healing vs. certain damage types, etc. The deities domains themselves should rule the efficacy of cleric magic, strengthening or weakening with weather, day of the week, time of year, terrain, or any other relevant factors. And if you really insist on chaotic deities, their clerics' access to magic should reflect that unpredictability, randomly becoming stronger or weaker or entirely unavailable from day to day, fight to fight or round to round.

 

In any case, while the cleric may not need to be entirely done away with like the fighter, still it cannot occupy the same broad category as it did when it was a quarter of the class list. As it no longer needs to be THE party healer, it should be less one class and more a divergent array of theistic praxis, synecdochical means of bringing a specific god along with the adventuring party. (Which, of course, means you need more interesting gods.)

Hineni, Hineni

"It's all about identity
This tribal sense of dignity
Of tolerance and unity
Of prejudice and bigotry"

 

Oi Va Voi - Hora

 

 

"Come for the girlfriend, stay for the lack of hell" reads a billboard in Chicago advertising Judaism, a trimillennially proven product with a refined marketing strategy. I'll address the girlfriend half of that some other time, but for now keep in mind that romanticized, socially reinforced salvation. It will come up again.

 

In lighter news, jews and muslims are mass-murdering each other again, which may explain why every news outlet has turned into "the 24/7 Israel network" the past couple of weeks. Unsurprisingly to anyone who's had to live with snowflakes, politically correct idiocy in universities here broke out in immediate support of terrorism, proving yet again that wokeism is a powermongering, hierarchical dogma in which any appointed morally superior breed (in this case arabs/muslims) can do no wrong.

 

The first observation would have to do with provocation. That's the main excuse trotted out for every muslim sadist and mass-murderer: provocation. They're always being "provoked" (read: triggered (read: boom)) by others' real or perceived encroachment, values, customs, well-being, or let's be honest here, just "being" anything other than mindlessly obedient slaves. Except in this case the cause of Palestine's aggression was specifically a lack of provocation, by their own admission allowing tensions to decrease over the past years to lower Israel's guard. Well, when your greatest slogan is "never give us the benefit of the doubt" ...

A few of our saner teevee faces did take issue with the forced, feigned impartiality of sources claiming Israel was somehow just as much (or wholly!) at fault for Palestine's attack. For my own part, I was already bracing myself for the inevitable displays of Israeli psychopathy to come. Because at this point, Israel really can cite verifiable and ample provocation, casus belli, a moral umbrella, albeit insufficient for its ambitions. Palestine supplied it. And yes, the establishment of Israel after WW2 was criminal, and its expansionist policy after that has only compounded its guilt. However... you can acknowledge that without justifying the random mass-murder of civilians by the thousand! Disaffection does not legitimize terrorism!

So where exactly are all those Palestinian negative vibes coming from? The party line holds it to be a reaction against occupation, and at that point the party flatly stops thinking. But imagine Hamas winning. Imagine they got their way, terrorized or murdered all the jews they can get their hands on, yiippee, hurrah, praise be unto Mohammed's beard lice or whatever.

... Now what?

You think Hamas would then call it a day, settle down, spend their evenings jogging with their poodles, argue about cafeteria menus at PTA meetings and water beds of daisies in their back yards? Can you really picture that happening? They'd find new victims! Any victims, anywhere. "Provocation" will be fabricated on command.

 

While much of the past two weeks' news has been depressingly tragic, you do have to find the tragicomedy in Israeli generals declaring they'll "destroy" Hamas. Sure, ok, that miiiiight happen. But more than an organization, it's an ecological niche you're talking about. Its members were not members last month and wiping it out will only see a replacement pop up a month later. If my conflating Palestine with its militant wing raises your hackles, do remember that insane as this may sound, Hamas is an elected government. It is supplying a popular demand, or at least did originally. In 2001, America vowed to wipe out the Taliban, provoked by the 9/11 attacks. Who's in charge of Afghanistan now? The Taliban.

For reference on the religious mentality, think back to the Bamiyan Buddhas. When foreigners offered to restore the statues twenty years ago, the Afghans instead demanded the cash itself on a "my kids are starving" gambit. (Never mind tourist / pilgrim income can also feed your kids and for a lot longer; just ask the Vatican, a tourist trap which knows all about stuffing kids.) Refused, they threw a tantrum and destroyed their own monuments. For weeks they shot at the gigantic mountainside carvings with guns and mortars. They set off land mines under them. They rappelled down the cliff to plant bombs on them and shot a fucking rocket at a statue's head. All while bemoaning they can't afford to feed themselves. Eat the rocket!

 

I remember back in 2011 when the tsunami hit Japan, a Japanese professor found herself fending off concerned voices in class. She replied thanks, appreciate it, but you know, it's Japan, we have measures in place for that sort of thing. And true enough, while some small failures to evacuate were recorded on the local level, overall the alarms sounded immediately, an informed public took the available routes to safety and almost all deaths and destruction were due not to the earthquake or deprivation but directly to the off-the-charts mountain of water washing over the sea-walls. After the initial drownings, the relief effort saved the vast majority of victims.

 

The entire world is sending humanitarian aid to Afghanistan now, after recent earthquakes - serious ones but quite on the charts. And the Afghans did not have measures for that sort of thing. While the initial death toll is low compared to the Japanese example, homelessness and starvation are gradually outpacing it, as the Taliban's own plan for helping its citizens, as far as I can tell from photos, appears to consist of thugs with assault rifles.

AKs vs. earthquake: fight!

Back at the end of WW2, Japan was itself a theocracy ruled by a bona-fide God-Emperor of Doom. They wised up. On the other hand, Muslims' means of coping with their own mismanagement is to bomb French newspapers. The U.S. is sending $12mil in aid to Afghanistan. How much of that do you want to bet will get skimmed off by the thugs with AKs, sold on the black market and used to fund the next 9/11?

 

Which brings us back around to Israel, Palestine and that romanticized, socially reinforced salvation. I said that Hamas is a niche more than an organization. Where political decisions can be justified by winning divine favor, support will always be found for those willing to commit atrocities as acts of faith, or any other grand nonsensical gestures like blowing statues' heads off, no matter how wastefully. The entire world is clamoring for Israel to open up routes for humanitarian aid to Palestine, but the real question is why did Hamas not provide for such aid itself? Given both states' bellicosity, Israeli reprisals were far more reliably predictable than any tsunami. What was Palestine's contingency plan for its own citizenry? Let them eat rocket cakes?

That's a big difference between dealing with rational actors and brainwashed superstitious primitives. Israel has held the moral high ground not only because it was the victim of attack, but because it consistently supports physical well-being and personal freedom, or any other reasonable measure of a life worth living, more reliably than its neighbours. It has to. It's playing to a different audience, to the quasi-secular West instead of the theocratic East.

 

But when one Israeli spokesman was quoted saying "this is our 9/11" I couldn't help thinking back to the U.S. using that as pretext for immensely costly invasions (motivated by military-industrial parasitism) at the expense of its own citizens. There's quite a bit of the crusading spirit to Israeli press releases now, lotta dismantling, decimating, destroying. The Cold War was prevented from turning hot largely by the two superpowers acting on rational (if often reprehensible) self-interest. But Israel, for all it plays to the tune of democracy, for all the widespread atheism it tolerates, is at its core an inextricably religious entity, founded on and defined by the preservation and propagation of irrationalism. Or at least one specific brand of irrationalism. A Holy Land for holy whatever. And that cannot help but create niches for eschatological psychopathy. It is entirely unclear from news broadcasts whether Israelis regard their current situation as a hostage crisis, as curtailing terrorism, or as a pretext for continuing an exceptionalist expansionist mission.

Ah well. Due to my location, I am in far more danger from christians than I am from muslims and jews combined, so for now I retain the privilege of casual interest.

But I do have to note your marketing strategy is slipping.

A Tale of Two Titles

"I think girls should be raised in the bottom of a deep, dark sack until they are old enough to know better. Then when it came time, you could either let them out or close the sack and throw them away, whichever was the best idea."

I've been re-reading Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky... or, well, skimming the tedious Boy Scout filler to reach the couple of meatier chapters about farming in the sky. That line caught my attention because it's put into the hero's mouth purely to prop him up as a strawman to be knocked down into an appreciation of womankind later on. Heinlein did in fact use it elsewhere (damned if I can find it now) with an adult commenting on a boy that when he hits his teens he should be placed in a barrel and fed through the bung-hole, and at adulthood either the lid removed or the bung driven in. Both times Heinlein was apparently paraphrasing Mark Twain (though the original quote seems to have been muddled by history) who had been more firmly on the pro-bung lobby. But it is interesting how much softer Heinlein applied the same quote to girls (strawman opinion to be torn down) versus boys (grumpy comment, still comedic but left to stand.) A second look at the novel raises the question of why the female characters were necessary at all, being, as mentioned, a Boy Scout story in which a teenager and his father move to Ganymede to plant beets or beans or broccoli or whatever. It would've made a perfectly workable young adult Robinsonesque yarn. Why were the men not sufficient unto themselves?

On a completely unrelated topic, my eyes fell across a book title recently: Staging Masculinity. I almost walked on by without a second thought. For once I'm perfectly happy to judge a book by its cover and assume it the same social constructionist palaver we've all seen reiterated a thousand times a year, spackled over with some playwright jargon, some excuse to shit on men for an easy sale to soccer mom amateur theater groups. But the title itself reminded me how strenuously we avoid turning the same critical eye toward women's behavior.

How do women stage their femininity?

not sure if this is InXile's or GoG's ad copy

I deleted some spam recently urging me to buy the "Colorado Collection" of Wasteland 3, which I won't be doing anytime soon given the game's good initial setup but poor handling of factions, companions, encounter diversity, character advancement, economy, plot, etc. and its transparent attempt to cover up these lacks with feminist pandering to distract critics. Doesn't seem they've changed their tune either, telling me to take command of a squad of:

- Desert Rangers

- lawmen

- women

Y'know... women. Law-men, and also wo-men. Class: women. Race: women. Background: women. Education: women. Qualifications: women. Prior experience: women.

Entitlement: women.

I did run across another title recently, and this one I probably will look into: Growing Up Absurd by Paul Goodman. Don't get me wrong, I'm expecting a hefty dose of primitivist hippie garbage riding the naturalistic fallacy into the ground - but juxtaposed with 1950s social repression it should still yield a few good observations. What really piqued my interest though (in a "my enemy's enemy" sort of way) was Wikipedia's insistence on including this line in the book's very introduction at the top of the page: "in later years, retrospective reviewers criticized Goodman's exclusion of women from his analysis" - and also Zimbabweans, yak herders or the line-up of the 1960 Icelandic national football team.

 

Heavens forfend a male speak without subsuming himself to the interests of women. Why exactly? It's not like women at the time could not publish anything from pulp detective novels to social critiques. In fact The Feminine Mystique launched around the same time and as far as I can tell out-sold Growing Up Absurd at least three-fold. How does yet nobody bat an eyelash at this hypocritical core dogma of female chauvinism: that women are more capable and superior to men in every possible way and never need a man's help, and also HOW DARE YOU slack off white-knighting for us for even a single second, you filthy pigs!

Staging Masculinity - book titles like that are themselves the staging of femininity. Nothing is more feminine than entitlement, whether to demand men's service or pass judgment on men or seek to invalidate men's right to live their own lives, or simply claim, by blanket uterine fiat, that everything must be for and about women.

And we haven't even gotten to the question of for whose benefit, for which audience is that masculinity being staged?

What Birds Know

"Don't speak about the cycles of life

'Cause your thoughts are so soft I could cut 'em with a spork or a bride's knife"

 

Andrew Bird - Spare-Ohs

 

 

I was reading the webcomic What Birds Know back when I started this blog, and in fact p.191 inspired me to jot down the little vignette I called One Thriving, One Withering. At about p. 400-ish I deliberately stopped visiting the site to let the archive build up for a big satisfying binge. By the time I got back to it years later it seemed about to wrap up, so I told myself I'd binge it when I can benefit from the satisfaction of an ending. For years I kept putting it off until one day the site was offline. End of story... except the Wayback Machine luckily archived it, so I was recently able to complete my decade-overdue binge.

Looking at the site now, I'm surprised by its scarce reader comments suggesting obscurity. Back in the late 2000s, SluggyFreelance-inspired random mishmashes of pop culture references with crude draw'rins were still largely the norm for webcomics. What Birds Know benefited from professional (if not quite earthshaking) artwork. Judging by how often revelations or turning points in the story coincide with hundred-page marks, it must have been carefully plotted from its very start. It didn't pull its punches (until the slightly deus ex machina-ish ending) and it provided just enough wry, in-character comic relief to let readers breathe. In short, it should have stood above its competitors.

Maybe it was harmed by its ambiguity. The public, after all, likes easy answers, white hats and black hats. At first glance, WBK lacks an over-arching moral, unless you count "don't put preteens in charge of kingdoms, no matter how adorable they look on the throne" and even eschews its obvious coming of age potential by not really being opposed to childishness so much as childish facetiousness, self-delusion. Anyway, in a vaguely renaissance-level society, three teeange girls go hiking, stumble into yer standard-issue ancient ruins, and fantasy adventure ensues. By the time one of 'em coughs up a surprise, you should already have figured out whether it's your type of story or not.

 

But if you must seek a recurring theme, call it freedom, or sacrifice, or freedom of sacrifice: willing and unwilling, justifiable or not. It's not so much the inherent good and evil of each situation that yields good or bad results as the characters' deliberate, knowing engagement with it.

 

A good yarn overall, and sadly underappreciated.

Classes&Cogitations, 2: Thief vs. Fighter

It rained on my eclipse, so let's stay indoors and talk about RPGs today.

 

Of the four most basic D&D classes, two would be easy to update for a better fit within a wider system: thieves can stay, fighters gotta go.

There, simple, see?

Done.

...

No, not done, obviously I plan to talk more about it. Case ya ain't notice, I doth prose verbose!

Combat greatly expanded with every iteration: more weapons, more rules, threatened areas (doin' the Opportunity Tango) and ranges, positioning, etc.

Healing grew into multifaceted support and protective abilities.

Magic spells acquired metamagic, multitudes of effects, schools, memorization mechanics.

 

But thievery? I've seen three editions of DnD so far adapted to PC, plus various imitators, and the stealth/disarm/pickpocket package remains largely unchanged. In fact, in contrast to all the other classes I'll be discussing, thieves don't need updating so much as backtracking from the more backstab-oriented rogue of 3E+ to 2E thievery. When thieves were the default medium armor and light weapon class, it made sense for them to also be the squishier alternative to fighter muscle. But with the addition of barbarians, rangers, monks, bards, swashdruids and whatever, it makes a lot more sense to refocus the rogue on traps and sneaking and shift assassin or sniper builds onto the later, less defined classes. Downplay the thief's combat ability to middlin' (between casters and fighters) and let it own its original role. Situations like NWN2 (where Neeshka was my most reliable damage dealer) or Solasta (where my evasive little Shadow was my most resilient frontliner) tread too much on more inescapably physical roles' toes. Thieves should be a utility class.

Fighters, on the other hand, are so poorly defined as to lack any validity among later additions. Everybody fights! Moreover, when weapon choice so consistently features in characters' identities, defining any one class as "all of the weapons" is a non-starter. Let the barbarian, swashbuckler, paladin, ranger and other more specialized fighters own their roles by removing the jack-of-all-trades capable of duplicating them at will. And hey, there's still room for heavily-armored fighter subclasses/kits/archetypes like shield defenders or some sort of pike/halberd-wielding interdictor - so long as their niche is defined with others in mind.

 

Don't get me wrong, if this were primarily a puzzle-solving stealth-based genre with rare fights, it would likely be the thief that needs to be split into locksmith / cryptologist  / pickpocket / burglar / mugger / confidence artist / Richard Nixon. Fighters could just be generic hired muscle. But as cRPGs at least rarely or never go in that direction, let the one own its niche and prevent the other from owning too many niches.

- and the flora who love them

My trip over the summer was exhausting and stressfull, but I cannot even tell you how much I'd missed the mountains.

...

...

(my family too, I guess)

Classes&Cogitations, 1: Prestige

Before I get into D&D fighters/wizards/etclerica, let's talk about prestige classes, and let me preface this by saying I'm mostly worried about cRPGs, where such classes add a bit of replay value and another facet to your character's identity: a big choice to make. Though I don't play tabletop games, I doubt I'd see the point in a medium where the potential for divergence and customization is whatever the GM will allow. Nevertheless, as a cRPG player, let me admit from the start I fundamentally like them. As an idea. As a symbolic transcendence or apotheosis for your character. As a goal to work towards. As they're actually implemented... well... not so much.

 

Biggest problem: redundancy. In their earlier editions' incarnations, half tended toward hybrids of magical and nonmagical (arcane-this and eldritch-that) which merely end up watering down both of their core constituents instead of acquiring any specific flavor of gameplay, and ultimately would have you wondering "why didn't I just play a bard?" The rest were either bland and overspecialized (dwarf defender) or stupidly munchkin-ish (dragon disciple) that I couldn't see myself using them.

 

Fast-forwarding to last year, Wrath of the Righteous gives the impression that classes in Pathfinder have proliferated to truly absurd numbers, differentiated from each other only by a single overpowered ability (like my Witch of the Veil's combo teleport/invisibility) or gaining freebies like hexes while surrendering little to nothing compared to a base archetype of wizard or druid. That infinite redundancy is even more pronounced when comparing base to prestige classes, as base classes like Woljif's "eldritch scoundrel" duplicate prestige classes (e.g. arcane trickster) without the need for purposeful character development.

In fact, while I complain a lot about DnD 5e (and with due cause) I've liked both Solasta and BG3 replacing prestige classes with the old 2e BG2 "kits" differentiating each class at level 2. Oversimplified as everything is in 5e, subclasses nonetheless fit the basic idea of taking a major decision about your character's progress after creation and adding some replay value. Prestige classes also erred by splitting your level advancement, stalling the build-up (and frequently overcompensating in return) conflicting with progression rather than complementing it, watering down, disrupting the flow rather than building on it. That itself stemmed from their growing naturally out of multiclassing.

But all those hybridization options worked on the assumption there would be gaps to bridge between core fighter/wizard/cleric/thief options. With every druid, barbarian, bard, etc. added to the base roster, the justification for juggling your basic class later in the campaign asymptotes to "I just want to play a dire wolf with a pointy wizard hat" which desperate sartorial need can be served better by a single gear/spell proficiency feat. You can certainly have your prestige classes... if you're willing to keep the level 1 choice low and split off into higher specializations later. Conversely, offering fifty different base classes from character creation makes it hard enough to give them individual personalities without piling on duplicates at level five. Make up your damn minds. Either go back to the core handful with prestige specializations in a huge tree, or keep numerous core classes with less branching, and later customization coming from feats and skills.

For the rest of this series I'll ignore the issue altogether and assume subclasses are the better option, but keep the prestige class redundancy problem in mind, as it also applies to adding ANYTHING to the existing roster, from fighters to swashbucklers and druids to shamans.

Classes&Cogitations, Part 0

"I killed the devil, I took his soul

I took his kingdom, I took his throne

I raised his army of the dead

Looked around before I said: more zombies, more zombies!"

 

Ameliah&Nef - The Zombie Stare (officially adopted TSW fan music)

 

 

My run through Baldur's Gate 3 proceeds apace - which is to say pace by pace with frequent backtracking and not very runny at all. Nevertheless dropping Mooners' Trousers or whatever gave me a rise to Level 10 and my spell list has gradualy been including more attrition-mitigating summons like dryads and... zombies.

 

Now what's wrong with that picture? Oh, right, I'm a druid. In older D&D adaptations the druidic party line was hating on undead for disrupting the circle of hakuna matata and whatnot. Regardless of whether that's necessarily the correct druidic roleplaying angle, it was one more quirk that made them stand apart as a class, gave them some personality. Now, along with being robbed of their animal companions, summons being downplayed, everyone using crossbows, etc., the Spore subclass' zombies are just one more bit of forced homogeneity making druids feel like shittier clerics who need a shave.

It's not just stupid but gratuitously stupid. You could've implemented corpse-based Spore Druid summons without making them humanoid, just raising a fungal mass from a corpse, an inchoate, slithering pile of rot. Same practical effect but fully in keeping with the circle of life, death and microbes and remaining thematically distinctive. In fact you even had the easiest possible reskinnable 3D model for it in the form of jellies! If you're gonna do it, why do it the stupid way?*

Though really by now it's one more drop in the bucket. By the time I got into computer adaptations of third edition, Dungeons and Dragons' class system was already a hopeless mess, and the problem has only compounded over the past twenty years with redundant prestige classes and re-redundant core classes and overpowered free-cast spells and fighters and rogues getting more and more magical and keeping familiars in your pocket and so on and on and on. Don't get me started on losing the alignments.

But let's admit that was inevitable. The original classes were based on rock/paper/scissors medieval wargaming and broadly enough defined as to cover an entire game with only three or four playable categories. Expansion mandated redefining the original fighter/wizard/thief/cleric themselves more narrowly, but fans' refusal to give up the old nomenclature while constantly demanding new gimmicks has yielded nothing but pointless bloat, simplistic token divergence and meaningless overlap.

So (though I'm sure the subject has been re-hashed on endless RPG forums) I'm starting my own** little series on the D&D-inspired RPG class system, and keeping it going... until the winds of Pandemonium waft my attention elsewhere, I suppose.

___________________________________

* Mass appeal. *Siiigh* yes, I am aware that zombie movies are rather popular.

** Pointless commentary bloat, token idea divergence and overlap, yes, yes, I know. Wer-wolfes are immune to irony though, so bite me.

Groundhog Halloween

Thank you to the couple of people hitting this old post last week, for putting my recent movie-watching experience into perspective. Y'see, I watched Groundhog Day in full for the first time in my life, having previously switched channels after half a scene whenever it came on television. Even now I found myself skipping a few minutes when the romantic scenes ground to a crawl. Not my cuppa'. But the other movie I tried watching, Hubie Halloween, I couldn't even finish. Hell, I didn't even get halfway through before skipping to the end to discover, yep, as suspected, they eventually all bow down before the retard and make him mayor or mayor for a day or mayor of Halloween or whatever. Fuck it.

While the two movies themselves are quite different comedies, the main character fills the same niche: everymanish, bumbling, meant to be sympathized with but not quite an audience surrogate. Moreover, both leads pretty much played only their one role, flick after flick, spanning decades. Their niche is quite similar, both in target and scope. And there, in the decline from Bill Murray to Adam Sandler lies another nice example of our cultural nosedive.

If Murray was abrasive, callous and overconfident, he was at least also permitted to be occasionally witty, moderately knowledgeable and fundamentally rational despite his excesses. Groundhog Day did not require him to play the lowest of the low, but merely stipulated room for improvement. No need for such self-improvement in Hubie Halloween, where we're instead made to share in the town's browbeating for mistreating the subhuman retard, because he's such a nice guy. Except he's not. Sandler's character is also abrasive, overconfident, intrusive, insulting, blustering and bumbling (to the even lower levels mandated by the more crass comedy style) but we're meant to side with him because (unlike Phil the weatherman who was functioning below his capacity for mindfulness) Hubie's genuinely the walking advertisement for abortion he appears and incapable of self-improvement... and therefore the entire world somehow has a duty to accomodate him.

 

Being above average but imperfect in '93 got you condemned to purgatory to make you a better yuppie, win the girl and live out your own personal life. Being an epsilon sub-moron now condemns everyone else around you to hand you a wife to fuck and a mayor's sash. This goes beyond mass-media's perpetual glorification of "that immortal ass, the average man" or demonization of the mad scientist, to the very definition of average. We hit that tipping point sometime in the mid-2000s with Leeroy Jenkins, noble champion of non-nerds everywhere. We idolize Gilligan now. Welcome to the Idiocracy.