The child psychologist was missing the tip of his ring finger. The finger simply ended at the breach of the second knuckle, the abbreviated digit capped with smooth shiny scar-skin. The psychologist had a tic of tapping this cap against his thumb, in a regular drumming motion that might have been an automatic reaction he was helpless to control, or it might have felt good and transgressive like a Q-tip in the ear, or perhaps it hurt and thus concentrated his mind on the task of helping Allan to be well. Allan never asked, nor did he ask how the child psychologist had lost the fingertip, though he was dying to know. He hadn't noticed the shortened finger the first few times he'd come, being more entranced by the child psychologist's trimmed beard and wire-rim glasses and bright solid primary-colour shirts that made him look like a clown or a magician, and at eleven Allan was sufficiently mature to be embarrassed to ask about something like this on their fifth or sixth meeting.
There was a ring on the partial finger, which must have meant the child psychologist was married. Allan imagined their wedding, the bride whom Allan for convenience's sake imagined as looking exactly like the child psychologist's stocky secretary, but platinum blonde instead of raven-haired with a rebellious purple streak, and the moment when she had taken that ring and pushed into onto that finger that was not all there. The child psychologist's secretary-wife must love him very much, Allan decided.
Showing posts with label just getting this out of my head. Show all posts
Showing posts with label just getting this out of my head. Show all posts
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Thursday, October 6, 2011
MPSI - Genesis
"There is a great threat posed by nuclear weapons, true, and we have built far too many of those monsters. But horrible though they are, they are rational monsters. They explode when they should, and no more. They do not dream, hope, love, or mourn. They do not go mad with drink or lust or grief. If they did, we would all fear for our lives; and so we should."
- Sergei Primakov, 1987
In 1987, Sergei Primakov, an undistinguished Deputy Chairman of the KGB presumed until that point to be another bland cog in that agency's bureaucracy, gave a short speech to the United Nations, directed pointedly at the intelligence communities of the United States and its allies, which caused an international uproar. The crux of Primakov's speech, alluded to above, was that whatever the threat posed to the world by nuclear weapons (a sore point following the US's withdrawal from SALT the previous year), the threat of rogue, crazed or even merely agitated parahumans was far more dire. He followed up this dictum - common sense, of course, but near-blasphemy to the thinkers of the day who saw each side's parahuman resources as an extension of Cold War brinksmanship - with a plea to the collected community to form a bipartisan intelligence agency dedicated to monitoring and countering parahuman threats on a global scale. It is a tribute to the effectiveness of Primakov's speech that the notion was entertained at all - that it was, even guardedly, accepted seems so miraculous that it is often cited as proof that Primakov was himself a latent para.
In addressing the UN, Primakov had made an end-run around the Kremlin, and the halls of power rang with calls for his head. However, Primakov had developed surprisingly strong connections and, more importantly, blackmail dossiers for such a nonentity; combined with his recent international exposure, he could not be easily removed. Fortunately for the lynch mob, it seemed that Primakov's punishment was inherent in his crime: He was made the first director of the USSR side of the Mutual Parahuman Security Initiative, which rapidly became a dumping ground for the unflushable dregs of Communist intelligence. The CIA treated it much the same, and the position of the US director was filled by a constantly revolving series of careerists whose primary interests were getting the hell out of MPSI and back into "real" parahuman intelligence, giving Primakov free reign over his kingdom of dead-enders. The MPSI seemed hopelessly stillborn; distrust cleanly divided the two sides, the primary intelligence agencies refused to share any but the most clearly useless information (though the quantity was as great as the quality was poor; "full participation" in the MPSI was a means of getting international-cooperation brownie points without giving anything away), and the initiative was constantly overshadowed by well-funded mononational organizations from both Dum and Dee. Nevertheless, MPSI managed to rack up a number of small victories, though Primakov was quick to shunt the credit for these onto others, often the revolving US directors or other functionaries seeking to get out. Interested observers, of which there were very few, noted the change from dumping to testing ground; the MPSI almost imperceptibly shifted from a punishment detail to a stop on the careerists' upward trail. However, Primakov's greatest accomplishment was still to come, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Yeah, more spy games, this time biting with ferocity on a certain agency from a certain out-of-print superhero game. I've been reading a lot of historical supers books for Wild Talents, and the desire to slap together a universe is upon me.
- Sergei Primakov, 1987
In 1987, Sergei Primakov, an undistinguished Deputy Chairman of the KGB presumed until that point to be another bland cog in that agency's bureaucracy, gave a short speech to the United Nations, directed pointedly at the intelligence communities of the United States and its allies, which caused an international uproar. The crux of Primakov's speech, alluded to above, was that whatever the threat posed to the world by nuclear weapons (a sore point following the US's withdrawal from SALT the previous year), the threat of rogue, crazed or even merely agitated parahumans was far more dire. He followed up this dictum - common sense, of course, but near-blasphemy to the thinkers of the day who saw each side's parahuman resources as an extension of Cold War brinksmanship - with a plea to the collected community to form a bipartisan intelligence agency dedicated to monitoring and countering parahuman threats on a global scale. It is a tribute to the effectiveness of Primakov's speech that the notion was entertained at all - that it was, even guardedly, accepted seems so miraculous that it is often cited as proof that Primakov was himself a latent para.
In addressing the UN, Primakov had made an end-run around the Kremlin, and the halls of power rang with calls for his head. However, Primakov had developed surprisingly strong connections and, more importantly, blackmail dossiers for such a nonentity; combined with his recent international exposure, he could not be easily removed. Fortunately for the lynch mob, it seemed that Primakov's punishment was inherent in his crime: He was made the first director of the USSR side of the Mutual Parahuman Security Initiative, which rapidly became a dumping ground for the unflushable dregs of Communist intelligence. The CIA treated it much the same, and the position of the US director was filled by a constantly revolving series of careerists whose primary interests were getting the hell out of MPSI and back into "real" parahuman intelligence, giving Primakov free reign over his kingdom of dead-enders. The MPSI seemed hopelessly stillborn; distrust cleanly divided the two sides, the primary intelligence agencies refused to share any but the most clearly useless information (though the quantity was as great as the quality was poor; "full participation" in the MPSI was a means of getting international-cooperation brownie points without giving anything away), and the initiative was constantly overshadowed by well-funded mononational organizations from both Dum and Dee. Nevertheless, MPSI managed to rack up a number of small victories, though Primakov was quick to shunt the credit for these onto others, often the revolving US directors or other functionaries seeking to get out. Interested observers, of which there were very few, noted the change from dumping to testing ground; the MPSI almost imperceptibly shifted from a punishment detail to a stop on the careerists' upward trail. However, Primakov's greatest accomplishment was still to come, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Yeah, more spy games, this time biting with ferocity on a certain agency from a certain out-of-print superhero game. I've been reading a lot of historical supers books for Wild Talents, and the desire to slap together a universe is upon me.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
The Young Nerdhood of Studs Lonnigan: Dragon Magazine
Of course, I started with Dungeons & Dragons, just like everyone else. I found a set of old red-covered D&D books in my aunt's basement, abandoned there by my much-older cousin, and that was pretty much the end of it for a life of quiet dignity.
I don't know why I started buying Dragon mags specifically. They were reasonably priced and well within the range of a young nerd's allowance, and offered a wide variety of supplementary material - Almost all of it for D&D, but of course at that point I was only barely aware that there were other options. The then-current issues often focused on the arcana of Second Edition which was strange and baffling to my first-ed mind, and so I skipped over them and went straight to the back catalogue. Of these back issues, I favoured the Halloween and April Fool's editions, which offered opportunities for horror and comedy gaming, strange, alien ideas at the time.
One particular Halloween issue (1994, to be precise) was the tipping point. There was an article on resurrection magic and its impact on the imaginary world - In particular, how it fucks around with the quasi-medieval milieu that, as mentioned, is D&D's default arrangement (The King is dead! Long live the King! The King is back!), and how, given the hefty but by no means impossible cost of magic, for wealthy merchants and the like being assassinated was closer to a fine you had to pay than an actual corporal punishment. Pretty standard stuff by the standards of modern gaming, but it blew my young mind because it presumed a few things: An internally consistent world, and actually working out every possible impact and effect of the changes of that world.
Another article, which it turns out came from six months earlier (1994 was a good year, I guess), enhanced this idea with an article breakdown of a short series of books and pamphlets of what I would later refer to, with much gleeful elbowing and knowing looks, as "controversial knowledge". Specifically, these materials conveyed Thomas E. Bearden's spectacularly loopy theories about how the Soviets were totally developing Tesla technology, guys. In addition to the usual Tesla fun, Bearden's version of the tech kicks physics in the balls in a whole new way, as any energy transmitted through hyperspace is massively magnified through pure magic*. Thus, by transmitting nuclear blasts through harmless-looking transmitters, the dastardly Reds had access to planet-cracking bombs with no need for satellites or missiles! And shining a flashlight through hyperspace creates lasers! And the devil is in my water supply! This was my first encounter with CK, but even to a 13-year-old, the author, Gregory Detweiler, was a bit too credulous (although come to think of it, he was probably just adhering to TSR's general "please, please don't sue us" attitude, which they held for pretty much the entire 90s**). Anyway, this set off a lifelong fascination with crazy guys and their vanity-press frothings, a fascination all the more enabled by my later discovery of Kenneth Hite and his whole rich galaxy of WTF. As for Detweiler, he went on to write Blood Brothers, the greatest idea for a Call of Cthulhu supplement ever***.
The Reviews section was another favourite, as it was often written by Rick Swan, whose breezy manner made them more interesting than a lot of the (usually ponderous) regular articles. Swan had done a lot of freelance work on Paranoia and it showed in his writing style. The reviews tended to make everything sound great (although nothing was ever quite as good as good old TSR**** products), and it was through that column that I learned about this crazy game called Over the Edge where "PCs can be anything from Green Berets to talking cats". Of course, it was also in the review column that I found my first mention of Werewolf: The Apocalypse, so in a sense it's Rick Swan's fault that I spent a lot of 1999-2001 statting up fomori and not realizing what an absolute knob I was being.
And finally, in the pages of Dragon I had my first real glimpse of how awful gamers could be. My gaming groups had had our fights, our games had been cancelled on account of rules disputes and nerd drama, but I had assumed that was us and our youthful inexperience - Surely real gamers didn't have these emotional freakouts. In Dragon, in the Forum and Judges' Guild columns, I learned that it never really gets better, it only gets sadder. Judges' Guild was people writing in for Official TSR Rulings on rules questions, and you could tell that behind every one there was a seething argument about how my halfling totally would have survived that green ooze pit if my dick DM hadn't rounded up for encumbrance, and now TSR themselves are going to show him he's wrong so nyah. But even that was relatively mild compared to the Forum section, in which the overpowered/underpowered nature of the cleric was endlessly debated in multi-column screeds, as were other weighty issues like gaming outside your gender. Yeah. Exactly like an internet forum. Nothing ever changes, it seems.
* Actually, there was a technobabble explanation for why the Laws of Thermodynamics not only don't apply but appear to be actively reversed in hyperspace, but it's about as convincing as everything else Bearden wrote.
** If the words "Baatezu" and "Tanar'ri" mean nothing to you, you dodged a bullet.
*** A series of short, light-hearted adventures based on classic horror movies, from teen slashers to silent films. I know, right?
**** Hey remember when the internet loved spelling it T$R? Man, that never got old!
I don't know why I started buying Dragon mags specifically. They were reasonably priced and well within the range of a young nerd's allowance, and offered a wide variety of supplementary material - Almost all of it for D&D, but of course at that point I was only barely aware that there were other options. The then-current issues often focused on the arcana of Second Edition which was strange and baffling to my first-ed mind, and so I skipped over them and went straight to the back catalogue. Of these back issues, I favoured the Halloween and April Fool's editions, which offered opportunities for horror and comedy gaming, strange, alien ideas at the time.
One particular Halloween issue (1994, to be precise) was the tipping point. There was an article on resurrection magic and its impact on the imaginary world - In particular, how it fucks around with the quasi-medieval milieu that, as mentioned, is D&D's default arrangement (The King is dead! Long live the King! The King is back!), and how, given the hefty but by no means impossible cost of magic, for wealthy merchants and the like being assassinated was closer to a fine you had to pay than an actual corporal punishment. Pretty standard stuff by the standards of modern gaming, but it blew my young mind because it presumed a few things: An internally consistent world, and actually working out every possible impact and effect of the changes of that world.
Another article, which it turns out came from six months earlier (1994 was a good year, I guess), enhanced this idea with an article breakdown of a short series of books and pamphlets of what I would later refer to, with much gleeful elbowing and knowing looks, as "controversial knowledge". Specifically, these materials conveyed Thomas E. Bearden's spectacularly loopy theories about how the Soviets were totally developing Tesla technology, guys. In addition to the usual Tesla fun, Bearden's version of the tech kicks physics in the balls in a whole new way, as any energy transmitted through hyperspace is massively magnified through pure magic*. Thus, by transmitting nuclear blasts through harmless-looking transmitters, the dastardly Reds had access to planet-cracking bombs with no need for satellites or missiles! And shining a flashlight through hyperspace creates lasers! And the devil is in my water supply! This was my first encounter with CK, but even to a 13-year-old, the author, Gregory Detweiler, was a bit too credulous (although come to think of it, he was probably just adhering to TSR's general "please, please don't sue us" attitude, which they held for pretty much the entire 90s**). Anyway, this set off a lifelong fascination with crazy guys and their vanity-press frothings, a fascination all the more enabled by my later discovery of Kenneth Hite and his whole rich galaxy of WTF. As for Detweiler, he went on to write Blood Brothers, the greatest idea for a Call of Cthulhu supplement ever***.
The Reviews section was another favourite, as it was often written by Rick Swan, whose breezy manner made them more interesting than a lot of the (usually ponderous) regular articles. Swan had done a lot of freelance work on Paranoia and it showed in his writing style. The reviews tended to make everything sound great (although nothing was ever quite as good as good old TSR**** products), and it was through that column that I learned about this crazy game called Over the Edge where "PCs can be anything from Green Berets to talking cats". Of course, it was also in the review column that I found my first mention of Werewolf: The Apocalypse, so in a sense it's Rick Swan's fault that I spent a lot of 1999-2001 statting up fomori and not realizing what an absolute knob I was being.
And finally, in the pages of Dragon I had my first real glimpse of how awful gamers could be. My gaming groups had had our fights, our games had been cancelled on account of rules disputes and nerd drama, but I had assumed that was us and our youthful inexperience - Surely real gamers didn't have these emotional freakouts. In Dragon, in the Forum and Judges' Guild columns, I learned that it never really gets better, it only gets sadder. Judges' Guild was people writing in for Official TSR Rulings on rules questions, and you could tell that behind every one there was a seething argument about how my halfling totally would have survived that green ooze pit if my dick DM hadn't rounded up for encumbrance, and now TSR themselves are going to show him he's wrong so nyah. But even that was relatively mild compared to the Forum section, in which the overpowered/underpowered nature of the cleric was endlessly debated in multi-column screeds, as were other weighty issues like gaming outside your gender. Yeah. Exactly like an internet forum. Nothing ever changes, it seems.
* Actually, there was a technobabble explanation for why the Laws of Thermodynamics not only don't apply but appear to be actively reversed in hyperspace, but it's about as convincing as everything else Bearden wrote.
** If the words "Baatezu" and "Tanar'ri" mean nothing to you, you dodged a bullet.
*** A series of short, light-hearted adventures based on classic horror movies, from teen slashers to silent films. I know, right?
**** Hey remember when the internet loved spelling it T$R? Man, that never got old!
Friday, April 15, 2011
Why it sucks being a gamer
Trying to write an essay focusing on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the war machine makes it extremely easy to slide into thinking about Warmachine, with the result that time better spent trying to root out what the hell those French bastards were on about ends up being spent on "Seriously, there aren't any Trollblood channelers?".
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Scene at a Nexus of Dimensions
"So what do you call mine?"
"6338-Gray"
"Yeah, yeah, but what do you call it? Like, there's Anti-Earth and the Gorilla World and, you know, the one with the Nazi Crab-men..."
"Der BrachyuReich."
"Yeah! So what do you call it?"
"... the Craigiverse."
"Fuck off."
"No, seriously, the Arbiter who visited apparently met like a dozen guys named Craig in the three days he was there. It seems to have made an impression on him."
"Bullshit. Can we get a do-over?"
"You may have noticed we have all of the infinite multiverses to catalogue."
"Yeah, but you told me you have infinite other Nexuses helping you."
"That only divides it into smaller infinities, which are by definition still infinite. No do-overs."
"Shit, I can't believe you make decisions for such stupid reasons."
"Hey, when the Craigiverse invents dimensional travel, we'll talk."
"... Total bullshit."
"6338-Gray"
"Yeah, yeah, but what do you call it? Like, there's Anti-Earth and the Gorilla World and, you know, the one with the Nazi Crab-men..."
"Der BrachyuReich."
"Yeah! So what do you call it?"
"... the Craigiverse."
"Fuck off."
"No, seriously, the Arbiter who visited apparently met like a dozen guys named Craig in the three days he was there. It seems to have made an impression on him."
"Bullshit. Can we get a do-over?"
"You may have noticed we have all of the infinite multiverses to catalogue."
"Yeah, but you told me you have infinite other Nexuses helping you."
"That only divides it into smaller infinities, which are by definition still infinite. No do-overs."
"Shit, I can't believe you make decisions for such stupid reasons."
"Hey, when the Craigiverse invents dimensional travel, we'll talk."
"... Total bullshit."
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