Bostonspacejockey is moving!

Hi, all!

So great to see you again. To my (very few) readers, I'm changing platforms--I will no longer be posting the flotsam and jetsam of my brain here. "The only constant in life is change," and all that. I've decided to focus more on fiction--specifically, weird fiction and a few novel projects that don't gel properly with the Amazon Kindle label.

You can now find me on Wattpad where I'm penning WEIRD and TERRIBLE stories that will make your skin crawl... or, at least, give you the occasional laugh. Come find me there!

So long--and thanks for all the views!

Eldritch Milkshake Ducks: H.P. Lovecraft's Bigotry

Greetings, fellow nerds! So good to see you. We're doing a heavy topic today. One might even say it's vast, squamous and unknowable!!

Today's guest is a writer who's famous now, but died alone and unappreciated. We've coddled him, made excuses for him and struggled to come to terms with his flagrant misbehaviors for a hundred years. No more! Today we're getting in deep with the weirdest writer of the twenties and thirties: Howard Philips Lovecraft, the man himself!

You know this guy. He invented Cthulhu! Cthulhu's fun, right? Drives people crazy in their dreams, lives in sunken R'Lyeh, his neighbor is the Bloop. But there's plenty you may not know about Lovecraft. Namely, that he was--in the words of Stephen King, who's not known to mince words--a "galloping" racist, conspiracy theorist, and basically the original 4channer.

Mr. King is making an understatement here. Lovecraft was a titanic bigot, his paranoia fueled by Puritanism and self-induced isolation. His views run parallel to the "alt-right" movements of today, but with less subtlety. If Lovecraft had been born in 1990 instead of 1890, he wouldn't have had time for writing--he'd be too busy rampaging across Twitter, dumping isolationist, xenophobic rhetoric on everyone. This man was terrified by people of color--despite never having met any. On top of this, he was a conspiracy theorist before that was even a thing you did--he was convinced Irish Catholic immigrants were conspiring to control America.

Pictured: Lovecraft's distant relative (no, not really--calm down, Lovecraft Estate.)

What I aim to do here is answer how this came about--how a guy nicknamed "The Old Man" for his charming fussiness became filled with irrational fears of people he never even met. I will not make excuses for Lovecraft, here--the dude was a genius, but geniuses can also be assholes. What interests me more than absolving Lovecraft is understanding him. All bigotry comes from somewhere, and once you find out where it comes from, it becomes one step easier to handle.

I've said before on this very blog that we need to take steps to understand today's young men and why they're so goddamn crazy misogynist and violent, and I think Lovecraft is one of the keys to the whole thing. Because... well... Just LOOK at this guy.

Voted "Most Punchable Face of the 20th Century."

Just... just look at that face. This is one of the few, rare pictures of Howard smiling, and it's awful. You just want to smack the smugness off him, or maybe write him a manual on how to smile without looking like you've inhaled a pineapple. He looks ridiculous, nerdy in his clothing choice and, if his biography The Curious Case of H.P. Lovecraft is to be believed, in his attitude. He was an insufferable jackass even to his friends, boasting of his "British" descent (neither of his parents had any connection to England) and refusing to edit any of his works--not because he thought they were perfect, but because he was so insecure he couldn't bear to look at a page once it had been written. Come on, H.P., you could've at least spell-checked your work.

Since every bigot is informed by their upbringing, let's look at Lovecraft's childhood. Jerkhood doesn't develop in a vacuum, and Howard's youth informed his attitude throughout his life. So let's see how he started... oh man.

Oh. Oh, dear.

Yep, that's baby Howard, wearing a dress. According to his biography, his mother--who later died in an insane asylum just like his father, both of them victims of mental illness--dressed him as a girl for most of his childhood, to simulate the daughter she'd never had.

Okay, not a great start. If a kid wants to wear a dress, fine, whatever--but I highly doubt Mini-Howard had a choice here. It's a classic case of bad parenting, and it left marks on Howard. He had issues with women for the rest of his life, from his fear of sex to his cold, calculating relationship with his wife. (They separated before his death--shockingly, the guy who wrote about "morbid, clammy slabs of Cyclopean marble" wasn't a warm and loving husband.)

"Honey, want me to draw us a sexy bubble bath?" "No thanks, dear, I'm busy doodling squamous, UNWHOLESOME horrors!"

Again, we're not making excuses for Howard. However, we can see how his early life jump-started inside him the burning core of bigotry: insecurity. His mother's erratic behavior and death terrified him, and he was forevermore a sensitive and delicate person. Someone so easily ruffled would have jumped at the chance to feel strong, about anything. And tragically, Howard felt strongly about just two things: weird fiction... and eugenics.

Pictured: The summary of HPL's entire writing career.

At many points in his life Howard engaged in racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric, from his famously horrible poem about black people and his rumored shock when his wife reminded him he was Jewish, to which he responded, "No, you're not! You're a Lovecraft!"

Yeah... Not our best guy, over here. Once again, talent does not preclude someone from being a complete irresponsible fuckstick.

But already we're seeing parallels here. A quiet, insecure white guy with a real sore spot about race (and women, and immigration, and his precious "white identity") sounds just like the shit we're dealing with today. The internet has radicalized an entire army of young, insecure racists, pushing them out into the street to spread hateful views and engage in deadly violence. While Howard never punched anyone in his life, much less committed murder, he was still the same type of radicalized, secretly hateful young white male we see today. History repeats itself, and America hasn't changed.

At least we've never elected Cthulhu. Though it's not for lack of trying.

The strangest thing about Lovecraft's prejudice is that of all people, he should be the most capable of using imagination to understand the unknown. The guy penned hundreds of pages about cosmic, alien entities, and referred to his Elder Ones aliens as "scientists" and "men of reason." Lovecraft engaged in plenty of gross, imperialist thinking--one of the narrators in "Call of Cthulhu" is killed by a mysterious swarthy man from overseas, the implication being Cthulhu's human minions are all people of color and foreigners... for some reason? Yet at the same time, Lovecraft had enough self-awareness to write this:

"Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos, yet other beings with wider, stronger, or different range of senses might not only see very differently the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy, and life which lie close at hand..."

... Damn.

"Yeah, man! Worlds of life, energy and matter, duuude!"

Someone capable of thinking outside the box like this--outside the scope of normal human life, and normal human minds--should have been able to see through the bigotries of his time, at least a little. But racism is a system, not just an attitude. The quiet prejudices of his friends--Robert Howard, August Derleth, and others--buoyed Lovecraft's pre-existing views.

None of them put any checks on his suspicion of  immigrants, or questioned him when he set his stories in "exotic Egypt" and wrote about the dangers of race-mixing. Why would they? R. Howard, for his part, was busy writing Conan the Barbarian stories--in a Hyperborea full of tribal caricatures and scantily-clad women, to boot. The nerds of Lovecraft's time couldn't be expected to reign in his attitudes... or teach him how to be more accepting, kinder, and less girl-phobic.

"Mr. Howard, you're sure these stories don't come across... just a little overcompensating?" "WHAT NO, WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT!"

And so, we're stuck with Racist Lovecraft, rather than the idealized version we'd prefer. All we can do is enjoy the parts of his work we like the most--the cosmic terror of his creatures, the creeping dread of his prose. Instead of lamenting his regrettable, isolationist attitude, we should do more to erase those toxic views in our own society.

And we need to do it quickly. Because despite his talent, despite the mystery and beauty of his works, the last thing we need is a new generation of Lovecrafts.

WHEN A SEQUEL LOSES A STAN: "REVENANT KINGDOM" VS. "WRATH OF THE WHITE WITCH"

Have you ever fallen in love with a game so obscure, so off-the-beat, so absolutely unheard-of in gaming circles that you meet with confused stares whenever you bring it up? Have you gone wildly out of your way to introduce that game to a stranger, walking through the rain to lend them the disc even though you know there’s no chance they might finish it? Have you had your heart broken when, three days later, they hand you the disc back saying “I dunno, I just couldn’t commit to the game right now” with a look of pity in their eyes?

… No? It’s just me, then? Figures.

It's fine. I've moved on. I'm fine... Really.

That game, for me, was Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. This game was a masterpiece on every level: artistically, in terms of the gameplay, in every single frame of its joyfully cutesy and pun-filled world. This was a game that reveled in being a game: there were references to the clichés of RPG mechanics, a monster-collecting system that shamelessly stole from Pokemon, and an entire casino of post-game challenges. It was designed, from the ground up, to be absurdly charming. And this makes sense, because all of it was made by the legendary Studio Ghibli.

To say Ghibli is the Disney of Japan is an understatement. In their many films, they’ve successfully captured the whimsy of childhood and the terrors of adulthood, wandering into gory territory Disney wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, and building an army of die-hard fans who now circle the globe. Ghibli helping to make a video game was an odd choice, a step out of their usual wheelhouse.

But what’s even more unusual was how deep it was. I’m not talking Karl Marx vs. Stirner deep, or "beatnik" deep—I’m talking “kid teleports to a magical land because his mom died from a heart attack while saving him from drowning.” THAT kind of deep. You literally take this kid through every stage of the grieving process, all while catching monsters with a magic harp and befriending dragons. Oh, and picking up random hobos for DPS purposes.

"Yes, this man sure looks trustworthy. Let's add him to our party." "Oliver, he's clearly a crackhead."

When Ni No Kuni 2 came out, my wallet never stood a chance.   

Revenant Kingdom picks up several thousand years after White Witch, and for good reason. The creative team wanted to distance themselves from the first game, partly because they were changing the mechanics a bunch, and partly to just get out of Hayao Miyazaki’s shadow a bit. This is understandable given how closely Ghibli watched the development of the second game: they were hyper-focused on making sure the game matched the “reputation” of Ghibli’s movies. This had mixed results, as we’ll soon see.

So, how did #2 compare to #1? Let’s count the ways.

ONE: STORY

As far as plot lines go, “orphaned boy goes to anime Narnia” is pretty hard to beat. Yet Ni No Kuni 2 almost does it, by taking the crazy levels and pushing them all the way to max. In a now-infamous cutscene, you start off as the President of “The Union,” a USA-analogue we never saw in #1. Possibly because it looks to be a future fascist state, but we’ll get into that later.

Behold… Ni No Kuni is become Death, destroyer of worlds.

I'm feeling a lot of feelings about that nuke, and none of them are childish joy.

 From the moment the voice-over hits, you know this ain’t your grandpa’s Ni No Kuni. We’ve decided to tackle bigger themes this time, it seems—not childhood, but adulthood. Not playground skirmishes, but—nuclear war?? Woah, Ni No Kuni, slow the fuck down! Where are the brakes, oh God the brakes on this Ni no Kuni train, where are they?!!

There are no brakes, child. Ni No Kuni is your God, now.

So, uh… Anyway, now that the MC’s country has been fucking nuked to ashes, he’s randomly teleported into Anime Narnia. “President Roland Crane” immediately proceeds to shoot a Mouse-Folk native in the back, saving the tiny blonde prince of this realm. Together, they escape the castle and become an inter-dimensional “bad cop, good cop” team. (Hint: Roland is the bad cop. Anytime diplomacy fails, he pulls out his future gun and uses that instead. It’s all very Mark Twain.)

With this… questionable dynamic in place, the story plods through a long and elaborate arc where Boy-King Evan decides to unite the world under one world government. Does this sound creepy? Because it should, and the other characters openly tell him so. It’s a while before he can make realistic, practical legislation out of his dream. Eventually [spoilers ahead] he succeeds, and future peace is insured! Oh, and his son contacts him in dreams from the future to tell him everything’s great and he’s a hero. Did we mention Ni No Kuni is weirdly fond of time travel? It just keeps coming up—and it’s never explained why the heroes can’t use it to solve problems. If Evan II can telepathically time-travel, what stops him from influencing past events? Hell, what happens if he turns out to be a dick and oppresses his people? How do you stop a psychic God-Emperor who can read your mind in the past? Maybe I should stop thinking about it so much.

 Pictured: Me trying to decipher the Ni No Kuni wiki at 3AM on a Monday morning.

Overall, the story of #2 is fun and engaging, but it never quite reaches the heights of #1. We still get a fairy sidekick, a gang of scoundrels and a plucky young hero, but… it all feels a little formulaic. The game never seems to truly challenge its protagonists, outside a few brief scenes where Roland flashes back to his broken world and a scene where Evan’s ninja babysitter gets fridged (killed off) for drama purposes. A shame, since she seemed like a cool character, but I guess something has to fuel Evan's lack of a character arc, so...

WINNER: White Witch, by a wide margin.

TWO: GAMEPLAY

"I cast NAPALM!" "Oliver, no!"

Back when White Witch came out, they got a lot of flak for stealing the formula of Pokemon. And rightly so: the creatures (while adorable) are all designed for battle, and they even go into 3 stages of evolution, with a split path at the 3^rd where you can decide between 2 (murderous) final forms. But the shameless move of stealing this formula actually worked, so well that I remember White Witch more fondly than any Pokemon game I’ve ever played. Pokemon might have collectible critters, but it can’t make you laugh or cry during cutscenes.

Revenant Kingdom abandons the Pokemon system, which is a little sad given how much work I put into it in #1. It replaces it with nearly 100 collectible “Higgledies,” basically the Kodamas from Princess Mononoke but more endearing. These guys are… not very fun to collect. They’re visually adorable, their names are sickeningly cute and they help out in combat, but they don’t have much story behind them. White Witch had an actual bestiary—an eBook the player could page through for hours when they got bored with the main game. Keep your Higgledies, just give me back my ripoff Charmander, dammit.

Pictured: Plagiarism. Delicious, delicious plagiarism.

The rest of the gameplay is propped up by hack-and-slash combat, mana-meter management and a fun but messy mini-game where you direct armies in battle. These armies are “chibi” shaped, which means you’ve got entire squads of adorable big-headed soldiers slaughtering each other for sport. It’s cute, and has a great role in the climax, but lacks the serious drama you’d expect from the title screen. Also, um, is anyone going to tell King Evan what happens to all his lost squads? Maybe we should keep it quiet, the poor kid’s been through a lot. Wouldn’t want him to snap and start drinking milk from a saucer.

The final cornerstone in our triple-fudge-cake of nested mechanics (did I say mechanics? You like mechanics, right? Because Revenant has DOZENS of them!) is a kingdom management screen. It’s a bit dull, until you realize you can chain research facilities into an endless Ouroboros of state-funded think-tanks, which make your Higgledies stronger, which makes your combat easier, which makes your magic recover faster, which—

If I can somehow work this clip into every blog post, I will die happy.

I’ll stop there, but it gets way more complex. All the stuff your citizens produce in the Kingdom goes into your personal inventory (I don’t know how Evan carries 5,000 Radiant Radishes in his bag, but whatever, it’s magic, I ain’t gotta explain shit) and you use it for crafting. The crafting mechanic is… not terrible. I usually hate the post-Minecraft trend of “EVERYTHING MUST BE CRAFTED, EVEN A SHARP STICK” but here, it works well. Because once again the mechanics feed into each other, and the weapons you craft allow you to kill monsters who drop items to build weapons with, to kill more monsters, who drop more items…

"This game mechanic is being bled like a STUCK PIG, MAC! And I got the 5,000 Radiant Radishes to prove it!!"

I could go on. It’s pretty impressive, mechanically. But I miss the simple, straight-forward combat in #1 where a “familiar” (Pokemon) could attack or be drawn back by Plucky Protagonist in order to charge a magical smackdown. Narrowly, though, #2 beats out #1 by the sheer options it provides to beat enemies with. Want to shoot fireballs and lightning? There’s a research topic for that. Want to swarm your foes with Higgledies instead? Recruit a citizen who can train them for that.

That’s another thing—the citizen recruitment is the most addicting game mechanic I’ve ever seen, because every citizen has a story you need to pursue to recruit them. It’s like a dozen Ghibli movies, all wedged into one game.

WINNER: Revenant Kingdom, by a cat’s whisker.

THREE: ART!!!

This is it: the reason people flock to Ghibli movies. The reason they keep coming back to the old ones, and seeking out the new. In the big-mouthed doodles of Hayao Miyazaki, the studio found an iconic style that never grew old, though it rarely gels with American voice-acting dubs. (Looking at you, Christian Bale.) But the art, the beautiful backdrops and comfy interiors and zany bright characters… These simple watercolors and smooth animation sequences are the true moneymaker behind Ghibli, especially when coupled with Joe Hisaishi's amazing music. White Witch contained animated scenes made specifically for the game, and when #2 dropped, I couldn’t wait to see more of them.

Revenant Kingdom, I’m sad to report, doesn’t have a single one.

Throughout the entire game, I played earnestly and obsessively, waiting to be lavished with that uniquely cozy visual cartoon style that Ghibli is world-famous for. No such luck. It appears the studio,having divorced themselves from involvement with Revenant’s story, also didn’t see it as worthy of their artistic brilliance. Which is… Kind of insulting. Revenant Kingdom is a game I sunk over 60 hours into, a game that I chased across a dozen sleepless nights. And the guys currently running Studio Ghibli just couldn’t be fucked to bestow the treasures of their studio on us unworthy gamer-peasants.

Why, Studio Ghibli? Why you gotta do me like this? I’ve been your Stan for so long. I have a DVD of Whisper of the Heart, for God’s sake—NOBODY liked Whisper of the Heart!! (Okay, maybe a few people.) And yet, here I am with over 60 (let’s be real, closer to 80) hours of gameplay in Ni No Kuni, and not one scene of the flawless glimmering retro style the studio is famous for. Not even a loading screen animation. Instead they have a Higgledie mockingly shake its ass at you. Yes, Level 5, that’s why I shelled out $60 for your game: so I could watch Higgledies twerk at me. Thanks a lot for that.

So sexy.

And let me be clear: This is false advertising. The makers of the game knew these sequences were a big draw back in White Witch, and to their credit they do their best to ape the style, in every 3D sequence. But it’s just not the same. What made #1’s characters so precious to the player, what captured our hearts, were the moments where these video game characters went back in time from 3D to 2D and showed us the beating emotional heart of the game itself. And Revenant Kingdom takes all that potential and pours it down the drain.

What were you busy with, Ghibli? (I'm sorry, it's Studio Ponoc these days.) Were you busy with… I don’t know, that fucking Magic Flower movie? Aka the rip-off of Little Witch Academia based on a 30-year-old children’s book that you shat out because you need to stay relevant in a changing world? I know animation is expensive to produce—I’ve seen the budgets on these films, and they’re absurd. But Ghibli, old buddy… This game was preordered by thousands of fans, solely for the privilege of marinating their eyeballs in your beautiful art. And you fucked us over, all to save a few yen.

No, I’m not going to give this one to Revenant Kingdom. White Witch was limited by the hardware of the time, and it could be annoying at times to have to re-tread familiar levels. But at least it didn’t seduce you with glimmering nostalgia, and then deliver microwaved Machinima. What duplicity. What absolute… cheapness. It’s a word I never expected to associate with any of Ghibli’s projects, but yet, here we are.

They do throw you a bone right at the end: after you do away with the final boss, and save the world, the credits scene is overlaid by beautiful concept-art frames showing everyday life in the game’s world. Polymorphed heroes being chased by a frog, flashbacks to better days of young Evan toddling around the castle—these are gorgeous pieces, and I would pay money to have any of them as a print. But as a peace offering, it doesn’t do much to make up for the lack of animation in the game. It reminds me of Bioshock Infinite, another project crippled by missing elements cut at the last minute.

WINNER: With less executive meddling and actual goddamn cartoons in their game about cartoon characters, W.W. wins.

And that’s the verdict! W.W. on story, R.K. on gameplay, and W.W. on art. Really, even after all my ranting on Revenant’s problems, you should still play it. It’s an adorably hyper-focused RPG that pushes themes of peace, cooperation and kindness in a world where we have less and less every day. Also, the anime engineer lady with pink hair is super cute. I’m just saying…

Don't judge me.

See you next time!