The Full Lid
29th May 2020
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Hi everyone! Welcome to The Full Lid!
It's Friday. It's 5 p.m. It's time for your double shot of pop culture caffeine without racing to drink it before your straw becomes damp papier mache. If I read it, played it, watched it, ate it, made it, listened to it, or otherwise generally found it interesting in the last seven days? It's here.
Enthusiasm! Jokes! Reviews! Analysis! Recipes! MONTAGES! (sometimes)! It's like email, but fun!
This week's interstitial sections theme is boosting voices in industries and communities that deserve and need to be heard, especially right now. So check out all these great indie RPG creators.
Want to catch up on a back episode of The Lid? Here's the archive. Here's my home on the interwebs where you can learn more about the just ridiculous number of things I do.
I remain honored to be a Hugo finalist this year so if you're eligible, check out my voter packet while we're waiting for the ballot to open.
Forward! To Contents!
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Contents
Punchlines
The Dragon in the Library
The Human Frontier
Signal Boost
Where You Can Find Me This Week
Signing Off / Playing Out
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Punchlines
*needle scratch*
Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this animated kitchen, punching a man dressed like a member of C&C Music Factory in the face. Allow me to explain.
Editor's note: Just.... just roll with it, folks. It's been A Week.
Streets of Rage 4 is a video game where you walk to the right and murder people. That's literally it. It is a classic, side-scrolling beat-em-up where you play as either Axel Stone (former cop, martial arts expert, headband enthusiast), Blaze Fielding (former cop, martial arts expert, allowed to have eaten food this time), Floyd Iraia (construction worker with cybernetic arms. It's... a whole thing) or Cherry Hunter (daughter of a previous character, rock musician, martial arts expert).
Individually or in multi-player, you're called on to fight the new syndicate taking over the city. You fight them on a train, you fight them on a plane, you fight them though they do their best, I HATE the guys in the green vests.
It is massive fun. it's also massively, relentlessly difficult and has unfortunately decided to bring back that other unwanted piece of '90s nostalgia; mocking players. Easy mode means your score is divided by 10(!) and there's no quit option, just 'CHICKEN OUT'. It's not quite a game that keeps flexing its delts and yelling about Joe Rogan but it gets pretty close at times.
That (and the green vest wankers) aside I really enjoyed it, and finished it for the first time this morning. The hand drawn animation and backgrounds are gorgeous, the thing moves beautifully and has some lovely anime-style '...sure, okay' escalation. You start out punching thugs in the face. You finish the game fighting a pair of 1%er trust fund babies, one of whom has an electrified fencing rapier and the other is driving a spider-mech. One that, in fairness, you see parked outside in a previous level, making it Chekov's Mecha. So there's that.
But what I really loved about it is embodied in the sceen from that screenshot. Stage 6, Chinatown, where you fight your way through... Chinatown. At one point you're swamped by about 10 goons, all of whom try and get you cornered. You avoid them, usually fists first, and move around that central island. You punch, kick, deflect, throw, use improvised weapons, including your opponents. It's frantic and balletic, brutal and darkly funny.
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Rather like this.
This is a fight scene from Spy, Melissa McCarthy's first finest hour and it's the exact sort of frantic, funny but OH GOD THE KNIFE IS RIGHT THERE fight that Jackie Chan has been perfecting for longer than most of us have been alive. It's also exactly what Streets of Rage 4 nails so beautifully. The perfect summation of graceful, clean martial arts and OH MY GOD WHY DO THEY KEEP HITTING ME?!
It's impressive, relatable, badass and fallible. Like Spy. Like you in Streets of Rage 4.
Which really crystallized for me why I love a well-put-together fight scene so much. Done wrong, usually with about 50 cuts a minute, it just shows you that the director had too much caffeine that morning. Done right, it tells you everything you need to know about the characters and their emotional and physical state.
Which brings us to Mr. Wick.
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Oh, Jonathan...
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The two human dynamos in the scene above are Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman, alumni of everything from The Raid movies to the most wasted cameo in Star Wars history. These men are martial artists with an emphasis on artist, offhandedly graceful, lighter than air and utterly bloody terrifying when called upon to be.
They're also, and this is what makes the scene, just instinctively good actors.
The running, bloodied joke here is that John has fought his way through an entire hotel of armored commandos and a couple countries' worth of thugs to reach this point. His lethally efficient, gracefully brutal judo and jujitsu skills have got him this far but he is TIRED and spends most of this scene getting his ass roundly kicked.
When his opponents aren't doing that they're busy fanboying over him. I mean sure, they're there to stop him but this is John Wick! Simply getting to them was something only he could do. So as the fight goes on, they treat him with respect, he is DONE with EVERYTHING and basically bulls his way through these embodiments of graceful violence to reach yet another fight scene. Because John Wick's real black belt is in not stopping and his perseverance is punched into focus by the world's most violent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cover act up there.
That's why I love a good fight scene, because it's crammed full of information. Character through action, action driven by character. Can you take the guys in the kitchen all at once? No. Can you dance round that center aisle limiting their chances to get to you? Damn right you can.
Streets of Rage 4 has several moments like this and I loved each and every one of them. There's one on a speeding train where signposts are an equal opportunities obstacle. There's a mini-arc involving a supremely tough SWAT commander you never quite put down who ends up realizing she's on the wrong team. There's the spider mech, embodying everything the two privileged little sociopaths operating it have that you don't. Weapons, money, goons, casual disregard for collateral damage.
But you have the corner of a dingy, stereotypical kitchen in a stereotypical Chinatown that has a karate black belt on every corner a kickboxer isn't. You're outnumbered, outgunned and even on easy you don't have enough lives.
And you've got each and every one of them right where you want them. Especially those assholes in the green vests. Go show them who you really are.
Streets of Rage 4 is out for all major consoles now. Though you will have to buy your own headband. Send me a picture.
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Indie RPGs: HEART from Rowan, Rook and Decard
Spire, Grant Howitt and team's dark fantasy / conspiracy / espionage RPG is one of the best RPGs I've ever read and Heart, set in the same universe, is out now. Here's how they describe it:
Heart is a game about damnation, redemption, survival and obsession. It’s also a game about body horror, walls made of breathing meat, and exploring a possibly-malevolent parasite dimension. It’s also a game about dungeon-crawling, at the base of it; we wanted to take the classic story of descending into a dangerous underworld and see what twist we could put on it.
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The Dragon in the Library
Editor's note: spoilers
Kit has a problem. A big one. She's being dragged to the library by best friends Josh and Alita because the new Danny Fandango book is out and they CANNOT miss it. Kit just wants to hang around graveyards, get muddy and fall out of trees. I mean, it's not like she's asking the world.
When they get to the library, all the copies have been checked out. Worse, Kit doesn't get to climb any trees. Because she's fallen into a book. Kit discovers she's a wizard, chosen very very young by wild magic. Faith, the librarian, is also a wizard and decides to train this super enthusiastic new recruit.
There's just one problem: the library is about to be bought and demolished...
Stowell does that thing that truly excellent children's authors do, playing to multiple audiences at once. The story of Kit, Josh and Alita is the cliffhanger-a-chapter stuff of every bored locked down child's dreams. Kit is sporty, physical, uncoordinated and worries she gets in the way. Josh is very smart and a little worried if that's going to work for him. Alita is pragmatic, sensible, and loves animals. Together they fit best when they're with each other: even when Kit makes bad choices, she does so for excellent reasons that she, and we, understand.
Better still, so does her mentor. This is a book crammed with incident and action, but where the characters are all either on the same page or have only skipped one or two ahead. Presumably to look at Davide Ortu's exuberant, energetic illustrations. There's none of the staid dusty majesty of Hogwarts here. This is a living, literally, working library used by wizards of every age, gender and nationality.
Which is a roundabout way of saying Faith, the hard-working and cheerfully honest librarian, is my favorite character. She has no problem saying when she's made mistakes, is learning just like Kit, and is both super cool and a great role-model for kids and parents.
Which brings us to the book parents will read, as opposed to the book they'll read to their children. That book is about the critical importance of libraries in our communities. That book skewers the banal 'human stock' fascism of capitalism at its most feral with kindness, intelligence and compassion. It subtly tells every kind of child that they aren't just one thing. Sporty Kit is a wizard. Bookish Josh thinks surprisingly well on his feet. Sensible Alita can lie like no one on Earth and may be on her way to becoming a dragon tamer.
Not only does Stowell show us the wonder in this universe for the magical and non-magical alike, she also shows us the wonder within those people. Because if they aren't around, who else is going to read to the dragon?
The Dragon in the Library is both a great MG standalone and a cracking start to a series, one Stowell cleverly weaves seeds for throughout this first book. Energetic, honest, kind and fun it's definitely worth fighting an evil property developer for.
The Dragon in the Library is available now, as is the sequel, The Monster in the Lake. |
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Indie RPGs: QUIETUS from Oli Jeffrey
Quietus is a deeply impressive game of quiet horror. It draws inspiration from the films of Mike Flanagan, including Oculus, Gerald's Game and Hush, so basically it's inspired by some of my all-time favorite movies.
It takes Flanagan's ability to wring horror and compassion from the tiniest of scenes and helps you do the exact same thing. It's prepless, playable with two players and a GM, and an absolute must for horror fans. I'm seriously contemplating a Flanagan special later in the year including a detailed look at Quietus. Hopefully I'll put together my homebrew settings inspired by Invisible Man and Treadstone by then too...
Quietus is available now. Find Oli on Twitter.
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The Human Frontier
Launched in secret, The Human Frontier is a sleeper ship carrying over a thousand settlers. The world they're heading for is uninhabited, light years away and the crew, fitted with neural AI assistants, are ready for whatever it throws at them.
They tell themselves they're ready...
Written and directed by Big Finish's Nicholas Briggs, The Human Frontier closes out their run of original drama shows on a cargo bay FULL of bangs. This is the sort of science fiction everyone likes to say they want when TV does it: massive ideas filtered through intimate human lenses.
The first of those lenses are crewmembers Anna Swift and Command Daisy Bailey. Bailey, played by Genevieve Gaunt, is an endlessly principled and ruthlessly determined officer whose desire to do the right thing outstrips her survival instinct. Anna, played with sincerity and charm by Pepter Lunkuse, would very much like to live AND spend way more time with Daisy, her almost-girlfriend thanks.
In the first twenty minutes, they find themselves on the opposing sides of a moral dilemma that would give Captain Pike pause. Inside an hour, Anna is alone on a new world and Daisy is MIA.
Our next pair of characters have some answers for them both. Clive Wood and Mark Elstob play Brett Triton and Malden Grey, respectively. Triton (and BRETT TRITON is a hell of a name) is the president of Triton, the latest in a long (very patriarchal, it's implied) line. His job is straightforward: rule the industrialized world, make sure relationships with the 'locals' stay on an even keel, and keep his head.
None of that is going well as the show opens. So Elstob's Gray -- the sort of major domo Leo McGarry would both nod approvingly at from down the bar and make a point never to talk to -- steps in. There's a murder, or at least a death. A scandal too and, slowly, Triton starts to unravel. Both pairings clearly have immense fun in wildly different ways. Lunkuse and Gaunt have a sparky, relaxed manner around one another that makes a lot of the more dramatic scenes really pop. Wood and Elstob are playing Shakespearean monsters, massive in action and ruthless in deed. Magnificent bastards, in every sense of the phrase.
Together these four walk a stage across which Briggs paints vast science fiction concepts. The payoff as to how Triton is inhabited is one. Another is the struggle to rebuild society when you've brought society with you and its FTL drive is breaking down.
This is where Lucy Briggs-Owen, Briggs himself and Elstob, pulling double duty, come in. Briggs-Owen plays Nilly, the ship and crew AI, always whispering in Anna's ear and ready with a plan. She's instantly charming, very funny and never quite goes away in a manner the show explores to great effect in later episodes. Briggs too has some fun with his Hitchcockian cameo as Dendrick, the scientist behind the mission. Most of all, Elstob's harried Bob, notional mission commander and a good egg in a boiling kettle, is worlds away from the feline scheming of Gray. One is a good man trying to be good enough. The other is a political chief of staff, and this week especially, we all know where that job leads, right?
Colonization. Interstellar ethics. Digital life. Free will. These are the concepts The Human Frontier with wit, intelligence and a raft of great characters -- this is classic ideas-driven science fiction. The only weakness for some will be the last sci-fi rope it embraces: the season break.
The show answers enough questions to be a satisfying done-in-one, but dangles the obligatory loose ends. The end result is similar to the Battlestar Galactica pilot; a complete experience that could open the door to a return or something else. I hope it does. Because The Human Frontier is the sort of sci-fi we need more of. And with Strange New Worlds barreling towards us, it seems primed to find an enthusiastic audience.
The Human Frontier is available now from Big Finish.
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Indie RPGs: WOLFSPELL from Epidiah Ravachol
Yes it's an RPG. Yes it's a triplefold album cover. Yes Epidiah Ravachol is a genius. A full RPG on an album sleeve, Wolfspell features art by Shel Khan and throws your players into an adventure that pits them against their destinies, introducing them to their bestial side...
Balancing prog rock visuals with a gripping story and a glorious screen / adventure / sourcebook combo design this looks georgous and massive fun.
Wolfspell is available now as a PDF for $15 and coming soon in physical form for $30. |
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Signal Boost
Events
Casting Calls
- Sinister Beard Games are actively seeking projects from underrepresented creators in the tabletop RPG community. POC, LGBT+, marginalized gender and disabled creators are all encouraged to apply.
- The fine people of New Century are looking to recast a role. Can you do assertive English wizard? Then you may be able to help.
Artwork
Hugo Voting Packets (an ongoing series)
While we wait for Hugo voting to open, various finalists have begun to make their voting material available. Are you a Hugo finalist? Do you have packet material you'd like linked to? Get in touch!
People and Projects
- The always amazing S. B. Divya is curating a list of 2020 debut authors to point readers at. Need a new read? This list has you covered, and you'll be helping out an author launching their debut in *gestures* this.
- Adam Rakunas has his books back! Windswept and Like A Boss are funny, clever, kind and perceptive science fiction about a union organizer, PTSD and corporate intrigue on the ragged frontier. They're GREAT and these editions have extras! Like taco recipes! Seriously, check them out.
- Chrissy Harrison's Mime had me at 'paranormal journalist' and by the time it got to 'evil mime whose creations are made real' I was literally applauding.
- Award nominated Gemma Amor's newest, White Pines, is available now!
- Dark Matter Magazine are running a crowdfunding campaign and need a bit of help to push over the line. Go help them out if you can.
- Brick Moon Fiction have a new story up, 'The Conductor' by Eli Edelson and narrated by N Thurkettle.
Podcasts
- My fellow Kitschies judge and incredible author in her own right Kirsty Logan co-hosts the fantastic Teenage Scream, a podcast lovingly dissecting the best and worst of '90s teen horror. As someone who still gets a Pavlovian reaction to the Dimension Films logo, I am READY for this.
- Wayne Kelly's long-running JUPodcast is worth checking out if you're a creative writer. Also check his feed for links to Life Support, the short movie he recently completed.
- The Y2K Pod is a phenomenally clever story told in two time periods and making full use of podcasting's glorious idiosyncrasies. I dig it a lot and you can find it here.
- Space Cowboy Books runs Simultaneous Times, a great short story and music podcast.
- Flying in the Face of Fate is an excellent, LGBTQIA+ friendly fantasy podcast that it's always a pleasure to feature. They're in Season 4 right now but do go check them out from the start.
Comics
- Jennie Gyllblad's webcomic, Skal, has just updated. It's powered by her Patreon and well worth your time, as is her Twitter feed. Nudity, violence and gore abound -- browse accordingly.
- Shing Yin Khor's roadtrip comics are startlingly beautiful.
That's this week's Signal Boost, folks. If you have a project you'd like to see here get in touch.
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Where You Can Find Me
Plus Size
- The Full Lid Plus is live! This month's inaugural edition features what we learn in the first half of The Mandalorian, a musical interlude from Will Smith, and a look at white knuckle free climbing documentary Free Solo. Cheap at half the price! Thanks for supporting my experiment into making my writing a bit more self-sustaining.
Special Guest
- I had massive fun playing Million Dollar Soulmate with creator Greg Stolze. The game of millionaire romantic entanglement, it's a cooperative storytelling RPG. Ours included lawnmower racing. It was a GOOD time and I'll share the link with you when the recording goes live. But don't wait -- you can find the game here.
The Clark Kent Beat
Something Good has covered a LOT of ground in the last couple of weeks. We've had:
PseudoPod Towers
PseudoPod 703: Dream House
Pseudopod 704: Resilience
Twitch Ahoy!
- Every Wednesday night at 10 p.m. BST I take to the Internet and read a bedtime story. It's great fun -- both mood lighting and shenanigans are involved (check the clips). This week we showed off our Field Notes stockpile and the story was 'The Phantom Coach' by Amelia Edwards. VODs are available on Twitch for a few weeks and then on YouTube.
- Marguerite and I also stream some videogames every Sunday morning for a couple of hours. Stop by and chat while there are Goose Crimes or Crash Team Racing happens. We're looking for suggestions for more PS4 cooperative games, come let us know if you have a favorite.
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Signing Off / Playing Out
Thanks for reading, everyone! I hope the week was either good or fast, preferably both.
TFL will return next week, same Bat Time Same Bat Channel. Find Marguerite and I on the Team KennerStuart Instagram and of course the Twitters throughout the week if you want to chat.
Next week on Twitch we're starting a serialized creepypasta -- I can't WAIT. Subscribe to the EA Twitch channel to receive notifications.
This work is produced for free. If you like what you read and can manage it, please consider dropping something in the tip jar. Thank you :).
Playing us out this week are The Ackles with a cover of You Can Call Me Al. No I don't know why either, but I'm BEYOND pleased it exists.
Know what I DO know? That this...
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is a Full Lid.
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