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http://webcomcon.blogspot.com/ on The Reading Canary: Gaunt's Ghosts' Second Assault at 19:16 on 09-09-2010 - link Absolutely, Corbec's death was way more significant than theirs. And I easily remembered his and a couple other major ones well after I read The Saint, and didn't even think of the two I mentioned until I was actually reading Honour Guard another time around. It's just that it's not quite as bad as only killing off random people who are introduced in Chapter X and killed halfway through Chapter X 1.

I actually don't mind that technique (caveat: when used in conjunction with actual, meaningful, plot-impacting deaths), because even someone who gets a name, a few cursory bits of personality, and a small achievement is a lot more meaningful than just a report that three Ghosts died in the offensive. It works with the third-person limited perspective, since hopefully that's how Gaunt sees his unit.
Sister Magpie on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 16:18 on 09-09-2010 - link p.s. Looking back on my original comment I can see how just saying "Except Sin" could read as a gotcha, like I was saying, "Um, except SIN! Who totally pwns your argument!" That was one of those times where how something sounds in your head doesn't come across on the page. In my head it was meant to be more, "Right, except Sin everyone is white."
Sister Magpie on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 16:15 on 09-09-2010 - link
Maybe that wasn't the intention but the fact is that so far, all the discussion has been about a supporting character's ambiguos biracialness and there has been NO discussion about SRB's choice to make all the four main characters and all the principal villains white. Kat's point about Mae's mother's fridging has also been completely unaddressed. Whatever Sister Magpie's intention was, bringing up Sin's ambiguosly presented race has shifted the discussion from this.

Yes, they are all white. But it still seems a bit sneaky to complain about everyone discussing Sin's race (which hasn't really been what people are talking about) while making an argument twice, once in bold-faced, about Sin's race with the implication that this will be the last word on the subject.

Sin refers to herself as a dark-skinned girl, Mae has a moment of awkwardness about not wanting to say something racist in response, and then Sin says that her mother was Welsh and her father's family was from the Carribean originally. I do not think this absolves the book of any and all accusations of race, sexuality or gender fail. But it didn't read as ambiguous to me.
Arthur B on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 16:07 on 09-09-2010 - link To be fair I think the discussion very swiftly shifted from Sin's race to the subject of derailing itself as it relates to this conversation, and the fact that this particular point doesn't actually change Kat's point.

In fact, I think more or less everyone has declared that they actually agree with Kat's point. Which, er, leaves us with nothing to discuss.
Leia on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 15:41 on 09-09-2010 - link Maybe that wasn't the intention but the fact is that so far, all the discussion has been about a supporting character's ambiguos biracialness and there has been NO discussion about SRB's choice to make all the four main characters and all the principal villains white. Kat's point about Mae's mother's fridging has also been completely unaddressed. Whatever Sister Magpie's intention was, bringing up Sin's ambiguosly presented race has shifted the discussion from this.
Arthur B on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 15:40 on 09-09-2010 - link I think it's like I said earlier - it really depends on whether you are correcting the mistake in order to derail the argument, or correcting the mistake in order to tighten up the argument against precisely that sort of derailing attempt. And the thing is, people do the former far more than they do the latter, so even though I think Kat jumped to conclusions in interpreting your original comment I think it's a completely understandable jump.
Sister Magpie on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 15:24 on 09-09-2010 - link
I think the thing is that "correcting errors" is often used as a derailing tactic - while I don't think that was your intent in this case, people do tend to fixate on minor factual-level quibbles in this sort of discussion which isn't *necessarily* helpful.

True. Though in this case it seemed like the opposite to me, that you don't want to make it sound like it's important that there are absolutely no non-white characters anywhere when there is one. That just leaves you open to actual derailing in the future or accusations that you just erased the one non-white character.
Daniel Hemmens on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 15:13 on 09-09-2010 - link I think the thing is that "correcting errors" is often used as a derailing tactic - while I don't think that was your intent in this case, people do tend to fixate on minor factual-level quibbles in this sort of discussion which isn't *necessarily* helpful.
Sister Magpie on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 15:01 on 09-09-2010 - link
I think what Kat is saying and I agree is that nitpicking about supporting character Sin's race just derails the discussion about race and gender representation. And, for the record, I didn't know Sin was biracial until I read the comments.

And I just didn't see how it could be derailing a discussion to correct something that I figured was an oversight. It didn't even seem like nitpicking to me.
Arthur B on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 10:27 on 09-09-2010 - link I think it depends on how the nitpicking's done. Pointing out Sin's race but emphasising that this doesn't really change the situation because Sin is arguably only there for reasons of tokenism is different from pointing out Sin's race and dismissing the argument entirely.

Ultimately, it doesn't help to let factual inaccuracies stand unquestioned because people have this tendency to say "Well, this one thing you said isn't actually correct, so I'm going to dismiss your entire argument". If the nitpicking is done with a view to strengthening and supporting the general point that's a bit different to nitpicking done to rip the argument apart.
Leia on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 09:52 on 09-09-2010 - link I think what Kat is saying and I agree is that nitpicking about supporting character Sin's race just derails the discussion about race and gender representation. And, for the record, I didn't know Sin was biracial until I read the comments.
Arthur B on The Reading Canary: Gaunt's Ghosts' Second Assault at 08:10 on 09-09-2010 - link The thing is, for me the death of Corbec had more impact than those guys because he was a member of the core cast, whereas the others seem more peripheral to me. I mean, I can remember who Corbec is whereas I just don't remember those other names.
http://webcomcon.blogspot.com/ on The Reading Canary: Gaunt's Ghosts' Second Assault at 02:32 on 09-09-2010 - link I've been re-reading The Founding and The Saint because I want to make sure I remember everything when I start reading The Lost, whose paperback omnibus I bought some time ago but haven't begun yet...

I just got through The Guns of Tanith again, and I'm broadly in agreement with Arthur's review here. However, I do think there were a couple deaths in Honour Guard that were a little more significant than anything in The Founding: Baffels and Vamberfield. Of course, the latter's death was pretty much definitely The Point Of His Character Arc, and he wouldn't have been fairly redundant (being not quite as interesting as, say, Larkin), but he was still developed and interesting over the course of Honour Guard.

Perhaps more significant was Baffels' death; he was introduced in Necropolis (or was it very early in Honour Guard?), he did some interesting things, had an interesting personality, and was on the verge of making transformative progress and achieving rather significant things. Then he died, rather ignobly, after a rather pathetically failed attempt to kill a Baneblade. It was kind of surprising. Not, naturally, as surprising as what happened to Bragg, Kolea, or Corbec. But still.

I'm re-surprised at how brisk the novels are. Obviously, they become lengthy when read together in a kilopage brick, but each individual one is fairly slim and focused. Sometimes, that means that the bazillion sideplots Abnett works in feel a little undercooked, but I'd still prefer something concise to a bloated fantasy epic.
Robinson L on Playtest Review: The Sun Never Sets at 21:30 on 08-09-2010 - link
Kyra: I know we are primarily writing for each other but I live in this wild vain hope that one day, some day, a stranger may wander into our midst and feel welcome and want to stay. *tumbleweed blows past* Ho hum.

How far we've come.

(Though it'd be even funnier if we still had pages for just commenters. And then there's the people who participate via OpenId ...
Sister Magpie on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 15:22 on 08-09-2010 - link
Why is it that when the race-fail or gender-fail in a story/TV show/movie is pointed out, the first response you get is almost always: “It can’t be racist if there is one Black/Asian/non-White supporting character in a sea of major White players.”?

Dan is right, I didn't say anything about how it couldn't be racist because there was one non-white supporting character. I just corrected the statement that there wasn't one single main character who wasn't white, and who I considered at least as important as the villains. She's not racially ambiguous, I believe she says flat out what her background is and it's biracial. I thought it was just giving a neutral fact.
Daniel Hemmens on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 13:38 on 08-09-2010 - link
How does it help the conversation about racism and under-representation in fiction and fictional work (and the way that under-representation spills into real life) if every time the topic is raised, tokenism is used as a defence?

To be fair, I don't think Sister Magpie was trying to present a defence so much as a clarification. I could be wrong but I didn't read her comment as dismissing your concerns, just highlighting that rather containing exactly zero non-white characters, the book in fact contains exactly one.

I'd also agree (although I haven't actually read the book) that "least magically powerful" is not necessarily the same as "disempowered".
Arthur B on The Secret of Good Clicking at 11:21 on 08-09-2010 - link WARNING: Do not play Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis. I repeat, do not play Secret Files 2. It is completely awful; there's a promising opening but then you're dumped on a cruise ship with no plot in sight, camera angles chosen to play up Nina's boobs significantly more than in the previous game, and some of the most idiotic and nonsensical puzzles and plot events I've ever seen in an adventure game.

It's soulless and horrible wherever Secret Files is interesting and worthwhile. And it rips off the Broken Sword plot device of having the two protagonists begin the game having broken off their relationship.
http://katsullivan.insanejournal.com/ on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 10:12 on 08-09-2010 - link Have fun!Except for Sin.

*face-palm* Why is it that when the race-fail or gender-fail in a story/TV show/movie is pointed out, the first response you get is almost always: “It can’t be racist if there is one Black/Asian/non-White supporting character in a sea of major White players.”? How does it help the conversation about racism and under-representation in fiction and fictional work (and the way that under-representation spills into real life) if every time the topic is raised, tokenism is used as a defence?

Sin is racially ambiguous – her little sister is described as blonde in the first book. She is also a peripheral player until hopefully the third book which is written from her PoV. (This may still not make her a major player, just the narrator.) Apart from all these things, Sin is still one character amongst White characters like: Mae, Nick, Alan and Jamie, Gerald, Black Arthur, Olivia, Sebastian, the female leader of the other Magician’s Circle (whose name I can’t recall), and Merris Cromwell.

Also I would quibble that while Mae is the one non-magical person, she's not exactly disempowered as she's being considered for what seems like a very important job in the magical world.

A job that can go to either Mae or Sin. So that’s two women fighting for a position of power (or a White woman making a power play for a Black woman's own position of power), which is far better than two women fighting for a man, but still two women fighting for one point of significance! As opposed to the men who get to be fought over for being uniquely powerful snowflakes.
Sister Magpie on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 21:19 on 07-09-2010 - link
the main characters are White and this includes the protagonists and antagonists.

Except for Sin. Also I would quibble that while Mae is the one non-magical person, she's not exactly disempowered as she's being considered for what seems like a very important job in the magical world.
http://katsullivan.insanejournal.com/ on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 11:20 on 07-09-2010 - link I also found the death of Annabelle extremely problematic for the same reason. She reminds me of Spock's mother in the 2009 movie: she appears in the story just long enough for her to have a Meaningful Death for the benefit of her children's own story.
http://katsullivan.insanejournal.com/ on The Demon's Blah Blah Blah at 11:18 on 07-09-2010 - link While I agree that Ryves Snr's diary did not read like the journal of a grown man, it's easily explained if you realize that Ryves had been a prose writer or poet before he became a demon huntert.

Again, this is probably completely unfair of me but from the fragments of Brennan’s LJ I have read here and there, his style and general approach to life is so reminiscent of hers that he’s evolving into some kind of gay Mary Sue

I definitely agree that Jamie comes across as authorial self-insert. Whether Brennan did this deliberately or this was subconscious is arguable. I don't think that automatically makes him a Mary Sue.

It's interesting that you found Book 2 so padded because I found it lacking in details about the mythology of the world. I still don't understand how Jamie's power is so dissociated from his free will that a Circle will go as far as to kidnap him to have it?

The reason I didn't consider him to be in love with Mae was really more that it seemed like the series in general, as stated by Mae, was sort of rejecting the idea that teenagers considering dating each other could be true love.

Interesting you should observe that, Magpie because that was definitely the impression I had got all through out the books and I found Mae's discovery that she is in love with Nick at the end of DC extremely profound because the distinction made it clear that it was no casual teenage-type of love that she was professing.

My one grouse with the characters is the lack of demographic diversity. All the main characters are White and this includes the protagonists and antagonists. Sarah Rees Brennan has written a lot of powerful articles about female represenation in stories but the fact is that a quarter of her main cast is female. And this person is also the most magically disempowered one. Her gay presentation, as you noted, is also problematic: Jamie and Seb.
Arthur B on Playtest Review: The Sun Never Sets at 10:47 on 07-09-2010 - link I can't remember why I didn't get around to doing the introductory article - I think there was some sort of concern about Ferretbrain being flooded with niche topics (combined with a feeling that there's actually already plenty of introductions to the hobby out there). I might see about doing one if any reader who hasn't already had first-hand experience of the hobby is actually interested...

As far as espionage RPG recommendations go:

- Espionage as a genre is actually not especially well-served by the market. I hear good things about Spycraft, which seems to be the only major game in the genre in-print, though since it's a heavily adapted version of the D20 Modern system it's quite system-heavy and complex. Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes is based on a modified version of the Tunnels & Trolls system and is therefore quite simple. A number of out-of-print games like Top Secret or James Bond 007 retain a following. Modus Operandi, the website that ran the competition, is a decent source of information.

- Espionage as an activity that takes place in a game is easier - grab your game of choice, come up with a scenario where the player characters are called on to do some spying, off you go. Conspiracy X, as the name implies, is an SF/modern-day occult game with a heavy X-Files influence and a major espionage component. Delta Green is a series of supplements for Call of Cthulhu intended to support espionage-filled, conspiracy-focused Lovecraftian investigations (and are probably the best third party supplements for CoC out there).

For that matter, modern-day occult games in general (such as Unknown Armies or the various World of Darkness games) are good for espionage scenarios as far as the setting goes - there's usually a reasonable variety of shadowy government agencies and nefarious conspiracies willing to employ spies to support their goals. Likewise, any game which provides decent system support for investigative activities, like Call of Cthulhu, is good for supporting espionage-based games since arguably espionage is 50% investigation, 50% concealment.
http://koboldwhisperer.livejournal.com/ on Playtest Review: The Sun Never Sets at 04:02 on 07-09-2010 - link I've looked around, and you can find a .pdf of the game here.

And it's a pretty fantastic game! I was rather worried that I might flounder while trying to run a game with it, as dnd is basically the extent of my GM experience, but my anxieties turned out to be ill-founded. I ran a quick game today, and the game worked beautifully; thanks to the backflash mechanic, the way the plot develops is quite intuitive, and the game mechanic are thankfully simple and restrained, leaving more mental space open for all the convoluted conspiracy plots.

I may have to look into more espionage rpgs...any recommendations?
Shimmin on Playtest Review: The Sun Never Sets at 20:33 on 06-09-2010 - link Illness-fueled archive trawling... I stumbled across this one and notice there is no sign of the intriguing "gaming for dummies" article (unless I just overlooked it). Any takers? I'd have a go, only I probably know less about it than pretty much all other ferrets.

Sadly the link to the rules is also broken :( I rather fancied a look at that.

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