Author: meg

I got into this intellectual hole a little while ago where I was doing a lot of reading and writing about the history of Mormonism, Manifest Destiny, rugged individualism and how these shaped political attitudes in the American West. I bought an out of print copy of a good dissertation from the 1960s about the Dust Bowl and changes to federal grazing and range-land policy. I read about Ruby Ridge, the Sagebrush Rebellion and the Bundy family. I read more about nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, about downwinders and the ways our leaders have destroyed our land.

There’s a whole stack of books near my desk at home that recount the neglect of the federal government in supporting the West, and the ways this neglect and apathetic approach to governing and policy enforcement contributed to a kind of right-wing extremism that’s spread like a cancer from the Rocky Mountains outward. I wrote a lot about it, which I hope to start publishing here on this very website someday soon. I dug deeply through tangents and family histories and how land claims worked in the 1800s. I refreshed my knowledge of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and wondered about the connection between hostility of early white settlers towards later caravans on the trails out to California, and the modern hostilities so many in western states hold towards emigrating Californians.

Doing all of that broke my brain a little.

I realized after spending nearly a year trying to read a single novel that I couldn’t read books. My brain was dead-set against it. I’d start novels from writers I liked with premises that interested me and get about seventy pages in before realizing that none of it stuck. I could read journal articles and news just fine, could read the massive amount of information I get on a regular basis at work. I just couldn’t read for fun.

A bit over a year ago, I went to our local comic book store with my husband and picked out a couple of things – some horror comics, Godzilla comics. I wasn’t entirely sure about all of it, but I’d liked some of the issues I’d borrowed from said husband and thought I’d give it a shot. I got a pull box of my very own not long after, having enjoyed the titles I’d selected and wanting more.

A sidenote – comics are their own interesting cultural exchange. It works like this: individual issues come out generally on a monthly basis, and depending on the length of the series the issues are periodically collected into what’s called a “trade paperback” or TPB, as you might see in description information. Trades are great for getting you into a series that’s in the middle of a run. It’s hard to dive into a series at the issue level, since stories are often told in multi-issue arcs.

For example, one of the series I got into is called Something Is Killing the Children. It’s been running for a while, but they happened to have a kind of one-off issue come out as a decent place for new readers to get a feel for the story. I read that issue, found out there were something like eight TPBs already out, ordered all of them and was caught up in the span of like two weeks. It’s an ongoing series, and there’s something maddening and thrilling about now having to wait for each new issue.

A pull box, then, is a system for having your local comic book store set aside issues from series you like. My “pull list” began with the instructions “anything Godzilla” and now I add at least one title a week. This is expensive. I have ended up with comics all over the house, on my desk, in my bed. You can buy boxes sized specifically for comics, and if you fill them you might injure yourself trying to move them. I don’t know that I can necessarily recommend this choice to you.

But my god, the storytelling; comics are a fascinating avenue for artistic experimentation, for unusual methods of moving a reader through a narrative. There are critiques of capitalism, of racism and sexism, there are series that collect short vignettes and stories that celebrate queer joy and issues with some of the most astonishing art I feel guilty having only paid $5 for it.

Comic books fixed my ability to read for fun. I can read novels just fine now, and alternate back and forth between comics and books every time I decide to spend some time reading.

Every Wednesday, without fail, is comic book day. We have a kind of ritual; the husband and I go together, usually after work, and we each pick up our pulled titles, peruse the new releases wall for things that catch our eyes, chat with the employees, and head home. Wednesday is also wrestling night (a topic I’ll write about at some point soon), and getting to spend the evening catching up on story arcs while watching the performative artistry of the talent that makes up All Elite Wrestling is the highlight of my week.

The comic book industry is in rough shape. We’ve never had so many talented writers and artists producing some of the most interesting creative work available. They’re wildly underpaid, and there are all kinds of despicable problems with distributors and with corporate executives putting their grubby hands where they don’t belong. It’s frankly unfair that tech companies whose product is mainly theft are thrown money hand over fist while the people making the creative properties they steal are having to use Kickstarter to fund their art, or GoFundMe to pay for medical bills. It should be a crime.

I don’t have control over that. I do have control over how I spend my money, which is why I’m happy to burn a little on a local business every week, supporting interesting stories and companies trying to publish interesting stories, like Ignition Press. 

I love comic book day. I love art, and storytelling, and good writing. I love sharing that interest with my husband, with my friends, with strangers on the internet. It took discovering that joy to fix the thing I had loved for almost my entire life, reading. I think what comic books did for me was this: I had forgotten that reading doesn’t have to be purposeful, that it doesn’t have to be productive or lead to something important. That’s a good use of the ability to read, but it’s not the only thing. You don’t have to have an explanation for what you choose to read.

You can just read a comic book, it’s okay.

It’s easy to talk about things I dislike, but it’s equally (more) important to talk about things I love. So welcome to Things I Love, reviews and meditations on all the good things keeping me going.

Today’s thing I love is a video game, an RPG, and like all good RPGs it plays like someone is gently telling you a story that changes every time you interrupt.

Esoteric Ebb, developed by Christoffer Bodegård and collaborators, takes place in the city of Norvik. You are The Cleric, or a cleric who is also a rogue, or a cleric who is actually a god wizard, or a cleric who is also a fascist struggling with his masculinity, depending on the choices you start making before you get into the story. It is your job, Cleric, to investigate a possible act of terrorism; someone has blown up the local tea shop five days before the very first election. There are opposing political factions in play. There is a mimic.

Your character traits, the things you selected for or against – my first run-through was a strong as hell constitutionally fortified cleric with nothing between his ears – are themselves characters with their own motivations and political inclinations. You have spells that can enhance or hinder the success of interactions. As you work your way through objectives, you are given choices between different bonuses that are flavored to match the different traits.

There are also women; a brash capitalist, a one-with-nature elf who is sort of a mushroom, a brawny hired muscle who really hates being Charmed, a flirty bar owner. A very political teenager. A literal angel.

These are all parts of what makes the game compelling to me. You can find more information, including access to a discord server and the soundtrack, on the game’s website.

I love the music choices, the way they set a distinct feeling of the story. In a story that borrows bits and pieces from a lot of traditional fantasy (and Dungeons and Dragons), Bodegård could have gone with something containing significantly more lute. He didn’t, though, and the soundtrack helps the player understand that while there are parts here that will feel familiar to anyone who’s played D&D, this is a different place.

No one is perfect; there are no perfect choices, and at times the player might find they bend the ideology they’ve attached to in order to justify an action. Sometimes capitalism is the best way to ultimately benefit the workers’ party. Sometimes you have to go along with what a shady character suggests because that’s the only good option. Ideals are meant to be tested, poked and prodded.

One of the themes that sticks out the most to me is about the reality and importance of mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes of varying consequence. Everyone should be given an opportunity to fix them. Even the mistakes that were devastating, that have created long-lasting divisions, are not permanent. They can be forgiven. It isn’t that to err is human; in Ebb, erring is universal.

There are a lot of comparisons drawn between Ebb and Disco Elysium, another catastrophically good RPG that I will absolutely write about at length later. Indeed, Bodegård talks about his game as being a kind of love letter to Disco. It is described on its own site as being a “Disco-like,” the first time I’ve seen a developer self-describe in such a way.

The thing about these two games is that Disco Elysium and Esoteric Ebb are asking you to live in different headspaces. 

Disco asks you to exist in a world that is, at its core, broken; even in a broken world there are murders to solve, there are people living their lives the best they can. At every step you are shown the corruption and malice of a system left to rot. You are a broken person but, depending on your choices, you can try and solve one single problem. You can do your best in a bad circumstance.

Ebb, then, asks you to exist in a place where there is the promise of something better, of a way to fix what’s broken through admittedly imperfect means. You are a person with a great many faults and failures, but conversely it is the world around you trying to make things better. You can (again, game choices) aid the work of idealist pro-worker Azgalists, build a relationship with a goblin queen trying to do right by her people, try and ensure the elections happen without problems. There is something optimistic about the tone of the game, even in its darkest moments.

I suspect it’s that tone that causes some Disco fans to regard Ebb as being less compelling. There are plenty of valid criticisms, and at times the writing in Ebb can be more simplistic than in Disco. I think the fundamental flaw with comparing them, though, is there’s often an unspoken idea that when you hold up two objects, one should be better than the other. This isn’t the case to me; I love both games for similar and different reasons. Disco Elysium embraces a revolutionary spirit – the system is broken, what you do won’t necessarily fix it, do it anyway – and Esoteric Ebb is focused more on the ideas of collective progression – there are many at work to make a difference, you must choose to help progress along in spite of its many flaws. Those are both ideas that are worth examining and understanding.

The two things Disco and Ebb strongly have in common that make me love them both are these: the power of introspection, and the importance of relationships.

Knowing oneself, strengths and flaws, helps a person make better choices. You play to your strengths, you find ways to get around the weaknesses. When your Strength is 6, chances of you passing a roll rated to 34 are pretty goddamn low. But there’s an option for Wisdom, for Constitution, maybe there’s a spell you know or an article of clothing you have that will even the odds.

Relationships give those choices meaning. You fail a check, an interaction doesn’t go the way you’d hoped, you’re compelled to find a way to fix it or deal with its consequences. A check is successful, and a new moment of understanding blossoms in its wake – your goblin associate thinks more highly of you, you secure a date with an attractive woman, you befriend a snail. The world you’re exploring is made real by the things you learn about the other characters, by digging deeper and taking risks. You love them because of your interactions, the way you understand them better over time.

I’ve seen posts from newcomers to both games asking “what stats make the best playthrough” and seasoned players explaining that it isn’t that kind of game. That’s what makes a game like Ebb, or like Disco, so appealing and thrilling to me. You’re telling a story in collaboration with the creator. You’re making choices about the direction of the story, and the creator, in turn, reveals little treasures of experience accordingly. These are games of intimacy, not optimization. There isn’t a loot crate to be had at the end of the story. The game was the friends we made along the way.

There is a moment towards the end of Ebb where, without spoiling it, a character reckons with the ways their choices have created harm. In a lot of storytelling, there might be fighting in that moment, violence, retribution. Instead, though, there is space for reflection. There is a kind of forgiveness. Mistakes happen, and in the spirit of all RPGs, there are choices to be made in response.

There’s also a perpetually-drunk Sphinx.