Octotherapist

Alex Speed

Gaming, Min-Maxing, and Living Au(then)t(ist)ically

Matt Spradling

I declined promotions in each of my first two long-term jobs. I guess I'll get to that in a minute, that just seemed like a nice clickbait first line.

I play a lot of DnD. This is known. For those of you who go outside a lot, Dungeons And/Or Dragons is a tabletop roleplaying game in which you and your friends use the top of a table to support papers on which you write the details of a character whose role you roleplay play. It's a pretty aptly named genre. Games of DnD, whether one-off sessions or years-long campaigns, can vary quite a bit in approach: your group may enjoy the number-crunching, precise distance-measuring strategy of the combat, taking a scant and utilitarian approach to fluffier things like conversations; they may primarily be in it for causing mischief, cracking jokes in goofy accents, and the general drama and comedy of it all, resorting to combat only as an occasional means of quest-progression; or, they may flip-flop between the two and everything in between seemingly at random because the hallmark of a classic DnD group is that no one can make their minds up about godsdamn anything; the only real "rule" governing this is to do what feels most fun.

This is where the concept of "min-maxing" comes into play, another expository domino I will set up before knocking them down in a less-than-satisfying, three-domino-long discursive train. Min-maxing describes the practice of building a character that instead of being realistically balanced is fully focused on one skill and fully ignoring everything else, e.g. with a focus on using math to create the best, biggest, most effective numbers possible while completely ignoring things like narrative, personality, style, etc. Basically, going all-in on the first category I described above.

This can apply to many games, not just DnD - for instance, in many of my favorite games like your Witchers, your Baldur's Gates, or your Elden Rings, I frequently find myself having to make choices about whether to sacrifice 3% of some stat's effectiveness in order to not look like a total doofus in terms of armor or whatever. This is the practice of retaining some amount of priority for atmosphere, aesthetic, realism, and, ultimately, a sort of narrative ABOUT the game's narratives I establish and maintain in my head, which are all things that have no tangible benefit in terms of beating the game. This is a worthwhile trade for me because the reason I play most games isn't just to tick it off the list of things I beat as efficiently as possible, but rather for the narrative experience, much of which is fed to me by the game but some of which I still have to pick up and run with on my end.

This also isn't always merely visual; in The Witcher 3, you can unlock a skill that's basically a jedi mind trick, letting you use diplomacy in certain situations instead of always having to murder everyone. I always like acquiring such skills ASAP because they tend to unlock different dialogue or story options, and in the case of The Witcher, I care about the character of Geralt and prefer cultivating the version of him that is more reasonable and less brutish, even though that valuable skill slot could be put to many other good uses that are very tempting numbers-wise.

I think this applies even more to DnD because of the wide variety of potential playstyles I described before, and again, there's nothing objectively better or worse about min-maxing (a lean, mean, killing machine never made an adventuring party weaker (that's almost certainly not true)), it's just a matter of understanding what your group's style is, which is to say, understanding what game you're playing. Part of me does really enjoy the process of getting under the hood and figuring out which spells and features synergize to produce the best results, and feeling like my character is broken even though everything is by the books. That in itself can be half the fun. However, I know from experience that virtually all of my favorite DnD moments have come not from having nice veiny stats that are 5% higher than normal, but from the personality traits that make my character unique, fleshed-out, funny, or tragic. Instead of just grabbing whichever new spell looks most technically powerful whenever it's time to level up, it's been much more rewarding to choose ones that play into my dumb character's dumb abilities (psychic powers, sexual innuendo). I suppose this could be summed up as adhering to what your character would do (you know, roleplaying) rather than what you think would be most efficient from a metagaming perspective.

(To be fair, it's hard to compare DnD to most other games because it is mostly unique in that, as with any story, failing your attempts to do things is often even more interesting and fun and story-developing than succeeding, so there's less pressure to sacrifice softer/flavor abilities in favor of utilitarian ones. For a truly egregious amount of examples, see Marina's series highlighting our group's inadvisable exploits, Smashmouth's Greatest Hits, in issues 43, 49, 50.)

All that is to say, it pays to know what game you're playing. Keep your eye on the prize and pause occasionally to consider what motivations you're letting drive you.

Now a surprise new domino: a sports analogy, to make sure that no matter who is reading this, they are alienated by at least a third of it. I enjoyed playing sports, especially basketball, from youth to high school. I eventually wasn't really a physical match for the NFL-bound freaks of nature in my class, but I had a decent brain for it and was particularly good at a few things. A feeling/concept/aspect/skill/thing that has always stuck with me is the way that, beneath the surface of all the complex passing-all-over-the-place plays, there's always the simple, fundamental goal of "go to basket and insert ball as directly as possible." All the passing around is just sort of a ploy to get the opponent to fall asleep and for a brief opening to appear and to break through it. You have to pay close attention, though, or else an offensive player may also get lulled to sleep, performing the play perfunctorily, moving the passes along even though the vulnerability is open before them. It was always very satisfying to me to be the one to realize, oh hey, we can stop this song and dance now because you fools aren't stopping me from just driving and scoring and I'm the only one who sees it. Does that make any sense? Try to hold onto that. I don't really know how to describe it, so that will have to suffice.

As I've spent the last year or two learning a lot about autism (I promise that won't be the only thing I write about forever), one common trait I see brought up frequently is a sort of disregard for tradition. Like, I don't mean to gas myself up for something very basic and not unique, or to claim for autists things that I'm sure everyone does on a certain level, but from my perspective there is an understandable connection between a (widely varied spectrum of a) group that frequently feels disconnected from social norms and sort of learning to see between the lines, through the artifice, and get to the why of it all. Not in a "we're so smart" way, more just asking questions, trying to figure out what the point is, because we often don't get the point as automatically as others. We make sure to remember the basket-goal because it takes so much distracting effort to keep up a lot of the complex plays.

This is perhaps the reason why autistic people are more likely on average than neurotypical people to identify with non-traditional communities or eschew mainstream concepts (e.g. identifying as non-binary, non-monogamy, paying attention whilst driving). Once you figure out that one supposedly fundamental concept holds no actual inherent truth or necessity for you, it's reasonable to continue scrutinizing every other supposedly fundamental concept as they arise. Traditions can be great when they have personal meaning and serve a purpose for you, but there need to be better actual reasons for them than "well that's how things have always been done and people who were alive before there were cameras knew better than us I guess."

I don't even mean all of this on like a grand philosophical scale. One of the smallest, most specific examples I can remember is in high school when everyone taking turns reading in English class was pronouncing McCandless (that dude who decided to go freeze to death in a school bus in the woods and somehow got a book written about him) "mc-candles," which struck me as wrong and stupid, so when it was my turn, I just used the clearly correct "mc-cand-less," because it was correct, which was met with a resounding chorus of grumbled "oh, yeah"s. I wasn't trying to be cool or smart or make waves. In fact not being noticed in any way was generally my primary goal in school. I think that's just a good little example of social norms and peer pressure and crowd mentality often having less of an effect on some people. This feels like an edgelord "you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty" thing to bring up in this way. I do not have a solution for that so I am going to ignore it. Writing after a very long workday is fun and cool and effective.

This is four times longer than I anticipated so I'll try to bring this here pony back to the barn. I guess I'm trying, without planning, to draw parallels between the sports thing and the dumb reading thing and the gaming thing, except drawing parallels implies they are similar but separate things, and I think they're actually just the same thing. See? Three dominos, perhaps unsatisfying in their grandeur but I hope a little helpful perspective-wise. Oh yeah, and I turned down multiple promotions because they were going to incur way more work and stress for like a dollar more. What's my point there? That people often get too career-focused and end up min-maxing themselves and automatically accepting changes that are actually a significant net loss when considering other emotional needs? That trying to "maximize your downtime" is a form of spiritual violence when you stop and think about it? Yeah, something like that. I am very well-adjusted and happy and doing great and everything is great so you should definitely listen to me.

The point is, of course, figure out what game you're playing and remember it, lest ye unwittingly become the glass cannon of cautionary legend and everyone laughs at you, or something, I don't know, I've never been socially punished because I never take any social risks and now I have cats. "Everything in life is just a game, so play it however actually makes you happy." -ancient autistic proverb (Marina)

Epic Recipe Drop! Keep Reading for Exclusive Access to This Life Hack for Foolproof, Perfect Furlcalling Finger Remedies Every Time

Andrew Piotrowski

When I was a little boy roaming about the Lands Between, my grandmother had a story that she would tell me as the giant angry Scrappy Doo dogs ravaged the landscape. She would say to me, "Nomadic Merchant," which is all of our names, "one day you're going to be responsible for keeping a new generation of adventurers well-supplied with a handful of limited quantity items ranging in quality from gutter trash to unskippable plot requirements." And she was right.

Years later, after Grandma Nomadic Merchant had long passed, I was out in the field, doing exactly as she had predicted; I was hawking my wares for whichever plague-rotted player-controlled player happened to be wandering by. I spend most of my days staring up at the blood red sky from the blood red ground, wondering how I happened to get so lucky. The world may be a rough place, but myself and my other relatives, the Nomadic Merchants, have the run of the place. If anyone tries to rub us the wrong way, we immediately turn on them mercilessly and in perpetuity. It's just like fun summertime bonding, but all the time and violent!

That brings me back to this recipe. When you're like me, and you have countless relatives with the same name, morals, and shared memory as you, all equally hungry and lonely, you learn to pass on the recipes that are important to you. That reminds me of another story of my grandmother: this time, my grandmother on the other side, Nomadic Merchant. Back before the gods abandoned our world to die in rot and darkness, there used to be quite a market for live concert performances! She was a roadie/nomadic merchant for the foremost lute band and even got to frolic and dance around the windmills when they performed in the Altus Plateau. "Nomadic Merchant," she would say to me when recounting these days, "I want you to always remember to take time to frolic around windmills. And when you do, you should do it with as many friends as possible." And having said that, she showed me this recipe, plucking an erdleaf flower out of the ground and crushing it to a fine paste with only her disgusting, dirty hands. She then picked up the next crucial ingredient, another erdleaf flower, and ground it into a mucus-like texture using only the thumb of one hand and the palm of the other like a demented mortar and pestle. I asked her what the moral of this story was, and she gave me a wistful look before one of her eyeballs fell out onto the ground, and then the eyeball on the ground continued giving the wistful look, and Grandmother Nomadic Merchant started to tell me a story.

When she was a little girl, and the sky was a little less pus colored, she made friends with not only the other Nomadic Merchants, but a strange cohort of adventurers who happened their ways throughout the Lands Between, dying constantly in any number of evolutionarily improbable ways: from falling off a really high cliff, to falling off a deceptively low cliff, to being hog-smashing-ass-tearing-metal-crunching-castle-crumbling decimated by a bear the size of a house. I sighed, falling prey to the romance of my grandmother's storytelling. These adventurers would come stand next to her for hours and hours, as if whatever great spirit controlled them was taking a break to heat up some Pizza Rolls or scroll vacantly through porn on their phone, before abruptly running off the nearest cliff because they were standing too close to it when they came back to their controller.

"Controller?" I asked my grandmother, and she apologized for breaking the fourth wall, and continued.

These adventurers would occasionally tire of dying in the maximum number possible ways allowable by the universe, and in their moments of despair, use a strange item to bring in the spirit of an adventurer of similar skill and demeanor. These comrades-in-arms, so long as they managed not to fling their bodies off of a mountaintop, would go on to achieve great things, such as accidentally pissing off every single one of my relatives, or beating the shit out of a demigod by taking turns knocking it down while forcing it to constantly turn in place. My grandmother chuckled here, perhaps reminiscing on the dire fates of many of these adventurers. She then began to load up her donkey and leave without speaking to me any further for the rest of her life.

With that, let's take a closer look at the ingredients we'll need for this recipe.

Ingredients

• Erdleaf Flower: Now this is a really important part of the recipe, y'all! Be sure to either pick the erdleaf flowers yourself, or make sure you're sourcing from a friend who is harvesting them responsibly! Arguably one of the more important ingredients here.

• Erdleaf Flower: Don't get me wrong, I know I just hyped up how important the first erdleaf flower is. But since this recipe only consists of two erdleaf flowers, this one is probably just as important, and some might even say it's more important than the rest of the recipe. The erdleaf flowers should have a tangible sense of ennui about them, and organic is a must must must!

Technique

Just like my grandmother, all you'll need tool-wise for this recipe is your horrid, curse-gnarled hands. First, you'll want to take your first erdleaf flower, and make sure you've thoroughly cleaned. If you don't want to just use your nasty meat mallets for this step, you can follow this affiliate link for a salad spinner that will break within a week but only after I get my commission, which is a dead spider. Then, you'll take the second erdleaf flower, and wash it similarly. You can follow this affiliate link for a different salad spinner to try; it's more durable but contains an uncomfortable number of blades. After you have the two flowers prepped and ready, you'll need both of your fleshy corn-grabbers so you can pulverize the flowers into a resinous, terrible paste.

A part of the recipe I haven't mentioned up to this point is the weird little round plastic container that you'll put it in. That part is, uh, frankly not my problem. It always seems to manifest once I mash the two flowers together.

And that's that! You, somehow, have crafted a Furlcalling Finger Remedy. It will allow you to summon a friend, which you don't have, to fight some of the strongest demigods and cursed monsters our lands have ever seen, so good luck with that.

RECIPE: Furlcalling Finger Remedy

Serves: 1 | Oven Temperature: Madness | Preparation Time: .05 Minutes

Ingredients:

• Erdleaf Flower

• Erdleaf Flower

Directions:

• Highlight the recipe, select it, decide on quantity, confirm selection.

Marina's Top 10 NPCs of Baldur's Gate 3

Marina Martinez

I wake up nearly every day wishing I had the kind of autism that made me good at math or law or something profitable that would enable me to be financially successful and have the resources to afford every accommodation and live a life of comfort and ease. Unfortunately, I got the autism that made me obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons and video games, which kind of has the opposite of the desired outcome. No use crying over spilled diagnoses, or whatever.

That being said, it should come as no surprise that I have apparently played Baldur's Gate 3 (a licensed D&D video game) for a total of 21 days, 2 hours, and 59 minutes, as of the writing of this article. And that's not counting the hours I spent playing it in Early Access, although those stats are as dead to me as my PC. To put this in perspective, I logged about 1,000 hours of LOTRO over 4 years of college. BG3 came out in December on the Xbox and I've played for just over 500 hours, so far. So yeah I'm obsessed with it, just a bit.

Enough with the boring details. You came here for a Marina list and gosh darn it that's what you're gonna get. Here is a definitive list of the Top 10 NPCs of BG3 (ranked based on how upset I'd be if you were mean to them).

Warning: This list absolutely contains spoilers for BG3. Like, obviously.

10. Dame Aylin/Nightsong

Starting off the list strong with maybe the coolest character in the whole game. Her mother is Selune, the Moon Goddess, which makes her an Aasimar (which are the D&D version of demigods). She's a paladin, she's a lesbian, she can fly, and she's absolutely one of the strongest allies you can make in the game (provided you can persuade a certain party member not to kill her on sight at the end of Act 2). I think her and Yasha from Critical Role would be best friends and that makes me really happy. She also probably gives the BEST hugs. I only listed her as number 10 because I thought of her first and these aren't really in order anyway.

How upset I'd be if you were mean to them: I'd be fine with you being mean to her, actually. Go wild. Because you could TRY to be mean to her, certainly, but it won't go well for you. Try asking Lorroakan.

9. Mol

Mol is my favorite little scamp. She's the leader of the tiefling children, all of whom have been orphaned as they escaped the hells and are headed to Baldur's Gate to find a new start. She has one eye and a lot of moxy and I gave her 20 gold pieces to start a thieves guild in the big city. That's true of a lot of characters in this game. Where have their eyes gone and why don't they have any money when I keep finding like 50 gold just lying around in dead people's pockets?

Anyway, Mol is only one of several tiefling children that you keep running into throughout the game. Though as the leader, she's slightly more plot relevant. In order to save her life and the lives of her friends, she makes a deal with Raphael, a silver-tongued devil whose deals seem too good to be true. While this guarantees that Mol and the kids survive the journey to the city, it also means that her soul is forfeit. On the off chance you go to hell (for an optional side quest), you can steal Mol's contract and free her. Even though she and the other kids literally can't do anything to help you, they say they will and I believe them.

How upset I'd be if you were mean to them: I would die for these kids (and I have) but I'd be more worried for you if you tried to mess with them. Good rule of thumb: never mess with tiefling kids.

8. Alfira

Alfira is a character that I didn't fully appreciate on my first playthrough. She's a tiefling bard you meet pretty early into the game, but apart from giving you (or one of your party members) musical instrument proficiency if you pass certain checks, I thought she was just 'okay'. If she doesn't die, you run into her a couple more times - she plays her lute to comfort children in a big scary fortress and you eventually run into her in Baldur's Gate having a rooftop picnic with her girlfriend. Cute, but gay people are a dime a dozen in this game, so she was ultimately forgettable.

But then I started a playthrough as The Dark Urge (or 'Durge', for short). Quick explanation - BG3's default player character is Tav, who has no written backstory, but the game also gives you the option of playing as an 'origin character' (which are any of your party members), or Durge, which is basically Tav but with a fully-fleshed out backstory (pun intended). It becomes evident pretty quickly that Durge has something wrong with them - they react fondly to blood and bodies and violence, even if you're trying to play as a good or peaceful character - and this becomes A Problem when a new camp cutscene happens and Alfira shows up one night, saying she'd love to join you on your travels and thinks you'll be the best of friends. Durge blacks out and…well, you can see where this is going.

Alfira is the one and only choice that's taken away from you as a Durge player, but for a very good reason. It's meant to be upsetting and to show you what's at stake if you continue down a certain path. She could be your only victim, or just your first. And though Withers (undead grandpa/god?) can normally resurrect any other party member, he refuses to bring Alfira back, telling you that she's safely out of your reach and is at peace. Ouch.

So anyway I appreciate Alfira a lot more now, especially alive.

How upset I'd be if you were mean to them: Very. I'm the President of the Alfira Protection Squad.

7. Owlbear Cub

Another one of my favs which I missed on the first playthrough because there's such a specific set of criteria you have to meet to recruit him! There's a side quest that eventually has you wandering into an owlbear cave - there's a fully-grown mom and cub, whom you can choose to fight or flee (although only a MONSTER would kill them). If you just incapacitate the mom (by specifying 'non-lethal' damage), the cub flees and then has to be rescued from a goblin camp. Eventually, he starts showing up to your campsite, and, if you're nice to him, he'll decide to stick around. This behavior is also typical of animals in real life.

Having the cub around doesn't provide any buffs or spells or anything, but there is a cute scene where he and Scratch the Dog (whom you can also adopt) become best friends, and then they just chase each other around camp for the rest of the game. It's extremely wholesome.

The REAL boon of recruiting the cub is that he'll show up to the final battle fully grown in full armor and fight for you. I've never had him fight because I'm worried he'll die and I like seeing him in the Epilogue. He's my best boy. I usually have my druid boyfriend adopt him so they have someone to hug when I'm not there.

How upset I'd be if you were mean to them: I'll kill you if you look at him funny. BE NICE TO HIM HE'S JUST A BABY.

6. Barcus Wroot

I didn't realize that Barcus was also a missable character, but Matt proved me wrong. I guess most things in this game are missable, which is what makes it such a great game. Anyway, Barcus is a fan favorite and I'm not just making that up. I wouldn't lie to you.

If you do happen across him, your party is given the option to rescue him from a windmill in Act 1. You also have the option to make the windmill spin faster and fling him to his death, but only a monster would do that. He's initially ungrateful for the rescue and we all move on with our lives. Except you run into him AGAIN in the Underdark. After freeing him from the bad guys (once again, the optional but obviously correct choice), he lets you in on his personal quest to save his best friend/apparent leader of the Deep Gnomes of Baldur's Gate. Barcus joins you in your camp and helps you through Act 2. And then you finally meet his friend Wulbren Bongle (I love dumb fantasy names) and realize that Wulbren, supposed hero of his people, is a first-class jerk and doesn't deserve a friend like Barcus.

Long story short, you can overthrow Wulbren's horrible plans and instate Barcus as the (rightful) leader of his people, who are your allies for life. Barcus is a wonderful little bitch and I love him and I still can't believe that his entire arc is completely optional. I love BG3.

How upset I'd be if you were mean to them: Listen, I understand light bullying towards Barcus, at least at first. He's kind of rude and dismissive, but he grows on you. If you are mean to him past Act 1, we will have stern words.

5. Volo

Volo is on the list mostly because he's a canonical D&D character and he's just wild to me. If you only play BG3, you'll know him as a bard who keeps getting captured by various factions and embellishes his stories with dragons (as he should) and also crashes at your campsite for a while unless/until you agree to let him perform a transorbital lobotomy on you (which I didn't do for the first three playthroughs until I realized that even though he absolutely fucks it up you get a magic eye that gives you a permanent See Invisibility which is super useful). So he's like a wacky side character in BG3.

In D&D lore, this guy is even more insane. It turns out, Volo - otherwise known as Volothamp Geddarm - isn't actually a bard. He's a fuckin' WIZARD. He gets mistaken for a bard because he travels around singing songs and writing guidebooks, which are…questionable. Some of his published works include Volo's Guide to Getting Lucky, Volo's Guide to Identity Theft, Volo's Guides to the Realms, Allegedly, Volo's Guide to Outraging Mages, and Volo's Guide to Being a Successful Author at Last. The only hints you get to his actual profession in BG3 are a few notes to/from Elminster Aumar (most famous D&D wizard ever, shows up at your camp at one point demanding cheese and telling one of your friends that god says he has to kill himself) in which Volo clearly considers Elminster a friend and colleague and Elminster basically tells him to stop bothering him and to please consider a different career.

Anyway, Volo is great and I support his endeavors. I understand him on a deeper level - we both continue to write, even though it's clearly not our calling and people would probably be happier if we stopped please for the love of god. Although if someone in a jester costume comes up to you with an ice pick in real life and says they can fix your brain maybe do not let them do that.

How upset I'd be if you were mean to them: Actually, please bully Volo. Like, I'll defend him with my life, but he's an old white man who needs to be taken down a peg.

4. Popper

My favorite thing about BG3 is that it feels like a fleshed out D&D campaign, and no campaign is complete without an adorably helpful kobold.

Popper may have been late to the game but he stole my heart with his little top hat and his sweet note that he left for the dead rat he killed. You can roll a persuasion check to convince him to give you one of the severed feet of Dribbles the Clown, and his 'wares' you can buy are a bunch of shiny pieces of junk. He is an integral part of the Circus of the Last Days - an inter dimensional traveling carnival with a drag queen ringmistress and a petting zoo featuring a Displacer Beast and a dinosaur - and they're gosh darn lucky to have him.

How upset I'd be if you were mean to them: Everybody knows you're supposed to befriend the Kobold, try and bring him into battle even though he has maybe 5 hit points, and then run into him again in the epilogue. If you are mean to Popper I'll pop you.

3. Abdirak

I read in an interview that Abdirak was put in the game as a joke, so thank goodness the game devs are a bunch of pervs (/affectionate).

In Act 1, you have to go to a Goblin Camp, either to help them or rescue the druids and kill the cult leaders. Before you have to make any potentially story-altering decisions, you can explore the encampment, save the owl bear cub and Volo, and meet Abdirak.

He's a priest of Loviatar, the Goddess of Pain and Agony. Naturally, she's not exactly a 'good' god, hence his presence in the Bad Guy encampment, but she does give you a pretty good buff if you're willing to put on a show. And by 'show' I mean 'succeed on a series of performance checks to howl in ecstasy as Abdirak whips you'. And your companions just stand there and watch with mixed reactions.

This game is extremely horny, btw. I don't think I mentioned that, but I hoped you'd infer that based on the fact that it's a licensed D&D game and I like it. So yeah, of course there's an optional BDSM scene and of COURSE you get rewarded for going along with it. Later in the game you can sleep with a druid in Wildshape (as a bear), a Mindflayer, and have anywhere from a 3-4some, based on everyone's comfort levels. But Abdirak just comes out of left field in Act 1 and I respect him for that. He's only evil if you're a kink-shamer.

How upset I'd be if you were mean to them: He'd like it if you were mean to him, actually. I'll be mad if you kinkshame him, though.

2. Shovel

I only found Shovel on my latest playthrough and I am so sad that I didn't find her sooner. Although it's not super surprising that I missed her, since she's a Quasit that can only be summoned with a scroll that you find in a rotted coffin in a secret passage under an Alchemist's shop in a ruined town overrun by goblins. Can I reemphasize how much this game fuckin' slaps?

Shovel is meant to be a one-time summon that helps you with a single quest objective. I say 'help' but she actively hinders you, you have to infer by the fact that she's a little imp that she's lying to you. Since Wizards can learn spells by reading spell scrolls, you can just teach the wizard in your party how to summon Shovel permanently, and she can join your party to yell things like 'GUNNA EAT YOUR BABIES!' and 'SHIT YOUR TROUSER HOLES. SHOVEL IS HERE!' and 'HERE COMES THE FISTING!' You also have the option to rename her 'Fork' or 'Bucket', if you prefer. I love her.

How upset I'd be if you were mean to them: She is doing her best! She's a wretched little demon! Be nice and let her lie to you!

1. Tara

First of all, NO, I did not pick a CAT to be number one on this list. That would be boring and predictable. Tara is a tressym (and she's my meemaw).

If you play as Tav/Durge, you hear Gale (your party's wizard/literal time bomb) talk about his dear friend Tara a few times throughout the game, but you don't have the opportunity to meet her until Act 3, and only then if you've decided to climb on the roof of a Temple of Ilmater. She's a very polite old lady who likes to eat pigeons and who likes to gossip with Gale's mom. She's great, but not very #1-on-the-list worthy.

If you play BG3 as Gale, however, Tara is a much more present and important figure. You might know from a Tav/Durge playthrough that Gale summoned Tara at a young age because he was lonely, but playing as Gale makes it heartbreakingly obvious that she's possibly the only friend he's ever had. She's there because Gale is her boy and she's worried about him and she occasionally comes to camp with magical objects for him to eat - don't worry about that part - but she also helps reinforce the fact that you, a 35 year old wizard, are depressed and alone and she's just a tressym but gosh darn it if she won't give your goddess/ex-lover a piece of her mind and talk you out of killing yourself (which is, like, the main part of your character quest). You can give her as many pets as you'd like, which is probably a lot.

No other origin character gets any sort of familiar like Gale does with Tara, and I think that's because they knew that their target audience would also mostly identify with the autistic wizard with a cat-adjacent emotional support animal. And they were, as usual, 100% correct.

How upset I'd be if you were mean to them: I'll kill you in real life.

Aaaaand that's the end of the list. Tah-dah! I'm sorry for the abrupt ending, but what else is new. I'm going to try and refrain from writing anything else about Baldur's Gate 3 because I want to maintain whatever amount of your respect I still possess. But just know that it's a very fun and heartfelt game and it won all those awards for a reason and if anyone tells you that they enjoyed playing BG3 then that's probably a green flag. Also, at some point in your playthrough you may stumble into an automaton named Bernard, and they basically literally stole that from our D&D campaign sooooooo where's my check, WOTC?

The feet of a killer, fella

Wendy Fernandez

I am a pencil in a school drawer.
I have some teeth marks,
Some shavings,
Lead poisoning
From when Jose stabbed me
In the hand in second grade

1940-1975 when subtracted,
Is a negative number.
Negative like the tests weren't,
Negative like a typical day in
Fargo

Millions of people watched Fargo
When it aired on FX
But I didn't.
Because I don't have eyes.

I am a pencil in a school drawer.
Although I am No. 2,
I am your first choice.
Go ahead, test me.
Sharpen me to see how
Far(I)go

I am a choleric vampire because I have a cough
In my chest so deep I never blame the garlic
I cook with in the late afternoons
When the sun is slipping
And I start to Stoker the fire

But it's gas stove
So I don't really have to do that
It's not 1475
And Ottomans are for raising your feet

I have tendonitis in my left foot
And even though I usually lean left,
I limp to the right like a French bell ringer

And though I'm not in the military
Like Nosferatu, or Vladislav too
I still stand at a tendon

LEGO Themes in Review, Pt. 2: Castle

Matt Spradling, Chris Spradling

This is my best attempt at organizing and separating the early Castle series. The "Factions" era runs from the start of Castle's golden era with the revamp in 1984 and lasts over a decade, with subthemes year-to-year that, instead of being completely standalone, all introduce different (you guessed it) factions within pretty similar styles, such that they were all generally interchangeable and could therefore have made for some pretty massive yet cohesive collections. It does my heart good.

Factions Era 1 (1984-92): Black Falcons, Forestmen, Crusaders (Lion Knights), Wolfpack, Black Knights

Design: Simple yet robust. Big gray walls, horses, colorful knights and flags and shields with different crests on them, more weapons, big set-specific base pieces - fundamental stuff. Also going black for the trees is a surprising choice that I love a lot. All kept pretty safe and realistic. 9/10

Atmosphere: The red and yellow sunset background is an all-time great. I tried implementing it into this newsletter issue's design but it always came out looking like you'd gotten too drunk at game night and woken up facedown on the Catan box at 4am. 10/10

Variety: Solid, especially for the early years, though things wouldn't get fully wet and wild until Era 2. 9/10

Playability: I mean, it's castles and Robin Hood hideouts, let's not get greedy. 10/10

Factions Era 2 (1993-97): Dragonmasters, Royal Knights, Dark Forest, Fright Knights

Design: Possibly the all-time peak for LEGO. These subthemes took what the earlier era had established and threw some fantasy stank all over it while still more or less matching. In previous Castle runs they clearly enjoyed putting the occasional spooky ghost and little freak in there just for fun, and I'm glad they finally fully embraced that. The dragons and wizards alone earn a 10/10, not to mention other improvements like armor and the… horse clothes? You know what I mean.

Atmosphere: Same as before but even more so. Dragons and magic just add a certain panache that's impossible to replicate otherwise. Colors became slightly darker and redder, which is also good. 10/10

Variety: One set is just a witch in a dragon-powered hot air balloon. 10/10

Playability: Of course 10/10

Figure of note: Basil the Bat Lord, Majisto

Ninja (1998-99)

Design: We were never ninja-shit kids (the only real memory this churns up for me is I think a Magic Treehouse book) but in retrospect these are pretty classy. Maybe that's just nostalgia for the era right before the more modern Castle runs began, sort of an aesthetic mixture of Castle and Adventurers. In fact, I was preparing to say that I think we had one of these, the Ninja Surprise hang glider, but no, it's just that those hang glider sail pieces were also used in an Adventurers set, so there you go. Perhaps it was just before our time. Perhaps we were simply too Eurocentric in our historical interests. Perhaps it snuck by us. Fuck me that's stupid. 7/10

Atmosphere: The varied, hyper-natural background art was a unique choice. I… don't know how I feel about it? It's not amazing, not too plain, just sort of an inoffensive hole in my memory that empties every time I look away. Was this a psyop or something? 5/10

Variety: Pretty good, especially considering all the unique elements and minifigure armor and weapons etc. that were created solely for this run, whereas the other Castle stuff sort of builds atop the rest. One set is a sort of dragon cannon tank. There are hang gliders. That'll do. 8/10. Although re: the Ninja Knights set - were they not able to use the term Samurai?

Playability: An abundance of means of transportation + weapons = a solid 8/10 I'd say.

Figure of Note: Bonsai the Black Ninja

Knights' Kingdom (2000)

Maybe not the most impressive run in retrospect, but it was OUR unimpressive run. Also it had a picture book.

Design: *Orphan Robot from Futurama Voice* "You raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, sir." These sets filled out a magazine realllll nice. Lion head ornamentation on the parapets, steep and sleek blue turrets, smooth lines around the castle wall window, and a gobsmacking lot of apparent complexity around the main gates.

It wasn't until you got home from Target, after weeks of working your dark machinations on your parents to cajole them into just one more Lego set, and really got a good look at the thing from inside the box, that you'd realize you'd been duped. The walls and turrets were weird prefab shapes, the "rooms" barely fit a single minifigure, and the much-lauded "secret passages" were, in fact, that you were allowed to take the castle off its base and there was space under the baseplate to put stuff. It's a feeling I wouldn't feel again until 20 years later, when I found a "great deal" on a "full size" air mattress on Wish.

The lion head things were legit, though. I used those years later when I tried my hand at designing a full size castle and needed to spice up the courtyard, and they slapped.

Also Princess Storm was kinda hot so 4/10

Atmosphere: I wrote this section last. I'm trying to find a positive, non-snarky angle to round out the review, but I just can't. Like, yes, the aesthetics here are as quintessentially Lego Castle as you can get, but like… parodically so.

For context, Lego had spent the last three years exploring Ninja themes in their Castle space, which is fine, they were pretty cool, but apparently someone over at Legoland (that's their head office, right?) was feeling the heat about the changeup in much the same way that Disney felt heat recently about letting Rose Tico have screen time. To quote: "Knights' Kingdom signaled a return to a more traditional interpretation of European-style castles after the end of the oriental-themed Ninja."

And man I like, I get it. I love a European castle. I was mainlining Lord of the Rings at the time and jonesing hard for that Medieval Fantasy vibe. And their initial mistake, really, was thinking the Ninja line would somehow fit the same niche that their knights'n'wizards stuff did. But boy they really did come back with "look here's REAL castles and aren't they Western European as all fuck" and just, y'know, left it at that. "We have princess and king with big crown and much knight. Here is Bad Guy who does Trebuchet."

1/10

And yet it feels like home :')

I'd be remiss not to give 2000 credit for (I believe) creation of the Very Large Chrome Sword, the lightsaber of the ancient world, which, though profoundly blunt, was a truly essential piece in any world. +1

-1 for being (I believe) the first Castle series with more unique and complicated face designs and using it to teach me that angry looking people with deformities are inherently evil.

Variety: Something something price-per-piece curve something supply demand what the market bears. We didn't know the dot-com bubble was about to burst but future historians should see it plain as day in the sheer number of dinky "guy with wagon and tree" micro sets this series churned out in a struggle to stay under some average price point while the financial and technological worlds lit themselves on fire around us.

Seriously though the entire series can be comfortably bucketed into three groups: A Castle (1 set, 500 pieces), The Bad Guys' Stuff (1 set, 300 pieces), and Fella + Doodad (14 sets, all <50 pieces each). For those not doing their math at home, the entire line of Knights' Kingdom constitutes barely as many pieces as the Royal Knights' Castle from 1995.

We previously discussed at length Lego's wayward descent into "toys over building blocks," and this might be the nadir of that fall. For a Castle theme, reprehensible. 1/10

Playability: I mean. I'll be honest. It was pretty fun. Your esteemed narrator never did get the 1995 Royal Knights' Castle, only this one, so maybe it was the naivete talking, but much like pizza and sex, even a bad Lego castle is still a pretty good Lego castle. The drawbridge/portcullis had a clever (generous) locking mechanism, there was a neat-if-inexplicable tower topper that kinda launched/dumped a treasure chest out of it, and the stained glass throne room window could spin around Scooby-Doo style to, I dunno, do a switcheroo between the king and queen? When you're 9, you don't notice so much that your imagination's doing all the heavy lifting, and I will concede that the weird castle did succeed in giving the imagination plenty of room to stretch its legs. 5/10

Figures of Note: Princess Storm, Gilbert the Bad more like Gilbert the Baddie amirite. with that slutty little eyepatch. Cedric The Bull, too – tbh the queercoding in this cast was not subtle, we just weren't ready for it. There's literally a guy named Gurth.

Also. Unrelated (I think). Weezil??

Knights' Kingdom II (2004)

They couldn't find an original title, but that's fine.

Design: This was more directly my run like the 2000 run was more Chris's, but while it therefore has some nostalgia, it's clearly the point when they started shifting focus a little less from sound- and realistic-looking architecture and more towards playable elements, the optimistic might say, or gimmicks, others. You could even say it feels almost superhero-ish. Everything has a launcher and things that throw something and instead of horses the joust has those monstrous horse robot abominations that roll. The four named knights were a great central element, though the colors ended up tacky. Overall good but made me long for the distant past (4 years is a long time when you're 11). I think this was also around the time when stickers became the go-to for most pieces with graphics, which solicited a very angrily worded email to LEGO from young Matt. 4/10

Atmosphere: Rudimentary attempts at a fantasy map were nice, and while it's not the sunset of the past, the more misty skies in the box backgrounds were actually a pretty good direction, though not fully committed to. 6/10

Variety: Not a ton going on besides variants of gates and towers, which of course are the mainstays. But it seems like a lot of effort in this era was wasted on Knight/Bionicle hybrid abominations. 5/10

Playability: Probably fine, but I suppose I was too jaded to make many real memories. However, sets from this run probably constituted the majority of the Big Fortress City Siege Battle Extravaganza I established around the peak years of my lego skills and then left untouched in later years until moving, so I guess that's worth something. 5/10

Dragons (Mega Bloks) (I know) (2002)

Hear me out. I know this makes me a brand traitor. I truly don't remember if I can even blame my parents as I don't know if these began with a random christmas gift or if I saw them in a store one day and was seduced by their gothic colors and violent implications. I vaguely associate them with Shrek for some reason so maybe it began around 2001-02.

Here's how I would describe the niche Dragons filled: when I was a young lad, I remember watching slow, thought-provoking arthouse films like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and thinking, these are great, but why can't they make movies that are just pure fighting, all icing no cake, with no pesky character development or relationships to have to skip through so regularly that there were probably grooves on the DVD? Well, Dragons was sort of the building equivalent of that: just a raw, uncut, mainlining of big land pieces, big armies, big fortresses, big everything, and no villagers or taverns or insane price markups based on minifigure count to get in the way, and all of it exceedingly grim-looking.

I remember my average day around 2nd grade or so entailed coming home from school, slapping on a Newsboys CD like Fonzie, pulling up a chair to stand on because I was not yet a giant, and then meticulously arranging or just sort of standing admiring, hands clasped behind my back like a discerning museum curator, this huge castle-siege-battle-type setup up on the top tier of my bunk LEGO tables, which I suppose should have been fairly retitled Brand-Agnostic Building Sets and Blocks Tables. And that's what Dragons was meant for, whereas with LEGO you were kind of left feeling like you were doing something excessive or frowned upon for such ambitions, surreptitiously half-cannibalizing sets to cobble together a LEGO tower of wartime Babylon.

For whatever it's worth, I'm happy to dedicate this issue to holiday-shopping parents everywhere. Some of the stuff I see in stores these days horrifies me so I can't imagine what it was like for 60's kids navigating the labyrinthine technicolor horror of Toys"R"Us circa Y2K.

9.5/10

Hey I'll die on this hill with you.

I remember, with my brain at the time four years more practiced at remembering things, that Mom and Dad did indeed get you this set for Christmas. You had been asking for "castle legos", but in the unspecific phrasing of a 9-year-old, and they (bless them) thought they stumbled across a Great Deal when they found this construction toy that featured a big castle and a very unlegolike price tag. They had no idea they had purchased The Devil's Brick, and we both fought bravely on Christmas morning to hide our confusion and revulsion.

But here's the thing.

Just this once.

They were right.

For one brief castle-themed window, Mega Bloks beat Lego at their own game. Did the bricks work well? No, not at all. Did the minifigures keep their arms on reliably? Even more no. But was it BIG and BADASS? Hell yeah brother. Look at those dragons. [picture of a megablok dragon] This guy whips ass. He'll eat your dog. He'll take from the high place Gandalf down through the depths of the world out of thought and time. I bet his name is like, Garthnag The World Eater or something. Hell, these dragons even came with POWER JEWELS that they fought each other for and had like a battery in them that made the dragons light up and roar and shit.

Now look at [the only shape of dragon Lego ever made for 30 years]. There's no world in which this guy's name isn't "Puff." This is the face of a dragon who got stuffed in a locker more than once at dragon school. Those stubby lil arms, man, come on. Who half-asses a dragon like that?

It speaks to the aesthetic, is what I'm getting at. Lego was mired in Cutesy, especially in its Castle sets at the time, and it may not have been prominent enough to detract from the sets on their own but it absolutely floundered when stood next to the Conan The Barbarian-ass heavy metal sensibility that Mega Bloks 9890 Warriors Fortress brought to the table.

As kids who had little exposure to such vibes, this Christmas morning was akin to the youths of yore stumbling across their D&D handbook out in the woods in the 80s. (I don't know, I think things were just out in woods more often in the 80s. That's how everyone older than me claims they got their porn.) What I mean is, there was something tantalizing and profane bound up in the wrongness of off-brand building blocks. An extra revelry in swooshing those kickass dragons; a satisfaction in a little warrior dude's little ballista decimating that big tower way too easily (I really cannot overstate how shitty those bricks actually are); an illicit joy in knowing that "Lego would never allow this" in a thousand subtle ways. It's no wonder that when on occasion the Mega Blok Castle Guys would fight the Lego Castle Guys, Team MB was always the bad guys.

Just that once, it felt really good to be the bad guy. With some absolutely bitchin dragons.

On the other hand Matt there's no forgiving that you actually mixed your mega blok pieces into the Lego bin when you were 10. I warned you. I warned you you'd never get them back out and you'd spend the rest of your days digging through busted off-brand bricks trying to find the one you needed. You'll have to answer for that one at the pearly gates.

I suppose young Matt was an integrationist in accordance with Mega Bloks' lore for Dragons, which seems to have begun and ended with: "The Dragons live in a special realm known as Dragon World. The Dragons also live in the Human World. There are many different types of Dragons." Truly biblical in scope.

Matt Spradling

Hows about a little lunchbreak Radiohead chat? No, I don't have anything better to do. What to call it.

Kid A, Amnesiac, Trauma, and Linearity

Yeah that seems right.

I listen to a lot of Radiohead. This is known. For those of you who go outside a lot, Kid A was their fourth album, released in 2000 as the highly anticipated followup to 1997's OK Computer which essentially completed guitar rock as a genre. OK Computer is the album in which the traditional technical prowess of the band's early days, i.e. powerful guitar riffs and belting vocals, overlaps with the… creativity? Uniqueness? Artsy nightmarescapes? of their later work which they are probably most known for. It is unique and perfect and an excellent representation of the 90's.

With the success of this album and a truly grueling tour, Thom Yorke went a bit insane, dissociating his way around the world, becoming self-conscious about the shinier elements of his voice and the band's sound, and becoming wracked with creative blocks. The results of subsequent painstaking years in the studio were Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), mostly recorded in the same sessions, along with some smatterings of things that would evolve later on.

These albums are… not like OK Computer. At all. There are many throughlines to be drawn about the sort of paranoid ethos and worldview and vague political vitriol, sure, but the sounds come from complete opposite approaches, and it shows. They feature more guitar and acoustic elements than people think, they're just frequently torn apart and shifted and obscured and tortured in ways that can make them difficult to identify but which are somehow gorgeous and absolutely unique. It's the sound of a band grappling with discomfort at the notion of cashing in on success, doing whatever it takes to stay a band, tearing up the formula and lightning it on fire and drawing with its ashes.

Lest this become another Issue 38, suffice it to say that reception to Kid A was understandably mixed and confused, but it has aged remarkably well. Entire books have been written about this, so no one needs me for that. Afterwards, Amnesiac released the following year, and somehow managed to be more conventional and simultaneously more insane. I told Alex I think it is their fourth masterpiece, and he just replied "It's so strange." That is a valid and correct take. Since Amnesiac originated from the same sessions as Kid A, shares big chunks of overall style, and feels even more chaotic and experimental, it was dubbed by many Kid B, as though it constituted little more than b-sides. That is not a valid or correct take, but I do sympathize that it's a weird taste to acquire in places. Opening with Packt Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box > Pyramid Song > Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors makes this immediately clear.

But, no, it's great. It is no less deliberate or agonized-over or unique than Kid A. I think a lot of the misconception might just come from the fact that Amnesiac came second, has one fewer seamless transition, and one more perceived esoteric "interlude" track than Kid A, but it is no less polished for that, though it is perhaps murkier. In the end, the way they were released as standalone albums - not a double album, not EPs, not one big album plus b-sides - was best. Just sort of vague sister albums. Wyrd sisters even.

I don't know where it originated - probably some cryptic, off-the-cuff quote from a revitalized but no less batty Thom - but a common interpretation of the albums is that Kid A does a good job of representing the experience of trauma, while Amnesiac feels more like the psychological aftereffects, trying to make sense of the pieces.

There's an infamous Chuck Klosterman essay charting Kid A as the prescient soundtrack to 9/11. This is not true because magic is not real and Thom is not Nostradamus and also Nostradamus didn't predict anything because magic is not real, but to be honest, it does pretty much work: Kid A's language is immediate, sensorial, confused, and emotional, and its track sequence flows so well that it summons narratives out of your imagination, clicking between impressionistic scenes of eeriness, terror, violence, and disassociation. Its artwork is of cold, barren landscapes, mixtures of paint and glitchy digital designs. It is pretty much a finely tuned nightmare. Suggested listening: laying in the dark with big headphones.

Amnesiac, meanwhile, feels like sleeping pills. It is warmer but also much murkier, shadowy, almost concussed, and I suppose aptly named. Its language is external, confrontational, disorientated, resigned. Its most beloved song, Pyramid Song, attempts to accept death; immediately after is its most divisive song, Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors, which evokes being trapped in a great labyrinth, browbeaten by constant turns, disappearing through door after door like the crying Minotaur in the variously styled booklet artwork. I believe its two most representative songs are Knives Out and Like Spinning Plates, the former an arrangement that seems conventional at first but somehow sucks the soul out of you while discussing abandonment and cannibalism, the latter a reversed and re-reversed lament at being forced into an endeavor doomed to fail. Thom described the album as being like a dusty journal you find in a forgotten desk in the attic, hence its cover. It may seem more chaotic and difficult, but there are no misses. Suggested listening: loud in the car on a rainy evening.

Even without deep analysis, I'd sort of always taken these loose interpretations and accepted them at face value. It feels sequentially appropriate: first you experience something traumatic, then you think about it until it just kinda goes away, then congrats, you get to move on to the album about the Iraq war. It's one-and-done at each stage, a clean narrative. But the more I return to them nowadays, the more it feels like something else, something less linear and more messy and alive and sinister.

[Insert paragraph about trauma and how life is really fucking hard and scary sometimes]

These aren't single discrete stages, but a constant cycle whose different parts are frequently recurring and constantly in conversation with each other and reflecting each other and struggling with each other. Healing isn't linear because trauma isn't linear either. The most difficult times in my life haven't been single specific events but ongoing, repetitive, predictable cycles; finding a respite one day is still colored by the knowledge that it will start again the next and is made all the more panicked for it. You're trying to scab over cuts that keep reopening, building the plane while flying it. That's when I feel like the Minotaur in a labyrinth, stuck inside the cacophony with no clear way out. Having lived more life (I'm like halfway adult now, which kinda sucks) and taken some beatings along the way makes these albums hit harder than they used to, especially Amnesiac. It's good to have art that grows with you.

Office Chart

Nobody's Soldier - Hozier

My man Hozier was like 'oh you guys like my music now? Here's an anti-war bop. Free Palestine'. He has said this repeatedly. Please listen to him.  -Marina

B.O.B. - Bombs Over Baghdad - Outkast

I started listening to this album while playing Shadow of Mordor and it made me better.  -Matt

Power of Two - Victoria Monét

GO WATCH THE ACOLYTE. Pirate it, I'm not a cop. It's High Republic Star Wars! It has really good performances! It has great music from Michael Abels (the guy who scored all of Jordan Peele's movies)! It has lesbian space witches! It has the coolest lightsaber fight choreography I've ever seen! And (spoilers) the protagonist has a corruption arc and there's a happy ending where everyone gets what they deserve! This show was explicitly made for the Reylo girlies and the real Star Wars lovers. (I literally don't know what else to tell you, it's just really fun to enjoy stories when you ignore everyone telling you how 'bad' they are.)  -Marina

Tubthumping - Chumbawamba

-Andrew

On The Bound - Fiona Apple

red pretty scary music good weewoo  -Matt

Images

Wall of Eyes - Stanley Donwood, The Smile

Octorepist [sic] - Alex is thriving

BG3 - Idk Marinagoogle

Dragons - I have a lot of time at work

LEGO - LEGO

RadioheadRadiohead