325: a mean Phoenix Wright comic
Hullo
TPF2
FF
Babybabbaybbbbbeee
Bye
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This has been out there for a while now, but the newsletters have been so busy that I didn’t want to not give it pride of place. Caspar and Rian killed.
Details of the second The Power Fantasy trade are out there. It’s called Mutually Reassuring Destruction and is available to order from booksellers. I’ll be banging the drum again along the way, but in pre-ordering the trade either from a comic shop or a book seller is definitely as helpful as ordering single issues, if the trade is your format of preference.
This is a six issue trade, so larger than last time, covering the events from issue 6 to 11.
Want to know more or order the first trade? The Power Fantasy primer will fill you in on everything you want to know, and significantly more. I do yap.
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I finally got around to writing an essay about something that’s been nagging at me. Namely, Role-playing games are all high art or fanfic.
I was probably making a cup of tea, as I usually am.
I just stared into the middle distance and thought “all role-playing games are either High Art or Fanfic” with a force that made me know that it was fundamentally true – which meant, on some level, it must be fundamentally false.
All dichotomies are false. You can never take this too seriously, as it’s a classic The Map Is Not The Territory trap.
However, given a certain definition of Fanfic and High Art, I think it’s can be a useful map. When I say “a certain definition” I mean “Mine.”
Or, at least, the ones I’ve stolen.
And continue on gleefully. This was fun, actually. There’s a couple of bits I’d have teased a bit more – namely stressing community interacts with “high art” games as much as “fanfic” games – but it went down well, and was fun to do, the latter is the main point of the endeavour.
Also, Jim and I did a dialogue about our recently completed campaign of Beowulf.
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I’ve got 10 minutes spare. Let’s see if I can write about The Slade Rule.
Basically, this is rudimentary phonomancery. You take a lyric, and put more weight on it than it really can support. What I do instead of tattoos. I’ve never felt the need to tattoo – say - “I believe in nothing/but it’s my nothing?” on my arm when I already have it seared into my frontal lobe. It’s note-to-self pop, a shortcut to remind yourself of something which is useful, and then move on, because if you stopped to think every time it happened you’d get nothing done.
I’ve got a lot of them. Sometimes someone does a song which actually is clearly Note-to-self pop for the singer – I always think of Gwen Steffani’s What Are You Waiting For? as an example of that. I don’t have a million dollar contract, but sometimes I feel that, and inertia and fear fighting against desire and ambition.
Anyway, Slade.
A gleefully unpretentious glam racket, and 1970s British institution, with Noddy Holder rampaging all over this in his brum bulldozer of a voice.
The line which I’ve loaded up in meeting is the second in the song. What prompts me to bring it to mind is just a certain sort of criticism. The line of criticism is, really, just not liking what I do. It’s not one you can actually engage with in any meaningful way, and shouldn’t. Criticism isn’t for you, after all, but I like thinking, and my instinct is to chew away.
But, sometimes, it just is “I don’t like how you write” and then just need to find a way to shrug. I am a bad shrugger.
Noddy isn’t.
“So you think my singing’s out of time?
Well, it makes me money.”
What a magnificent shrug.
Yeah, you don’t like me. It seems to have got me to where I am and paid for the roof above my head and the chair beneath my butt, so… whatever?
It’s a rudimentary bit of psychic armour. If you’re online, you catch stuff. I’m am sensitive, to some degree. You can’t go Masumi over everything, so the Slade Rule covers what you shouldn’t even be thinking about.
The Slade Rule has a corollary, however.
It’s the next line.
“And I don’t know why anymore.”
I suspect most of those who get to the position of being able to deploy the Slade Rule also are well aware of the Slade Corollary.
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Clayton’s latest newsletter covers various options in overlapping balloons, and how to execute them, and to what effect. The second one (interruption) is one of my go-tos. I would write a mean Phoenix Wright comic.
Tegan O’Neill writes extensively about Thomas Covenant. Extraordinarily grim, extraordinarily good criticism. The namecheck of Covenant in issue 1 of DIE was something of a warning sign – that you know you’re reading a story where a guy’s game sucks people into the game, and the guy who made the game is namechecking the grimmest portal fantasy of the period is a little flashing light.
I did smile when I saw the teaser Marvel put out after we put out our Power Fantasy one.
Over at New Left Review, Owen Hatherley writes about Manic Street Preachers, which is a well done, long-view picture of them. I last saw them when they played the Holy Bible in full, and left after that before the rest of the gig – I couldn’t imagine listening to any music after it.
Freaksugar run an interview about the Power Fantasy – which actually dates to really early in the comic, so has been updated a little. Nice to look back at all this. How young we were.
Andrew Hickey, of A History Of Rock Music In 500 Songs, writes about the problem of writing history while still in living memory, with an eye making it work as a history for people when it is out of living memory. “Until Elvis Presley Enterprises started a hugely successful multi-pronged publicity campaign culminating in the Luhrmann film a couple of years ago I would have bet that the average person under thirty would not be able to name an Elvis song, and he had about as much cultural relevance as Glenn Miller.” Also touches on the difficulties of writing about really troubling material, like Manson in the latest podcast.
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It’s a slightly crunched week, as I’m away this weekend. I’m off to Play Bologna in Italy, and looking forward to Stephanie laughing at my pronunciation of Italian. I’m not even sure Stephanie speaks Italian, but is devoted to the understandable French passtime of mocking Brits’ hapless attempts to speak other languages.
I’m doing various bits and bobs – there’s a game I’m playing for a bunch of people, which will be in a place folks can watch but not a public game? I’m not quite sure what it is. We’ll find out. And more stuff too. It’ll be exciting anyway. So I need to decide what DIE scenario I’m going to run – either Total Party Kill, or Con Quest, depending. Con Quest at a con is always a giggle, but may tweak according to the players. Also, relying on me being able to walk around the con and get a sense for it.
It’s been quite a big gaming week – as the essays above show, but I’ve also been noodling on Not-Primacy (as talked about in the essay above) which actually has its second playtest on Monday when I get back. We also wrapped another short campaign with Comrade Jim, which I’ll be writing about.
In terms of comics work, I wrapped the fourth issue of the thing for Stephanie, which did give me a bit of perspective. I’ve been talking about Eric about releasing a one-off comic later in the year, which is fun to get a single cover on. I’m also working away at the Power Fantasy – I suspect I may actually go straight into the next. It’s going well, but it’s very much an issue I’m going to make some interesting cuts to fit the shape of an issue. In a good way. I say, right now. Will it be “in a good way” by next week? We will see.
I also emptied most the boxes in my office, which is a major achievement. It’s almost tidy, for the value of Tidy acceptable to a 1998-era Future Publishing Games Journalist.
Naturally, to an adult, it’s a tip.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
2.4.2025