Let's Talk About Player Generated Content (I Really Want To Play Ark)

So yeah I've been jonesing to get back into video games for years and have a list. And on the top... 10 of that list is Ark. And it's on there for a specific reason. Ark at least, in theory, fulfills a promise games have been making to me for a long damn time.

Let's talk about player generated content.

Okay if I had to guess I'd say I got into RPGs around 2001 for the same reason everybody else got into RPGs around 2001.




People do not know how much that movie effected media in the early days of the new millennium. Sure it's easy to point to all of the movies that were trying to be the new Lord of the Rings and how everything after was trying to be a trilogy but books and video games were trying to take the fantasy crown.

Anyway, it showed that there was a market for sword and sorcery and rejuvenated the video game industry in regards to role-playing games. Specifically role-playing games with a western methodology.

Not counting Bioware and maybe if you squint Blizard there just weren't as many western fantasy RPGs coming out as JRPGs. And that matters because in general especially at the time, JRPGs were much more story based often restricting player choice for the sake of the narrative. 

While the much of the core of western RPGs was allowing players to customize their characters and how they played.

To this day this is a core difference between the two types of RPG.

In general, western RPGs have a much more open-ended feel where players are offered much more freedom. And the zenith of this was having a game where multiple players were plopped in a world together and essentially told to use each other to make their own fun.



Yeah. I played a lot of MMORPGs. In retrospect, a lot of them don't hold up not because the ideas sucked (don't worry I'm writing this whole thing because of you Shadowbane my whole hope is that ARK is a better you.) but because the technology just wasn't there. What are you going to do? Everybody still had dial-up and lag was terrible for most games.

But the few that worked really did open the door to the idea of players as content. Rather than using NPCs and scripted events to create believable yet still fictional worlds MMORPGs did so organically via player interactions.

And the next logical place to go after having players build the world is literally having players build the world.

And MMORPGs have been trying to figure out how to do this for a while.

But in almost every game I tried with the exception of Minecraft it tends not to work. And I really really really really want it to.

The question almost always comes down to how much control and how many options to give the players.

Regardless, to me, Ark seems like the game that might have actually cracked the code and I want to see it.

Note: It's not the same thing but one of the earliest examples I can think of where putting players in charge of an area actually worked was Lineage II's siege system. Since that game is still around I thought I would note it.  

Favorite Fantasy Anime Shows

So the reason why I'm jonesing so hard to get back into video games is at least partially because Overlord is back and is heavily leaning on classic old-school RPG and fantasy tropes. But it airs once a week so... here are my other favorite sword and sorcery anime. And just to keep things fair I'm going to try to avoid talking about stuff I put on my other list.  And I'm going to try not to discuss shows I only know by reputation. Sorry, Yona of the Dawn,  Slayers, and Record of Lodoss War. Also while I've seen everything on this list and have tried to differentiate it a lot of my memory was jogged by My Mother's Basement's "Five Fantasy Anime You Probably Missed" video. 

Sorcerous Stabber Orphen

 Let's start old school. For better or worse most anime of the 90's didn't take themselves all that seriously. The dub voice acting specifically was seldom dramatically ambitious. The tradeoff is that a lot of them are really fun and funny and Orphen is one of those. There is a dramatic plot. You will not care you'll just love the journey.

Claymore


For a lot of reasons I hope they remake Claymore eventually. It has interesting characters and good story but it was produced at a time where the focus was more on action and there it delivers. If you want gore, gore it has. But I feel that this incarnation of it was kind of a wasted opportunity.

All the same. I really do like Claire as a character. It's relatively easy to convey hot anger, but getting cold anger across on screen takes skill. And Claire is the anime epitome of cold anger. And the entire story is about making her realize how truly pissed she is and calming her the hell down before it kills her.

Avatar the Last Airbender & The Legend of Korra


It's anime. Fuck you, fight me. Most of it was animated in Korea and nobody gets there nickers in a twist debating whether that stuff counts as anime. Furthermore, the show along with its sequel is just too good to leave off a list of my favorite fantasy shows animated or otherwise. especially with how Last Airbender ended. If I had to make a list of best finales that show would probably top it.


The Heroic Legend of Arslan

It's the most ambitious fantasy show I've seen in some time, with epic battles and huge production values.

Beast Player Erin
I'm a sucker for stories that follow a single character throughout their life and Beast Player Erin is one of those. But beyond that. It has a strong message (these animals are not pets) that it gets across by showing rather than telling. Specifically, the entire story has a tension regarding the use of tamed and domesticated animals, and it's just really intriguing watching wondering how they are going to resolve it.


Moribito: Guardian of the Sacred Spirit

You've got your action. You've got your drama. You got your intrigue. There is something in this show for everybody. That said it kind of switches gear in the middle, becoming a different show until its ends.  Oh and hey it looks like they made a live action version that was up for an Emmy. WATCH THIS SHOW!

Spice and Wolf

Hey, who wants a crash course in currency markets. Eh, Spice and Wolf was just really refreshing. Most of these stories are about a warrior on a quest. This one is about merchant trying to make bank while not going bankrupt.

And a lot of it is him talking his trade and trying not to get swindled by other merchants.

Resturant to Another World

Again sometimes you want the traditional, "I be strongest warrior I go on quest to save village" but...it's been done a million times and occasionally I want something different. And Resturant to Another World is that. It's a fantasy anthology more or less centered around a restaurant.  Because it's not so concerned with EPIC narrative it can get away with telling smaller more atmospheric stories I rarely see in sword and sorcery largely because they wouldn't add anything to a larger story unless they were the point in and of themselves and here they are.

That being said don't watch it unless you're prepared to be hungry by the end of each episode.

Scrapped Princess

Talking about what makes Scrapped Princess good would be a spoiler. But it is probably one of the best anime I've seen that does what it is trying to do.


Snow White With The Red Hair

I have a thing for post-modern reimaginings of fairy tales. And this is a great one. It's not Snow White if that's what you're looking for but it's a story that draws on it for inspiration and is one of the most charming anime romances I've ever seen.



Maoyu: Archenemy and Hero

It was a casualty of how we watch anime these days. It had a decent time in the spotlight before everybody moved on. But still, I think did what it was trying to do pretty well. Which again was get past the "I be strong hero. I save village" thing.

The Twelve Kingdoms
I lied. I couldn't resist putting this on here. For a really long time, it was my favorite anime. And I just couldn't keep from mentioning it even if I did put it on another list. GO WATCH THE TWELVE KINGDOMS!

People Should Give The Windows 95 Sampler and Entertainment Packs More Credit

... So I'm jonesing to get back into PC gaming. (And create a killer tech set up in general... Someday.)  While I'd honestly like to return to my pupal stage of "coreness" I'm not there and won't be for a long time. And free to play games (with some notable exceptions) have not been able to scratch that itch.  To be fair most of the free to play games I've tried have been browser or mobile based because right now I just can't afford the type of hardware it would take to play anything more but all the same it's just not happening for me. Most of what I play has basically been skinner box stuff while waiting to eventually have fun.

And the combination of that and the brokeness has been causing me to reevaluate free or cheap games I liked and played before I became "a hardcore gamer"

The games that came on the demo disk for Windows 95, as well as Microsoft's Entertainment Packs, don't get nearly enough credit as they deserve in the history of PC gaming.

I love consoles. Can't afford them right now but I love and always had loved the general set up of a big screen and a controller to relax with that they afford. But again they're essentially expensive toys and always have been. I'm not calling anybody who loves games juvenile, god no.  Just acknowledging that console gaming is expensive and on the list of financial priorities is pretty low as a fun luxury for most people and always has been.

But computers have always been a more justifiable expense with many people needing if not a desktop, some form of a computing device for work and daily life. And especially in the early days, those games set the standard for what casual and even occasionally hardcore PC gaming would look like for those people.

I Would Prefer an Upfront Price ... But That's Not the Way The Market Works

 I am a gamer.

I like playing video games. Have as far back as I can remember. But I haven't played many recently. My computer is the sort of junker that makes playing anything made past 2012 force me to hurl things at it. And being super broke with a mountain of debts I can't justify spending half a grand on consoles that are still essentially toys, luxury items for me to play with.

Still to me playing video games is one of the fastest ways for me to actually enjoy myself. I am really hoping for the day when I am just able to get back into the game. As such I try to stay current on games I might like and the general conversation occurring around the medium.

And for the past year, it's been microtransactions. microtransactions, mictrotransactions.

But this week Extra Credits put out a video explaining things from the industry side with an interesting argument.

Video games should not cost $60 anymore.

Now for me, it's a bit hypothetical. I don't have the money for new games and haven't for a while. But if I did somehow earn that dump truck of stupid money and could do whatever I wanted would I have a problem paying $75-100 for new video games? Do I feel that that would be a fair price?

Sure.

What annoys me most about microtransactions and even day one DLC, again I'm dealing hypothetically here, is that they obscure the real price of the game, how much money it takes to get a fully enjoyable experience.

I feel like right now a lot of these games are essentially lying to consumers telling them the game will be enjoyable to them at the $60 mark when it's been developed from the ground up not to be.

Furthermore, without a set price or even guidelines, these games can feel downright predatory, extravagantly bilking their customers regardless of what it does to their lives. Sometimes you got to know when to cut 'em off.

But here is the thing. A price hike on games would require a first penguin. It would require a major studio being willing to be the first and take all the slings and arrows that implies. They aren't living in a vacuum. It hurts me to say it but there just isn't the variety there used to be in AAA games as there used to be, at least from where I sit. If Activision were the studio to do it (they won't be) with Call of Duty, EA would be sitting in the wings selling nearly the exact same game with a sticker price of $20-40 less.

Moreover. Even though I don't play games this conversation seems kind of "hardcore" (maybe I haven't been keeping up with the conversation as well as I should have been) and dear god I know how that sounds. But hear me out. I understand the frustration with microtransactions. Heck, I WAS RAISED ON MAGIC THE GATHERING! But a parent who doesn't play games buying their kids Star Wars Battlefront II for a birthday present might not. They're likely to just see a lower price on the shelf not realizing what it means. As I said in the beginning. As much as I would like to get into the game they are still essentially expensive toys.

Vikings' Real Problem... The Last Kingdom

So I love me some dudes with swords. So you know I've been all up in Vikings. But this season has been off. I don't hate it, but its hard not to feel like the show is spinning it's wheels, especially when somebody points out how much Viking Civil War feels like a giant waste of time.

I can only speculate as to why the writers don't just focus on the conquest of Wessex, but my guess is because both narratively and historically the most logical place for the show to go is The Last Kingdom.


Since really the death of Ragnar my biggest question with Vikings was how they were going to essentially tell the same story as The Last Kingdom when they caught up to it. When it came out The Last Kingdom in a lot of ways was Vikings: The Next Generations.  And then Vikings had that time skip and it became evident that the show actually did intend to tell the story of The Great Heathen Army, 

There are a few notable differences, Vikings is from the Danes' point of view. Though they aren't exactly unsympathetic in The Last Kingdom they are well established as the series antagonists and I was looking forward to a different perspective especially considering the dueling religious outlook of the factions. Both shows dip a toe into magical realism but Vikings more so and dealing with that would have been fun.

And then there is Bjorn. I'm not caught up on the second season of The Last Kingdom. But the first was notably Bjornless and Bjorn is my favorite character. It was going to be fun seeing what he was up to around this time. (We only got like three episodes in the Mediterranean when I was hoping he we would spend the entire season over there kicking ass.)

Regardless it was going to be a hard needle to thread. Before they actually showed up if you wanted to flash forward to "The Sons of Ragnar Lodbrok" The Last Kingdom was the place to go.

But more and more it seems the show is uninterested in retreading The Last Kingdom, thus The Viking Civil War.

January 9, 2018 Southfield Board of Education Meeting (Regular)

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Southfield January 9, 2018 Board of Education Organizational Meeting

• Election of Officers

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January 8, 2018 Michigan 11th District Congressional Republican Debate

Cook Rating of District 
R+4 

Date
January 8, 2018

Place 
Novi Emagine Theatre
44425
W. 12 Mile Road
Novi, MI 48377

Republican Candidates 

• Lena Epstein
• Kerry Bentivolio  
• Kurt Heise 
• Klint Kesto 
•  Andrew Raczkowski 
• Kristine Bonds 

Democrat Candidates (Not Debating)

• Tim Greimel
• Dan Haberman  
• Fayrouz Saad 
• Haley Stevens 
• Suneel Gupta

 Moderators 

• Scott Hagerstrom
• Thayrone X 
• Meshawn Maddock 

For more content like this please visit www.cypheredwolf.com and please support me on Patreon at www.patreon.com/CypheredWolf

Future Man is ... Smarter Than Stranger Things

So the marketing got me. After having the commercial preroll ads over and over and over on various Youtube videos I gave in and watched Future Man which looked like nothing more than a 13 episode  College Humor sketch poking fun at 80s movies and time travel rules.

And it is that.

But it also comments on those 80's movies. And I can't help but contrast it Stranger Things.

Look I love Stranger Things. It's basically the best 80's sci-fi show not made in the 80s which is what it's trying to be but after awhile I can't help but feel it's a bit hollow. It's not the 80s. We have roughly 30 years of hindsight.  30 years of contemplation of what the decade, it's events and culture all of it meant in the broader stroke of human history.

Stranger Things tries so hard to be of the 80's that it kind of stops being about the 80s. Future Man is about the 80's or at least 80's pop culture.

The plot is (in movie terms) what if Kyle Reese and T2 Sarah Conner used Starfighter to find T1 Sarah Conner.

At first the show runs on the metajoke of inserting "reality" into these movies.  Playing a video game does not equate to growing up and training in bad future #682: Cyberpunk.

But that metajoke slowly turns the characters from one note knockoffs designed to poke fun at how silly those movies were to actual human beings as they respond to the fact that they are not actually in an 80's sci-fi movie or at least not a world running on 80's science fiction rules.

And in that space the show can and does actually comment on the culture of the 80's in ways I didn't expect from it. That's not to say it's a grand intellectual exercise. At it's heart it's still a Seth Rogan comedy working with Youtube production values but given what it is it made me think.



All pop culture is culture. All of those movies, books, tv shows, songs, video games, and music videos originate in the minds of people grounded in the surroundings of their world. And as such all of that pop culture can't help but to a certain extent reflect that world even if it set out to.

That's the interesting thing about a lot of 80's pop culture.  The zeitgeist of the moment was an exhaustion of the overt politics of the 1960's and early 70's, the pop culture of which was often trying to be overtly political. But a lot of mainstream by the 80's was trying to run as far away as it could from any topic that could be overtly read as political.  That's not to say there weren't political movies or even political sci-fi but just that those generally weren't the blockbusters the industry was banking on and supporting. Even the original Terminator was a relatively low budget feature with $6.4 million.

A lot of the 80's movies we remember aren't exactly the ones that people were going to see. Film geeks tout 1982 as the best year in genre film history and sure a lot of those movies make the highest grossing but Tootsie beat out everything but E.T.

My point is now we look at all of the stuff that was going on under the surface but that's just not where your typical denizen of the time was and the media of the age reflected that. There is a dissonance between the reality of the 80's and the version of it we have in our heads, between history and nostalgia.

Stranger Things and Future Man aren't made for people living in the 80s but people living in the late 2010s who have experienced either via memory or media the remnants of the decade.  Future Man acknowledges it while Stranger Things doesn't. And honestly, it makes me kind of like Future Man a little bit more.

Fraternization Is Always a Bad Idea

Okay so for "reasons" (I want to be clear Stephen Henderson is still a personal hero of mine. And even now represents the guy I want to be in 10 years, but he's fallen a few rungs off the pedestal. And I'm still working my way through Tavis Smiley. Well at least it is not a bad as that time when I got into a Twitter fight with Adam Baldwin. And yes that actually did happen. Notice how I never changed my website's tagline.)  it's become relevant to discuss the nuances between sexual harassment and workplace romance.

...

But before I even wade into those waters I feel the need to admit, I don't date. I'm not a particularly social person, at my age it's hard to meet new people anyway and I've had one and only one quasi-romantic relationship ... in which I didn't take it seriously and acted like a complete and total jackass. The slow realization of that has pretty much permanently turned me off of romance though I can't  bring myself to quit Disney. Let's just say I have regrets. (Southpark's Heidi arc hurts.)

That having being said:

Don't hit on women while they're working. There is some wiggle room after hours but still, it's generally a bad idea regardless of if you are a coworker or a client.  It's pretty common knowledge for folks under about 35 but older folks don't seem to get it and it's kind of my thing to explain things.

Part of the social contract of working means being pleasant.  Everybody and I mean everybody has stories of putting up with stuff at work that they otherwise wouldn't because they were getting paid for it.

It's really easy for people to take advantage of that even if they don't mean to. Screw everything else what separates the boys from the men is realizing when that's what's going on and adjusting behavior to it. Recognizing when people are being nice primarily because they are in a social situation where they can't afford not to be and trying not to that make that scenario any more awkward than it has to be.

...

Kids be nice to your teachers.

Hitting on women while they're working is a pretty big example of doing the opposite of that. And even after hours, it requires an awareness of both parties of segregating roles that is hard to pull off in the best of situations let alone when there is some sort of power differential. My view is that workplace fraternization is ALWAYS a bad idea.

But then again look where this is coming from. 

P.S.  Money advice is pretty much in the same boat as dating advice. I've got ideas but I'm in such a bad place that I have to have a disclaimer on everything I say. Welcome to my midlife crisis which oddly enough butts right up against my quarter-life crisis.

...

When the hell does "life" actually start?

Oh and Living Single was better than Friends.

GOP Stop Being the Flight 93 Party

Okay, I hate the tax bill. That's known. And EVERYBODY has pretty much explained why it's bad better than I could. Let's be honest. If I were to go into a point by point breakdown on why it sucks I would be essentially be cribbing from other sources.

But I can't shake what's on my mind and writing helps me calm down so I can focus my brain space on other stuff so let's go.

First thing is first. Everybody hates the tax bill. Even republicans kind of hate it. The last few weeks have essentially been an exercise in watching the Republicans both in the tax bill and in other cases do mental gymnastics to justify the actions they're taking.

So why?

Well, they've said why publicly multiple times.

In the age of Obama the campaign promise of the Republicans was that if they were in power they could do things better. Beyond all the ... "other stuff" that was the pitch. "We know you all hate Obamacare, the regulatory state, and all that other stuff and if we were in power we'd get rid of all that stuff"

I would argue Trump has been more successful than people think and infiltrating the executive branch with poison pill appointees, and the judiciary is going to be red for decades,  but legislatively, Congress just hasn't passed the laws they promised the Republicans. Let me be clear at least for the next few weeks that's a win for me since I HATED all the stuff they said they would do.

But still, Republicans, in particular, have a veneration for Congress as the branch that actually gets things done and if they can't when they are in power then why does the party even exist?

A lot of the Republicans in Congress view this as the last best chance to justify the GOP's existence before it fades into obscurity. Let's be honest almost every shady thing the party has done over the last ten years has been a result of this fear. The obstructionism over Obama,  the moral relativism of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, and now the Tax Bill itself.

Now it's more or less the goal of politics to see your ideas and policies put into action and stay relevant but... stop being the "Flight 93" party. It's not a good look.

Despite previous statements, I made I don't hate republicans in theory. I hate all the stupid shit they've done in the last 18 months, and the party's instinct to double down rather than change course on repugnance.

I may be a hippy liberal, but  I want the GOP to survive as a VIABLE party. I want people who can intelligently and in good faith tell my guys all the reasons they SHOULDN'T try enact the policies I want. Who can make legislation better by articulating the flaws behind liberal ideology.

In short, I want a debate.

And there is a good debate to be had between the parties.

But lately, the Republican Party has been acting so crazy, taking positions that society has already moved past and finds "deplorable" that the debate is moot. Moreover how they are acting makes it seems as if the positions they are taking are logical extreme of the notion of negative liberty which is the cornerstone of the party and American democracy itself.

I NEED somebody who can stand for that without a bag full of crazy, or at least can make the case without feeling the need to lie about the positions they are taking. Which right now isn't the GOP.

They've been so focused on holding on to political power that more and more it seems thier ideas are irrelevant not only to the American people but to themselves. And that's a shame because there is something there that is salvageable when you scrape away all the xenophobia, and lying and racism, and lying and homophobia and lying and social Darwinism, and lying... did I mention the lying yet.

It's the most important part because while the election stands and I'm not going to say, "not my president" it's hard to feel like the GOP won by making an honest pitch about ideology and policy. By saying this is what we believe and this is what we'll do based on those beliefs.  

That tax bill is proof of that. That's why they are doomed to forever be the "Flight 93" party. And this needs to stop.

Education and the Failures of Capitalism

I was venting about a lot of different things both personal and political when I wrote this but then Bridge posted this article and it's actually a good case study on how economic self-interest can decimate public institutions. The article is actually pretty even-handed in the push and pull between teachers and districts fighting over money.

Because of personal experience and other biases (my mom was a teacher for 30 years), I tend to side with the teachers. Specifically, a lot of charter schools do have horrible working conditions and low pay at least without the current slew of bonuses and I have no faith that's sustainable in the long term or that the charter operators will even stick to the terms of their own deals when dollars get tight, which they will (and I'll get to it in a moment)

Let me put it like this. In Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary an ARVN interviewee says he told the American government the fastest way to end corruption was to pay officials enough money honestly so that they didn't have to steal to support themselves, as once they crossed that line all bets were off, and doing so would comparatively cheap.

It's not the same thing and I don't want to even come close to pretending it is but that's more or less how I came out of my experiences with education. That a lot of the problems of education were caused because there just wasn't enough money to seriously tackle problems and the knowledge of that so lowered moral that some people stopped trying.

At the same time, I don't like the cutthroat competition the article describes even amongst the teachers. As much as I hate to admit it they aren't blameless, or at least not as blameless as I would like to pretend.

That having been said of feel the article is missing a bad guy.

This entire situation is the result of nearly a decade of bad public policy regarding education. I have mixed feelings about how hard I want to rail against charter schools. Love them or hate them nearly half of Detroit's kids are enrolled in them now.

But the state legislature needs to own that.

To own they have a monster of their own making and deal with it.

Which brings me back to the squabbling.

There is so little money in the system that both the teachers and the schools are desperate for every dollar. The state needs to intervene with both funding and guidance to bring order to a system of laisse fair dog eat dog economic self-interest.

And let me be clear I don't want the state to come in and punish teachers who have been dog pilled on enough, but to act as a fair and just referee in a conflict they engineered.

They created this system with the idea that such economic competition for students and by extension funding would increase the quality of the educational system.  By now it is the nearly common knowledge that on its own it has and not can not.

We need law. And we know whoose responsibility that is.

On Conyers and Franken

Right now I have a visceral hatred of the Republican Party. (And that's not even the state-based stuff I'm pissed about.)

When it comes to Senator Al Franken and now Representative John Conyers I've known for weeks that my absolute repugnance towards the Republican party has been clouding my judgment but there is no counting for emotion.

The argument can be made that right now we need every Democrat in office we can get and I am very tempted to agree with that position.

And then I think about Roy Moore. Am I that bad? Am I one of those guys?

If so I really really don't want to be.

Politics has to be about more than beating the other guy. It has to be about the argument.

I don't know how it happened but the Democrat Party has branded itself as the party that lends an ear to traditionally marginalized groups. In this case specifically, women who are in this moment saying that this type of sexual harassment is an unwanted detriment to their everyday lives and has been for a very long time. 

Anytime this or any other gendered issue comes up in the national conversation the Democrats will no longer be able to claim the moral high ground if they overlook their own problems.

All the opposition will have to do say the words "Franken and Conyers" to claim that the argument is a political ploy initiated in bad faith.

That being said what is really needed is a reform of workplace culture and procedure not just in Congress but in general and that requires more than retribution towards a few bad apples, but without dealing with this it makes cultural and procedural reform much more difficult.

Anybody, not just Republicans but anybody who wants to protect the status quo will not take the problem seriously when the people at the top don't.

Econo-Political Problems

I hate Donald Trump.I really do, for a lot of reasons.

But the biggest reason of all is that he's a coagulation totem of problems in my personal life and it's getting harder to divorce my feelings of him from that so let me vent a little.

What Donald Trump represents to me is the apotheosis of the econo-political problem.

A capitalist system depends on the exchange of value.  Or in laymen's terms the flow of money or capital as a store of value. If the money doesn't flow the system breaks down. That value of that money often represents a capacity to act within the economy. As such it's in the individual's and even an organization's interest to accumulate as much money as possible.

On a macro-level money is only useful when it's being ... used or at least has the capacity to be used. But it's in the individual's interest not to use it, to hoard it.  And sometimes this interest can override others. This is the cause of econo-political problems.

There are a lot of problems that have detailed worked out practical solutions save for one thing. The funding to put them into practice. Regardless of all other factors, it's not in the individual's interest to put money into these solutions if there is not a direct and quantitative return on their investment.

And it is maddening.

I see all these problems we could solve, we could fix but we lack the political will.
It's hard to convince the people with the money to put it towards solving these problems when it has been ingrained in them that it's more so in their interest not to. At that point, it's not only the economics that keeps these problems from being solved but the politics. Simply convincing people with the capacity to act (as represented as an accumulation of value) to do so.

I don't know how to do it.

But over and over and over again I see all of these problems we have the ability to solve in both my personal and political life that we simply don't because we don't want to give up the money to do so.

It's the reason things don't get done.

So...  I need to read Das Kapital. Hell even Kaynes was on to this problem.

Best Once Upon A Time Episodes (Between Seasons 1 and 4 and not counting Wonderland)

Okay, I might as well. Once Upon a Time is a very hit or miss show. When it's good dear god is it great but when it's bad dear god is it intolerable. As such it's guilty pleasure. I like it but I completely understand other people who hate it. Sometimes I'm right there with them.

It is hard to make people understand what I see in this show when there's a 50/50 chance their first episode will be god awful. So if you are someone who wants to see what all the buzz is about here are the episodes I recommend you watch.  Keeping in mind a few provisos.

1. Spoilers. Both if you read what I have to say and if you watch these. If you want the full Once experience you're going to have go through some PAIN but most times I'm not even really all that willing to do that. So whatever. Just don't blame me if you see some really huge plot turns out of order. 
2. I've only seen the first half of season five and almost none of season six. So they won't be showing up on this list.
3. Furthermore, I think it's unfair to really grade most of season 7 until things play out. I'm digging it but I want to wait until the season is over to really solidify my opinions. 
4. Once Upon a Time: Wonderland is probably the most consistently good thing the show has ever done so instead of cherry picking episodes if you want to watch it just watch it. It is generally more serialized well-paced than the main series.
5. This isn't a straight top 10 list since Once is so serialized. But rather a list of watch these in this order so you don't get put off. 

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Pilot: Season One Episode 1
Name on the tin. It's not the best episode not even close. But it does have most of the basic information you need to engage. So watch it.


The Outsider: Season 2 Episode 11 
I have trepidation about putting this on a list of "best" Once Upon a Time Episodes but it does form the foundation of Regina Mill's/The Evil Queen's redemption arc so if nothing else it's important.

Honestly, if you're binging the series watch this earlier.  It explains the motivation of season two's villains but they're small potatoes anyway so ehhh.  That's not why it's important. In all honesty you should probably watch it right after the pilot.

This episode is about explaining why Henry, Regina's adoptive son means so much to her.

She can't control him. His love actually is love and that's what after all of it she wants.  Retroactively that's what the big conflict between her and Emma was about. Losing the only person in her life that truly loved her.

It takes place just before the series proper.

The Evil Queen wins. Regina gets everything she wants. Her magic forces Snow White and Prince Charming to kowtow to her. Her enemies live in fear of her. Life is pretty sweet. Except it isn't. She won. She won. Yet she's unsatisfied.

The love and respect of her enemies means nothing unless it's freely given. That revelation would have meant a lot more if the series articulated that earlier.than it did.
...

And Still doesn't change that she ripped the Huntsman's heart out though. And this episode ends with her doing some pretty despicable stuff too. So she's no saint.



That Still Small Voice: Season 1 Episode 5
This is the episode where Once Upon a Time... grew up. I'm a sucker for fantasy and will give virtually anything a try if it has dudes with swords but this is probably the first legitimately good episode of Once Upon a Time. It still has its problems but has a story to tell and is a pretty good character study of Jiminy Cricket.

Sometimes the guy who everybody goes to for advice just doesn't have the answers. Sometimes "the conscience" has no clue what the right thing to do is.

...

But that doesn't mean he shouldn't try.

Anyway, it highlights one of the best aspects of Once in that it fills out well-known fairytale icons to make them more interesting in ways that feel very much in line with what we know. Most of the better episodes of season one do this. So many in fact that I'm probably going to skip a few not because of they're bad but because I don't want to write a complete episode guide for season one.

Nor do I want to pretend there is no fat in a lot of these episodes. They are obligated to focus on the main plot featuring Regina Mills and Emma Swan and compared to some of the other stuff those two are just boring. And that extends to this episode.

There are lots of times when I would be screaming at the scream, "STOP CATFIGHTING AND GO BACK TO THE CRICKETT!"

The Heart is A Lonely Hunter: Season 1 Episode 7
Yeah I just got done explaining this one but. It's probably the singularly most important episode of season one. It's the first real episode where the show stops playing coy about whether or not "the flashbacks" we've been seeing are real or not. It's the episode where Once Upon a Time became Once Upon a Time.

Desperate Souls: Season 1 Episode 8
"Desperate Souls" covers the back story of Rumple Stilskin who is probably the single most important character of the entire series. Everything and I mean everything goes back to him.  Even if it wasn't a good episode you would need to watch it just to make sense of things... but it's a really good episode. If this were a straight top 10 list it would probably be number 3.  Most of my affection for the character is based on the quality of this single episode as his quasi-introduction.

Rumple is a real rat bastard, but he's a tragic rat bastard.

Skin Deep: Season 1: Episode 12
I keep saying the series is more clever than people give it credit for and one of the reasons is because it amalgamates characters in clever ways. This is the first time it really does that and introduces Rumplestilskin, one of the most duplicitous and ruthless individuals in the show up to that point (and let's be honest period) as Belle's beast. And honestly knowing how horrible he is when he starts that story adds a new context to it, highlighting the redemptive power of love.  And also hinting the stuff that went down in Rumplestilskin's episode affected him to the core. Part of the reason why Belle falls for him is that she's the only person he reveals this vulnerability to but that story is another episode.


The Crocodile: Season 2 Episode 4
This list is probably going to wind up as  "Rumpie is  so awesome isn't he." But the plot of the show really is best when you view as epic tale of the fall and redemption of one big screwed up family of which Rumpie is responsible for.

Once Upon a Time really can be seen about how his moral failings cause his family to suffer and the lengths he will go to in an attempt to make things right even if in doing so he causes more harm.

The Crocodile is really three interconnected stories.  And each of them is interesting. The first is a perspective flip of Belle who is trying to make a real go of a relationship with Rumpie but she has to come to terms with the fact that yeah for a long time he really was this series' resident devil and acted accordingly.

The other two are basically the tale of one of the worst things Rumplestilskin has done in this series. And later sets up consequences for his actions.


Hat Trick: Season 1 Episode 17
This episode is important for two reasons. First off while the audience realizes that magic exists far earlier in the series, the characters are oblivious to it. While it's not a lock this is the first episode characters become open to the possibility that something hinky is going on.

And secondly, it establishes the cosmology of the series which is one of the more interesting aspects of it. This episode introduces the existence of Wonderland a third "realm" other than our world and the world of fairy tales.  It actually goes further explaining that there are a lot of places and a lot of stories playing out that we the audience just haven't been seeing. It opens the door for anybody and everybody to show up.

Also as a stand-alone episode, the Mad Hatter plays up the mad bit. He's legitimately frightening and unpredictable.

Also this is the start of the end. There is a lot of fluff in Once Upon a Time but from here to the end of the season it's more or less a race to tell its story.

"The Return": Season 1 Episode 19
I've been trying to focus on episodes that are good in their own right. Where you don't have to watch everything that preceded them to be entertained.  But a lot of the best of those happen to be about Rumplestiltskin's backstory. This list might as well be called the Rumplestiltskin playlist, and this episode expands and connects "his" episodes to the story at large. What exactly is it he wants and how have his actions, which have instigated the story at large,  been getting him closer to it.

Rumple mentions the plot of this flashback story Skin Deep but this is where we see it. The ONE DEAL, the one promise he couldn't keep. And it more or less defines him as a character.


"Second Star on the Right" & "Straight on Till Morning": Season 2 Episode 21 & 22
So part of what had Rumpie so rattled in "The Return" is that he thought, August, the only person around he didn't recognize as a known fairy tale creature might have been his long-lost son. Spoiler he's not.

"Second Star on the Right" might have more impact if you watch it right after "The Return".

For a long time, we're going to be exposed primarily to Rumpie's regret but "Second Star on the Right" and "Straight on Till Morning" reveal that, yeah what he did was a really lousy thing to do to his kid it did have consequences for his son.

Furthermore, this episode sets up the groundwork for Neverland as Baelfire, Rumplestilskin's son crash landed in Victorian London and started stealing bread from Wendy Darling to survive. It doesn't go exactly where you think and I'll probably spoil all of that later but it's a really nice charming retelling of the first bits of Peter Pan.

Also as mentioned previously I don't really give a damn about the villains or really the plot even of the second half of season 2. It's the guy they're working for I really care about. And this is the first episode we get an idea that he's baaaaaad news.


"The Stranger": Season 1 Episode 20
August, the guy walking around in "The Return"  is actually a grown-up Pinocchio. A globe trottin' grown-up Pinocchio who failed to stay on the straight and narrow, and we all know what happens to Pinocchio when he fails to stay on the straight and narrow.

This is an episode where we watch him confess his sins and try to make amends. And it is especially heartrending as he tries to fix things with an amnesiac Gepetto.

"The Doctor": Season 2 Episode 5
Anyway, by the second season Once Upon a Time decided it really want to redeem The Evil Queen, who up until this point I viewed as a pretty disposable character despite her being framed as the co-lead. This episode manages to make her actually interesting, by pulling the same trick it did with Rumpie.  Once has a talent for charting it's characters' paths to the dark side and while it's not the first of her episodes to deal with it it's probably the best. It best captures the forces that made her into what she is.

Furthermore. It's the Frankenstein episode. (It was that season's Holloween episode.)

One of the biggest criticisms of the show is that at times it can feel like a giant Disney commercial. While it does regularly feature some non-Disney characters it's rare for it to depict a character that feels out of line with what they would do in their classic animated movies.

Victor Frankenstein is a whole 'nother animal.  Once never really fulfilled it (I didn't see season 6) but watching that episode felt like a promise.  Once Upon a Time could and would mine any iconic story. Anybody and everybody could possibly show up.

"Manhattan": Season 2 Episode 14
Manhattan is the series MVP. It is by a long shot the best episode of Once Upon a Time, and is the pay off to all the stuff dealing with Rumpie.

The entire series plot thus far has been a part of Rumplestilskin's master plan to reunite with his son and this is the episode where it happens.  He meets his son and has to account for that moment. And it's rough and honest, and rough.

"Think Lovely Thoughts": Season 3 Episode 8
I have a tendency to talk Rumplestiltskin up as best bad guy. Largely because in a lot of ways Once Upon a Time is his story but he's not the best villain of series. Peter Pan is the best villain of the series. The first half of season 3 is the high point of the series but because of how interconnected it is I have trouble just sorting one episode from the others. But this is the episode where the show puts its chips on the table and tells us exactly what season 3 is all about.

Furthermore Peter Pan is the reason why I say this show is the story of Rumplestilskin's big screwed up family. And Rumpie coming to terms with him as a manifestation of his own sins is satisfying.



"Snow Drifts" & "There's No Place Like Home": Season 3 Episodes 21 & 22 
Okay mostly I'm going on for big dramatic episodes filled with pathos. This one is just funny. It's basically Back to The Future. The series decided that for the season 3 finale it would do fairy tale Back to the Future. And it's just fun on a metalevel.  That said since we're playing with time travel most of the humor is dependent on being keyed into the series continuity this far.

"A Tale of Two Sisters" & "White Out": Season 4 Episodes 1 & 2
Season 4 is where the show started to jump the shark for me. Let me explicitly state that. Almost everything that happens is stupid and incongruous with previously established events.

...

But.

The relationship between Anna and Elsa works. Especially as a post-script to the movie.

Furthermore their "spirit quest" to find each other works as the closest thing Disney could have done to telling the Anderson version of Snow Queen.

If nothing else season four deserves my respect for pulling that little miracle off.

Shoehorning Emma into it as a snow witch later kind of ruins it but as it is I have to give it a slow clap for what they did manage to accomplish.

And these two episodes are relatively light on the stuff I hate. And I feel I need SOMETHING from season four on here.

"Operation Mongoose" Parts 1 & 2: Season 4 Episodes 22 & 23
Okay, the plot of the back-half of season 4 is convoluted and I hate it. Just about every bad guy in the series that matters already went through a redemption arc and to make season 4 work they had backtrack on all that good character development.

...

But.

 It culminates in one of the most fun episodes of the series.

So the bad guys have been trying to use the magical mcguffin to re-write themselves as good guys in their own stories, and it works. They manage it. The bad guys are good and the good guys are laughably bad and it's hilarious.

...

As a single episode.

THEN THEY HAD TO MAKE EMMA "THE SAVIOR" SWAN THE REPOSITORY OF ALL EVIL EVER!

I hate season 5.

...

AND EDMOND DANTES DOES NOT LOSE SWORD DUELS!