Why must we be human?

Why must we be human, with all the flaws and failings?  Having to live and die, facing the mountains of pain and torment of our years often times alone.  How many can say that their lives have more good times than bad?  What calculus must be performed to truly balance the scales compared to the indignities, the horrors, and the maledictions placed upon us before those tiny moments of joy measure equal?

Better to be a rock, timeless, ageless, shaped only by the wind and rain.  A rock feels no pain, no terror, no shame.  A rock is content. It’s not driven by an urge to procreate or a need to find food or shelter.  It simply is.  It exists, and needs no one and nothing to prove that existence to itself or to the world.  Yes, much better to be a rock, hardened and solid, than this fleshy chaos.

But a rock cannot feel the wind upon it, and certainly cannot stop it from blowing.  It can’t feel the cold touch of rain or the slow expansion of ice as it cleaves it ever so slowly in twain.  A rock has to control over itself or over its environment, and is at the mercy of the world.  It is naked, alone, and forever without the means to express itself against its oppressors, wind and rain.

Perhaps a tree would be better?  Not so immortal as the stone, but still a constant for much longer than a human lifetime.  A tree with gnarled bark and strong limbs reaching to the sun, yes, and still a slave to wind and rain but able to feel and grow.  Still mute to the world, and yet the tree slows the wind and soaks in the rain.  The tree uses the wind to sow its seed and the rain to help it grow.  It scrubs the carbon from the air and returns oxygen, its quiet protest against the very nature of the atmosphere itself.

Ah, but a tree will never see another forest save its own.  It will never know what the sunset over the ocean looks like, never lay eyes upon the great glaciers of the frozen north.  It will see only the world around it, and nothing more, and in so doing will be limited in its scope.  It knows only what it can see, only what it can feel, never realizing the larger world beyond it.

Then a bird, yes, a bird, that is what we should be.  A bird that rides the winds and weathers the rains, a bird that can see the snowy tundra and the placid seas.  A bird that soars and dips and dives without a care in the world.  Did not the dinosaurs choose this path?  Did they not become the feathered freewheelers in the skies over our heads?  What more does man envy than the bird, so much so we invented metal wings of our own?

Yet birds have their follies.  They have to eat, and must avoid the weather.  They mate, yes, and have to sing to find their partners.  How many end up alone?  They perhaps have their own sort of sadness, and while it may be more balanced than our own, it is still there.  And their lifespans, so much shorter than ours, as if they were given the freedom to fly at the cost of their longevity.

And so we are stuck, trapped in the only form that fits for us.  We are human, after all, because we must be.  We have no choice, no means of changing this one destiny.  You cannot choose to be a rock or a tree or a bird.  You can only choose to life your life in a way that balances the scales a little better in your favor.  That is the truest lesson of life, that it is only as fair as you allow it to be.

 

Remembering what’s important

I haven’t been posting much, and for that I apologize.  My real job has been ridiculously busy.  But it’s easy to forget what’s important to you, and to sink into the groove (or is it a rut?) that’s comfortable if not fulfilling.

Today I remembered what I had forgotten.  I love to write.  I miss it.  I haven’t turned out a complete story in months.  I’ve distracted myself, told myself it was no big deal, made myself busy with work or friends or games.  But today something happened, something stupid, and it tripped the memory circuits.  My company is locking down flash drive ports on laptops – they’re concerned someone will run off with sensitive data.  This means I can’t listen to my music on a flash drive any more.  I went out and bought a cheap MP3 player and decided to load a bunch of stuff onto it, including audio books.

I was happily bopping along to The Art of Noise, not thinking much about how much I’ve closed myself off from the part of my life I really enjoy, when all the sudden my audiobook of Stephen King’s IT came on.  Oh god…I’d forgotten.  I’d completely forgotten about how much I loved that story, how much I loved HEARING stories.  And how much I loved telling stories.  I’m listening to it as I write this, and resolving that I WILL write more.  I’ve cut myself off from my creative side and it has to stop.

It has to stop because I know this is one of the signs of my depression returning.  I’ve talked about it before, about the sometimes crippling feelings of emptiness and uselessness I have.  I realize now, I’ve been having those sorts of feelings a lot lately.  I’ve ascribed it as stress, but it’s not…it’s that dark shadow inside trying to cut me off again.  So here I am, not letting it.  I’m rambling, but you’ll forgive the crazy guy his babbling when he’s trying to break through the mental walls he’s put on himself.

There are times I look back and I realize how empty my life has been, always because of this darkness, this emptiness.  I’ve been fighting it a little at a time, but it’s very, very hard, and of course I’d love to be able to stop for a while.  That’s not possible, however, or I fall right back into the depression cycle again.  But once in a while I have to realize that my mind is really good at fucking me over.  I’d like to say this breakthrough means I can put it behind me forever, but I can’t.  I will fail again – I’m only human.  Just so long as I never give up.

Oh well!  Break’s over!!!

 

So, about the Evil Dead remake…

Spoilers contained herein, you are warned.

 

 

Ok, so I’ve seen the remake.  I wanted to like it.  I really, really did.  It’s Evil Dead.  I love Evil Dead.  So why did I not like this movie?  Why did I leave feeling let down?

It certainly wasn’t the effects, which are gory, over the top and definitely in keeping with the original’s oceans of arterial spray.  It wasn’t the story, which is similar to the original with a group of friends going to a cabin in the woods for a weekend.  It certainly wasn’t the little elements that were throwbacks to the original, such as the “tree rape”, the invisible force running through the woods, the rusted out car, even keeping the book named the same (even though we all know it’s the Necronomicon).  And the chainsaw…and the…well, you get the idea.

No, the movie was just lacking something that has always made Evil Dead the kind of movie you can just pop in and enjoy any time.  The movie is lacking charm.

Charm is a hard thing to quantify.  The original movie had it because of the low budget, the genius of the director, and the powerful jaw-line of the leading man.  Let’s focus in on that last one.  I had heard this movie didn’t have an Ash, or that there was a female Ash, but it wasn’t Ash exactly.  Well, that was correct.  None of the characters was Ash.  None of them had a tenth of his charm.  And a big chunk of the movie seemed to be the plot trying to decide who was going to be the Ash in this film.  First the brother is the protagonist, and then for a short time you think it might be his girlfriend, and then it’s the sister…but none of them are Ash.

So does there have to be an Ash?  No, not really.  But there does have to be a hero.  See, Evil Dead is not a horror film about a bunch of victims.  That’s Halloween or Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but Evil Dead is a story about a transformation from man to superman, from victim to hero.  Ash begins as a normal guy, but by the end of the movie, and certainly in the sequels, he becomes a true hero (albeit a bumbling one).  It’s not dissimilar to Aliens – Ripley starts as a victim and becomes a hero, and that’s why Aliens is a great movie and its followups were all horrible.

The movie also lacked just about any humor at all.  I chuckled a tiny bit during the “deadite lesbian scene”, but it clearly wasn’t meant to be funny.  There could have been humor in the movie, and there SHOULD have been considering the source, but it was deadpan all the way through.  And here’s where we come to the inevitable conclusion and comparison that I had hoped wouldn’t need to be made, but clearly does:

Cabin in the Woods is a better Evil Dead remake than this.

Why?  Cabin in the Woods had charm.  It had humor, but was still serious.  It had a victim become a hero.  It has practically the same premise (and it should…that was the point of Cabin in the Woods), and pulled off the story ten times better than the Evil Dead remake.  Cabin in the Woods had an Ash.

In the end, I think this film will not be well remembered, and deservedly so.  It simply isn’t Evil Dead.  Here’s to hoping Raimi and Campbell can pull off the rumored Army of Darkness II.

P.S., for those who have seen the remake, who in the hell was the girl supposed to be?  I mean, seriously…who was it?  It didn’t make any sense to show this big imposing guy in the Necronomicon and then have the big bad be a woman who looks like she needs to eat a sammich or two before the wind blows her away.  This is just one of those things that logically didn’t make sense to me, and I think it jarred me almost as much as the lack of humor and charm did.  I had no reason to care, whatsoever, who that witch was.

 

John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy

John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors for a number of reasons, not least of which is his soundtracks.  Carpenter films SOUND the same, and you almost feel like they all exist in the same universe some how.  But one of the main reasons I like him is that he’s a fan of Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos.  He’s also the only director to get a film that is, in many ways, a version of “At the Mountains of Madness” off the ground.

It’s that film and two others that I’d like to talk about, the three films that make up Carpenter’s unofficial “Apocalypse Trilogy”.

The first film is The Thing.  Released in 1982, The Thing is actually a remake of an earlier film, The Thing From Another World (1951).  The movie is based on a short story, Who Goes There, by John W. Campbell Jr., written in 1938 and published in Astounding Science-Fiction.  The story is about a remote base in Antarctica and a shapeshifting alien that can absorb and take over a life form.  It’s a great mix of both science fiction and horror.  The reason it’s part of an “apocalypse” is that during the film, Blair, the team biologist (played by DIABEETUS…er…Wilford Brimley) calculates the time it would take for the alien to take over all human life on Earth if it escapes – it’s just about three years.

The primary protagonist of the film is MacReady (Kurt Russell), who is a rough edged chopper pilot.  By the end of the film, we can’t be sure if MacReady is actually human or not, nor if Childs, the only other survivor, might not be the alien. Either way, there’s no escape.  Both are doomed, though one might simply go into hibernation again, to be found by a rescue crew.  It’s this undefined, unknown consequence that really defines these three films.  None of them end on a happy note.

The second film in the trilogy, which are not connected storywise, is 1987′s Prince of Darkness.  This film also mixes science fiction with horror, this time presenting a secret that the Catholic church has kept hidden for millennia. Essentially, the Devil is a self-organizing abstract equation kept in a special glass container.  A team of students from a local university are brought in to study the device after its caretaker dies and it begins to become active.

As the movie progresses, the evil in the container escapes, possessing several of the students.  In the end, a sacrifice by the protagonist’s love interest stops Lucifer from bringing his father (the “anti-god”) into the world.  The movie’s hero is played by Jameson Parker, mostly known for his work on Simon and Simon.  He’s really not a good fit for this role, but that’s ok because the movie also features the late Victor Wong (Egg Chen in Big Trouble in Little China) and Dennis Dun (also from Big Trouble in Little China), plus a cameo of Alice Cooper as a crazed homeless man under the devil’s influence.  The movie ends with a suitably creepy scene that makes you wonder if they really stopped the anti-god or not.

The final film is 1995′s In The Mouth of Madness, Carpenter’s love note to the Cthulhu Mythos by way of Stephen King. The story is about an insurance adjustor who investigates the appearance of the world’s most popular author, who happens to write Cthulhlian stories that are so popular, people actually start to become part of them.  He is revealed to be in a small town that exists only in his books, and the insurance agent, played perfectly by Sam Neill, becomes the unwitting prophet that delivers the final book, the book that will drive the world into madness, to the publisher.

The movie plays with the concept of shared reality, and how much of our perception of the world is based on the rules we all agree to.  Madness is more abstract here, with Neill’s character slowly slipping into insanity as the rules of reality seem to crumble around him.  Carpenter has said the movie is more Stephen King that Lovecraft, but there are parts lifted directly from The Haunter of the Dark, and the Old Ones are clearly Lovecraftian.  This film is probably the most successful mythos film, while not being directly connected to the mythos.

The three films together form the “apocalypse trilogy” because in the end, in all three, the world may be doomed, though only in the third, In The Mouth of Madness, is the world specifically threatened.  These three films, viewed together, are very bleak.  They’re a perfect rainy Sunday companion if you want to get your horror geek on.

 

Ok, seriously…North Carolina Republicans…WTF?

A group of North Carolina Republicans have introduced a bill to establish a state religion.  This is not an April Fools joke, even though it was introduced on April 1st.

Look, I have a pretty low opinion of most Republicans as it is, but I’ve always believed that they at least were down with the Constitution of the United States and weren’t, you know, cartoon villains despite their various attempts to prove me wrong.  This, though, is beyond the pale.  This is literally evil.  There’s no other word for it.  This is the sort of stuff Lex Luthor or Mumm-Ra would be pulling.

These legislators need to not just be removed from their seats, but banned from ever holding public office again.  The level of stupidity and hubris they are exhibiting is nearly unthinkable.  This is the sort of thing that, should it pass (and I hope it does not), Washington should roll tanks into North Carolina and forcibly remove the state government.  And quite honestly, if the people of North Carolina are too damned stupid to not vote for mustache twirling villains, perhaps a decade or two as a territory managed by the federal government might straighten them out.

Or maybe we just need to clone William Tecumseh Sherman and let him deal with it.  Seriously, people, it’s 2013…we CANNOT be this stupid.

 

A brief moment of pure hapiness

Please excuse this post, for it shall surely ramble.

I experienced a moment a pure happiness today.  It’s been quite some time really, since I’ve had that feeling.  It’s like all the weight dropping from your shoulders, just for an instant, and the world feels like for at least a little while like it will spin on.  It’s not a physical sensation, like a orgasm, but rather a spiritual or emotional renewal.

It happened in my car, which I just bought a month ago and have had issues with.  I love it dearly, but it has had various minor mechanical issues and the check engine light has been on since I bought it.  Despite a mechanic telling me it’s nothing, it worries me, and sounds and shakes and other things the car does always worries me. I love it so, I don’t want it to not work right.

I had just gotten home from a very unsuccessful shopping run.  I’d gotten my groceries and a video game I’d wanted to try, but two other ventures, one looking for some steampunky goggles at a costume store and the other some leather from a craft store, both ended in failure.  But sitting there, in my space, the car still running, warm sunlight spilling in after what’s seemed like an eternal winter, the light on the dash went out.  The check engine light turned off.  I know it will come back on, but it was like the car, no, the whole world was telling me everything was going to be ok, at least for a little while.

And in that instant, I had a moment of bliss.  The world was right on its axis, there were things to do, stuff to see, new friends to make.  The winter was ending, spring and summer were coming.  The dark clouds were turning silver and for just one moment I knew everything would be ok.

A minute later I was worrying about the car again, and mentally calculating how much I needed to put aside for any possible emergency car issues, and reminding myself to do laundry and that I needed to do this, that, and the other, but I felt better, so very much better.  I still feel it, hours later, that maybe things will be ok.  And maybe the world will spin onward.  And even if bad things happen, I will be ok.

I wish you all, anyone who ever reads this, the best of luck in having such a moment, because we all sorely need them in our lives.  They are too few, and too far between, but when they come, cherish them and hold on to them as long as you can.

 

Marcon 48 – Good people, bad con

Yesterday and today I attended Marcon in Columbus, Ohio.  This was my second year at the con, and I can say there was a marked drop in quality this year.  I didn’t bother to “live blog” because there was nothing to really blog about.

I did have a wonderful time with the people there.  I cannot stress that enough – I had an AMAZING time, but not because of the con.  In fact, almost in spite of it.

Three things really hurt Marcon this year: 1) very poor programming, 2) confusing information and 3) very low turn out due to the scheduling of the con.  Let’s talk about the last one first – next year, Marcon is moving back to May, which is when it traditionally took place.  It won’t be on Memorial Day weekend, due mostly to the hotel not wanting it scheduled then, but it will be on a better weekend than Easter weekend.  I’m not sure what the idea was with moving it to Easter weekend – most folks will entirely skip Sunday (I will) because it’s a family holiday, and practically no one gets any work holidays for it.  It’s just a really DUMB move to have the con then.  A random weekend in May is MUCH better than on a holiday that’s not a goof off holiday.

Ok, now lets talk about the confusing info – there was precious little signage at the con, and to get info on cancelled panels you had to go to the art show (and not the info booth).  As usual, some of the listed times, like when registration would open, was…well to call them embellishments is a stretch.  Registration of Friday was supposed to start at 11am…it didn’t get going till 12:30.  But that didn’t really matter because…

…the programming sucked and nothing really started until 4pm.  I get not having enough panelists – see the first point about horrible con scheduling.  However, that doesn’t excuse things like scheduling the two costuming panels AT THE SAME TIME.  Or putting  one of the Dottore Who skits against Rocky Horror.  I also understand wanting to do adult panels late…but 11:30?  The people in the Kink 101 panel were yawning and falling asleep because duh, they were tired as fuck.

An honorable mention on stuff the con failed at was the dealer room.  There were fewer stands there this year than last, and honestly most of the folks there were raking people over the coals for cash.  There was, for example, a single sword dealer there, and they were selling katanas that go for $30 on BudK.com for $150.  Now I get “con prices” on some stuff – but seeing Party City steampunk goggles that sell for $6 marked at $35? Even the t-shirts were expensive.  I bought a con shirt, as I always do, and it was $28 this year.  Last year I believe I only paid $20.  Again, the move to May might help attract more vendors and competition might drive down some prices, but I have to say, I walked through the dealers room so many times and I honestly either found nothing I wanted or what I did want was terribly overpriced.

Marcon has so much potential to be awesome.  It used to be – it was on its way to becoming the SDCC or Dragoncon of the midwest.  Then something happened, I don’t know what (though if I find out, I’ll write about it), and it’s been headed down hill ever since.  I sincerely hope that the move back to May brings more people.  I plan to volunteer to be a panelist next year, since I can definitely speak to writing and blogging, as well as other geek topics that I’m an expert on (Star Wars, Transformers, Stephen King, Lovecraft, etc.).  I might also offer to help them with their horrible web page – you can’t find shit on it and the gallery link has been broken for literally a year now.

Again, the people there, the friends I got to hang out with and the wonderful folks I met, they were definitely reasons I will come back again, but this con needs help.  Perhaps someone (me, maybe, and my friends) should start a “help Marcon shine again” effort.  But I can honestly say, the con didn’t feel worth the $60 I paid this year.

 

The lost shows of the 1980s

I have a good memory, which I’ve found to my dismay is slowly eroding as I grow older.  But I still cling to childhood memories, and as any reader of this blog will well know, I love to share those precious fragments of recollection.  Today I’d like to share some memories of old tv shows that I used to love as a kid.  I’m not talking about Knight Rider or the A-Team or Macgyver, though I loved all three of those.  No, I’m talking about obscure shows most people probably will never remember except in that ill-cleaned corner of their memory.

Let’s start with Wizards and Warriors, a show I swear the internet was invented to remind me about.  The show lasted for a total of eight episodes in 1983 on CBS, and starred Jeff Conaway, better known for his roles in Taxi or Babylon 5.  How Gary Gygax didn’t sue the pants off them for the title I’ll never know, but the show was goofy as hell.  Most of the series was directed by Bill “Incredible Hulk” Bixby!  I can’t honestly remember much of the plot, but I think it was about two brothers, one evil, one good, vying for control of a kingdom.  Here’s the whole first episode:

yes, that’s Jacques Renault from Twin Peaks there…

Let’s move on.  The next gem of a show was Otherworld.  Also on CBS (before they became the Old Folks Network), this show is from 1985 and shares some similarities with Stargate.  The show was about a family visiting Egypt who get stuck in a parallel world, with technology far in advance of our own, but ruled by a totalitarian government that splits the world into zones that people can never leave.  It also only made it to eight episodes, with the pilot being shown out of order.  It always amazes me with networks do something like that and then wonder why a show fails.  Here’s the opening:

Next up is Street Hawk.  This show lasted a whopping thirteen episodes on ABC in 1985, and was their answer to the insanely popular Knight Rider and Airwolf shows on NBC and CBS.  The show was about a cop chosen to be the pilot of a secret crime fighting motorcycle.  It’s pretty much as crazy as it sounds.  Check out the intro:

Finally, the craziest of all the shows from my childhood…The Phoenix, starring Judson Scott, better known as Star Trek’s Khan’s right hand man, Joachim (“Yours…is the superior…intellect…*croak*).  This show, which ran for four total episodes in 1982 on ABC, was about an alien found in ancient Aztec temple, who had come to Earth to help mankind with his powers, which included levitation, telekinesis, telepathy, and precognition.  I cannot fathom why this show ever made it to the air, but as a kid I thought it was awesome.  It was WAY new agey and hippy, and it felt a lot like The Incredible Hulk and Starman.  It also had Judson’s Scott’s chest acting its heart out.  Here’s the hippy-trippy opening, best viewed stoned:

In summation…TV in the 80s was really, really weird.

 

Why you should hate Glee and try to get it off the air

I’m no fan of the show Glee.  I know there were some Joss Whedon fans who really took a shine to it, but I wasn’t one of them.  I tried to watch their atrocious version of Rocky Horror wherein they changed “offensive lyrics” such as changing Sweet Transvestite to “I’m just a Sweet Transvestite from sensational Transylvania” (really…transvestite is ok, transsexual is not????).  It was so terrible I didn’t make it more than half way through.

The show is also supposedly set in Lima, Ohio, and is so much NOT Lima (which is maybe 45 minutes from my home town) that it’s pathetic.  It’s a small town in Ohio…there aren’t lots of musical theaters there and Lima is about an hour or two away from ANYWHERE like what they depict.  It’s as rural as it gets and makes the show that much more stupid.

But now they’re ripping off music and not even apologizing for it.

Jonathan Coulton, best known as the guy who wrote the ending songs for Portal and Portal II, did a slow, funny cover version of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back.  It’s really pretty good.  Glee decided to rip  it off, and when I say rip it off, I mean they copied it exactly, even the slight lyric changes and a duck quack to cover a naught word.  When Coulton contacted the producers of Glee, they basically told him to take a hike.

So, not that I have that many readers or fans, but those I do, please do what you can to spread the word – this show needs to go.  It needs to crash so hard in the ratings it leaves a crater in its time slot for the next ten years to teach these asshats a lesson.

 

Memories of Karazhan

I am a recovering World of Warcraft addict.  Actually, I’m not recovering at all considering I’m now engrossed in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Still, it’s been a few years since I ventured into the magical lands of Azeroth.  I’d like to share with you my favorite thing about WoW – the twisted instance known as Karazhan.

For those who have never played an MMO or WoW, let me briefly explain what Karazhan is all about.  In the game, there are group adventures, basically dungeon crawls that require a set amount of people to accomplish. These come in several flavors, from the average five man dungeons that are the bread and butter of adventurers, to the larger raid instances that are 10, 20, 25 or even 40 man instances.  Karazhan is a 10 man dungeon, meaning you needed 10 players to take it on, at least when it first came out.  It, like most adventures, are geared for a specific character level.  It’s not a lot different from the pen and paper dungeon ancestors of these computer games, where you need a group to explore the evil castle and defeat the wizard.  The difference is that the computer runs all the bad guys, and they always attack in the same ways.

Also, you can sack the evil wizard’s castle once a week and he just keeps coming back to life.

In the case of Karazhan, it’s a tower, not a castle, though it might as well be a castle.  And the evil wizard has vacated the property, leaving behind a bunch of monsters, ghosts, and an extra-dimensional prince to take his place.  There’s also two dragons to slay, one a giant blue monster, and the other a skeletal dragon with a bad attitude.  But there’s so much more to Karazhan than just the monsters and the loot they drop.  There’s and opera!  There’s a giant chess game!  There are whores!

Wait, what?  Yes, Karazhan has a whole brothel area, and while you can’t bed any of the women there; they’re either ghosts or evil succubi, you can take out their big nasty madame, the ironically named Maiden of Virtue.

So why do I remember this place fondly?  Well, basically for the same reason people remember those old pen and paper games fondly, regardless of how stupid they actually were.  Karazhan is a gigantic dungeon to clear. For characters of the proper level with average gear, it was about a six to eight hour event to clear the place.  Those didn’t have to be consecutive; as long as you downed the boss in an area, you could come back and run right through with no respawned monsters in that area for an entire week.  However, my group always tried to do it all in one day, or at worst over two nights.

The first reason I love Karazhan is the setting.  The tower is located in a bleak, gray canyon guarded by ogres and ghosts. There’s also a hidden area to the side, but we’ll talk about that later.  Inside the castle itself is a stables with a very angry stablemaster and his equally angry mount, and an entry area where you can meet Berthold the Doorman.  The ground floor has a lovely dining room where Moroes, the former evil wizard’s butler, keeps things tidy.  He also will try to kill you and your friends.  Just up from the first floor is the harem, where the aforementioned Maiden of Virtue, a twenty foot tall iron giant, waits to welcome you between her massive thighs.

As you explore the tower, you will find a library, an Escher-esq labyrinth of stairs, the ghost of the evil wizard’s father, a museum with a magical robot curator, and the skeletal dragon I mentioned, who you meet on a balcony.  There is also the opera event, which is a hell of a lot of fun.  The game randomly selects one of three operas; the Wizard of Oz, Little Red Riding Hood, or Romeo and Juliette.  You then fight bosses based on that opera.  For the Wizard of Oz, for example, you get a metal man, a lion, a straw man, a warrior women in red shoes and her little dog, and eventually a witch who commands a tornado.  For Little Red Riding Hood, you fight a giant wolf, who magically transforms one of the party into a little girl who must run for her life from him.  Romeo and Juliette sees you battling the two lovers and their feuding families through three different acts.  The fun part is, during all of this you are on a lighted stage with an audience of ghosts watching and applauding as you fight for your lives.

Everyone loved guessing which opera we’d get. Some people would make in-game bets.  Others liked running out on the stage and having their characters bow to the audience or make other emotes at them.  The audience vanished and the hall turned into a desolate place once you won the event, but for the time you were there it was kind of interesting to feel like you had a true audience.

Fighting upstairs, you eventually came on the second “event” in the dungeon: the chess game.  This was very simple, but still a lot of fun.  You took control of chess pieces, each player picking a different one.  Each piece had different powers; some were damage dealers, like the knights, others, like bishops, healed.  The idea was to kill the king, but you had to move like chess pieces, and use the powers of the pieces to win.  It was very easily laid out, and all you really needed to do was get a couple of damage dealers close enough to the enemy king to take him out, but it was still fun.  It was almost impossible to lose, but we found a way more than once. The phrase “wiping on chess” was shorthand for being particularly bad at something.

The final boss in the tower, found at the very tip-top, was a demon from another dimension.  Easily the hardest fight of all, the guy could flatten a group with ease, and you had to stand in just the right place to fight him or you were dead.  plus he dropped giant meteors on your head.  He was a really nice guy.  But he dropped the epic fat loot, so every week we would battle our way through the tower to get to him.

In many cases, we skipped bosses to go directly to the Prince.  You didn’t have to kill them all, just the ones directly in the path to him.  There were several “optional” bosses, such as the two different dragons.  Once the big guy was down, you might do some mop-up work and take out those bosses.  They also dropped some nice loot, so it wasn’t uncommon to go back and finish them if you hadn’t said hi on the way up.

As much fun as Karazhan was for the sheer challenge and complexity, I liked the lore that went into it.  The story is a little confusing and the game and written material don’t quite match, but the tower was once the home of Medihv, sort of the anti-Gandalf of the Warcraft universe.  Many of the things in the tower were call backs to older events in Warcraft.  There were even readable books in the library about what had happened there.

There was also the hell of the upside down sinners.

Not an official part of Karazhan, but the HotUDS was a proto-dungeon that had been abandoned by the developers and was hidden behind a locked mausoleum gate.  Like many things in World of Warcraft, players figured out how to get there despite the gate.  Inside was a sprawling dungeon complex that clearly was meant to be part of Karazhan but was never finished.  Part of it had the spooky underwater dead.

Seriously…what the fuck was that about?

Eventually I outgrew Karazhan.  I got all the loot I could ever want from it, on three different characters, and my guild moved on to harder and bigger challenges.  But I always loved returning there, sometimes to help new folks out, or just to see how, once we were better geared or, after the next expansion, higher level, how easily we could clear the place, but it wasn’t our place any more.  It wasn’t that weekend crawl I’d enjoyed.  You can’t go home again, and apparently you can’t raid Karazhan again either.