Which are better, spiders or dogs?

I was discussing the most recent episode of Doctor Who with a friend.  The episode was titled Arachnids in the UK and featured a bunch of spiders, as one might expect. She enjoyed it, but found it unsettling, because she does not like spiders.

I can’t imagine why. Spiders are pretty great.

I will put aside my personal feelings and go into this exercise entirely without bias of any kind. With sober, dispassionate objectivity I will compare spiders to dogs in ten categories, and we’ll see just exactly who is man’s best friend.

Cuteness

Look at these randomly selected pictures selected completely at random. They are perfectly representative of the critters in question.

Spider

So dapper! So earnest!

Doggo

Average dog

Harry Potter appearances

Aragog: Voiced by Julian Glover and therefore awesome!

My dear, no one could be as stupid as he seems. 

Fluffy: Outsmarted by children. Terrible watchdog. Drooly and disgusting.

You had one job!

Odor when wet

Dog: Smells like wet dog.

Spider: Does not smell like wet dog.

Anthropomorphized appearance 

Spiders: Far and wide her lesser broods, bastards of the miserable mates, her own offspring, that she slew, spread from glen to glen, from the Ephel Dúath to the eastern hills, to Dol Guldur and the fastnesses of Mirkwood. But none could rival her, Shelob the Great, last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world.

Shelob looks pretty great in that Middle Earth game.

Dogs: 

Ahem

Diet

Spiders eat insects. Spiders eat 880 million tons of insects every year. That’s a lot of creepy-crawlies not biting you.

Dogs eat their own poop. I don’t know how much of it, but I doubt it’s 880 million tons worth.

Charlotte's Web

Would not make sense with dogs. They can’t spin webs and their spelling is atrocious.

Fighting the Red Baron

We’re coming up on the centennial of the armistice that ended WWI. Snoopy has had a hundred years to defeat the Red Baron and he still hasn’t managed to do it. Put a dog-sized spider in the cockpit of that Sopwith Camel and Richthofen will be limping back home by sunset.

Manners

Dogs always want to hump my leg or lick my hand and it’s disgusting. Spiders do neither of these things.

Substances produced out of rear ends

Spiders: Spider silk! Spider silk is absolutely bonkers. A given weight of spider silk is five times as strong as the same weight of steel. Dragline silks can hold their strength below −40 and up to 428 °F. Silks are about a sixth of the density of steel. As a result, a strand long enough to circle the Earth would weigh less than 500 grams. Spider silk is incredible!

Dogs: Poop. Again with the poop. Get it together, doggos!   Dogs don’t produce any marvelous materials out of their hindquarters. I’m sure that the prospect of more poop is enticing to the other dogs who want to eat it, but it’s less appealing to the world at large.

Consequences of bite

Spider:  Muscle tone,

wall-crawling,

 male enhancement.

Dog: Rabies.

In conclusion, Spiders are better than dogs. Sorry, spider-hating friend. It's just science.

A word from Lily: Also, side-note, people eat spiders more often than dogs, and they let dogs play the victims? Shame on you, spider haters. SHAAAAME.

Crossover Combat: Battle of the Genies

There was a stupid joke in an old issue of Dragon magazine that nevertheless made me laugh.

Efreet: Let me get this straight: You want me to RAZE your ability scores?
Naïve Adventurer: Well, yes.

I started playing D&D in the era when the game was still framed as something of a contest between the Dungeon Master and the players. Advice on screwing with your players in such a fashion was not uncommon in those days.

But the smart ones always took precautions

I said once in an early post about Superman that I think “Should you do it?” is a much more interesting question than “Can you do it?” and wishes are an interesting way to explore that question.

Today’s installment of Crossover Combat is The Battle of the Genies.

In this corner, we have Aladdin’s Genie of the Lamp!

Powers: "Phenomenal Cosmic Power!"
Restrictions: “Itty Bitty Living Space!” No wishing for more wishes. No making anyone fall in love. Can’t or won’t bring back the dead.
Weaknesses: Sight gags referencing Arsenio Hall no longer topical.  Compelled to obey the holder of the lamp.
How he would grant the wish of “Make me a ham sandwich”:  For Aladdin, he’d create the biggest, most delicious ham sandwich with all the fixings. For Jafar, he’d make something flavorless and bland, with waxy cheese and stale bread.






Jeannie: Barbera Eden from I Dream of Jeannie.

Powers: Standard genie panoply of wish-granting.
Restrictions: Can't use her powers to get out of an enclosed space, which seems like a weaksauce weakness until you realize that she spent the 2000 years prior to the start of the series stuck in a bottle.
Weaknesses: Kind of stupid. Compelled to obey the holder of the lamp.
How she would grant the wish of “Make me a ham sandwich”: She’s a bit capricious. If she's in a good mood, she'll blink a ham sandwich into existence. If she's in a bad mood, she'll get involved in some sitcom hijinx like joining NASA or putting a bunch of goats in your boss's office.

The Djinn from Wishmaster: I like Wishmaster. The movie is all kinds of B-movie trashy,  it looks like it was made a decade before it actually was, most reviews are a variation of the San Francisco Chronicle's pronouncement of "an extravaganza of bad special effects and worse acting"  and the titular villain constantly mugs for the camera. However, there are parts where it's legitimately very clever and they stuck in as many cameos from horror movie actors as they could. Come on, Tony Todd, Angus Scrimm AND Reggie Bannister? Sure that's worth a few points on Rotten Tomatoes!

Powers: Must reshape reality in accordance with his interpretation of any request he hears.
Restrictions: Must grant the wish as worded even if it's to his detriment. Unable to use his powers without a request from an outside.  (The Djinn: Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to have unlimited power, and only be able to use it when some worm asks you for something? Guard: No, I can't say that I do. I can't say that I give a shit, either.) Can't grant wishes directly relating to himself. ([after Morgana wishes him to go back in the opal] I see you've done your homework. Unfortunately for you, it's not that easy. After all, I am the Wishmaster here. So any wishes pertaining to me are circumscribed by the prophecy.) Oooh, circumscribed! Sounds like somebody spent a wish on a word-a-day calendar.
Weaknesses: The Djinn is the biggest asshole in the world. My friend Frederick maintains that the Djinn is under a compulsion to twist the wording of his wishes, and that would explain a lot.  Like the scorpion in the fable, it’s just his nature. He needs to get the person who freed him to make three wishes (at which point the other Djinn are unleashed upon the world), which shouldn’t be a hard sell. Instead, he twists the first two wishes through some darkly humorous wordplay, making the wisher extremely reluctant to go for a third.
How he would grant the wish of “Make me a ham sandwich”: Do I have to spell this out? It's going to involve some kind of body horror transformation.



Mister Mxyzptlk: Grant Morrison tied Mxyzptlk and other five-dimensional entities to the myth of the djinn, so let’s go with that.

Powers: Unlimited restructuring of reality.
Restrictions: The effects of his magic disappear when he is banished back to the Fifth dimension. The TV version said that he was unable to make Supergirl fall in love with him, stop her from killing herself, or make her drink orange juice. Since these all fall under the umbrella of compelling her to do something, I'll say that he's incapable of such an act.
Weaknesses: Autocorrect. Also, like any character that's been around for several decades, he's been portrayed inconsistently, but he is banished back to the Fifth Dimension if a previously determined condition is met. It's usually tricking him into saying his name backward.
How he would grant the wish of “Make me a ham sandwich”: Unpredictably. Not the baleful polymorph of the Djinn. Maybe dropping a thousand ham sandwiches around the area, maybe putting you in a ham sandwich costume, maybe making the raw ingredients (live pigs, wheat) appear all around you.

Akinator

Powers: The ability to guess the identity of a character.
Restrictions: Stymied by obscure Star Wars characters.
Weaknesses: Only as good as the data put into it.
How he would grant the wish of “Make me a ham sandwich”: By asking “Does your character wear shoes?” and “Is your character the main character of the work in which he appears?”


So, who wins this frightful battle of the genies?!

It is none other than

King Suleiman! 

If you're playing in a format that allows Suleiman, you're going to find him in some kind of degenerate deck that costs more than my car. And before you can say Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Mox Sapphire, Mox Pearl, Wheel of Fortune, he's killed all your genies. 

Crossover Combat: Franklin versus Washington

VS

I used to live outside of Philly, and like everyone there I was required to pay obeisance and worship Ben Franklin at his giant throne in the Franklin Institute. Despite that fact, when asked to resolve a dispute between two friends over who was the best Founding Father, I was able to do so ably and impartially by citing the following facts, much as I did with Jane Austen:

Washington vs Franklin

1.) Wartime Leadership

None of the troops under Franklin’s command during the Revolutionary War froze at Valley Forge.
Advantage: Franklin

2.) Peacetime Leadership

Washington’s third term went so poorly that many modern historians do not even acknowledge its existence.
Advantage: Franklin

3.) Patriotism

Washington failed to capture or kill Bin Laden when he was president. Ben Franklin invented a time machine and retroactively erased twenty-nine terrorists from existence.
Advantage: Franklin

4.) On hunting the Most Dangerous game

George Washington was renowned as one of the greatest horseman of his age, which assisted him in his favorite hobby, hunting. Many historians believe he would arrange meetups on Craiglist, abduct his victims when they arrived and fly them to his private island by helicopter, where he would hunt them for sport.

Ben Franklin was too fat to hunt people
Advantage: Franklin

5.) Slavery

It is well-known that George Washington released his slaves upon his death. He did not release his House Elves however, and hundreds of them still labor at Mount Vernon.
Advantage: Franklin

6.)Inventions

Franklin had eleventy billion inventions., including swim fins, the lightning rod, Daylight Savings Time, Snapple (each bottle contains a spark of the lightning from his kite), Jazzercise, bifocals, the Franklin stove, Philadelphia’s first fire brigade and Philadelphia’s first Fight Club.

George Washington didn’t invent anything, but tried to take credit late in life for some peanut related developments from a man with a similar name.
Advantage: Franklin

7.) Legacy

Stupid Washington launched his Christmas attack on Trenton and we’re still hearing about this “War on Christmas” from Bill O’Reilly two hundred years later.
Advantage: Franklin

8.) Diet

Franklin was a vegetarian for most of his life. George Washington was a cannibal.
Advantage: Franklin

9.) Monetary Value

One Franklin is worth 100 Washingtons.
Advantage: Franklin

10.) Appearances in advertising

The only work Washington can get is shilling mattresses on Presidents’ Day

This commercial where a giant Ben Franklin fights a kaiju cheesesteak is pretty much the best thing ever, as well as being an accurate depiction of life in Philadelphia.

Advantage: Franklin

I hope these little known facts have proved illuminating.

Crossover Combat: Battle of the groups that are puns on the word “Android”

Well, that’s curiously specific.

Our contestants:

The Bandroids: The Bionic Six was really kind of wonderful in its distinctly 80s way. (See also, Spiral Zone) It was very much a product of its time, but it does have one of my favorite story arcs from any show in my childhood. At the end of the first episode, the main characters are captured, so their patron, Professor Doctor Amadeus Sharp, PhD (one of the all-time great character names, thank you very much) assembles a rescue team of second stringers and former guest stars. This legion of substitute heroes includes the robot rock stars called the Bandroids.

Truly Truly Truly Outrageous

From the Bionic Six Wiki: The Bandroids are androids, created by Dr. Bruce "Bad Brains" Huxter, designed to perform as a musical band. The Bandroids are guitarist Rivet Rick, keyboardist Techno Tex, bassist Metalhand, and drummer Bob. Each Bandroid has their musical instrument designed into their chassis and showcases some special ability: Rivet Rick can generate force fields, Techno Tex is equipped with two six-shooters, Metalhand can grow in size and has a jet pack, and Bob can generate electrical blasts from his drumsticks. The Bandroids perform in concert and are reported to have had four consecutive number one hits


Annedroids: If this TV show were a person, it would be Morgan Freeman talking about penguins. One of its goals is to educate children about STEM topics, and comforting and inoffensive in a way that only Canadian children’s television can be. The new girl in town in a precocious super-genius, and she builds robots and makes friends up in Canada. She has three main robots, Hand, Eye and Pal.


Randroids: All right. Debates about “Who would win in a fight?” tend to be even more subjective than most things on the Internet, and, like modern jurisprudence, chiefly involve working backwards to justify one’s favored outcome, all the while issuing protestations of one’s role as a neutral arbiter and declaring that the only possible interpretation of a sober reading of the evidence regarding a hypothetical matchup between Batman and Galactus will, of course, force any reasonable party to conclude that Batman would just throw batarangs at Galactus’s face until he decide to leave the earth alone forever.

I’m going to forgo even that slender fig leaf. It’s hard to overstate how much I hate Libertarians. When my seven-year-old daughter overheard the word and asked me what they were, I answered “People who like living in a civil society, but don’t like paying for it.” That’s perfect. So accurate, and so simple that a child could understand it. Several years ago, I first heard someone refer to Senator “Rand” Paul. I knew that that perennial Presidential candidate and part-time garden gnome Ron Paul was a hard core Glibertarian, and when I heard someone on TV say “Rand Paul”, I assumed that the speaker was just being snarky and facetiously referring to Ron Paul as Rand Paul. I didn’t realize that the man had actually named his son after Ayn Rand.

To Quote John Rogers:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

This is not an environment favorable to Libertarians, is what I’m saying.

We’ll rank our contestants in four categories.

Fighting: This is going to be a bit of a curb stomp isn’t it? Pal knows kung fu (or at least has some katas down), but only one team has rocket packs and shoots death rays. The Randroids learn how fickle the free market can be when they learn that the going rate to hire someone to fight against killer robots is out of their price range.

Round

Annedroids: 1

Bandroids: 2

Randroids: 0

Total

Annedroids: 1

Bandroids: 2

Randroids: 0

General Knowledge:Anne is a TV super genius. The Bandroids were never shown as particularly bright, but at best, Libertarian philosophy is intellectually dishonest sophistry. The word “scrub” has taken on a more specific meaning in recent years. Previously, it had been more or less synonymous with a bad player, but now it has increasingly come to mean a particular type of bad player, one who plays a game according to how they feel it should be rather than how it is. Consequently, their strategies are never effective as they feel they should be, and they blame everyone but themselves for this. Paul Ryan will answer “Ayn Rand” to every question, and sulk when he’s told that she didn’t write Othello.

Round

Annedroids: 2

Bandroids: 1

Randroids: -1

Total

Annedroids: 3

Bandroids: 3

Randroids: -1

Entertaining:Everyone knows that the Bandroids are the most popular singing robots of the 80s. (Sorry Chuck E. Cheese)

Who wants to get badgered?! 

Hand wows everyone with paper-rock-scissors artistry, but Anne accidentally say “A-boot” and alienates the American judge.

Rand Paul tries to deliver the I Am John Galt speech,  but he comes down with food poisoning from something he ate, because the free market no longer has any obligation to provide safe foods to its customers.

Round

Annedroids: 1

Bandroids: 2

Randroids: -1

Total

Annedroids: 4

Bandroids: 5

Randroids: -2

Passing the Voight Kampff Test:

The Bandoids and the Annedroids are, of course, actual robots, but they have many time more empathy than actual Randroids.

Round

Annedroids: 2

Bandroids: 1

Randroids: -10 

Total

Annedroids: 6

Bandroids: 6

Randroids: -10

There you have it, folks! The numbers don't lie! Annedroids and Bandroids beat Randroids, every time! 

Crossover Combat: World's Best Dad: Stark versus Atreides

I like Frank Herbert's Dune Universe. Not to the extent that I like Roger Zelazny's work, but I return to the original books (I even like Heretics and Chapterhouse!) every year or two. (However, I share Penny Arcade's opinion on Brian Herbert's unnecessary prequels.)

Likewise, I enjoy A Game of Thrones/ASOIAF, as my posts on the topic will show.

Two Houses, both alike in dignity...

Two Houses enter, one House leaves!

This started out as a Father's Day post, but I didn't have it completed on time, and felt no particular rush to finish it once I had missed that deadline.

There are a number of similarities between Ned Stark and Leto Atreides.

They each find themselves in very similar situations in the beginning of their respective stories, being pressured to accept an ostensible boon that is also clearly a danger (rulership of Arrakis/the position of the King's Hand), underestimating their opposition, dying relatively early in their respective sagas, but survived by their wife and children. Heck, they each even apprenticed their kids to dancing masters. (Paul gave the short bow his dancing master had taught—the one used “when in doubt of another's station.”) and after death, their heads wind up taking on special significance.

 How did each man comport himself?

1.) The Call to Adventure:

This one is a gimmee. Have you ever played a Choose Your Own Adventure book? I have the vague recollection of a few that give you a choice like

If you want to serve as King's Hand, turn to page 81.
If you choose to stay in the North, turn to page 17.

And page 17 wasn't even necessarily a bad end. Sure, in the early CYOA stories, they were more likely to kill you arbitrarily for making the reasonable but wrong choice.

Page 17

You stay in the North, and rule there happily and well for the next two weeks, until you slip on a wet cobblestone and crack your head open.

Later books in the series might be

Page 17

You stay in the North, and rule there happily and well for the next seventy years. Occasionally, you wonder what would have happened had you relocated to King's Landing, but these thoughts trouble you less and less as you age into your dottage. You die at home in your bed at the age of 107, surrounded by a great brood of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

 but still end the story right there, which is, of course, unsatisfying.

Verdict: Tie. There is some discussions of rejecting the call by allies of each man, but none of it serious. Each of them made the choice that was best for his kids. 

 2.) Judging the Threat: 

 The circumstances are somewhat different here. Arrakis was, specifically a trap, whereas the position of the Hand, while containing its own dangers, was not. Each recognizes that he will be taking his family into danger, but underestimates the magnitude of this danger.

 

Verdict: Advantage to Leto. He has a clearer understanding of the forces opposing him, whereas Ned tends to judge things in the context of their relationship to the Lannisters. Leto is crushed by the overwhelming legions of Imperial Sardaukar. It's the equivalent of your GM saying, "Rocks fall. Everybody dies." Ned could have survived, but he bungled three judgment calls in quick succession (Telling Cersei, rebuffing Renly, trusting Littlefinger) and basically doomed himself.

 3.) The Betrayal:

Each man was betrayed from with, Leto by his doctor, Wellington Yueh,

"My liege, I'm not sure if I trust this guy! Look at his porn star, mustache!" "Relax, Thufir. He's Al from Quantum Leap!"

and Ned by Petyr Baelish.

Littlefinger is often held up in geek circles as a good example of long term planning, and I think he deserves a lot of that credit. He plays to his strengths, keeps things as simple as possible, and he's there to take personal involvement to shepherd his plans to the next stage or react to unanticipated events.

Yueh would have been the obvious subject, save that he was conditioned with a pyretic conscience, the specifics of which were vague, but presumably prevented him from betraying a patient rather than merely preventing physical harm, as a betrayal of secrets would be equally devastating for someone in the Duke's position.

Verdict: Yueh was the first and only Suk doctor whose conditioning was compromised, in a galactic civilization containing trillions of people. Littlefinger is the most weaselly character imaginable, he practically humps Catelyn's leg whenever they're in a scene together, and repeatedly cautions Ned not to trust him. Advantage: Leto.


 4.) Rulership:

I think it's pretty much settled fact that Robert was not an especially good king. I don't think Ned would have been, either. The position requires too much compromise. I do think, however, that Ned was suited for the Lordship at Winterfell, where beheading petty criminals is a skill one places prominently on one's resume. His common sense solutions work for moderating disputes between semi-autonomous vassals, but once there are more than two degrees of separation, loyalty and charisma only go so far.

Leto had all of Ned's personal charisma, plus he understood what made for good spectacle, and good politics. I was thinking of Leto during the Rains of Castamere episode. Leto never married Jessica, only took her as his ducal consort, because that allowed the possibility of an alliance through marriage. Being a good ruler means sometimes having to do something that contradicts your personal wants, needs, or values.

Verdict: Leto


5.) Training of the Children:

Ned loved his kids, certainly, but he did a shitty job of teaching them the skills that would keep them alive. Paul and Arya each had a dancing master. Well, presumably, Paul had a dancing master and Arya had "dancing master". Syrio Forel was pretty awesome in the series.

Pall had a shitty childhood in a lot of ways. He was trained by a Mentat-assasssin, and in modern and ancient combat, and in all manner of Bene Gesserit skullduggery by his mom.  He was taught anything that would keep him alive.

That's the kind of childhood the Starks should have had. You put them all together, and they actually have a half decent education, but damn, if Winter really is coming, Ned dropped the ball. Again.

Verdict: Leto


6.) Disposition of the head:

This is a tough one to quantify.  Ned's head is stuck on a pike in the keep, and it gives rise to a Joffrey really is a bastard moment. ("How long to I have to look?" "As long as it pleases me.") Leto's skull is in some weird shrine on Dune, and essentially becomes a symbol of Paul's jihad.

Verdict: Ned. Nobody committed interstellar genocide after praying to his head.



Bottom Line: Tom Hardy used the phrase "destructive integrity" in a recent interview, and I think it applies to Ned. It's possible to be a good loving parent and still mess up your kid. His parenting left his children unprepared to deal with the challenges they would face.

Go, ahead, Leto. You've earned it.

Crossover Combat: The Laundry vs. Bureau 13

Two quasi-governmental agencies tasked with defending the world against the supernatural. Who comes out on top?

In this corner, we have the 13th Bureau of Justice Department.

There were a lot of game stores and comic shops in the 90s. When I worked in comic store a couple years later, someone more familiar with the industry said that if you had the capital to open a game store in that era, then you were just about guaranteed to make money. The boom was unsustainable, being, as it was, fueled in large part by speculation, but Ah my friends, and oh, my foes, it made a lovely light.

I first encountered Bureau 13 in one of those local game stores during the 90s. They sold used games for cheap. The Phil Foglio cover caught my eye. I'd been playing Magic the Gathering and I really liked Foglio's distinctive style. I figured that for five dollars, I could take a chance.

I usually describe Bureau 13 as the X-Files before the X-Files. It's a game about government agents investigating the supernatural and weird science, and it predates the X-Files by a good ten years.

Gamers often make a distinction between "crunch" and "fluff". Crunch represents the rules of the game and fluff represents the setting. Bureau 13 had wonderful fluff, but I felt that its crunch was far too complex for its play style. Does my free-wheeling adventure game really need rules for hydrostatic shock? Phoenix Command called. It wants its rules back.

The fluff, though. That was some great stuff. I loved the writing and the humor and the wonderful villain groups. It reminded me of the old 1st edition DMG, this crazy sprawling mishmash overflowing with adventure seeds on every page.

I'm not a huge fan of universal systems, but I thought the d20 edition released during the d20 boom was a better fit. When I played it online, our GM used cinematic GURPS.

The novels, too, are outstanding. They're even more broadly comedic, and somewhat different in tone. The RPG assumed that PCs would be civilians conscripted into the Bureau's service after surviving an encounter with the supernatural, but the heroes of the books were sorcerers, super-evolved apes and psychics. It's been my experience that most groups tend to reflect the books more closely. (My first character was a Neanderthal mathematician and marksman.)

I was sorry to see that Nick Pollotta, author of the Bureau 13 novels, had passed away in April. We'd had one or two exchanges on the old Bureau 13 group, but more than that, he seemed like a really nice guy, and he wrote a combination of wry humor and sci fi action better than anyone else.

I was surprised by how much I liked the Atrocity Archives, because I liked almost none of the components that made it up. The dialogue is dreadful, his metaphors are overwrought and I hated every one of his characters. It also has the idiosyncrasy peculiar to British works, which tend to be written with the premise that the UK is still a world power, rather than an island that exists to create media properties for the consumption of the rest of the world.

I'm not exaggerating. I couldn't think of a single character I didn't hate. The world was fascinating and I envy the incisive combination of imagination and precision Stross used to bring it to life.

I've only read the Atrocity Archives, which collects the Atrocity Archive and Concrete Jungle. I've been told his gender relations improve, but this was by die-hard fans who cited Concrete Jungle as when we first started seeing the improvement, and I felt, if anything, Jungle was even worse in its portrayal of women.

It's probably addressed in the later books, because Stross really impressed me as a world-builder, but the biggest problem facing the Laundry seems to be that they are trying to protect the world England from the effects of what in the Laundry universe, are basic scientific truths. The same problems were present in the arms race. Once you know the math, A leads inexorably to B, and you can't keep a lid on it forever, and once is all it takes.

I see that there is also an RPG based on the series, and I think I might be interested in that, because, as I've said, I love the world, but hate its inhabitants. Telling stories there with a bunch of characters who aren't outrageous dickwads might be a lot of fun.

It's unfair to match them up directly, because the power levels are so uneven, and the Laundry's purview is so limited. It's only on British soil that the Laundry would have any kind of hope, and even with that, the outcome is far from certain. It's not impossible to concoct a scenario that would see the Laundry victorious, but you'd really have to build it with that outcome in mind and work backwards from there. 99% of the scenarios are going to show the grey old men of the Laundry that geases and being an asshole isn't enough to cut it against the jet-powered apes and the .50 caliber machine guns of the Bureau.

Bottom Line, Bob encountered remnants of a victorious Third Reich in the first book.

Bureau 13 regularly tangles with the SIXTH Reich. You gotta go to Delta Green if you want better Nazis than that!

Game, set, match: Bureau 13

Crossover Combat: Battle of the Scorpions

Now for something completely different.

The blog has mostly been lying fallow lately, so let's see what I can do to change that.

Today's post offers the Battle of the Scorpions!

The Contestants

Mortal Kombat Scorpion

I was a teenager in the 90s, and video arcades were still a thing back then. Street Fighter II revitalized a moribund genre, and it spawned a horde of imitators. Most of them are forgotten, some were absolutely unique, and some were good enough to stand on their own, and with the second generation came Mortal Kombat.

I liked the first two Mortal Kombat games a lot. They looked great, played differently and they had a neat Enter the Dragon mythology going. That mythology eventually got so convoluted that it strangled itself and required a reboot (!!), but for a while it was different and really fun.

Scorpion is a guy who evidently saw April O'Neil's bright yellow jumpsuit and thought, "Hey, that color would look good on me."

He's an undead ninja with a spear and a great catch phrase.

Marvel Scorpion

When my friend Frederick told me that Scorpion would be showing up in Injustice: Gods Among Us as DLC, I thought he meant this guy. Then I thought, "Wait, he's a Marvel character. What's he doing in a DC game?"

Apparently, shitting all over Superman wasn't enough for Ed Boon. He had to stick his own characters in a DC fighting game. Boo!

Growing up, I was never sure what the deal was with the Scorpion. Was he some kind of mutant? Was there an experiment/accident? Was that his body or a suit?

(No. Yes. A suit.)

I liked him. Spider-Man always had some pretty great rogues and he had a distinctive enough look that I didn't mind not knowing what his deal was.

His backstory is arguably even more convoluted than that of the other Scorpion's. Lost his suit, learned Spider-Man's secret identity, forgot Spider-Man's secret identity, the usual roller coaster that any long-lived comic book character goes through.

Recently, he bonded with the Venom symbiote, got in a fight with Namor and incapacitated him by ripping off his ankle wings, which scientists have proven is the most awesome sentence in the English language.

He's described as physically superior to Spider-Man, who is mid-range superhuman. Plus his tail could be packing anything from acid to plasma blasts.

Hank Scorpio

Hey, look at my feet. You like those moccasins?

Homer Simpson's one time boss, owner of a Doomsday Device, mastermind of Project Arcturus and ruler of America's East Coast.

A James Bond Supervillain, he's notable for actually winning in his first and only appearance. +10 for being awesome, +1000 for disappearing before we get sick of you. (Lindsey Naegle, I'm talking to you.)

An actual scorpion

Aren't they the coolest looking animal ever?! 

Matchups

Hank Scorpio versus an actual scorpion: Unless it sneaks into his boot when he's not looking, I give this one to Scorpio. Winner: Hank Scorpio

Hank Scorpio versus MK Scorpion:  For the purposes of this piece, we're giving Hank Scorpio all the accoutrements of a mastermind. So he gets his volcano base, his goons, the whole shebang. I give this one to Scorpion. He is a teleporting ninja, after all. He sneaks in and assassinates Scorpio, whose minions don't realize anything is amiss until they shake their peacefully snoozing boss and his head falls off his hammock. Winner: Scorpion.

Hank Scorpio versus Marvel Scorpion: Marvel Scorpion is many things, but stealthy is not one of them. He smashes his way into the Volcano Base and starts breaking things, but doesn't get more than a few rooms in before he's fibrillated apart by the Gehenna Gun. Winner: Hank Scorpio.

MK Scorpion versus actual Scorpion: MK Scorpion steps on it without even noticing. Winner: MK Scorpion.

MK Scorpion versus Marvel Scorpion: I think this one goes to Marvel Scorpion. He's physically superior to Spider-Man and has a bunch of gadgets in his tail.  MK Scorpion wouldn't have the chance to leverage his stealth like he would against Hank Scorpio, and while he's a passable fighter by fighting game standards, he regularly loses to woman who comes to a tournaments in her sports bra and hot pants. (Sorry Sonya fans) Mortal Kombat Scorpion gets smeared. Winner: Marvel Scorpion

Marvel Scorpion versus actual scorpion: Marvel Scorpion picks it up, thinking it wants to be his friend, whereupon it stings him in the face. Winner: Actual Scorpion.

And as my misunderstanding of the transitive property shows, (Hank Scorpio beaten by Mortal Kombat Scorpion beaten by Marvel Scorpion beaten by an actual scorpion) the actual scorpion wins the tournament. All hail our arachnid overlords!

Crossover Combat: Dalek versus Beholder

The Daleks are the perpetual whipping boys around here. They were featured in the very first post in this series (previously called Geekfight, but now renamed to Crossover Combat) as the opponent for a Jedi. They lost.

Daleks should need no introduction to readers of this blog or fans of Doctor Who. The history of Doctor Who is the history of the Daleks and that history is the Daleks fucking up and losing every time they appear.

However, are they finally being confronted with an adversary they can defeat? Read on to find out.

Beholders are one of the most recognizable of the Dungeons and Dragons monsters. They're so closely tied to the brand that when the rules were open-sourced in order to open the game more widely to third party creators, Beholders were one of a handful of "product identity monsters" that were held back.

It always struck me that Daleks and Beholders more or less occupy the same niche, xenophobic aliens who shoot their death rays at anything different from themselves.

They certainly have a distinctive look. And when I say "distinctive look", what I mean is that they're fucking terrifying.

Look at them. Good god.

The big center eye projects an anti-magic field in front of it. While this is usually a big deal in D&D, it's completely irrelevant against the technological Daleks. Not so the ten eyestalk eyes, each of which generates its own magical effect, charm, disintegrate, flesh to stone, death ray, telekinesis.

How do they fair against the Daleks?

Daleks: The Daleks are, for the purposes of this exercise, comparable in performance to what we see from the individual Dalek we see in the Eccelston episode of the same name. We're basing it on what we see it do on screen, not on accounts of what we're told it can do. Refer to the earlier post for details. 

Beholders: They're based primarily on their entries in the various monster manuals, and the more detailed information in "I, Tyrant" and "Lords of Madness". 

One on One - Straight Up Fight

The Dalek and the Beholder are in a forest glen, see each other at the same time, and hostilities commence immediately (of course).  Who wins? 

This is a fight that highlights the similarities between the two combatants. They're each packing an instant kill death ray that they have no compunctions about using. Maybe a slight advantage to the beholder, because the terrain is not going to be perfectly level, and while we know Daleks can levitate, they don't do so all the time. 

On the other hand, if the beholder has never seen a Dalek before, it might think the anti-magic eye would protect it, and, if so, it would have no chance to learn from its mistake. 

This one could go either way.

Verdict: Toss-Up (Or more likely, mutually assured destruction)

One on One - Indirect

Say the beholder and the Dalek start off on opposite sides of a city and have basic knowledge of their opponents.  

This one's not even going to be close. With the charm ray, the beholder has an advantage that the Dalek couldn't hope to overcome. The beholder does everything the Dalek does, and a whole lot more. It has on average, higher than average human intelligence. The Daleks are often described as "geniuses", but that can only possibly refer to technical aptitude, as they have no impulse control and are absurdly incompetent each and every time we see them on screen. 

Verdict: Beholder

Small Groups: 

Here's where the Daleks have an advantage. Whovians know that there are occasional schisms in Dalek society, with each faction believing that the other is impure and must be destroyed. Beholders think that about every other beholder. A dozen Daleks would exterminate a dozen beholders one by one, in less time than it takes to screech the word.

Verdict: Dalek

Small Groups - Unified Beholders:

There are certain circumstances where beholders can work together. A hive mother can compel cooperation, groups have united in the Spelljammer setting, and if faced with the real prospect of extermination, they would probably unite against a force dedicated to that. Under these circumstances, the beholders would crush a much larger force of Daleks.

Verdict: Beholder.

Every Dalek versus Every Beholder:

This is the only way the Daleks ever win these things, isn't it? There are a zillion of the buggers. Yeah, they'd win, through virtue of overwhelming numbers. 

Daleks lose. Daleks always lose.