Things I would Change in the Bloody Jack Series

I recently finished reading the Bloody Jack series. And while I enjoyed it, I found that there where a few issues that jarred my immersion in the story. Particularly in some of the Later books. So in that spirit here are a list of things that I would like to see changed in the Bloody Jack Series
Needless to say "here there be spoilers" so proceed at your own risk:

1. Jacky should have been born in 1788

This would make her two years older throughout the series and make the whole thing more plausible. The age of menarche declined significantly through the 19th and early 20th century, so a malnourished girl in 1802 would not be getting her period at 13. Yes if you haven't read it yet, this is an important and rather humorous plot point. Add to this that in Mississippi Jack. Jamie is 19 years old, which would have made him 15 -16 in the first book. So if Jacky was twelve this would have been a rather questionable romance.  if she is 14 - 15 it works better. And this applies for all of he romantic interests thereafter.

2. Other ages

If Joannie is eleven in Rapture of the Deep then she should have been eight years old in Under the Jolly Rodger and six when she joined Jacky's old gang.  Daniel should have been ten to eleven years old when he was found in Mississippi Jack. And now not only do they work as a pair, but Jacky works much better in her mother role, as she is now seven years older.

3. Mississippi Jack

The girls should have succeed in distracting the Crew enough for Jacky to escape. This would save Misters Fennel and Bean for Wild Rover No More, so that we don’t end up with the same gambit twice.

4. Rapture of the Deep

Flashby is replaced by Bliffil all the way though. After the big battle he should be retrieved from Key West and make an attempt to kill Jacky, only to be killed by Jamie in turn. When they get back to Boston Ezra should have done his job and stopped Jacky from spending money she is not supposed to have. Yes I feel sorry for Ezra as a character, while we are told he is a very good lawyer, we never actually see him win a case.

As a side note it turns out that the Diving Bell described here is actually a little behind what was possible at the time. In particular inventors in the late 18th century had come up with several ways of supplying fresh air to a submerged bell. This could have let Jacky stay submerged for somewhat longer periods.

5. The Wake of the Lorelei Lee

The first half of this book doesn't happen, the ship is never bought because Ezra makes Jacky see sense. Instead Jacky goes to London to find that Jamie is being tried for the murder of Bliffil. He looses and is transported, as is Ian For unrelated reasons. Then Jacky and Mairead set off in the Nancy B to try to rescue their men from Australia. The visit in India happens, and the later events including Jacky being captured by Ching Shih still happen. She does end up with a captured East Inida company ship given to her by Ching Shih, so the ending is unchanged.

What I really don’t like here is that trip of the Lorelei Lee is actually based on the Lady Juliana, except that its happend in the wrong century, as the Lady Juliana sailed in 1789, and that is the only time that ship carrying only women convicts was sent to Australia. Incidentally Mary Wade, was a real person, and she is quite famous in Australian History. So having her show up 16 years late is a significant change to history.

6. Mark of the Dragon

Jacky's part of the story happens but.  Jamie going mad does not. Instead let him get some nasty illness forcing him to stay in Rangoon while Jacky goes back London to try to clear his name. Back in London Flashby is seducing one of Jamie's sisters. Honestly I was very disappointed in how the sister showed up for one scene and then disappeared never to be heard of again.  Jacky frames him as the highway man to prevent them eloping. Meanwhile the Captured Cerberus is refitted to carry Irish migrants to Boston, paving the Way for the events of Boston Jacky. We still end with Jacky agreeing to work for British Intelligence in exchange for Jamie getting a full pardon.

7. Boston Jacky

She really should be much more capable here, and should not need Ezra to point out trouble at her theater. Havn't we seen her working taverns and running a show boat, where spotting trouble was part of her job? Fighting Pigger should take more effort. And getting a truce from the third fire house as well. While I'm OK with her using the mushroom mix to finally get rid of Pigger, giving it to the Judge was just weird, so lets pretend it didn't happen.

Also assuming that the diving Bell is still on board the Nancy, there is no no need to retcon the ending of Rapture of the Deep. As not only was the cache of treasure left very deep, but the red marker on the mangrove was destroyed by Falco.

When it comes to the hearing regarding her competency as a mother, let Ezra earn his keep by actually winning a court case for a change. The coup de'tat being Amy being called as a witness for the prosecution and supporting Jacky Instead.  Instead of a charge of witchcraft, Jacky should then be tried for the Assault against the leader of the Son's of Boston Firehouse, leading to much the same conclusion.

8. Wild Rover No More

Jacky’s reasoning for why she dosn’t just get on a ship for London at the first opportunity is really weak. Instead she should try and  almost get captured, before falling back to the governess idea.

Also a Seasoned spy would know better then to corrspond with her known associates. She should have instructed Ezra, and gotten Mistress Prim to send the references, and no allowing Amy to write to her.  The entire story should have happened in Plymouth. Yes this needs some extra complications, an unwelcome suitor would fit the general storyline, or indeed even a welcome one.  Instead of being a separate Arc let the circus jsut be a scene, where she is taking Edgar and his sister to see the show, and runs into Gally who blurts out her real name, at which point she has to draw Edgar into her conspiracy. The idea that Gally exposed her location is now plausible.

She is then caught soon after releasing Edgar, and brought back for trial. While awaiting Trial we need to see more evidence of her friends trying to get her off. She should have powerful friends after saving the entire student body of Mistress Primm’s school. Also her dependents really should feature here. Joannie, Daniel and Ravi should at least get a visit, with their adoptive mother.

Techniques of the Rules Author

I make sporadic attempts to write something good enough charge people money to read. So far these have not resulted in a published work, though they have made me a rather brutal literary critic at times.  Over the course of these various attempts I've amassed a little writers bookshelf.  Some of the books seemed good but I've never gone back to while others have become standbys that I refere back to and re read all the time. One of these standbys is Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight Swain What has struck me is how much of this book I've seen in RPG rule sets recently. So much so that it seems to be the unsung hero of rules wrting, unlike Hero of a Thousand faces which gets mentioned all the time.

Two systems in particular stand out in this regard. Marvel Heroic Role playing¹, which has an explicit structure of Scenes and Sequels, and even calls them this in the rules. And the various games derived from Apocalypse World. Apocalypse World and its derivatives, of which I'm most familiar with Dungeon World, have  the interesting idea that the Dungeon Master does not roll dice, only the Players do. And based on the role they either fail, succeeded at a price or succeed outright. IF success is not outright the Dungeon Master gets to make a Move in response which may involve just dealing damage, or a host of other things. End result is that every dice roll matters to the story.

The standard rules in Dungeon World is present the situation, the looming threat and ask "what do you do?" The player then responds and probably rolls their dice. In Dwight Swain's terminology the chunk of converstation between the Dungeon Master and Player is a Motivation Reaction Unit. Indeed go to any example of play in the Dungeon World manual and you will see a seqnece of prefect MRU's strung together into a scene. And that accounts for everything the game calls a basic move.

Then we have special moves, which could just as well have been called sequal moves. They are things like making camp or making an entire perilous journey through the wilderness, and other such bridging details that go to make a smooth narrative wihout getting bogged down.

I've also being playing Mythic RPG both in whole (Pokemon inspired game with my sons) and the Game Master emulator subsystem (solo play dungeon world on the train). What has struck me in the last day as missing from Mythic is any mechanic for dealing with sequels. The system as it stands works very well for scenes but I can't seem to get it to frame sequels at all. At the table with my sons we just narrate them, while in my solo play they are quit conspicuously missing, mostly because I'm not motivated enough to type them in on my tablet. That said The Mythic GME is a great product, and has worked very well for me both at the table and solo. Mythic as a generic system not so much though, but thats a post for another day.

1. What? Marvel Heroic Roleplaying has been pulled. I went looking for the link only to find that the entire product line is gone from the Margret Weiss Website. I'm assuming their relationship with Marvel soured for some reason, but man I didn't see that coming,

Harry Potter

So I finally managed to get through the last book. Looking back on the HP journey and really it has been mostly fun. Mostly we have a cast of great characters on all sides. And some great stories to boot. However it is not all a bed of roses and the later books too seem to suffer a bit form lack of editing. The biggest points being that The Half Blood Prince doesn't seem to have much in the way of a major plot. Its just a several subplots merged together, so much so that it feels like a one year filler in the story. And the last book has long periods of extreme drudgery between, interspersed with some truly awesome scenes.

My view on the overarching plot would be as follows :

* It was disappointing how little time in the spotlight Ginny got, especially once the Harry - Ginny romance was established. I would really have expected her to tag along on the final mission, by accident or design.

* More hints about Dumbuldore's dark side should have appeared earlier. In the end he turns out to be rather a Machiavellian character who even managed to shock Snape at one point. The whole limbo scene was rather annoying in this regard, and the and I had a hunch that you might survive anyway line seemed rather shallow and annoying. In my opinion the Christian allegory here feels like something Rowling stuck in to mute some of her critics, rather than something that was intended all along.

* By the same token as the above Snape should have become the Headmaster at
least one book earlier, so that Harry would then have to deal with Principal
Snape for a while. Actually seeing how Snape, who navigates the waters
between appearing to be on Voldamort's side and at the same time trying to
protect the students of Hogwarts from him at the same time. A who killed
Dumoldore mystery where Harry suspects Drace would have been a better story
than the one we actually got in the Halfblood Prince.

But really the plot is not the thing that threw me out of the story the most. What really made suspension of disbelief difficult was the world building. Building a plausable society is hard, building a plausible shadow society that somehow exists in parallel to the very day is even harder. So far the following points have bugged me:

Didn't do the maths
Having just one teacher per subject puts a real limit on how many students could be at Hogwarts. And claiming it's the only magic school in Britain buts a major limit on magical population. Really having 600 students at Hogwarts would have been pushing it.


Having established a small magical population the Ministry of Magic seems unbelievable large. there just does not seem to be enough witches and wizards to warrant such a huge and sprawling public service, especially considering how little they actually provide. For instance the only public utility is the floo network.

Gringots, the wizards Bank also seem kind of large for the amount of Economic activity that actually takes place. Ditto for extreme specialists such as Olivander. Wands don't seem to wear out. A careful wizard might buy 1 wand in their entire lifetime. 99% of Olivander's business would then be the before school rush of first year students.

Modes of transport

At the start of the series we have wizards riding broomsticks and using Owls to deliver things. Under those circumstances using a train for longer journeys, when you have a lot of baggage, kind of makes sense.

Then we get the floo network and all of that breaks. Why go to Kings Cross station to catch a train that then has to get to the Scottish Highlands, when you could use floo powder to take your kids directly to their common room?

Indeed considering that floo powder can get you for place to place near instantly, why bother with a boarding school at all? Children could just as well live at home and commute to school. The floo network is a telephone and rapid transport system all in one.
Why give your letter to an owl that could be intercepted, or killed by accident, when you could just pop through the floo network and drop your letter or parcel off in a couple of minutes.

And then we get teleportation. At first it seems like a dangerous and difficult trick that only the most experienced wizards attempt, which is not so bad. Then we learn that it is as common in the Wizarding world as driving is in ours. Really Young witches and wizards going for their Teleportation test is kind of cheezy. But the big problem is that it completely breaks everything that went before it, suddenly the night bus and the floo network, not to mention owl post nolonger make sense. Even the broom becomes something that no one would really use for anything other than recreation.

In my opinion teleportation should not have been added to the Story. At least not for the ordinary wizard. It should have been a feature of the Dark mark, something that Voldamort developed. By virtue of having some of Voldamorts Soul, let Harry pull it off in an emergency. But that's it. And to prevent House Elves replacing the Owl post, make it so that they explicitly cannot take anything with them. Picture the added mirth of Harry first seeing Dobbie wearing one of Aunt Petunias best tea towels as a toga.

Portkeys on the other hand are a neat idea, and in the absence of teleportation
do seem to make sense when large numbers of wizards need to travel. The one
plot element I did not like was the ease with which Dumboldore could make one.
In any case you'd think that the only magical Hospital in Britain would be on
the Floo network.

Restictions on Underage Magic

Well, you could set up enchantments to monitor every child between 11 and 17, 24 hours per day to make sure that they don't do any unothorised magic outside of school. Or you could just put their wants in a magically sealed locker. Really why are young wizards allowed to run arround with wands if they arn't allowed to use them?

As others sites have pointed out the sheer amount of magical surveillance involved in policing these restrictions is very Orwellian. And once you've established that there exist spells that can achieve infalable survalance the idea that anyone can hide from the ministry becomes rather implausible.

A registry of Wands and the ability to forensically determin who's wand cast
what spell in a given location, much like real world police can match a bullet
to a particular gun, would have been much better. The trick to avoiding capture
is then to avoid using magic. Forcing our heroes to use muggle forms of
transport during book seven would have been rather interesting, especially for
Ron.


Armed and Dangerous

I don't think there is any real way to fix most of this bit, as it does seem to
be an integral part of a magic school. But I'll note them anyway.

Every high school kid is running around with a loaded weapon, that can fire an
unblockable death curse if you get them angry enough. Sure most injuries can be
fixed in the hospital wing fairly quickly, accept for the instantly fatal ones
that is. Note that sport of choice does not seem to have anything in the way of
safety precautions at all. You'd think the helmets might be used, and perhaps
some enchantment to catch any player unfortunate enough to fall off their
broomstick.

And then we have potions which for some reason are not regulated anywhere near
as heavily as wand usage. Mind control, pain and death spells are unforgivable
curses. Yet you can legally buy mind control potions at the local joke shop. And
as for the rest, there's probably a recipe for them in your text book, or
failing that in the school library. This includes the infamous polyjuice
potion which can be misused in so many ways.

So I've read all of the Anne stories

Yes I've gotten though every single one, thanks largely to project Project Gutenberg, as the library copies seem be on the move more often then not, and that's with two library chains at my disposal.

After a while the characters, though appearing under different names, do get a little repetitive. After all one can only contend with so many old men who are really quite nice under their ogarish exterior and terrifying matriarchs who have been on their death bed for 20 years or more and still manage to make everyone lives miserable day in and day out.

Overall I have to say that which the child Anne was endearing the adult Anne was just too perfect in every way. Small wonder then that as the stories wore on the spotlight shone on other characters more and more.

In the end I'd say that The last book, Rilla of Ingleside was was the best of the books. Still managing to hold humor despite its dark background, and having a somewhat less idealized heroin in Rilla Blythe. I'm not sure the book could stand on its own, as it does presuppose that you already know a bit about many of the characters, but it certainly most intense, of the lot.

The two later additions written to plug gaps in the chronology where however disappointing, mostly as they where completely lacking any central plot or problem but where rather a serious of unrelated events. The first of these, Anne of the Windy Poplars, presented a near goddess like Anne who made everything better by her mere presence. And then we had Anne of Ingleise, a similar sequence of random events, but one in which Anne played almost no roll at all, while being overshadowed by her young children. (I have to admit I didn't finish this one). In any case afterwords the practical Mary Vance, and baby disliking Rilla made a very pleasant change.

PS After a little more reading Jane of Lantern Hill, is by far my favorite Montgomery book. I think I'll stop here as Montgomery's story lines (while quite enjoyable) are a tad on the repetitive side, though I may read more at a later date.