Diabolical Plots

written by David Steffen

Cards Against Humanity advertises itself as a “party game for horrible people” that was created by 8 Highland Park students in Illinois and is now published by Cards Against Humanity, LLC. The game is very similar to the children’s game Apples to Apples, but generally aimed at a mature audience (or at least, an adult audience, if not necessarily mature).

To play, each player is dealt seven white “answer” cards. Then a single black “question” card is played that everyone can see and each person apart from one person who is the judge for the round has to pick what they think would be the best answer card in their hand to combine with it to inspire some kind of reaction (whether it be laughter, disgust, confusion, whatever). The cards are all played facedown and then the judge decides which one they like best, and the one who played that card is the winner of the round and is the judge for the next round.

An example of a black card is “I drink to forget _____”. Which you could choose a white card like “Alcoholism” or “A PowerPoint Presentation”, to name a couple of the cleaner ones, to keep this review on the cleaner side. But many of the cards in the deck are not ones that you’d want to say in front of your mom, or at your average workplace (google for “cards against humanity examples” to find some favorites.

The game aims to be offensive in a funny way, which can admittedly be a hit-and-miss kind of prospect. Sex is probably the most common topic, but many of them also touch politics, adoption, pregnancy, race, a lot of other topics. The judge for the round reads all of the entries aloud to the group before deciding, so part of the fun is picking cards that would be funny for that person to say.

If you play you’re going to want to consider who you’re playing with, I’d probably only want to play with people I know pretty well so that they would know very well so I didn’t have to worry too much about what might bother them. Much of the humor is based around not expecting the cards that get read, so the game can wear out if you play it too many times, it’s not one you’re going to want to break out every weekend.

Audience
I wouldn’t play this with or around kids unless you want them to pick up some bad language that they might use at school. I would personally only try it with friends that I know well enough to know what offends them.

Challenge
Not really challenging, it’s basically competitive multiple-choice punchline choosing. There might be a tiny bit of strategy involved in trying to pick a punchline that would appeal to that particular judge, or trying to save a particularly funny answer card for the perfectly suited question card. There is a high element of chance in how good the cards you get are, sometimes I’ve had to sit on a dud for the whole game because it wasn’t funny and I didn’t want to waste a round playing it.A

Session Time
You could play as many or as few rounds as you want, so very customizable. You could play for 5 minutes or for hours if you have a group that’s enjoying it who don’t know the cards.

Replayability
Certainly some replayability, but if you play it too often the repetition of the cards, and the loss of the surprise-humor would make it less enjoyable.

Originality
Since it is basically “Apples To Apples for adults” the premise isn’t particularly original, though the individual writing for the cards (which is the highlight of the game anyway) is very original.

Overall
I’ve enjoyed playing this game now and then with friends whom I know well enough, but because of some of the content it is more limited in where and when I can play it (I don’t play it when kids are around, and I’m not going to bring it to work to play at lunch)–if you want one you can play anywhere and anywhen and with anyone you can grab Apples To Apples instead. I have played it enough times with people in a short stretch of time that the cards lost some of their humor from repetition. Overall it’s a fun game though, and can be a riot with the right group. You can find it at various retailers, the original and expansion packs for varying prices depending on the size of the pack and how new it is. There are also specific topic packs like a science fiction pack.

written by David Steffen

The Boxtrolls is a 2014 claymation film by Focus Features. Everyone knows Boxtrolls are dangerous monsters. Everyone knows they capture and eat children. This is only confirmed when a boy is taken by them, and the exterminator Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) establishes a deal with the cheese-loving aristocratic council The White Hats that if he exterminates all of the boxtrolls they will let him join their council.

What everyone knows is wrong. Boxtrolls are peaceful creatures who hide from humanity and whose only interaction with them has been to scavenge human garbage for tools and other things of interest. They’re called boxtrolls because each one wears a box as a sort of permanent garment, like a hermit crab’s shell, and will retreat into their box as a refuge to hide. A boy lives among them, called Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright) (because he wears a box with a picture of eggs on it), who thinks he’s a boxtroll like any other. He is the boy who had disappeared years ago, his very existence acting as the proof of the fraud of Snatcher’s arrangement with the White Hats. As Eggs witnesses the continual disappearance of boxtrolls, he decides to venture up to the surface where he finds out about Snatcher’s quest to exterminate them all.

The setting and character design are particularly good because the characters each have their own characteristic style, from the sinister and greasy character of Snatcher, to the polished and aloof White Hats, to the grubby but well-grounded Eggs.

The Boxtrolls is a fun, funny, and well-paced movie that’s well worth watching, that does enough unexpected to keep things interesting. The boxtrolls themselves are easy to root for and loveable, while both Snatcher and the White Hats are easy to root against.

written by David Steffen

The Handmaid’s Tale is a TV show presented on the Hulu streaming service, based on the 1984 Margaret Atwood novel of the same name, which was previously reviewed here, about a near-future dystopia in which the USA has become an extremely oppressive theocracy in which women are second-class citizens, especially the handmaids who are little more than breeding stock. Season two aired on Netflix in 2018 (season 1 was reviewed here).

The protagonist is June (Elisabeth Moss), a handmaid in the new nation of Gilead, a dystopian vision of a violent fundamentalist Christian regime in the near future. Women have no rights, can own no property, and the handmaids in particular are basically only treated as breeding stock, meant to get pregnant by the commanders of the society in a monthly ceremony with their wives. She is known officially as “Offred” because she is considered the property of Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes), to conceive for his wife Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski).

The end of season 1 ended in the same place as the book it was based on, with June being hauled away with no explanation in a van, with no idea if she is going to be freed or killed or something else entirely. She is smuggled away from her household and hidden somewhere else, with the help of Nick (Max Minghella), her household’s driver and her secret lover , but her fate is still far from certain.

This season explores areas of the world of Gilead and the surrounding world in ways that are never directly explored in the book or season 1, seeing what life is like in other countries (especially Canada) as well as other parts of Gilead itself, like the colonies that are the destination of the doomed, and finding out more about the roles of different people in the world and how they are rewarded and trapped in their roles as well.

Season 2 was an excellent addition to the series, continuing to expand on the world and the characters (and I’m in the middle of watching season 3!).