Worth Novinski – Literary Arts Blogspace

Midnight Mass: Motherhood and Monologue

Midnight Mass is a Netflix original miniseries about the going ons of the small island town of Crockett Island that slowly changes under supernatural effects. The show itself is a horror piece, using religious imagery of the catholic variety and eventually vampiric lore to arouse unease within the audience. While I find it to be expertly crafted, I want to pay heed as well to the development of the theme of selfishness within the text of the show. I analyzed the use of religion for selfish or personal means and the consequence of doing so as a major theme within the miniseries. In this blog, I intend to describe just how these themes are expressed, focusing on characters used as vehicles for them.

CW: child abuse, religious abuse, islamophobia, murder, self harm, and suicide

Bev Keane(played by Samantha Sloyan) is a parishioner of St. Patrick’s church who is held in high esteem by some characters in the shows large cast, while reviled by many others. Keane is presented as an astutely religious woman from the very beginning, quoting bible verses and correcting the new priest, father Paul Hill(Hamish Linklater), on wearing the incorrect color robes. Sloyan’s character is written to feel overbearing, judgmental, and deeply unlikeable. She complements Erin Greene’s(Kate Siegal) abusive mother in a way to put Erin down, and makes comments on the Muslim faith of the town sheriff(Rahul Kholi), contributing the audience’s dislike of the character. But while she may have expressed her religion despicably, this does not alone show a selfish viewpoint, more simply an elitist one. The perception of the Bev Keane as a simple elitist slips, however, as we learn of her role in the recent events of the town. See, when Crockett island fell victim to an oil spill a year before the start of the series, Keane encouraged the residents to simply take a small settlement from the company responsible. Calling the settlement money a ‘gift from god’, she leveraged many to donate some of it back to the church, which some characters suspect to essentially have gone into her pockets, as the priest at the time had gone senile. Using the money from the donations, the church would erect a rec center, but it is implied the donation money would have covered much more than just the costs of the center. Keane seems to utilize religion as a mask to deflect criticism, and as a means to maintain influence and acquire wealth, making her an insidiously selfish character. When the supernatural events rise within the town, however, her true nature is fully revealed.

Reverend Paul Hill, the new Priest of St. Patrick’s, is similarly influenced by a form of selfishness, causing him to ultimately share the blame of the fate of Crockett island. Hill comes to the church intended as a temporary replacement to their aging original Priest, Monsignor Pruitt, who he tells them to be recovering from a sickness on the mainland. In truth, the young Hill is the same person as the elderly Pruitt, revitalized and given youth from drinking blood given to him by a winged vampiric creature(Quinton Boisclair) he encountered on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Hill has brought the creature with him to the island, and has been mixing it’s blood with the eucharist of the church, resulting in the healing of many of the town’s ailments. When a girl previously confined to a wheelchair miraculously stands during mass, a religious revitalization spreads across town. While in his sermons, he speaks of the resurrection of the church, we find in the final episode what he is truly motivated by. After it is revealed that drinking enough of the blood and dying will result in immortality, a thirst for blood, and an intolerance to sunlight, Hill and Keane reveal to the entire church what they have been doing, offering the church members to die and become creatures of the night. It takes a moment for most of the members to accept, all(except for several main characters) do, and they go out and feed on the town. Linklater’s character, who is recovering from a wound suffered earlier, sits with the newly regenerated Mildred Gunning(played by Alex Essoe). Mildred had formerly suffered with severe dementia in her old age, being taken care of by her daughter(Annabeth Gish), but is now young and fully cognizant as a result of having drank the blood of the creature. They lament the happenings, revealing that they were former lovers, and the Hill was the father of Gunning’s daughter. He reveals to her that all of this, despite his feverous sermons, was so he’d never have to see her or their daughter grow old, so he could save them from that. In the end, he was acting selfishly.

The disastrous actions of Hill and Keane fed on, or turned, with the exception of a few main characters. Bev decides to take the role of a leader of them all, seizing her opportunity for power, and leads her flock to burn all the trees and buildings of the island, leaving only the church and rec center to provide cover at sunrise for those she decides to let in. Erin, the sheriff, -people who throughout the show were wronged by Keane- and Hill’s very own daughter, work together to destroy the church and it’s rec center, leaving no cover for those turned by the blood. When the sun finally upon the island, none survive. Hill’s selfish actions exploiting faith lead to the even more selfish Keane to exploit it, resulting in the death of hundreds.

An analysis of my name, for those Curious

Names are funny, just in general, the mouth sounds often arbitrarily attributed to people so we can identify them. Name are often more than that, though, first names we can keep from what was given to us, or choose them for ourselves, either way says something about us. First names can even be passed down, connecting us to another member of our family just as easily. Last names can trace one’s ancestry back far, and can connect one to their family or history. My name has always been a bit strange, as I’m sure most of my peer know, but I’m unsure if they understand it’s complete nuances and connections, so I thought I’d detail them here!

So, my full legal name is Michael Worth Yager Novinski. This is my name at it’s most Americanized and Christianized. If one were to translate my name to it’s origins, it may look something like this: מיכאל Ægenworþ Jäger Nowicki. Now, that’s probably something that deserves further elaboration, so I’ll start from the first name.

Michael is the 12th most common first name of boys born in the US as of 2020, I share it with my father, and it is likely to originate from Judeo-Christian myth of Saint Michael the Arch angel. Biblically, he is a member of the prince class of angels and is the only one referred to as an “Arch-prince”. This often translates to Christians referring to him as an Archangel. The name is an anglicized version of מי כאל‎ (mī kāʼēl). Which derives from the Phrase “who is like El?” which is interestingly implied to be a rhetorical question, implying that none are as powerful as El. This is really funny because if the angels are names by gods then it would be the equivalent of me naming my child “Nobody-is-as-cool-as-worth”. Biblically, מי כאל is supposed to battle Satan and cast him from heaven, although there is often a split in Jewish and Christian interpretations of him, with Jesus often taking on some of Michael’s roles in Christian tradition.

Next up is Worth, the name I go by, I am named after my mom’s maternal grandfather, who went by Worth as a nickname. Worth is short for Ainsworth, which come from the Old English Ægenworþ, with Ægen being a personal that may have at one point had significance, and Worþ meaning enclosure. Most people with this last name likely descend from people hailing from the English village of Ainsworth, although I do not know why my great grandfather has this as his first name.

Next, Yager, which I got from my Mom, it being her last name when she married my Dad, which she kept. Now, Yager is a relatively common last name in the world, and it’s difficult to trace where that side of the family traces up to because we know very little of my great grandfather Yager other than that he wasn’t from Mississippi, likely from Kentucky. The name on it’s own comes from Germany, originating from the Old German word “Jage”, which means to hunt, meaning the name is one of a hunter.

The Novinski name I inherited from my father, and in it’s case the family history can be traced back to Polish speaking Germany that the early Novinskis emigrated to America from in the 1880s. Novinski is an Americanized version of the Polish name Nowicki, which is often either meaning someone originating from the town of Nowice, or some who is in some way “New”, as the name itself originates from the Polish “Novy”, which means new, and the name itself would translate most literally into “New man”.

Basically, my full name is a lot of different words from a lot of different spaces, and I frankly find it and a lot of other names and their origins fascinating.

The Sins of D&D and the saints of TTRPGS Part 1: A refutation of D&D

Okay, so for what is practically one of my first blogs here I wanted to talk about something that’s been on my mind for a little while: Tabletop Games Specifically, which tabletop games are good for newcomers and which ones are not.

While in pop culture the most known tabletop game is Dungeons & Dragons, there’s a vast myriad of reasons why it’s not actually a good introduction to the medium. Those are as follows:

The first and second editions are more so intended as war games not unlike 40k, and are generally agreed to be unpolished. The first two are unrepresentative of the TTRPG medium as a whole, as they’re games made to facilitate strategy instead of storytelling
The third edition, while closer to the typical TTRPG, is ludicrously unbalanced, has a severe learning curve that makes it less user friendly, and lacks the customization often associated with TTRPGs. Some of these issues improve with 3.5 edition, but that update makes it even LESS user friendly.
Fourth edition is considered a bad example of a D&D game, much less of a TTRPG. Character creation is easy, but also uniform and lacking in customization. The combat system is bloated, confusing, and completely unpolished. The character classes are indistinct, making gameplay between each one feel the exact same. The game is more user friendly and balanced, but that only really matters if it’s worth playing.
Fifth edition is by far the best of the editions, but it’s also unbalanced, has a lot of redundant rules and concepts and character abilities that become useless over time, not to mention it’s practically impossible to scale threats, stakes, or rewards to the players, as the challenge rating system is completely misleading and changing with every newly released book. The combat system is still overly complicated, though in different ways than previous ones, but still contributing to combat times lasting several hours even on small encounters.
For almost every edition, the books are too expensive, and one often is supposed to buy the game’s multiple angles of content in separate books in order to attain the best experience.

Overall, D&D fails in many crucial elements of TTRPGs in every edition, and one can actually reverse engineer criteria judging other tabletop games by looking at the many sins of Dungeons and Dragons:

TTRPGs should be TTRPGs, or, tabletop games made to tell stories
TTRPGs should be well balanced
TTRPGs should have rules made for human beings to read and understand
TTRPGs should have systems and procedures that are functional and constructed in order to assist the players in having fun, even if it breaks from how realistic procedures such as combat are, realistically, siege combat is not a recreational activity, that doesn’t mean all of the fun must be wrung from it with counterolls, counterules, cover calculation, and conditional modifiers
Not a requirement, but affordability of rulebooks needed to play is obviously a plus

Now keep in mind, if you enjoy these editions for any reason, that’s okay too! I also play D&D occasionally, I just wanted to acknowledge it’s flaws which are often overlooked because of it’s status as the genre’s flagship. The game isn’t horrible, but it is flawed, and I wanted to present some games that are strong where it is weak.

With these criteria in consideration, which TTRPGs are good alternatives to Dungeons and Dragons? In my opinion, two champions outclass Dungeons and Dragons: Monster of the Week and City of Mist.

These two TTRPGs, monster of the week coming out in 2015, and City of Mist coming out in 2017, succeed distinctly in ways that Dungeons and Dragons has failed. Because both are unique and creative games, following blog posts will discuss them each individually.