There is a series of games I am quite enamored of, known as Pax games.  They are, for the most part, a production of Sierra Madre Games, and designed and/or devoloped by one Phil Eklund.  At one point they were described in contrast to wargames.  In wargames, typically, the players are the great generals or factions moving their pawns on the map to achieve victory.  Whereas in a Pax game, "the players are the pawns."  Meaning your goal is to leach on to the strong faction of the moment and hopefully come out ahead when the power structure tumbles.  More or less.

Pax Porfiriana The first of this line.  It takes place during the final years of Porfiro Diaz's leadership of Mexico.  Players are Hacendados (powerful landowners of the time) building their own wealth while destroying others, dealing in extortion, lawsuits, banditry, revolution.  Victory comes in several guises; being named Porfiro's successor, staging a military coup, leading the revolution, or becoming the governor of Mexico under U.S. control.

Pax Pamir Afghanistan circa 1830-1885, aka the Great Game.  Britain is worried Russia is seeking access to its interests in India.  Russia is maybe just concerned about encroaching British imperialism.  Afghani nationals are seeking cohesion after the fall of the Durrani Empire.  Players are vague tribal leaders currying favor with one of the three factions, building armies, constructing roads.  And also spying, betraying, taxing, holding hostage whenever it's beneficial.  And changing loyalties when things start to go south, of course.  There is a recent second edition of this, that is easier to learn/play than the original.

Pax Renaissance This is my favorite.  It covers the full scope of the Renaissance.  Players are financial powers using their economic influence to drive the powers of the region.  Complete with coronations, peasant revolts, conspiracies, trade fairs, piracy, religious wars (Reformation, Crusades, Jihads).  Victory is had any number of ways.  Having the most influence in royal courts, supporting a sufficiency of exploration and trade, religious influence (if some religion comes to enough power of the region), amassing legal power in free states, or just plaing supporting the arts.  It's a wild sandbox of a game, but oddly, can be played in about an hour, once you wrap your head around it.  This one also has a second edition being made, but looks like it mostly just cleans up some of the artwork and layout.

Pax Emancipation Easily the largest in scope, it covers the global attempt to end slavery from 1776 to 1917 (or something like that).  It is kind of a pseudo-cooperative game.  It can be played fully cooperative, or even solo.  The game takes as its conceit that the driving force behind this global emancipation arose from Enlightenment ideas.  As such, players are all Western entities (British Parliament, Evangelical Missionaries, and Philanthropists), but the game gives plenty of credit to Eastern leaders and ideas as well.  So you are all working towards ending slavery, but in the end, you want the world to be bent towards your particular idea of what that actually means.  Slaves are freed, slave ships are sunk, laws are passed, revolutions abound.

Pax Transhumanity This is the only one that is not historical.  It is the near future, and players are funding and commercializing various scientific and social breakthroughs to bring humanity to a new era.   Your goal is to bring about the future of humanity as you wish to see it, be it transbiological, computing, space-faring, etc.

There is also a Pax Viking that is currently getting made, but all I know about it is that it has to do with the Vikings and Sweden.

I love Dark.  Based on the intro, I assumed it would be some kind of creepy horror.  It's turned out to be one of the best Netflix originals.  Excited to see how season 3 turns out.

These were both finished in May, I am just lax in updating.

John Dies at the End by David Wong

I blitzed through this in two days, not because it was particularly gripping, I just had a long weekend and some rare time to myself.  It has a pretty informal conversational style to it, and any lack of plot cohesion can be attributed to the partial madness of the narrator.  It was fun and enjoyable to read, and while I'm not clamoring to read the sequels, I am not opposed to it.

The Thousandfold Thought by R. Scott Bakker

Continuing my reread in between other things.  I also reread The False Sun.  I might get around to posting some further cogitations.

Within the first 10 seconds or so of "Parasyte: The Maxim" on Netflix, there is a nice representation of a skin spy.

I haven't really thought much about the how.... The chorae are creations of Aporos, right?  That word brings to mind "aporetic."  The dictionary tells several things, but in rhetoric, it means "expressing doubt."  Perhaps that's some kind of metaphorical-made-physical device Bakker is using in that doubts are meaningless in the presence of the manifestation of a god.

But then, I think the skin spies are creatures of Techne, not Aporos, so that wouldn't hold....

And also "aporos," straight from greek is "without means" or "destitute," so I am again probably sliding down a rabbit hole of meaning.

Men At Arms by Terry Pratchett

I liked it much better than Guards! Guards!  The clown funeral actually gave me an audible chuckle.  Pratchett seems too be too coy at times with the movements of minor characters.  Having a section where a character is doing something important but not introducing the reader to that character until much later kind of jars me out of the flow.  It would probably work well if i was reading the book over the course of a couple days instead of a couple weeks, but so it is.

Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson

Ugh.  What a tedious book.  I actually attempted to read it long ago (19 years actually, made it to chapter 3 according to the bookmark).  I persevered this time.  Am I getting old because i found the most interesting part to be the beginning before Covenant goes to The Land?  Once there, it's just a tiresome succession of boring events mainly showcasing what a jerk the main character is.  I don't mind unlikable characters, and I suppose this was revolutionary 40 years ago, but I really had to force myself through this.  I did not care at all what happened.  Maybe I just don't get what Donaldson is trying to convey through it all.  There was one interchange between Covenant and the Giant I really liked, the rest was forgettable.  Maybe I'll add the quote to the Quotes thread.

Update: Ah, I knew it was familiar from somewhere when I read it.  It was actually already posted here:http://www.second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=768.msg17388#msg17388

Echopraxia by Peter Watts

I was kind of let down by this one.  Maybe I didn't understand a lot of it (likely), but its plot seemed a lot less focused than in Blindsight.  I do enjoy all the different takes on cognition and the various paths of post-humanity.  The inclusion of faith and God (or the idea of God) in hard sci-fi was pretty well done, too.

Yeah, how "you" is defined is key.  Someone can condition you to have a pavlovian conditioned response, but then I'd say that "you" is changed to the person with that response.

I guess we need to define "pulling" as well.  If that connotes a conscious decision, then any subconscious action or response can't be "pulled" by "you."  I didn't really think of pulling as a conscious decision before writing that last bit.