#and people were outraged and started looting shit. its like ????????

[achtung-attitude]

April 1991. People took to calling them the Opposite Brothers: in spite of how different they were, Ganmyeol and Gangak became close as brothers. Their 17 year bond cemented in their joint business venture: an auto-repair garage run entirely by Korean immigrants. Gangak became renowned in his community as a friend to all. Ganmyeol took a backseat, managing their finances.

On that day in April, Ganmyeol sat apart from the rest of the workers, reading his newspaper as they talked. They discuss what the whole city is discussing: the shooting of a black teenage girl by an old Korean shopkeeper, all captured on security footage.

“Self-defense.” Gangak declared.

“Self-defense?” Park repeated, incredulously.

“Self. Defense. For all she knew, her store was getting robbed. What's she supposed to do?”

“Jesus, man, she… She was paying for juice! The old lady just popped her, like-!”

“Were you there?” Gangak challenged. ��I didn’t hear any audio on that tape. We don’t know what was going on!”

“Alright, let’s keep our hair on,” Sanjo, the older man, intercedes. Born before the war of North and South, he had been among the first of his generation to come to Los Angeles, and was hardened by 30 years of strife.

“I’m serious,” Gangak goes on, not to be dissuaded “There’s black folks out there gearing up for war.  Have you seen it out there? ”

“Yeah, we saw it. We all saw the protests in South Central,” Park said. “All for that King kid the cops kicked hell out of. All I can say is, if I were that kid’s dad, I’d be looking for a fight too.”

“Ough, gimme a break, Park-!!”

Sanjo physically stepped in between them, placing hands on both their shoulders. “Would you loudmouths cool it? Busting a gasket isn’t going to change anything. We got enough to worry about on our side without worrying about other communities.”

“Sure, we do, but it’s not that simple!” Gangak counters, “We look after our own here. And so does everybody else. I’ve got nothing against any man, whatever color he is. But if shit hits the fan and the looting starts, then damn it, I’m gonna defend what’s ours!”

The old man sighed. “Yeah, well… Can’t say I don’t understand. Between all this color tension and that grinning jackass Chief of Police… How are we supposed to rely on the Police to protect us?”

“They won’t,” Ganmyeol says. The other men turned to look at him. He had not looked up from his newspaper, closely reading the accounts of the trial. “If things blow up, the cops won’t be able to help. They’ll be too busy dealing with their own shit to worry about us. If it comes down to it, we will have no choice but to take the fight to them.”

Gangak blinks. “Take the fight-”

“That’s right. Right to their door.” Ganmyeol starts folding up the paper. Its rustling punctuated his words. “Defending yourself is not enough. If all you do is scare the bad guys off, they’ll just lick their wounds. Prepare for their next move. They have to be cut out. Root and stem. You want to protect yourselves, my friends?” he asked, dropping the newspaper on the table in front of them. “You have to kill them all.”

***

November, 1991. The court rules for ‘voluntary manslaughter’. The Korean lady who murdered Latasha Harlins is sentenced to 5 years probation, a $500 fine and 400 hours of community service. No jail time.

On the TV, hundreds voiced their outrage. Black people, having lost faith in the justice system, levied their rage at Korean Americans. Citing countless incidents of disrespect, suspicion and humiliation suffered. The Opposite Brothers watched in silence.

“Gangak,” Ganmyeol said abruptly.

Gangak, shaking in surprise, asos, “Yeah?”

Ganmyeol fixed his glasses. “We’re probably going to need guns soon.”

END of CHAPTER 74

[nothingbutalgae]

In case you are curious about what it's been like living in Minnesota the past year, I think this sums it up pretty well.

[shadow-djinni]

may we hear more about your dnd kids Blz

okay anon, just remember: you asked for this

so, a little context. Aldin and Cal are from a, now sadly defunct, Legend of Zelda homebrew campaign a gang of my friends and I were playing (defunct owing to a change in DMs and then schedules falling apart). this campaign was set circa Age of Calamity, during the warmup to shit actually hitting the fan.

we, of course, completely derailed that plot, but I'm putting the cart before the horse.

the party is as follows:

my girl Aldin, a Gerudo sorcerer and molduga huntress from the deep desert, the resident powerhouse

Na'ila, Gerudo bard and emissary of the Spirit Temple, an absolute sweetheart

Olo, our Zora rogue, a charming but impulsive flirt

Ciel, a Korok fairy scion (homebrewed class, effectively a warlock of a great fairy) and the party's baby

and Broth, Goron cleric of Din, Team Dad and resident pacifist

now, we'd spent the first three sessions basically just dicking around Central Hyrule, participating in a horse race (we came in third), generally having a fabulous time of things and getting a handle on dnd, because most of us were newer players.

and then the fourth session happens. and one of the players (Ciel's) is guest DM'ing to give our main DM a break to plan some stuff. so we started that day at a stable, and wound up agreeing to assist a Sheikah Guardian technician (Landy) in getting down to a Zonai temple in Faron—she got a letter from her brother, who was on an archaeological dig there, requesting her help with an artifact he'd found. we of course agreed, because the party is largely composed of good-hearted altruists, and set off for Faron.

and we get down there, and the stable nearest the temple (Highland Stable) has been torched, and everyone in it killed, and the lizalfos looting the burned-out shell claim that the thing that did it came from the ruin half a day's travel from there.

aka the ruin we're going to.

so we get there, and the place is trashed and most of the people in the party Landy's brother was with are redeads so we have to put them down, and the sole survivor—Landy's brother, Cal—is down in the lower level of this temple with a couple of corpses, obviously having a terrible time of things and clutching a bone, which he claimed to have used to fend them off long enough to get down there and shut the door, locking himself in.

so we tell him to head back up while we figure out what the hell we're doing, and then one of the bodies down there reanimates as a redead and its screaming knocks out half the party, so

I need you to picture this:

Aldin, the strongest member of the party, scoops up Landy and Na'ila, slings one over each shoulder, and makes her way for the staircase while Broth and Olo deal with the redead. she enters the staircase, turns, and looks up, and Cal is busy whaling on Landy's little Guardian scout, Tipsy, with the bone. we very rapidly put two and two together—Cal is responsible for the whole mess, and we need to stop him, or we're done for.

now, by this point Aldin had an established pattern—she hits first, and she hits like a godhammer, and anything that survives that first blow had better put her down fast because it won't survive a second one.

and she refused to lay a hand on Cal. she terrified him into dropping the bone and we knocked him out and broke the damn thing instead.

as it turns out, the bone was cursed and Cal was under a compulsion to kill people, revive some of them as redeads, and...uh, commit some light cannibalism. and even though he's now freed from that, he's hearing a voice in his head from something calling itself "the First", which recognizes Aldin—because she had an encounter with something in a tomb out in the deep desert as a teenager. something that left a mark on her, in much the same way as Cal is now marked.

anyway, a dozen sessions later the truth comes out: Cal is a former Yiga blademaster on the run from the organization, trying to get to the bone before they could. Aldin is a vessel for the power of the Calamity itself, chosen to kill Link and Zelda before they can prevent its coming.

as to character dynamics:

Cal hates himself. he blames himself for not being able to resist the compulsion, he hates himself for killing his companions and putting Landy in danger, he's lost nearly everything—and is willing to risk what little he has left for Aldin, who is the only person who understands what he's been through and has been there to support him the entire way. Aldin loves him back fiercely, and is determined to give him the shelter she needed and didn't get after her Incident—even if that means fighting a god with her bare hands. they're like, peak mutual "not to me, not if it's you" energy, they're wildly in love, they snark at shit and cause problems together and Aldin flirts with Cal outrageously just to fluster him, and if they don't manage to destroy the world they might just be able to save it.

anyway, the campaign might be defunct but I'm stealing the ship and the core of the plot and attempting to file the serial numbers off and write something original with it, and in the meantime I'm subjecting all of you to art. and maybe fic excerpts if anyone's interested.

[lake-arrius-caverns]

Nerevarine Rising

Chapter 8: Life Lessons

summary En route to Vivec City, the twins experience a couple of strange encounters. Ribyna hits Fahjoth with some cold, hard facts.

content warnings uh very minor character death ig

tag list @boulderfall-cave , @padomaicocean (lmk if you’d like to be added!)

read under the cut or on AO3, cheers 👍

:: First :: || << Previous << || >> Next >> || :: Masterpost ::

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If Fahjoth had been hoping for a calm, relaxing stroll to Vivec City, he was to be sorely let down. Granted, it did help to take his mind off of his unsettling encounter with the Dunmer, who Fahjoth had come to realise was one of the sleeper agents that Cosades had discussed with him not an hour prior. Fahjoth tried to remind himself that he was lucky to have escaped unscathed, but he would surely need to discuss it with Cosades once he and Ribyna returned to Balmora. 

The first of the day’s unsettling events started just after the twins passed by Seyda Neen, when the quiet of the lazy afternoon was pierced by a horrendous scream. After jolting to a stop they both began to search for the source, without success until Fahjoth happened to look to the sky. 

“Holy shit—!” he gasped, grabbing Ribyna by the arm and yanking her along as he stumbled back to a safe distance. The shrieking continued, growing louder and louder until it was abruptly cut off by the body of a Bosmer striking the dusty road at tremendous velocity. Fahjoth couldn’t tear his eyes away as the skull collided with the ground and split open on impact with a sickening crack. 

The Bosmer bounced and rolled after landing, carried along by the momentum from the fall before finally coming to a stop where the twins had been standing mere seconds before. Within seconds, a stark red stain had begun to pool out around his head, and that coupled with the expression of agonised terror frozen on the now very dead Bosmer’s face made Fahjoth feel severely ill. 

“Fucking— gods alive…” Fahjoth breathed, drawing his hands up to cover his mouth in horror. Silence fell over the scene for a few seconds during which nobody moved, with both twins instead staring at the broken body lying prone and twisted on the path in front of them. Then, as Ribyna took a hesitant step forward and crouched down beside the body, Fahjoth shook his head in dismay. 

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do, Beebs—” he started, before his voice died in his throat as he realised exactly what Ribyna was doing. He had been under the assumption that she was attempting to help, to see if there was anything that could be done for the unfortunate fellow, but then he came to realise that he had been sorely mistaken once he noticed Ribyna going through his pockets. 

“Ooh, this looks fancy, don’t it?” Ribyna remarked, holding up an oddly elongated yellow hat with a fur-lined brim. Fahjoth was speechless, but as she began to rummage through the Bosmer’s belongings once more, he finally found his voice. 

“Ribyna, what the fuck?!”

Ribyna whipped around, a picture of wide-eyed innocence, looking surprised to see Fahjoth so angry. He wasn’t sure whether that made him feel more or less incensed. “What?”

“What d’you mean, ‘what’?! You can’t just—” He gestured vaguely to the body, almost too outraged to splutter his words out. “You can’t just... take shit from someone who’s just died! I bet the body’s still fucking warm, for gods’ sakes!”

With a thoughtful expression, Ribyna reached out again and pressed her fingers against the Bosmer’s crumpled chest. With a petulant look on her face, she turned back to face Fahjoth again. “Okay, it is, but that’s besides the point,” Ribyna said stubbornly. “Look, it’s all about the hustle, bro. If he’s got valuables, we can sell them! That’s how this shit works!” 

“Well, it shouldn’t be!” Fahjoth spat. “It’s disgusting! It’s wrong!”

Ribyna didn’t rise to Fahjoth’s chastising, but she did narrow her eyes and stare at him coolly, even after he’d finished. “Look, you need to get used to this kind of shit,” she warned, pointing a finger up at Fahjoth accusingly. “This is what we have to do to get by sometimes. In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t have too many friends here. So you might as well get off your high horse ‘cause it won’t do you any fucking good here.” She turned back to the corpse, continuing to loot the Bosmer of everything valuable that he carried, so that Fahjoth finally had to look away out of revulsion. “And that goes for people, too. If anyone fucks with you, you need to fuck with them back. You’re too bloody... soft-hearted for your own good, you.” 

With a heavy scowl, Fahjoth shook his head. He knew exactly what she was referring to; his catastrophic trip to Arkngthand, which was the last thing he needed to be reminded of. The indignation burned in his chest, and he spared Ribyna one more glance before walking around the corpse and skulking along down the road again, hands in pockets and shoulders tense. “Whatever. Catch up to me when you’re done, I’m not hanging around to watch this.”

“Fine. Will do,” Ribyna replied as Fahjoth stormed off. Even from a distance, he could pick up on the vexation lacing her tone. 

Once he was alone with his thoughts, Fahjoth slowed his pace and began to reflect on the argument. Guilt started to gnaw at his gut over snapping at his twin and leaving her on her own, but more than that, he was hit by a wave of doubt. Her harsh words had been hurtful, but perhaps they were truthful, too. 

Maybe she’s right, he thought sullenly, kicking a stone in his path and watching it ricochet along the road. Maybe he did need to toughen up…

The stone finally rolled to a stop, and Fahjoth was surprised to see it land in someone’s long shadow. A Dunmer, donning a Bonemold cuirass and boots, stood in the middle of the road, his rich auburn hair gleaming in the low sunlight. He faced Fahjoth directly, red eyes fixed on him with the ghost of a smile on his angular features. 

Fahjoth offered a smile in return as he changed direction to walk around him; but the stranger stood to the side simultaneously, blocking the road and causing Fahjoth to abruptly stop. Perhaps that had been an accident, he reasoned. So Fahjoth gave an awkwardly apologetic laugh and tried again, only to have the Dunmer once again sidestep and stand in his way. 

That couldn’t have been an accident. It was clear now that he was blocking Fahjoth’s path on purpose. 

“Could you move, please, mate?” Fahjoth asked, keeping his tone polite despite the mild annoyance he felt. “You’re sort of in my way.” 

“Afraid not, friend,” the Dunmer responded, his voice unusually melodic and chipper. “Allow me to introduce myself! It is I, Nels Llendo.” 

“Right...” Fahjoth was baffled. “Can I help you, then? I’ve kind of got somewhere to be.” 

The Dunmer, Nels Llendo, simply folded his arms and continued to smile that charming yet unsettling smile. “Ah... I see you have not heard of me,” he said softly. “A shame. Well, no need to tremble in fear. Nels Llendo is a reasonable man, hardly the cutthroat some would make me out to be. To cut to the chase, I offer you a fair and healthy proposition.”

A cutthroat? Fahjoth frowned, staring at Nels in disbelief while he stood motionless, rooted to the spot. Was this a robbery? He wasn’t feeling very threatened by Nels’ friendly disposition, but then his eyes fell on the gleam of a sword’s hilt hanging at his waist. With trepidation, he dared to ask, “What proposition?”

“A very simple proposition, actually,” Nels replied. “You will give me fifty septims, and in return, you will be allowed to continue safely on your journey. Nels Llendo gives you his word as a gentleman that, once our transaction has taken place, you have nothing to fear from me. What say you?”

And there it was. Trying not to let his apprehension show in his body language or voice, Fahjoth stood his ground. “No way. I’m not just gonna hand over my gold to you, mate.” 

Nels shook his head, tutting in a very exaggerated show of disappointment. “I fear you are making an unwise decision, my friend. But, so be it... though I do hate to soil my clothes with your blood. No matter. Such is the life of Nels Llendo.” Before Fahjoth could respond, Nels had whipped his sword out from its sheath and held it aloft, the enchanted blade gleaming with a flaming red sheen. “You have made the wrong choice, outlander.”

As Fahjoth took a hasty step backwards and reached for his own blade, very conscious of Nels already advancing on him, the sound of approaching footsteps and a voice gave both Mer pause. 

“Oi!”

Once he caught sight of Ribyna marching towards them — her backpack a lot fatter than it had been when they left Balmora — Nels instantly sheathed his sword and, to Fahjoth’s surprise, sank into a low, elegant bow. 

“Hello, my dear. Nels Llendo at your service.”

“Nels Llend—?” Ribyna rolled her eyes, tilting her head back and rubbing her brow. “Oh, gods...”

“Oh? My name is familiar to you?” he questioned, perhaps mistaking her irritation for apprehension. “Fear not, my dear. Nels Llendo is far from the heartless villain some have made me out to be. From one as charming and gracious as you, I would ask for but a single kiss.” 

Fahjoth had to do a double-take, turning back to Nels in bewilderment. “You what?” Then his mouth fell open in outrage. “You were just about to kill me over fifty septims!”

Nels, however, paid Fahjoth no heed, his attention focused solely on Ribyna. “It would be the most precious prize I have ever solicited from a... client.”

Fahjoth was silent, looking between the two with unease. Though he would have liked nothing more than to jump in, to tell Nels in no uncertain terms to piss off and leave them alone, he did not want to risk drawing Ribyna’s ire by speaking for her. Instead he waited, and when Ribyna spoke up, it was the last thing he had been expecting to hear. 

“And if I do, me and my brother can pass? You won’t touch either of us?”

Nels held up a hand, placing the other sincerely over his chest. “I give you my word.”

After a second or two of hesitation, Ribyna took a step forward. Fahjoth, with great discomfort, spoke up at last. 

“Ribyna, you don’t—”

“Shut up, Fahjoth.”

Fahjoth's jaw hung open, aghast but rendered totally speechless once again as Ribyna began to approach Nels, closing the gap between them. Once she reached him, she placed her hands deliberately on each of his shoulders, the look on her face one of sheer determination. 

Overcome with intense awkwardness, Fahjoth dropped his gaze — but before he could turn away completely, a sudden blur of movement caught his eye and his head snapped back up just in time to witness Ribyna thrusting her knee into Nels’ crotch, and hard. 

The once cocky and self-assured bandit crumpled to the ground in an instant, a wheezing yelp of pain hissing from between gritted teeth as he was reduced to a quivering ball of pain. Fahjoth was motionless, struck dumb with astonishment. 

Apparently, Ribyna wasn’t finished yet. Taking the opportunity while he was downed, Ribyna knelt beside Nels and began to go through his pockets, quickly fishing out a sizable coin purse and shoving it in her own. “Oh, and I’ll be taking this,” she announced, patting Nels roughly on the cheek. “Y’know, for compensation.” She then stood up, dusted herself off and began to head off, muttering a scathing insult under her breath as she did so. “Prick...”

Fahjoth cast one last glance at Nels, still curled up on the ground with tears streaming down his cheeks, before he turned away and trotted along in Ribyna’s wake as she strode onwards without a care in the world. He ambled along mutely beside Ribyna, occasionally throwing his twin an incredulous glance, still barely able to comprehend what had just happened. As grateful as he was for the lengths to which she would go to defend him, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Ribyna had handled the situation rather poorly. Eventually, he tentatively voiced what was on his mind.

“D’you think you might’ve gone a bit too far?”

“What?”

“I mean…” Fahjoth waved his hands vaguely and grimaced. “Knocking his bollocks in? Couldn’t we have just tried talking to him? Looked to me like he might’ve listened to you.”

Ribyna stopped in her tracks and rounded on Fahjoth with a scowl. “He was blackmailing us, Fahjoth, in case you hadn’t noticed! I didn’t want to try and reason with him, he was about five seconds from shoving his sword down your throat!... That wasn’t a euphemism, stop smirking! Anyway, he might’ve just got nasty again if I’d turned him down.” 

Fahjoth quickly arranged his features back into an expression of solemn concern, though he still quietly fought to keep a straight face. “Okay, fair enough... But stealing from him as well? What if he goes to the guards?”

Ribyna scoffed. “What, him? A highwayman? If he’s as infamous as everyone reckons he is, then good luck to him is all I can say. We’ll see how seriously the guards take him from inside a prison cell.”

“Good point...”

In the quiet that followed as the pair meandered on down the southern path, Fahjoth found his thoughts wandering back onto something that he wanted to get off his chest. “By the way, I’m... I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier. I was just... shocked, I suppose. But you’re right. I probably do need to wise up.”

“Yeah...” Ribyna offered Fahjoth something between a smile and a grimace. “I’m sorry as well. I didn’t mean to rag on you so hard. I only say it cause I care about you. You do know that, don’t you?” 

His spirits lifted, Fahjoth turned to face Ribyna, beaming with delight. “Aww, and you call me soft-hearted?” he remarked. Ribyna faltered, flushing with embarrassment over her unintentional sentimentality. 

“Don’t even start,” she growled, quickening her gait to avoid looking at Fahjoth in a futile attempt at saving face. “Shut up, or else you’ll go the same way as our good friend Mr Llendo.” 

Fahjoth laughed as Ribyna rushed on past, jogging on ahead a short distance until she stopped at a signpost on the side of the road a few yards down the path. But as she squinted to peer at the weather-worn wood, Fahjoth slowed his pace and came to a stop a few metres behind.

“Come on, I think we’re nearly there—“ Noting Fahjoth’s distance, Ribyna stopped mid-sentence and turned to look at him quizzically. Fahjoth struggled to hide a grin as he instead wore a deliberately thoughtful expression. 

“What?”

“Well, it’s just... I thought he was quite handsome, personally. I’d’ve kissed him!”

Ribyna groaned in exasperation, rolling her eyes and trying to hold back a smile. “You would!” she scoffed, turning away and continuing on her way down the road, to where Vivec City awaited them through the evening mist. “Shame he didn’t ask, then. Maybe I should’ve tried to set you two up instead of kneeing him in the nuts.” 

“At least you’ll know for next time!” Fahjoth laughed. As he hastened to catch up with Ribyna, he raised a hand to shield his eyes against the peachy glare of the sun low on the horizon, its vibrant fire in the sky signalling that the moons and stars would soon take its place. 

[the-desolated-quill]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Quill’s Quickies (No Spoilers)

This year, Star Wars has been almost mired in controversy. From the loot box controversy in EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II to the noticeable lack of non-white characters in The Last Jedi’s marketing. Rian Johnson making a total prat of himself by claiming that Kylo Ren is a dual protagonist with Rey, and now the reviews are in it turns out Episode 8 is the most divisive movie in the whole franchise, with critics clambering over themselves to praise the movie for its ‘bold new direction’ while the fans decry it as the arse-raping of their collective childhood. On the whole, I’d say this has been a complete and total cock-up.

I had no idea what to expect going in. I’m sure you all know how lukewarm I was about The Force Awakens. It didn’t surprise me in the slightest that the critics were praising the hell out of The Last Jedi considering they were doing the same thing with the previous film, which in my opinion was mediocre at best. The fan reaction surprised me. After all the blind (and arguably undeserved) praise The Force Awakens got, if even the fans are struggling to find good things to say about this movie, something must have gone spectacularly wrong.

So what did I, diehard Star Wars fan and professional arsehole, think of The Last Jedi? Well honestly I’m disappointed I didn’t hate it more. Truthfully I liked this movie about as much as I liked The Force Awakens, which is to say not very much. Like The Force Awakens, it’s a competently made movie and it’s possible to derive some enjoyment from it if you switch your brain off for two and half hours, but otherwise it’s just yet another tired retread of the original Star Wars movies that brings absolutely nothing new to the table. Not for the first time, I feel a real disconnect from the rest of the Star Wars community here. I have no idea why the critics are praising this movie for being a game changer because there’s genuinely nothing very revolutionary or groundbreaking going on here, and I’m confused as to why the fans have chosen to fling their bile and venom at a movie that, in my opinion, is the very definition of average. I mean sure, The Last Jedi isn’t very good and there were some bits that did kind of annoy me, but there’s nothing about it that’s outrageously offensive as far as I can see.

Let’s start with the things I liked. The biggest, shiniest gold star has to go to Finn. He was quite possibly the only new character I was in any way invested in last time around, and he’s just as brilliant here. We see him slowly embrace his new role as a hero of the Resistance and we also see him get the chance to stick it to his First Order oppressors, which I thought was quite emotionally satisfying. He’s joined by Rose, played by Kelly Marie Tran, who I thought was a nice addition to the cast and who undergoes the traditional everyman turned hero journey. I really liked her relationship with Finn and their scenes together are by far the highlight of the film, which makes their subtle erasure from the Star Wars marketing campaign all the more offensive to me because, as far as I’m concerned, they’re the main characters. They were the most developed, the ones I was most invested in, the only ones that actually grow and develop over the course of the film and who pretty much drive the plot.

The other thing I liked (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) is Kylo Ren. I really wasn’t impressed with him in The Force Awakens because he was pretty much just a shitty rehash of Darth Vader, and I mentioned in my review at the time how it might have been better to embrace the more weaselly and slightly pathetic nature of the character to help better distinguish him and give him his own identity. So I’m extremely pleased to see that’s exactly what this film does and it’s great. There’s no pretence anymore. Kylo Ren is this spoilt, impotent man-child that desperately craves power and attention, but doesn’t really know what he wants to do with it, and that’s glorious. That’s just the burst of inspiration the character sorely needed and Adam Driver does a great job with this new material. I’m actually looking forward to seeing where he goes in the next film and if they handle it well, he should make for a very unique antagonist (that’s antagonist Rian Johnson. AN-TAG-GON-NIST).

It’s just a pity that in order to prop up Kylo Ren, Rian Johnson felt the need to completely warp Luke Skywalker’s character into something wholly unrecognisable.

Yes now we come to the bad stuff, and there’s quite a bit. My main gripe is with Luke’s characterisation. In order to justify a lot of the plot, they have to make Luke this cynical halfwit and there are loads of moments where he says or does something that just simply doesn’t ring true with what we already know about him. His reasons for his exile are utterly out of character for one thing and his reasons behind his provocative statement that ‘it’s time for the Jedi to end’ are even more ludicrous. What’s worse is that the majority of the movie is dedicated to Rey trying to persuade Luke to come out of exile and rejoin the fight. Remember the scene in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke tries to persuade Yoda to train him? Well imagine that dragged out for an hour and a half. That’s pretty much the movie in the nutshell. I think that’s part of the reason why I loved Finn and Rose so much. Because it was a blessed relief to get off that fucking island for a while. There were several moments where I came close to dozing off.

I’m sure it’s no secret to anyone by this point that Rian Johnson has played pretty fast and loose with the Star Wars canon. Luke’s odd characterisation is one example. There are a few others. None of them truly insulting in my opinion. But the most notorious is a scene involving Leia, which I will hereby refer to as ‘The Scene.’ This got a lot of Star Wars fans riled up, but I personally thought it was absolutely hysterical just because of how random and idiotically daft it was. I’m not going to tell you what happened in ‘The Scene’ because this is a non-spoiler review. All I can say is you’ll know it when you see it.

Of course this was Carrie Fisher’s last film before her untimely death and that’s incredibly sad. Does The Last Jedi offer a fitting tribute to Princess/General/Queen (she’s a a Queen in my eyes) Leia Organa? Not really. In fact, outside of ‘The Scene’, Leia doesn’t really do anything worthy of comment. Some say she was mischaracterised too, but I don’t think so. At a push, I could see Leia doing some of the things she does. I just wish Fisher could have been given something with actual substance.

My views on Poe and Rey remain virtually unchanged. Poe Dameron is still a one dimensional cardboard cutout and I’m still continuously baffled as to why people like him so much. He doesn’t have a character. We’re two movies in and we still haven’t learnt a single sodding thing about him. Frankly I’ve seen fossils with more life in them. Rey meanwhile is still quite possibly one of the blandest protagonists I’ve ever seen. I’m struggling to find any reason to actually give a shit about her. Why should I be invested in her Jedi training? Why does she even need Jedi training when she seems capable of pulling any random superpower out of her arse at the convenience of the plot? At no point have these films ever given me a reason to care about her. Maybe if they focused more on her looking for her missing parents, I might be slightly more invested. And that’s another thing. In The Force Awakens, her missing parents are basically used as sequel bait. Here (without giving too much away) they’re pretty much just swept under the carpet entirely, which begs the question why was JJ Abrams wasting our time with them in the first fucking place (yes I am blaming JJ Abrams instead of Rian Johnson because Abrams was the one that actually came up with this shit and it’s very much reminiscent of his bullshit ‘mystery box’. The principle where an audience are naturally drawn to some big unknown or mystery and that he frequently utilises in his projects, most notably the TV series Lost. What he often forgets however is that good mysteries tend to have a satisfying fucking answer at the end).

And that’s pretty much all I have to say really. No doubt some of you are disappointed I haven’t quite given The Last Jedi the vengeful pummelling you’ve come to expect from me, but honestly I can’t work up the energy to get properly angry at it, and that’s largely because I’m past caring about this sequel trilogy. I think I’ve made my views on the sequel trilogy quite clear by now (that they’re a soulless cash grab concocted by studio execs who wouldn’t recognise a decent script if one jumped up and bit them on the arse) and I think it’s my total lack of interest that kind of shields me from some of Rian Johnson’s ‘creative’ decisions. These movies don’t count as far as I’m concerned. I’m not especially bothered by Johnson’s ‘reimagining’ and there’s nothing truly terrible going on here. The only crime The Last Jedi is really guilty of in my opinion is that there’s large swathes of it that are just really, really boring. And the main reason for this (apart from the obscenely long running time and a plot that drags its feet) is because, like with The Force Awakens, a lot of this stuff has been done before and done better in the original trilogy. While The Force Awakens ripped off A New Hope and a few elements from The Empire Strikes Back, The Last Jedi rips off The Empire Strikes Back and a few elements from Return Of The Jedi. What makes it slightly more egregious here is that The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi are both very emotionally charged stories that rely on three films’ worth of character development and buildup to make an impact, whereas The Last Jedi just blunders in, trying to replicate these emotional moments, but fails to recognise what made them so powerful to begin with and hasn’t done any of the legwork to make us feel truly invested in what’s going on, and thus it has all the impact of a feather duster.

So that’s The Last Jedi. A pointless and mediocre middle chapter to what has so far been a pointless and mediocre trilogy. The one bright side is that now it appears they’ve finally rehashed all they can from the original trilogy, there’s a chance we might finally get to see some original ideas in Episode 9. Unless they’re planning to ripoff the prequels next. In which case Disney must be more creatively bankrupt than I thought.

[theliterateape]

Optimism When Things are Easy is a Sham

By Don Hall

"For mine I am an optimist by nature. My reading of history is that the world has always stepped back from the edge of disaster. Against all odds, here we are, alive and kicking." — Rabbi Laibl Wolf

Optimism isn’t merely hope. It isn’t happiness or a cheery disposition.

Optimism is an act of resilience against the brutal harshness of living the existential crisis.

It’s darkest just before the dawn implies that there will be a dawn. What if there won’t be? What if it’s just more darkness? If the implacable timpani of human greed, a self correcting planetary environment, and the algorithm that defines our modern interaction has no end, should that result in giving in to the despair?

As optimism is a breeze when things are going your way, despair is the path of least resistance when things turn to dire. Seeing through the mist at a better future takes effort and commitment like a solid marriage or a massive novel you’ve committed to writing. It’s a project to be managed not a feeling to languish within.

One cannot truly call himself an optimist who refuses to see the horror. Pretending that people are essentially kind and generous is stuffing the ostrich head in the sand. People are apes with higher brain functions and follow the rules of the jungle. Tribalism, essentialism, war for resources, the history of brutality of all humanity goes far beyond Hannah Jones’ 1619 Project. Taken in whole, we aren’t a very enlightened and forgiving species.

Further, optimism is an individual choice. It’s not something that can be enforced but it is something that can be inspired. The American Experiment, despite its many missteps and flaws, is grounded in a belief that humans can govern themselves justly and effectively. Given the larger picture, belief in democracy is only slightly more delusional than the guy playing slots so he can pay his rent. The odds are astronomically against success and yet the choice to persevere is made.

“We have to reject the notion that we’re suddenly gripped by forces that we cannot control. We’ve got to embrace the longer and more optimistic view of history and the part that we play in it. If you are skeptical of such optimism, I will say something that may sound controversial. I used to say this to my staff in the White House, young interns who would come in, any group of young people that I met with, and that is that by just about every measure, America is better, and the world is better, than it was 50 years ago, 30 years ago, or even 10 years ago.” — President Barack Obama

This isn’t just hopeful bullshit. This is completely pragmatic, data-driven reality.

Despite the horrors of police killing unarmed black men in viral videos that seem to crop up every other day, the number of unarmed black men killed or injured by police in America has decreased dramatically in the past five years.

Despite the heartbreaking realities of homelessness in America, more people have more access to food and healthcare than ever in the history of the country.

Despite the histrionics of the trans-activists burning Harry Potter books as an expression of (quasi-authoritarian) outrage, the LGTBQ + community is at a unique and unprecedented place of societal acceptance in America.

That’s not hopeful thinking. Those are cold, hard facts. Optimism is not rooted in fantasy but grounded in seeing a fuller picture and recognizing progress when it smacks you in the face. Ignoring the macrocosm and expanding the microcosm’s importance is the choice of children. A child only sees how things affect himself; an adult comprehends that there is more to see and a larger consequence to that ego-driven hyperbole than self-interest.

It’s darkest just before the dawn. There’s the rub. What if there is no light at the end of the tunnel? What if Trump manages to maintain his seat in the Oval Office? What if he packs the SCOTUS with a six-three conservative majority? What if we go to war with China? What if the planet continues the onslaught of climate disaster? If history tells any story at all, it is this:

There is always a dawn.

In the closing moments of the horror film The Mist, after enduring a terrifying night of uncertainty and surviving monsters (both genuine monsters and the monsters humans reveal themselves to be under extreme fear and rage), Thomas Janes is finally escaping. With him is a woman and a child. Once the vehicle runs out of gas and they are still enveloped by the impenetrable mist, they hear what they believe are more monsters. In that moment of despair Janes decides that dying by his hand is better than facing the monsters so he shoots both the child and the woman. As he prepares to kill himself, the monsters he fears turn out to be soldiers and the true horror was his giving into the fear.

If, after the pandemic is under some semblance of decline, the economy starts to find its footing, and Trump is in prison (either in 2022 or 2026), you gave in the despair you’re gonna feel pretty fucking stupid and then spend the rest of your days justifying your shortsighted pessimism.

If you mourn Justice Ginsburg and laud her achievements in changing America for the better yet respond to injustice by throwing cans at cops and justifying looting and destruction, you will have missed the lesson of her life. She never screamed in the streets or stomped her existential adolescent feet to express her desire for a better future. Ginsburg focused her rage and slowly, deliberately, and effectively worked through the democratic system she believed in and fomented lasting change.

Recently, a poll indicated that roughly two-thirds of Zoomers did not know that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. The tragedy is not their myopic narcissism and pathological disregard for history. It is their dismissal of those who survived the Holocaust because they refused to give in to despair. 

When you see someone who has one of those death camp tattoos on their arm you are witnessing a genuine, tried and true, bona fide optimist.

Optimism is hardest when things turn to shit but it is then when it is most necessary.

[vgoccasion]

Reader Mail November 2017

Welcome to the first edition of Reader Mail! Thank you to everyone who wrote in with a question for me. Let’s get started!

VGO: Thank you for writing in James! Please take my answer with a large grain of sea salt, as I am not well-versed in World of Warcraft or MMOs in general.

While I think it is easy to categorize anything that Activision does as a cash grab (they are a profit-motivated publisher after all!), I think that the introduction World of Warcraft: Classic begs for deeper analysis. Blizzard telegraphed this move back in April 2016 when they shut down the largest private server, Nostalrius, which itself was a fan operated instance of vanilla WoW. Blizzard acted completely in its rights to stop that fan project (which violates their copyright) and start their own in-house Classic or “vanilla” WoW servers makes sense. Clearly there is a market of players who are nostalgic for the game in its much simpler form. (Sourced this information from an April 11, 2016 article on Polygon.com: “World of Warcraft fans bid farewell to largest legacy server before shutdown” by Allegra Frank)

As someone partially addicted to Hearthstone, I would love a third “classic” or “vanilla” ladder to check out that would limit players to cards as they existed at launch. I imagine that less sophisticated WoW fans may feel the same way. I trust Blizzard to make experiencing WoW: Classic extremely simple. Having not played more than 6 hours of the game in my life, I am not sure that I could find or access Nostalrius. So this sounds like a win for accessibility at the very least.

My train of thought next moves onto the track of game archival and history. I am only cursorily aware of efforts to keep other deactivated online games up-and-running on private servers. As more games become online services, it will be important to empower someone to preserve games on backup servers so they can be studied for historical context and inform the budding game developers of the future.

This phenomenon popped up just recently with the news that Sony and Altus would shut down the online servers for Demon’s Souls next February after 9 years of supporting the game’s online aspects. That game has spawned its own subgenre of action game (“Souls-like”). Exploring early experiments in game design that have had measurable impact on industry trends is crucial. Demon’s Souls online innovations included showing locations where other players perished and allowing people to leave cryptic messages and warnings for each other. These mechanics have continued on in FromSoftware’s Dark Souls and Bloodborne games, but soon curious players will lose the ability to explore their origin. This news acts as a reminder that games reliant on an internet connection are far less permanent than their offline, physical counterparts.

With a game as old as World of Warcraft — it turned 13 this November— the differences between the basic experience of 2004 and the version available in 2017 must be gargantuan. It is one thing to read about the quality of life changes or watch videos of the game in its original state, and wholly another to actually get hands-on with it and experience the flaws and differences yourself. If just for the sake of game archival and education, I am glad Blizzard is creating Classic servers in-house.

Overall, I think the move is primarily public relations management to try to appease fans who may feel alienated by the closure of private WoW servers. This story nicely echoes Nintendo stepping in to shut down Another Metroid II Remake, better known as AM2R, shortly before announcing the game at the center of this month’s issue, Metroid: Samus Returns, Nintendo’s own remake of Metroid II: Return of Samus. So, cynical cash grab? Only to the extent that protecting one’s copyright and providing a service people have demonstrated demand for can be labeled cynical.

VGO: I have indeed played a small amount of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. The game does a great job of replicating the surface-level appeal of the series. The music, character design, and dialogue all drip with charm. I got serious flashbacks to my time with the GameCube and DS iterations of the game from the title screen alone. I cracked a huge smile when K.K. Slider greeted me at the start of the game.

Nostalgia and aesthetics aside, I have a fundamental problem with the game’s premise, which has held me back from truly enjoying it. The furniture sets all include couches, dressers, chairs, etc. and while I think the design of each set is visually interesting, it feels extremely strange and stupid to set all of this real furniture outside at a campsite. The items you can craft in this game belong inside a cute house. Period.

Dumb gripes aside, I think the nightmarish memes the game has created in its first week of full release point towards the creativity (and unsettling mindset) of its audience. I hope the game grows over time. The game feels incredibly casual, and I could see myself checking in on it from time to time.

The worst sign for my future with the game is that I already find my interest in logging in on a daily basis waning. The core “gameplay” loop centers around a series of checklists, timers, and meters. None of the mechanics show depth enough to interest me in fishing or bug catching for the challenge, as there is absolutely none.

Overall I would give the game a hesitant recommendation, just to experience the quick spark of joy that comes from exploring a new Animal Crossing game. Sadly, that spark failed to grow into an inviting campfire worth gathering around.

David O.: “Query: Have you an opinion on the new Battlefront game, and what do you think of all the negative publicity around it?”

VGO: I will start answering this question by alienating a large amount of my potential readership: I am not that big of a Star Wars fan. I think 5 of the 8 movies are good. I find the lore and universe interesting, but I don’t think it is the coolest shit of all time. So as a nerd with a less than passing interest in the franchise, I would have been happy to ignore Battlefront II and let it sell like gangbusters.

Sadly for the three development teams behind the game (Dice, Criterion, and EA Motive) the press cycle prior to the game’s release consisted almost entirely of stories focusing on outrage over the predatory loot box design in the game. The entire controversy is too lengthy to present in whole here, but online complaints won the day and EA announced they were putting the microtransactions on hold until further notice. This news story acted as a major distraction from any positive buzz the game may have generated.

In terms of the actual reviews, it seems like game has received mixed reception with some reviewers disparaging the quality of the much touted (and John Boyega requested) single-player campaign. Alternatively, some Star Wars fans have been effusive about the quality of the multiplayer and the outstanding detail of the game’s visual and audio design.

The negative fan, consumer, and press reactions have directly impacted EA’s wallet. The game’s UK sales were reportedly 61% lower than its 2015 predecessor in their respective first weeks. The game still hasn’t broken into Amazon.com’s “Best Sellers of 2017 in Video Games” list. The poor sales and backlash against the loot boxes has caused an 8.5% month to date drop in EA’s stock price, costing their investors $3 Billion in value (according to CNBC).

Call to Action Time!

December is Game of The Year month, and I would love to hear everyone’s personal anecdotes about how they played games in 2017! Which game grabbed your attention the most? Which game surprised you? What are your games of the year? Write in by tweeting your answers @vgoccasion or emailing them to vgoccasion@gmail.com. I need your help and input to make each issue of Video Games! (Occasionally) great.

[alexsmitposts]

North American, European Public: Finally Wake Up, Damn It! Year after year, month after month, I see two sides of the world; two extremes which are getting more and more disconnected: I see great cities like Homs in Syria, reduced to horrifying ruins. I see Kabul and Jalalabad in Afghanistan, fragmented by enormous concrete walls intended to protect NATO occupation armies and their local puppets. I see monstrous environmental devastation in places such as Indonesian Borneo, Peruvian gold mining towns, or the by now almost uninhabitable atoll island-nations of Oceania: Tuvalu, Kiribati or Marshall Islands. I see slums, a lack of sanitation and clean drinking water, where the boots of Western empires have been smashing local cultures, enslaving people and looting natural resources. I work on all the continents. I never stop, even when exhaustion tries to smash me against the wall, even when there are hardly any reserves left. I cannot stop; I have no right to stop, because I can finally see the pattern; the way this world operates, the way the West has been managing to usurp it, indoctrinate, and enslave most of the countries of the world. I combine my knowledge, and publish it as a ‘warning to the world’. I write books about this ‘pattern’. My most complete, so far, being the 1,000 pages long “Exposing Lies of The Empire”. Then, I see the West itself. I come to ‘speak’, to Canada and the United States, as well as Europe. Once in a while I am invited to address Australian audiences, too. The West is so outrageously rich, compared to the ruined and plundered continents, that it often appears that it does not belong to the Planet Earth. A lazy Sunday afternoon stroll in Villa Borghese in Rome, and a horror walk through Mathare slum in Nairobi could easily exist in two distinct realities, or in two different galaxies. Even now, after I slightly misspelled “Villa Borghese”, my Mac immediately offered a correction. It is because Villa Borghese does exist. On the other hand, “Mathare”, which I spelled correctly, was underlined red. Mathare ‘is an error’. Because it does not exist. It does not exist, despite the fact that around one million men, women and children lives there. It is not recognized by my MacBook Pro, nor by the great majority of my relatively well-educated readers in the West. In fact, almost entire world appears to be one big error, non-entity, if observed from New York, Berlin or Paris. I come and speak in front of the Western public. Yes, I do it from time to time, although with decreasing frequency. Frankly, to face European or North American crowds feels depressing, even humiliating. It goes like this: you are invited to ‘tell the truth’; to present what you are witnessing all over the world. You stand there, facing men and women who have just arrived in their comfortable cars, after having good dinners in their well-heated or air-conditioned homes. You may be a famous writer and a filmmaker, but somehow, they make you feel like a beggar. Because you came to speak on behalf of “beggars”. Everything is well-polished, and choreographed. It is expected that you do not show any ‘gore’. That you do not call your public ‘names’. That you do not swear, do not get drunk on the stage, do not start insulting everyone in sight. What you usually face is quite a hard, or at least ‘hardened’, crowd. Recently, in Southern California, when I was asked, by a fellow philosopher and a friend of mine, to address a small gathering of his colleagues, some people were banging on their mobile phones, as I was describing the situation at the Syrian frontline, near Idlib. I felt that my account was nothing more than a ‘background, an elevator music’ to most of them. At least when I am addressing millions through my television interviews, I do not have to see the public. When you ‘speak’ in the West, you are actually addressing men and women who are responsible, at least partially, for the mass murders and genocides that are being committed by their countries. Men and women whose standards of living are outrageously high, because The Others are being robbed, humiliated, and often raped. But their eyes are not humble; they are drilling them into you, waiting for some mistake that you might make, so they can conclude: “He is fake news”. For them, you are not a bridge between those who ‘exist’ and those who don’t. For them, you are an entertainer, a showman, or more often than not: a nuisance. To learn about war, about the terror that the West is spreading, is, for many in my audience yet another type of luxury, high-level entertainment, not unlike an opera performance or a symphony concert. If necessary, they can even pay, although mostly they’d rather not. After a titillating experience, it is back to the routine, back to a sheltered, elegant life. While you, the next day, are often catching a plane back to the reality of the others; to the frontline, to dust and misery. They, your public (but face it, also most of your readers) came to show how ‘open-minded’ they are. They came ‘to learn’ from you, ‘to get educated’, while keeping their lifestyles intact. Most of them think that they know it all, even without your first-hand experience, they are benevolently doing you a favor by inviting you, and by dragging themselves all the way to some university or a theatre or wherever the hell you are standing in front of them. They did not come to offer any support to your struggle. They are not part of any struggle. They are good, peace-loving, hardworking people; that’s all. You know, like those Germans, in the late 1930’s; self-righteous, hard-working folks. Most of them love their pets, and recycle their garbage. And clean after themselves at Starbucks. A few days ago, we stopped the coup in Venezuela. I say we, because, although deep in devastated Borneo Island, I had been giving interviews to RT, Press TV, addressing millions. Even here, I never stopped writing, tweeting, always ready to drop everything just fly to Caracas, if I were to be needed there. To defend Venezuela, to defend the Revolution there, is essential. As it is essential to defend Syria, Cuba, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Bolivia, South Africa and other revolutionary and brave nations that are refusing to surrender to the Western diktat. While the ideological battle for Caracas was raging, I was thinking: is there anything that could still move the Western public into action? Have they – Europeans and North Americans – become totally indifferent to their own crimes? Have they developed some sort of emotional immunity? Is their condition ideological, or simply clinical? Here we were, in the middle of a totally open coup; an attempt by the West to overthrow one of the most democratic countries on our planet. And they did almost nothing to stop the terrorism performed by their regimes in Washington or Madrid! At least in Indonesia in 1965 or in Chile in 1973, the Western regime tried to hide behind thin fig leaves. At least, while destroying socialist Afghanistan and the Communist Soviet Union by creating the Mujahedin, the West used Pakistan as a proxy, trying to conceal, at least partially, its true role. At least, while killing more than 1 million people in Iraq, there was this charade and bunch of lies about the ‘weapons of mass destruction’. At least, at least… Now, it is all transparent. In Syria, Venezuela; and against North Korea, Cuba, Iran, China, Russia. As if propaganda was not even needed, anymore, it as if the Western public has become totally obedient, posing no threat to the plans of the Western regime. Or more precisely, the once elaborate Western propaganda has become extremely simple: it now repeats lies, and the great majority of Western citizens do not even bother to question what their governments are doing to the world. The only thing that matters are ‘domestic issues’; meaning – the wages and benefits for the Westerners. There are no riots like during the Vietnam War. Now riots are only for the better welfare of European workers. No one in the West is fighting in order to stop the plunder abroad, or the terrorist attacks unleashed by NATO against non-Western countries, or against those countless NATO military bases, against the invasions and orchestrated coups. How much more can the Western public really stomach? Or can it stomach absolutely everything? Would it accept the direct invasion of Venezuela or Cuba or both? It has already accepted the direct intervention and destruction of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, to name just a few terrorist actions committed by the West in recent history. So, how much more? Would an attack against Iran be acceptable? Let’s say, 2-3 million deaths? North Korea, perhaps? A few more millions, a new mountain of corpses? I am asking; it is not a rhetorical question. I really want to know. I believe that the world has to know. Has the Western public reached the level of the ISIS (or call them IS or Deash)? Is it so self-righteous, so fanatic, so convinced of its own exceptionalism, that it cannot think, clearly, analyze and judge, anymore? Would provoking Russia or China or both into WWIII be acceptable to people living in Bavaria or South Carolina, or Ontario? And if yes, are they all really out of their minds? And if they are, should the world try to stop the, and how? I want to know the boundaries of the Western madness. That there is madness is indisputable, but how massive is it? I understand, I have now accepted the monstrous fact that the French, Yanks, Canadians, Brits or Germans do not give a shit about how many millions of innocent people they kill in the Middle East, or Southeast Asia, Africa or in ‘places like that’. I accept that they know close to nothing about their colonial history, and want to know nothing, as long as they have football, plenty of meat and 6 weeks vacations on exotic beaches. I know that even many of those who can see monstrous crimes committed by the West, want to blame everything on Rothschilds and ‘Zionist conspiracy’, but never on themselves, never on their culture which expresses itself through the centuries of plunder. But what about the survival of our planet, and the survival of humankind? I imagine the eyes of those people who come to my ‘combat presentations’. I tell them the truth. I say it all. I am never holding back; never compromise. I show them images of the wars they have unleashed. Yes, they; because the citizens are responsible for their own governments, and because there is, clearly, something called collective guilt and collective responsibility! Those eyes, faces… I will tell you what I read in them: they will never act. They will never try to overthrow their regime. As long as they live their privileged lives. As long as they think that the system in which they are the elites, at least has some chance of surviving in its present form. They play it both ways, some of them do: verbally, they are outraged by NATO, by Western imperialism and savage capitalism. Practically, they do nothing tangible to fight the system. What is the conclusion then? If they do not act, then others have to. And I am convinced: they will. For more than 500 years the entire world has been in flames, plundered and murdered by a small group of extremely aggressive Western nations. This has been going on virtually uninterruptedly. Nobody finds it amusing, anymore. Where I work, in places that I care about, nobody wants this kind of world. Look at those countries that are now trying to destroy Venezuela. Look closely! They consist of the United States, Canada, majority of Europe, and mostly those South American states where the descendants of European colonialists are forming majority! Do we want another 500 years of this? North Americans and Europeans have to wake up, soon. Even in Nazi Germany, there were soldiers who were so disgusted with Hitler, that they wanted to send him to the dogs. Today, in the West, there is not one powerful political party which believes that 500 years of Western colonialist plunder is more than enough; that torturing the world should stop, and stop immediately. If Western imperialism, which is the greatest and perhaps the only major threat our planet is now facing, is not decisively and soon dismantled by its own citizens, it will have to be fought and deterred by external forces. That is: by its former and present victims. https://journal-neo.org/2019/06/06/north-american-european-public-finally-wake-up-damn-it/

[loudlytransparenttrash]

Ello! I would've never guessed you to be a former feminist and BLM supporter. What was the final straw that changed your point of view about everything? I used to believe in the whole BLM agenda of police brutality as well until I actually looked at the statistics, and I honestly felt betrayed since the media was pushing the agenda as well. It was eye-opening, for sure.

Hey! :) Yeah, that’s why it’s comical when they scream at me that “you just don’t understand” or “educate yourself” when they’re trying to save their failed and shattered argument. I’m all too familiar with their every point and reasoning, I know exactly where they are coming from and why they feel and think the way they do. Their main problem is, and I’ve said this before, they’re intelligent enough to absorb everything they’re taught but they’re not intelligent enough to question everything they’re taught. And what they’re being taught by their professors, the mainstream media, social media, websites, politicians, entertainers etc is all cut from the same cloth, there is only one acceptable opinion to have and they are completely unwilling to question it or allow any opposition to it. They do this because the entire framework of their ideology and logic is built on manipulating our emotions and making us feel ashamed of ourselves if we don’t support them, they don’t have a leg to stand on the moment any kind of factual rationale comes into the discussion. 

When Michael Brown got shot by the police officer, automatically it was because of racism, it was because of oppression, fuck cops, fuck white people and because of this they said blacks were justified to riot, loot and destroy their town. Let’s ignore the fact that Michael Brown had just robbed a store which is why he was stopped to begin with, let’s ignore the fact that he attacked the police officer and tried taking the officer’s gun, let’s ignore the fact that he never had his hands up and he was charging at the officer, let’s ignore the fact that witnesses (black witnesses I must add) and ballistics, autopsy and crime scene reports and analyses without a doubt prove this account. But if you dare to even acknowledge these facts, then you are a racist Nazi who supports black people being shot. This is the way they work. If you’re against the ideas and actions of BLM, you’re a racist. If you’re against the ideas and actions of feminism, you’re a sexist misogynist. If you’re against the ideas and actions of Islam, you’re Islamophobic. It’s black and white to them. Even when you’re a black person, a woman or a Muslim who speaks out against them, then you’re a race traitor, a gender traitor, an uncle tom, a sellout or heretic/apostate. 

I’ve never encountered anyone who is so giddy about their hatred of other people than those within these social justice communities and it took me a long time to realize this and think to myself, ‘holy fucking shit I’m part of something extremely violent and hateful here.’ These are people who on a regular basis call for violence and genocide against “oppressors” - whether it’s white people, men, republicans, heterosexual people, thin people or just anyone who even slightly disagrees with them as they believe it’s for “the greater good” and they’re on the right side of history. Just like any other hate group, they have to create an enemy, one that they insist is hellbent on killing them so they can justify their own violence and hatred against anyone who is associated with “the enemy” as being self defence or morally inclined. “Social justice” has proven itself to be a dangerously authoritarian ideology that advocates the exact opposite of what its namesake describes, the same applies for social justice groups such as feminism and black lives matter. 

Anyone who has dedicated themselves to these movements, only to find out that their whole foundation is created with mythical injustices and fictional statistics to pull on your heartstrings and get you on their side, that you’ve been lied to and manipulated this whole time, like you I felt betrayed and that’s why it’s important to me to get this information and the truth out there. It’s not to make people agree with me or to get them on my side, it’s to provide another perspective and argument that is usually banned from publicly being expressed in the hope that people will actually start questioning what they are being taught and go research and look into it themselves and come to their own conclusion instead of just mindlessly believing what’s being spilled into the mainstream and reacting violently and outrageously to something that is likely to be entirely fictionalized or manipulated. 

[brothermouzongaming]

Loot Boxes!!

I wanted to talk about them. 

Battlefield 1, FIFA, Killing Floor 2, Destiny 2, Shadow of War, and CoD: Infinite Warfare were just the ones that I played. I must say, that personally, I believe these methods of monetization are a terrible business practice. I think it encourages lazy game design, it’s the exact opposite of consumer-friendly (in most if not all cases), and generally steers the way games are made to a heartless money driven scheme. Unfortunately, it’s clear that what originally started as a free-to-play staple is now leaking into our AAA titles. On top of it all, it’s being backed by the industry’s biggest publishers. The scariest thing about it all is, to me at least, it happened almost overnight. I’m gonna talk about the games listed above and the way they implemented loot boxes into their game. Some are alright, some are offensive, but I wanted to give a sense of range because the bottom line is: it can be done right but publishers and developers have to want to do it right. 

Battlefield 1: I wanted to start with what I found to be the least egregious and antagonistic approach to the loot box system. Funny enough, a game by EA, and in retrospect, it was very much the clouds on the horizon so-to-speak. As far as I’m aware, this is the earliest game with the monetization mechanic in place as far as this publisher is concerned (outside of FIFA who have been getting shafted for years). Battlefield 1 was overall much much better than 4, I didn’t even bother on Hardline I just couldn’t. From single player to online, it was a more cohesive experience that really doesn’t drop off or feel hollow. It was so good they reined in CoD from the super sci-fi shooter look they were pounding into the ground for the last couple games. I got online for the first couple matches and noticed something different. I wasn’t grinding for the guns I wanted, I was kind of hoping for them after I opened these boxes. I didn’t always get one or have enough of the currency to get one. I did, however, typically earn one in two or so matches. I didn’t even know that what I was dealing with were loot boxes. I didn’t play Overwatch and I didn’t touch FIFA Ultimate Team in the 4 years I’ve been playing. This concept was foreign to me. All that said, I wasn’t mad at this strange new system I was encountering, it was definitely more of a drip feed but nothing anger-inducing. I had no idea about the tsunami of oncoming games in 2017 that would lean hard on the virtual slot machine. If anything my only question is why didn’t they go with this model for Battlefront 2? Why push the envelope when there was little to no outrage or backlash from the major release Battlefield 1 featuring such a new and potentially devious means of endgame material. This is without a doubt the best way of enforcing a loot box system by the people who royally fucked up enforcing a loot box system. I guess they saw what Battlefield 1 did and just couldn’t resist. 

FIFA: I love soccer, there is something intangible that electrifies my senses and invigorates the competitor in me. Basketball is my first love but its something special when you think you have it all figured out and a sport comes and knocks you on your ass. FIFA was like playing 2k for the first time all over again, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been chasing that dragon ever since. The level of control you are given once the finer mechanics are mastered is damn near seamless. At times, FIFA truly is the pinnacle of sports simulation so pure and elating that it transcends it’s staggering sales numbers. I say this because the soft and playful tickle that is the gameplay is quickly followed by a cold hard smack when you pop open Ultimate Team. Gain coins through playing games, coins are earned to purchase packs; packs get you different tiers of players. See where I’m going with this? Coins are your only means of buying everything actually, players, contract cards to keep your players/managers, training cards, and essentially anything your team is going to need to keep kicking. People can only play so many games of FIFA, I’m pretty sure I’m addicted and I can only play so many games. So coins go fast, needless to say, fortunately, you can purchase FIFA points in varying quantities. These packs are completely randomized. On top of that, the tier system is wildly skewed toward players you don’t need/could possibly want, even top-tier gold packs. Don’t even get me started on the player controlled auction hell that is the transfer market. On your best match, you get 1,000 coins; a player like Pogba (my favorite) can go for 600,000 coins and up. It’s an absolute mess and countless players like me are left powerless to the FIFA gods who have accrued literal fortunes worth of coins via their immense prowess and domination on the field. I understand and appreciate skill being rewarded but there is no point where I can hope to get that many coins and average but avid gamers like myself (c wut i did therr) that dedicate their time deserve to be rewarded in some way. The pack system for random players from a database containing thousands is beyond underhanded. It’s downright malevolent, and leaving players to the whim of a cruel and greedy market isn’t encouraging in the slightest. I doubt EA will take any charge in this department but who knows. 

Killing Floor 2: Ya know what grinds the everloving fuck out of my gears? Genuinely fun games that get in their own way by putting systems in place that discourage and push the player away from the game itself. Killing Floor 2 is this, and it’s pretty heartbreaking. At its core, it’s a better zombies horde mode than CoD the franchise that popularized it. To me, the key is in the classes every player is forced to pick between, a role to play in this session. Snipers sit back and pick off the stragglers, Beserkers run through crowds of Zeds like madmen clubbing everything in sight, SWAT (rEpRESenT!!!) covers the crowd in a mist of bullets. Those are just 3 of the 10, each class having a target priority tree that gives the player a good sense of identity. All while allowing the player to be the Zed slaying machine they please. Where this game slips and is thusly consumed by the creatures dawning the cover, is its loot box system. On the surface, it’s the ideal version of this unfortunate reality in only offering cosmetic prizes (helmets, weapon skins, emotes, etc). What blows harder than John Coltrane in an iron lung is the fact that keys need to be purchased in order to open said crates. 3.00 bucks a key to be specific. This quickly stacks once you play any substantial amount of games required to advance your various classes through their perk trees. Instead of working it into the game itself, through kill-specific challenges or even prizes to draw players to the underwhelming competitive multiplayer. As a party game, it’s great to grab friends and whip out wave after wave of Zeds. However, once you start to invest real time, that is when you get shafted by the game creators for bothering to do so. Another example of how these loot boxes are keeping games from being as good as they could and arguably should be. 

CoD Infinite Warfare: What a fucking mess this game was, lord. The story was bland and felt like I was playing Titanfalls annoying younger brother. It is no longer the well-crafted war story that consistently beat out whatever Hollywood blockbuster was out that year. Not even Infinity Ward could save this thing, and on top of it all, the multiplayer was a pay-to-win shit show with no semblance of pride or shame whatsoever. As if that wasn’t enough, the mod and weapon system itself was a convoluted tree of guns I didn’t want or care to see if I wanted. CoD definitely seemed to pivot even more toward the casual audience with their focus on bs cosmetics that varied from the obnoxious to the pointless. At least those were free I guess...? This to me is another large rock on the long fall down the mountain, oh how the mighty have fallen. 

Shadow of War: I’m convinced publishers and developers don’t care about themselves, they would rather make money now and lose money in the longrun than make something worthwhile and make money because the game is good. I really don’t get it. Look at Shadow of Mordor, it was the surprise hit of the year if you ask me. I wasn’t expecting much if anything out of that game let alone it be one of the better games of that year. Ride the momentum and use it to propel yourself into an amazing sequel? Watch what the competition and other developers are doing to avoid their mistakes? Not force loot boxes into a game that has less than no business using them? No, no to all of them and fuck you for thinking such logical thoughts. SoW barely adds on to a game that was riding off the backs of others to begin with. What great changes they made like the additions to the upgradable skills and deeper nemesis system were greatly overshadowed by repetitive gameplay and the unnaturally imposed loot boxes. Turning the Orcs we were having fun interacting with and meeting in the game world into these little sprites after our pennies. The world is vast, combat is varying depending on the skills you choose, and it even manages to recapture that magic the first game did as far as specific Orcs becoming special to us as players. It’s the strong-arming of these loot boxes that really holds this game back because again: these orcs could be in the world giving us hours more of game to play and maybe even more varied ways to interact with them. 

Destiny 2: Laziness at its finest could be the tagline for this game. I won’t say that it is the use of loot boxes that ruin this game but lord is it one more thing on a mountain of complaints that I and those that remain in the Destiny community have. Eververse is upsetting, especially when it comes from a developer so well known for developing good content. This was their first step into the next gen with Destiny and it had a lot of potential. This time around it is all too dependent on its monetization scheme. Loot that could be used to entice players to spend time in the game world is instead hidden behind “engrams” players earn over time. Or they can spend their money on silver to earn even more of those loot boxes than the one that’s allocated for every level gained. With a game so dependant on online play, this mmo lite is falling short the one way an mmo-esque game can’t and that’s endgame. Literally, all Bungie has to do is remove Eververse and put these items in the world for us to earn and grind for. Which would bide them time to work on the upcoming expansions (if Curse of Osiris is any indication). I want Bungie to step up, I want Destiny 2 to succeed and help start something special in gaming. Right now it is just following in the footsteps of every money hungry triple A title that came out last year. Lately it seems Bungie can’t help themselves especially in the face of constant fan backlash involving the virtual market. Now with the new faction rally they throttled the tokens, only to offer a ghost shell in Eververse that grants you more tokens. Realy shady shit Bungie, cut it out, before you find yourself on the wrong end of a revolt.