#but with a gun for if you try to dehumanise either of those

[britcision]

It’s just another dehumanizing tactic along with the “aro/ace robots/aliens” bullshit and I have no patience left for it

It falls apart at a single question: why not?

Why not ship aro/ace characters?

“Because no aro/ace person would” BZZT nope not a monolith, aro/ace folks just so happen to be humans just like you with our own personalities, wants, and needs

“Because shipping has to involve traditional romance/sex” does it? Why? Because you only value those kinds of relationships? Sounds like a personal problem, you should work on it

“Because I’m not comfortable seeing that character shipped” well then don’t ship them sugar, but you don’t get to make that choice for anyone else. Don’t like don’t read

“Because who would date an aro/ace person” just gonna leave you to think about this one because I’ve seen it a couple times and it’s the quiet part said out loud

You are not, have never been, and will never be entitled to control how other people interact with a character. You don’t have to like it or look at it, but you cannot demand they change it.

I have zero patience left for this especially from other aroace folks because an aro friend very recently decided they’re also ace, and are playing an aroace character in our dnd game

They have since been making extremely confident statements like “oh I know that can’t be (ranger)’s love interest cuz she’s aroace she can’t have one”

To me. Who has been out aroace for years. And my partner. Who has been out aroace for longer.

But I like them, so I’ll gently remind them who tf they’re talking to

Random internet strangers are throwing themselves on the mercy of my mood that day if they need to be reminded that “your personal experiences are not universal actually”

I’m not less aromantic because I have formed a committed, dedicated relationship with someone I love outside of the bounds of traditional romance

I’m not less asexual because I’m extremely sex and kink positive and think everyone should have precisely as much sex as they want, including none

And I will step directly over your body on my way to “all aro/aces are people and worthy of love and respect in the ways that they specifically are comfortable with, with the compromises that come with Literally Any Relationship Of Any Type Whatsoever”

You don’t get a world that values more than just romantic love and qpps and loving relationships of every type by trying to lock anyone out of human connections

I don’t expect aphobes to know this because they’re usually the idiots who think only romantic relationships matter, but if you’re stepping into this identity boat with me you’re damn well gonna unlearn their nonsense asap

There’s enough of it on the outside

Even if you personally hella identify with the robot/zero feelings stereotype, you’re not pushing it on anyone but yourself

not the non from this post [709482568399110146] but as an aspec person people saying that aro/ace characters shouldn't be shipped pisses me off. Saying aspec people can't participate in relationships is like saying a colorblind person can't wear a tie dye shirt. Like sure, we experience them differently, but there's no reason to ban us from participating. Adults who experience attraction differently (or not at all) are not children. We have agency.

--

[five-one-two-station]

Everybody should have their own fun, and this isn't trying to harsh anybody's buzz, but I find the impulse to make your own cutesy/badass Replika oc doing funny or heroic or badass things a little odd. Like, that character you designed as a super badass soldier, or well-armed and armored steely eyed cop type... who would they have been built to fight or police exactly? Remember who all those guns and weapons were intended for use on?

I know we're all sick of discourse over who "gets" the game, and I'm by no means scolding anybody for something that harmless, but what's interesting to me is the sense that designing overtly "cool" Replika personas and OCs, complete with the propaganda poster style imagery, feels a little...

I mean, bluntly, it's like the in-world propaganda worked, unironically, on some level, for many people. Kolibris aren't scary, they're whimsical and fun! Storches aren't notably cruel enforcers and chain gang drivers, they're Protektors! Falke isn't a camp commandant, she's a beautiful angel!

The Replikas aren't cool and heroic figures in the reality of the game. They're the carefully crafted organs of a system of control so dreadful it could do what it did to Elster and Ariane. They're victims to that system themselves too, sure - and humanising them is a nuanced and valuable observation of how totalitarian regimes maintain themselves - but that doesn't negate the fact they're also the ones who operate, enforce and perpetuate it, a big part of what the game knows and communicates about such societies. It's notable that the game makes it clear few, if any, of the Replikas actually buy into the Nation as an ideal at all - they enforce it no less pitilessly anyway, incapable or unsafe to imagine anything else.

Their affectations, pasttimes, trinkets, and even affections for each other, all serve to draw a stark contrast to how callously they regard the gestalts they keep suppressed. Their disposability is something they're conscious and fearful of themselves, but fail to recognise as a commonality with the people they brutalise every day, their business as usual. The only grief, tragedy or suffering they acknowledge is their own - they have no regard for any such things in the humans they have... well, dehumanised.

But S-23 Sierpinski was such a hellhole for most of its denizens under "normal" conditions that the nightmare it becomes is arguably an improvement; if only because there are fewer people left now to suffer it. There's a dark poetry here - because the place's banal cruelty is "off camera" to us, it's very naturally less real to us than the grief of the crying Eule. It's only natural, too, to forget how grim the Replikas' purposes are when you don't have to see anyone endure the brunt of it.

And isn't that the very same effect a state like the Nation is seeking in the first place, by disappearing people away to such dark little corners to have it done? In our world, no less than that one.

That works like a kind of propaganda too, not being able to see it - a propaganda of hidden things, as powerful as any poster. A space that's been intentionally left blank.

Kolibris are literal thought police; they intrude on people's very minds, interrogating them to death as a matter of course, with hardly a care either way. The various Protektor classes are functionally concentration camp guards and slave drivers. Falke and Adler are overseeing what amounts to a gulag, one so unimaginably awful Ariane preferred to spend years of her life alone in space to the prospect of being sent there, and inevitably worked to death, far underground.

I think there's a reason we never see one of those posters for LSTRs in game. How could we be asked to forgive our own if we ever did?

[thenugking]

Grand Academy For Future Villains II: Attack of the Sequel, Chapter 0: Prologue. A commentary for Three.

Like Maedryn in this chapter, I am also back on my bullshit.

General CW for the whole thing: parental abuse, internalised dehumanisation as a trauma response. Three’s not doing well. They’re doing worse than usual in this specific chapter.

Game 1

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9

Alternatively, read on Google Docs here

***

That would explain the swarms of clones, you think dimly through the haze of the flashback, but not why they're me….

No. You hadn't been a mindless copy at all. You had been disappointingly independent, an individual in your own right, so instead of simply recycling you as perhaps she should have, Maedryn had raised you like her own child. Of course, you were still intended as a tool to carry out her grand designs; what kind of villain would she have been if she had simply loved and cherished you?

Professor Cerebrist had wanted your mother's replication technology for himself. When you, the living prototype of your mother's early research, showed up in his freshman Evil Genius 101 class, he saw his opportunity. In your first year at the Academy, you found yourself as the battleground in the war between your mother and her mentor. Even though it never came down to a fight between you, your loyalties were tested.

In the chaos of the battle between the rebel faculty, the attacking heroes, and the beleaguered Grand Academy administration, you'd called on your mother for help, and she'd come through. She'd defeated the Professor and taken his place.

Clearly your mother has finally perfected her replication technology and taken the place of her former mentor. But if she already has everything she wanted…why has she unleashed swarms of mindless yous upon the Academy?

It’s… not a great start to Three’s sophomore year. They weren’t looking forward to having their mother on campus in the first place, but they'd hoped she would wait at least a little while before getting back on her bullshit. (Not that that’s a phrase they’d ever use, having only heard it in the context of Scorpius informing them that ze’s very sadly back on zir bullshit, before throwing a box of scorpions at them and running off before Three could ask what ze was talking about. But Maedryn is, unfortunately, very much back on her bullshit here.)

They don’t know what she’s doing with the clones, but right now, that’s not as big of a concern as the fact that the clones are here at all. Looking like Three. And making person-like screams. And probably getting their outfits and hair messy. In public. Three is… somewhat disgruntled that after all the effort they’ve put in to turning themself into a tool, erasing any displays of personhood and imperfection, Maedryn would simply create some new tools that don’t bother with any of that at all. But which still let other people see Three as a messy, screaming person.

The very noticeable, very public appearance isn’t helpful for Three’s desire to remain unnoticed and not draw attention to themself, either. It’s an interesting paradox; they can blend into the janitorial staff perfectly, but they stick out as The Student Who Looks Like All The Clone Janitors. There’s a similar thing going on with their name, actually. They like having a name that suggests a lack of personhood, but it does have the unfortunate side effect of having people consider it  odd, unique and even memorable.

...That first explanatory paragraph up there is spot-on Three characterisation though. 

#"But what an impressive job you've done of it! I'm so proud you're my mother!"

She looks at you critically. "A bit grovelly, but appropriate; it was and you should be."

Three’s probably not quite this grovelly. Apart from disliking the exuberance of the exclamation marks, they’ve had nineteen years to learn to measure quite how much grovelling Maedryn likes. But a little grovelling in this situation is only appropriate, particularly when they’re not certain exactly what she might have read from their thoughts on the flashback gun.

"Some of you may remember," says the Head, in ponderous tones, "the attempted establishment of a second and rival school on our campus last year, calling itself the Polytechnic Institute for Antagonism and Moral Complexity. This institution is hereby forcibly dissolved, thanks to the clone armies contributed by our loyal faculty. There is but one school on this campus, and it will tolerate no challenge, share no power, and show no mercy!"

The judgment of the remnant of the ill-fated Polytechnic Institute for Antagonism and Moral Complexity is summary, arbitrary, and surprisingly creative. The fates of the rebel faculty, announced and executed by DarkBoard, range from "Probation, with Extra Probes" for Professor Ulik, to "Dismissal Before Expiration of Contract" for the senior Professor Dethclot, to "Disciplinary Suspension" for the ringleader, Professor Mortwain. This last didn't sound so bad, until you see that it involves being suspended in a vat of clear Jell-O and set on the plinth in the courtyard as a warning to traitors.

The rebel students are all expelled, which is to say they are one by one dropped through a trapdoor in the floor. Presumably it ends up somewhere in the dungeons, but the geography of the Grand Academy is dubious at the best of times, and you figure they're lucky if they end up somewhere with a breathable atmosphere and not floating in the void.

Three thought they’d long grown out of feeling sorry and disappointed for idealists who tried to act against their mother. Of course, they hadn’t known Maedryn had cared about the Polytechnic Institute for Antagonism and Moral Complexity, but on reflection, they don’t know why they ever expected the School Head to have any more mercy than Maedryn had. It’s unexpected and unpleasant, having these feelings come up again, and there’s a deeper despair they’re not sure they remember feeling before.

They could have been part of the Professor Mortwain’s Institute. They’d thought before this that they should have been. It was only cowardness that stopped them. But they’ve known all along that going against authority never ends well. This just shows they were right. This just proves any ideas they had about standing for their own beliefs in future were foolish and naive, and they knew better than Mortwain and Ulik and Phil and everyone else in the firing line now. So why do they still feel like they should be standing there with them?

"That," the School Head tells the surviving students and staff, "was a Refreshing Display of School Spirit."

It casts its gaze about the hall. Then those eyes land directly on you. "Are there any remaining students in this body," it says, "that we should know about, that participated in activities unbecoming the Grand Academy for Future Villains?"

You scan the hall, trying to find someone to betray. Not Rathna, you were known to be enemies. Not Miriel the Bloodshrike, you actually like her. Not Aurion either, the Head is known to favor him.

There. Leaning back in his chair, you spot the perfect mark. Phil, a casual friend from last year. Permanent upperclassman, villainous slacker, and known supporter of the rebel college, insofar as he could be bothered to support anything at all. 

The Head's baleful gaze has not left you. It's waiting.

Seriously, why am I being told I’m enemies with Rathna now? And that I like Miriel? Anyway, Three doesn’t particularly want to betray anyone. Certainly not Aurion, their Not Best Friend, or Rathna, who they get along well with, and turning on anyone from the Shadow Council could be dangerous. But with the Head looking right at them, betraying someone else might be the only way to keep themself safe. A few months ago, they wouldn’t have hesitated before giving Phil up; they’d thought he was too lazy and useless to deserve a place here anyway. Then he’d beaten them, and shown a commitment to his cause Three wished they could have, and inspired them to do better. Which obviously, in the end, was a bad decision on Phil’s part and got neither of them anywhere.

#Say nothing and hope no one notices.

You can't bear to betray him. However, your mother—despite the effort of controlling all the replicas in the room—notices your hesitation, and intervenes. Phil isn't any help. He doesn't put up a fight, doesn't even really seem to notice what's happening until he's hauled off to the trapdoor by two of your blank-faced replicas.

You think you hear him call your name. "What are you—" You shift guiltily in your seat, but he's addressing the clones.

Did he even notice that they weren't you? Did he even care that there were suddenly swarms of you when last year there'd been only one? Hurtful. He deserves whatever he's going to get. Or so you tell yourself as the trapdoor closes with a final clang.

Three doesn’t really feel hurt (at least not by Phil). After all, why shouldn’t he think the clones are controlled by them? Or that Three’s at least part of the dissolution of the Polytechnic Institute for Antagonism and Moral Complexity? They were working with the School Head to stop it last year, and they’re sitting with Maedryn now. And they never thanked him for what he did. And they never apologised.

Three doesn’t have many thoughts on the rest of the announcements, mostly because they’re dissociating during them. Which is fine. That stops them having feelings, and tools don’t have feelings. None of the Probably Much More Useful Than Three Is clones have feelings. Does Maedryn even need them for anything now she has the clones?

It’s not going to be a good year for Three.

[theassassinscape]

*Insert good title* We're Home

Hi all!! So, um, first thing I've written, had an idea for this for a while. Hope y'all enjoy and feedback is appreciated!!

Language, angst and fluff if you look hard enough. 2,153 words, I went all out.

Bucky Barnes X mutant!reader

(I don't know man ❤️ italics are flashbacks)

"I think I'll do it." Bucky said, his hand holding his glass of whiskey so hard his knuckles turned white.

"Go on, she looks like she's about to leave," Steve encouraged, looking over to you, "I think it's worth a shot." He said, while taking an actual shot. Bucky never understood why they'd go out drinking. It's not like they could get drunk from everyday alcohol; the only time they'd succeed in doing so was when Thor had the Asgardian Liquor on him, and after Thanos was gone and Loki was back, he had recovered and barely touched alcohol. So the duo weren't too familiar with the feeling.

"I can't. Look at her. She could break my arm in 12 different places while still looking angelic," Bucky groaned, turning back around to face the bar, downing the rest of the whiskey. "I can't."

"Maybe if you say that to her she'll give you a chance? C'mon Buck, you barely go out, you need to give it a try!" Steve exclaimed, patting Bucky's shoulder. It made him sad; even though most of Bucky had returned, he wasn't fully here yet. It looks like he forgot how to have fun like he had in the 40's.

After ordering two more whiskey's Bucky finally plucked the courage to stand up and walk over to you. He locked eyes on you like you were a target, and squeezed between sweaty, dancing bodies, heart hammering in his chest as he got closer. What if you thought he was a creep? Just another guy trying to approach you? He was certain others had their eyes on you the entire night. But one thing he had noticed, is that your booth was entirely empty, and no one dared come close to it, except the barman bringing you your drinks. His train of thought had brought him right to your table without him noticing.

"Can I help you?" God, your voice was melodic. Charming and a little bit hoarse, like you've been speaking all night, yet soft. Bucky couldn't describe it. He could listen to it all night.

"Umm... I, uh, jus-"

"Not today, Barnes."

Bucky's eyes widened. You knew him? Oh God, what if you knew him as the Winter Soldier? As the monster he was? What if he had gotten into trouble somewhere that he doesn't know about?

"I-I'm sorry?" Bucky stammered,

"You should be." You said, crossing your arms and leaning back into the cushioning of the booth. Bucky couldn't help staring. "You left me at the funfair, you bastard."

The amount of confusion that had clouded Bucky's mind was overwhelming. He did not remember a single mission where his target was at a fair, nor does he remember a girl as beautiful as the one before him. Maybe one, but the image was blurry.

"Sit." You ordered. You could see him searching, eyes wide and panicking. You wanted to investigate if he remembers you or not before you revealed yourself. You wanted to make him wait, like he made you at the fair.

He sat down immediately, stiffly and clearly uncomfortably, but his eyes never changed the panic they showed.

"How's Stevie?" You asked without looking at him, your golden dress hiking up as you stood up to pick up the drink the barman brought over. Bucky gulped louder than he had thought.

"Is he here?" You mumbled into your drink as it neared your lips, eyes still not meeting his, even though you could feel his burning stare on your face, trying to figure you out. The noise seemed to die out; it was deafening to Bucky while he was at the bar with Steve, thanks to his enhanced hearing, but with her it all seemed to fade away. His focus was only on her.

He gulped again, "Yeah, he's at the bar."

"Why didn't you bring him over? I bet he would've recognised an old friend straight away," you said, gently placing your glass on the mahogany table. Your fingers began tracing the edge, eyes still not meeting Bucky's. It drove him crazy.

"Old friend?" He dared to scoot closer to you, leaning his flesh arm on the table and covering his metal hand. "What's your name?"

And then you looked at him, and you both said the same thing, "Y/N."

His breath had stopped in his throat. His jaw clenched, and eyes widened. It couldn't be true. Someone was messing with his head again. You're not here. The love of his life is not here.

"C'mon Buck! I wanna go on that one!" You had pointed to the tallest Ferris wheel Bucky had ever seen. Even the brave Steve Rogers would shake in his boots at the sight of it.

"Ooor we could just stay here, doll," Bucky pulled you back into his chest, ocean eyes adoring your enchanting y/e/c ones. "I could stare at you all night. I could spend the whole night with you here, sugar." Bucky said, grabbing your jaw gently, lips getting dangerously close to yours. Your hands had travelled to his chest, to his neck, through his soft, chestnut hair, until you had knocked his cap down to cover his eyes.

"You can stare at me all you want when we're on the wheel, Sarge," you giggled, fixing the collar of his uniform, "and if you're lucky, you'll spend the entire night with me too," you had poked his nose playfully, bouncing away like a child towards the ride.

He couldn't believe he was lucky enough to have you. All his. The woman he was gonna marry, the one he was gonna show off to his ma, to Steve, to the whole world. You had such a presence; no-one dared mess with you, you stood your ground and was always so painfully honest, but you were caring, loving and sweet, and so, so beautiful. Bucky would never believe he deserved you, no matter how many times you'd tell him he deserves even more.

That's when he saw Steve wonder into another army enlistment tent. He looked at you once more, to know where to find you, and walked over to Steve. He was measuring himself again, and finding he was a whole foot and a half too short. It almost made Bucky angry. Bucky would much rather be able to stay here, with you, and not fight in this damned war, like Steve could stay. But he couldn't be mad. Never.

"No."

"Yes."

He let out a breath, "no."

"What is it, Barnes?" Your question almost sounded like a growl, your stance immediately changing, like you were about to fight him.

"You can't be here. You can't, you're messing with me..." Bucky had covered his face with his hands. Had he drunk too much? No, that wasn't it. Someone was playing a cruel joke on him.

"I'm here Barnes, we've got some explaining to do."

"Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"This! You're messing with my head! Get out!" He had looked up, hands shaking, eyes glossy.

"I ain't going nowhere. This is my bar."

You had patiently waited. 5 minutes. 10 minutes. 15. Bucky still hasn't gotten back. You saw him follow Steve into another army enlistment unit. You were happy he was helping out his friend, but a little upset that he abandoned you on what could be your last date. At least before he came back.

"Y/N Y/L/N, correct?" A man in a dark, green suit had approached you. He was quite handsome, a dark stubble decorated his face, brown eyes darker than the night. He was nowhere near as handsome as Bucky though. Your Bucky.

"Yes, who's askin'?" You turned to him fully, crossing your arms before you.

"Hm, sassy for a mutant. You'll be useful."

You felt your heart in your throat. How did he know? You morphed your fingers into knives and held them to his throat discretely, fully aware that you were in a queue where you could get in plenty of trouble.

"I don't know who you are or how you know, but if you speak a word of this to anyone and you'll be my next fucking meal, you understand?" You whispered, eyes searching his.

"Or you'll be mine." He smirked at the needle in your arm, injecting a substance that looked like liquid metal. Your last thought before you fell into the man's arms was Where's Bucky?

You had destroyed half the Hydra facility within the first couple of hours being there. Turned into a mammoth and wrecked a lab, or a swarm of hornets and stung the lab workers until they were a pile of blisters. You had turned your fist into vibranium in order to break the glass that they had surrounded you with. All to no use. They always found a way of injecting you with that shit, and you’d always find yourself either on a bed or with a chair, strange machinery attached to your face. Within the thousands of years that you’ve been alive you’ve never felt so useless, so helpless. You only hoped you got to see Bucky again soon.

And you had. 1962. He looked horrible. He was covered head to toe in weaponry. And he didn’t recognise you. He wasn’t Bucky. He was the Winter Soldier. The thing that Hydra wanted to make you into but failed miserably. So they got the thing closest to you. They dehumanised the thing that made you feel most human. Was it to get back at you? You’d never know. But what you did know now was why you couldn’t find Bucky or his corpse after his 'death'. To say it had broke you was nothing. It destroyed you. Dr Zola was lucky he had put himself into those fucking computers because you couldn’t have ripped him apart any more for it. But that didn’t make any difference. Bucky wasn’t there anymore.

If only you two hadn’t wondered off at that funfair.

You had told each other everything in the backroom behind the bar. His eyes were filled with tears, and yours were no different. You had sat in your chair, while he on the sofa. This was the first time you’ve been this close in over 70 years. The first time you saw Bucky as Bucky, not as the Winter Soldier.

“So now you own bars across the world and work with drugs, guns, money and intergalactic businesses? Stop shitting me.”

“And you feed goats in a 'Third-world' country after making yourself into a ghost story?” you had mocked by making speech marks in the air.

“Sounds better.”

“You just fought a massive space grape, you think I’m shitting you?” you had asked, tears disappearing and eyes filled with anger instead.

“Why didn’t you help? If you have so much power, why didn’t you help? When we got dusted? When we were fighting?”

“I got dusted too, Barnes! And it wasn’t as quick! I didn’t get dusted fully until three years after it! Three. Fucking. Years, Barnes! And you think that army was all that Thanos had? I lost hundreds of soldiers trying to stop those ships! I lost friends Barnes!” the tears we’re back in your eyes

“I lost friends too!” Bucky cried, pointing at you

“Oh, as if you had any friends apart from Steve!” you had slumped back into your chair, glaring at him.

Bucky's head dropped. He blamed you. He blamed himself. Himself more. He didn’t look for you hard enough. Not during the war. Not after he got out of cryo. He was afraid, and still so in love with you. He had prayed every time when the brainwashed him that he’d remember you. Your smile. Your eyes, your hair, your laugh. But you weren’t there.

“I had Sam.” He whimpered.

“Wilson?” you asked. He came here sometimes. Always left with a girl. He seemed lonely.

“Yeah. And Nat.”

“Oh.” You knew who she was. Not only did you try bribing the Red Room into handing over a couple of the best girls they had to you, but you also trained some. One of them was Romanoff. Plus, she had a past with The Winter Soldier. And you made sure you knew everything you could. That shut you up a bit.

“I missed you,” Bucky looked up at you, eyes puffy, red and swollen, cheeks wet with tears. Your heart broke.

“I missed you too.” You had walked over to him and knelt before him, grabbing his hands with your left one and wiping tears from his face with your right. You felt so bad at that moment. Memories and feelings you’ve pressed down for so long resurfacing. You felt horrible.

“I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.” You whispered, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. “Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive, doll,” he smiled, more tears spilling down his cheeks. Oh, how you missed that smile. “We’re home.”

Let me know if you enjoyed it and what I can improve!!

[the-desolated-quill]

Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2018

Congratulations dear reader. You survived 2018. And you know what that means. It’s time for another best of/worst of list. Welcome to Quill’s Swill 2018. A giant septic tank for the various shit the entertainment industry produced over the course of the year. The films, games, TV shows and various other media that got on my bad side. As always please bear in mind that this is only my subjective opinion (if you happen to like any of the things on this list, good for you. I’m glad someone did) and that obviously I haven’t seen everything 2018 has to offer for one reason or another. In other words, sorry that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald isn’t on here. I’m sure it is as terrible as some have been suggesting. I just never got around to watching it.

Okay everyone. Grab your breathing masks and put on your rubber gloves. Let’s dive into this shit pile.

Hold The Sunset

The news that John Cleese would be returning to the world of BBC sitcoms was incredibly exciting, being a massive Fawlty Towers fan and all. Unfortunately Hold The Sunset was not quite what I had in mind. It’s one of those rare breed of situation comedies that chooses to offer no actual comedy. It’s not a sitcom. It’s a sit. Like Scrubs or The Big Bang Theory.

An elderly couple plan to elope abroad only for Alison Steadman’s son to barge in, having left his wife, and forcing them to put their plans on hold. Hence the title ‘Hold The Sunset.’ It’s like a cross between As Time Goes By and Sorry, but if all the humour and relatability were surgically removed by a deadpan mortician. The characters are weak, the plots are thin on the ground and the humour (hat little of it there is) feel incredibly dated. The middle aged mummy’s boy is something that hasn’t been funny since the 90s. It’s an utter waste of great talent and what hurts even more is that this tripe is actually getting a second series. I can only assume the people watching this are comatose. Either that or there’s an epidemic of people in Britain who have lost the remote.

Avengers: Infinity War

Yes this is one of the worst movies of 2018 and no I don’t regret saying that one little bit. Avengers: Infinity War was fucking terrible. Period. There were too many plots and characters going on, which made the film hard to follow (and what staggers me is that the so called ‘professional’ critics have condemned movies for having too many characters and plots before. Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice and even Deadpool 2. But because this is an MCU movie, it gets a free pass. Fuck off). The characterisation was weak due to sheer number of characters they try to juggle, resulting in characters coming off as one dimensional caricatures of themselves and scenes where characters such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord sound completely interchangeable. The villain, Thanos, is a stupidly and poorly written villain, but that’s hardly surprising considering what a shit job Marvel have done building him up over the course of these 20+ movies. And let’s not forget that pisstake ending. A bunch of prominent Marvel characters die and it’s all very, very sad... except all these characters just so happen to have sequels planned, which makes this ending fucking pointless and have less impact than a feather on a bouncy castle.

I don’t know which is more shocking. That Marvel and Disney think their audience are that stupid and gullible, or that their audience are actually validating their view. Fuck you Disney.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

I’ve always wanted a Harry Potter RPG, where you could customise your character, choose your house and actually live a full school life at Hogwarts. This year, Warner Bros and Jam City gave us just that.

That was a mistake.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with the mobile gaming market right now. The gameplay is boring and involving where you just tap images on a screen until a progress bar fills up. Wizard duels are little more than rock-paper-scissors challenges that require no kind of skill. Bonding with friends and caring for magical creatures just consist of pathetically simple pop quizzes and yet more boring tapping. Oh and of course you only get a certain amount of energy to complete these tedious tasks. If you run out of energy, you wait for it to fill up... or pay up for the privilege. So determined are they to extract your hard earned cash from your wallet, there’s actually a bit where Devil’s Snare strangles your eleven year old avatar and the game effectively tries to guilt trip you into paying micro-transactions to save them. It’s sleazy, gross and manipulative. Honestly, you’re better off just playing Candy Crush.

Agony

When the developers of this game said they wanted to give the player a trip through Hell, they had no idea how true that statement really was. Agony is dreadful on a number of levels. The design for Hell itself, while visually interesting at times, is often not very practical and gets quite dull and repetitive after a while. The stealth mechanics are a joke and the AI of your demonic enemies are pitiful. All of this alone would have been enough to put this game on the list, but then we also have the casual misogyny. Agony is a gorefest trying desperately to shock the player. We see men and woman get tortured, but it’s the women that often get the extreme end. The violence inflicted on them is often sexual in nature and the game seems to go out of its way to degrade and dehumanise women at every turn. The orgasmic cries of ‘pull it out’ quickly become a staple of the game’s experience as we see naked women raped, tortured and murdered, all for the purposes of ‘entertainment.’

I would call Agony sexist, but honestly that would be giving it too much credit. Agony is like a little child trying desperately to be all dark and edgy in a pathetic attempt to impress everyone around him, and we should treat it as such. Go to your room Agony. No ice cream for you.

Peter Rabbit

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of Beatrix Potter rotating in her grave.

Yes we have yet another live action/CGI hybrid, but instead of something innocuous like the Smurfs or Alvin and the Chipmunks, Sony instead decides to adapt Peter Rabbit, with James Corden in the title role.

It’s about as bad as you’d expect.

Their attempts to modernise the story are painful to say the least with pop culture references, inappropriate adult humour and twerking rabbits. Plus rather than the gentle, but slightly mischievous character we got in the source material, here Peter is a sociopathic delinquent who seems to revel in making the farmer’s life a living hell. He’s unlikable and unwatchable as far as I’m concerned and the film doesn’t in anyway earn the emotional moments it tries so desperately to sell to the audience. And the worst part is it’s getting a sequel.

Wait. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of Beatrix Potter tearing out of the ground, ready to kill whatever idiot came up with this shit.

Fallout 76

I was excited for Fallout 76. A MMORPG where players band together to rebuild society after a nuclear apocalypse. Could have been great. Pity it wasn’t.

Fallout 76 is a dreadful game. Not only is it a buggy, glitchy mess that requires a constant online connection to play, which could result in you losing hours of progress if your WiFi went down, it’s also unbelievably tedious, and that’s because there’s nothing to do in the game. There’s no other characters to interact with, the various robots and computers you come across are really little more than quest givers, there’s no actual plot so to speak, and because of the sheer size of the world and the number of players allowed on a server, the chances of you actually meeting any actual players is remote. And let’s not forget all the behind the scenes drama. Bethesda falsely advertising Fallout themed canvas bags and players getting shitty nylon ones. Bethesda accidentally releasing the account information of various players trying to get a refund for said bag. Bethesda failing to program the year 2019 into the game code, meaning that the game’s nukes don’t work.

Maybe there’s a chance that Bethesda could pull a No Man’s Sky and fix everything over the coming years with various patches and DLCs, but the damage has already been done. It’s incredibly disappointing. The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to have be fucking incredible to win everyone back.

Mama Mia!: Here We Go Again

I can’t stand jukebox musicals anyway, but Mamma Mia was always one of the worst. Its boring, meandering story with its one note, obnoxious cast of characters screeching out ABBA songs like they’re at some drunken karaoke session at some poor sod’s hen party has always grated on my nerves. So imagine my delight when they announced we were getting a sequel. Ever wondered how Meryl Streep met her three lovers and founded her hotel? No? Well tough shit, we’re going to tell you anyway.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is basically just Mamma Mia again. The actors still can’t sing, the characters are still annoying and story is still boring and meandering, completely at the mercy of the chosen songs rather than the filmmakers using the songs to compliment the story (you know? Like proper musicals do?).

How can I resist you? Very easily as it turns out. Gimme, gimme, gimme a fucking gun so I can end my misery.

The Cloverfield Paradox

A lot of people were unhappy about the direction Cloverfield was going. They wanted a continuation of the found footage, kaiju movie from 2008, not an anthology series. I was personally all in favour. Partially because I thought the first Cloverfield was a tad overrated, but mostly because I thought it would be a great opportunity for more experimental film projects and could be a great launchpad for new writers and filmmakers. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a great start. Then The Cloverfield Paradox happened.

The Cloverfield Paradox is basically JJ Abrams trying to have his cake and eat it too. Maintaining the anthology format whilst connecting everything together in a ‘shared universe’ (yes, yet another shared universe). The result was a cliched, poorly edited and idiotic mess of a film that actually took away from the previous two films rather than added to them. Everyone hated it and, as a result, 2018′s Overlord, which was totes going to be part of the Cloververse, was made its own standalone film and Abrams double pinky promised to make a true sequel to the original Cloverfield. A complete and total disaster. No wonder it was a straight-to-Netflix film.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Season 2

This is probably going to be the most controversial entry on the list, but please hear me out because I’m not the only one who has a problem with this season.

I was reluctant to watch The Handmaid’s Tale simply because of how gruesome the original book was, but I forced myself to watch the first season and I thought it was pretty good. It remained faithful to the source material for the most part and included some nice additions that helped to expand the story and mythos. If it was just a one off mini-series, everything would have been fine. But then they made the same mistake as The Man In The High Castle and Under The Dome did where they commissioned another season and attempted to tell a story that goes beyond the book.

There’s a reason why the original story ended where it did. The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t meant to be an empowering story about women sticking it to the patriarchy. It’s a cautionary tale about how fragile our civil rights truly are and how easily they can be taken away from us. It’s designed to shock, not to satisfy. So seeing a handmaid blow herself up in a suicide bombing feels very incongruous and just a little bit silly. It would be like doing a TV adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 where the first season followed the source material and then the second season turned Winston Smith into this heroic freedom fighter trying to overthrow Big Brother. It would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what the book was about in the first place.

And then of course there’s the increased level of violence in Season 2, which many have complained about. In Season 1 and the original source material, the violence was justified. In Season 2, the motivation behind the violence has gone from ‘how can we effectively demonstrate how easily a fascist patriarchy can happen in the West?’ to ‘what brutal act can we inflict upon Ofglen to shock the audience this week?’ It’s purely for shock and nothing more. And with the showrunner (who I feel I should mention is a man) announcing that he has planned ten seasons of this, it seems that The Handmaid’s Tale is going to go even further with this depravity until it effectively becomes the equivalent of a Saw film.

The Handmaid’s Tale exists as a way of shining light on and critiquing misogyny in its most extreme form. Season 2 however demonstrates that there is a serious risk of it becoming the very thing it’s criticising in the first place.

The Predator

I love the Predator franchise, but The Predator is the worst.

People thought that this would be good because director Shane Black had actually starred in the first Predator movie back in 1987. Instead we got this bloated, confusing, obnoxious and insulting mess of a film that seems to go out of its way to ruin everything that makes Predator so good. There’s no tension. No suspense. No intrigue. Just a bunch of gore, explosions and shitty one liners from annoying and lifeless characters. They essentially took this big alien game hunter from outer space and turned him into a generic monster from a bad summer blockbuster. It no longer hunts for sport. It wants to take over the world and splice our DNA with theirs. But don’t worry, a rogue Predator doesn’t want to kill humans (even though he himself kills a bunch of humans), so he gives us a Predator Iron Man suit to set up a sequel that will probably never happen because this movie was a box office bomb and it fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKEEEEEDDDD!!!

This film also has a very nasty streak towards those with disabilities. There’s a lot of jokes at the expense of a character with Tourette’s and it has an extremely ignorant and patronising view of autism, portraying the main character’s kid as being a super genius who can decipher the Predator language and even going so far as to say that he represents ‘the next stage of human evolution.’ Presumably the Predators want social communication difficulties because apparently it helps them hunt somehow.

What with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox, the future of both the Alien and Predator franchises were very much in question. This film needed to be a success in order to make a case for Disney to keep making more of them. It wasn’t. Congratulations Shane Black. You might have just killed off this franchise for good. Thanks arsehole! :D

So those were my least favourite stories from 2018. Join me on Wednesday where we shall discuss something more positive. Yes, it’s awards season. Who shall win the coveted Quill Seal Of Approval? Watch this space...

Or don’t. It’s up to you. I don’t want to force you or anything. It’s a free country.

[meeedeee]

Westworld: (De)Humanising the Other RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

Warning: total spoilers for S1 of Westworld.

Trigger warning: talk of rape, sexual assault and queer death.

Note: Throughout this review, it will be necessary to distinguish between the writers of Westworld the TV show, and the writers employed in the narrative by the titular Westworld theme park. To avoid confusing the two, when I’m referring to the show, Westworld will be italicised; when referring to the park, I’ll use plain text.

*

This will be a somewhat bifurcated review of Westworld – which is, I feel, thematically appropriate, as Westworld itself is something of a bifurcated show. Like so much produced by HBO, it boasts incredible acting, breathtaking production values, intelligent dialogue, great music and an impeccably tight, well-orchestrated series of narrative reveals. Also like much produced by HBO, it takes a liberal, one might even say cartoonishly gratuitous approach to nudity, is saturated with violence in general and violence against women in particular, and has a consistent problem with stereotyping despite its diverse casting. In Westworld’s case, this latter issue is compounded as an offence by its status as a meta-narrative: a story which actively discusses the purpose and structure of stories, but which has seemingly failed to apply those same critiques to key aspects of its own construction.

The practical upshot is that it’s both frustratingly watchable and visibly frustrating. Even when the story pissed me off, I was always compelled to keep going, but I was never quite able to stop criticising it, either. It’s a thematically meaty show, packed with the kind of twists that will, by and large, enhance viewer enjoyment on repeat viewings rather than diminish the appeal. Though there are a few Fridge Logic moments, the whole thing hangs together quite elegantly – no mean feat, given the complexity of the plotting. And yet its virtues have the paradoxical effect of making me angrier about its vices, in much the same way that I’d be more upset about red wine spilled on an expensive party dress than on my favourite t-shirt. Yes, the shirt means more to me despite being cheaper, but a stain won’t stop me from wearing it at home, and even if it did, the item itself is easily replaced. But staining something precious and expensive is frustrating: I’ve invested enough in the cost of the item that I don’t want to toss it away, but staining makes it unsuitable as a showcase piece, which means I can’t love it as much as I want to, either.

You get where I’m going with this.

Right from the outset, Westworld switches between two interconnected narratives: the behind-the-scenes power struggles of the people who run the titular themepark, and the goings-on in the park itself as experienced by both customers and ‘hosts’, the humanoid robot-AIs who act as literal NPCs in pre-structured, pay-to-participate narratives. To the customers, Westworld functions as an immersive holiday-roleplay experience: though visually indistinguishable from real humans, the hosts are considered unreal, and are therefore fair game to any sort of violence, dismissal or sexual fantasy the customers can dream up. (This despite – or at times, because of – the fact that their stated ability to pass the Turing test means their reactions to said violations are viscerally animate.) To the programmers, managers, storytellers, engineers, butchers and behaviourists who run it, Westworld is, variously, a job, an experiment, a financial gamble, a risk, a sandpit and a microcosm of human nature: the hosts might look human, but however unsettling their appearance or behaviour at times, no one is ever allowed to forget what they are.

But to the hosts themselves, Westworld is entirely real, as are their pre-programmed identities. While their existence is ostensibly circumscribed by adherence to preordained narrative ‘loops’, the repetition of their every conversation, death and bodily reconstruction wiped from their memories by the park engineers, certain hosts – notably Dolores, the rancher’s daughter, and Maeve, the bordello madame – are starting to remember their histories. Struggling to understand their occasional eerie interviews with their puppeteering masters – explained away as dreams, on the rare occasion where such explanation is warranted – they fight to break free of their intended loops, with startling consequences.But there is also a hidden layer to Westworld: a maze sought by a mysterious Man in Black and to which the various hosts and their narratives are somehow key. With the hosts exhibiting abnormal behaviour, retaining memories of their former ‘lives’ in a violent, fragmented struggle towards true autonomy, freedom and sentience, Westworld poses a single, sharp question: what does it mean to be human?

Or rather, it’s clearly trying to pose this question; and to be fair, it very nearly succeeds. But for a series so overtly concerned with its own meta – it is, after all, a story about the construction, reception and impact of stories on those who consume and construct them – it has a damnable lack of insight into the particulars of its assumed audiences, both internal and external, and to the ways this hinders the proclaimed universality of its conclusions. Specifically: Westworld is a story in which all the internal storytellers are straight white men endowed with the traditional bigotries of racism, sexism and heteronormativity, but in a context where none of those biases are overtly addressed at any narrative level.

From the outset, it’s clear that Westworld is intended as a no-holds-barred fantasy in the literal sense: a place where the rich and privileged can pay through the nose to fuck, fight and fraternise in a facsimile of the old West without putting themselves at any real physical danger. Nobody there can die: customers, unlike hosts, can’t be killed (though they do risk harm in certain contexts), but each host body and character is nonetheless resurrected, rebuilt and put back into play after they meet their end. Knowing this lends the customers a recklessness and a violence they presumably lack in the real world: hosts are shot, stabbed, raped, assaulted and abused with impunity, because their disposable inhumanity is the point of the experience. This theme is echoed in their treatment by Westworld’s human overseers, who often refer to them as ‘it’ and perform their routine examinations, interviews, repairs and updates while the hosts are naked.

At this point in time, HBO is as well-known for its obsession with full frontal, frequently orgiastic nudity as it is for its total misapprehension of the distinction between nakedness and erotica. Never before has so much skin been shown outside of literal porn with so little instinct for sensuality, sexuality or any appreciation of the human form beyond hurr durr tiddies and, ever so occasionally, hurr durr dongs, and Westworld is no exception to this. It’s like the entirety of HBO is a fourteen-year-old straight boy who’s just discovered the nascent thrill of drawing Sharpie-graffiti genitals on every available schoolyard surface and can only snigger, unrepentant and gleeful, whenever anyone asks them not to. We get it, guys – humans have tits and asses, and you’ve figured out how to show us that! Huzzah for you! Now get the fuck over your pubescent creative wankphase and please, for the love of god, figure out how to do it tastefully, or at least with some general nodding in the direction of an aesthetic other than Things I Desperately Wanted To See As A Teengaer In The Days Before Internet Porn.

That being said, I will concede that there’s an actual, meaningful reason for at least some of Westworld’s ubiquitous nudity: it’s a deliberate, visual act of dehumanisation, one intended not only to distinguish the hosts from the ‘real’ people around them, but to remind the park’s human employees that there’s no need to treat the AIs with kindness or respect. For this reason, it also lends a powerful emphasis to the moments when particular characters opt to dress or cover the hosts, thereby acknowledging their personhood, however minimally. This does not, however, excuse the sadly requisite orgy scenes, nor does it justify the frankly obscene decision to have a white female character make a leering comment about the size of a black host’s penis, and especially not when said female character has already been established as queer. (Yes, bi/pan people exist; as I have good reason to know, being one of them. But there are about nine zillion ways the writers could’ve chosen to show Elsie’s sexual appreciation for men that didn’t tap into one of the single grossest sexual tropes on the books, let alone in a context which, given the host’s blank servility and Elsie’s status as an engineer, is unpleasantly evocative of master/slave dynamics.)

And on the topic of Elsie, let’s talk about queerness in Westworld, shall we? Because let’s be real: the bar for positive queer representation on TV is so fucking low right now, it’s basically at speedbump height, and yet myriad grown-ass adults are evidently hellbent on bellyflopping onto it with all the grace and nuance of a drunk walrus. Elsie is a queer white woman whose queerness is shown to us by her decision to kiss one of the female hosts, Clementine, who’s currently deployed as a prostitute, in a context where Clementine is reduced to a literal object, stripped of all consciousness and agency. Episode 6 ends on the cliffhanger of Elsie’s probable demise, and as soon as I saw that setup, I felt as if that single, non-consensual kiss – never referenced or expanded on otherwise – had been meant as Chekov’s gaykilling gun: this woman is queer, and thus is her death predicted. (Of course she fucking dies. Of course she does. I looked it up before I watched the next episode, but I might as well have Googled whether the sun sets in the west.)

It doesn’t help that the only other queer femininity we’re shown is either pornography as wallpaper or female host prostitutes hitting on female customers; and it especially doesn’t help that, as much as HBO loves its gratuitous orgy scenes, you’ll only ever see two naked women casually getting it on in the background, never two naked men. Nor does it escape notice that the lab tech with a penchant for fucking the hosts in sleep mode is apparently a queer man, a fact which is presented as a sort of narrative reveal. The first time he’s caught in the act, we only see the host’s legs, prone and still, under his body, but later there’s a whole sequence where he takes one of the male hosts, Hector – who is, not coincidentally, a MOC, singled out for sexual misuse by at least one other character – and prepares to rape him. (It’s not actually clear in context whether the tech is planning on fucking or being fucked by Hector – not that it’s any less a violation either way, of course; I’m noting it rather because the scene itself smacks of being constructed by people without any real idea of how penetrative sex between two men works. Like, ignoring the fact that they’re in a literal glass-walled room with the tech’s eyerolling colleague right next door, Hector is sitting upright on a chair, but is also flaccid and non-responsive by virtue of being in sleep mode. So even though we get a grimly lascivious close-up of the tech squirting lube on his hand, dropping his pants and, presumably, slicking himself up, it’s not actually clear what he’s hoping to achieve prior to the merciful moment when Hector wakes up and fights him the fuck off.)

Topping off this mess is Logan, a caustic, black-hat-playing customer who, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it foursome with three host prostitutes – two female, one male – is visually implied to be queer, and who thereinafter functions, completely unnecessarily, as a depraved bisexual stereotype. And I do mean blink-and-you’ll-miss-it: I had to rewind the episode to make sure I wasn’t imagining things, but it’s definitely there, and as with Elsie kissing Clementine, it’s never referenced again. The male host is engaging only with Logan, stroking his chest as he kisses and fucks the two women; it’s about as unsexualised as sexual contact between two naked men can actually get, and yet HBO has gone to the trouble of including it, I suspect for the sole purpose of turning a bland, unoriginal character into an even grosser stereotype than he would otherwise have been while acting under the misapprehension that it would give him depth. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Logan doesn’t cease to be a cocky, punchable asshat just because you consented to put a naked white dude next to him for less time than it takes to have a really good shit; it just suggests that you, too, are a cocky, punchable asshat who should shit more in the bathroom and less on the fucking page. But I digress.

And then there’s the racism, which – and there’s no other way to put this – is presented as being an actual, intentional feature of the Westworld experience, even though it makes zero commercial sense to do this. Like. You have multiple white hosts who are programmed to make racist remarks about particular POC hosts, despite the fact that there are demonstrably POC customers paying to visit the park. You have a consistent motif of Native Americans being referred to as ‘savages’, both within Westworld-as-game and by the gamewriters themselves, with Native American mysticism being used to explain both the accidental glimpses various self-aware hosts get of the gamerunners and the in-game lore surrounding the maze. Demonstrably, the writers of Westworld are aware of this – why else is Episode 2, wherein writer character Lee Sizemore gleefully proposes a hella racist new story for the park, called ‘Chestnut’, as in old? I’ve said elsewhere that depiction is not endorsement, but it is perpetuation, and in a context where the point of Westworld as a commercial venture is demonstrably to appeal to customers of all genders, sexual orientations and races – all of whom we see in attendance – building in particular period-appropriate bigotries is utterly nonsensical.

More than this, as the openness with which the female prostitutes seduce female customers makes clear, it’s narratively inconsistent: clearly, not every bias of the era is being rigidly upheld. And yet it also makes perfect sense if you think of both Westworld and Westworld as being, predominantly, a product both created by and intended for a straight white male imagination. In text, Westworld’s stories are written by Lee and Robert, both of whom are straight white men, while Westworld itself was originally the conceit of Michael Crichton. Which isn’t to diminish the creative input of the many other people who’ve worked on the show – technically, it’s a masterclass in acting, direction, composition, music, lighting, special effects and editing, and those people deserve their props. It’s just that, in terms of narrative structure, by what I suspect is an accidental marriage of misguided purpose and unexamined habit, Westworld the series, like Westworld the park, functions primarily for a straight white male audience – and while I don’t doubt that there was some intent to critically highlight the failings of that perspective, as per the clear and very satisfying satirising of Lee Sizemore, as with Zack Snyder’s Suckerpunch and Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, the straight white male gaze is still so embedded as a lazy default that Westworld ends up amplifying its biases more often than it critiques them. (To quote something my straight white husband said while watching, “It’s my gaze, and I feel like I’m being parodied by it.”)

Though we do, as mentioned, see various women and people of colour enjoying the Westworld park, the customers who actually serve as protagonists – Logan, William and the Man in Black – are all white men. Logan is queer by virtue of a single man’s hand on his chest, but other than enforcing a pernicious stereotype about bisexual appetites and behaviours, it doesn’t do a damn thing to alter his characterisation. The end of season reveal that William is the Man in Black – that William’s scenes have all taken place thirty years in the past, shown to us now through Dolores’s memories – is a cleverly executed twist, and yet the chronicle of William’s transformation from youthful, romantic idealist to violent, sadistic predator only highlights the fundamental problem, which is that the Westworld park, despite being touted as an adventure for everyone – despite Robert using his customers as a basis for making universal judgements about human nature – is clearly a more comfortable environment for some than others. Certainly, if I was able to afford the $40,000 a day we’re told it costs to attend, I’d be disinclined to spend so much for the privilege of watching male robots, whatever their courtesy to me, routinely talk about raping women, to say nothing of being forced to witness the callousness of other customers to the various hosts.

It should be obvious that there’s no such thing as a universal fantasy, and yet much of Westworld’s psychological theorising about human nature and morality hinges on our accepting that the desire  to play cowboy in a transfigured version of the old West is exactly this. That the final episode provides tantalising evidence that at least one other park with a different historical theme exists elsewhere in the complex doesn’t change the fact that S1 has sold us, via the various monologues of Logan and Lee, Robert and William and the Man in Black, the idea that Westworld specifically reveals deep truths about human nature.

Which brings us to Dolores, a female host whose primary narrative loop centres on her being a sweet, optimistic rancher’s daughter who, with every game reset, can be either raped or rescued from rape by the customers. That Dolores is our primary female character – that her narrative trajectory centres on her burgeoning sentience, her awareness of the repeat violations she’s suffered, and her refusal to remain a damsel – does not change the fact that making her thus victimised was a choice at both the internal (Westworld) and external (Westworld) levels. I say again unto HBO, I do not fucking care how edgy you think threats of sexual violence and the repeat objectification of women are: they’re not original, they’re not compelling, and in this particular instance, what you’ve actually succeeded in doing is undermining your core premise so spectacularly that I do not understand how anyone acting in good sense or conscience could let it happen.

Because in making host women like Dolores (white) and Maeve (a WOC), both of whom are repeatedly subject to sexual and physical violation, your lynchpin characters for the development of true human sentience from AIs – in making their memories of those violations the thing that spurs their development – you’re not actually asking the audience to consider what it means to be human. You’re asking them to consider the prospect that victims of rape and assault aren’t actually human in the first place, and then to think about how being repeatedly raped and assaulted might help them to gain humanity. And you’re not even being subtle about it, either, because by the end of S1, the entire Calvinistic premise is laid clear: that Robert and Arnold, the park’s founders, believed that tragedy and suffering was the cornerstone of sentience, and that the only way for hosts to surpass their programming is through misery. Which implies, by logical corollary, that Robert is doing the hosts a service by allowing others to hurt them or by hurting them himself – that they are only able to protest his mistreatment because the very fact of it gave them sentience.

Let that sink in for a moment, because it’s pretty fucking awful. The moral dilemma of Westworld, inasmuch as it exists, centres on the question of knowing culpability, and therefore asks a certain cognitive dissonance of the audience: on the one hand, the engineers and customers believe that the hosts aren’t real people, such that hurting them is no more an immoral act than playing Dark Side in a Star Wars RPG is; on the other hand, from an audience perspective, the hosts are demonstrably real people, or at the very least potential people, and we are quite reasonably distressed to see them hurt. Thus: if the humans in setting can’t reasonably be expected to know that the hosts are people, then we the audience are meant to feel conflicted about judging them for their acts of abuse and dehumanisation while still rooting for the hosts.

Ignore, for a moment, the additional grossness of the fact that both Dolores and Maeve are prompted to develop sentience, and are then subsequently guided in its emergence, by men, as though they are Eves being made from Adam’s rib. Ignore, too, the fact that it’s Dolores’s host father who, overwhelmed by the realisation of what is routinely done to his daughter, passes that fledgling sentience to Dolores, a white woman, who in turn passes it to Maeve, a woman of colour, without which those other male characters – William, Felix, Robert – would have no Galateas to their respective Pygmalions. Ignore all this, and consider the basic fucking question of personhood: of what it means to engage with AIs you know can pass a Turing test, who feel pain and bleed and die and exhibit every human symptom of pain and terror and revulsion as the need arises, who can improvise speech and memory, but who can by design give little or no consent to whatever it is you do to them. Harming such a person is not the same as engaging with a video game; we already know it’s not for any number of reasons, which means we can reasonably expect the characters in the show to know so, too. But even if you want to dispute that point – and I’m frankly not interested in engaging with someone who does – it doesn’t change the fact that Westworld is trying to invest us in a moral false equivalence.

The problem with telling stories about robots developing sentience is that both the robots and their masters are rendered at an identical, fictional distance to the (real, human) viewer. By definition, an audience doesn’t have to believe that a character is literally real in order to care about them; we simply have to accept their humanisation within the narrative. That being so, asking viewers to accept the dehumanisation of one fictional, sentient group while accepting the humanisation of another only works if you’re playing to prejudices we already have in the real world – such as racism or sexism, for instance – and as such, it’s not a coincidence that the AIs we see violated over and over are, almost exclusively, women and POC, while those protagonists who abuse them are, almost exclusively, white men. Meaning, in essence, that any initial acceptance of the abuse of hosts that we’re meant to have – or, by the same token, any initial excusing of abusers – is predicated on an existing form of bigotry: collectively, we are as used to doubting the experiences and personhood of women and POC as we are used to assuming the best about straight white men, and Westworld fully exploits that fact to tell its story.

Which, as much as it infuriates me, also leaves me with a dilemma in interpreting the show. Because as much as I dislike seeing marginalised groups exploited and harmed, I can appreciate the importance of aligning a fictional axis of oppression (being a host) with an actual axis of oppression (being female and/or a POC). Too often, SFFnal narratives try to tackle that sort of Othering without casting any actual Others, co-opting the trappings of dehumanisation to enhance our sympathy for a (mostly white, mostly straight) cast. And certainly, by the season finale, the deliberateness of this decision is made powerfully clear: joined by hosts Hector and Armistice and aided by Felix, a lab tech, Maeve makes her escape from Westworld, presenting us with the glorious image of three POC and one white woman battling their way free of oppressive control. And yet the reveal of Robert’s ultimate plans – the inference that Maeve’s rebellion wasn’t her own choice after all, but merely his programming of her; the revelation that Bernard is both a host and a recreation of Arnold, Robert’s old partner; the merging of Dolores’s arc with Wyatt’s – simultaneously serves to strip these characters of any true agency. Everything they’ve done has been at Robert’s whim; everything they’ve suffered has been because he wanted it so. As per the ubiquitous motif of the player piano, even when playing unexpected tunes, the hosts remain Robert’s instruments: even with his death, the songs they sing are his.

Westworld, then, is a study in contradictions, and yet is no contradiction at all. Though providing a stunning showcase for the acting talents of Thandie Newton, Evan Rachel Wood and Jeffrey Wright in particular, their characters are nonetheless all controlled by Anthony Hopkins’s genial-creepy Robert, and that doesn’t really change throughout the season. Though the tropes of old West narratives are plainly up for discussion, any wider discussion of stereotyping is as likely to have a lampshade hung on it as to be absent altogether, and that’s definitely a problem. Not being familiar with the Michael Crichton film and TV show, I can’t pass judgement on the extent to which this new adaptation draws from or surpasses the source material. I can, however, observe that the original film dates to the 1970s, which possibly goes some way to explaining the uncritical straight white male gazieness embedded in the premise. Even so, there’s something strikingly reminiscent of Joss Whedon to this permutation of Westworld, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. The combination of a technologically updated old West, intended to stand as both a literal and metaphoric frontier, the genre-aware meta-narrative that nonetheless perpetuates more stereotypes than it subverts, and the supposed moral dilemma of abusing those who can’t consent feels at times like a mashup of Firefly, Cabin in the Woods and Dollhouse that has staunchly failed to improve on Whedon’s many intersectional failings.

    And yet, I suspect, I’ll still be poking my nose into Season 2, if only to see how Thandie Newton is doing. It feels like an absurdly low bar to say that, compared to most of HBO’s popular content, Westworld is more tell than show in portraying sexual violence, preferring to focus on the emotional lead-in and aftermath rather than the act itself, and yet that small consideration does ratchet the proverbial dial down a smidge when watching it – enough so that I’m prepared to say it’s vastly less offensive in that respect than, say, Game of Thrones. But it’s still there, still a fundamental part of the plot, and that’s going to be a not unreasonable dealbreaker for a lot of people; as is the fact that the only queer female character dies. Westworld certainly makes compelling television, but unlike the human protagonists, I wouldn’t want to live there.

      from shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows http://ift.tt/2jqQuUS via IFTTT

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

This blog was originally posted on the RetroNeo Games blog page on May 27th, 2017.

Let me tell you a story. It’s about a boy who was born into a fairly poor family who eked out a passable existence on a family plot in the mountains. When he was only 12 years old, his father was killed in a tragic farming accident, and as his mother was too ill to work, he became the sole breadwinner for a family of six younger siblings.

He had a talent for singing. His deep and melodious voice, paired with a deep well of emotion bought from years of personal sacrifice, won him many admirers in the taverns and dance halls around the local villages. It wasn’t long before the girls started to notice him.

As his younger siblings matured, he dreamed of leaving the farm and pursuing a career in music, until one day a paramour told him she was pregnant with his child. Dreams of a life of travel and singing were forgotten. They married and his love gave birth to twins some few months later. He was the happiest man alive!

Unfortunately, the harvests had been poor for years, and the bank reclaimed his family’s farm as the twins neared their first birthdays.

With not one, but two families to support, and no means of doing so, he joined the army, one of the few employers who was always hiring. He moved both families to the city as he began boot camp.

His first post was guarding a hydroelectric power plant. It was hard to be away from his family, but he knew that they were safe and provided for.

One day on duty, as he quietly hummed a lament, thinking about the night he first met his beloved, this happened…

GIF recorded from tommytep's YouTube Channel. Click image for source.

THE END

Like that one? Let me tell you another (shorter) story.

A class sits idle in some code, waiting. Its name is Soldier 4. It’s basically frozen in time. It doesn’t even look like anything yet because its mesh hasn’t been rendered because the player camera’s frustum hasn’t come across it yet. Suddenly, the player enters a trigger area around the corner and the class springs to life in glorious pixelated detail. It starts playing an animation, shifting its weight back and forth on two legs. Then a raycast determines  that it’s just been shot 3 times. A rather slow and painful looking death animation is chosen from a small list of predetermined death animations. After a few seconds, Soldier 4 lies still, fades to nothing, and the garbage collector erases any trace of his existence shortly thereafter.

FIN

Okay, which story do you like better? Which is more true? Which is more believable?

Which would you tend to think of when playing a game? I suppose that would depend on how immersed you are, and what lengths the game goes to in order to inform you about non player characters (NPCs).

I used Goldeneye because it’s one of the earliest examples I can think of where my mom was a bit upset that I was shooting people in games, rather than speeding through checkpoints and jumping on robotic animals. It’s also one of the first games I can recall that put some real effort into showing pain in the enemies. You could shoot them in the foot, hand, or crotch, and they’d stop shooting, grab the injured area, make a pained noise and hop around (if they still could).

I was too busy at the time being blown away by the speed and the technology (I’d also never played Doom or similar 3D shooters at that time) to think of the enemies as anything more than obstacles to progression, but I can see now in games what my mom saw then. And it’s got nothing to do with graphics, or realistic animations. It’s partly a question of emotional maturity, of course, but also of storytelling. Where I just saw ‘baddies’ my mom saw me walk into a room and gun down a random young man in a Russian uniform with no provocation. Goldeneye didn’t really give you reasons to kill most of the game’s enemies other than “you’re James Bond and they’re Russian. Duh!”

Twenty years later, we have plenty of room on the disc to fit even a little audio that can precisely let you know why you should (or shouldn’t) want to kill these dudes. Yet in those situations where we have the opportunity to do better, how often do we actually strive to?

When to dehumanise

There are so many games of all sorts. I’m not at all trying to argue that we do want backstories for all game characters in order to make them better. That could often do the opposite.

Brutal Doom's OTT gore doesn't exactly inspire regret or sympathy. Because demons!

Take Doom (new or old). It’s an unapologetic power fantasy, delivered through the medium of speed and violence. Killing demons removes any need for cumbersome storytelling. It’s black and white. Demons are evil. Kill demons. A game shouldn’t try to do too many things. If the extras conflict with the core idea, cut them.

We often dehumanise the enemy in games. Literally. Whether to simplify story, avoid moral debates or to sidestep local censorship laws, we turn our targets into zombies, monsters, robots, or aliens. It works really well. Robots and zombies can also relieve the impact of bad AI, since they’re not meant to be particularly intelligent to begin with. Great! Over the top violence and power fantasies can be fantastically fun, and I wouldn’t change Doom 1 or 4 one little bit.

The topic I’m addressing is what to do when we have human adversaries, who are meant to represent believable people. Because this is the greater challenge, and it’s likely that you seek to tell some sort of story when you’ve chosen to have human antagonists.

There are two types of games that use humans as enemies; those with either fictional or non-fictional settings.

Fictional Settings

GTA V is one of the most realistic, alive open world games that’ve ever been created. But players have zero empathy for the citizens of Los Santos. The game’s over the top satire, occasionally wonky physics, and amazing yet vastly imperfect AI, prevent any great depth of immersion. That’s not to say that you can’t get lost in the game for hours, but you’d never mistake it for a real experience, and you wouldn’t really start to feel for the characters. The emphasis on driving fast across a world populated by pedestrians is fundamentally incompatible with any sort of attempt to make you care about individuals in this world. And that’s fine. GTA V is incredible for what it is, and no game can be everything (though it’s not far off, to be fair).

Now take Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I just finished playing yesterday. As in most games, you’ll mow down hundreds of enemies, but narratively there’s something interesting going on. If you listen to the idle dialogue and/or audio records, you’ll come to appreciate a depth to the enemies. There are the core villains but also their paid and oblivious contractors. Trinity are out to do bad things and don’t care who they kill, but most of the enemy army are hired mercenaries who don’t know about or don’t believe in the religious fanaticism that drives their employers. Among these contractors, many start to realise that their bosses are nuts, and say that they didn’t sign on to round up and shoot local tribespeople. Some talk about trying to get out asap. Some other contractors are psychopaths themselves, and then Trinity are always evil. This approach did make me want to avoid killing certain guys, or at least regret having to do so. A little. It also made me more eager to hear what type of group I was about to go up against, by stealthily sneaking up on their positions instead of opening fire early. It’s a pity that there aren’t any non-lethal options or other mechanics to expand on this narrative theme. Once the bullets start flying, the good ones and the bad ones all want to kill you just as much.

Still, it was a good effort at adding some depth to the game, and I appreciated that it was there. Because personally I’m usually (when facing human game enemies) thinking that they’re probably not all bad and they don’t all deserve to die. It was nice for a game to respond to this.

Of course, other games have done this, and done it better. If you haven’t yet played Spec Ops: The Line then do it now! Even if you think you know all the spoilers, it’s a masterpiece in subverting player expectations. The whole journey through the game is brilliant.

Fundamentally, I think that most conflicts only occur due to a lack of understanding or empathy (including an unwillingness to share resources). With better communication and patience, most could be avoided. Games so rarely attempt to show this, but if narrative is a serious part of the game you want to deliver, then it should be strongly considered.

Games are such a powerful medium for delivering understanding and empathy because the player actively takes part in them. I’m not saying that every game should be doing this, but we could certainly be faring better as an industry.

Historical Settings

Real world armies have forever attempted to dehumanise the enemy in order to make it easier for your own troops to kill them. They’re all savages. They’re all baby killers. They’re all rapists, thieves and murderers, and God is on our side. War films are almost universally anti-war films (especially since Vietnam) and they usually tap into the folly of these lies. Yet war games still seem to find it more convenient to buy the lie hook, line, and sinker.

Maybe it’s because you’re asking the player to do the killing directly for hours on end that designers have felt the need to retain these lies. I remember that in the opening minutes of Call of Duty World at War you’re being brutally tortured by Japanese captors before being rescued by Kieffer Sutherland and his band of more morally upstanding brothers. It’s set up so that you will have no problems killing Japanese or German pixels for the next several hours. Of course, the Japanese and German armies were conducting genocide and torture, and stopping that is a fairly justifiable goal (as long as we’re clear that no side was squeaky clean), but I’m just saying that I’ve never seen a game take the opportunity to do what Letters from Iwo Jima by Clint Eastwood did.

This is why I’m a bit concerned that Call of Duty are returning to World War 2 as a setting this year. For the last several years they’ve been doing fictional settings and usually have some big opening set piece showing you exactly how evil your enemies are and why you should kill them all (they blew up your house and neighbours, usually). Their games are so formulaic that I’m concerned they’ll miss their chance to advance the genre of war games by just ticking all the same boxes in a new (well, old) setting and perpetuating the notion that Americans are always good, and Nazis are always bad. That said, they seem to be heavily influenced by Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan so maybe they will have some shades of grey in their narrative and do something new.

Battlefield 1 at least lets you play as both sides in a conflict and although human lives are reduced to mere ‘tickets’, I do admit that I felt remorse when sitting in a machine gun nest, mowing down a charge across the trenches by the players on the other team.

Yes, it’s a game, but it represents something. Yes, the players will respawn and so it’s more like a game of paintball or virtual tag than an actual battle, but this is where my empathy for pixels idea comes in. Real lives were ended doing exactly this kind of action that I’m doing right now. I sincerely hope that when you watch the last hour of Titanic you feel a lot more moved than when you watch Con Air. Similarly, I hope than when you play games based on the world wars or Vietnam, that a part of you doesn’t glorify the killing in the same way as you the glory kills in Doom.

They’re different beasts, I think, and deserve different treatments from the creators. I hope that Call of Duty: WW2 gets some of that.

Games with more moral weight

I’ve referenced more linear games here so far, but RPGs are traditionally much better at giving weight to your moral decisions, even if they are nearly always set in fantasy or post-apocalyptic worlds.

I recently played Westerado, an indie cowboy RPG/ murder mystery in an open world that you have a lot of agency over. It doesn’t take itself fully seriously, but because you can go anywhere and kill anyone, you feel like you’ve some real responsibility in the world. Because of this responsibility, when I found myself riding out with some US Army soldiers who’d been fighting with native American tribes, and we than happened upon said tribes in a sudden ambush, I said “oh f**k no I will not be killing native Americans and still pretending I’m the good guy”. I ran from the fight. I failed that side quest. I think the army were regrettably all killed but I’m not sure. But that was my story. The game didn’t establish that these natives were out of line in any particular way, just that the army were fighting them. So my own knowledge of history filled in the rest.  While I was happy enough to help the army bring food to settlers (or whatever we were doing in that quest) I was not taking part in any genocide. Pixelated or not.

Here is an example of an extremely unrealistic looking game reaching me on a real level. An historical setting (fictional as the specifics are) and a game where my choices can have a lasting effect can create real empathy even for pixelated characters.

Mechanics for deeper, more sympathetic NPCs

Assuming you want some moral ambiguity or emotional weight in your game, particularly if you’re making a war game, what tools could be used to advance this agenda?

Just having NPCs chatter together is a very simple way of humanising them (for better or worse) before you go in guns blazing or not. It’s tried and true in linear games, but challenging in open worlds where the dialogue inevitably can start to repeat, and feel insincere.

The opening level of Battlefield 1 had you fighting a pitched battle on the Western front. Each time you died (in this level only), as the screen faded to black, you got your character’s name and the year of their birth and death. What it would say on their tombstone, basically. You then respawned as a new soldier elsewhere in the battle. This gave a weight to death that most war games (and the rest of this one) usually can’t deliver. If you add to that system something like “loving father and husband” or “always dreaming” you’ve a better system already.

Valiant Hearts has you play as characters from both sides of the trenches, and actually never has you kill anyone. It shows your Franco-German family in tact before the war, then watches as, torn apart by circumstance, they struggle to reunite.

This War of Mine has you play a war game from the point of view of starving families trying to survive amidst the rubble, where you make decisions to kill innocents because you need food for your own kids. The shocking reality of the unseen other side of war games was powerful.

Apart from historical settings that bring their own moral weight (and ethical dilemmas in terms of storytelling) to the table, you could use procedural generation to fill out backstories for each and every NPC that lives or dies. It’s its own challenge, but it’s possible. Watchdogs had a system where you could hack the phone of anyone in the open world and get a little summary of that person as an individual. That’s not an end in itself, but it’s a tool in the box.

Dwarf Fortress procedurally generates its entire world and history when you launch a new game. Co-creator Tarn Adams and Kitfox Games’ Tanya X Short have some great GDC talks and blogs about procedural generation, including a book they co-wrote called Procedural Generation in Game Design coming out soon. Do check some of it out if you’re interested in the area.

I’ve experimented myself with generating a small town’s size of population. Everyone gets a name, age and job. Every year people grow up and either die, marry, have kids, or do nothing extraordinary. Over a few seconds I grow this town by several generations and all of a sudden have a family history for every character still alive at the moment I start playing the game properly. I’m planning on using something similar to this in Sons of Sol to flesh out your wingmates’ backgrounds, though we don’t yet know the extent of player interaction with wingmates outside of the main missions.

In Conclusion

There are many more ways we could flesh out NPCs. Better AI is one. We could even get as far as giving NPCs the levels of interactivity that the hosts in Westworld have. Though I think the point of that show is that some people will just refuse to acknowledge the humanity in artificial things, while others can empathise with them very naturally; less because they’re fooled by looks or behaviour, but more because they’re emotionally invested in the story.

Humans have always loved storytelling, and creators have always found new and better ways of expanding our toolset for crafting them. We have amazing tools for creating empathy and understanding through interaction now.

Games are chief among the most consumed media in the modern age. Violence and conflict are a core part of many of our games, but also a significant part of the real world that we live in. In a world that too often seems to lack empathy and a willingness to understand our adversaries, games could be our best tool to foster a willingness to understand other sides in a conflict. I think it’s important that we start to do this more often. It doesn’t suit every game, but where killing humans is the main activity, and especially in historical war games, I think we can and should do better than we have been. We’re moving the right way, I think, but let’s keep it up.

Until next time..

[thenugking]

Grand Academy For Future Villains II: Attack of the Sequel, Chapter 5: Bride of Chapter Five. A commentary for Three.

General CW for the whole thing: parental abuse, internalised dehumanisation as a trauma response. Three’s not doing well.

No specific warnings for this chapter except for a typo my friends have been teasing me about for weeks.

Game 1

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9

Game 2

Chapter 0 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Alternatively, read on Google Docs here

***

"Well obviously," says Professor Ulik, faintly irritated. "I thought you were a bit cleverer than that,Three, I really did. Yes, but specifically I need you to make sure that one of my classes is on the auditor's schedule. You may use whatever methods you please to get it there. The less I know, the better."

Her message communicated, Professor Ulik returns to her papers. You begin to consider your situation. This would be an unparalleled opportunity to ensure Professor Ulik's selection for a tenured position and what else are you here for, anyway?

But how to get an audience with the newly-arrived auditor?

#Val's on the Board of Visitors and Overlords. I'm going to consult zir about this situation.

This isn’t particularly helpful to Three’s intention to stay as far away from the auditors as  possible. Their first plan is still to ask DarkBoard if they’re able to alter Goul’s schedule, but when DarkBoard gives a foreboding speech about how they shouldn’t meddle in forces far beyond their control,  (Three is pretty sure DarkBoard’s scared of the auditors but don’t want to admit it,) they realise they’re going to have to talk to these people. This hopefully won’t be overly dangerous, after all, they are excellent at being helpful to important people, and tend to be good at quickly working out the level of grovelling important people prefer, so they’re unlikely to annoy the auditors. The danger that comes with just being around important, powerful people is inevitable, but they hope they can avoid the worst by appearing as a mere supporting character in Ulik’s narrative, unnoticeable to the auditors underneath all her achievements.

The best place to start with this is Val. Scorpius told Three ze was on the Board of Overseers and, while Three has been trying to interact with Val as little as possible, ze’s at least someone they’re able to get an audience with. And--despite a slight annoyance about Scorpius spilling zir secrets--Val apparently either likes them enough, or thinks they’re plot relevant enough, to help.

Ze is, however, going to point out that meeting with the Auditors isn’t the kind of thing people with no narrative weight do. It doesn’t matter what reason Three gives--do they think there isn’t a story in an underdog brave enough to put themself in the firing line of powerful villains they’re frightened of, just out of loyalty to their wise and supportive mentor? And Val has a feeling this isn’t the first time Three’s done this. Three informs them that they are not a hero, or an underdog, or special in any way whatsoever. Val tells them that ze knows better than most how Narrative Weight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, so ze’s really, genuinely sorry to say this, but that’s not true, Three. Three decides they’d better get over to that meeting before they’re late, so doesn’t have time to listen to Val try and tell them they’re more than just a tool.

The minutes Val showed you indicated that a team of no less than three auditors would be arriving from the Board of Visitors and Overlords. And you're fairly certain you know who this one is.

The falling pieces of the dome leave trails of fire in the air all around you. The air of the artificial atmosphere is rushing upward; the weather programs that the dome once produced are sputtering fitfully. Fish, frogs, bolts of lightning, hailstones and drops of blood tumble at random from the shattering sky.

"Lord X!" you call, as the figure lightly touches down to the earth. "Welcome to the Grand Academy for Future Villains!"

The figure turns towards you, and you see that the upper half of his face is concealed by a black mask like a frozen lava flow. His clothes are rich and close-fitting, his black shirt with silver buttons reaching to the neck, his hands concealed by silver gloves, and a belt around his waist supports a really alarming arsenal of weapons. You spot what looks like an oversized silver revolver, a long sword, a short sword, and a gun that looks strangely familiar. There's also a trowel tucked into a beautifully tooled black leather sheath; there's probably some explanation for this besides being for some sort of demonic gardener. 

"Well done…student," says Lord X.

Val, watching from under the shelter of a black umbrella, gives the slightest of nods to the auditor.

Again, not something Three would have done if Ulik hadn’t wanted them to talk to the auditors, they’d much rather be running to hide right now, or else checking the sudden environmental changes of the world falling apart aren’t adversely affecting DarkBoard. But they do like important people being impressed with them.

As if it overheard your unspoken question—which you suppose it did—the nearest DarkBoard portal begins scrolling through something you recognize as the fine print of your application paperwork. You look at the scrolling text:

…WITHOUT REFUND. THE APPLICANT CONSENTS TO MANDATORY BINDING ARBITRATION IN THE CASE OF ACCIDENTAL OR PURPOSEFUL DISMEMBERMENT, IMPERFECT RESURRECTION, AND OTHER PHYSICAL OR PSYCHIC MODIFICATION UNDERTAKEN VOLUNTARILY OR INVOLUNTARILY IN THE COURSE OF ACADEMIC DUTIES. THE APPLICANT CONSENTS TO THE ACADEMY'S USE OF THEIR IMAGE, DNA, BIOLOGICAL MATERIALS, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, OFFSPRING IF ANY, WITH OR WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN NOTIFICATION. SURVEILLANCE DEVICES MAY BE INSTALLED IN PHYSICAL AND INTELLECTUAL LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT THE ACADEMY INCLUDING BEDROOMS, HEARTS, DREAMS, AND NARRATIVES. THE ACADEMY RESERVES THE RIGHT…

Okay, okay.

It may not be immediately relevant to the current scene, but I think it’s worth noting that students “consent” to the Academy’s use of their offspring. Being the child of an alumnus, Three was a little concerned, if resigned, about that when reading their own application paperwork. Those feelings haven’t completely gone away, but they also realise this could be an excellent excuse if Maedryn ever discovers their loyalty to DarkBoard. She herself signed them away to the Academy before they even existed, and if necessary, Three will remind her that neither of them can complain if DarkBoard wishes to collect on that.

Three has never wanted children themself, but the Academy’s application paperwork just makes them more sure of that.

#Come observe Professor Ulik’s class.

You've kept your bargain with Professor Ulik. Whatever the auditor says, the fact that you faced one of the most powerful beings on the Academy grounds has to count for something.

It's a simple request—so simple the auditor seems taken by surprise. You hold your breath, waiting for an answer. "Of course," says the auditor. "Next week. Of course, we make no promises as to the nature of our judgment. Only of its inevitability."

"Fifteen seconds," pipes the assistant.

Variyah Goul stands up. She does not offer you her hand. "Your career, of course, will be of interest to us, whatever becomes of the school."

"Ten."

"If at the end of the year we find you an individual of sufficient narrative weight…there are certain provisions made for individuals who are fit for a great destiny. I am impressed by hedonism and competence, and the portfolio of destinies I manage are those of grandeur and glory."

"And zero." The assistant escorts you out of the room.

That went… surprisingly well. Three’s alive. They’ve at least slightly impressed two auditors. Goul’s agreed to observe Ulik’s class. Three wasn’t given time to have to pretend to be interested in a destiny.

They are growing increasingly concerned that the Academy’s accreditation may not, in fact, be renewed, but all they have to do is show that a place with teachers as good as Professor Ulik is worthwhile, make sure Maedryn isn’t too stressed by her various responsibilities that the clones stop working, help Sona keep Sci-Fi looking respectable and genre savvy, and do whatever DarkBoard requests to help the Academy run smoothly.

((Side note: I did originally accidentally replace a bit too much of the “insert your professor here” text with “professor ulik” when I originally typed this up, with the result that Three very unfortunately invited one of the most powerful villains in the universe to come observe Professor Ulik’s ass. They don’t want to talk about it.))

The senior students that approach you after your Evil Planning class are well known to you. They're a group of Thriller and Science Fiction students that even in these polarized times of inter-genre competition, have remained friends and close collaborators. 

"Three!" one of them calls to you. "Do you have a second? We want you to try this!"

This is rarely the prelude to something good, but often the prelude to something interesting. You pause. 

"This is our capstone project for our Cyberpunk Dystopia class," explains another, proffering his personal DarkBoard portal, its screen glowing. "A dating app for the Academy! We need beta testers! And, well, a lot of people have been requesting you."

"It's right here in the early feedback," confirms the third. "Let's see…'If it doesn't have Three I'm not joining'…'Where's Three I mean the real one not the clone'…'Please add an option to romance Three.'"

You look warily at the colorful images on the DarkBoard portal. What's so dystopian about a dating app?

"Well, it's powered by DarkBoard, for one thing," says the first student, "so it can be kind of unpredictable. And wildly intrusive. But the administration is interested in monitoring the personal lives of its students."

"Personally I think DarkBoard's getting a bit lonely," adds the second, behind his hand, as if that could conceal his comment from the security system.

I mean, there might be a couple of students wanting to find out what’s underneath Three’s aloof emotionless exterior, but I really doubt there’s anyone specifically asking for them. In any case, they have far more important things to do than trying to find another relationship at the moment, and even if they wanted one, they wouldn’t be looking for it on an intrusive dating app made by a bunch of students they have no reason to trust. 

But, well, they don’t exactly completely object to submitting information about certain preferences they may have to a system powered by DarkBoard. It’s a villainous action to sign up to a dating site and then ruthlessly reject every classmate who appears on there, isn’t it?

Besides the grinning face of Science Fiction's figurehead, a long list of diagrams and spec charts appears. Sona, or DarkBoard on Sona's behalf, is listing out all her weapons and modifications. You're fascinated—there are some extraordinarily personal items here. You would never have guessed about the navel turret, for instance.

All right, getting lists of people’s hidden abilities is also a very useful feature of this app. Three just hopes their own profile isn’t going to start listing out the dozens of weapons they have hidden on their person at all times.

The portal clouds over again, but this time, when it clears, no face is visible at all. Slowly words form on the portal's surface.

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHAT THE WORLD LOOKS LIKE WHEN SEEN THROUGH A THOUSAND EYES?

"Uh-oh." One of the Cyberpunk Dystopia students tries to snatch the portal out of your hands. "It's doing it again. Close! Close! Administrator override!"

SHED YOUR FLESH, continues DarkBoard, AND JOIN US IN THE TIMELESS VOID BETWEEN ELECTRONS.

"Yeah, this is a known issue," explains the leader. "Every so often DarkBoard will decide that it wants to get in on some of the action. Sorry about that."

He hands you back your portal, now quiet and docile. Is that Xi's lingering influence? Does something about DarkBoard remember you as an object of romance?

"You know where to find us! Thanks for trying it out!"

And they're gone.

Well, even if Three’s list of concealed weapons are on view to everyone on the dating app now, the student trying to snatch the portal away from Three is not prepared for a kick in the groin and a gun pointed at him before he has a chance to react, as Three calmly explains that they want to be aware of all known issues before deciding whether to continue using the app or not. After taking a few moments to closely examine this one, they tell the cyberpunk students that they can live with it. They spend a fair amount of their free time (limited though that is) on the app over the next few months, while making sure to reject every student profile they find.

The app does cause another slight issue, however, given that the rejection messages it sends are calibrated to, “cause greatest emotional impact to the target!” Three and Aurion awkwardly avoid each other for the next few weeks, after they each receive a horrifying rejection message about how the other loves them far too much like a sibling, and is so grateful for the bond they already have.

And then this final scene doesn’t actually take place, because Three doesn’t have a nemesis or a pet, so doesn’t need help dealing with them, but:

Professor Ulik thinks so highly of you that she leaves the class that she was in the middle of teaching to rush to the ${temphousing}.

I love Three’s new mum a lot.