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ladykailitha · 3 months ago

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Of Butterflies and Backstrokes Part 1

Welcome to my other AU that I couldn't wait until September to show you all. I know, I know the closing ceremonies for the Olympics are tomorrow, which is another reason to get this in before all the fanfare dies.

Summary: When a freak accident at his third Olympics left him with migraines and a fear of deep water, Steve thought his Olympic dreams were dead—until delinquent Eddie Munson arrived at his pool to do community service. Steve witnesses Eddie's swimming talent and realizes his dreams don't have to be over. Now it's a race to get Eddie Olympic ready in two years. Steve's going for gold, but Eddie might have other interests in mind.

~I know I forgot to post the results of the poll regarding which time period to set this story in. But I got the notification on my phone while I was busy and by the time I got to my laptop, I forgot. And kept forgetting.

Most people wanted Eddie's Olympics to be in 2004 but after talking to people in the tags and comments, I decided on 2012 instead. Sorry about that.

Steve Harrington grew up with parents who pushed him hard in everything he did. He had to be the best at playing the piano, basketball, baseball, singing, formal dancing, and swimming. But of all those things Steve excelled at swimming the best. Because once he put his cap on over his ears, the roar of the crowd dimmed and then vanished the second he hit the water.

Those other things? Suddenly no longer mattered because Steve wasn’t just good at swimming, he was brilliant. From when he first started competing when he was eleven there was always talk about the Olympics. Always the Olympics.

So it was something he was being pushed toward. World Championships and other competitions were just trials for the Olympics as far his father was concerned.

His father. Clint Harrington, who had never worked hard for anything in his life, who had his job handed to him by his dad, who was a raging, frat boy narcissist who drank his weight in alcohol before he was even twenty-one. Who collected guns but never shot one in his life and didn’t even know how to load one. The man who decided that because his life was soft, his son’s could not be.

When he got fifth at the Olympics at age fourteen everyone was amazed and even a little shocked. Clint Harrington was disappointed. Even though everyone knew that boys his age were still growing and changing and once he had settled into his body, he would do more than just medal, he would take home gold.

Which is exactly what happened his second Olympics. He was eighteen and just coming into his own. He walked away with three silver medals, four gold, and a bronze. The bronze is what upset Clint Harrington the most.

How dare he only take third! The audacity!

Where was his mother in all this? Maureen Harrington was bragging at all her country clubs, charity dos that her son was an Olympic gold medalist. Never mind her friends had never met him. That they saw more of him on their TV then she had since he turned ten. That was when she decided that he was big enough to handle himself and promptly stopped interacting him.

Clint hadn’t even noticed, he was so focused on making sure Steve won at any cost. He hired the best coaches, built a swimming pool in the backyard, drove him to all his meets, all of it; just so Steve could be the best at any cost.

There was only one line Clint didn’t cross, which honestly surprised everyone who knew him. He didn’t suggest Steve dope up. Steve wasn’t sure if it was because he was a coward and was afraid Steve would get caught, or if he just merely thought Steve could be pushed into perfection without them.

But he was always grateful that it was the one line Clint Harrington refused to cross.

And then it happened. It was 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. Steve was poised to break several records and win a staggering amount of medals. He was in eight events and everyone was expecting him to medal in every one of them.

But the only things he broke that year, was his head, his hopes, his dreams, and his spirit. For in the very first event the jump board he was on, slipped out from under him as jumped. His head hit the side of the pool and he sunk like a stone to the bottom.

He didn’t remember much, the roar of the crowd turned to screams, the sicking crunch as his head hit the side and then the rush of water all around him as he sunk, weightless to eternity.

When he woke up, all Steve was left with was migraines and a fear of large bodies of water.

His dad walked away that day and he never saw him again.

Two Years Later

Eddie Munson was in deep trouble and he knew it. He had been arrested with enough weed on him to know it wasn’t for personal use. Possession with intent to sell. Thank god it happened two weeks before his eighteenth birthday otherwise he’d be facing real jail time and not.. community service?

Wait, what?

He was expecting probation at the very least. But nope. He was sentenced to five hundred hours of community service as it was his first offense, he had a troubled childhood, and apparently the God damned Chief of Police on his side. Who had said that he was a good kid who protected the weak and participated in afterschool programs to help teach them math, creative writing, cooperative skills, troubleshooting, and time management.

Eddie’s lawyer told him before Hopper was to testify at his sentencing hearing that he could not laugh, could not chuckle, could not even so much as snort or smile. When Eddie asked why, he was told he couldn’t be told that or else it would be seen as influencing his testimony. And then Hopper got up on the stand and said that.

D&D. Eddie DM’ed D&D after school. Jesus Christ did it take everything he had not to show any emotion at all.

Five hundred hours was nothing to slouch at. It came out to roughly three months. And he could only work eight hour days. He had barely graduated high school by the skin of his teeth and a fair amount of flattery.

Chief Hopper came to pick him up personally for his first day of community service.

Eddie came barreling out of his trailer only to stop in his tracks when he saw Hopper leaning up against his pickup truck arms folded and ankles crossed.

“Chief,” he said dryly. “To what do I owe this rather dubious pleasure?”

“Get in the truck, boy,” Hop growled. “I’m doing your uncle a favor and making sure you actually show up. And I will be taking you every day. You’ll work five days a week for eight hours a day. You will have three people sign off on your sheet every day. Me, Joyce Byers, and your direct supervisor, Murray Bauman. Every god damn day. Because if you miss one signature, one day and you’ll be thrown in jail. Do. You. Understand?”

Eddie gulped.

He nodded and quietly moved around the truck to get in on the passenger side, head down and shoulders rounded. He didn’t utter a single word the whole trip. He just followed Hopper through the doors and into Joyce’s office.

Sitting behind the desk was a lovely woman with kind eyes, standing beside her was a balding man with beady eyes behind thick glasses. Eddie hadn’t liked the sight of him at all. He just hoped the guy didn’t make his already miserable life even worse.

Joyce broke down all his duties, when he could take breaks and a lunch, and that those would be included in his service hours. He would get access to all the facilities but with the proviso that if a client wanted what he was using, he would have to give it to them.

Whatever that meant.

“Come on,” she finished. “Let me show you around, then Murray will spend all of today training you.”

She stood up and Eddie immediately followed.

“Hopper will sign you in,” Joyce explained, handing a clipboard with his time sheet on it and a pen to the police chief.

He signed it and handed it back to her, she put it on her desk.

“Then Murray and I will sign it when you’re done for the day,” she continued as she moved around the desk. “You are allowed sick days but only five, unless signed off by a doctor.”

Eddie breathed a sigh of relief on that one. He got hay fever something fierce in early September and there were some days that it got so bad he couldn’t see.

All three men followed her out the door. Hopper stopped in front of it.

“This is where I get off,” he said gruffly. “You’ll have to find your own way home as I’ll be at work when you get done.”

Eddie nodded. He shook hands with him and watched as he left.

Joyce smiled at Eddie brightly. “Let’s go.”

She showed him where all the equipment was and that he was charged with wiping it all down once an hour. They continued on and suddenly he heard it.

A sound he had not heard in years.

The sound of kids’ playful screams echoing around the sounds of splashing water. Holy shit, Uncle Wayne, he thought nervously. What did you do for the Chief of Police, hide a body?

Joyce opened the door and led Eddie through the humid air and strong scent of chlorine, pointing out his duties. Which included mopping the floors and grabbing the great big laundry baskets that held the complimentary towels to be taken to washed and also restock them every morning.

Eddie was practically vibrating now. Yeah, sure it was shit grunt work that was meant to be deliberately demeaning, but he got access to the pool. He would be able to swim again and for more than just a couple of times a summer where they would have free swim days when it got too hot.

They got to the end of the tour and Joyce turned around to face him, clapping her hands together.

“So you ready to get to work?”

Eddie sighed. Because yeah that part still sucked. “Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

“That’s the spirit!” she said with a laugh.

Steve stepped out of the showers and toweled off the best he could, throwing his white trainer polo on.

Because this pool was in Indianapolis where Olympic trials had been held more than a couple of times, it had the best of services for swimmers that could be offered. You had the standard lifeguards in the red polos, the coaches in the blue polos, and the trainers like him in white. It was supposed to be patriotic, but there were far too many countries that had the red, white, and blue color scheme for Steve to do anything but scoff at the notion.

What was the difference between a trainer and a coach? Well it depended on who you asked. If you asked a trainer, they would tell you age. They taught beginning, intermediate, and advanced classes.

If you asked a coach? They would tell that trainers only taught coaches inspired. They brought out the best in their students, fostered a love of water, and coached them in competitions.

They also had state of the art facilities, too. A kiddie pool, two Olympic sized swimming pools, an outdoor pool and water park, and even an endless pool.

Steve loved the endless pool. It was fifteen feet long and eight feet wide with a current that you could change the speed on so you could build up strength and endurance. It was how he unwound every day.

He stepped out of the men’s changing rooms and smiled at his assistant trainer, Robin Buckley who was waiting for him.

“You ready for another day of screaming, terrified children?” she asked with a grin, slinging one arm around his shoulders.

He returned her grin.

“You better believe it!”

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12

Also on the 14th, I'll be throwing myself a birthday party on my new Discord server for my writing. Link here. Come join me, ask questions about me or my work. I like to chat. I'll still be doing WIP Wednesday but a more informal vibe in Discord, too.

Tag list: TEN SLOTS REMAINING

1-@mira-jadeamethyst @rozzieroos @itsall-taken @redfreckledwolf @zerokrox-blog

2- @gregre369 @a-little-unsteddie @chaosgremlinmunson @messrs-weasley @cryptid-system

3- @maya-custodios-dionach @goodolefashionedloverboi @val-from-lawrence @carlyv @wonderland-girl143-blog

4- @justforthedead89 @irregular-child @bookbinderbitch @bookworm0690 @forgottenkanji

5- @anne-bennett-cosplayer @yikes-a-bee @awkwardgravity1 @littlewildflowerkitten @genderless-spoon

6- @dragonmama76 @ellietheasexylibrarian @thedragonsaunt @useless-nb-bisexual @disrespectedgoatman

7- @counting-dollars-counting-stars @tinyplanet95 @ravenfrog @swimmingbirdrunningrock @lingeringmirth

8- @gutterflower77 @a-lovely-craziness @just-a-tiny-void @w1ll0wtr33 @beelze-the-bubkiss

#my writing #stranger things #steddie #ladykailtiha writes #olympic steddie

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medievalandfantasymelee · 2 months ago

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THE HOT MEDIEVAL & FANTASY MEN MELEE

FIRST ROUND: 50th Tilt

Wen Kexing, Word of Honor (2021) VS. Sir Gwaine, BBC’s Merlin (2008-2012)

Propaganda

Wen Kexing, Word of Honor (2021) Portrayed by: Gong Jun Defeated Opponents: - King Arthur [Alexandre Astier], Kaamelott (2004-2007)

“Meet Wen Kexing, drop dead gorgeous and quite mad ruler of the Ghost Valley.”

Sir Gwaine, BBC’s Merlin (2008-2012) Portrayed by: Eoin Macken Defeated Opponents: - al’Lan Mandragoran [Daniel Henney], The Wheel of Time (2021-)

“THEEE flirt of the five kingdoms!! He's so hot and annoying and charming and loyal and stupid,,, and he hates the rich! He has weird sexual tension with an alien despite it being a medieval setting.... he has big brown puppy dog eyes.... most ideal man in Camelot fr”

Additional Propaganda Under the Cut

Additional Propaganda

For Wen Kexing:

“Wen Kexing IS the drama and he believes in dressing for it. Poutiest babygirl. Flirtiest murder kitten. He may be bleeding, but his eyeliner remains unsmudged.”

For Sir Gwaine:

“I'm someone who rarely crushes, but I was OBSESSED with him. The hair, the attitude, the loyalty. Plus he's just hot.”

“Just look at him”

#medieval hotties round 1 #wen kexing #sir gwaine #word of honor #bbc merlin #gong jun #eoin macken #fuck that medieval man

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morbidology · 30 days ago

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The death of Brian Sinclair in 2008 stunned Canada and became a symbol of the racial disparities and systemic discrimination that many Indigenous people face in accessing healthcare in Canada. Brian, a 45-year-old Indigenous man, died after waiting 34 hours for care in the emergency department of Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre.

Sinclair, who was a double amputee and used a wheelchair, had sought medical attention for a bladder infection. However, despite his clear need for help, he was overlooked by medical staff and left unattended in the waiting area. When he was finally seen, he had been dead for around two to seven hours, and rigor mortis had set in.

An autopsy revealed that Sinclair died from a treatable bladder infection brought on by a blocked catheter. The investigation into his death exposed critical failures in the healthcare system, particularly in how it responds to Indigenous patients.

In 2013, the president of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority stated: Mr. Sinclair's death was preventable. He came to us seeking care, and we failed him." An inquest was launched, but nobody was ever held accountable.

#Brian Sinclair #Disturbing

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vintagelasvegas · 4 months ago

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Reconstruction of The Mirage volcano, 2008

WET, the company that developed the Fountains of Bellagio, led an overhaul of The Mirage volcano.

“Technological advances will allow the volcano to be presented in a more realistic setting than was possible when it was created. Steam will pour from the sides of the mountain, water will flow down the crags of the exterior with fire and flames sprouting through the openings. The largest fire-shooter will send flames soaring more than 60 feet above the Strip. A state-of-the-art sound system will be added.”

Construction began in Sep. 2008, and the new volcano debuted in Dec. The new show included an original music score composed by Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and musician Zakir Hussain.

The Mirage used two logos. One with a serif font was used on the sides of the building and in the volcano lagoon, seen in this photo. The other logo resembled handwriting. When the new volcano was completed the serif signs were replaced by two “handwriting” signs in the lagoon.

Photos (1) from Las Vegas Review-Journal, 2008, and (2) circa '99 from Hytam, Flickr; (3) After the demolition of the volcano in 2024, via Las Vegas Locally; H. Stutz. “Raised from the Dead.” Review-Journal, 9/11/2008.

#The Mirage

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milligramspoison · 1 month ago

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Hi! First two MCR shows for 2024! Except part of the list started in 2023 thanks to fucking Mikey and Chris!

I also have a list of MCR’s 2022-2023 tour if you also want to check that out! Anyways ty Mikey and Chris for starting this list off 11 months early 😭

MCR @ WWWY

Hey Chris commented a sunset emoji under Mikey’s post that announced day 2 of WWWY, referring to Pete’s Amazing New Mexico Sunset post from 2005 (writing this on November 17th, 2023- 11 fucking months to go lmao)

Mikey also replied to Chris’ comment

Mikey is also very excited to play Disenchanted! (Love this for him)

Not WWWY but it deserves to be here -> Gerard’s cat costume from Toronto night 2 made it into the show Carol & the End of the World! (Hi it’s January 29th, 2024 as I’m writing this bullet point)

Frank is back on his fortune cookie bullshit (hello it’s March 18th, 2024 as I’m writing this)

American Idol contestant Abi Carter sang WTTBP for her top 20 performance on April 14th, 2024!

Chris posted the Pete and Mikey emo critters on his story on May 17th, 2024, using 🌅 as the fucking caption 😭

My Chem’s facebook got hacked on July 25th, 2024 😍

They’re doing additional songs after they do TBP in full, possibly the B Sides and Living With Ghosts 👀 (update they didn’t do either 😭)

Teenagers surpassed 1 BILLION streams on Spotify!!

I’m Not Okay will be added to Fortnite October 17th! (And will already be in the game by the time this post goes up!)

Close up of MCR’s (and FOB’s) merch for the festival!

The Swarm fly also returns for whatever reason 👀 (it was a big symbol during the last tour so I’m surprised it’s back for two one off shows)

DAY BEFORE WWWY WE HAVE THE BAND SOUNDCHECKING FAMOUS LAST WORDS (it’s officially WWWY weekend!!!)

MCR’s first show since March 26th, 2023!! (That’s 573 days aka 19 months!!)

Frank’s first tonight’s our night post involving MCR since last year 🥲

Mikey was spotted watching Mayday Parade’s set!

A CLIP OF THEM SOUNDCHECKING ON THE 18TH

Mikey was also spotted watching Dashboard Confessional’s set!

A third Mikey (and this time Kristin too!) spotting!

A fourth Mikey spotting and he’s with Patrick of FOB this time!!

WHITE FLOORING IS BEING LAID OUT

MCR’S STAGE AROUND THE BEGINNING OF FOB’S SET

MCR’S STAGE TOWARDS THE MIDDLE OF FOB’S SET

MCR’S STAGE AROUND 9:45PM

Pete of FOB hyped up the crowd for MCR’s set during the FOB set!!

WHATEVER THIS IS THEYRE TESTING STUFF FOR MCR’S SET

4 separate stage lights for them as of rn…….

GERARD AND MIKEY’S PARENTS ARE THERE

GERARD GOT A HAIRCUT

THE END FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE OCTOBER 7TH, 2007

DEAD FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE AUGUST 27TH, 2011

RAY ALSO HAD TWO GUITARS (obvi but still exciting nonetheless 😭)

“Fuck yeah” ~ Gerard

“Kisses for you!” ~ also Gerard!

SHARPEST LIVES FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE MAY 9TH, 2008

RAY’S WINE RETURNS

“Spicy, you're fucking spicy” ~ Gerard ofc

I DON’T LOVE YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE OCTOBER 17TH, 2022

Gerard asked the audience to bark as they were going into House of Wolves 😭

HOUSE OF WOLVES FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE MARCH 20TH, 2023

CANCER FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE MARCH 19TH, 2023

They also got a violinist for Cancer and it sounded incredible

The violinist was Kayleigh Goldsworthy!!!!!

DISENCHANTED FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE OCTOBER 7TH, 2007

There was also blooming and decaying flowers during Disenchanted!!

And there was also swords at some point during the set too…

RAYRARD MOMENT

“I got all this fucking honey in my mouth, it broke my ass! The fucking softest hands!” ~ Gerard, whatever he was rambling about 😭

WTTBP WAS REPRISED AT THE END OF FAMOUS

Blood was played on tape for the first time in many years!!

The band had an encore following the entirety of TBP!

I’m Not Okay was the first song of the encore!

A fan rushed the stage and touched Frank before being escorted off 🤦‍♀️ (BE NORMAL PPL they’re human just like the rest of us)

The look Gerard gave the stage rusher was super funny tho 😭

And they ended night one off on Helena!

DAN AND PHIL REFERENCED NO BUT SERIOUSLY IMAGINE IT

VIDEO OF THEM REFERENCING IT

Frank and Gerard goofing around <3

Marina Toybina styled their outfits (or at least Gerard’s) for night one of the festival!! (She also styled a lot of outfits for Gerard on the last tour!)

“Hey everybody!” ~ Gerard as he was going backstage!

MIKEY WATCHED FOB’S SET AND SANG ALONG TO MMRS

Gerard got on their tippy toes to reach over to fans on the other side of the fence 🥹

FRANK SPOTTING (WWWY night 2)

Cherry, Miles, and Lily (Frank’s kiddos) watching the Dunes set from yesterday <3 (and a bonus- it’s also Frank’s second tonight’s our night post for MCR since last year!)

Pete of FOB once again hyped up the crowd for MCR’s set during FOB’s!!!

GERARD IS IN THE SAME OUTFIT

RAY IS IN A BLACK SHIRT AND JEANS

“FUCKING ACE MAN” ~ Gerard!

Pixels of Mikey and Frank!!!

“Thank you” ~ Gerard after I Don’t Love You 🥹

KAYLEIGH RETURNED ON VIOLIN

SERENITY PRAYER BEFORE MAMA

KAYLEIGH ALSO DID VIOLIN ON MAMA TONIGHT

“BAG FULL OF KNIVES”

“There was a summer, I started collecting knives. Big bags full of knives. It’s because my friend died. And I was hoping somebody would try to hurt me so I could kill them. And he fell down. And one day he went to sleep forever.” ~ GERARD BEFORE SLEEP

“Vegas, I want you you to let go of everything. Everything!” ~ also Gerard before Sleep!

Gerard also laughed during Sleep 😭

“BELLISSIMO”

“THIS IS A SONG ABOUT BEING IN THE DREAM. AND DYING. BECAUSE THATS ALL DREAMS DO” ~ GERARD GOING INTO DISENCHANTED

WTTBP REPRISE AGAIN DURING FAMOUS

NA NA NA IS THE FIRST SONG OF THE ENCORE

SECOND SONG OF THE ENCORE IS HELENA

“Good night Las Vegas!” ~ Gerard before Helena!

WWWY POSTED PROFESSIONAL FOOTAGE OF MCR’S SET

GERARD WRAPPED THE MIC CORD AROUND THEIR NECK JUST LIKE OLD TIMES

This photo of Gerard…

AND THIS PHOTO OF GERARD WITH RAY AND MIKEY

Gerard met some fans after the show!!

RAY’S STAGE LEFT TATTOO HAS MADE AN APPEARANCE

Some of the photos Beemer took last night!

RAY AND HIS WINE RETURN ONCE AGAIN

INCREDIBLE video of Gerard

Hi if you’ve made it this far! Welcome to the 2024 list for MCR!- that feels so good to say omg

I’m so excited to be posting this after having it in my drafts since last November. And it was so exciting to be liveblogging about an MCR show again with everyone!!

I hope it isn’t a long time before we all can do this again. Following the tour was such an incredible experience for me and to do it again for two nights only this weekend was amazing

Anyways, thank you if you’ve made it this far. And I hope all of you enjoy looking back on the list!!

My Chemical Romance forever and ever, okay? <33333

#god i can’t believe i’m setting this post free into the wild #this is so insane i can’t believe we’re talking about TWO mcr 2024 shows 🥲🥲#ANYWAYS…the little sister to the tour list is HERE #mcr #my chemical romance #my chem #mcrwwwy #mcrwwwy2

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bekaterrier · 1 month ago

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A few other wonderful shows I wanted to shoutout for BIPOCtober, with BIPOC creators and/or leads:

A Ninth World Journal: Based on Numenera, a tabletop roleplaying game, and written, produced and performed by David S. Dear (plus guests). Set one billion years in the future… it’s the story of Januae, a man who randomly teleports to strange and dangerous places with no way of controlling it.

@meteorcitypod: In 2008, a freak meteor shower hit Detroit, killing hundreds and displacing thousands. Hundreds of people were quarantined for radiation exposure. 10 years later, Bianca Diaz, a vlogger returns to tell the stories of the dead, the missing, and the remaining citizens of Detroit, now called Meteor City. Shortly after returning, Bianca realizes that Meteor City, New Detroit, and the people left behind are not what they appear to be...

@witcheverpath: An interactive horror anthology podcast. Their current story is Message in a Bottle. A siren misses what was taken from her, but as she swims out to sea, she discovers a bottle that may change the course of her life.

@radio-outcast: A fantasy-western audio drama. When Helix, the Messenger God of Sound, gets yanked from the 1980s and sent to the 1880s by her abusive ex-lover, the God of Time, she must forge unlikely alliances with two humans: Jesse, a cowboy out for revenge, and Charles, a conman running from his past. The three of them embark on a journey across the American West, each with their own goals and secrets waiting to be revealed

@vegapodcast: A Sci-Fi Adventure Podcast!: In a fantasy futuristic world, Vega Rex is employed by her government to kill off the world's worst criminals. She's never met a criminal she couldn't catch...until now. Join Vega as she journeys through a world of bumbling apprentices, powerful technogods, and her biggest challenge yet

@noadventurespod: A fantasy (un)adventure story that follows Sig, the owner of Signature Eats bakery, as he aggressively avoids becoming embroiled in any daring quests or chosen one shenanigans even though the universe really seems to want him to do just that. This is a story about cutting the Hero’s Journey off at the knees to chill with friends. And also baking. This is also a story about baking.

Harlem Queen: A Black historical fiction audio drama based on the life and times of Black, woman, gangster "Numbers Queen" Madame Stephanie St. Clair during the Harlem Renaissance (the story takes place around 1926-32). She fought the "big boys" (Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz) and won.

@herebedragonspod: When the body of a previously unknown aquatic creature washes up on shore, four women are called together for the expedition of a lifetime. Tasked by the U.S. Government to find and record evidence of this new breed of sea monster, Harper Bennett, Pippa Cambell, Lt. Commander Adrienne Scarlett and Dr. Natalya Atlas set off into the untamed wilds of The Bermuda Triangle.

@unwellpodcast: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery. Lillian Harper moves to the small town of Mt. Absalom, Ohio, to care for her estranged mother Dorothy after an injury. Living in the town's boarding house which has been run by her family for generations, she discovers conspiracies, ghosts, and a new family in the house's strange assortment of residents.

Fan Wars: The Empire Claps Back: A not-so-romantic comedy about two star wars fans on opposite sides of the Last Jedi debate.

#a ninth world journal #meteor city pod #witchever path #radio: outcast #vega podcast #unwell podcast #harlem queen #absolutely no adventures #here be dragons #here be dragons podcast #fan wars: the empire claps back #bipoctober #podcast recs

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ceteradesunt · 1 month ago

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Dead Set (2008) dir. Yann Demange — 1x5 "Outbreak"

#dead set #charlie brooker #yann demange #00s horror #2000s horror #zombie outbreak #jaime winstone #big brother #e4 #netflix #caps #my caps #screencaps #classichorrorblog #horroredit #dead set 2008 #zombieedit

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geronimomo-spd · 1 year ago

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and there we go! the full Confidential Archive!

here are all the episodes, according to tardis wiki list, including all of the mini specials and chrismas specials and most if not all in good quality! the full list of everything is under the cut because yeah, its a longgg list!

all in order, including some youtube videos and dvd rips hehe, all according the the tardis wiki list

SERIES 1 -

1x00 - A New Dimension (a prolog to season one, narrated by David Tennant)

1x01 - (rose)

1x03 - (the unquiet dead)

1x04 - (aliens of london)

1x05 - (world war 3)

1x06 - (dalek)

1x07 - (the long game)

1x08 - (father's day)

1x09 - (the empty child)

1x10 - (the doctor dances)

1x11 - (boom town)

1x12 - (bad wolf)

1x13.1 - The Ultimate Guide (another little documentary right before

parting of the ways, about key aspects about filming the season)

1x13.2 - (parting of the ways)

1x14 - Backstage at Christmas (the nine minutes they gave us from some of behind the scenes of The Christmas Invasion)

SEIRES 2 -

2x00 - One Year On (a general preview for season 2, including the series 2 press launch, a lot more behind the scenes of The Christmas Invasion and some Torchwood stuff)

2x01 - (new earth)

2x02 - (tooth and claw)

2x03 - (school reunion)

2x04 - (the girl in the fireplace)

2x05 - (rise of the cyberman)

2x06 - (the age of steel)

2x07 - (the idiot's lantern)

2x08 - (the impossible planet)

2x09 - (the satan pit)

2x10 - (love & monsters) - (featuring the winning of the contest of designing a monster)

2x11 - (fear her)

2x12 - (army of ghosts)

2x13 - (doomsday)

2x14 - Music and Monsters (the behind the scenes of doctor who's first music show, including some behind the scenes stuff of The Runaway Bride)

SERIES 3 -

3x01 - (smith and jones)

3x02 - (the shakespear code)

3x03 - (gridlock)

3x04 - (daleks in manhattan)

3x05 - (evolution of the daleks)

3x06 - (the lazarus experiment)

3x05 - (42)

3x06 - (human nature)

3x07 - (the family of blood)

3x08 - (blink)

3x11 - (utopia)

3x12 - (the sound of drums)

3x13.1 - (last of the time lords)

3x13.2 - Children in Need Special (the behind the scenes of the special where 10 meets 5, really cute stuff)

3x14.1 - Kylie Special (series 3 christmas special. version 1 - the full version in less of a good quality i found on youtube, bless this youtube channel honestly)

3x14.2 - Kylie Special (series 3 christmas special. version 2 - the shorter version that was up on iplayer)

3x14.3 - Kylie Special (series 3 christmas special. version 3 - the version i edited to include the low quality parts that were missing with the good quality shorter version)

SERIES 4 (INCLUDING THE SPECIALS) -

4x01 - (partners in crime)

4x02 - (the fiers of pompaii)

4x03 - (planet of the ood)

4x04 - (the sontaran stratagem)

4x05 - (the doctor's daughter)

4x06 - (the posion sky)

4x07 - (the unicorn and the wasp)

4x08 - (silence in the library)

4x09 - (forest of the dead)

4x10 - (midnight)

4x11 - (turn left)

4x12 - (the stolen earth)

4x13 - (journey's end)

4x14.1 - The Journey (So Far) (a documentary about the entire show so far)

4x14.2 - Confidential Christmas 2008 (behind the scenes of The Next Doctor christmas special)

4x14.3 - Doctor Who: Top 5 Christmas Moments (a sort of confidential behind the scenes clip show of all of the episodes set at christmas)

4x15.1 - At the Proms 2008 (behind the scenes of doctor who at the proms 2008)

4x15.2 - The Eleventh Doctor (the special they used to announce Matt Smith as the new doctor who)

4x15.3 - Desert Storm (behind the scenes of Planet Of The Dead)

4x16 - Is There Life on Mars? (behind the scenes of The Waters Of Mars)

4x17 - Lords and Masters (behind the scenes of The End Of Time, Part One)

4x18 - Allons-y! (behind the scenes of The End Of Time, Part Two. version 1 - full dvd version)

4x18 - Allons-y! (behind the scenes of The End Of Time, Part Two. version 2 - shortend higher quality version from iplayer, this version has a song in the soundtrack that is diffrent from the dvd version, this is the most accurate version to what aired on tv at the time)

SERIES 5-

5x01 - (the eleventh hour)

5x02 - (the beast below)

5x03 - (victory of the daleks)

5x04 - (the time of angels)

5x05 - (flesh and stone)

5x06 - (the vampires of venice)

5x07 - (amy's choice)

5x08 - (the hungry earth)

5x09 - (cold blood)

5x10.1 - (vincent and the doctor)

5x10.2 Monster Files: The Daleks (a little documentary about victory of the daleks/daleks in general)

5x11 - (the lodger)

5x12 - (the pandorica opens)

5x13 - (the big bang)

5x14.1 - Monster Files: The Weeping Angels (a little documentary about the weeping angels episodes this season)

5x14.2 - Monster Files: The Silurians (a little documentary about the silurian episodes)

5x14.3.1 - Monster Files: The Alliance (a little documentary about the alliance of monsters from the pandoica opens)

5x14.3.2 - Backstage at the Doctor Who Prom 2010 (behind the scenes of doctor who at the proms 2010)

5x14.4.1 - Charlie McDonnell - Runner (the first Charlle behind the scenes videos, pretty quiet - Currently not up on the archives as Charlie has expressed the need to remove her old videos)

5.14.4.2 - Charlie McDonnell - TARDIS (another Charlie video, she explores the tardis set this time -Currently not up on the archives as Charlie has expressed the need to remove her old videos)

5x14.4.3 - Charlie McDonnell - Decorating Bus (another Charlie video, she decorates the food place with christmas decorations, i liked them Charlie - Currently not up on the archives as Charlie has expressed the need to remove her old videos)

5x14.4.4 - Charlie McDonnell - Christmas Presents (badger) (the famus Charlie video where she brings the cast and crew presents! this is where Matt gets his badger puppet - Currently not up on the archives as Charlie has expressed the need to remove her old videos)

5x14.5 - Christmas Special 2010 (behind the scenes of A Christmas Carol)

SERIES 6 -

6x01.1 - (the impossible astronaut)

6x01.2 - My Sarah Jane: A Tribute to Elisabeth Sladen (a special memorial for the late Elisabth Sladen 😭😭)

6x02 - (day of the moon)

6x03 - (the curse of the black spot)

6x04 - (the doctor's wife)

6x05 - (the rebel flesh)

6x06 - (the almost people)

6x07.1 - Charlie McDonnell interviews Neil Gaiman (Charlie interviews Neil Gaiman, appewrently causing some ruckes on Charlie's blog at the time hehe - Currently not up on the archives as Charlie has expressed the need to remove her old videos)

6x07.2 - (a good man goes to war)

6x07.3 - The Monster Files: The Silence (a little documentary on the silence, thank god because i needed that)

6x07.4 - The Monster Files: The Gangers (a little documentary on the gangers, my beloveds)

6x07.5 - Charlie McDonnell Becomes A Dalek (the last Charlie video, released late because it had the 1-4 tardis set, also she gets to ride a dalek in this one - Currently not up on the archives as Charlie has expressed the need to remove her old videos)

6x08 - (lets kill hitler)

6x09 - (night terrors)

6x10 - (the girl who waited)

6x11 - (the god complex)

6x12 - (closing time)

6x13.1 - (the wedding of river song)

6x13.2 - The Monster Files: The Antibodies (a little documentary on the antibodies from lets kill hitler)

6x13.3 - The Monster Files: The Cybermats (a little documentary on the little adorable cybermates because awww)

6x14 - The Nights' Tale (a little documentary on on the nights mini episodes! the last confidential stuff ever made rip)

#doctor who #doctor who confidential #dw #dwc #tenth doctor #eleventh doctor #ninth doctor #9th doctor #10th doctor #11th doctor #david tennant #matt smith #christopher eccleston #momo confidential watch #dw cast #rose tyler

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keepthedelta · 2 months ago

Note

can you tell me something about rubens barrichello? i know that wikipedia exists but learning information from people on tumblr is more interesting

oh rubens barrichello, the greatest second driver in the history of the sport. he was michael schumacher's number two (and apparently michael literally had it written into his contract that rubens would have to give up wins to help him win the championship, and rubens did not know about that) and the two of them are (i think, don't quote me on this) the second most successful driver pairing in the history of f1 (after brocedes of course). rubens was apparently exceptional at setting up a car, jenson button once said that he was the best at setting up a car that he had ever seen (and i think jenson also once said that rubens was his favourite ever teammate).

in 2002, rubens was absolutely dominating at the austrian grand prix. michael was well ahead in the championship and ferrari were dominating the season. towards the end of the race rubens was ordered to let michael past so he could win the race, which rubens did (unhappily, obviously). it caused a massive scandal, i think michael refused to take the top step or pulled rubens up there with him, and afterwards the team was fined something like a million dollars for breach of proceedings (not for the team orders but because of the podium stuff with michael and rubens. Later that year, at the US? grand prix, michael was leading but slowed down supposedly to try and finish in a dead heat with rubens, but rubens was awarded the win because he finished slightly ahead (it is thought that michael did this to pay rubens back for the win that was taken from him). because of the ferrari team order situation, the fia actually banned team orders from the 2003 season (although this move was reversed years later, also because of ferrari and the fernando is faster than you order given to felipe massa).

after being replaced at ferrari by felipe massa, rubens went on to drive for bar honda, and was teammates with jenson button. in 2009, after honda pulled out of f1 following the 2008 financial crash, both of them were retained by brawn. many people were critical of brawn retaining rubens, with some saying he should have been replaced by bruno senna (nephew of ayrton) but both jenson and rubens won multiple races that season, with jenson winning the wdc, and brawn winning the constructors. when jenson won the wdc in brazil he had to go back to the uk to do stuff for sponsors etc. as a sort of victory tour, but there were problems with his flights, so rubens lent him his private jet to take him back (i think rubens also has a pilot's license).

in addition to his achievements in f1, rubens also has the honour of being the very first person to beat the stig on british top gear, something that many f1 drivers had previously tried and failed (seriously i don't know if you have ever seen british top gear but it was one of the biggest shows in the world and when this happened it was a legitimately extraordinary moment).

i believe he now occasionally does commentary/media work for brazilian f1 broadcasters, and at least one of his sons has competed in the lower formulas. he is widely regarded as an incredibly nice man, and is deeply underrated as a driver

#delta help desk #rubens barrichello

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justagalwhowrites · 7 months ago

Text

What was lost...

Joel can't seem to shake you, even when he knows you're dead and gone. A canon Lavender one shot set in between chapters 8 and 9, a few months before Joel and Tommy arrive in Boston.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader from Lavender

Length: 2.3k

Warnings: Angst. This is pure angst, I'm sorry. Imagined canon-typical violence. Mention of sex. No use of Y/N. Minors DNI 18+ only.

A/N: I got this idea from an anonymous ask when I wrote about wanting to write Joel with a dead reader and they suggested writing Joel when he thought Doc was dead. SHE IS NOT REALLY DEAD, OK? Joel thinks she's dead. She's not dead. Doc is fine. She's in Boston calling QZs looking for Joel, working at the school and the clinic, and being codependent with Andrew. It's OK. I promise.

July 2008

I’ll always love you, Joel. Til the day I die.

Joel woke with a start.

It was still dark, the moon full and high, and for half a glorious second, he thought it was you asleep against him. That the two of you were camping with Sarah and you would sense him in your sleep and reach back to put a hand at his waist and tug him closer.

He asked you once if you knew you did that, that when he woke and sat up in the night that you would reach for him until you found him and pull him back to you where he belonged, always with a little satisfied sigh. As though him being close was all you needed in the world, even when you were unconscious.

You’d laughed when he asked, tucking your chin like you wanted to hide from it.

“God, I’m sorry!” You said as you caught your breath. “I had no idea I did that! I promise, I won’t hunt you down in my sleep if you pull away from me…”

Joel had laughed a little, too.

“Don’t apologize,” he’d said. “Like it when you keep me in line.”

“Good,” you smiled, teasing and sitting up a little straighter. “You’d better.”

But it wasn’t you, of course. It hadn’t been you for five years. Five years to the goddamn day.

Joel wished he’d lose track of the fucking date but he couldn’t seem to. Every time he seemed to get close, they’d have to do something like coordinate a raid on a FEDRA caravan and he’d be set back on track, his brain always keeping count.

He wanted to forget his birthday the most. If there was any mercy left in the world, he’d have never seen another one after 36 but here he was, closing in on 41 and still marking time.

He wished he could forget Sarah’s birthday, too. And yours.

But, strangely, July 18 was the second hardest day for him. It was the last day the three of you were together. The last time he’d heard your voice right beside him, the last time he’d held you, the last time he had nuzzled into your hair and your skin and breathed in the lavender scent of you.

The body next to him didn’t smell like lavender. She didn’t fit against his body like you did, either. She didn’t sound like you or taste like you or feel like you. But she was close and warm and wanted him and he’d given in. He almost always did. Because what they offered wasn’t sex, not really. It was a chance to forget, for a moment. If she looked like you, it was a chance to pretend, too.

This one didn’t look much like you, though. He’d closed his eyes during because it didn’t seem to matter that you’d been dead for years, it still felt wrong to be with anyone besides you. It didn’t make much difference. She didn’t feel like you. He’d pulled out and finished with his hand, thinking about how you felt that day five years ago in the water.

“Everything OK?” The woman beside him sounded groggy.

He couldn’t remember her name.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “Just takin’ over the watch. Go back to sleep.”

She just shrugged and settled on the ground again as Joel worked his way through the woods, finding Tommy walking the perimeter of where they’d stopped for the night.

“You got another two hours to sleep,” Tommy said, frowning in the moonlight.

“I’m awake,” Joel said. “May as well take over.”

Tommy gave him a look for a moment before he sighed.

“S’long as you’re OK,” he said, clapping Joel on the shoulder. “Should be good for a while, just did a sweep.”

Joel just gave him a nod and Tommy made his way back to camp as Joel settled into a notch in some roots, his back resting against the trunk of a tree.

“She’s not me, you know.”

Your voice was so close beside him it would have made him jump if it were any other sound. But it was you.

He was used to this by now, the way you haunted him on days like this.

He wasn’t sure why you’d hung on in ways Sarah hadn’t. Maybe because he knew what happened to her, knew where her body had gone cold.

He’d spent so much time trying to drown out that memory - to shove it away, suffocate it, anything to keep it from taking over - that he thought he might have pushed all of her aside with it. He didn’t hear her voice as often anymore, didn’t picture her there next to him either.

You were another story. His mind seemed to enjoy torturing him when it came to you. He’d pictured your death so many times now, the imagined memory of it finding him in his sleep on so many nights.

Tonight had been one of those nights. This time, you’d died at the hands of a man like him. You had your backpack on, the one Joel had told you to pack, and you were walking where he’d told you to go. He could see you so clearly, your hair in braids with ribbons on the ends and your cheeks with smears of dirt like you sometimes got when camping. You’d tried to beg for your pack because Joel had told you it was important and then you tried to beg for your life because he’d told you that was important, too.

It hadn’t worked.

You’d been in the man’s grip, his knife at your throat and your eyes found Joel’s and you said the same thing to him you always did before you died at the hands of whatever monster he’d left you to suffer:

I’ll always love you, Joel. Til the day I die.

“Don’t expect her to be you,” Joel said quietly, refusing to look at the ghost beside him. He didn’t need to. He knew what you’d look like, down to the jeans you were wearing and how many buttons were done up on your shirt. You always came to him in the form you’d been in the last time he’d seen you, when you waved to him as you passed through airport security on your way back to New York five years ago today.

“I wonder why you’re always let down then,” you sounded almost smug. It didn’t sound right on your voice. You were so rarely smug. He’d made you mean in death.

“Does it matter?” He asked.

“I guess not,” you said. “Just thought you’d have found something better to do by now. It’s been five years, Joel.”

He turned to look at you then. You were sitting close enough to him that, if you were real, he would feel the heat of you there.

But there was no warmth to be found in a ghost.

“Know how long it’s been,” he said gruffly.

“Well, you probably deserve to torture yourself a little,” you sighed, no longer looking at him and out at the forest instead. “It’s your fault I died the way I did, you know.”

That’s how he knew it was all in his head. You’d never say that to him.

Even if it was true.

“I know.”

He sat in silence for a few minutes, refusing to look at you, speak to you even though he sometimes wondered if falling into his delusions would be the best he could hope for in this life. Nothing else would measure up to you. He knew that. He would, for the rest of his life, regret not being beside you when the world ended. He would, for the rest of his life, compare every woman he ever met to you. He would, for the rest of his life, wish for something he could never have because he’d done nothing but fucking fail the only people in the world who mattered. Now, you were both out of reach.

“I miss you, you know,” you said eventually, quietly. “I missed you when I died, too.”

Joel didn’t say anything. He just clenched his jaw.

“I was alone,” you said. “I was scared. You know how I got panic attacks, imagine how bad it would have been then…”

“Stop.”

“How I would have looked for you…”

“Stop it.”

“How I would have been worried about you, even as they killed me I would have been worrying for you…”

“SHUT UP!”

He yelled it, finally looking at you again. But you weren’t what he expected. At least, not in how you were looking at him.

So often when he pictured you now, when you spoke to him like this - when he was sleep deprived but couldn’t rest and was in desperate need of some kind of solace - there was an almost vicious look on your face. He didn’t think he’d ever seen you look like that when you were alive, it was an expression entirely of his mind’s invention. You had never been cruel or even really aggressive in life but he couldn’t think of you without it. It hurt too much to see you kind.

But you looked earnest and sad now, so like the real you, like he was worthy of your pity for the first time in five years. It was like his heart beat for the first time since he’d held his daughter’s body.

“You never even looked for me, Joel,” you said softly. “I could have made it, you know.”

He shook his head.

“Don’t say that. Don’t put that thought in me, don’t…”

“I could have. You can’t know, not really. Why did you give up on me? Why didn’t you come find me? Save me?”

“How would you have lived?” He asked, meaning to sound angry but he couldn’t. “How would you have fucking made it through that? What was I supposed to find? What was I supposed to save?”

You just shrugged.

“If you really think I’m gone, why didn’t you join me? Join her?”

He looked straight ahead.

“I tried.”

“You flinched.”

He hung his head, clenched his jaw. Yes, he’d failed at that, too.

“Is this really how you’re going to spend your life, Joel?” You sounded like you. He could almost feel the gentle brush of your fingers on his neck. He still knew your touch so well, he still compared every woman he ever felt to that touch. “Hurting people and killing people and suffering yourself? Do you think this is what I would want for you?”

He looked to the side, as far from you as he could without leaving you.

“You could try something else,” you said after a moment.

He looked back to you again. You were still so beautiful. Even dead, you were beautiful.

“Try what?” He asked. “What other fuckin’ options do I have?”

“You could go to a QZ,” you shrugged. “Try to be a person again. Have a life.”

He scoffed.

“What’s the point?”

“What’s the point of any of it?” You asked. “You flinched, Joel. There must be a reason for it. Do you really think you’re going to find it out here, like this? Become yourself again, become the man I loved so much that I begged him to stay, even when he told me I wasn’t worth staying for. I know you can.”

Joel thought for a moment.

What if you were right? What if there was still some kind of meaning to this fucked up world he was trapped in? It didn’t seem possible, not really. But you were impossible, too. You’d been impossible before the world ended and yet you’d existed. You had existed and you had chosen him.

“You loved me once,” you said softly.

“I still love you,” he said. “Always will.”

“Then try. For me. OK?”

You were looking at him, so full of hope and love that he couldn’t say no. He could never say no, not to you.

He took a deep breath.

“OK.”

You smiled and you were beautiful, still so beautiful.

“Thank you,” you said before you took a deep breath and turned your face toward the full moon like you were basking in the sun. “I think it’s time for me to go. But I’ll see you soon.”

He huffed, cynical, looking in front of again.

“Sure you’ll be back when I’m too tired to think straight,” he said.

“I’m sure I will,” he heard the smile in your voice. “But who knows? Maybe you won’t need me anymore, not once you find yourself again.”

He looked at you, frowning.

“What…”

“Take care of yourself for me,” you leaned in so close, close enough that, if you were real, he would feel the brush of your lips on his and smell the lavender of your shampoo. “I’ll always love you, Joel. Til the day I die.”

You were gone before he had a chance to respond, nothing but air and silence, the echo of a ghost in your wake.

He sighed and leaned back against the tree, closing his eyes for a moment, trying to think. Maybe a QZ wasn’t a terrible idea. They’d heard some halfway decent things about Boston lately. If they started heading that way now, they could be there before the snow flies.

And Boston, at least, was a new city. A place he’d never been, where there were no ghosts to haunt him. It was a good a place as any to try to become a person again. It was a good a place as any to try to move past you.

Joel settled in to his watch, deciding to talk to Tommy in the morning. He’d be on board. He always was, when Joel made up his mind.

And who knows, maybe he would find something in Boston worth flinching for.

#fanfic #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #lavender #joel miller x oc #angst #lavenderversary

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vvatchword · 2 years ago

Text

In Defense of BioShock Infinite

Although I had preordered BioShock Infinite with all its bells and whistles, I did not actually play it until January 2023. And lordy, I had me another Experience with a capital E. How the hell a bunch of urban Yanks could capture my experience as a queer democratic-socialist atheist struggling with her roots as a rural evangelical-cum-fascist is kinda magical, honestly. As to the game itself, it didn’t hurt how good it looked—the kickass skyhook gun battles—that novel setting—the complex characters—that delicious historical setting—that bloodthirsty critique of America—and to top it all off, they had pulled yet another Cassandra. Hell, speaking of which—not only was the game fun, it was fucking smart. It was intelligent, memorable, and meaningful in a way I hadn’t experienced in video games for years.

Now, back in 2013, when I had realized that I would be spoiled for Infinite, I left the BioShock fandom. After completing the game, I headed to Tumblr to re-engage, wagging my whole body like an excitable golden retriever, only to discover that BioShock Infinite was remarkably absent, and when mentioned, brutally derided.

“I hate BioShock Infinite and all my friends do, too,” someone said in the tags under a post.

I was utterly befuddled and deeply sad. I wanted to talk about BioShock Infinite! I wanted to dig into it, uncover unexpected ideas, learn new things, talk shit, make new friends—the full fandom experience. And instead I kept stumbling into hateful diatribes and super-charged disgust.

Obviously, I first looked at myself and my own judgment. Had I missed some obvious problem or misread some theme or dialogue? This wouldn’t be the first time I’d snapped down on a hook. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

There are two parts of BioShock Infinite that are unquestionably terrible: the fridging of Daisy Fitzroy and the false equivalence of violence between haves and have-nots (lol what are the have-nots supposed to do, ask nicely?). Additionally, one could look at the use of real Native American tragedies as tasteless. Personally, I do not—in the same way that I don’t find it tasteless that real war victims were used as inspiration for Splicer deformities. This is what really happened; this is commentary on events that really happened to real people.

At this point, I’m sure I don’t have to explain why two of these themes are Unequivocally Bad.

Anyway, I thought that perhaps these were the reasons BSI had been condemned to Super Hell.

I was wrong.

How Criitcsim Werk

This wasn’t the fandom I’d made friends in over 2010. Hell, this wasn’t the fandom of 2013. This was a fandom made up of Babies. They were making their first coltish stumblings into media criticism and with it, dredging up the same brain-dead bullshit from Tumblr circa 2008.

Suddenly I was brought face to face with people who seemed to think that if a character couldn’t be likable or good that the story itself couldn’t be likable or good; that one bad element means the story is unsalvageable (lol u pussies); the implication that one is bad for liking it; the destructive juvenile insistence that media accurately measures its fans’ moral qualities en masse like an astrological sign. This goes far beyond simple like or dislike and plunges head-first into Puritanism: praying loudly on street-corners instead of quietly in a dark corner where God might hear you.

At one point I had a kid go off about how they wouldn’t take time to understand Booker DeWitt’s perspective because he had (fictionally) taken part in a genocide. (That same person said the Native American element had been employed for shock value, a thought that sometimes keeps me up at night, because it is legitimately one of the dumbest criticisms the game has ever received.) At another point I saw someone acting personally offended that (fictional person) Dr. Suchong’s (fictional) data was being stolen (in a fiction) by a (fictional) racist who would (fictionally) take credit for (fictional person) Suchong’s (fictional) inventions “while calling him slurs”. Sure, a better question would have been, “Why would the creative team opt to do this” rather than assume intentional racism from a Jewish creative director with an in-office multi-ethnic team in the year of our lord 2013, but why not handwave the choice with prurient moral dismay so your audience won’t beat you to death with bats?

It was as though fans were treating these completely fictional characters as real people whose personal gods had opted to torment them, and that their tormentors merited the kind of censure that psychopaths should receive. As I hope all of you understand, this is fucking madness.

More than once I saw people posting about hating the studio or the creative director in ways that seemed intense, unreasoning, and excessive—notably an “I Hate [Irrational Games creative director] Ken Levine” stamp (rofl the more things change amirite). People get so performatively moralistic about it that I started wondering if I missed something big along the way. Was there some secret Voxophone I missed swearing fealty to baby Hitler or some shit?

Double Standards

At the same time, I was utterly confused. BioShocks 1 and 2 both featured some absolutely ghastly bullshit based on real-life horrors and a thick mix of complicated human beings—many of them victims who have become monsters. The fact they are grounded in historical tragedies is a huge part of their appeal. Hell, I don’t think those games would have had half their meaning without World Wars I and II and the threat of a third.

A gay man who feels so cursed by his orientation that he is incapable of intimacy and systematically destroys his ex-lovers—including the man he loves the most. A Korean who survived Japanese occupation and a Jewish Holocaust survivor repeat the violence and traumas exacted upon them and their people, subjecting a new generation to agonies unthinkable. Chasing the shadows of Bolsheviks, a Russian citizen becomes the brutal tyrant that he loathed. A rich lawyer with an easygoing drawl designs a concentration camp and systematically harvests hundreds, if not thousands of political prisoners, selling them out to medical testing for a quick buck.

But a Native man who destroys his own people and class to ensure his own survival and social acceptability is too far? This character is where people drew the line, so much so that the entire game is disavowed? Hell, if you’re just talking about Booker (rather than Comstock), he doesn’t have anywhere near the largest bodycount. If we were to judge on the metric of human misery alone, Booker wouldn’t even hit the top ten.

Keep in mind that the most-discussed BioShock game on Tumblr is BioShock 2, and that one of the biggest fandom favorites is Augustus Sinclair—the easy-talkin’ Georgia lawyer who sells your character into horrors past all human comprehension, as he sold hundreds before and after you. Sinclair is a motherfucker so vile that BioShock 2 gives you no choice but to murder him. But Sinclair is also pleasant; good-looking to some; spends the whole game making sweet love to your ear; is one of the only true positive experiences you experience in a horror story. Unlike DeWitt, a man who is brutal and awful from step one, Sinclair is smooth and sweet. Unlike DeWitt, Sinclair’s victims are faceless, completely fictional, and carry no political or social baggage.

People fuckin’ ship this guy with Subject Delta, his explicit victim. He’s usually described as a squishy cinnamon roll. In most fanfiction, he often gets to escape to the surface and fuck Delta while helping raise Eleanor as Dad 2. It is rare that I find fanfiction that acknowledges his monsterhood in all its glory. In fact, I can only think of two.

Literacy Comes in Levels

My problem with the over-the-top hatred of BioShock Infinite is along the same lines as my confusion at Twilight and Harry Potter hate: there is so much worse out there (how much do the haters actually engage with media if they think this is that bad—yes, even considering the shitty creators themselves!), the hatred far outweighs the sin committed (in BioShock’s case, the truly bad bits are not central enough to derail the larger narrative), people don’t seem to hate it so much as they want to be seen hating it, fans want to enforce an unspoken rule hating it (bitches this is poison. Stop this), and there’s something about the hate that stinks of poor reading comprehension.

A great metric for general literacy is the newspaper. In journalism, you’re writing for the lowest-common denominator, which for years here in the USA has been about a fifth-grade reading level (about 10-11 years old, for my non-American readers). The AP posted an article a couple years back about how the general reading comprehension of Americans needs to be dropped to a third-grade one (8-9 years), and baby, I’m here to say it’s true.

Most of the problem is that the American education system is shitty as fuck. The rest of it is from an extremely American disdain of intellectualism and the arts. People are not taught how to interpret art or literature—a difficult and subtle skill which involves accepting such truths as “multiple contradictory readings can exist and yet be simultaneously correct”, “the author can be a complete tool and still be right about things”, “the author can be a great person and still write horrifyingly incorrect bullshit”, and “worthwhile works can be ridiculously long and it really is your fault for not having an attention span”.

Media criticism must be learned through trial, error, asking questions, confidently swaggering into a public space to announce your brilliant insight only to have your ass handed to you (usually by your older self ten years later), being willing to admit you swaggered confidently into a public space to state bullshit and then amending your bullshit only to produce more bullshit, and otherwise making a complete and utter cock of yourself. We are taught to fear and flee pain and failure, despite the fact this is how we learn and improve. Because we judge our value by whether or not we are “smart,” we are afraid of displaying that we don’t know something or might be mistaken–better not to try at all than to reveal ourselves to be fools. And yet the best way to learn is to crash up against someone else and be proven wrong!

American parents are terrified of hurting their children to the point that they spare them cognitive dissonance of any kind, disavowing difficult art—without any appreciation for the fact that art is how we provide safe spaces to explore key human experiences, better preparing us to face those difficult subjects when there are real-world consequences (sex, gender and social expression, grief, violence, predation, illness, interacting with people of different ideologies, whatever new issue is pissing off some smooth-brained old motherfucker somewhere).

If parents and teachers aren’t teaching us how to interpret art, we’re probably never going to develop the skill at all, or crash unsubtly into it in a piecemeal fashion (hello it me). Another unfortunate side effect is that these readers tend to be blitheringly superficial: they are literally intellectually incapable of reading deeper than the uppermost layer of a text. The curtains are always blue.

And let’s not forget the role moral performatism plays in media criticism, which although faaar from new, has reached hilarious levels in the age of social media. What’s important isn’t understanding something, it’s finding something to symbolically burn at the stake so everyone knows God loves us: please keep loving me, please don’t hurt me, please don’t throw me on the fire—for performatism is not for outsiders. We long for human connection so fucking much that it’s more important to destroy what might point out our fallibilities than it is to let ourselves stand in the furnace and burn out the dross.

What do you think the point of BioShock Infinite was?

Emotional Machines

Let’s face it. Human beings give a lot more credence to how something makes them feel than they do its complex invisible reality. We are not logical creatures; we are emotional ones. Our logic is too new a biological mechanism to override something as powerfully stupid as our primal lizard brains.

Knowing this, let’s take BioShock’s most popular characters. The first two are Subject Delta and Jack Wynand, the protagonists of BioShocks 2 and 1, respectively; and why not? They’re the characters we play. In the first two BioShocks, whether or not you kill Little Sisters determines the ending you receive. In other words, Delta and Jack can only be as “wicked” as the players are.

How do people want to see themselves? As good. What do people want to see around themselves? Good. (What is “good”? Uh, well,,,,,,) What do they want? Simple moral questions with simple moral answers. And in the first two BioShocks, what is moral is obvious: don’t kill little girls. It’s actually kind of insulting once you say it out loud.

In-fandom, Jack and Subject Delta are almost never painted as murderers or monsters, but as victims and heroes; I saw someone musing about putting Subject Delta on a “gentle giants” poll and I nearly choked on my own tongue. I only saw that musing because someone put Subject Delta and Jack in a “Best Fathers” poll. Nobody in-fandom really considers the “evil” or “complicated” endings as canon choices, despite those versions being fully understandable alternate readings, with a story that doesn’t make sense without them. (I don’t believe Burial at Sea is necessarily canon; in fact, I would bet good money that it is a huge middle finger lol, mostly because a number of brain-dead motherfuckers won’t take unhappiness for an answer.)

Most fandom art and writing is gentle, sweet, good: the symbolic healing of the damaged, the salvation of innocents, the turning of new leaves. These things are not just saccharine sweet—they tend to be unrealistically sweet. Now, far be it from me to demand these works cease. There’s a reason they exist. People write them because they need hope and happiness; I have enjoyed them greatly myself and intend to enjoy them in the future. But if y’all get to have your dessert, I demand the right to have my dinner.

The Colours Out of Earth

Let there be media where the opposite can also be true: where everything is unbelievably complicated and unforgivably fucked-up. Let there be characters who slide slurs into their speech without thinking. Let there be characters who destroy themselves in a thousand different ways, not all of them obvious, some of them horrifying. Let there be well-meaning people struggling with all their mights to do what is right only to destroy everyone around them and then completely miss the fact it’s all their faults. Let there be wickedness painted as goodness, superficial appearances accepted over essential and inherent values, denial of change and transformation, failure to accept that what is old must die and what is new must live, human stupidity and short-sightedness and cruelty in all their flavors. Let’s smash it all together and see how it plays out.

Oh, badly? No shit! But “badly” isn’t the point. How does it play out?

Let there be a world of gradients—a place I can float from color to color, hue to hue, value to value, while attempting to figure out where, why, how, and by whom they transform—to taste concepts in a hundred different ways, test their textures by a hundred different mediums, insert them into a hundred different contexts. I need to understand why I feel the way I do; I need to understand morality in all its hideous, fragmentary glory. For I have been sold to a ideology of blacks and whites, and let me tell you: it prepares you for nothing, and it will always destroy what is most precious about human life.

I can no longer believe in a world where what is lost always returns, because that world does not exist. I have a reflexive need to come to terms with Finality: what I have lost, what I have destroyed, what will never return, what will never be better. I have a reflexive need to understand Transformation: what I am now, what is as of the present, what has risen shambling from the ashes, what turns to gaze upon me in the darkness. I need to understand what is wretched about me as much as I need to heal myself. How can I heal if I can’t understand how I have hurt and been hurt?

I need to shine a light in the dark. Not to remodel it, not to destroy it—because I also can’t believe in a world where the wicked is destroyed forever—but to behold it, to learn from it, to view my own impact upon it, to accept how it has become a part of me, to learn how to do my best (because that’s all one can do). I must learn to love people more than causes, I must learn to love people rather than the act of winning, I must learn to love people rather than battle. I need to stand in that endless black with the lamp off and my eyes closed, letting the agony roll over me, burning with a fire that throws no light, rolling back and forth from an intense self-loathing to a fury at a society that destroys what is most valuable because it didn’t make them feel the way they wanted.

The Unforgivable

I believe that there are only two differences between Booker DeWitt and his equally cursed cohorts.

In the Hall of Whores: The Unmarked Slate

First, unlike the previous two games, where you enter the world as a tabula rasa and might roleplay as what you perceive as a good person, you are explicitly put into the shoes of a monster, and nothing you do can save you.

With other shitty BioShock characters, you are passively watching other people, and you are able to hold yourself apart. Sure, everyone else is crazy as fuck from using biological Kryptonite, but you’re too smart to end up a crazy fucking asshole like them! Sure, you are now technically a mass murderer, but those fuckers deserved it, damn it!

“Look at this crazy bastard!” you say, rolling your eyes at the Steinmans and Cohens and Ryans and Fontaines. “It sure is a great thing I’m not a crazy bastard!”

You are able to escape acknowledging that you, too, in certain circumstances, might be the crazy bastard. You are being challenged to stand in the body of a person who has committed unforgivable sins. Imagine if you yourself committed those sins. Imagine what sins you have already committed. Imagine what brutalities you cannot take back. Imagine what horrors you have wreaked just by breathing.

“Ahhhh!” said players, probably. “What do you mean I’m not allowed to be good?”

Because that’s what the game was designed to do. Because “good” is a fucking cop-out and if it’s how you live with yourself wait until you find out you’ve been doing horrifying bullshit all your life without question. You can be evil by association through no fault of your own.

Original Sin

Second, the plight of Native Americans is a sin that non-Natives will always carry, and the socially conscious are aware of this even if they don’t know how to put it into words. The state of affairs being what it is, it is unlikely that First Peoples will ever be treated humanely, much less have their land returned. They must struggle for scraps of what is rightfully theirs while we lounge on their corpses. We cannot help but benefit from their destruction; we are made unwitting partners with our forebears; we steal the fruits of their lands and make mockeries of their faiths and identities. We have destroyed part of what made this world fascinating and unique and most of it can never be returned. Even if everything were to be made right tomorrow, their genocide is a sin that we will carry until we die, because the only reason we could be here at all is because they were killed.

The obvious solution stands before us, but the powers that be are so much greater than we that we are effectively powerless, and achieving anything less than total restoration smacks of anticlimax.

This is unbearable.

How can one think of oneself as a good person if one sees the good that must be done, but cannot achieve it? If one’s actions are meaningless? Goodness without action is pretension.

We are all Booker DeWitt. We have all set fire to the tipi. We swept the ashes away, we ignored the sizes of the bones, we built a CVS on their graves, and then we made statues and holidays commemorating Native Americans like the world’s cheapest “Thinking of You” card. We have de-fanged them, transformed them into cardboard cutouts, and set them up as cute little side characters in our sweeping American dream.

Booker is not a man. Booker is America and Americans—and America and Americans are monstrous: one part hypocrisy, two parts incessant violence, three parts constant peacocking, and four parts dumb as a stump.

The Monsters We Make

Outside of the message about “choice,” an enormous part of BioShock’s thematic ensemble is the creation of monsters. How are monsters created? Who or what is responsible for creating them? What do the monsters think made them the ways they are? Can a monster be saved? How? Is it enough to acknowledge you did wrong and want to be a better person?

Maybe most people are aware on some instinctive level of what facing one’s own monsterhood means. No one wants it. It’s not fun. It hurts. It’s embarrassing. It’s destructive. It’s admitting you don’t have it all together and might never, ever—that despite your best actions, you can have it horribly wrong at any point. In an age where we demand moral perfection, it demands vulnerability: you must admit that sometimes you’re the racist, the transphobe, the sexist, the nationalist, the classist, the homophobe, the violent, the wrong, the dumbfuck.

Human beings are not built to be moral; human beings are built to survive. We so rapidly learn how to deal with our contexts at such young ages that we don’t have the time or capabilities to question why those contexts are the ways they are or why it is demanded we perform the ways we do.

In a very real way, BioShock Infinite demands vulnerability of us. It demands you look in the mirror and see what is monstrous in you—how you have been created—manufactured—a tool, a machine, a trained animal. It asks you to recognize that you can be a monster simply by association. And if we can’t look into the mirror and truly acknowledge that monsterhood, we run very real risks of becoming or enabling those monsters in one way or another.

Worst of all: perhaps monsterhood isn’t optional. Perhaps the monster was inside of us from the very beginning. It’s not a matter of if you become a monster, but when, under what circumstances, by whose hand. What is more, believing the “right” moral stances will not save you. Monsterhood can afflict anyone, in any ideology, any political stance, in any social movement, in any faith. The only element that can save you is to truly love other people, and even then, you can fail, for there can be states where there is no winner and ways to misread how best to treat another person.

Environment and Society: Context Will Not Be Denied

BioShock 1’s original ending is Jack-as-monster, regardless of how many children he saves, regardless of your feelings as player. He passes through the gauntlet of Rapture, but he has supped of its poison. And he wasn’t poisoned when he entered Rapture the second time—he was poisoned the minute he was conceived. He was born of it. He had no hope of ever escaping it—he never could have—he’d never had a choice to begin with.

No matter what choices you make in BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth will always kill you. Why? Because she has seen every world—every context—every limitation—every boon. And there is no way to stop what has been; there is no way to undo what has been done. The minute you have committed to a decision, you have split the universe; there is no telling what kind of person it will make you. In fact, there’s no telling which of your decisions will matter at all. Only Elizabeth can see because she is the unlimited future: your offspring stands before you, judge and jury, and you will have no choice but to accept her verdict, for despite your name, you are incapable of controlling how you are interpreted.

Elizabeth sits across from you in the boat and stares without blinking. She sees a million million similar Bookers. Some are a little bit taller, some a little bit shorter, some a little heavier or lighter. Some more-resemble one grandparent or another. They have different colored ties. This one blinks when rain hits him in the eyeball. That one took a brutal beating back on the airship and one eye is swollen shut. That one can’t stop shaking; this one is unable to speak at all; one hasn’t yet lost hope, although even he doesn’t realize it.

They all lowered the torch to the tipi.

The baptism determined Comstock; what determined Booker?

Why Booker Is

In BioShock 1, characters are often stand-ins for larger concepts. Thus Ryan stands in as Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Ubermensch; Bill McDonagh as Andrew Ryan’s conscience; Diane McClintock as the citizenry of Rapture; Captain Sullivan as law and order; Frank Fontaine as the truest expression of Objectivism in its distilled form.

Who is Booker? Most importantly: why is he?

Booker is a fictional character with a brutal background based on historical events, alternative and true. Booker might be Lakota; Booker might have undergone forced Anglicization; Booker might have been ripped from his parents; Booker is a product of violence, perhaps literally. Booker is American exceptionalism distilled. Booker is the past in constant judgment of itself, unable to live with itself and unable to die. Booker destroys what is best in him and around him in exchange for belonging. Booker has sold the future to absolve his sins. Booker has sold his daughter because he is a fictional character in a work of fiction who needs to be propelled.

Booker is a shell, a sluice, an environment. Booker is the broken shape you are meant to fill, horrified. His internal shape should torture you as it has tortured him: the messy slaggy soul of a shitty tin soldier.

Does Booker take the baptism and become Comstock? If so, it might be his second one. His last name literally means “the white.” His first name can mean “author.” It is most likely his second name: an attempt to rewrite himself. And when he was unable to rewrite himself the first time, when the cognitive dissonance boiled at the edges of his skull, he found there was only one way to cleanse himself the second: to remake the world entirely. To force transformation on everyone else. To take vengeance on a world that could never love him, never want him—to create a world that has no choice but to love him. If he can’t change the world’s mind, he’ll change the world.

Note what he opts to do: to take the fight to the environment–to the unyielding universe.

Context Is Everything

It is no mistake that BioShock Infinite occurs in 1912: the sinking of the Titanic is often credited with ending an unfettered optimism, a period when the Western world believed technology had brought the human race into a golden age. With World War I—which would follow a mere two years later—came modern warfare and all the horrors thereof, not the least of which was the realization that humans had created a kind of war that could destroy the entire world. World War I also seeded the rise of the United States: much of the wealth of warring Europe—itself fat on the blood of subjugated peoples and stolen lands—would rattle into America’s coffers.

It is also no mistake that BioShock 1 directly follows World War II. With WWII came a heightened terror—that this war is not the last war, that there will never be an end to war, that war will go on expanding and expanding until it has consumed us all. World War III would not be denied: prettily packaged in the ideals of its children, it simply followed the utopians down to their underwater tombs. According to BioShock 1’s original ending, World War III is not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when.

But even more important than the history in the BioShock games are their settings. Mute leviathans, Rapture and Columbia determine all of your behaviors: from where you can exist in space to all of your desires and goals to how you choose to present yourself to how you opt to behave. Isolated in extremism—whether that extremism is the crushing depths of the ocean or the unbearable lightness of the air—most of their power is that they simply cannot be escaped. You can’t outrun them. They are everywhere. They are everything.

Like Lovecraft before it, BioShock acknowledges the greatest horror of all: you cannot escape your context. Your context does not only involve your immediate surroundings. It is also historical; contains zeitgeists from various cultures and subcultures; is filled with pressures both personal and impersonal, human and nonhuman. Many of these forces can hurt you. Many more can destroy you. What you do to survive depends very much on where, when, and with whom you must live.

Human beings are not built to be moral.

The Death of the Future

In the film Operation, Burma!, a soldier asks Errol Flynn: “Who were you before the war?”

“An architect,” says Flynn.

Who were you? Because that “you” doesn’t matter now. That “you” is irrelevant. So you’re an architect. What the war does to you; what these deaths mean to you; your past, your education, your loves and desires and forward motivation, the you that could have been outside war, the you that slogs alone into the brutal future—all completely irrelevant. Your forebears don’t care so long as you can bleed.

Children are the manufactured tools of their creators—helpless before the enormous strength of their elders and the zeitgeists that enclose them, poisoned by their parents’ insecurities and flaws, utilized like weapons regardless of the cost—often with great love.

Consider something more than the traumatized culture: consider the society filled with traumatized children; consider the traumatized society. Consider channeling children through that trauma over and over and over again, if you can. Poisoned—poisoned—poisoned—all of us poisoned. Poisoned by those who loved us most. Poisoned by the people we trusted. Poisoned by the people who meant to make a better world.

I believe it is notable that creative director Ken Levine is Jewish; I have read from multiple accounts that the European Jewish diaspora was uniquely traumatized from the Holocaust and passed that trauma down upon their own families. I sometimes wonder if he saw that firsthand.

The fathers eat sour grapes; their children’s teeth are set on edge.

Choice: Player Expectations and Entitlement

For players who experienced BioShocks 1 and 2 with their multiple endings (Good, Bad, and “ok bye then I guess” respectively), it must have been jarring to suddenly reckon with being a monster. How often I see players grousing that nothing they do will change their wicked pasts! These players completely miss that the only meaningful choice had already been made, that it had nothing to do with the player at all, and even if they had been there, DeWitt was still unforgivable. The only way to go on was to bow out and allow the future to redefine herself.

Nobody was ready for that shit.

Like it or not, BioShock 1 had set a precedent. Not everyone’s going to read up on creator intentions. If any keyword came blaring through the noise, it would have been “choice.” Most players only recognize choice by the ability to make it, not the absence of it, and most of them weren’t equipped to recognize that its lack was the point. The meaningless choices were commentary, and they were as much about the player as they were about DeWitt himself. Not every choice will be meaningful, will it? And there will be choices you make that will be momentous, but they will seem very small when you make them.

Because most players had experienced what they thought was a basic moralistic tale in the first two games, and would see Infinite not as reflection upon America’s destructive personality, its obsession with a meaningless Good/Bad duocracy, and the infinite, cyclical nature of violence, they saw Booker’s death as corrupted artsy claptrap.

“I did the good schuut,” they say. “I want the good schuut end. Where happy end??? Where treat :(”

Bitch the future is here.

Time to die.

It’s Not Me, It’s You

Generally I despise essays that end with, “But the real fault lay with the clueless motherfuckers who played the game!” Often, if enough people complain, there’s something to it; the message has been obscured somehow. Details or explanations weren’t clear or intuitive enough, some mechanism isn’t working somewhere, some character needs to talk more or less, some setting needs to be transformed. O artist: stop whining and get cracking. If everywhere you go smells like shit, it’s time to look under your shoe.

But sometimes it’s true that a piece of media is on a level folks aren’t equipped for. Think of every literature and art class you’ve ever had, if you’ve been fortunate enough to have one. There’s always someone scoffing in a back row, like here are all these jokers making more of something than they should. Similarly, some of you have been arguing with me this entire time, saying: “I just wanted a video game. I just wanted to shoot something and feel better and instead I get this bullshit ending that makes no sense.”

First of all, smart bullshit (and even fucked-up attempts at smart bullshit! Hi BioShock 2) gets to exist on this Earth along with Gmod and Roblox or Schuut Big Tits 84 (there are 84 tits and you must shoot them all. They explode into smaller tits) or whatever-the-fuck-else you think is a worthwhile gaming experience. Second of all, miserable bullshit also gets to exist, and what did you fucking expect if you played through either BioShocks 1 or 2? When you hear a football player quavering out in the darkness for his mom to pick him up, how’d that make you feel? What did you think was going to happen to Jack after pounding back the entire Plasmid library, the cancer cocktail that explicitly destroys the fuck out of its users? Third of all, if you missed the smart bullshit going on in BioShock 1 and didn’t think BioShock Infinite might be larger in scope in more ways than one, that’s on you. Fourthly, if you were simply satisfied with saving like, 15 kids from a violently-perishing city of thousands and call it good, I mean… is that really where your thoughts end? Are you really that fucking small?

It’s Not You, It’s Me

You ever meet those motherfuckers who talk shit about Shakespeare or modern art? And you’re just left there staring with dead eyes at this poseur who mistakes playing devil’s advocate for intelligence, cheek resting on your fist, thinking about the fanfic you’re writing, wondering who it’s for, remembering that all your smut-writing friends get ten times the viewers, and considering throwing yourself in front of a bus.

Yeah, there’s a personal element to this: the fact that BioShock Infinite is the kind of art I like and long for and want to make myself, the fact that the game was successful and yet the studio was closed, the way its DLC was so rushed that the story plopped out like half-baked mystery meat—realizing that the same forced rush was at 2K’s behest for BioShock 2, as well, and wondering how good art can ever be made in this unforgiving capitalist hellscape. The game was weirdly niche and I’m not 100% sure I’ll ever experience anything quite like it again. And with the whiners in this fandom, the loud ones controlling the narrative, some fresh brain-dead exec in some brain-dead publisher might be like: “We must keep it safer and simpler for these fuckin babby adult!”

Nah bitch nah. Naaaah. Cry some more while I enjoy me my fucking dinner. I’ll eat it while making loud smacking noises and keeping unbroken eye contact. Come here. Let’s look at each other. It’ll be like Lady and the Tramp but we want to punch each other. What truer form of love can there be here in the modern world?

I keep having to remind myself that this response isn’t new. I keep having to remind myself of my place. I keep having to remind myself why I write, why I read, why I like to experience art to begin with. It’s not for the reasons other people do it. Oh, I want the same emotional release as everyone else, I want the same rollicking plots, I adore the same tropes. I seek out everything and anything for a good time; I’ll read Moby Dick today and a smutty 5,000-word abortion with the world’s most suspect grammar tomorrow. I don’t give a shit if it’s low- or high-brow; there are all kinds of ways to have fun and there are all kinds of ways to engage with art, and lord knows I’ve done my share of smooth-brain criticism. The problem is that I’ve always wandered off by myself, sunk into an all-consuming reverie, on tracks that no one else ever seems to be on, and then looked up to talk excitedly about something only to realize I’m alone. And whose fault is that?

By the same token, maybe I haven’t talked enough. Maybe I spend too much time with my mouth shut. Maybe I haven’t stood up enough for things that are worth our time, worth talking up, worth setting on pedestals.

I tell you, BioShock Infinite will stand the test of time. It’s too good for this. It’s too good for you, warts and all. Some of you will grow to understand that; some of you won’t; many of you will shrug and go on with your lives (and this is fine; it is only a video game). But I’ve truly not seen anything like it. I can’t believe a mainstream video game was allowed to be so fucking brutal about the American juggernaut, and what’s more, that it sold like hotcakes. Plus, I can’t think of any works in recent memory that have struck me so close to my own heart. No creative work has made me start beating a monster’s face into a washbasin for ten hours only to lift her by the scalp and see my own eyes looking back.

Look into those eyes. See your own stupid impulses pouring out. Your own stupid excuses, your violences, your sins—your claws, your teeth, your costumes, your hilarious attempts at interpretive dance. The beast doth protest too much.

O, monster—behold thyself—and tremble.

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