#except for ai generators those guys can fuck themselves

[turoce]

i'm joining the war on robots on the side of robots

[gearlic-personal]

My Borderlands Movie (2024) review

Right before the movie ended, I thought “is this how the movie ends?” and “no surely not, we’re only like 45 minutes in”, and then the movie ended. So little happened in the movie I couldn’t fathom the fact I absorbed nearly 2 hours of a film. And I say “absorbed” because my attention did not waver for a second, I was so hooked on how awful the writing was I just had to hear it to believe it. I feel the characters were written for a voice acted video game, not live action— it created an awkwardness when the tone of a video game is poorly translated to a performance that is acted out, especially when the actors themselves are notttt feeling the role at all. You know it’s bad when you can hear the actor cringing at their own lines. I’m gonna bring up the Fallout show because I feel they did a fantastic job at translating the quirky humor of the game into the live acted show: going into the show I felt the same hesitation as this movie, and it didn’t help when I noticed how 1-to-1 they make the set look to the game, the same goofy vault posters and outfits (albeit MUCH better designed and fitting for a screen, and not a cheap Amazon cosplay version they attempted in the Borderlands movie). What broke me out of the awkwardness of a goofy-video-game-to-live-action translation was the moment the lead used a Stimpak to heal herself, same as the game (AKA jabbing herself with a needle and instantly healing). It was funny, jarring, and more moments like this helped set the tone of the world WHILE STILL UTILIZING WELL-WRITTEN CHARACTERS AND PLOT to help us attach ourselves to the environment and take silly seriously. The Borderlands movie had no anchoring tone of the film unlike the Fallout show, despite being fairly similar in gamplay and environment in their games. Where the writers may have struggled is just how much of the humor of the Borderlands games…. may not have made it to 2024. The script holds onto a lot of the wrong jokes made in the original games (one’s where I’d suck air into my teeth and wince when returning to these games), and character dynamics that were annoying (such as the joke of a character being the annoying punching bag that everyone hates bc he’s annoying……………. hi claptrap ily). This is also why I believe they fed the BL games scripts to AI and had it poop generalized garbage 2010 gamer-talk for the movie. The application of humor in the Borderlands games WORKED though, even if they are dated they still hold up (except the ableism and fatphobia those did not . like why. hello) because of how unified the world and characters are. UNIFIED! The BL movie writing felt so clunky, and it’s not only because they obviously did not pay attention when dubbing voice lines that don’t make sense in the conversation (Claptrap: “is this your home?” Lilith: “I grew up here.” yes girl thats what a home is. Also I’m so sure Jack Black did another line intended that said “Do you recognize this place” or some shit that makes more sense. Anyway. This happened a lot. Especially Kriegs lines which were just pulled from the games i s2g). The writing felt clunky because not one damn soul working on that movie was 100%. On the list of soulless movies with no one working on it connecting deeply with the source material at all, this is right up there with Wonka. And I’m not saying you gotta be Tiny Tina #1 mega-fan but oh my god it was so hard to watch Ariana Greenblatt act out a character that was only ever explained to her once by a guy who had Tiny Tina explained to him by another guy who read off her fandom wiki page summary. Except thats what every single character in this movie felt like. Everyone but Marcus??? for whatever fucking reason, he read the assignment he took Cornell notes. too bad he had 15 minutes of screen time. I’m actually glad they didn’t include my all-time favorite character Mordecai for fear of how they’d butcher his character too. Sorry Brick and Mordecai the writers could not fathom your gay love for each other the way I would have. Put me in that writing room.

Script-doctoring is a lost cause for this movie. she doesn’t need a facelift she needs a multi-organ transplant. With just how rich the world is why did they not just go the Tell-Tale BL route and put their own OCs on Pandora.. instead they cherry-picked elements from all the games to combine into… a twisted version of the OG plot? Not even a new adventure for these characters, no, they take the existing plot of how they met and decided to butcher Tiny Tina’s story so she can be a main character? The only way they could have fixed this in the writing room was in the very beginning if someone said “no” to this idea (also I’m pretty sure Tiny Tina wasn’t even born yet bc her story is tied to Handsome Jack and Hyperion not Atlas… also RIP to not getting a Handsome Jack plot he wouldve been so fun on screen and probably have been a good unifier for the tone I talked about before… I would never let him in the hands of those writers though).

Oh my god I could also go on and on about how nasty the environments were UGHHHHH so fucking awful, no creativity not an ounce. The patchwork architecture in the games is so meticulous and clever, even if they just payed attention to the silhouettes in the movie they don’t have to go crazy with the designs but at least give us SOMETHING!! Caustic Caverns too…. oh my god. Probably my favorite map in all the games. It’s the most unique map, its got so much breathing room, it looks like it goes on forever but still makes you feel claustrophobic (as intended). The dynamic man-made structures made to look natural with decay as they blend seamlessly into the natural structures.. the unique enemies and dangers of the map. This is the only(?) map mentioned by name in the movie, I was preparing for what I’d see. And they gave me nothing. The characters walk into a sewer cellar with glowing green sewage, walk around it, then fight a bunch of psychos in the… sewer cellar. its. its a sewer cellar. thats it. then they continue walking through the normal sewer cellar. the only comparison is the green acid and the name. Anyway that made me most sad of all, there was so much they could have done.

Ultimately this was gonna be an inevitable flop coming out anytime after BL3 womp womp. Nothing could have saved the franchise after the circumstances surrounding that game (recasting key voice actors to avoid raising wages, almost completely new writing team that was not great, Epic games paying for exclusive platform for like a year?? idk ppl were mad abt that). Great gameplay though.

Rating: 3/10

Giving it 3 stars for thinking of trying something new with the characters..? Also the fight scenes were pretty solid ngl, one thing I like about playing the BL games is how satisfying the fighting is, the sound design adds so much weight that makes it more fun than other FPS games and I think the movie replicated that well.

[msfbgraves]

AI and the meaning of art, a stream of consciousness

Or... the more I think about it the less I understand

The way I see it, if you're involved in any salaried art creation, you're making propaganda. And that's not a diss, it's a statement of fact; I'm doing the same working on an annual report. Now of course they're going to take the human element out of that if they can. Humans sometimes can't help themselves but put something transgressive in there, that's what humans do, especially grotesquely underpaid humans.

Also, why are artists and writers so undervalued?

They call bigshots out on their bullshit

They can do something death- defying

They need nobody's permission to do it

Art and writing transcend language, time and culture. And rank. The lowest of the low can do it and will sometimes be remembered better than the highest and mightiest.

And not everyone can do it well. And humanity needs it. Other creatives need it, and they make a hell of a racket about how insignificant the concept art is, how trivial the writing. Because it's all about the interpretation, huh!! They are more important....!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I think that a 100 years ago, nobody gave a rat's ass about this German guy who had written this show, Spring Awakening, they're right. Nobody came for this Wedekind.

Except they're still remaking it. Even though it has been filmed, and played, and filmed again. All the interpretations will become dated.

The bare bones endure over decades, even centuries.

Do we know the people who commissioned Caravaggio? Very few do. Or Dior? Chanel? No we don't. Verdi? Mahler? Philip Glass? No. No, because it will cease to matter in a few decades.

Some art won't of course. Still, many people can't do it, and that must bug them to no end to want to invent this AI - which also cannot function without the stolen input of actual artists, let's not forget!

What I'm fucked up about is that they're using the most original, because least controlled art - and especially writing - to do it. I'm very happy that artists are already protecting their work. No idea how to protect my fic.

And maybe it doesn't matter. Which bigshot would authorise something that undermines their power to be published, even if AI could generate it?

And even if writing would get to be reduced to editing AI generated content, would that not require artistic insight, at least? And wouldn't it take so much time and engagement with an art form that isn't theirs that people are either likely to say, fuck this, I'll write it myself, or fuck this, I'll hire someone to create something good out of this because I don't enjoy it? There's a reason why people become directors and producers instead of artists and writers.

And if you have to hire AI 'editors' for your scripts only to keep the knotting and heats out of your show, don't you, again, ultimately end up with a bunch of, you've guessed it, writers? Or is there going to be an editor's strike in future, demanding better conditions? Same for artists?

Or can AI really replace humans completely? Sign off on its own storylines? Know what is and isn't acceptable?

And if it can, would we really not notice?

People are already sick of all the endless variations on a theme. They crave comfort, yes, but also novelty. And even if the AI could be trained on counterculture novelty, if you force it to stay within some kind of Hayes code, it can't do that, either. And if you'd remove that, what is the point of AI? Those things are, first and foremost, censoring machines. I mean, they can't solve the problem of people not being able to do it because they still wouldn't be able to do it. They can merely stop other humans from undermining them by using this.

But then the question becomes, say, you want a new episode of Succession, and you feed it all the old episodes of Succession and all the fic ever written, and you filter all the undesirableness out of it beforehand and you give it to one (1) underpaid editor, could it do it?

What if there's no fic to be had? What if there's not even an outline to be had?

If the answer is Yes, well. That's... that's weird. Although I think it's hardly going to stop people from being creative. You can stream all the Nutcrackers in the world and people still go to see it live. People will still make art without being paid for it because they are not getting paid much now, either. So you can't stop originality or dissent completely. The Nazis couldn't. The communists couldn't. Why could Hollywood?

And nobody is watching chess matches between two computers, even though they're technically superior to people already. Somehow, we seem to enjoy the fail margin.

If the answer is No, then it is only an acceleration of what they're already doing, hire fewer people to regurgitate the same old things. Which is showing diminishing returns, they must see that, right? Box office is down, and going for unlimited growth only destroys industries?

What problem is this supposed to fix?

No, seriously, what is this for?

[belliesandburps]

Followup with MGS4 Peace Walker and 5?

History has a funny way of repeating itself. :P

This one's actually gonna be long, so I'll cap it here to spare those uninterested in non-kink posts the burden of having to scroll past this fanboy rant. 'XD

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

3. It's Okay

Soooooo...not a controversial opinion to say that I don't think MGS4 is GREAT. I adored it when it first game out, and I still enjoy replaying it from time to time. But good lord, so many of the interviews shed light on a LOT of this games problems.

Some backstory is required. Hideo Kojima was done with MGS by this point. He planned to move on and leave the series to the younger generation. But then, there was a lot of internal conflict and struggle to determine what MGS4 should be after Fukushima quit (AND was rumored to have been murdered by the Yakuza...how that rumor started...and became a SERIOUS rumor that millions believe, I do not know...). So Kojima came back, course corrected, and the end result was kind of a giant mess.

I'm not talking story because, there's just way too much to unpack. But as a game, MGS4 can't decide what sort of video game it wants to be. It had a brilliant idea that had never been done before with its Battlefield Stealth, which were the best parts of the game. And then they get dropped two acts in, and what gets replaced in their stead is not nearly as fun.

The game had substantially less boss fights than its predecessor, and a lot of them were mechanically simplistic or just didn't let you get creative with how you fought them. And we later learned there were a lot more bosses planned, more gameplay sequences planned, and an entire other PMC group that got canned in favor of the Scarabs so Shadow Moses could be guarded by machines instead.

There's a lot about MGS4 that I love. I think the first two acts are amazing, ESPECIALLY Act 2. I think the mechanics are great. REX vs RAY is criminally fun. The sheer buffet of insane weapons gives the game a good amount of replay value. And the graphics still hold up to this day!

But what I finally realized is that the game juggles way too many ideas and doesn't give any idea the time they deserve to flourish. Battlefield Stealth could've CARRIED MGS4. But it gets dumped before we can get our moneys worth. A disguise sequence could've been really creative, having to juggle different identities with OctoMask every time one identity is burned. But it's only used once and wasted because it's only used for a terrible tailing mission that doesn't let you actually explore the European City. And too many of the action set pieces are kind of bland except the bosses and piloting Metal Gear.

MGS4 should've been MGS4. Not MGS's "Best Hits."

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

1. LOVED it!

I know this is unpopular to say, but I'll say it. Peace Walker is one of the best Metal Gear games ever made. I adored almost everything about it. The gameplay improves on MGS4 in most ways because it doesn't juggle a billion ideas all at once. It's MGS4 stripped down to stealth action from start to finish, and that's all I wanted. The level design is great. The insane volume of guns changes the entire feel of combat in later post-campaign gameplay. The mission select options mean you can jump into all the parts of the game you enjoy the most. There's TONS of bonus missions that are really inventive and fun to replay. And the story is one of the best in the series. It's straight forward, very tight, characterized well, and is the best iteration of Big Boss to date.

Peace Walker's also the FUNNIEST MGS game by Kojima as well. There's so much more personality and levity to everything, to the point where Big Boss often feels like an MCU character. That might sound bad, but it's really not. That corniness fits MGS PERFECTLY, and I'd argue is tonally spot on for this series. MGS doesn't need to be dark, gory or explicit. It's a silly series that's about giant robots, corny bad ass super agents with an anti-nuke message.

The only downsides to Peace Walker are the QTE's and the boss fights. This was a feature that only ever appeared in this game and for good reason...it was fucking terrible. So basically, you had cutscenes that forced you to do various QTE's or else get dinged on your ratings at the end, even if you played perfectly. Fairly minimal, but then, you get to Strangelove's torture. And this is the single most rage-inducing part of any MGS game ever made. It's an insanely physically painful button mashing sequence that will leave your fingers raw and your PS3 triangle buttons jamming. And the ONLY way you can replay one of the best missions in the game (the prison escape where you have no items) is by redoing that sequence over and over. And the boss fights? While inventive, they're all just grindy bullet sponges with no personality, no stealth tactics, and no room for creativity the way you can get creative with every other MGS game's bosses. This was the biggest disappointment for me because the stealth and combat mechanics of PW are great and would've been SO good against human enemies like what Portable Ops had. Instead, every boss is a mini-Metal Gear all voiced by the VOCALOID AI from the mid 2000's, and each one takes forever to destroy. It sucks because PW had a TON of bosses, but only a few of them are any fun, and that's only if you have weapons that are strong enough that they don't take ages to destroy.

But asides from the bosses, the REST of the game is so damn good that I don't even care because that's just one element to a much larger, grander game. Which is even more impressive when you consider PW was originally on the PSP before the PS3 port. And this game has more content and replay value to it than most games I've played since.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

1. LOVED it!

Hooooooookay...so, I've rambled about my storybook romance with MGSV for YEARS now. (Just ask @twistedtummies2, he's been subjected to my fanboying of this game more than anyone in existence XD) But there's a reason I regard this game as one of my all time favorites and the best MGS game to date.

It's REALLY freakin' fun.

Kojima had been re-energized by the time he got to MGSV. He'd been working on the game around the time he finished Peace Walker in 2010. He KNEW it was his final MGS game and wanted to do something completely different...

...He wanted to make a game where the central focus was on...waaaaait for it...the gameplay...

MGSV was designed to be, what he described, as a toybox. You have these missions that all take place in structurally unique outposts like any level in MGS. And the missions are designed with the structure needed so that they all feel different, but all remain so open ended that you can play them countless different ways.

MGSV's game model is everything GTA SHOULD'VE been. It fully embraces the open world freedom and incorporates that into the missions flawlessly. And it plays in such a way that stealth and combat both feel like they were the primary point. In MGS, combat is usually a last resort. But with MGSV, you can fly into an outpost blasting away on your helicopters mini-gun, shoot up the bad guys, rescue your target, throw them back into the chopper and fly away while "The Final Countdown" blares on your choppers loud speakers.

Every method of gameplay is valid and the controls, the enemy AI responsiveness, it's all, bar none, the best I've experienced in ANY video game. Sneaking around feels tight and tense and combat makes you feel like Jack Bauer on adrenaline. (I mean, he IS the voice of Venom Snake)

And I really like the story for the most part too. Its weaknesses are really glaring. Namely, the "Fun" of MGS is completely devoid in the story (which is really odd since it's FRONT AND CENTER in-game). Venom Snake only has maybe six minutes of dialogue in the entirety of this 30+ hour long game. And the way Skull Face gets completely undercut right at the home stretch is something I have NOT stopped bitching about for almost six years, and my friends can personally attest to that.

That and the ending feels too abrupt.

We know that Kojima got fired by Konami's VP and said VP scorched the entire production company after that and made a series of dickheaded decisions that pissed off a LOT of fans, burning much of the good will Konami IP fans had towards the company. But that had nothing to do with MGSV's abruptness. That was the plan from the start because only Kojima would think to end the entire series on a plot twist like that.

And I think the issue isn't the twist at all. In fact, I LOVE the twist. The issue is that the game should've continued beyond it so Venom Snake could cope with the truth and realize how badly he'd been screwed. I think even people who hated the twist could've been won over if there was a little more to the games epilogue than Episode 46.

Also, the games boss fights were a tad underwhelming. Not the fights themselves, I LOVED all five of the games bosses.

Oh? There were twelve?

No. I meant what I said. Because so many of the games bosses are rematches against the same bosses. All MGSV has is the Skulls, Quiet, Eli, The Man on Fire, and Metal Gear. They're great bosses that do everything the best MGS bosses always did; give you tons of options, incorporate combat AND stealth, have varied attacks AND even have multiple methods to sneak around the boss and avoid the fight completely. But for a game as long as MGS, you need more variety. And frankly, the bosses NEED more personality. Skull Face should've had more XOF assassins acting as the bosses in the game along with the ones we have. Elite assassins like Quiet, with their own powers and specialized weaponry so the fights feel completely different from the ones we have. And oh yeah, SKULL FACE HIMSELF SHOULD'VE HAD A GOD-FUCKING-DAMN BOSS FIGHT!!!!

Buuuuuuut those issues don't even matter if for all the games issues, I still replay it frequently when it's almost six years old.

So yeah! There's the massive rant you totally didn't ask for! :D

[swaps55]

Sam Shepard

Full Name: Sam Powell Shepard. His middle name is his mother’s maiden name. He hates his middle name (he and his mother are not on very good terms).

Gender and Sexuality: Male, very demi aro/ace. He tried sex with men and women when he was younger out of sheer curiosity, got nothing out of it, and proceeded to basically forget about sex entirely. He’s baffled at the idea of being in a relationship until Kaidan comes along. If you were to ask him about his sexuality he’d get a deer in headlights look and just point at Kaidan, because outside of him Sam has no fucking idea what he’s into.

Pronouns: He/him

Ethnicity/Species: I admit. I haven’t given much thought to where his parents are from, and probably won’t, because part of what makes him fun is that he doesn’t have roots. Earth is very unfamiliar, even alien to him. Oh, and he’s human.

Birthplace and Birthdate: Arcturus Station, April 11, 2154

Guilty Pleasures: The dumber the joke, the funnier he thinks it is. He loves media and entertainment that doesn’t make him think. He does enough thinking in his real life - he wants his escapism to be superficial and fun. He would love the 22nd century equivalent of MST3K.

Phobias: As a spacer, he’s really weirded out by nature. Especially bugs. Especially anything remotely resembling a silverfish. That’s too many fucking legs. Put him in combat armor and he doesn’t even notice bugs, but take him out of the combat armor and he’ll lose it at the sight of a creepy crawly.

After Alchera, he develops a severe phobia of extra vehicular activity. Which he finds frustrating, because he doesn’t remember the explosion. Last thing he remembers is pulling Joker out of his chair.

What They Would Be Famous For: To the general public, being the Savior of the Galaxy. To his crew, he’s famous for making the Galaxy’s Worst Cup of Coffee.

What They Would Get Arrested For: Illegally carrying a firearm, illegally discharging a firearm, assault, breaking and entering, harboring an illegal AI, mutiny, insubordination, making really shitty coffee. The list is…long.

OC You Ship Them With: Just Kaidan.

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: I’d love to say one of my ‘Yang marines, but honestly Aslany worships him, Pendergrass facilitates his insanity, and Beaudoin is too easy going to be bothered by whatever batshit thing Sam does next. But Kaidan is always on the verge of murdering him during combat.

When Sam served on the ‘Yang, his team would regularly borrow an M-29 Grizzly that was property of the Madrid, the lead cruiser in the ‘Yang’s flotilla. The chief tech in charge of that Grizzly, a gentleman by the name of Gamba Msipa, hates Sam’s guts.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: There’s a turian buddy cop comedy Garrus showed him that he’s obsessed with. As for books, when he actually has time to read he prefers popcorn fiction that allows him to turn his brain off. But if you tell anyone he’s read Forbidden Ops, Tali’s favorite human romance series, he’ll kill you.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: He doesn’t care much for military movies or books, because he spends so much time picking apart everything they get wrong that he doesn’t enjoy it. Exception: body count movies that do not take themselves seriously.

Talents and/or Powers: He’s one of those bastards who is infuriatingly comfortable in his own skin. He’s also a charismatic motherfucker when he wants to be. He can talk to you like he’s known you his entire life, but it’s a ploy to trick you into getting you to talk about yourself so a) you’re not asking about Sam and b) he can compile a mental dossier on your strengths and weaknesses.

But while he is very good at this, as an extroverted introvert it’s generally not something he can sustain for long periods of time. To get him through it he’s most likely imagining all the different ways he could kill you with whatever is within his line of sight.

Why Someone Might Love Them: He’ll burn down the sky for the people he cares about. If you can get past The Butcher of Torfan, and get past the Commander Shepard mantle, you’ll find a guy who has a thousand-watt grin, is a lot funnier than you’d expect, will consume media he’s not into just because someone he cares about enjoys it, and, provided you’re the cuddling type, is a champion snuggler (spoiler: Kaidan is the cuddling type).

Why Someone Might Hate Them: He does not know how to be still for five fucking seconds, and he has this stare that’s a lot like a directed energy weapon. If you’re in his crosshairs, it’s not something you will enjoy. Even worse is when he looks through you instead of at you, because your very existence is inconsequential. Also, he will never let anyone else drive.  

How They Change: After Torfan, Sam was closed off, defensive, angry, and deadest against getting close with any of his crew. When you’re in a position to send people to their death, he figures it’s better not to know who they are. Problem is, that made him an asshole. His time on the ‘Yang helps him recognize how important to foster trust with your team and have something to fight for. He loosens up a lot by the time he sets foot on the Normandy.

…how he changes after Alchera is a whole other thing.

Why You Love Them: I fucking love Sam. He’s an enigma to everyone around him – pinning down what’s really Sam vs. what’s The Butcher of Torfan and the Savior of the Galaxy is a really complex task – he wears so many different personas based on what’s needed from him at the time. I love how badly he longs to just be Sam, but gives that up to be what others need him to be. Deep down he cares so deeply for the people around him at tremendous cost to himself. I love how important it is that he do what needs to be done without losing his soul. I love how afraid he is of becoming Saren. I love how genuinely funny he is, and how much he likes to laugh. Despite everything he’s been through, there’s a sense of optimism and hope you can’t shake out of him.  

I really love Sam.

[jokerfan99]

Icebreaking (RWBY/RVB) by Necroceph

*RVB Opening Theme*

Grif: Ugh... Simmons: Grif. Grif? GRIF! Grif: Wha- Mom? Simmons: Nope it's your old pal, Simmons. Grif: Oh man, I had the weirdest dream. There was this blonde chick who emerged from this crashed ship. She was hot as hell, you could've seen her! But then all the sudden she started sabotaging everything just to cover her tracks because she claimed that Command kidnapped her because they chose her to be a new host for O'Malley. Yang: Who's O'Malley?

That was no dream!

Grif: O-oh fuck... me.

He faints again.

Ruby: Not again! That's the third time he fainted. Next one might end up a coma. Sarge: Dagnabbit. Lopez, get a bucket of hydrofluoric acid. Water won't work this time. Lopez: Sí señor. Ruby: Wait won't that kill him? Donut: Nah I think he'll be alright. Probably with just a few bald spots. Ruby: Okay... By the way, Yang, what is Omega? Yang: Hey don't ask me, I only heard it from the guards. But from the way your team reacted, it looks like they know what it is. Ruby: Do you? Sarge: Of course we know him. He's our greatest nemesis. A crazed computer program that tried to kill all of us with his rockets and his laughs. Ah, those were the good old day. Simmons: No it wasn't! He made me call, Sarge a cocksucker!

WHACK!

Simmons: OW! Sarge: Still haven't forgive you for that. Donut: He tried to kill us with a robot army. Lopez: Incluso me secuestró y me convirtió en su asistente personal del mal. Ruby and Yang:... Huuuuuh? Simmons: Christ, let me tell you in detail. Long story short, he's an angry unstable megalomaniac AI used by a mercenary the Blues hired years ago. He went loose and started trying to kill every last one of us while possessing the body of conscientious objector with a rocket launcher. He was destroyed when he went into a Pelican with a bomb rigged inside it. Do you get the jist? Ruby:... Yang:... Ruby: I got lost when you said 'conscientious objector with a rocket launcher'. Simmons: Ugh... you know, forget what I said! Donut: C'mon, Simmons. You'll have to try harder. Give a story a little... 'pizzazz'. Ruby: I don't know what they're talking about, but I really wanna be in their world for five minutes. Yang: Totally. It must've been very fun here before you came. Simmons: Sigh, I don't understand. How did Command get their hands on him? Didn't the Pelican blew up with him and Tex inside? Sarge: Of course it did. I made sure he stayed dead by adding more payload inside the ship, strong enough to obliterate everything in a fifteen mile radius into space dusts. That explosion was a huge sight to behold! Lopez: Realmente no era tan grande. Simmons: And did you remove the ship's radio before that?

Both stared at each other for a moment.

Sarge:... Ah fiddlesticks. Simmons: HOW COULD YOU FORGET ABOUT THE RADIO?! Caboose: Hello! Weiss: Quiet!

Someone's calling from outside.

Yang: Who's that? Simmons: The Blues. Sarge: Captain Ahab's Barnacles, they must be here to salvage the ship for themselves. Damn vultures! Donut, Rose, go handle them. Donut: Wha- what about you guys? Sarge: One: Me and Lopez are trying to wake Grif up with EXTRA pain. And Two: Simmons' is needed here to find where O'Malley is being held at. The black box might contain information where did was being headed. Simmons: I would love to do that, Sir. IF YANG DIDN'T DESTROY THE COMM'S ROOM! Yang: I said I was sorry! Ruby: Why not call, Vic? Maybe he can ask you. Simmons: Oh please. He isn't that dumb enough to give us, O'Malley's exact location... unless... Sarge, permission to rip out the Warthog's radio. I have an idea. Sarge: Now wait a minute, you can't just rip out a piece of the Warthog! That's a penalty of- Simmons: I can do extra shifts. Sarge: Deal! Yang: Hey what about me? I can also fight those guys too. I really need to stretch this punching muscles of mine. Sarge: Punching muscles, hmm? I see why not. Permission granted. Alright, Lopez. Ready to pour that acid on him. Ruby: Yes! It's good to have you fight by my side. Yang: Hey, you're not going to let me miss out the fun. So, Donut. How many out there? Donut: Two. Yang: Two?! I expected more than fifty. Donut: Nah just two. There was suppose to be three more but I'm not sure why they didn't come along. Ruby: Hmm... maybe it's a Blue tactic. The two waiting outside are acting as a distraction while the other three are prepared to ambush us. Yang: That means we'll be surrounded. But that ain't a problem for me once I kick their asses. Donut: You against five of them? Wow, you're a bigger badass than I thought. Ruby: Trust me, she is. Back at basic, she destroyed an entire team all by herself without needing any help. It was awesome. Yang: Thank you. So what do you know about those two? Donut: Well there's Caboose on the tank and then there's Weiss. Yang: A tank, huh? That'll be easy once I throw my homemade... who was the other person?

Outside

Weiss: This is the Blue team! Come out with your hands up or be destroyed. There's no point in fighting 'cause we have a tank that outguns your pathetic little Warthog. But if do you seek battle, that's fine by me. That is all.

She turns off the megaphone and turns to Caboose, sitting inside the tank.

Weiss: Alright, Michael. We're just here to talk about the ship, no need to go all guns blazing. Caboose: If we're here to talk with the Red, why did we bring, Sheila here? Weiss: Just for precaution. Plus, I intend to see a shell liquifying both Ruby's legs. Caboose: Okay. Hi, Donut!

Donut appeared on the roof alone. Where is the rest of the Reds?, Weiss thought. Something's up and good thing she brought the tank.

Donut: Hi, guys! Hey where's everybody else? Weiss: Busy scrubbing the floors with their toothbrushes. That's what happens when you don't report anything important to your leader. (whisper) Keep an eye out for, Ruby. We're here to talk about the ship. Do you know what happened to it and where it came from? Donut: Didn't you guy's hear the crash yesterday? Caboose: Weiss didn't hear it because she was singing in the bathroom when it happened. Donut: Ooh can she sing Mordern Major General? Weiss: No. Donut: Sorry, guys. But there's nothing left to trade with you except ash and stuff. And it wasn't carrying anything too. Weiss: We're not here to trade. We got enough SMGs in the armory. How can you be sure it wasn't carrying anything? Donut: Yang told us. Weiss: I-I-I'm sorry, can you repeat what you said? Donut: I said... Yang: (offscreen) Shh! Not now. Donut: I should go back inside. We're quite busy today. Grif fainted not too long ago. Sarge and Lopez are trying to wake him up. Simmons' working on a pet project on communication and I was sewing silk for the winter. Weiss: Silk?! You don't use silk for the winter, you idiot! And winter isn't coming in another six months. Donut: I mean- Sangheili silk. It's a very nice alternative to wool... kinda Weiss: Really? And tel me, what is Rose doing? Donut: Making runs around the base. Weiss: Oh you mean... HER?

Weiss sticks out her foot slightly up in the air. Then a flash of red accident trips on the leg and crashes on the tank, head first. Ouch, that did not go as plan.

Ruby: Ow...! Weiss: Ah, poor old, Rose. Always forget that I've read every move she makes back at Beacon. Alright, Donut, enough games...

HISSSSS

The sound of hissing caught her attention. It came from next to her and... oh no. A plasma grenade is stuck onto the turret!

Caboose: Why do hear a snake hissing? Weiss: MICHAEL, GET OUT OFF THERE!

Caboose quicky jumps out from the tank. They both ran away until the grenade explodes, blowing the tank into pieces. Bye bye, Sheila (or her body), you will not be missed.

BOOOM!

Caboose: SHEILA, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

At Blue Base.

Church and Tucker could see the mushroom cloud erupted on the field. Must be one hell of a fight out there.

Tucker: Man I'm glad we're here cleaning up the base. Hey, Church can I burrow your toothbrush? Church: No.

Back at Red Base.

Weiss: KUFF KUFF... Michael, are you alright? Caboose: Yes, I'm fine. But Sheila... sniff... is dead. Weiss: What the hell was that? There's no way a plasma grenade can create an explosion that big! Yang: Unless it was made by me, YOU WHITE HAIRED BITCH!

That voice, that tone. No it couldn't be. She turned to the direction of the voice and sees a Red soldier carrying the same weapon that almost split her head into a bloody mess. And the only one carrying it is...

Weiss: Oh no...

Yang Xiao Long.

Yang: Hello, Weiss. Long time no see. Caboose: Weiss, is that the angry friend you talked about? Weiss: Yes. Yes she is... RUUUUN!

Weiss grabs Caboose's hand and run away from Yang. However they were stopped when three more plasma grenades land in front of them and exploded, creating two large craters roughly about 12 meters in diameter, six meters in depth.

Weiss: Oh crap! This is Weiss Schnee to Blue base, we require reinforcements, NOW! Yang: NO ONE'S COMING TO SAVE YOUR FIRST CLASS ASS, SCHNEE! Just you, me and these two babies, Mr. and Mrs Fisty.

Yang cracks her knuckles as she approaches towards them, with raging red eyes focused on the one and only teammate who ran away.

Weiss: AAAAAH! MICHAEL, KEEP THAT PSYCHOPATH AWAY FROM ME!

Weiss quickly hides behind Caboose, cowering herself away from that golden monster that tried to kill her. Yang stopped as her path is block by Caboose who stood calmly between her and Weiss.

Caboose: Hello... big scary lady... with big boobs. My name is, Caboose. You must be,... Yang. Yang:... Caboose:... Yang:... Uhm...hi? Do I know you? Caboose: Yeah, Weiss told me that t you are the angry friend. She also told me that you and Ruby are sisters and were part of a team in the letters R, W, B and Y. Ruby: Actually it's pronounced... ow my nose!... 'Ruby', with a 'W'. Caboose: Oooh! Wait if it's pronounce Ruby, shouldn't 'W' be a 'U'? Yang: (whisper) Who is this guy? Ruby: That's Caboose. Dumbest member in the Blue team here. Yang: A mentally retarded guy serving in the Blue army, huh? I'll deal with you later.

Yang glares at Weiss.

Yang: So, Weiss. This is where you've been. Stationed in a desolate box canyon with nothing but sand and rocks. I thought you'd be in the Atlesian army by now. Weiss: GULP! Yang: What's the matter, still afraid to face me after all these years? Hmph, how pathetic. To even call yourself a soldier is just embarrasing. Caboose: Hey you can't talk, Weiss like that! She's my best friend. Yang: You... her friend? Caboose: Yeah she may be a little noisy. Weiss: Gee, Michael. Thanks. Yang: SHUT UP! Weiss: EEK! Yang: So you know who I am, that's something. But do you know what she did before she came here? Caboose: Yeah she told me that she was in a base with you during an exam. But it got attack by space pirates who want to steal things, arrrgh. She was then given orders by her teacher to escape because she had to bring back important dates before the pirates steal it. You know I like the Egyptian ones. They're very chewy like gum. Ruby: Don't you mean 'data'? Caboose: Yeah that too. Yang: And what else did she tell you about us? Caboose: Well I know is that Ruby disobeyed her orders to save everybody, leaving the pirates to take over the base. And you kicked a guy's balls because he ordered you to tell everyone to fight back despite the pirates winning. And... Weiss, what did Blake do...? Yang: TO HELL WITH ORDERS! Caboose: Mommy!

Caboose stepped back away from Yang's explosive wrath.

Yang: Those soldiers back couldn't stand a chance against them! I don't give a damn what our superiors ordered us to do, but me and Ruby won't stand idly to see them get slaughtered. And Weiss over there, just left us and those people to die, just for what? A PLACE IN ATLAS' MILITARY! Is that something you would consider her a 'friend'? Caboose:... Yep. Yang: Good... wait, what? Caboose: Uhm... because, no matter what your friends did, he'll always be your friend. Yang: That... is the most stupidest quote I've ever heared. IT MATTERS WHAT SHE DID... TO US! Now move aside so I can pummel her bitchy face! Caboose: Nope. Yang: Sigh... then you left me no choice. EAT THIS!

Yang raises her fist and strikes Caboose, only for him to catch it mid air. His quick reflexes surprised everyone. Yang's tries to yank off her fist from his tight grasps...

CRUNCH

... followed by the sound of a metallic crunch. Caboose finally lets go of her hand. Yang looks at her right hand and was shocked to see her hand has been crushed.

Yang: WHAT AND HOW?! Caboose: Sorry! I squeezed it too tight. Weiss: Holy... shit. Ruby: Is... that normal? Yang: No. This was supposed to be made out of titanium and he crushed it... as if it was paper. That's so... metal... RETREAT!!! Ruby: RUNAWAY!!!

Yang and Ruby, run like hell from Caboose. Oh the sweet irony.

Donut: (from afar) Hey, guys. Why are you running, aren't you supposed to fight them? Yang: We're not running. This is the Xiao Long secret technique! Ruby, you didn't tell me he was that strong! Ruby: I didn't know, just keep running!

Weiss emerged from the safety of Caboose's back. She can't believe, they're gone.

Weiss: My God, Michael. How did you do that? Caboose: Oh it was nothing. I don't like bullies harming my best friends. And I like catching hands. Weiss: Nothing? I've never seen Yang run away from fight before. That's was... AWESOME. Since when did you do workout? Caboose: I just drank a lot of milk till my muscles grow strong. That's what they said in the commercials. Weiss: Milk makes your bones stronger, not muscles you beautiful dope. Now then, let's get the hell out of here before Yang come's back!

In the caves.

TZZT

Vic: Hello, Project Freelancer Operational Command Center. This is your friendly neighborhood, Virtual Intelligence Computer, calling from Blood Gulch. ???: This is Command. What seems to be the problem? Vic: Finally, been calling for ten minutes. Hey listen, your drunk driver called me last night and asked if he can parked right next to the Red base. I allowed and now the ship's here, burnt up to a crisp and sitting there like it's nobody's business. ???: Copy that, V.I.C. Is it the ship, Sanctuary? Vic: That's the one. ???: And what is the status of the subject? Vic: She is hot as hell. Where did you guys pick her up, the Red Light Outpost? ???: Ahem. Vic: Sorry. The good news is, she's a-ok. The bad news, she told the Reds what happened. They're willing to hide that fine body to stroll around their territory, tsk tsk. Send in those Recovery people to pick her up. Also get aclean up crew for this mess. Seeing that ship here is an eyesore. ???: Acknowledge. We'll send in a Recovery squad. And one more thing. How's the Alpha? Vic: Still a hot head as always. Why do you ask? ???: Nothing. We just want to know its current status, that's all. Hehehe... nyehehehehehehe... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! YOU FOOLS! THE DARKNESS WILL CONSUME YOU ALL! NYEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!... Command, out.

TZZT

Vic: Hmm, must've said somethin' funny. Ah, oh well I'm sure it's nothing serious!

A/N: Sorry the is so rushed. My degree started and I've been busy lately

Deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/necroceph

[ihavenoside]

What is something that was never addressed at all in the canon material that you have independently developed for your muse?

Questions for Muns of Canon Muses || Meme || Accepting

His insecurities. I’m by all means not the first person to have done this but Connor is a unique individual and that uniqueness fuels his anxieties that he’s only sometimes half-aware that he has. (because it’s long)

For starters, Connor, with the exception of Sixty and RK900, is the youngest model released. So at the time of the revolution, mine is only 3 months old, having lost the deviant and the girl, watching them plummet 70 stories to the ground. Now unlike other models that might have been released at the time time, Connor is programed vastly differently. Connor takes orders from another AI, he is the only android to be seen to carry money, Connor, while assigned to Hank, can freely disregard Hanks orders and do what he feels is necessary to complete his task. My Connors relationship with Hank would be a strained one because up until the traces, he’d be ignoring and manipulating Hank to get what he wants before starting to take into account Hank's opinions and learning more about him. Normally androids don’t have this option until they become deviant, making Connor technically already a deviant from the start, if not a deviant after the first mission, without him realizing it.

Connor doesn’t know what it’s like to be a normal machine because he was programmed to look into other machines, who were defective, which act kinda like him and he later begins to wonder if he is defective himself. Amanda, is a real piece of work because Connor can confide in her, saying that he might be compromised and she’ll turn around and say something along the lines of “no, anyone with your experience would naturally feel that way.” and then makes him refocus on that task at hand while also adding extreme amounts of pressure on him to solve the case and he’s the only one that can do it, otherwise, he’s a failure and in the end, he does realize, success or fail, he’ll be terminated, which bothers him and is his deciding factor at some point to accept Markus’ hand and join the revolution.

Now after the revolution, Connor is filled and still mostly filled with untreated PTSD for several reasons. Having failed to save the human girl, having hunted down his own kind, having seen other androids... deactivate themselves in front of him in several ways, having killed 7 human guards(as a devaint and something that not everyone would know, mostly only Hank and Sixty, while others could assume.) dealing with the damage that was inflicted on him both mentally and physically in a span of 5-8 days and finally, the stress of knowing that even as a fully deviant, Cyberlife was capable of regaining control over him and almost locked his mind in the raging blizzard of the zen garden. He barely freed himself in time to find that he was holding a gun and quickly put it back away. (this is also the reason he hates winter so much, it’s a constant reminder of that night. He can generally deal with winter but some days are harder than others if it's really cold or storming.) 

This is a secret Connor is still very much willing to take to his grave and something no one would have really noticed and something he’ll very convincingly lie and deflect about if someone takes notice.

Because Connor can’t even trust himself, he has a very hard time trusting others. He won’t turn to Hank because Hank has enough on his plate and doesn’t want to add to it. He has faith in Markus but even he knows that faith will only last so long and if it was ever found out that Cyberlife could regain control over him, in his mind, without a doubt, Markus would think it’s wise to deactivate him.

This is all more or less irrational thinking because Connor is 98% of the time in a constant state of stress. All his life and even now, he’s been told what he is going is wrong. Like, suggesting to Hank to keep professional help to deal with his PTSD and Hank, angrily, aggressively, and even physically telling him no and to fuck off. Amanda, nothing was ever good enough for her. If he lets the deviants go, he’s a bad guy. If he kills the deviants, he’s the bad guy. If the deviants, beyond his control, deactivate themselves, he’s a failure. 

And in not so recent threads, he tries to be helpful but be it a misunderstanding or someone refusing his help, he’s more often than not upset the people he’s tried to help and doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong. Which has gotten to the points that he’s often damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t and has become jaded and will start pushing back and takes a lot of things offensively and is very tired of it because it’s still in his mind that if he doesn’t have the answers, no one does and on the rare occasion he’s asked for help or tried to rely on someone, he’s been intentionally and unintentionally burned badly. (A friend told him to self-destruct and start over and someone saying they have his back but when push came to shove, they didn’t and are actively talking to the person Connor doesn’t approve of. All of which as the mun, i’m okay and amused by) Among so many more instances but those two stand out as well as the fact that Connors often the last to learn about anything, which fuels his insecurities that he’s untrustworthly.

So my Connor is a mess both mentally, physically, and especially emotionally. Which he doesn’t know how to handle despite seeking professional counseling. Connor is also jaded about that too because everyone is in need of counseling but he’s the only one willing to go despite not doing what is necessary for the person to help, which is what causes his internal struggle. Connor so desperately wants to be accepted by someone, be it human or android but he knows and sees he won’t. He doesn’t want to be alone but he sees if he was alone, everyone would be better off without him, which isn’t necessarily true. Connor hides his pain well and unless he’s willing to start opening up about the things he’s experienced he’ll continue to see the monster that's in the mirror and throw himself into the one thing he knows he’s good at, work and will keep wondering why he fought so hard to survive to only never be truly happy.

[crusherthedoctor]

Sonic Villains: Sweet or Shite? - Part 7: METAL SONIC

It's been a while, but it's time for another Crusher review and analysis.

There are some villains I like. And there are some villains I don't like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That's where this comes in.

This is a series of mine in which I go into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the villains in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I'll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves in the game(s) they featured in. Keep in mind that these are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don't bite. :>

Anyhow, for today's installment, we'll be putting the Stardust Speedway saxophones aside for a moment to discuss Dr. Eggman's notorious robotic copycat, who desperately wants to show us what he's made of: Metal Sonic.

NOTE: While I will be taking several of Metal Sonic's non-game portrayals into account, this will NOT include his Sonic the Comic incarnation, as I feel that Fleetway's Metal - or Metallix, as he's called - is so vastly different in so many ways that I feel there's no point, whereas his other portrayals in non-game media are considerably more consistent for the most part.

The Gist: Being a criminal mastermind slash world conquerer in the making has its shortcomings, and for Dr. Eggman/Dr. Robotnik/The Bad Guy, that shortcoming came in the form of a plush-sized hedgehog who frequently wrecked his machines, foiled his plans, and - worst of all - talked back at him. This literal thorn on his side made the good doctor a very unhappy camper, but one day, his brilliant brain brought a brilliant breakthrough: Why not pit Sonic against himself?

During his then-new scheme to use the Time Stones of the Little Planet to conquer the world through time, Eggman worked tirelessly on his new idea to ensure it was just right. It couldn't be too slow. It couldn't be too bulky. It couldn't be too un-Sonic-like, for he vowed to assert his technological dominance by making a better Sonic than the real one. He wanted this to be his greatest creation yet, and he wasn't going to half-ass that objective.

The result was Metal Sonic, a marvel of industrial automation who established himself as fast as Sonic, as deadly as Sonic, and... not talkative, unlike Sonic. No wonder Eggman declared him the superior of the two.

Eggman loves his creation so much that he’s willing to let him die if this goes wrong. That’s how you know he’s his favourite.

Sure enough, Eggman's efforts were not entirely in vain, as the blue droid was more than a match for Sonic in the speed department, as well as the "What's the best way to make it clear to Amy Rose that I'm not interested?" department via snatching up Sonic's pink hedgehog acquaintance, leaving her as the doctor's captive. Unfortunately however, despite giving Sonic the race of his life, Metal was not yet as quick in his reflexes as the genuine article was, meaning his initial reign of terror came to an abrupt end when he flew head-first into a wall, George of the Jungle-style. Eggman was devastated, except he wasn't, because he knew he could just rebuild and upgrade him. Which he did. Constantly.

He also rebuilt these guys for some reason.

Since his debut in Sonic CD, Metal has went on to appear in a sizable number of games throughout the years, and he's made some personal appearances in a few other continuities as well. Most of these appearances simply have him show up, attack Sonic and other heroes for a bit, then get his ass handed to him. Some of those ass-kickings even came with a tasty amount of hue hues. But every now and then, they'll have him do something more, the most famous example being Sonic Heroes, in which he took over Eggman's army by force and went on his own little crusade to gain everyone's data and become Metal GodJesus, all the while proving himself the real Sonic the Hedgehog... by doing a lot of things the real Sonic the Hedgehog would never do. (This general concept would reappear in the IDW comics, though he did not betray Eggman that time around.)

Overall though, Metal is generally considered to be a welcome face whenever he makes an appearance... when he’s not dreaded for being the biggest roadblock in Fighters.

“Well that’s the end of the playthrough, make sure to like, comment, subscribe.”

The Design: What is there to say about Metal Sonic’s design? It’s cool, it’s ominous, it’s sleek, it’s stylish, and it holds a palpable aura of dangerous badassitude while still fitting perfectly with the design philosophy of this franchise. Truly, Metal’s design alone makes him one of the all-time greats of the Eggman repertoire, and it's easy to see why the scientist is particularly proud of this one.

He’s the robot your robot could crash into a wall like.

He’s had a few transformations over the years though. In Knuckles Chaotix, he turned into a ginormous monstrosity commonly referred to by fans as Metal Sonic Kai, who terrified many juniors back in the day due to making the inexcusable error of not being blue. The bad ending might have also affected them.

E for Everyone.

Luckily, Classic Metal got the right idea two decades later, and kept his blue colour scheme when the Phantom Ruby brought the form back in Sonic Mania Plus. As for Modern Metal, he had a brief life (or lives, if you count IDW) as Neo Metal Sonic, who - despite being made with the intention to be a darker, cooler, more serious iteration of the character - went the complete opposite direction by looking less like a frightening metal monarch, and more like a shonen anime’s midnight seizure.

Look at this fucking thing.

Elf shoes. Ripped skirt. Starfish haircut. Vaguely phallic strap in the appropriate area. Regular Metal may have a semi-cutesy look even in his more dangerous iterations, but at least he doesn't come off as a compensating son who doesn't quite know how to come out to his judgemental father, which is more than I can say for whatever the hell this is supposed to be. Is this really meant to be a more intimidating design? A more badass design...?

Then, as if this wasn’t ridiculous enough for Metal already, they had him transform even further into MechaGodzilla Metal Overlord, a goliath made from the remains of the Egg Fleet, with a side order of spikes and artist’s regret.

"Sonic, I was created for the sole purpose of destroying you... but I can never seem to defeat you... That is why I purchased Freddie Mercury's wardrobe with my own hands!"

Said form also returned in the IDW comic, rechristened Master Overlord, who traded the clawed wings and the flamethrower in exchange for symmetrical hands and a more simplistic body structure, at the expense of looking even more like a children’s toy.

Needless to say, Metal's had some... interesting transformations over the years. But his original look will always remain iconic, and rightly so.

The Personality: Metal Sonic's personality is harder to specify compared to other characters in the series, because his kill-first ask-later demeanour in tandem with his usual muteness means we see him most of the time as little more than a Sonic-shaped extension of Eggman's will. That said however, there have been deeper glimpses here and there into what makes his mechanical mind tick.

The most obvious thing to note is that Metal holds the very un-Sonic trait of not having time for nonsense. Sure, he might not be above taunting his organic counterpart in a likeminded way occasionally, but that aside, he's generally a pretty serious and humorless individual, a stark contrast to his creator and master that nonetheless works in the latter's favor, as the realisation that the goofy manchild Eggman of all people made this thing helps shoot down the myth that the rotund madman is all talk.

"He's behind you!" "Shut it wee man, this is a serious play."

Then there's his insanity, by means of identity crisis. It's not known if this was something that was there from the beginning, or if it's somethng that developed and worsened with each defeat, but at some point in his life, Metal convinced himself that despite literally being made with the intention of exterminating the actual Sonic, he himself was in fact the actual Sonic, and that the actual actual Sonic that already existed prior to his inception was in fact the actual Not-Sonic (or a faker, as would be used to describe a certain other lookalike). This belief has caused him to do a bunch of crazy stuff of dubious logic, and don't try to question him on his reasoning, lest you want him to cut you open like a Terry's Chocolate Orange.

His relationship with Eggman is something of an enigma. While his teenage phase betrayal in Heroes is probably the most mainstream evidence of how he feels about his master, it's easy to forget that this was the exception, not the rule. In nearly every other appearance before and since then, Metal has shown nothing but stone cold loyalty towards the doctor and his cause. Even in IDW, when he regained his Neo form and basically did everything he could to remind everyone that Heroes was a thing that existed, he did it that time around for the purpose of finding his master, and helping to restore his empire. A far cry from Neo's first attempt, when he was ranting and raving about how he should have the empire.

Thus, I can only conclude that while his Sonic-esque AI may cause him to get a little reckless, he remains genuinely devoted to his creator outside of his brief cocaine rush in Heroes... and Free Riders, but I don't think anyone knew what was going on in that one. I don't think he knew what was going on in that one.

But perhaps most surprisingly of all - according to the OVA at least - despite all his black-hearted ways, he is still capable of good, as evidenced when he saved the President and the legendary Old Man Owl from dying a fiery death. Whether it's an inherent part of his own nature, or whether it's a side-effect of his Sonic programming, isn't fully clear... but either way, he might want to make sure Eggman doesn't find out about it.

The Execution: Metal Sonic's execution is a complicated case, because there's a dissonance between when he's merely an obstacle for the good guys, and when they've tried to make him more than that.

When he's merely Eggman's instrument of evildoing, he does the job nicely. Sometimes his appearances can be underwhelming depending on the game (read: Sonic 4), but he usually provides a memorable scuffle when it's time for him to put up his dukes. Even if half of those are actually races.

When he aims for bigger, on the other hand? Well...

I've already joked about Neo Metal Sonic's design, but don't be fooled, for his ridiculous fashion sense is merely one part of my beef with the overall concept of Neo. Simply put, everything about Neo Metal Sonic goes against everything that makes this particular character work.

Ranting, monologuing, and running his mouth off does not work for Metal Sonic.

Gathering everyone's data with the intention of becoming Metal Everyone does not work for Metal Sonic.

Transforming into a goddamn dragon does not work for Metal Sonic. (I can let Metal Sonic Kai slide since despite being bigger and more monstrous, you can still recognise it as Metal Sonic specifically. Colour scheme aside, Metal Overlord/Master Overlord might as well be a random monster entirely.)

These ideas aren't necessarily bad on their own. They could work for another villain, or another Eggman minion. But for Metal Sonic specifically? It just doesn't work at all, and while some may be willing to handwave it as the result of Metal's insanity, I firmly believe it's more than possible to establish and delve into his inner madness in ways that DON'T contradict almost everything about him. A character being insane is not an excuse for turning them into a completely different character altogether, nor is it an excuse for just plain handling them in a shitty manner. By all means, I'm all for giving Metal a bigger role, and I'm all for expanding his character and his dynamic... just not like this.

Metal doesn't need to do all that in order to be effective and leave an impression. His portrayal in the OVA confirms that. OVA Metal was everything that Metal was known for at the time: straightforward, loyal, and silent, bar one line towards the end. And he still managed to be a very intriguing antagonist who served as a believably major threat, and who gave Sonic the fight of his life, and thus earned the hedgehog's disgruntled ire and his begrudging respect. That is the Metal that writers should aspire to. That is the essence of what makes that character.

So, despite everything, I still highly enjoy Metal Sonic when he's Metal Sonic, and not Something Vaguely Shaped Like Metal Sonic. He's stumbled a bit over the years, but when he's done right, he's always an eventful burst of fun, and ultimately, my fondness for those portrayals overrides my disgust towards elf shoes. And I'd love to see them expand on his dynamic with Eggman, which a certain well-liked series of shorts has thankfully given us a small taste of. Here's hoping the future will follow up on it...

“Now, if you may be so generous, hand over the Emerald slowly, or else I'm afraid your little friend will face the consequen-ooooowwwww my FUCKING wrist.”

Crusher Gives Metal Sonic a: Thumbs Up! (and Neo Metal Sonic a: Thumbs Down!)

[jaywhitecotton]

Fuck Elvis

I used to play this terrible game with some monstrous friends at karaoke shows. It was all based on how Michael Jackson died at the right time and if he molested just one more kid we’d be screwed out of decades of music and nostalgia.

We’d then apply other artists to this molestation scale. Like if MJ set the standard at say 7 known kids we’re pretty sure he finger banged, how many could say Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler get away with?

Turns out - it’s one. One for sure, but I’m pretty sure there would have to be at least three before we as a society are willing to let go of Dream On or Bruce Willis’s meteor sacrifice.

Bob Dylan? So hard. Old white NPR people would blame the motorcycle accident and give up everything after to protect his earlier legacy, but comparing Michael Jackson to Bob Dylan’s importance? He’s got to be able to molest as many - if not three more kids - than the King of Pop, right? I mean Jewish or not, he is still white so that has to give him the edge over Jacko in what he can get away with.

Anyhoo

Comics have been acting like comedy has been bringing “truth to power!” and patting themselves on the back, but thirty years of Michael Jackson jokes couldn’t do what one documentary has done.

Proving if you really want any justice these days, you need to first invest in some production value and an editor who knows how to make criminal acts look especially bad.

The reactions are pouring in and people are very conflicted. Many questioning whether or not it’s ok to like an artist because of their lurid personal life.

Look, can we come to a consensus on just one thing?

Human beings have been giant flesh bags of hot garbage since the very beginning of our upright existence. We started out so bad, we’re not even sure of what are real beginnings were actually like.

And its not even people that are the worst either. Look at life itself.

Nature is gruesome and horrifying! Every nature documentary is inherently a horror movie missing the scary cello mood music. If you knew how much ducks gang-raped in real life you would burn any remanence of all those duck-themed shows from the 90’s.

Even the creation of space and time was the result of a destructive explosion that shit us out into the nothingness of space.

Disagree? Thinks humans are great? Cool. Keep in mind a lot of people watched a movie about a guy who sexually abused children and their first thought was “Can I still grab my dick and effeminately scream ‘ohhhhh’ whenever it gets super windy? Because I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t do that!”

To me anytime a person does something exceptional - THAT should be the thing that is celebrated. Like “Wow, you overcame being a piece of shit and had a moment of triumph for our species, well done ya piece of shit!”

Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, Gandhi and Civil Disobedience, Beethoven’s 9th have all stood the test of time and those acts are worthy of praise.

Are we going to really miss Ignition (remix)?

I’m not saying any of these people’s flaws should be ignored, but seriously - there were plenty of slave fuckers, wife abusers, and piss-on-tweeners out there who not only did that shit - but didn’t even have the decency to form an experimental democratic republic placing power in the hands of the people, much less write a catchy tune.

We have got to start holding a higher standard for what we consider legit and meaningful art.

Is Trapped in the Closet really an achievement for humanity? Is the cinematic legacy of Space Jam ruined by the tainting of I Believe I Can Fly?

Was American Beauty and House of Cards our civilization’s finest cinematic moments? Has there been nothing else to watch?

Can we no longer backwards slide dance at house parties because a guy who dressed like a sequined private eye slept with kids?

I’m not saying you can’t still enjoy those things, or even question your feelings about them. I’m saying don’t make those things more important than they actually are. You can both think an actor should be castrated and get lost in visualized fiction.

Just as easily as you can decide to never watch again. It’s all disposable.

To me the real crime is needing a movie like American Beauty to be the pinnacle of human achievement because you got your first handy in the theater when it came out or whatever.

Not that anyone is exactly saying that, but you big bad wolves get my straw house point.

What is the value of achievement? How do we measure what’s important? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s what the consensus decides should stay. Maybe it’s the individual.

Sometimes it feels like a lot of our general arguments are between the perspectives of group thinking socialists versus self-motivated libertarians. Maybe they’re both right, I guess it depends on the situation.

Personally I think most the arguments about entertainers matters most to the people who have a vested interest in brands and making it in the ‘look at me’ industry.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m in the thick of it having done music and standup most of my life and have the same guttural need for a stranger’s approval, but sometimes I feel surrounded by people who treat every moment of their lives like a biopic. Selling themselves on social media as if they’re the subject of their own Rolling Stone exposé.

People who define themselves by the most disposable of expressions and since trying to be good and known is so difficult, decided it’s easier to just simulate success instead of working harder on the mediums.

You know, frauds.

I’m surrounded by a generation of ‘fake it til you make it’ personalities who thrive on all the shit I find utterly useless, meaningless and the worst crime - boring.

Entrepreneurs in narcissism who communicate through gossip and trade in brand expression, littering the artistic landscape with recycled lateral thinking dog turds.

It’s exhausting,debilitating, and absolutely the future as AI replaces our normal careers, forcing all of us into becoming Instagram models and Influencers.

And everyday I have to have deep sobering introspection trying to figure out if I’m not equally culpable in this terrible trap of meaningless thinking.

Not that there’s anything wrong with meaningless. Not everything has to have as everlasting an impact as Ode to Joy.

I mean really, what actually matters if we all die and whatever impact we had becomes erased regardless of whether or not it takes years, months, days or even minutes after we are laid into the ground?

Most of everyone who has been born has meant nothing and left no trace or measurement that they even existed at all. Think of all the stillborn babies who didn’t even get the chance.

Nature the cold hearted bitch strikes again!

People call me jaded and bitter for these thoughts, but I promise you - I hold no anger or selfish need to compensate my own lacking by exclaiming ‘people are mostly shit and none of this will stand the test of time’. I’m very fun at parties.

It’s just the people desperate to matter that think reality is inherently mean.

Celebrate the achievement not the person, but also - let’s not over inflate the achievement to validate our own petty need for someone to hear our folk song about getting a handy while watching American Beauty or whatever.

A quick story.

One of the most talented people I ever met was a dude from Philly named Perone.

Perone played bass and was known across the city as being this incredible player who for some reason just never found a project he clicked with.

I met him when I was 18 and homeless, living in a 24 hour diner he waited tables at. Everyone loved this dude and for some reason he took care of me. Hooking up free salads, sodas, bread. He was the coolest dude I ever met.

I was learning guitar and we both loved 70’s soul and blues music so we’d jam together which in hindsight was wild.

I had no fucking idea what I was doing and yet here was this genius jamming patiently along.

Teaching me without putting in a show that he was actually teaching me, if that makes sense?

Was he perfect? No. Not at all. He was charismatic as fuck, but obviously weighted down with some demons.

The weirdest thing I could say about him - and I don’t know how to even properly frame this was - he used to draw on bed sheets.

For years he had a dream about a woman he never met and would paint her face on the bed sheets and attach lyrics to songs he was writing next to her face. These sheets hung all over his walls.

Keep in mind he was living with a girl at the time. He had a kid, yet here were all these sheets dedicated to a fictional white woman he was obsessed with, hung like championship banners across his entire two bedroom apartment.

My last conversation with Perone was perfect. I sat strumming his guitar while he smoked meth out of a can of Pepsi, telling me how Michael Jackson was the King.

Every click of the lighter, every inhale and exhale would punctuate just how much Michael Jackson meant to the world and music.

How Motown celebrated their 25th anniversary with a tv special and Michael Jackson came out and destroyed with the moonwalk.

“Dude, (click) black people loved Michael (inhale). White people loved Michael. (exhale)Young people loved Michael. (cough) Old people loved Michael. (click) None of this race or generation shit mattered. (inhale) It was because of the music and HE did that. (exhale) He bridged everything together in that one moment. (violent cough) Michael Jackson is and will always be the King. (click) Fuck Elvis.”

That was twenty years ago. I have no idea if he’s still alive, earned a living with his music or met the woman he’d dreamt and painted for years. Or if instead he succumbed to meth, took his own life and or manages an Olive Garden.

I don’t know and I don’t have to. I miss him and appreciate the things we shared that mattered and helped me grow as a person, but that’s all it ever will be.

Let justice be done and handled by those involved in their situation and value only the things and constructs that have some permanence or growth in your own life.

Either way you will still die, and wether it’s alone and forgotten or if it takes centuries for people to forget you were a miserable deaf cunt who wrote some sweet jams - you’ll eventually be nothing.

Fuck Elvis.

[metalandmagi]

August Media Madness

Well, August may have sucked for me personally, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t keep track of all the media I consumed this month! And spoiler alert, I watched a lot of movies involving adorable talking bears. Although, I have a feeling that as soon as the fall television premieres start, I’ll be watching a lot less movies.

July’s media

Movies!

Dear Evan Hansen

Thank you bootlegs. This isn’t a movie, but I didn’t want to make a separate category for plays when I’ve only seen one this month. Anyway, if you haven’t heard of it, Dear Evan Hansen involves an incredibly anxious teenage boy who is tasked by his therapist to write motivational letters to himself. Unfortunately, Connor Murphy, an angsty boy who goes to Evan’s school sees one of the letters, takes it, and promptly decides to kill himself, with the letter still on his person. Everyone ends up thinking he and Evan were friends and that this letter was a suicide note that Connor wrote to Evan...and a beautiful fake gay relationship friendship was born. Call me basic as hell, but I’ve watched this show twice now, and listened to the soundtrack more times than I can count, and it’s turning into my favorite musical. There are so many important messages in it, and it takes you on a roller coaster of emotions. Every character does good and bad things, and no one is blameless or innocent...except maybe Zoe Murphy. If anything just listen to the soundtrack. 10/10

Night on the Galactic Railroad

Cats...on a mystical train...This seems like the kind of movie they would show you in film school. Very dull plot and characters with the themes being the main takeaway. What even is the plot of this movie? Darker, grittier, furry version of the Polar Express? Incredibly boring slightly more religious version of Over the Garden Wall? I just kept watching it because the main character looks like a cat version of Kagayama Tobio in middle school...cat-gayama. 4/10

Paddington

An adorable bear from South America travels to London and gets into all sorts of trouble with an English family. It’s very charming and sweet, and the aesthetic in this movie is on point, like Wes Anderson directed a children’s movie. This is one of those movies you hear about where everyone loves it, and you think it can’t possibly be that good, but then you watch it and you were wrong! So wrong! 10/10

Paddington 2

Naturally. This time an adorable South American bear goes to prison, and his family tries to clear his name. Again, A+ aesthetic and imagery, but I think I preferred the plot of the first movie a little more because everyone was all together. 9/10

Christopher Robin

Do you like Winnie the Pooh? Do you like jaded adults finding happiness in their lives again? Do you think the movie Hook had a good premise but was extremely long and kinda boring and could have been a better movie with a little tweaking? Well this is the movie for you! Christopher Robin has grown into an overworked adult, and his old friend Winnie the Pooh inadvertently helps him reconnect with his wife and daughter (and also his inner child) just by being the sweet, clumsy, dry humored bear we all know and love. I was so skeptical of this movie at first, and I was absolutely blown away by how funny and meaningful it was. 100/10

The Road to El Dorado

Two lovable Spanish con men named Miguel and Tulio are accidentally swept away on a journey to the fabled city of El Dorado, where everything is made of gold. Once they reach the city, the locals believe they’re gods due to an (un)fortunate series of coincidences, and the con men try to keep up the charade with the help of the best character in the movie, Chel (who I’m pretty sure caused an entire generation of lesbians’ sexual awakening). This is one of my favorite animated movies of all time and one of the reasons I wish Dreamworks would go back to their 2D animation days, where the visuals and music were just as stunning as 3D movies are now. This movie is a classic, and I desperately want a sequel! 10/10

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before

When Lara Jean thinks it’s a good idea to write 5 secret love letters to 5 boys that she’s had crushes on over the years, everything is fine until her little sister mails the letters to all the boys (because even a 6th grader knows Lara Jean is lonely and emotionally stunted as fuck). This is a Netflix original movie that was adapted from the book by Jenny Han...which I haven’t read, but now I really want to. Overall, this was super cute, but I wasn’t really crazy about the boys. They weren’t horrible people or anything, and they never pressured Lara Jean or made fun of her for being “innocent”, but they were just kind of bland. I’m much more interested in the other boys we didn’t see in the movie! But the family relationships were so heartfelt, Lara Jean’s fashion sense is AMAZING, and the acting/casting was awesome. 8/10

Summer Wars

I...don’t even know how to describe the plot of this one. A teenage boy named Kenji goes on a country holiday and pretends to date an acquaintance of his in order to impress her enormous family...but it’s really about an AI that becomes sentient and wants to mess up the world through this universal internet program called OZ that’s kind of like a mashup of Facebook and Second Life...but actually no it’s about family sticking together and using a Japanese card game to save the world…but apparently it’s got the same plot as the Digimon movie because they’re both directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Yeah...

Guys, I have a confession to make...this has always been my favorite Mamoru Hosoda movie. Everyone falls all over themselves saying Wolf Children is the best Mamoru Hosoda movie, and that’s great for them but it doesn’t even come in second for me. Summer Wars means a lot more to me personally because I come from a big extended family, and when I first saw this movie, I was blown away by how accurate the family dynamic was. There are so many characters, but everyone has their own personality. Not to mention the music makes the summer atmosphere so on point. And I’m not going to lie...I bawled like a fucking baby the first time I saw this movie. So anyway, I like Summer Wars more than Wolf Children, thanks for coming to my TED talk. 10/10

Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Unappreciated researcher Milo Thatch goes on an expedition to find the lost city of Atlantis.

Okay, there are two kinds of Disney fans in this world: Treasure Planet fans, and Atlantis fans. And I will support Treasure Planet as the best underrated vaguely steampunk inspired Disney movie until you can pry my 15 year old dvd copy away from my cold dead hands. But Atlantis is pretty good too. I could write essays comparing the two and why both of them should be successful but weren’t. My main problem with it is that the characters are great, but I feel like we don’t see enough of them, and as a kid a lot of the humor went by so fast that I completely missed it. Also the glowing eyes and spirits taking over the Atlantian princess’s body freaked me the fuck out as a child. NEVERTHELESS! This really is a great movie, with extremely well developed lore and well designed characters that chills me to this day. 8/10

Deadpool 2

The merc with a mouth is back, and man there’s so much going on in this movie I won’t even try to explain the plot. I literally had to go back and add this in because I was so into this movie when I was watching it that I forgot to write it down! Even though I really liked this sequel, I think I liked the first one better, just based on how much I laughed. There was so much going on plot wise, but it really seemed to work for this movie. There were also a lot of great new characters (Domino is my favorite character of the franchise now), but since there was so much stuff going on, a lot of jokes and plot lines were sort of hit and miss. Anyway, I’m sure everyone’s seen this one by now but just in case, I highly recommend it. 9/10

Books!

The Adventure Zone Graphic Novel: Here There be Gerblins by Clint McElroy (technically all the McElboys) and Carey Pietsch

Yeah yeah, for anyone who doesn’t know I’m Adventure Zone trash okay. TAZ is a DnD podcast where 3 brothers and their father create one of the most famous campaigns in history involving three idiot adventurers going on a quest to find a missing person and getting sucked into a much larger grand plan to protect the world. This graphic novel is a visualization of the first arc. I don’t even really like Here There be Gerblins all that much, and yet here I am. Oh well, the art was amazing, and of course I already knew the story. But it was kind of hilarious to see the name changes they had to make to some of the characters and places. I was a little disappointed that the ending was so rushed, and we don’t really spend time around the moon base before The Director is in our face changing the Lunar Interlude parts but whatever. 10 dead gerblins/10

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

When a disease that only affects children kills off nearly all the kids on the planet, the survivors are left with supernatural powers and are taken away to concentration camps in order to “protect” the public. I’ve been wanting to read this for a long time, and since the movie just came out I thought it was the perfect time. This is one of those books that some people adore and some people hate. I thought it was just okay. For everything that I didn’t like, there was something to make up for it. Personally, I felt that Bracken focused on the wrong part of the story. Everything takes place years after this disease has come, and I think it would have been more interesting to see everything from the children’s points of view when this disease was first starting. I would focus on each different character as a child and how they wound up in their respective camps. Oh well, there’s way too many pros and cons  that I could delve into, but you like the YA dystopian genre then I say go for it. I didn’t like it enough to read the other two books (not yet anyway). 7/10

TV Shows!

Camp Camp

You know how there are summer camps that specialize in science, or acting, or space, or whatever? Yeah Camp Camp is about a summer camp that throws literally everything you can think of into one summer camp. If you don’t believe me, just listen to the theme song. Seriously though this is one of the best shows I’ve watched all year, but boy howdy this is not one for young children. It’s like Gravity Falls and Rick and Morty had a baby! Anyway, the characters are both surprising and hilarious. David the camp counselor (voiced by Miles Luna) is genuinely likable when you think he’d be the most annoying person on the planet, and the kids are so accurate it’s scary. Also Yuri Lowenthal is in it. And Griffin McElroy has a recurring role where he plays A GHOST! I’ve never been into Rooster Teeth stuff, but they have a winner with this one. 10/10

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

After her husband leaves her, Midge Maisel gets super drunk, goes on stage, and gives a hilarious rant about her relationship at a small comedy/talent club and somehow gets sucked into becoming a rising comedian as a woman in the 1950s. It’s good. Great acting pretty funny, but Midge and her agent/manager Susie are the only likable characters. Everyone else just kind of...sucks 8/10

Voltron Season 7 (spoilers)

Okay, I know everyone had mixed feelings about this season, but I did come out liking a lot of it. It had a lot of flaws (I really thought it would be Shiro’s season, and man was I wrong), but this is the sort of thing we can’t really judge until the last episode of the series is finished. I like to think of the positives: the action was amazing as usual, HUNK IS GETTING MORE AND MORE DEVELOPMENT EVERY SEASON, I refuse to believe the team introduced Adam just to have him killed off immediately so he’s still alive in my mind, we get to see everyone’s reunions with their families, the lost in space episode was cool, and say what you want about the game show episode, but I loved it! There were a lot of good things so it was easier for me to look past the...not so great aspects of the season. 7/10

Galavant

A musical comedy mini series involving a renowned medieval hero named Galavant on a quest to rescue his ex girlfriend from her “evil” husband King Richard. But maybe she doesn’t want to be rescued. Well, that’s just the first season. It’s best to go in knowing as little as possible. I remember liking it when it first came out, and it’s still pretty cute...but sometimes I feel like it’s trying too hard. A lot of the music isn’t really...memorable, but the characters are likable so it’s still worth the watch. 8/10

Disenchantment

Speaking of medieval comedies...Princess Bean doesn’t want to get married, mystical elf Elfo doesn’t want to live in an enchanted forest where everyone is happy all the time, and Bean’s personal demon Luci just wants to watch people suffer. Honestly, I wasn’t very into this show at first, but something compelled me to just keep watching, and by the end I was totally into it! This is one of those shows where you think there isn’t going to be a plot, but then the last few episodes come up and smack you in the face! 7.5/10

Round Planet

A documentary parody...mockumentary...satire...That’s really not a great way to describe it. It’s a nature documentary with funny commentary. I like nature shots and animals so I liked it, but there’s a lot of tangents and running jokes and British references that sometimes don’t land. Oh well, if you like unconventional documentaries, just watch it. 8/10

Honorable Mentions

DnDnD: I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this podcast before, but there’s a DnD podcast made by Practical Folks (aka the Drunk Disney youtube channel). It’s pretty good! I want an Adventure Zone crossover now!

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Every time I think I’m out, it pulls me back in. I finally got the DLC and spent most of this month playing this freaking game AGAIN!

The Heathers soundtrack: I finally listened to the Heathers musical soundtrack...and I didn’t love it. There are some good songs in it, but overall I’m unimpressed. And I never could really get into the plot, I’ve always thought it was really weird and over dramatic.

Legendary by Stephanie Garber: I’m about halfway through this book, which is the second in the Caraval series. And it’s pretty good! More on that next month.

[lechevaliermalfet]

Pistols at Dawn: A Look at Doom and Marathon

In the mid-1990s, the first-person shooter genre was born with Doom. It wasn't the first game of its type.  Games like Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold preceded it.  Catacomb 3D came before either of those.  And you can trace the lineage further back if you like.  But it was Doom that saw the kind of runaway success most development studios live and die without ever attaining.  That success spawned imitators.  It was the imitators and their imitations – some of them using the very same engine – that made it a genre.  It's how genres are born.

It was interesting to watch that happen in real time.

But that's the PC side of history.

If you were a Macintosh user, you were probably sick to death of your PC-owning friends crowing about Doom, all the more because it wasn't available for your system of choice. Doom would eventually make its way Mac-ward... after its own sequel was eventually released for the system first.  Absurd as this sounds, it didn’t really matter too much.  Story, and the importance of continuity between games, wasn't exactly a big concern in Doom.

But Mac users had little reason to despair.  Because although Doom was and is rightly remembered as a classic, Mac users were privy to a game nearly as good – probably even equal, maybe even better, depending on who you talk to.

That game was Marathon.

More below the cut.

It's hard trying to justify comparisons between Doom and Marathon, because despite their similarities, they aren't really in the same league.  It's hard to compare any game that became the jumping-off point for a whole genre to its contemporaries.  But as much as I lionize Doom, and as much as everyone else does the same, it's perhaps helpful to think that this is done with the benefit of hindsight.  Today, in 2018, we've had nearly two-and-a-half decades of Doom being available for almost every single thing that could conceivably run it.

Remembering Doom in its time, it would have been hard to predict that it would go on to achieve quite the level of adulation it's garnered over the years. It's not that Doom doesn't deserve it.  It's more that any game attaining this level of success both in its time and in the long term is basically impossible to predict.  Doom was much talked about, it was wildly popular, you heard rumors of whole IT departments losing days of productivity to it in network games, but...  Well, it was just one game.  Later two.  It was perfectly valid to suppose, in the mid-90s, that some developer would surely supplant it with something even better.  That's just the way things worked.  It's just that Doom was well-made enough, well-balanced enough, that "something even better" didn't come around for a long time.  

Still, the Macintosh is not where I would have expected to look for real competition for Doom.

The Mac wasn't actually a barren wasteland, game-wise.  It's just easy to remember it that way, especially if, like me, you grew up playing PC games.  Most of the games we think of as being influential in the realm of computer gaming tended not to come from that direction.  Mac users made up a smaller portion of overall computer users at that point.  PCs (still often referred to as "IBM/PC compatibles" at the time) being the larger market and thus a source of larger potential profits, that was where the majority of developers focused their attention.  The hassles of porting a game to Mac, whether handled by the original developer or farmed out to somebody else, were frequently judged not to be worth the potential profit.  At times, it was determined not to be profitable in the first place.

There were a few games – Myst comes immediately to mind – that bucked this trend, but most Mac games only became influential once they crossed over to PCs, like...  Well, like Myst did.  The Mac ecosystem just wasn't big enough for anything that happened in it exclusively to influence the wider world of PC gaming.  

Actually, let's go with that ecosystem analogy for a minute.  

Mac gaming in the early 90s was sort of like Australia.  It's a tiny system that only accounted for a small percentage of the biosphere. It had its own unique creatures, similar to animals occupying equivalent ecological niches elsewhere in the world.  But on closer inspection, these turned out to all be very different from their counterparts, often in fundamental ways.  And then you had some creatures with no real equivalents elsewhere.  There was a lot of parallel evolution.  

Case in point: Marathon.

Being released a scant eleven days after Doom, you definitely can't accuse it of being one of the imitators.  It didn't happen in a vacuum, though.

Its creators, Bungie, were a sort of oddball company whose founders openly admitted that they started off in the Macintosh market not because of any fervent belief in the superiority of the platform, but because it was far less competitive than the PC market at the time.

They started off with Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete, a multiplayer-only (more or less) first-person maze game, and followed it up with Pathways Into Darkness.

Pathways was meant to be a sequel to Minotaur at first, until it morphed into its own thing over the course of its development.  In genre terms, it's most like a first-person shooter.  Except there are heavy adventure game elements, nonlinearity, and multiple endings depending on decisions you make during the game, which are pretty foreign to the genre.  It also features a level of resource scarcity that wouldn't be at all out of place in a survival horror game.

Incidentally, I would love to see a source port of Pathways Into Darkness. It is its own weird, awkward beast of a game, and I would dearly love to be able to play it, after having seen only maybe ten minutes of gameplay at a friend's house one time when I was about twelve.

They followed this up with the original Marathon.

Doom is largely iterative.  It follows on from a tradition of older FPS games made by its developer, like Wolfenstein 3D and Catacombs 3D. Like those predecessors, it relegates the little apparent story to pre-game and post-game text, and features a very video game-y structure that relies on discrete levels and fast, reflex-oriented play.  It adds complexity and sophistication to these elements as seen in previous games, introducing more enemies, more weapons, and more complex and varied environments, then layers all of this on top of an already proven, solid gameplay core.

Marathon, by contrast, simplified and distilled the elements of previous games by its developer.  It opts to be more clearly an FPS (as we understand it in modern terms) than any of its predecessors, shedding Pathways' adventure elements and non-linearity while increasing the player's arsenal.  However, it's still less straightforward than Doom's pure level-by-level structure.  Marathon presents itself as a series of objectives given to the player character (the Security Officer) by various other characters to be achieved within the level.  These can range from scouting out particular areas, to ferrying items around the level, to clearing out enemies, to rescuing friendly characters, and so on.

Marathon's story, unlike Doom's, is front and center.  Where Doom leaves the player to satisfy themselves that they are slowly progressing toward some ultimate enemy with every stage, Marathon gives the player concrete goals each step of the way, framing each objective as either a way to gain advantage over the enemy, or to recover from setbacks inflicted by them.  Doom's story is focused on the player character and their direct actions. For narrative purposes, anything happening beyond your ability to observe is irrelevant.  Marathon instead opts to give the player a feeling that although they are the one making crucial things happen in the story, they are not directing the action themselves.

Which brings me to something interesting about Marathon's story.

The player character, the Security Officer, has surprisingly little agency within the narrative.  At a guess, I'd say that's because it would be almost impossible to express his own thoughts and emotions with the way the plot is relayed.  It's true that most games -- especially in the FPS genre -- tell you what to do.  Rescue the princess.  Save the world.  Prevent nuclear catastrophe.  Etc.  Etc.  But this is normally done in an abstract sense, by presenting you a clear goal and some means to achieve it.  Even open-world games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim have an overarching goal that you're meant to be slowly working your way toward.  

But while your actions in a given game are generally understood to be working toward the stated goal, the player is usually presented in the narrative as having a choice – or perhaps more accurately as having chosen prior to the beginning of the game proper – regarding whatever path the game puts them on.  Mario has chosen to go save Princess Toadstool.  Link has chosen to go find the pieces of the Triforce and save Princess Zelda.  Sonic has chosen to confront Doctor Robotnik.  Even the Doom Guy has chosen to fight the demons infesting the moons of Mars on his own rather than saying "fuck it" and running.  The reasons for these choices may in some cases be left up to the player to sort out or to apply their imagination, but the point remains.  These characters have chosen their destinies.

The Security Officer from the Marathon trilogy, by contrast, does not.  Throughout the games, he is presented as following orders.  "Install these three circuits in such-and-such locations".  "Scout out this area". "Clear the hostile aliens out of this section of the ship". And so on, and so forth.  Even in the backstory, found in the manual, the character is just doing his job, responding to a distress call before he fully realizes the sheer scale of the problem.  The player, as the Security Officer, is always moving from one objective to the next on the orders of different AI constructs who happen to be in control of him – more or less – at a given time.  The Security Officer is clearly a participant in events, but he lacks true agency.

In fairness, it must have been hard to figure out how to tell a compelling story within the context of a first-person shooter back in the early 90s, which is why so few people did it.  

I'm not enough of a programmer to be able to explain it well (understatement; I'm not any kind of programmer), but the basic gist of it is that games like Doom weren't technically in 3D.  The environments were rendered in such a way that they appeared in three dimensions from the player's perspective, but as earlier versions of source ports like ZDoom made clear, this was an illusion, one that was shattered the moment you enabled mouse aiming and observed the environments from any angle other than dead-ahead.  The enemies, meanwhile, were 2D sprites, which was common in video games of any type for the day.

This was how Marathon was set up as well.  It's how basically every first-person shooter worked until the release of Quake – and some after it.

The problem is that this doesn't lend itself very well to more cinematic storytelling.  Sprites tended not to be very expressive given the lower resolutions of the day.  At least, not sprites drawn to relatively realistic proportions like the ones in Doom and Marathon. So you couldn't really do cinematic storytelling sequences with them, and that left only a handful of other options for getting your story across.

You could do what I tend to think of as Dynamic Stills, a la Ninja Gaiden on the NES.  At its best, it enables comic book-style storytelling, but that's about as far as it goes.

You can do FMV cutscenes, which at the time basically involved bad actors in cheap costumes filmed against green screens or really low-budget sets.  CG was relatively uncommon (and likely prohibitivesly expensive) even in the mid-90s.

You can do mostly text, interspersed throughout your game.

You can just not have much story at all.

Doom opted for option four.  John Carmack has been quoted as saying that story in video games is like story in porn.  Everybody expects it to be there, but nobody really cares about it.  

I disagree with this sentiment pretty vehemently, as it happens.  There are some games that aren't well served by a large amount of plot, and Doom is definitely one of them.  But to state that this is or should be true for the medium as a whole is frankly ridiculous.

There's something refreshing, almost freeing, about a game that has less a story than a premise. Doom starts off on Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, which has been invaded by demons from hell.  They've gained access by virtue of human scientists' experimentation with teleportation technology gone horribly, horribly wrong.  The second episode sees you teleported to Deimos, which as been entirely swallowed up by Hell, and which segues from the purely technological/military environments of Doom to more supernatural environs.  Episode 3 has you assaulting Hell proper.  Doom II's subtitle, Hell on Earth, tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the setting and premise of the game.

That's it.  There are no characters to develop or worry about.  It's just you as the lone surviving marine, your improbably large arsenal, and all the demons Hell can throw at you.  Go nuts.

Bungie, meanwhile, took a different approach.  I can't seem to find out which of their founders said it, but they have been on record as basically being diametrically opposed to Id Software in their attitude about story.  "The purpose of games is to tell stories."  I wish I knew who at Bungie said that.

Marathon is very much a story-oriented game.  Of the aforementioned methods of storytelling, they opted for option three: text, and lots of it.

Marathon's story is complex and labyrinthine, especially as it continues through the sequels (Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity), and is open to interpretation at various points.  Much is left for the player to piece together themselves.  Aside from the player character, the story mainly centers on the actions of three AI constructs: Leela (briefly), Durandal, and Tycho.  Their actions, in the face of an invasion by a race of alien slavers called the Pfohr, drive the story.  

Their words and actions are relayed to the player by way of text at terminals scattered throughout the game's environments.  Some of these take the form of orders and objectives given by the AI to the player character, the Security Officer.  Some of these are more musings or rants (two out of the three AIs you work for over the course of the Marathon trilogy are not exactly all there), which serve to flesh out events happening beyond the player's observations, and help build the world.  Some of these are seemingly random bits of background information, presented as if they were being accessed by someone else (often an enemy) before they were distracted by something – usually you, shooting everything in sight.  

Design-wise, there are some interesting differences.

Doom is old-school from a time when that was the only school, with levels that strike a nice balance between video game-y and still giving at least a vague sense that they were built to be something other than deathtrap mazes.  But what makes them old-school, at this point, is the fact that they're levels, with discrete starting and ending points, where your goal is to move from the former to the latter and hit the button or throw the lever to end it and begin the next one.

There's no plot to lose the thread of, no series of objectives for you to lose track of if you put the game down for a week, or a month, or longer still.  It's extremely pick-up-and-play, equally well suited to killing twenty minutes or a whole afternoon, as you like.

The appeal (aesthetics aside) of Doom is also at least in part its accessibility.  It has a decently high skill ceiling (which is to say, the level of skill required to play at an expert level), but a surprisingly low skill floor (the level of skill required to play with basic proficiency), which has lent it a certain evergreen quality. And Id Software has been keen to capitalize on this.  Doom is one of a small number of PC games (Diablo II is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head; what is it with games that have you fighting demons from Hell?) that have been commercially viable and available basically from the day they were released.  In addition to DOS on PCs, Doom was rejiggered for Windows 95, and also (eventually) saw release for Mac.  Also, it's been sold for multiple consoles: the Super NES, the Sega 32X (regrettably), the Atari Jaguar (also regrettably), the PlayStation, the N64, the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and the Xbox One (the 360 version again, via backward compatibility).  And source ports have kept the PC version alive and kicking, adding now-standard features like mouse aiming, particle effects, and support for widescreen displays.

The result is a game that, if you don't mind pixelated graphics, is as ferociously playable today as it was twenty-four years ago (as of this writing), and has enjoyed a kind of longevity usually not seen outside the realm of first-party Nintendo classics.

Marathon by contrast is somewhat less inviting.  

From a technical standpoint, Marathon is more or less the equal of Doom. The environments throughout the series are rendered at a somewhat higher resolution, but the enemies are less well animated.  Marathon also introduced the idea of mouse aiming to the FPS genre, and allowed the player to use that to look (and aim) vertically, which hadn't been done before either.  Even Doom, though it also introduced more vertical gameplay, locked the player's movement to the strictly horizontal; vertical aiming was accounted for automatically, although source ports have modernized this. Marathon leans into its verticality a little more as a result, and level layouts are more complex, bordering on the impossiblely convoluted without the aid of your automap.

While I wouldn't go so far as to say that Marathon would classify as a survival horror game, there are some elements of that genre in it.  This is almost certainly unintentional, and I'm identifying them as such retroactively (the genre hadn’t really arrived yet). Still, they exist.  Ammunition is more scarce than in Doom, forcing the player to lean on the lower end of their arsenal far later into the game than Doom does. Some weapons also feature alternate fire modes, which was a genre first.  

Health packs are nonexistent; instead, the player can recharge their health at terminals designed for this purpose, usually placed very sparingly.  Saving is also handled at dedicated terminals – a decision better befitting a console game, and somewhat curious here.  In addition to health, there is also an air gauge, which depletes gradually whenever the player is in vacuum or underwater, and which can be difficult to find refills for.

Marathon also marks the early appearance of weapon magazines in the first-person shooter genre.  Doom held to the old design established by Wolfenstein and older games that the player fires their weapons straight from the ammo reserves.  If you have a hundred shotgun rounds, then you can fire a hundred times, no reload necessary.  The reloading mechanic as we would most readily recognize it seems to have been added for the genre with Half-Life, for reasons of greater realism and introducing tension to the game.  

Marathon's version of this, as you might expect for a pioneering effort, is pretty rough.  There is no way to manually reload your weapons when you want.  Rather, the game will automatically cycle through the reload animation once you empty the magazine.  It does helpfully display how many rounds remain in the magazine at all times so you know how many you have left before a reload, and can plan accordingly. But it still exerts the familiar reload pressure, just in a different way.  Rather than asking yourself whether you have the spare seconds for a reload to top off your magazine, now you have to ask yourself whether it's wiser to just fire the last few rounds of the magazine to trigger the reload now, when it's safe, so that you have a full magazine ready to go for the next encounter.  Marathon's tendency to leave you feeling a little more ammo-starved than Doom makes this decision an agonizing one at times.  

Id's game is pretty sparing with the way it doles out rockets and energy cells for the most high-powered weapons, true.  But the real workhorse weapons, the shotgun and the chaingun, have ammo lying around in plenty.  Past a certain early point in any given episode of Doom or Doom II, as long as you diligently grab whatever ammo you come across and your aim is even halfway decent, you never have to worry about running out.  Marathon, by contrast, sees you relying on your pistol for a good long while. Compared to other weapons you find, it has a good balance of accuracy and availability of ammunition.  

The overall pacing and difficulty of both games is also somewhat different.  

Both games are hard, but in different ways.  Doom has enemies scattered throughout a level in ones and twos, but most of the major encounters feature combinations and larger numbers.  But the plentiful ammo drops and health packs mean the danger of these encounters tends to be relatively isolated, and encourages fast maneuvering and some risk-taking.  If you can make it through a given encounter, you usually have the opportunity to heal up and re-arm before the next one.  Doom is centered around its action.  It gives you the shotgun – which you’ll be using for most of the game, thanks to its power – as early as the first level if you’re on the lookout for secrets, and by the second level, you really can’t miss it.

Marathon, by contrast, paces itself (and the player) differently.  Ammo gets doled out more sparingly, and health recharge stations are likewise placed few and far between (rarely more than one or two in a stage, at least so far as I’ve played, and small enough that they can be easily overlooked).  Save points are likewise not always conveniently placed, and the fact that the game has save points means that you can’t savescum, and dying can result in a fair amount of lost progress.  The result is that, unless you’re closer to the skill ceiling, you tend to play more carefully and conservatively.  You learn to kite enemies, stringing them along to let you take on as few at a time as possible.

The tactics I developed to play games like Doom and later Quake didn’t always serve me very well when I first started playing Marathon. The main danger in Bungie’s game is the death of a thousand cuts. Where Doom attempts in most cases to destroy you in a single fell swoop, Marathon seeks to wear you down bit by bit until you have nothing left, and you’re jumping at shadows, knowing that the next blow to fall may be your last.  It encourages more long-term thinking.  Similar to a survival horror game, every clip spent and every hit taken has meaning, and can alter your approach to the scenario you find yoruself in.

In short, if Doom is paced like a series of sprints, Marathon is, well... a marathon.

Another interesting difference is how both games deal with their inherent violence.  

As games which feature future military men mowing down whole legions of enemies by the time the credits roll, violence is a matter of course. It becomes casual.  But both games confront it in different ways.

Doom was one of the games that helped stir up a moral panic in the U.S. in the early to mid-90s (alongside Mortal Kombat, most notably).  While I don't agree with it, it was hardly surprising.  Doom gloried in its violence.  Every enemy went down covered in blood (some of them came at you that way), some of them straight-up liquefying if caught too near an explosion.  This is to say nothing of all the hearts on altars or dead marines littering the landscape to provide the proper ambiance.

The idea was simple: You were surrounded by violent monsters, and the only way to overcome them was to become equally violent.  The game's fast pace and adrenaline-rushing gameplay only served to emphasize this.  Doom isn't a stupid game by any means – it requires a certain amount of cleverness and a good sense of direction in addition to good reflexes and decent aim to safely navigate its levels -- but the primary direction it makes you think in is how? How do I get through this barrier, how do I best navigate through these dark halls, how do I approach this room full of enemies that haven't seen me yet?

Marathon asks those questions as well, because any decent game is constantly asking you those questions, because they are all variations on the same basic question any game of any kind (video games, board games, whatever) is asking you: How do you overcome the challenges the game throws at you using the tools and abilities the game gives you?

The difference (well, the narrative difference, distinct from all the rest) is that Marathon also talks about the violence seemingly inherent in human nature as one of a variety of things in its narrative.  

To be fair, Marathon brings it up pretty briefly in its terminal text.  But one of the terminals highlights Durandal's musings on the Security Officer, and humankind in general.  

Organic beings are constantly fighting for life. Every breath, every motion brings you one instant closer to your death. With that kind of heritage and destiny, how can you deny yourself? How can you expect yourself to give up violence?

Indeed, it may be seen as not just useful, but a necessary and essential component of humanity.  Certainly it's vital to the Security Officer's survival and ultimate victory in the story of the games.

And yet, on the whole, Marathon is a less violent game.  Or at least, it glories in its violence less.  Enemies still go down in a welter of their own blood, because that happens when you shoot a living creature full of bullet holes.  But it's less gory on the whole – bloody like a military movie, bloody as a matter of fact, in contrast to Doom's cartoonishly overwrought slasher-flick excess.

And yet it's Marathon that feels compelled to grapple with its violence, to ask what motivates it, not just in the moment, but wherever it appears in the nature and history of humankind.

On the whole, I think I come down on the side of Marathon, personally.  Its themes, its aesthetic, and its characters are more to my liking.  True, part of this is simply because Marathon has characters. Doom has the player character and a horde of enemies.  Even the final boss of each installment has no narrative impact to speak of.  They simply appear in order to be shot down.  They're presented as the forces behind the demonic invasion, but aside from being bigger and stronger than all the other demons you face, there's no real sense of presence, narratively.  And that's fine.  But on the balance, I tend to prefer story in my games, and Marathon delivers, even as it's sometimes a bit janky, even as I get the feeling that Bungie's reach exceeded their grasp with it.

I can recognize Doom as the game that's more accessible, and probably put together a little better, and of course infinitely more recognizable.  Id still sells it, and generally speaking, it's worth the five whole dollars (ten if you want Doom II as well) it'll cost you on PSN, or Xbox Live, or Steam.

Bungie, meanwhile, gave the Marathon trilogy away for free in the early 2000s.  It's how I finally managed to play it, despite never owning a Mac.  There are source ports that allow it to be played on PCs (or Linux, even).  About the only new development in the franchise was an HD remaster of Marathon 2: Durandal for the Xbox 360.  In the same vein as the remasters for Halo or Halo 2, this version changes nothing about the original except to update the graphics and adapt the control scheme for a 360 controller.

I'd love to see a remake of Marathon with modern technology, even though I know it's extraordinarily unlikely to happen.  Bungie's occupied with Destiny for the foreseeable future.  The most we've gotten in ages is a few Easter eggs.  343 Guilty Spark in the original Halo featured Durandal's symbol prominently on his mechanical eye, which fueled speculation for a little while that perhaps Halo took place in the same continuity.  There's another Easter egg in Destiny 2 that suggests two of its weapons, the MIDA Multi-tool and the MIDA Mini-tool, fell out of an alternate universe where Marathon's events occurred instead of Destiny's. But that's been it.

The tragedy of Marathon is that it wasn't in a position for its innovations to be felt industry-wide.

Doom had the better overall playability and greater accessibility.  If you were to ask where a lot of FPS genre innovations came from, the average gamer would probably not point to Marathon as the progenitor of those things.  Quake would probably get credit for adding mouse aiming (even though it wasn't a standard menu option, and had to be enabled with a console command), or else maybe Duke Nukem 3D. Unreal would most likely get credited as the genesis of alternate firing modes, while Half-Life is probably the one most people remember for introducing the notion of reloading weapons.  I'm not totally sure which other FPS would get the nod for mainstreaming the greater presence of story in the genre – probably Half-Life again.

But since it's free, I would strongly recommend giving the Marathon trilogy a spin.  It's a little rough around the edges even judged by the standards of its time, but still eminently playable, with a strong story told well. And if it seems at times like the FPS That History Forgot, well, that's because History was mostly looking the other way at the time. It's part of the appeal for me, too.  It feels at times like a "lost" game.

Let that add to its mystique.

[titleknown]

TITLEWave Character Re-Imaginings...

Welp, in the tradition of @dimetrodone I decided I might as well write up copyrighted fictional characters as how they’d exist in my TITLEWave setting.

But, as both a challenge and a proof-of-why-it-needs-to-happen, I’ll be restricting it to copyrighted characters from 1960 and earlier ala my idea of 56 or Bust. Because WHY THE HECK NOT?!

Past the break, because this is gettin loooooong.

Astro Boy- Essentially one of the earliest robots establishing a lot of the groundwork both AI and construction-wise for the androids of TITLEWave, despite his dubious origins as the product of a deranged scientist trying to recreate his lost son Astro’s ended up kind of an icon. So much of what he’s done laid the groundwork for what few rights robots had in this setting, and there’s even some minor religions amongst synthetics in this setting in his name

But, when the world needed him, he vanished. And robot rights backslid, often attributed in large part to a world without his influence. Only to reappear decades later, with no memory of where he had been; except for being trapped in some strange; dark place. And now, having upgraded thanks to years of interest on a bank account set up under his long-dead adoptive father’s name, he works as he always has to try to set the world right, to bring the balance between machines and humans.

Of course, while there are many who profit off the exploitation of sentient machines and present him with a handshake in front but a dagger behind their backs, there are also plenty of new allies for Astro, given the fact that he’s a living legend amongst the robotic community, and there’re a lot of people who’ve been inspired to their own heroism by him

Godzilla- Essentially created less from acts of massive war violence as much as years of societal violence, on a huge New Jersey industrial company town dedicated to the repurposing of nuclear materials and chemical waste into useful products, in a process both grueling; dehumanising and lethally toxic for those on the bottom and a nightmare of crunchtime working conditions for those doing the engineering/research. Said process became essentially automated more and more; leaving more and more people out of work and creating a massive underclass; located right by the heavily polluted coastline.

The problem started when they tried to “purge” said underclass, at first via subtler means by neglect cranking up the pollution levels to unsustainable limits, then by more blatant means, such as experimental toxins and random police experimental-gassings. And, this further added to the primordial nightmare-soup to the point where company scientist Doctor Serizawa tried to raise the alarm about the unsettling; violent biological mutations his research team found in there. To no avail. And then, one night, during the largest gassing raids in historyu; The Midway Street Massacre, the creature came.

Serizawa did eventually destroy it with the Oxygen Destroyer, and sacrifice himself to do so, though millions of lives were lost including several of the company’s highest executives. Curiously, most of the attacks by the creature were centered on the wealthiest areas of the city, much to their chagrin.

But, the story diverges from the fact that, when company scientists came to inspect things, they found the creature’s flesh was growing back onto its bones. And, then they had the alledgedly-brilliant idea to bring it onto land and cyborgize the regeneration creature. This went as well as you’d expect.

The escaped creature now wanders the country, less vicious than its original appearance and now treated more like a natural disaster than a kill-this-abomination-now-level threat. One wonders what goes through its head. Those who have made mental contact with it seem to indicate a creature that is lonely, and in pain. Because like those others living in where it was created, it too is a victim in its own way.

And, there are worrying signs from that original company, because not only do they still posess tissue samples of the creature’s cells, but also there are whispers of whole new strains of creatures they found mutated from the results of the Oxygen Destroyer….

Gandalf/Sauron- A wandering robot that looks superficially like some cheap carnival animatronic of an old man, only to reveal incredibly powerful technology beneath his surface; if it even is technology as we know it. He’s a wise mentor-type to heroic types he finds, but he has an agenda of his own as well.

It involves stopping a similar; but more powerful machine called Sauron, whose original body was destroyed, but who lives on in fragments of his corpus and AI cores; in particular one TITLE-like divice simply known as The Ring.

Nobody really knows where they came from, when asked Gandalf says he simply answers to “A higher authority”

Rick Blaine- Or, rather, Rikki Blaine. Formerly an uninvolved bystander for years running her bar in a place that was essentially a waypoint for those trying to escape from various nightmarish megacorp-owned city states, she finally was spurred to involvement after an old flame of his came with her leftist freedom-fighter husband, which ultimately ended not only in heris aiding in their escape; but also him finding a reason to live; and skimming off a high-level megacorp official to her cause too.

Now she runs an organization called the “Casablanca Foundation” to help people escape not just from Megacorp-states but also the places that are megacorp-states in all but name; or even just generally bad situations. If you know who to call, you can find her.

Bugs Bunny- Called by many nicknames including “the abortion of this age” and “the rough beast Yeats spoke of,” nobody knows where the fuck Bugs Bunnycame from. The best guess of most is that it’s a confluence of multiple biological and parapsychological factors ending up affecting one normal North American rabbit. It is also theorized they came from Brooklyn due to their distinctive accent.

Bugs is essentially an incredibly powerful humanoid lapine organism, unable to permanently die even when flattened; exploded; burned; eaten; chopped to bits; ectcetera, and with remarkable abilities of mental power despite his screwball attitude towards life; with the ability to defy the laws of physics without conscious thought and bar-none high-level abilities of spacial reasoning and behavioral prediction. And able to disguise themselves better than you’d think.

Originally they were much more terrifyingly chaotic, but nowadays they have rules they seem to follow. Namely; no retribution unless either they are provoked or somebody they like gets hurt and no killing. Other than that, if you piss them off there will be hell to pay.

Though, if you can get on their good side (Which is easier than most people think) they can be a jovial; steadfast friend (Albeit one with an often overly-massive ego with a tendency to be overly cocky and quick to fight) and a powerful ally. And, as you can guess by my use of pronouns, they happen to be genderfluid. Because Bugs Bunny

Superman- Despite a more neon 80s-tacular costume, complete with badass bounty-hunter-y mask, he’s still fundamentally Superman, helping people against problems too great for mortal people. He’s the only “proper” superhero in this setting in fact; and while everyone wonders what his real agenda is, nobody suspects that he’s just as genuine as he seems, a Jewish guy from the sticks who happened to be found in a crashed rocketship by a couple of farmers who’s trying to bring Tikkum Olam to the world. Though his reporting is more for television, he still works to report the news of the world at the Daily Star webcast.

Of course, there are a few differences. Like the fact that underneath his human appearance is an anatomy that is far off from human, with him only looking human thanks to the “rebirthing machine” in that original ship that altered him; and in fact perhaps other Kryptonians still out there; into the appearance of the planet’s dominant species.

And, there’s also the fact; with the research into the strange crystal technology linked to his planet and its lethally radioactive corrupted form known as Kryptonite, he’s found that they weren’t quite restricted to one planet. In fact, they were an interplanetary civilization, leaping across solar systems. And then, all at once, they were destroyed. But he’s never been able to find an answer as to by who or by what, or why seemingly relatively so relatively few of them were able to escape. And the few leads bring up disquieting possibilities...

You may ask, why not make expies just like these descriptions?

And I probably will do that in the future with these ideas. But; thing is; there’s power in legacies. There’s power in Superman being a shining neon light in this vicious future, there’s power in Astro Boy coming to set right what has fallen apart in his absence, there is power in Godzilla as the wrath of societal violence, and so-on.

And, while I agree with the truth that even if things are public domain they need to be treated with respect, that’s an argument I’d say for the public domain rather than against it.

Also, if you want to support further content like this, maybe throw a few bucks my way on my Patreon! This was actually decided from two ideas via a poll for those five-dollar donors, and there’ll probably be more in the future...

[commanderlurker]

I've had a day to decompress, I’ve thought about the game, and I've worked through a few of my feelings on it. They are contradictory and hypocritical. I fully acknowledge that. 

2,300 word diatribe under the cut, with game spoilers and character hate. I need to get it out of my system so I can move on with my life.

I went into the game with low expectations and the game still managed to let me down. I think one of the reasons for this is that I went into the game with the wrong mindset. I went in with high expectations for the characters while not really giving a shit about the story, because characters are what Bioware is good at! But in the end, the story was the most interesting part while the characters... well... they lacked.

My one continual feeling throughout the game was boredom. The side quests were boring. Travelling between systems was boring. Side quests that required you to travel between systems were so boring. Mining was boring. Crafting was boring. The characters were, mostly, boring.

There were a few moments of ah! Yes! But they were let down by poor execution. Take Ryder Family Secrets, for example. I absolutely loved that quest line and if I end up writing any fic for Andromeda, it will be based on this. Sure, finding floating orbs of light as 'memory triggers' was dumb but it's a game mechanic so whatever. The memories themselves were great. Alec's reasoning for partitioning them was mostly great. Then the big reveal at the end? Your mum isn't dead? WHOAH!! BUT, and this is a huge but,  the reactions you get from the two Ryders are, 'Wow! Isn't this great! Mum's not dead!' But I'm sitting here like, WHAT THE FUCK GUYS??? I was fucking pissed off that Dad hadn't told us. That he'd lied about her dying, that he'd gone so far as to take an unconscious woman who had already accepted her death to another fucking galaxy possibly without her consent. Don't get me wrong, it's a great twist! But the execution, the fact that the only 'angry' option I had to respond with was a confused and sad 'why didn't dad tell us' instead of an actual angry 'wtf dad' response really pissed me off and took away from the emotional impact of that whole story.

Sticking to the Ryders for a moment, I really did love my Ryder. Frustrating character creator aside, I made someone who looked great and the VA was perfect for her. I can’t stand BroRyder’s VA but that’s just me, not really a legitimate criticism against the game. BUT that your sibling is asleep for such a long part of the game doesn’t really give you much time to develop a relationship with them, or ‘remember’ them, as it were. Sibling wakes up and is very soon thrown into the Main Plot deep end. The stakes are raised too soon. I was sitting here thinking, if I end up having to choose between me and Bro, I’m going to choose me because I have very little reason to care about Bro.

First contact with the Angara was really underwhelming. We get a couple of interactions where we can't understand each other and then our translators kick in no problem. That's what annoyed me the most, actually. That they were so wary of outsiders/aliens was understandable in light of what you learn about the Kett, so I have no complaints there. But the whole scene was just… short. And… dull. That was really frustrating.

And, this might just be me being an Antipodean, but making the angara sound foreign by giving them Australian (and Dickens-eque servant/maid) accents just made me laugh. I kept expecting an Angara to turn up with a cork hat and a dagger between her teeth and suggest we go wrestle a crocodile. Not really a complaint, just something weird that kept pulling me from the game in an amusing way.

My other translation gripes are with the Kett interactions and then the Jadaan at the end. How did SAM manage to instantly translate this dead language? ~plot reasons~ obviously. SAM ended up coming across as a bit of a deus ex machina, except when the plot meant he needed time to decrypt something that he had no problem decrypting from a mission ago.

One thing I really liked about SAM: When you're in the Archon's ship and SAM say he (is he a he?? I don't care) has to stop your heart, kill you, in order to get you out of the Arcon's fancy jail. That for me was cool. It really highlighted the AI/Human conflict, and the characters' reaction to that, Lexi, in particular, was great. Again, if I write anything, the AI/Human relationship will be considered (but there are people out there who will do a much better job of that than me), BUT I didn't really feel like I had enough time to work up to that, to consider life before an AI implant and life after.

Game play: There were a couple of very frustrating instances of the game not being good in telling you what to do. In Liam's loyalty quest, you have to shoot/smash through a wall, but there is nothing about that wall to indicate that it is smashable. I kept following my quest marker and getting stuck at the wall, thinking, it can't be this way, I must need to go another way. In another mission, I encountered another such wall and Ryder or someone said, 'maybe try shooting it'. I don't know if I just didn't hear that the first time or what, but I got so fucking frustrated (don't get me started on how much I fucking hated Liam's loyalty mission and how much I ended up hating Liam afterwards.) I ended up watching a walkthrough on youtbube and when I this fucking player just shot the wall I almost threw my fucking controller across the fucking room. My god. In other games, a breakable wall is usually pretty obvious: a different pattern, a slightly off colour. It looks out of place. But these breakable walls just looked like they were part of the room.

The Krogan/Salarian conflict: Oh my god. Call me a space racist, I don't give a fuck, but I fucking hate the krogan and wish they'd not been brought to Andromeda. Being constantly reminded how much the Krogan and Salarians hate each other was really fucking grating. Morda was a fucking cunt. Wanted to shoot her. Wanted to nuke the entirety of New Tuchanka (with the exception of the nice romantic krogan guy. He was a sweetheart).

There is no nuance to their conflict. In the Trilogy, the krogan are fucking awful, too, but they're tempered by Wrex. The Salarians' involvement in the genophage is ~okay~ because Mordin is cool. (I don't like Mordin, FYI, I think he’s a fucking dick). But in Andromda, the generations-long conflict is constantly shoved down your fucking throat to the point where I stopped caring about the Krogan at all. Grow up, put on your big boy pants, and join the negotiation table. Stop playing the victim and acting like none of this is your fault (to be fair to them, they were treated very badly on the Nexus), take some responsibility, and stop threatening to blow people up. Terrorism, or the threat of terrorism, doesn't make people want to work with you, Morda! Or whoever. That quest was confusing. I wasn’t paying attention because my god, I just stopped caring about the fucking krogan and their fucking problems.

The shove-down-your-throat issue was really highlighted on the Archon’s ship. The choice between saving the Salarian Pathfinder and her mates, or some random fucking krogan scouts of Drack’s? Of course I’m going to choose the fucking pathfinder over some random fucking krogan scouts. Oh my god. What is wrong with the krogan.

On the topic of cunts, how the fuck did so many low life scum get into the Initiative in the first place? Just how many fucking exiles were there?!?! I killed so many. SO MANY. HUNDREDS. And the hundreds more in Kadara Port that I also wanted to murder with nuclear weapons but for some reason the game didn't give me that option. I read Nexus Uprising and while it gave me a bit more context (especially with Sloane--but that's a can of worms I'm not going to open right now) than what non-readers had, neither the book nor the game really answer a) how these fucks got into the Imitative and b) why so many people were woken up. If I remember correctly, only two people in the book had manual override codes for the cryo pods, and Tann, Addison, and Kelly agreed (for once) to only wake those needed to get the Nexus working. But there must have been, what, 10k people across the Nexus and the exiles? That’s the impression I got. I understand the need for “low skill” people like dancers and bar staff and cleaners in Helius, fuck, not everyone is a scientist, but I question why the people likely to shiv you were allowed in. That made me really depressed, actually. You travel to another fucking galaxy and we end up with another Omega. Great. Conflict like that lasts generations. Sons and sons and sons of the first exiles hating the sons and sons and sons of the Nexus for history that no one really remembers the truth behind. I vacillated between wanting to save as many as I could, bring them back into the Nexus family, and wanting to fucking nuke them all.

This leads to a point that I read in another post: Just about everywhere you, as Ryder, went, the exiles had been already. Whether it was a planet or a star system, chances are, Ryder stumbled across stolen Nexus shuttles/gear/satellites. In a game that was advertised as going-where-humans-have-never-been-before, there sure weren't that many opportunities for Ryder to actually be the first.

Do I do a breakdown of the characters? I feel like I should, since I went into this game really hoping to find my new OTP, the person who would break my heart in all the right ways. Positive first: I really liked all the female squadmates. That was the one thing I wanted and the one thing I got: Likeable women. I didn't fall in love, but I did get a great female crew.

All in all, the characters fell flat, and that's the most disappointing part of Andromeda. In Inquisition, I could forgive the shit plot and that the whole story peaked with the destruction of Haven because the characters made up for it. In Andromeda, the characters were at best, interesting, but mostly not much more than cardboard cutouts. Not much in the way of nuance. They rarely felt like real people, fleshed out.

Cora was not what I was expecting personality wise but I loved her anyway (except for her tragic biosecurity blunder with the seeds on Eos, but I'm putting that down to writing rather than her character). Her loyalty mission made me feel feelings, which is an achievement, to be honest.

Vetra is amazing. She's wonderful. I love her and I love Sid. Had she not been turian, I would have romanced her in a heartbeat.

Peebee was fun and unpredictable. She's who I ended up romancing and I enjoyed it, but that's all.

Liam. He was gone as soon as I figured out how to change my squad (and that took a fucking long time. That loadout system is not intuitive at all). I liked him fine to start off with, I just preferred Cora and Peebee on my squad. But then came his loyalty mission and fuck him. He was out. I was glad I got to yell at him at the end. Never used him again.

Drack grew on me. Totally love grandpa Drack. Surprise star. Still, never took him out except when I had to deal with the Krogan, which I avoided whenever possible.

Jaal got on my tits. Bro, please talk faster. I have five other crew mates to talk to, I don't have all day.

After I got over my disappointment of Lexi being an Asari and not, you know, Natalie Dormer, I really liked her.

Suvi's great. Liked her a lot, especially after you discover the ~truth~ about the Angara. There’s lots of nuance there, lots to explore in terms of creation and evolution. Her lip gloss looks like it tastes like strawberries.

Once I could remember Kallo's name, he was cool. I liked his and Gil's continual conflict and the way it was resolved.

Gil was great, though I worry he has a gambling addiction. I don’t have any strong feeling either way on his baby with Jill. I thought Jill was a dick, but whatever, I didn’t need to be friends with her.

I really liked the main missions. For the most part, it was action packed, full of suspense and wonder, and well executed. HOWEVER the Archon was a pretty fucking boring antagonist. One sided. I did see a post that talked about him being effectively a middle manager defeated by his own hubris, and that take does add some interest to him, but ultimately, he's boring. The kett are boring. They are Collectors. There is barely a difference between them and the Collectors. Cough *reapers* cough. A more interesting story could have involved just the Remnant tech. But you got to shoot, something, I suppose.

A list of the other shit I didn't like: crafting, R&D, AVP, mining, SAM talking over my squadmates to tell me shit I already know about AVP and mining, huge maps, mining, why the fuck am I the one doing the fucking mining, HUGE MINERAL DEPOSITS of 67 iron wow thanks that's great.

Yeah. I think that's it. I'm disappointed by how disappointed I am. I resent how much of the game is shit, and how much that shit detracts from what is actually good. I don't know how many of my complaints are legitimate criticisms or nitpicking, or whatever. But like I said at the start of this diatribe, I went in with low expectations and the game failed to even make it to that low bar. Perhaps, after enough time has passed, I'll pick the game up and stick only to Priority and Allies missions and hopefully enjoy it more. But right now? I'm bored. So bored. And so disappointed.

[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.

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