Tolstoy, my Birthday and the Number Nine

I've finally finished War and Peace!

I can honestly say that it took me a long while to get into it, but as things started to wind down I realized how invested I'd gotten in the various characters. It's still a weighty tome that I wouldn't recommend to casual readers, but if you're looking for a classic story to invest your time into then look no further.

On a more personal note, today (9/9) was my birthday. It just so happens that the 9th of September was Leo Tolstoy's birthday as well! While I didn't plan on finishing War and Peace on today of all days, I refused to let the chance slip by. So yes; I spent most of my 32nd birthday on my own, powering through the last pages of some 19th century Russian literature. 

And then I went to work, so yeah - today hasn't been the best birthday ever but I certainly got a lot done. I went and got myself some birthday presents as well, because that's just how we do these days. That's a whole other story that I'll have to get into at a later stage, there's a lot involved in it.

But anyway, I went down to JB-HiFi and grabbed a few DVD series that I've been keen to see. Since Netflix went all Negan on Australia, my favourite streaming sites have all been blocked so now I'm forced to go and buy DVD's like a common pleb. Life's really tough sometimes...

Anyway, here's what I picked up!

Wynnona Earp was a total mistake, I meant to buy the new Van Helsing series - I just saw the badass monster hunter chick at thought they were the same thing. My bad! It does look good though and it's gotten good reviews, so I'm keen to see how it plays out.

Zoo is a recommendation from a mate on Twitter, Z.E.D.D Radio - he told me that it's the single greatest post apocalyptic series ever created and that I should totally raise both my hopes and expectations for this fantastic series because there is a literal 0% chance that it will disappoint me. I am *super* excited!

After that gag real of a TV series we've got Taboo, now this one has interested me for a while now. It's created by, and stars, Tom Hardy - so I'm guessing that this is his big push into more artistic, less blockbuster, territory. I loved him in Bronson, so I'm very interested to see what he gets up to when he's not on someone else's leash.

Preacher - I've head people go on about it, and it sounds interesting, so I'll give it a go. This was really an impulse buy, I am hopeful though!

American Gods - I was a bit iffy about this, I read the book a while back but got the shits when I saw that they were changing the story to give Shadow's wife, Laura Moon, a bigger role. She's literally a cheating whore who died with some other dude's cock in her mouth, she doesn't need a bigger part. Shadow don't need that bitc-uuuuugh, sorry. I don't like cheaters. So as you can see, I'm still a bit conflicted about this, but I loved the book so I'm sure the show will be great.

Anyway, that's what I'm going to be diving into over the next few weeks. I'm renowned for my binge watching capabilities, so it shouldn't take me too long to get through these. I'll just have to keep my studies up for TESOL since that's the main goal in all of this.

One last thing before I sign off, however, since now is numerically the most suitable time to do this.

Just so you know... I have a thing with the number 9. 

Obviously the fact that I was born on 9/9 plays a role in this, then Tolstoy being born on the same day melds into this as well. And, just to give an example of how crazy this fascination can get at times, add up all the numbers for the last page of War and Peace...it’s nine.

How crazy is that?! 

It's just a gimmick I use to drive certain mates crazy from time to time, but it's actually gotten kind of fun to see how many places it pops up. Obviously there's a whole lot more to it than just this, you don't make a trend with just a handful of occurrences after all. The number 9 plays a pretty important role in my upcoming novel as a numerological motif, and for those that read this - now you've got an idea of why.

Also, just FYI - there's also this amazing animated post apocalyptic film called 9, that was released 09/09/09. 

How doubly crazy is that?!

How this plays into my upcoming book will be revealed later on, so consider this one of those teasers for a trailer for a movie that isn't out for a while yet. It's not enough to tell you anything of worth, just enough to piss you off. Do you remember when the just did trailers, and not teasers? Gods, those were the days...

Anyway, it's late and I'm rambling and I've got to go read a the intro of a book about Shakespeare and the Eternal Recurrence before bed. Hope you all had/are having a great day, cheers for reading.

Peace

The Ending of The Last of Us

A big part of The Last of Us is its last act, where Joel goes on a rampage and "selfishly dooms humanity" by saving Ellie. A lot of people think he was right, a lot of people don't, and some just think he's the worst, most selfish, kind of broken that a human can be. This whole discussion has bugged me since the game was released, and when I played it I found that the choices that Joel made were pretty much the same choices that I'd make as well.

First off, just to get this out of the way, it was never Ellie's choice to make. There's a reason that Ellie was knocked out when she cracked her head in the flooded tunnel and didn't wake up until the car ride out of Salt Lake City. The choice was only ever going to be between Joel and Marlene; save Ellie or save humanity, and Ellie was never going to get a say in this.

As for the Fireflies' whole plan, I think it's a pretty shitty plan all around and just to speed things up, I'll jot down why in a few bullet points.

• They don't even know if they'll be able to make a vaccine from Ellie, they're just going to yank her brain out and give it a go.

• A vaccine is fucking useless because who gives a shit if you're immune to the Cordyceps Virus when a Clicker is chewing out your goddamn jugular. There are still hundreds of millions of Infected roaming around the US alone, the few remaining survivors being immune won't change anything.

• They didn't even ask Ellie what she wanted to do, they just found her unconscious and prepped her for surgery and went with the old "oh well, anybody would do the right thing and sacrifice themselves to save humanity" route of justification. It's an easy decision to make when you get all the benefits but don't have to make any kind of sacrifice.

• Even if they could make a vaccine and even if they did manage to mass produce it - would they distribute it freely or try to use it as leverage against the military?

Now, you could say that Ellie wanted to make a difference, that she wanted her life to count for something, and you wouldn't be wrong. The problem with this is that throughout the mission through Salt Lake City, Ellie and Joel are discussing what they want to do after they've helped the Fireflies. Ellie specifically states that she'd like Joel to teach her how to swim and play the guitar. She's willing to help the Fireflies, but she's assuming she's going to survive the procedure. You don't go out and buy a week's worth of groceries and make dinner plans for next month if you're going to hang yourself later that day...

Now, Joel is just as much in the wrong as Marlene is for not waking up Ellie and letting her decide, but he's sort of got the moral high ground for not trying to kill a kid and harvest her bloody brain.  Although I've got to say that even I agree with him on this one, who in their right mind would saddle that responsibility on a 14 year old kid? That's a recipe for instant survivors guilt and lifelong self loathing, so I've got no problem with Joel making the decision for her. If you're going to be making a decision for someone else, the very least you can do is chose the option that doesn't result in their death.

I should probably state that I think that Marlene is a piece of shit and I really don't like her. My main problem with her, among many, is that she thinks she's the good guy. She's been fighting the government for so long, on behalf of "the people," that she's gotten high off of her own bullshit. She actually recites the Firefly mantra in her journal, like a prayer, because she's starting to believe her own lies. She can justify killing soldiers who are only trying to keep people safe and apparently she's able to justify killing a kid she was meant to be looking after.  She's so wrapped up in her own dogmatic ideology that any kind of violence, against any kind of target, is justifiable because it's in service of this non-existent group called "humanity."

The thing that really does it for me though, is that she begs for her life at the end. We don't get a defiant "you'll regret this" or a "you're dooming us all" line. No, all we get is, "Wait. Let me go. Please." There's not even the slightest hint of relief that Ellie is going to be okay, which you'd assume she'd have if the choice to sacrifice her had actually been that difficult to make. In her dying moments, Marlene shows us where her priorities truly lie - herself. 

Marlene is a terrorist who started a war with the military, while they were protecting her from the Infected, because she couldn't live under their rules. And she's a piece of shit because she's willing to kill a kid to create a vaccine, just to further reduce the chances of her dying. Tess went out like a boss, Sam accepted his death and Henry willingly followed him, but Marlene went out begging like a coward. She's not brave and she didn't "make a tough call," she chose the option that would save "humanity" ie: herself.

Joel, on the other hand, is way down the other end of the spectrum. He's not willing to kill Ellie to save humanity, but he's totally willing to kill humanity to save Ellie. Which, if you think about it, is what you would do if you were a parent. Call me crazy, but if you're not willing to nuke a city to save your own kid, then you're not fit to be a parent. That's literally your only job, keep them alive, and you do that even if that means sacrificing your life or your soul. Marlene may have been watching over Ellie since she was born, but Joel was more a parent to her in that last year than Marlene ever was.

The hospital scene at the end causes some contention for a lot of people, because it seemed to outright change the goal of the game. Killing Fireflies suddenly seemed like a terrible act, since you'd been travelling to meet them for the entire game. But if you recall, Joel was never that friendly with the Fireflies, his brother even left them because they were getting a bit too crazy, and our first real encounter with them is when they blew up a goddamn truck in Boston. When did anyone ever say that they were the good guys? Joel's role as a guardian was to look after Ellie, which meant he protected her from any and all threats - even the Fireflies.

Now, you could state that killing the doctor at the end was a purely needless act, but if you go back and watch it again you'll see that it's otherwise. The only doctor you have to kill is the one that said "I won't let you take her." He then picked up a scalpel and pointed it at a guy who's clearly just slaughtered his way past dozens of soldiers... the doctor made a call to stand in your way and he doesn't let you pass unless you kill him. He doesn't even try to fight you, he's making you kill him. So you do. The other two aren't as resolute as him though, so whether or not you kill them is up to you. You, as in you the player, not Joel.

Also, I find it kind of hypocritical that the female doctor says that she doesn't want to die, when she was clearly about to butcher an innocent kid.

After that you go for a light jog, shoot Marlene in the face and then bail with Ellie. Once you get to the final act of the game you're playing as Ellie and you need to pass through a wooded area. To me, this just book-ended the game; you started as Sarah as she leaves the safety of home and you end as Ellie, as she journeys towards the safety of home. There's this bit in this last stage where Joel jumps up off a log to reach a ledge and the log falls down, so he has to reach down and pull Ellie up. I read this review that took this scene as a metaphor for toxic masculinity; where the selfishly ignorant male charges ahead, ruins the path, and forces the female to rely on the sexist male's aid to proceed.

This is exactly the sort of loaded interpretation that made me want to avoid the game in the first place. To me, this scene was simply a quick recap of the whole game, he took Ellie from civilization (the road) through the wilds (the journey) and then he carried her at the end (the ledge.) Ambiguity is the wiggle room that allows for interpretation though, so I'm sorry that my interpretation doesn't push forward some kind of socially progressive agenda...

Then there's the lie, the final aspect of the story that causes so much turmoil in the online community. I don't understand it really, because what else was he going to do? "Yeah, they could have saved humanity but you would have needed to die, so that's on you." No, fuck that - there's this insanely damaging thing called guilt that you really don't want to throw onto your kids if you can avoid it. Joel is Ellie's parent now, he needs to shield her from all this shit, because that's what parents do. They lie about Santa Claus, they lie about the gold fish dying, the lie about the bank foreclosing on the family home and they sure as hell lie when thousands of people will die in place of their kid.

I think it's entirely possible that Ellie knows, but at this point she's more interested in maintaining the relationship than digging for the truth. She knows Joel, she's spent a year trying to form a connection with this guy, and she finally got what she was after. Was it the perfect relationship? Hell no, but then it's a far from perfect world, even before the infection hit. Is she better off this way? Well, she's alive, and so is Joel, and she's going to live a few more years at least. Despite the demons she's no doubt accrued, it's still better than being dead.

I loved The Last of Us and I loved the ending, I felt that turning the Fireflies into the enemies you need to take out was a great twist. A few of them were still alive in the hospital as you left though, so they no doubt know what Joel and Ellie look like. I'm sure they'll be back in the sequel and feeling doubly justified in yanking out Ellie's brain.  

Real World Update

When I first started this, I mentioned that I was in a dead-end job. I sell booze, which in itself is never that interesting, especially when you take into account that I don't drink, can't smell and can only barely taste... seriously, I don't know why people take drink recommendations from me. 

Anyway, it's a job that was never going to go anywhere and the pay is shit. People who stock shelves at night get paid more than me, and they don't have a $9000 fine hanging over their head every time they walk in the shop because some kid had a fake ID. But that's all alright, because this job was never meant to go anywhere, it was meant to pay the bills and fund a few projects while I did some personal development. It's paid off too, in the three years that I've been there I've made leaps and bounds, just not in any way that's quantifiable. 

It's all coming to an end though, and I'm looking at moving overseas at the start of next year, most likely China, to teach English. With this in mind, certain things are coming into focus.

I had a guy walk in tonight and steal a bottle of wine. I saw him do it, he stuffed it into his over-sized jacked, I had a laugh with another customer about it before she left. He pretended to ask something stupid about some vodka and then made dash for the door. I tried to talk to him, I legitimately wanted to tell him that what he was doing wasn't worth it, but he bolted from the shop. So in the spur of the moment I called out "Run, Forest, run!"

People steal things all the time, it's not that big of a deal, I just grab some security footage and send it off to the cops. The cops love me, half the time I manage to get a photo of these people's ID's and I attach that to the report as well. The cops then just rock up on their doorstep and charge them, nice and easy. Occasionally I'll get someone who comes back in after they've been fined and they'll abuse me for reporting them, as though I'm in the wrong...

The thing is that booze is not a need, not unless you're living in a wasteland where you need it to sterilize a wound or something. I'd let someone go if they ran out with a loaf of bread or something basic like that, but I've got no problem with making a tape of someone stealing wine simply because they feel like a drink but can't or won't pay for it. The problem is though, once this kid gets caught, it's seriously going to fuck up his life.

Shop lifting sounds like a minor offence, but imagine every job interview he's going to have in the future. He's going to have to answer the questions; what he stole, why did he steal it and has he done it again recently? It's going to follow him around like revenge porn, and although I'm technically in the right here, I'm also to blame for this. The problem is though, if I let it go and he doesn't get caught then he'll just keep doing it until something really bad happens. Best he learns this lesson early on, there's a better chance of him righting his ways.

I just wish he didn't come into my shop and drag me into this situation with him, I'm only working this dead end job to pay the bills while I write.

And after that this woman comes in, crying, which happens often enough, and I ask her what's wrong. Turns out the car crash that I'd been hearing about all night had involved her husband, some young guy had plowed into him and he was at the hospital. I did what I could for her, which is not much since I'm a freaking night shift worker at a bottle shop, but I helped her out. I've been in her shoes and I've also been in her husbands shoes, so I had an idea of what to say, so she left well enough. 

I've had to deal with some crazy shit in this store over the past few years. For about a year and a half I had a running transcript of the stupid conversations I had with people posted up on Facebook. I had to stop though, eventually it all just got too absurd to make a joke of it anymore. I've had customers skull whole bottles of wine right outside my door, a woman has asked me to knock her up, I've had a guy screaming at me for over twenty minutes because I wouldn't serve him, I've had to stand against three guys harassing a carload of girls, I've watched a truck crash into a traffic light, I've seen a kid get hit by a car, I've had multiple customers drink themselves to death, I've been one of the only shops in the area to not get held up in a crime wave...

I've kind of been trying to hide away from the world these past few years, working in the bad part of town and keeping to myself while I put some things together. The problem with the world is that you can run from it, but you can't hide from it, and it's usually pretty damn good at sneaking up on you. There has been some seriously crazy shit go down in that shop, and as much as I appreciate the chance to work a solid job, I'm kind of glad to be leaving.

I was in a bad way when I first started working there, and although I've still got a few things to work out, I'm doing a whole lot better these days. I'm not desperate enough to steal a bottle of booze, and I haven't been in car crash... recently. With all that in mind, as shitty as things seem at times, I'm actually doing pretty well. I've just got to remember that. 

I am looking forward to getting out of here though, and this TESOL course is my ticket to do just that. 

Why I'm so Critical of Post Apocalyptic Stories

As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, I tend to rip into post apocalyptic books, movies and games... a lot. I'll admit that it got a little crazy when I was stuck inside for two months with a back injury, I didn't have much else to do. I usually had a running commentary of each film I was watching, just ripping apart plot holes, inconsistencies or creative choices that I thought were lame. All with 140 characters or less. You'd be forgiven for thinking that I hate all these movies, especially the low budget ones, but there's a bit more to it than that. 

There was a time not too long ago, right up until the last decade, when fans of the post apocalyptic and dystopian genres simply had to accept what we were given. For every indie gem like 28 Days Later, we got a Dawn of the Dead remake or Resident Evil. We sort of had to just accept lesser quality films, which were obviously still watchable, because that's all that was available to us. 

But then films such as The Children of Men, The Road, The Book of Eli and the grand Warlord of them all - Mad Max: Fury Road, were released and the bar was raised. With amazingly successful films such as these, which were profitable even in mainstream circles, I feel we're able to be a bit more discerning these days.  We don't simply have to accept lesser quality content because that's all that's available to us, we've got options now. 

I don't rip on these films, or books, or games, because I don't like them, I rip on them because I expect more from them. The Colony had Lawrence Fishburne and Bill Paxton and it still managed to be shit, then The Rover came out with Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson (and a much smaller budget) and it managed to be fucking amazing. The set up for The Colony was great and it had a pretty damn solid cast - so why was it shit? 

I expect more from my post apocalyptic stories these days, I'm no longer willing to let the little mistakes slide in the hopes of fostering some future accomplishments. The genre is mature and established enough now that it's got responsibilities and expectations to meet. And when it doesn't meet those expectations, when it fails in its responsibilities, I'm sure as hell going to let it know.

Because I love it, so. 

My History with the Fallout Series

I've been playing Fallout since 1998, and although no individual Fallout game is my favorite game ever, the series as a whole is quite possibly my most favorite video game series ever. In saying that, however, I should point out that the series has had a very rocky history and I don't agree with every choice that's been made along the way. This blog post will probably devolve into a rant, but I'll try to get it all in line as I express my biggest issues with the series. 

I should start with the fact that I am both a massive, and a long time, fan of Fallout. I stumbled across Fallout 1 in my first year of high school and played it to death for a few months, then similarly stumbled across Fallout 2 that same year and did likewise. So for those without basic math skills, I've spent over half my life playing this series. I remember going without lunch at school for a week because I was saving my tuck shop money to buy Fallout 2.

(Tuck Shop = Tucker + Shop = Cafeteria  - it's where Aussie kids buy their school lunches from. Moving on.)

The wait for Fallout Tactics wasn't that bad, only 3 three years. It was a bit different to what I was used to but it played well enough in it's own right. Rumors of Van Buren being made arose and then disappeared, which irked me. Another three years passed after Fallout Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel was released. I took one look at that and knew it was a piece of shit, so I never bought nor played it. So I just kept waiting, and waiting...

Finally, in 2008, Fallout 3 was released. I bought a 50" TV just to play this game and it was worth it. My eyes were bloodshot and my university grades plummeted, but it was very much worth it.  A few things bugged me about it, but overall I was just ecstatic to be playing another Fallout game, in full 3D too!

Fallout New Vegas came out in 2010, I didn't really dig the whole cowboy ascetic thing they had going on, but the story and setting were amazing. And then 5... years... later - Fallout 4 was released and it's another different take on the series that brought with it a whole slew of changes, some good and others bad. 

Now, that's a fairly standard history of Fallout for anyone that's been playing from roughly the start. The series has changed hands so many times you'd think it was that one chick from high school that had really bad self esteem issues. I rehashed all of that to show that I'm a fan, but that while I love the series, I'm also fully aware of it's flaws. And currently, my biggest gripe with the series is the way that Bethesda has handled it. 

See, Fallout started on the West Coast of the United States, 84 years after the Great War. People were still living in the ruins of the old world, but they were already starting to rebuild, and there were also some horrors of the old world that plagued them. Super Mutants and Deathclaws are prime examples of this, they were both military experiments that were created before the Great War. They were horrific experimental monsters that were created to replace or enhance soldiers in war. We've also got the Brotherhood of Steel, remnants of the US Army that have an interesting view of the world and their role in it. 

The Master found the FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus) that was used to create the Super Mutants and decided to create some more, and the plot of the first game revolved around stopping this nutbag from using a weapon from the Old World to take over the new one. He was grabbing humans, dipping them into the FEV, and creating Super Mutants.  

Similarly, Deathclaws were genetic experiments from before the Great War that were refined by The Master and have been breeding out in the wasteland ever since. They were a rare, and dangerous, species that wandered the West Coast just fucking shit up.

Finally, we've got the Brotherhood of Steel, a faction of isolationist warrior monks who revere technology and think it's too dangerous of the common man to have. They're descended from the soldiers who abandoned the Mariposa military base after the Great War, and they've been policing the wasteland ever since. 

Fallout 2 goes down in 2241, 80 years after Fallout 1. New nations are being built and many people have spent generations out in the wilds, reverting to tribalism. By this point the Super Mutants are still around but they're an ageing and dying breed, the Deathclaws have been genetically tampered with some more so now they can talk, and the Brotherhood is in decline because that's just what happens when you're isolationists. 

The thing that all these groups have in common, is that they're all from Mariposa - a military base that is very much on the West Coast of the United States. So my main question here is, what the hell are they all doing on the East Coast in Fallout 3 and 4?!

By the time Fallout 3 happens in 2277, 36 years after Fallout 2, there are an endless supply of Super Mutants, Deathclaws and Brotherhood in the Capital Wasteland. Why though? All three of these groups were on the West Coast and they were all dying out - how, and why, would they ever be on the East Coast in force? 

This is where Bethesda comes into the picture, they wanted to make another Fallout game but they wanted to set it somewhere far from the originals - hence being on the other side of the country. However, they also wanted it to be recognizably Fallout, so they included the most eye catching aspects of the series, despite the fact that this made no sense. The could have included the gritty tone, the chilling ambient soundtrack, or the bleak black humor that worked so well with the post apocalyptic wasteland.... but no. 

Apparently Fallout *is* Super Mutants, Deathclaws and the Brotherhood of Steel!

Ugh, I'll give them half a point for coming up with the "our Super Mutants are different" explanation that was used in Fallout 3, that was a passable excuse. But then they went and did it again in Fallout 4, they didn't even use the same Super Mutants from Fallout 3! The Institute has literally been kidnapping people, turning them into Super Mutants, and then dumping them into the Commonwealth Wasteland. Why? No logical in-game reason, it's just because apparently a Fallout game needs to have Super Mutants and that's the best explanation that they could come up with.

Why are Deathclaws in Fallout 3 and 4? Apparently they wandered across the country, because that's just what species do? Gigantic, death lizards managed to migrate across a continent without being wiped out by the millions of people and their guns that sit between the West Coast and the East Coast. Why can't they talk anymore? The Enclave made them more intelligent so they could follow orders better, in what world does it make sense that the more intelligent members of a species die out while the stupid ones manage to breed prolifically?

And the Brotherhood of Steel, what the hell are they even doing? Fallout 2 made it pretty clear that they were doomed, and after Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas had to reiterate this fact because they themselves were probably surprised that they still existed. They only breed with their own, taking in outsiders only very rarely, and their technology hording ways tends to create more enemies than allies. They're a doomed faction, it makes no sense for them to still be around. But they're romping around the East Coast, recruiting willy-nilly and saving the day.

These three groups being in Bethesda's Fallout games is about Bethesda trying to maintain the core group of Fallout players by including factions they're familiar with, even when it makes no sense within the world of Fallout for them to be there.  Instead of creating new and interesting creatures that could be populating the East Coast of the United States, instead of creating new factions, they leaned on the old ones to give themselves some false legitimacy. They got a bit better in Fallout 4 with the Minuntemen, the Institute and the Railroad - but we still had Super Mutants, Deathclaws and the Brotherhood of Steel as a core part of game too. Where are the new nations that would naturally pop up like they did on the West Coast? Where are the tribals, those people who were forced back into a hunter/gatherer lifestyle for generations? 

The only species that I can think of that would logically be on both sides of the continent is the Ghouls, just from how they were created. Whether or not you agree that pre-war exposure to FEV had a hand in their creation, it was a massive dose of radiation that played a key role in their mutation. Radiation, as we know, is everywhere - so it stands to reason that Ghouls would be living all over the place. The problem is though, Bethesda basically turned them into zombies, scrambling melted corpses that you can kill without remorse.

Fallout 1 and 2 were about the old world lingering on for a while before fading away, allowing a new world to rise. Some creatures could adapt, or be adapted, to the new world but there was a definite, progressive theme of the world changing. This was all abandoned when Bethesda took over, they pushed the timeline forward but regressed any advancement the wasteland had made. They did this so that players could continue to run around a lawless wasteland, blowing shit up and shooting mutants in the face. 

Developers need to start taking the stories of their games more serious, because inconsistencies like this turn people off. If I have to do mental gymnastics to suppress my disbelief because you've retconned your own lore - I'm going to get the shits. I need consistency in what's happened for the story to make sense, that's how stories work. Despite all this though, I'm still hoping for another Fallout game some time soon. I love the series to death, I just wish it was handled with a bit more care by people who know what they're doing... 

The Last of Us and Feminism

(So I was writing this and it started out coherent in my head but it sort of spiraled into a rant and then it got impossible to edit, so I'll release it in two parts. There was a pretty obvious break in the style and overall point of the piece anyway.... so yeah, this part is the "whiny rant" part.)

While there is still no release date for The Last of Us 2, I feel it's a good time to finally throw my worthless opinion of the game into the ring. The Last of Us didn't change my life, but just to be clear, that's more of a critique of my life than the quality of the game. I loved the game, like so many others, and it certainly moved me in spots, but I'm not one of those people that will rant and rave about how perfect it was till the day I die.

I actually didn't want to play it at first, despite it obviously being a really high quality post apocalyptic title. It looked great, I liked the unique take on the zombies and it was getting rave reviews, but... the people who were playing it really put me off. It was released amid the build up to Gamergate, when there was a lot of social issues around gaming being brought to the foreground. Since The Last of Us put so much emphasis on the relationship between Joel and Ellie, and because it also had so many strong female characters, it's little wonder that it got picked up and carried as a mascot for what all games could and should be like.

I stayed out of the whole Gamergate cluster fuck, I could see points on both sides and to be honest the whole thing bored me. I started playing video games as a kid to get away from people, so social issues and games don't mix for me. This is primarily because the outside world ceases to exist once I start gaming. As much as I wanted to play this game though, I read countless articles about how it was a feminists dream but how it was somehow still sexist, how people were offended that the two main characters were white, about the horror of two female characters being (metaphorically) put into refrigerators, and I even skimmed through a forum argument between two chicks about what specific type of pedophile David is.

No thank you, I ain't having any of that shit.

So I rolled my eyes and played something else... Dark Souls, if I recall correctly. So I didn't actually play The Last of Us on the PS3, and it wasn't until I got a PS4, where the remastered version came with the console in a special deal, that I finally got to play it. I played it and I loved every minute of it, and I was actually pleasantly surprised that it was nothing like people had claimed it to be. The relationship between the characters was key to the narrative, sure, but it wasn't this emotional bonding wankfest that everyone made it out to be. Each character in The Last of Us is deeply broken and troubled in their own way, and each of them having to overcome their fears in order to move on is part of what makes the story great. It had plenty of female and homosexual characters as well, and it never made the slightest fuss about them, which is exactly the way that it should be.

I think that The Last of Us got swept up in this wave of social action and touted as something that it totally isn't. Sure, it can be a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but a feminist tale it most certainly isn't. Blame it on the ludonarrative dissonance if you want, but your characters literally murder their way across the United States. You shoot people in the face, stab them with scissors, rip them to shreds with homemade explosives, torture them, burn them to death and stomp on their heads. By the end of the game you've got a kill count that's so high it's no doubt left both Joel and Ellie as gibbering, homicidal maniacs. Also, if it's such a bastion of equality, why do we only murder human males and no human females? I don't actually have a problem with any of this mind you, except that last part which strains credulity, and it only really becomes a problem if you're trying to pass the game off as something that it isn't.

If you simply take it as a post apocalyptic story about two broken people who find one another and form a relationship, then it's all peachy. No need to try and shoehorn it to fit your political agenda, just let it be what it is - it's bloody good at that.

This is always the difficult part of the discussion, where I reveal that I'm not one of those people that runs with the herd and spouts the same old popular opinion for fear of being socially ousted. I'm not a Feminist *gasp* but I'm not a fucking Nazi either *double gasp!*  

I'm a storyteller, I have to maintain neutrality so that I can view all situations as objectively as possible. Obviously I can agree or disagree with certain things, but I'm usually trying to stay out of the action so I can observe and analyse the situation better. I need to be able to entertain any and all ideas, good and bad. So I'm sorry if this rustles your jimmies - but that means not picking a side. Telling me that a story is Feminist is about as appealing to me as saying it's a Skinhead story, they're both extremes and I don't particularly like the crowds that either group draw. 

I will probably still listen/read/watch the story though, eventually... maybe?

I don't care that The Last of Us has so many female characters, I also don't care that so many of them die, but I'm damn appreciative of how well written they are. Playing as two little girls wasn't a problem for me, that's something interesting that I haven't done before. Bill is such an complex character, I'm actually glad that he survived despite how much of a dick he is. Sam and Henry, that gets me every time, not because they're black but because they're so damn realistic. 

All I'm after is a great story, and that's something that The Last of Us delivered.

Being "diverse" isn't a selling point for me, it's not a good enough reason to pick up a game, or any kind of story. A diverse cast of characters is great, but only for what they can bring to the story, it's not simply great in and of itself. Give me diverse, or give me all white or all black, all male or all female, all straight or all gay - all I care about is the story that's being told. 

So that's the long of it, while the short is that I'm sorry that it took me so long to play this game. As is so often the case, the white noise surrounding it was just that - noise. It's a fantastic game and I really look forward to the sequel, and I'm confident that Naughty Dog will bring their customary attention to detail. I'm really hoping that they focus on the toll that the first game took on both characters, instead of simply bowing to social pressure and making it all about the lie that was told...

...but I'll get to that later.

Terminator and Time Travel

The Terminator series has been a pillar of the Post Apocalyptic genre since the 80's; it's the story of Judgment Day, an apocalyptic event that can be temporarily pushed back, but never outright averted. This idea of fate, of a man-made pre-destination, is a key component of the series and it meshes well with all the time travelling that pretty much anyone can do in this universe for some reason. There is a serious flaw with Skynet, the series antagonist, though, and it's one that has its roots in the structure of good storytelling.

            TL:DR, Skynet is an artificial intelligence that grew too powerful, too fast, and scared its creators. Skynet perceived its creators attempts to shut it down as a threat and calculated that all other humans would see it as a threat as well, so it fired off a bunch of nukes like Trump in the middle of a temper tantrum.

            Voilà, one Judgement Day.

            It fails to kill all the humans though, so there is a lengthy war fought between the human resistance fighters and Skynet's robotic forces. The war is long and bloody because Skynet doesn't just use all the biological and chemical weapons at its disposal for some reason. It starts out with the humans having to contend with primarily the bare skeleton T-800 Terminators that we're all familiar with, but pretty soon they're also dealing with the Infiltrator T-800's that look exactly like humans... as long as those humans are all competing in a Mr. Olympia contest.

            Despite having a near endless army of obedient death robots and fighting in an environment that is now deadly to humans, Skynet doesn't do too well. As the war enters its fourth decade Skynet finds itself backed into a corner by the rag tag bunch of plucky human survivors.

            Blame it on budget constraints or the limitations of CGI technologies, I'm still shocked that it took us 25 years to get a story set in that part of the timeline. The part of the timeline where the humans are fighting a full on war against murderous robots in a radioactive wasteland.

            How? How did it take us that long to get there?

            But I digress. The point in the story in which Skynet sends a Terminator back to kill the resistance leader before he was even born, while great in terms of storytelling, is really dumb in terms of actual strategy. Of all the things it could have done, of all the infinite options available to it, that seems to be the most randomly haphazard.

            And now I need to take you on a slightly tangential route. There is a point to it though, so bare with me. In Dungeons and Dragons there are these little lizard things called Kobolds, and while they're a possible threat to low level characters they quickly become little more than a pesky annoyance. As more and more supplement rule books were released for D&D 3.5 though, something terrible started to happen. Through an amalgamation of disparate skills, feats, spells and reptilian companions - a single Kobold managed to turn itself into a god in an instant and break the entire game. The worst part of all this was that it was all allowed within the rules of the game, it just took some insane rule junkie Munchkin to put it all together.

            (For those interested; Pun-Pun, the Kobold in question, could temporarily enhance the abilities of its reptile companion, then steal them to enhance its own permanently. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. There's a bit more involved than that, but basically at a certain point Pun-Pun would hit critical mass and become so conceptually powerful that it would physically manifest itself in the real world... and then proceed to kill everyone around the gaming table. Totally true story.)

            Anyway, I took that little tangent to show you what Skynet has access to.

            The problem with time travel in the Terminator universe, for humans, is that you can only go back with your bare naked self. This means you've got however many years of experience and know-how and your swinging copulating tool with which to save the day. It's why the Terminator movies all start with a confused, naked dude running around trying to find some clothes. Sure, Jai Courtney's Kyle Reese could have jumped back to 1984 and told humanity about the glories of the iPhone, but he couldn't bring one back with him and he sure as hell couldn't tell them how to make one.

            A Terminator, however, is basically just a computer on legs that's wrapped in a skin suit. You could load any and all the data you'd ever need into a Terminator and send it back to any point in time. In one of the comics, a Terminator accidentally goes back to the Cretaceous Period and gets stomped on by a T-Rex, because why not?. My only question is, why would Skynet bother sending a Terminator back to a point in time when it's not in control of the entire damn planet? In the first Terminator movie, the Terminator and Kyle Reese jump back from 2029, and considering Judgment Day was first meant to occur in 1997 - that's roughly 32 years of playtime for Skynet to mess around in.

            Why would Skynet not send a Terminator, fully loaded with all the latest schematics and technologies, back to a point when it's already in control? It could be back to 2028, or even all the way back to 1998, it doesn't really matter. The point is that the technology and blueprints that the Terminator has stored in its metal head will be more advanced than what's available to Skynet at that point in time. All Skynet would have to do is hold off the resistance fighters while it upgraded itself, then just not die until 2029, and then repeat the process.

            Go back, become more advanced, go back again, become more advanced again. If it did this a ten times, that's roughly 320 years of advancement in the blink of an eye. Each time Skynet would become more powerful and holding off the resistance fighters would become easier and easier. We already know it can make it to 2029 with just the basic T-800's (as well as a few other non-humanoid machines), how hard would it be to get back there with the T-1000's or the T-X's? It wouldn't only get easier because it's becoming more powerful with each iteration, but because it's also learning through the repetition of history. Ambushes could be laid, decisive losses could be avoided and pivotal battles could be won. It would never need to risk its own creation by sending a Terminator back to a time prior to Judgment Day, which in itself is an act that could potentially disrupt the chain of events that led to it being created.

            The problem with this method is that it's an instant win for Skynet. Each time it upgraded, the resistance fighters of that timeline wouldn't even know that they were fighting upgraded Terminator models, they'd be too busy getting their arses handed to them. After enough of these loops, it wouldn't be unrealistic for Skynet to learn how to kill off humanity in a matter of hours after Judgement Day. At that point, it'd just be looping back again and again to save literal time.

            This is where the structure of storytelling jumps in an neuters things in favour of the humans. This sort of truly apocalyptic scenario is one that you couldn't fight against, and would therefore make for a pretty terrible story. Judgment Day would come and humanity would be wiped out entirely - that's not a post apocalyptic story, it's just a straight up apocalyptic one. Skynet needs to make nonsensical decisions that a genocidal AI would never make, because humanity needs to have a slim chance of actually defeating it. The humans can get pushed back into a corner and beaten down, it can look like they'll be exterminated at any second, but at the end of the day the good guys have to win.

            The upside to this castration of Skynet is that we get the great thematic notion of Judgment Day being something that is perpetually pushed back, but never truly averted. In each instance, the world ends in a different time because it got pushed back after the last time. Judgment Day has arrived, and been subsequently averted, in '95, '97, '03, '04, '05, '11 & '17 - that's not bad for humanity, it may get knocked down but it always gets back up and fixes things. In terms of storytelling, it's like an in-built retcon switch for the series, we'll always be able to have Terminator movies because Judgement Day will keep happening with each new era of technology. It's why we started with Terminators basically running on MS-Dos and ended up with Terminators that are comprised of nanobots. As technology changes, the Terminators change too, and we get another movie about another Judgement Day - because that's our fate. 

            Sending a lone agent back in time to try to fuck with causality is dumb, but it's interesting. Playing it safe and upgrading to the point of godhood is the smart thing to do, but it's pretty boring and near impossible to beat. As cool as that post-Judgment Day battle could potentially be, it's only cool if the humans actually win it. And I just don't think that humanity could realistically win against an genocidal AI with time travel capabilities.

            Besides, does Skynet even have a plan for after it wipes out humanity? Does it even want anything? What's the end goal here?

Why I Became a Writer

My old man is pretty much the reason I became a writer. He was full of wild and unbelievable stories and he's the one that got me writing in the first place, though probably not in the way that you'd expect.

My old man was a stevedore, he loaded and unloaded cargo ships. He traveled all around the world, to some of the most remote locations, and unloaded ships there. Half the time he was going to places that didn't even exist yet, he was there to unload the building supplies for mining or logging camps that were destined for the middle of some island jungle. You can't go to these sorts of places and not come back with some crazy stories.

Pirates, rabid Razorbacks, minefields, fossils of prehistoric birds, tidal waves, guys blowing their legs off while fishing with grenades and WW2 era Japanese swords lodged in trees in Papua New Guinea. He'd seen it all, and afterwards he'd come home and tell me all about it.

The thing with my dad though, was that despite having all these amazing stories to tell me, he rarely read or wrote because he was dyslexic. It's why he continued to be a stevedore well into his sixties, it was a hands on job that allowed him to travel and didn't require him to do much of either. The problem was though, when you've been in a job for that long you tend to get promoted to management, and managers usually have to write emails and reports and all those boring, desk jockey things. 

Which is where his nerdy, nine year old kid comes into the picture. 

I'd be on the computer, playing Dark Earth or Fallout, and this gigantic hand would suddenly drop down onto my shoulder. My dad was pretty stealthy for a big guy, but that's a story for another day. I'd close the game with a sigh, I knew what I needed to do.

When that happened, I was going to be spending the next fifteen minutes to an hour transcribing and editing an email or some report. He'd sit behind me and spout random things about subjects that we're way beyond my comprehension, or he'd be having a go at some employee that wasn't pulling their weight. My job was to write it all out, and edit it to make sure that it sounded right. After he was finished, he'd always end with, "now, read it back to me. Then send it."

The cool thing about this little ritual we had going was that I've got a pretty good typing speed, I know how to spell and, although I don't do it the way you're meant too, I can touch type. I've got a pretty good idea of sentence structure and formatting, and I've got an idea of when things don't sound right - especially in dialogue. Beyond this, I'm also not bad at remembering strings of words that're shouted at me, and I'm usually able to regurgitate them with a fairly high level of accuracy. 

The downside to this training, besides the countless hours of gaming that I missed out on, is that this was all on the job learning. I know what I'm doing, I just don't know why I'm doing it or even what "it" is called. I know where all the commas and full stops go, but throw a semicolon at me and you might as well be speaking Pitjantjatjara. I can still only barely tell you the difference between a noun and a verb, and don't even get me started on adverbs and adjectives. Please, don't get me started, I wouldn't even know where to start from.

They... change things? I dunno.

Let me just reiterate; I have a Bachelors Degree in Creative Writing, with minors in English and History. I got through all of university and I still didn't learn this stuff, either because they figured it was so basic that we should already know it or because they just don't teach it anymore. It's one of the reasons I'm so glad that I'm doing this TESOL course; I'll have to know grammar if I'm ever going to teach it. Learning how to teach kids how to read/write/speak English is as much for my own benefit as it is theirs. 

I get that this probably isn't the best thing to be divulging to the world this early in the game, but I've always been a fan of a unique origin story. My old man passed away a few years ago now, and although we didn't always see eye to eye, he's the one that go me interested in storytelling and, whether he intended to or not, he's the one that trained me how to write. He showed me how to have some crazy adventures of my own too, but again - another day.

Would it have been that hard for me to pick up a grammar guide and learn how to do this? Probably not, but then I am notoriously lazy and I got a weird kick out of being the lone sorcerer in a class full of classically trained wizards. (sorry... D&D joke there, props if you get it)

I am making amends for all that though, as I am finally studying up on something that I should have mastered a long time ago. It'll take me a while to get used to all the technical terms for the in's and out's of English, it is a bastard language after all, but I'll get there.... because I would really like to get out of here, and teaching kids overseas is my best chance of doing just that.

What I'm Reading and Why I'm Reading It

I love reading post apocalyptic fiction. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's reading this, but I figured it needed to be said because I haven't been reading much of it lately. 

See, when you start writing you also need to start reading; and a lot of the time that means reading books you need to read as opposed to reading books you want to read. I'd love to just sit back and work my way through the great, and not so great, post apocalyptic tales - but that wouldn't give me a very broad view of things. Sure, I'd get a pretty comprehensive understanding of the post apocalyptic genre, but I wouldn't be able to bring anything new to it. I'd just be one of those authors that regurgitates the same old tropes used in decades old tales that're no longer relevant in a modern context. 

I've read books in the Naturalism and Realism genres, just to study their styles of writing, random essays and texts to understand a topic a bit better, heck - I've even got a book about Shakespeare and Eternal Recurrence, because that's something that I'll need to know about for an upcoming project. These aren't books I'm reading because I want to, they're studies and examples of topics that I need to understand better in order to bring new ideas to my writings.

Which brings me to War and Peace...

Written by Leo Tolstoy and first published in it's entirety in 1869, War and Peace is a weighty tome that you could use to bash someones skull in. Coming in at 1215 pages (at least in my version), the book is a serious slog about the war between Napoleons France and Russia. This is not a book that I would normally read, but I need to do so for few reasons. 

1. I'm a writer, and as it's considered one of the best books ever written - I have an occupational obligation to read it.

2. I make a slight pun about reading it in an upcoming project, so I better have read it before the project is released.

3. Bragging rights.

Alternating between the battles between France and Russian and the high society escapades of the Russian elite - it's pretty obvious where the title of the book came from. I definitely wouldn't say it's bad writing, but it's not that fantastic either. It's just solid writing all the way through... and there's a lot of it. Which, I guess, for the time was pretty impressive. I'm not sure it should still be holding the award for one of the best books ever written, we've had some great works written in the 148 years since, but history has a way of stubbornly cementing legitimacy. 

I'm currently somewhere in the 800's in terms of page count, I only ever read it while I'm at work, and I'll be glad when I'm done with it. As much as I'll be happy to tick it off my writers must-read bucket list, there are a lot of far more suitable books for me to be reading. Something with radiation or zombies, or maybe just some kind of virus that turns people inside out, I don't know. 

I'm not even finished it yet and already I can tell that I wouldn't recommend this book to just anyone to read. If you want to appreciate the craftsmanship of it's writing, then go for it, but if you're looking for a good story that won't take you months to read, then go read something else. 

I have a pile of books just sitting there, and they're waiting for me to pick one of them up. 

My Current Writing Projects

I'm pretty good at procrastination, because my procrastination is quite productive and therefore easily justifiable. I like world-building, it's an easy way to "create" without actually creating any content for publication. This is a problem, especially for someone who'd like to get paid for this one day.

I am working on a few things though, and just to put everyone's minds at ease - today I'll give you all a brief overview of what I'm working on and at what stage of the project I'm at for each.

Unnamed Sequel - First, it has a title, like all the others, I'm just not listing it because of reasons. This work is a sequel to my first novel which I've been ashamed about for the longest of times, but of which I'm slowly coming around to. I haven't been ashamed because it's bad writing, I was ashamed because of the actual story it tells.

Don't bother searching my name to try and find it, I'll be re-releasing an updated version of it soon anyway, you can gawk and gasp at it later. The point is, there's a first draft of the sequel out there and it's currently being read by a mate of mine. It's part of a bigger career spanning plan of mine so as much as I'd like to move away from the original, I've got to work with what I've got and finish it.

CODE - Brissy Story - This is the big one that I've been working on since... late 2009, I think? It started out as just a short 20,000 story and it's grown into this massive narrative that is just the first part of a planned trilogy.

It's a first person journal, like all the best post apocalyptic stories are, and it centers around one guy and his view of the world and his place in it. It's set in Australia and deals with the whole world ending and how the survivors organize themselves afterwards. There's a bit going on in this one, primarily because it's the first of a trilogy and I need to lay the seeds here so they can pay off in book two and even three. 

This project is in the late late stages of development, I've been getting some graphic design done by a mate down south and artwork done by another mate up in Russia. Although I, and several of my very talented writer mates, have edited it something like 15 times over the years, I'm going to get to looked over by a professional before release. 

It's been a fucking expensive venture, but I think it's worth it. 

Brissy Story Companion - This has been requested by a few people, it's only going to be a novella - sources of inspiration for it are One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Metro 2033. It will deal with the events of one day, from a third person point of view, in relation to the larger project above and will focus on the surrounding characters. I currently have it outlined but haven't begun work on it yet.

Metanoia - Tales of Forlorn Liberty  - This is another big project that I've probably been putting together in the background for three to four years now. Anyone who follows my mate Weilard on Twitter has probably seen some of the covers he's drawn up for me. Yes, I'm the type of dumbass that got 36 covers drawn up before he'd even written the stories. Lesson learned, I won't be doing that again. On the bright side though, I met another artistic fan of the post apocalyptic genre and helped him live off his art for a while, so it's not all bad.

I'd insert an example of the covers for this, but they're so damn big that it'd take forever to load, so I'll just redirect you here to see them all. They're actually fantastic, and I'm not just saying that to brag, Weilard is an amazing artist and if you ever want to commission some post apocalyptic art - hit him up.

Anyway, this series will deal with the survivors of an end of the world scenario, as they learn to live in the new world and alongside one another. It's more about the social interaction between the people themselves, rather than the apocalyptic backdrop. The intended writing style has changed over the years and one of the main reasons it's taken me so long to even start writing is because I've had to read a pile of books for inspiration and direction. 

These are just the projects that I'm actively working on at the moment, and more details for each will be released as time goes on, but there's also a whole mess of other things going on too. I've got notepads (physical and digital) all over the place full of notes for specific story ideas - but these are the ones that I'm focusing on at the moment. My problem isn't lack of ideas or too little motivation, it's that I like to have everything planned out before I even start writing, and that is damn time consuming. 

I am working though, always working.