Equality in Television

Ever tried to run through a mine field while you're being chased by a tidal wave of lions and tigers and bears... and also your hair is on fire? Well, for me, that's what writing this piece has been like. I'd like to get to the other side unscathed, but in all likelihood I'm going to get pretty fucked up.

There's been a trend in television shows of late that are targeted directly at women and lauded as the pinnacles of equality and shining examples of what all shows should be like. The problem is, beyond the fact that I've actually sat down and watched a few of them, that they're nothing of the sort. They're just as sexist and reductive as every other television show in history, just in the opposite direction.

For the purposes of this piece, I'll be discussing two shows and a movie in particular - Orange is the New Black, Wynonna Earp and Wonder Woman. Before you pop a gasket and start pissing liquid outrage, I've seen 4 Seasons of OitNB and the first season of WE and obviously I've seen Wonder Woman. I know there's more seasons of the shows out there of either but I live in Australia, where dvd's take ages to be released and all the good pirating channels have been blocked. So, it'll have to do!

My problem with these shows is that they're always regarded as morally superior to shows that have traditionally had male leads, or a focus on male dominated life. But if you actually sit down and watch them, you'll find them pretty uncomfortable if you're a guy because you're constantly seeing individuals that you identify with being vilified or sidelined. It wouldn't be such an issue if they weren't touted as being more inclusive and simply better... because they're not. It's the exact same shit, just targeted at a different audience. 

I might as well get this out of the way early so I can get a healthy streak of negativity going on afterwards. Seeing these shows has actually inspired me to become a better writer. I can't imagine what it must have been like for women over the past half century as they watched television, seeing their entire gender relegated to the background and given absurd roles that only exist to pump up the male lead's story lines. Seeing this new generation of television however, I get an idea of how uncomfortable it must have been, because now it's happening to men as well. The problem is, doing a complete 180 turn doesn't solve the problem, it's just the same shit with a new direction. I'm all for a series that's about equality, but actual equality, not social justice revenge where women finally get their own back after being oppressed for so long. 

So, I guess, some good has actually come from these shows. For me, at least. They make me uncomfortable and I'd hate to see all of media go in this direction, so I'm definitely going to do my part to be a better storyteller. Again, not because I'm a bleeding heart Lefty but because I want complex and interesting stories - and a fully fleshed out cast of men *and* women, is the best way to achieve that.

Okay, onto the negativity! 

Orange is the New Black always bugged me, it's a show that's clearly about women. We've had plenty of shows that have primarily female casts before, that's never been an issue, I watched Charmed and Buffy back in the day and loved them both. (Totally crushed on Holly Marie Combs btw...) But OitNB is a show that casts females specifically as protagonists, and as a natural result of this men must take the role of antagonists. 

Every male in the show is some sort of villain that exists solely to act as an opponent or hindrance to the female characters. George "Pornstache" Mendez is the vile and corrupt prison guard who abuses his authority and takes advantage of the female inmates. John Bennett is a guard who is portrayed as a coward, for leaping from a grenade while on tour, to having an injury that isn't as heroic as it could be, and finally from running from his responsibilities as a father. Joel Luschek is the drug using, alcoholic loser who runs the prison mechanical shop. Sam Healy was the prison social worker who was blatantly sexist, racist and homophobic and ends up having a mental breakdown due to an unbelievably shitty childhood. Joe Caputo is the quintessential "nice guy" who gets treated like shit because it's his own fault. Scott O'Neil is a big, fat dumbass. Cal Chapman is the primary protagonist's deadbeat hippie brother. Charlie "Donut" Coates rapes a prisoner because he has a weird demented crush on her. Desi Piscatella is a sociopathic torturer who is gay, but not because that makes him a more well rounded character but because that makes him immune to the feminine wiles of the female inmates and thus a more difficult opponent for them to overcome. 

All these male characters are fucking horrific, I would hate to be a little boy watching this show and seeing that this is what men have to be like. I'd hate to have a son who watched this show with his mother, only for his mother to state that this is what men are really like. I didn't even list off all the random background prison guards who are sadistic ex-servicemen, there's just too many of them! Do people not know how hard it is to be a prison guard in real life? Do they think it's just for college drop-outs and undercover psychopaths? 

There is one sympathetic male character who you could possibly side with, but then he randomly kills an inmate because the actor who portrays her got a job offer on *another* show about how bad females have it. (Samira Wiley jumped ship to go board The Handmaid's Tale, I'll get into that mess in another piece.) There's not one single male character in this show that you can side with, they all exist simply to be opponents to the female characters. 

The question I have about this is, when has there ever been a TV show where females have been cast in direct opposition to the male protagonists? I will freely admit that female representation and the roles that women can play in television hasn't been great, not even good, but they've never been systematically cast as the villains because of the simple fact that they're women.

I get that we need to be better in the content that we create, but OitNB isn't a show about equality or equal representation. It's a show that's even more sexist than almost any other show that I can think of, to the extreme, and the worst part is that it's posing as a progressive narrative.

Wynonna Earp is basically a shit version of Supernatural combined with Charmed, it's a Weird Western story about the great great granddaughter of famous American lawman - Wyatt Earp. I have less of a problem with this series because it's not about women vs men, instead it's just a show about women, targeted towards women, and tends be executed pretty poorly. 

Wynonna is shown to be an alcoholic run away with a history of mental illness, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity and criminal activity. She returns home to find she's got a destined role to play in saving the day from some really lame demons. Along the way she gets tangled up with the immortal Doc Holliday, who was stupidly stuck down a well for the past century, and the stone faced Deputy Marshal Xavier Dolls - and of course, a love triangle evolves. Also, Wynonna has a younger sister who ends a relationship with a deadbeat guy and starts up a bisexual relationship with a female deputy called Officer Haught (literally pronounced "hot.")

The series is full of quirky little bits of sexual innuendo and all the primary male cast members are fully supportive of their female leads. Despite the fact that one of them is immortal, and the other is an ex-military monster of some sort, both supportive male leads are only ever fully effective when the women aren't around. The second Wynonna is on scene, these guys who are meant to be the best of the best suddenly turn into whimpering and ineffectual losers. Which, I get on a creative level because you can't have side characters out-shining your protagonist. It's just that this is a problem when they're ultimate badasses while along, but they become useless the second there's a vagina around.

I'm not the only one who sees that this makes no sense, right? Do they both have some sort of weakness to estrogen or something? Tone down both extremes and it stops being an issue, make them less badass on their own and less pathetic when they're around the female lead.

There's also this really odd scene where a guy has been killed by some sort of succubus duo, and he's been torn apart and is hanging from the rafters of a shed in his boxers. The only thing Wynonna says is "Should have kept your pants on..." and just walks past his corpse. Like, that's an innocent dude who's been killed by demons, and your only reaction is to make a joke about his death? Pretty sure that's a quintessential example of Victim Blaming right there. Can you imagine the uproar there would be if there was a show with a male cop who found a dead female on the side of the road in her underwear, and the only thing the cop said was "should have kept your pants on..."

And the worst part about Wynonna Earp is that the whole series makes this really overt attempt to justify and validate Wynonna's sexual history. She ends up shagging Doc Holliday, the century old immortal bad boy, before making out with Deputy Marshal Dolls right at the end. It's this absurd female fantasy of getting to fuck the bad boy and then settling down with the reliable guy who is totally accepting of your laundry list of sexual partners, one of which is a close associate of theirs. It's absolute absurdity, the world doesn't work like that. But of course, because it's targeted at women, it's got this ridiculously romanticized "have your cake and eat it too" message to it.

It's exactly the same as the doubebag guy who shags the town bicycle for a while before ditching her to settle down with the homely girl next door.... just in reverse. That's not equality, that's just equally unequal! 

Straight laced, by the books, ex-military types like Deputy Marshal Dolls don't fall for ex-drug addicted, alcoholic "party girls" like Wynonna Earp. It's sending this insanely damaging message to young women that they can fuck around as hard and as fast as they want, and then Mr. Right will totally be waiting for them when they're done. Now, note, this isn't me saying that women shouldn't be allowed to fuck around, because I'm not saying that at all. You wanna get dicked till your heart's content, by all means - go for it, because this is not about slut-shaming or anything like that. What I'm saying is that it's absurd to think that you can do all that and then also expect a knight in shining armor to be waiting for you at the finish line.

Women don't like guys who sleep around, guys don't like girls who sleep around either. We need to put this shit to bed, because no matter how movies and TV shows try to convey it as true, it doesn't work like in that in real life in either direction. 

There are other shows that have been reported to be in similar vein as this, Marvel's Jessica Jones comes to mind, but I've never actually watched that. I haven't actually watched any of the Marvel TV series, primarily because I'm fucking sick of super hero content but also because they often turn out to be pretty shitty. When I heard that Jessica Jones was all about Jessica being this strong and independent woman who talks shit and gets to stare at a shirtless Luke Cage for most of the series, I pretty much deleted all mention of it from my brain. 

I did go out and buy a copy of Wonder Woman though, because I heard nothing but rave reviews about it. I was expecting something great, but it was in the similar vein to OitNB and Wynonna Earp. Albeit, to a far lesser extent. I loved the action, the story line was pretty damn good, but the film was clearly targeted at women. There were little quips here and there that constantly reminded me that I'm a dude and that I'm not entirely welcome here. I will state that the male cast members were much more well rounded in Wonder Woman than those other series, they were consistent and well thought out. And there was a pretty awesome female villain as well, so it wasn't a blatant 'man vs female' set up. 

Now, this is where I've got to make the ridiculous announcement that shouldn't be, but totally is, necessary. I don't hate women, I don't have a problem with women having their own shows and I don't want to go back to the good old days of women being relegated to the kitchen. I just want better shows, shows that espouse *real* equality, not just shows that're about man-bashing because it's the in-vogue thing to do right now. I want shows that have complex male and female characters, not shows with one or the other. 

As much as I hate sucking on the Whedon dick, Buffy and Firefly were both great examples of this. Men and women on equal footing, working together and getting shit done. Firefly had a strong warrior woman and her more peace loving husband, totally loved that. The original Aliens series was fucking fantastic, that had a female lead and they didn't need to wax on all poetic-like or make rapid-fire quips about how superior women were to men, it just had a female lead and got on with it. Dark Matter was a little sci-fi series that got three seasons out before it was cancelled. Great cast, men and women, badasses all. 

I loved that Tauriel was added to The Hobbit, she was an absolute fucking badass. Also, seeing Galadriel bust out into Witch-Queen mode was awesome, Gandalf was getting his arse handed to him until she showed up. Two damn powerful female characters, zero issues. Hell, I would have been happy with more!

We need better stories, because the stories we've got now are lame, with blatantly obvious political leanings that cater directly to the current populist trend. Supporting minorities is the cool new thing, so lets all support and raise them up by BUILDING A PILE OF STRAIGHT WHITE MALE CORPSES FOR THEM TO STAND UPO-

No.  

Casting men as the villains tells young men that they can only be villains, and teaches young women to fear men. Showing women doing whatever they want and then getting Mr.Right is telling young women that they can do what they want without consequences, which just isn't how the world works. We need better shows with better messages, otherwise we're going to end up with a generation of kids with a really fucked up view of how the world works and how they fit into it. We know that depictions of television can have negative impacts on peoples self-perceptions, especially young people. 

I don't want shows that cater to men's warped view of reality just as much as I don't want shows that cater to women's warped view of reality. I want realistic shows, with nuanced and diverse characters in multi-layered narratives, that everyone can enjoy. I don't want us all to drift off into our own little TV worlds that drag us down different rabbit holes to the point where nobody recognizes a single reality anymore. We can still have shows and films that are for men or women, respectively, but we don't need to throw the other under the bus to make them work. 

Seriously, at this point, Resident fucking Evil has been a better series in terms of equality... and that series is absolute garbage! But it's got a whole host of strong female characters, including the lead, and none of them talk shit about men at any point. This trash zombie series is more inclusive than most modern television shows. Bravo, people...

Post Apocalyptic Character Analysis

I don't usually focus on a single character like this, but The Rad-Lands did a piece on Lord Humungus from Mad Max 2 (found here) and it got me thinking about what post apocalyptic character has stood out for me. Funnily enough, it's not a protagonist and it's not even a primary antagonist, it's actually a side character. 

Redridge, from The Book of Eli, is the right hand man of a small town tyrant known as Carnegie. He starts out looking like your usual end-of-the-world thug, he's bigger than most others and not overly intelligent so he probably just fell into the role. By the fact that he's the right hand man of the movie's villain, you know straight away that he's not a good guy by any stretch. We see this in the fact that he's perfectly fine with the way things are being run in this violent town, he's happy to kill people and even executes fellow underlings when they fail. It seems like he's content with being Carnegie's second.

When the protagonist, Eli, comes to town though, things start to change. While Redridge is a man of violence, Eli is both a holy man and death incarnate. Even someone as simple as Redridge picks up on the fact that there's something special about Eli, it seems like every bullet fired actually wants to miss him. After a brief shoot out in the main street, Redridge has Eli dead to rights but chooses to let him go. It isn't revealed if this is because he's already figured out that he'd probably miss, even with a clear shot, or if he's simply chosen to let Eli live. The point is, he doesn't shoot.

The movie makes it pretty clear that there's more to this guy than simply being a brutish thug who hurts people for a living. He's actually got a crush on the Carnegie's daughter, Solara, and seeing as he's spent most of his life being violent he doesn't really know how to interact with her or express his attraction to her. He playfully steps in her way while she's out on errands, then quickly steps back when he realizes that he's misjudged how she'd react to this. He was young when the world ended, so he probably never even finished school, and despite his size he's still operating as someone with a primary school education at best.

Despite being uneducated, and not knowing how to express himself properly, he still cares for Solara and wants to be with her. When he sees an opportunity to secure her, he makes a deal with Carnegie. He's too immature to realize that Solara could never love a man like him, but he's just so infatuated with her that he doesn't even see this. He just wants her, and he comes up with a plan to get her and keep her safe. He plans to capture Eli for Carnegie, if Carnegie will let him have Solara.

Redridge and Carnegie chase Eli and Solara across the radioactive wasteland of the former United States, and eventually capture the pair as they share some tea with a couple of delightful cannibals. Redridge has given Carnegie what he wants and as promised, he is given Solara in return. He finally gets what he's wanted for the longest time, but even he's picking up on the fact that none of it feels right. 

Solara has spent the entire movie growing as a character, she's gone from a terrified prostitute to an absolute badass, so by this point she's more than ready to show Redridge exactly what she thinks of this whole situation. She strangles the driver of the vehicle they're all in, and it ends up flipping before rolling down the highway. 

Just as Solara is about to make her escape, we see that Redridge is still alive despite being impaled by a machete. Now... he could try to kill her out of revenge, seeing as she pretty much just killed him, but instead he pulls the machete out of his chest and exits the car. He had Solara, but instead of holding onto her he chose to let her go.

In a scene that made the The Book of Eli a favorite of mine, a dying Redridge kneels down on the ground and takes his goggles off. He looks up at the sky, and smiles, before his head slumps down. It's a scene that's enough to give both Solara and Carnegie pause, it's like they're bearing witness to something divine. This man of violence chose not to rely on violence at the very end. By changing his ways before it was too late he seems to not only have had some kind of revelation, but also found peace.

Redridge is left kneeling on the side of the road, like a man who's died in prayer. 

The whole story arc really spoke to me, not only because I myself am a rather large gentleman who has often had trouble interacting with tiny women, but because of the extra depth that was added to a character that could've been easily ignored. In a movie that is all about faith, this background character was given a pivotal role in supporting the film's overall theme.  

Redridge taking his goggles off at the end was a great piece of symbolism, showing that he was no longer blinded by earthly distractions. He has his goggles off at other times during the film, but this is always when he's indoors where he's shrouded in darkness. While the goggles are still on his vision is occluded by the darkness of Carnegie's influence, but he manages to strip them away at the very end and see the light. The symbolism works really well when the twist about Eli is revealed.

I get that Redridge wanting to own Solara isn't a healthy relationship at all, even if he genuinely wanted to look after her, but I think that even he'd figured that out in the end. He was a bad guy, yes, but he was a bad guy that found redemption. It's a story that has stuck with me since I first saw The Book of Eli at the cinema, and even after all these years I still want to know what Redridge learned in his final moments. What, or who, did he see? What made him so serene in the face of death?

A New Post Apocalyptic Writing Project

I've decided to be a bit more proactive in my writing, which has paradoxically meant that I've not been writing on the blog as often as I'd like.

With a slight nudge from a fellow doomsday enthusiast on Twitter, I remembered this idea I had a few years ago. It took me a bit to hunt down the file, but eventually I found it and I've been working on it since. I don't want to go into too much detail, but I will say that it is non-fiction and that it is post apocalyptic.

And that I've somehow written sixteen thousand words in the past three days...

I don't know what it is but I am really excited about this project, it's definitely not as big as other things I'm working on but I'm hoping that some of the other members of the Twitter post apocalyptic community will get a kick out of it. This is definitely a speed of writing that I've never attained before. I hit 6600 words today. I've never even come close to that before. I don't know, maybe because it's non-fiction? I've done university papers, of course, but I've never written something non-fiction that was intended for publication.

We'll see how I go over the coming days. I'd originally given myself the month of October to work on this little project and get a rough first draft out, but it looks like I might be a little ahead of schedule. Which is never a bad thing mind you, gives me plenty of time to go over it and give it a polish or two. 

Besides all that, I haven't really been up to much. Just working the dead end job, hitting the gym and doing this TESOL course. Things are all progressing rather well, nothing is really going wrong and it's all relatively boring to be honest.

Oh, I guess this is worth mentioning, it's in the ballpark of what this whole blog is meant to be about. Although I haven't really been playing video games since my spinal injury, I did pick up Fallout Shelter today. I haven't played it since a week before Fallout 4 was released, and it's really grown as a little iOS game. They've added in a whole mess of features and it's really quite fun now.  Check it out if you've got some time to kill! 

I should probably head to bed, I've been staring at this screen for days. I'll make a point to get back to the blog little more often, but I'll probably keep the posts a bit shorter until I finish this project.
 

Hope in the Post Apocalypse

The thing with post apocalyptic fiction is that, by its very nature, it's depressing as all hell. The whole world has ended, lives have been torn asunder, and depending on the scenario there could be zombies or radiation or aliens or plagues to deal with for the foreseeable future. You're generally in for a bleak time when you get into a post apocalyptic story. What kind of people actively seek out stories that are inherently dark, dreary, dismal and depressing? Well... that's a discussion for another day. 

The thing is though, all the best post apocalyptic stories know how to balance this bleak narrative with a spark of hope. Because as much as the world could possibly suck after it's ended, there has to be the possibility of things getting better one day. You can drag the audience through the shit and mud, and even kill their favorite characters, but at the very end there has to at least be the possibility that things will get better... someday. 

In The Road, the Man and The Boy face months of hardship as they journey south, trying to find a warmer climate to survive in. They come across cannibals, roaming bands of marauders and (in the book) they even come across a woman who gives birth to a child and then cooks it straight away... their journey is harrowing, to say the least. The Man is clearly sick, and after a short and pointless skirmish with some other travelers he is injured and after a while he can't travel any further. The Man dies, and just when it looks like the Boy will be left on his own in this bleakest of worlds - a whole family approaches him, and asks him to join them. 

In The Book of Eli, Eli has traveled across the irradiated ruins of the United States, guided by faith alone. He's been beaten and shot, he's dying, but with the help of Solara he's able to finally reach his destination. It looks like it's all been for naught, he lost what he was meant to bring with him, but it turns out he's carried it for so long that he knows it's every facet by heart. He dies, having finally completed his mission. And Solara, changed by her journey with Eli, sets out to return home, ready to be the change she's always wanted in the world.

In 28 Days Later, Jim woke up from a coma to find a world overrun with rage zombies (yeah, The Walking Dead totally stole the whole coma intro idea from 28 Days Later.) His family is dead, he's made friends and lost them and he's seen, and become, the worst that humanity has to offer. In an attempt to save the last of his friends, he's gravely wounded and it looks like he might die. In the last scene however, we see them all living peacefully together in the countryside and as a plane flies overhead we see Jim smile, despite it all. 

Finally, we come to The Divide. New York gets nuked and a bunch of people cram in to a fallout shelter under an apartment building. What follows is 122 minutes of the bleakest shit you've ever seen. The characters are trapped down in that bunker and they turn into monsters, they kill and rape one another, and as a few of them get radiation poising they all start physically decaying as well. Eventually the protagonist manages to escape the bunker into the outside world, and just when you think things might start to look better.

We see the gray and crumbling ruins of the New York cityscape, with not another living thing in sight. She's finally escaped that little hell beneath the ground, only to discover that there's absolutely nothing above the surface... and then the film just ends. We get this defeated look upon her face and then the credits start rolling. It's absolutely crushing. I clearly love post apocalyptic fiction and I don't mind watching a movie again every few years, but I seriously doubt I have the emotional stamina to get through The Divide a second time. It's just so goddamn draining! 

And that's the thing, there has to be some kind of release. You can't put audience through the painful and oftentimes uncomfortable experience of a depressing story without at least giving them some kind of emotional pay off at the end. If the characters have managed to get all the way past the flesh eating corpses, past the mutated dogs, through the quagmire of radiation and beyond the death robots, then they have to find some sort of oasis that makes the whole fucking journey worth it. Not only for themselves, but for the audience as well. 

Even if they die at the end, they have to die for a purpose that has meaning. Because at the end of the story, the journey has to have been worth it.

My Issue with Teen Fiction

Teen Fiction is a genre that I've never liked, not even when I was a teenager, and this has become doubly so since it's started creeping into my favorite genres of writing. My problem with Teen Fiction is not with the style of writing, there are many talented writers who are (wasting their time) writing Teen Fiction these days. No, my problem is with the genre itself, what it stands for and the methods it uses to appeal to its target audience. 

As a teenager, you're at what is quite possibly the most stressful and confusing stage in life that a human being will go through. You're still treated like a child but expected to act like an adult, your entire future is decided by the grades you get, one misstep and you can be socially ostracized for the rest of your high school career and to top it all off you've got these hormones racing through your body telling you to do really stupid things that you'll totally regret later on. Besides all that, there's always the slim chance that one of your peers won't be able to take the pressure and will go on a rampage. 

Being a teenager is stressful and confusing because not only are you trying to develop a deeper understanding of the world, but you're also trying to define yourself and figure out how you fit within that world. You've been molded by your parents for years, and you want to make them proud, but you also want to step out and have a say in who you turn out to be as well. As a teenager you are very vulnerable to being mislead because you're actively seeking new paths, and you're constantly walking down the wrong paths while you try to find the right one.

Teen Fiction is the ICBM that cruises past all defenses to strike right at the heart of this confusion. It's the douchebag at the party that walks up to people and sucker punches them, it's the bitch that makes up a story about her friend because she's becoming more popular, it's the arsehole that gets chicks wasted because it's the only way he's assured of having a good time. Teen Fiction targets our youth when they're at their most vulnerable, it tells them they're special, they're unique and that they'll change the world. It tells them everything an impressionable young teen could ever want to hear...  and then it takes their goddamn money!

And in recent years, Teen Fiction has slithered it's way into Post Apocalyptic and Dystopian Fiction. Of course, with the brutal injustices and tough moral choices brought about by the desperate times inherent to both genres, it was only a matter of time. Despite the fact that all these worlds generally have police officers, soldiers, diplomats or barbarian warriors - it's the teenagers that always manage to save the day. Because adults are just too set in their ways to solve the worlds problems, it takes a teenager's fresh perspective on things to bring about lasting and effective change... ugh. 

Never mind the fact that when these books are turned into movies or tv shows, the teenagers are always played by 20-something actor/models who are absurdly attractive to the point of being genetic freaks. This only further alienates the average teen who, more than likely, will never attain such godlike levels of attractiveness.   

It's cheap, it's dirty, and I fucking hate it...  

Anosmia

I have anosmia.

Shut up, I'll explain what it is. 

Basically, I can't smell. You know how blind people can't see, and deaf people can't hear? Well, anosmics can't smell. The thing is though, since it's not blatantly in everyone else's faces, it's pretty rare to find someone who actually knows what it is. Right now, for example, Squarespace is telling me that both 'anosmia' and 'anosmics' aren't even real words. But then there's a squiggly red line under the word 'squarespace' as well, so I shouldn't judge them too harshly.

I don't have some sob story about how nobody understood me as kid, and how everyone thought I was making it up to get attention. That's all true, but I'm not going to waste your time going on about it. I'm sure we've all got better things to do. Mind you, I've got a book coming out soon, with an anosmic character in it, and I sort of do all my venting there. With that in mind, my reticence here is somewhat more self serving that I initially let on. I know how much people hate spoilers though, so... 

It is true that it's not exactly represented that well in the media, but I don't particularly care about it that much. I read some article about a guy who thought anosmics being referred to as "nose-blind" was seriously offensive... motherfucker needs some real problems. It's nice to see characters in shows and movies with anosmia, but it'd be pretty stupid of me to be asking for them to be included in every show just for the sake of inclusiveness. 

Yeah, I'm handicapped. I've got no sense of smell at all, and because of that I've also lost most of my sense of taste as well (they're linked... and you thought you were done learning!) I'm not going to sit here and write out some positive "I'm not lesser, just different" BS speech though. If I could magically get my sense of smell back, I'd be willing to do some pretty terrible things to make it happen - because it would greatly improve my life.

I honestly don't understand all this hate from handicapped people about not being seen as equal to everyone else though. Like... if you can smell, and I can't - then we're not equal. You've got an advantage over me, and while that sucks I'm actually okay with it. That doesn't mean that you should treat handicapped people like shit, but you don't have to tell us we're equal just to make yourself feel like a goodly and inclusive (and auto-fellating) individual. 

Also, just in case you were wondering about the scientific link between anosmia and being a psychopath... I wasn't actually born like this, so I'm kinda exempt from that association. People do like to bring that up though, for some reason.  

Now, you may think it never comes up, but there have been a few life threatening situations that I've just stumbled into because I can't smell. I don't get to enjoy most of the foods that most people get to enjoy, I've never smelt perfume, can't tell if food is cooked or spoiled, I've never smelt sex and the notion that oranges have a smell has always weirded me out for some reason. It's not all bad though, you can fart around me and I won't care, I've never had to smell a rotting corpse...  and I have this neat little trick, it's sort of a body-hack.

See, when you can barely taste, it doesn't really matter what you eat. This means that I can eat the blandest shit imaginable, day after day, and not get sick of it. This sounds bleak, but it's a fucking godsend for someone who has weight issues and makes dieting a hell of a lot easier. Ask people that see me in person, most will attest to seeing me eating a salad straight out of a bag and then downing a plain chicken breast, every day, for 6 months.  

So I try to make the best of it and not go on about it. Sorry if anosmia doesn't fit your criteria for what "disabled" means, it doesn't fit the governments either, so fuck them too. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing, I'm getting along well enough as I am.

Why Gears of War is my Favorite Post Apocalyptic Series

Gears of War is the one series that I love to an absurd degree, and not just because it's post apocalyptic. I'm aware of it's many flaws but I'm willing to look past them to what the series offers as a whole. Other people go all fanboy for Star Wars/Trek, Harry Potter, The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones, my brain turns to mush for Gears of War. 

I'll get this out of the way first, primarily because this is meant to be an all-positive piece but also just to show that I don't have a blind spot to the shitty bits in the things that I love. Gears of War as a whole definitely has an overly macho tone to it, and some of the lines of dialogue are so absurd that they wouldn't even be accepted in a Sharknado movie. Alongside this, the games all have this habit of throwing in ridiculously left field gameplay elements that're simply there to break up the shooty parts. For a game about hiding behind chest high walls and shooting big ass guns, there's always one vehicle section of the game that feels totally out of place. I think the only game that doesn't have a vehicle section in it is Gears of War Judgment, and as the weakest of the 5 games, Judgment has a host of other issues. Finally, as much as I love the series, not even I can escape the fact that the plot and factions are basically interchangeable with the Halo series. 

But enough of all that, a single paragraph has satisfied my pathological need for objective shredding! 

Gears of War, as a series, is about how shitty human are. War is just something that humans do, it's part of our bestial and baser nature, we're always looking for excuses to go to war. Humans fight over resources, land, nationalism, religion, revenge or because we just don't like how the other guy looks. In Gears of War, there have been generations of war, and before that there were entire eras that were defined by conflict. As civilized as humans can be, that's just a thin veneer that hides the ever present animalistic element that wants to chew someones throat out. This is showcased splendidly by the series' contrasting theme of "destroyed beauty," where the heights of human creativity (often represented by grand architecture) are brought low by the base human ability to bring ruin upon the world. Finally, as a subtle nod to all this, the planet that Gears of War is set on, Sera, is actually 'Ares' spelled backwards. Ares being the Greek god of war... duh.

The basic premise of the original Gears of War trilogy was that, fifteen years prior to the first game, humanity had just finished an eighty year conflict, dubbed the Pendulum Wars, that was fought over a resource called Imulsion. It's basically a yellow glowing stand-in for oil, but much better because it's more efficient, clean and insanely powerful. Hence why they fought for eight decades over the stuff. Very shortly after this conflict ended, monstrous humanoids dubbed the Locust broke through the surface of Sera and slaughtered most of humanity. Thus began a new war - the Locust War. These horrific monsters literally tunneled up from underneath the surface of the planet and could attack anywhere and at anytime. Humanity suffered catastrophic losses in the first days of the war, but they managed to hold out for over a decade since the war began.

A major element of the story line, and game play, is the drastic lengths that humanity are willing to go to in order to survive. Humanity didn't just bunker down and play defensively for fifteen years, no, they initiated a scorched earth policy where they used orbital laser weapons to literally burn the planet to dust and glass. The idea being that the Locust would stop raiding if there was nothing left to raid, so humanity burnt their own crops, their own cities, and their own people, just to deprive the Locust access to resources and military assets. As many humans died when the Locust first invaded, billions more died from humanities own hand.

This point is further illustrated by the iconic Mk.2 Lancer - the chainsaw gun. It could be said that putting a chainsaw on a gun is stupid, and basically it is, but the point that it exists actually lends itself to the overall theme of the series. The Mk.1 'Retro' Lancer, had a simple bayonet on it, but the problem was that while this was great for skewering humans, it tended to break when used against the scaly hides of Locust Drones. The situation was that dire, that someone actually had the idea to attach a chainsaw to a gun, and then someone else in a position of means actually thought that it was warranted. And so they made a gun with a fucking chainsaw on it! That's how bad the situation was, the Locust were so much of a threat that the sheer insanity of putting a chainsaw on a gun was seen as a good idea.

Finally, a point of some contention among... certain... fans, is the fact that the humans of Sera used breeding farms to boost their numbers. For some reason, which is revealed in the series later on, humanity has a sterility problem. Civilian women who were fertile didn't have to join a breeding farm, but if they did they were given extra rations, and if they didn't like the idea of pumping out babies who would go die on a battlefield then they could always suit up and go become bullet sponges themselves. There's this line in one of the comic books, or one of the novels, where a character mentions there's a rumor that the female Locust are chained down and raped, and that's how the Locust reproduce. Now, you could either take this as a way for the writers to showcase how terrible and savage the Locust are, or you could take it as the humans of Sera trying to demonize their opponents in order to assuage their own guilt. Humanity had never gotten below the surface to the Locust cities before this point, so how would they ever learn of such a process? It's far more likely that someone made up the rape-story to allow people to deal with humanities own horrific acts.

"Humanity may have breeding farms, which are disgusting, but the Locust rape... which is far worse!"

Humanity goes on the offensive in the second game, attacking the Locust on their own turf. There's a massive invasion of the tunnels that honeycomb the planet and we get a chance to see the Locust side of things, and we learn what should have been pretty obvious by this point. There are links between the humans and the Locust, and the government that you're fighting for might have actually had a hand in creating them. By the end of the second game, taking inspiration from a gigantic worm, the humans preform one last act of psychotic desperation - in order to flood the tunnels and kill the Locust once and for all, they sink their last remaining city and allow the ocean to pour in.

Of course, since there's a Gears of War 3, we know this doesn't exactly work as intended. The Locust survive and flee to the surface, becoming just as homeless as humanity. The conflict is less larger than life in Gears 3, since both sides of the conflict are battered and running on empty, but there's a new player in the conflict. The zombie-like Lambent, who, while once only an issue for the Locust, were now zombiefying humans as well. And this is where the series as a whole gets the nice little bow tied around it. The human on human Pendulum Wars were fought over Imulsion, but the Locust knew that being too close to it tended to infect people and turn them into zombies, hence why they invaded the surface all those years earlier - they wanted to get the hell away from the Imulsion. The problem is that Imulsion isn't just resource, it's a living parasitic organism that, while technically able to be used as a fuel source, is alive and has goals of it's own. With the tunnels below Sera flooded in Gears 2, it managed to reach the surface and began wrecking havoc on both the Locust and human survivors. To cut a long story short, you manage to find someone who failed to help the Locust stop the Imulsion from infecting them years earlier, and this person is finally able to stop the Imulsion by killing it, but only by also killing all the Locust as well. 

By the end of Gears of War 3, it's fairly explicit that the Locust are the mutated bastard offspring of humanity, evolved into horrific monsters by the Imulsion in one of the earlier stages of its life cycle. As monstrous as they are physically, they're just a dark reflection of how monstrous humanity can be internally, in their thoughts and actions. This is shown rather well in the Locust city of Nexus, which is carved into a series of gigantic stalactites that hang above an ocean of Imulsion - which is just an inversion of the human cities above. The Locust were just doing what they had to do to survive, just like the humans. When the humans successfully wiped out the Locust, they effectively proved themselves to be more monstrous than their mutated offspring.

Gears of War Judgment came out after this. It was a prequel that explored the back story of two the side characters from the original trilogy, Barid and Cole. It was great in terms of gameplay, but it didn't really add anything new the series, it was just more of the same to tide fans over. My only issue with this game is the fact that they put the Mk.2 Lancer (the chainsaw gun) into the game, even though the game was set before that weapon was even invented. Because apparently Gears of War *IS* the chainsaw gun, and you can't make a game without it. Can you imagine the sheer nerdrage that would result if someone made a Star Wars game with Lightsabers, but then set it before Lightsabers were even invented?! If they wanted to show how fucking terrible the start of the Locust War was, they should have just left us with the shitty old Mk.1 Lancers and had them break each time we tried to use them. Fucking coffee sipping hack writers, too chicken shi-

Sorry, gotta stay positive!

Finally, Gears of War 4 came out at the end of 2016, and it's set 25 years after the end of Gears 3. It's revealed that the Locust weren't exactly killed by the weapon used at the end of the trilogy, it's more like they were sent into stasis. Well, some of them woke up, and now they're messing with the genetic code of the Locust and we've got a more evolved form of Locust, the Swarm. They look like shellfish versions of Locust, but basically they're the same deal. The series continues with the son of the original trilogy's protagonist.

Now's a good enough time to get into these protagonists. Both Marcus Fenix, and later his son in the new trilogy, James-Dominic "JD" Fenix, are your typical gruff, loner straight white male action heroes. JD is less so in Gears 4, but he's young and hasn't the lifetime of conflict that his father had experienced in his first game. They're both massive, they were tanks for body armor and they carry guns with chainsaws on them - you'd be forgiven for thinking that both these characters are meat heads.

The problem is that this is a massive disservice to the characters, and ridiculously dismissive of males across the globe. A lot of guys can relate to these stoic action heroes because that's how they're expected to behave in the real world, I know that's how I was raised. When we see a big strong guy shrug off a death or risk their lives like it's nothing, it's not a cliche for us but a representation of our own reality (to borrow some totally cringe-worthy terminology...) It may not be the most emotionally healthy way to deal with things, but when the shit hits the fan in the real world, it's often the big guy that's expected to go deal with it. Trust me, I'm 6'2 and even when I'm showing ribs I'm a solid 90kg, so I'm a big guy and there have been plenty of times where I've been shoved outside to go deal with some nasty shit.

What other people see as emotionless machismo, people who actually live that life, or have a similar backstory, see the inner turmoil that goes on within these characters. With every other character in a story relying on them keeping their shit together, these guys are the central load-bearing pillars that cannot give up. But this is getting a little off track and I might delve into this in another post. The point is, if people read the novels, of which there are 5, and all the comics, they'd actually realize that there's a lot of backstory and complexity to each of these characters.

Marcus Fenix was raised in a wealthy household, but his mother disappeared and his father was always at work. As a child he drifted towards that Santiago family, who were much poorer than his, because they were a large family and there was a lot of love that he never found in his own home. He was smart, but lonely, and so he joined the military as a front line soldier, instead of as an officer, because he wanted the comradery that the rank and file provided.

Dominic Santiago was actually the younger brother of Marcus' best friend, and the two only really became close after his brother died just before the Pendulum Wars ended. He had a wife and children but they disappeared early in the Locust War and he spends most of his spare time trying to track them down - in one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in video game history, he finally finds his wife and she's been tortured and broken by the Locust. All he can do is offer her a mercy killing, and this breaks him. In Gears of War 3, in the second most heart-wrenching moment in video game history, he sacrifices himself to save the rest of his squad. Dom was the heart and soul of the team, the guy that kept everyone else on the right path.

Augustus "Cole Train" Cole was a star Thrashball (football) player who signed up to become a soldier the day the Locust invaded. You get very little of his backstory in the games beyond him being the spirit of the team, the guy that keeps everyone else motivated and moving along the path. In the books however, you find out that his parents were killed in the initial invasion of the Locust, and he threw away his absurd amounts of wealth to combat the Locust as a front line soldier. He writes to his parents as often as he can, throwing the letters into a fire.

Damon Baird is the arsehole techie of the team, the engineer who is better with machines than with people. He had a wealthy upbringing like Marcus, but instead of seeking connection with others, he drifted further away from them. This became worse when his parents died when the Locust invaded, the few connections he had in life had been severed. He's rough around the edges but he desperately craves connection with people, just like Marcus did as a child. Damon is the sarcastic brains of the unit, while nobody is by any means stupid, Baird is genius levels of smart. 

There's a several other characters that get introduced, especially in Gears 3 and 4, but this team is the core team for the original trilogy. Each of the characters in the Gears series is often seen as interchangeable, and several of the characters who wear helmets actually are, but there's actually a lot of characterization to the named cast. My favorite character across all five games is one that's introduced in the very first novel, Bernadette Mataki - she's a Northener from the South Sea Islands (basically a white New Zealander) who is a sixty year old sniper. She's an absolute badarse! And I've got a mate who loves Tai Kaliso, the unkillable soldier from the island of Irohma (basically, Samoa...) I'm fully able to admit that it took the developers a while to get this amazing cast of characters into the games, but once they were there they really beefed up the series.

At the start of Gears of War 1, Marcus and Dom have known each other for years, growing up and fighting in the Pendulum Wars together, and Cole and Baird have been together since basic training. But this is the first time these two pairs meet, and we actually get to see them grow as a team across the trilogy, they butt heads a bit to begin with but eventually they figure out how to work with one another. 

There's a lot of depth you can explore in the Gears of War universe, if you're willing to look past the macho monster slaughterer aspect of the series. There's the brotherhood between the main cast of characters, the issues with family, especially parents, and an exploration of how far you're willing to go to survive. The series also delves into the concept of governments, and the amount of control they have over their people.... because funnily enough, the side you fight for is actually considered hardcore socialist/fascist. There's also the idea that the Locust and Imulsion represent mother nature and her natural resources, and that taking too much from her has caused her to fight back. And finally, there's that whole idea that I was talking about earlier, where humanity are basically shitty creatures when you strip away the cloak of civilization.

There is depth to Gears of War, you've just got to get past the superficial elements to find it. I know there are a lot of flaws with this series, but I'm more than happy to look past and even forgive them. It's got characters, and situations, that I can relate to and it's set in a beautifully destroyed post apocalyptic world. Gears of War is one of those series that I will eagerly follow until my time is up. I've got no doubt that there will be weak entries in the series at some point, and I don't always agree with the design choices that're made, but despite all that it's still my most favorite video game series... and I really really really want to see a trailer for Gears of War 5 already!  

The Spores are the Real Threat in The Last of Us

Another piece on The Last of Us? 

I know, I know... I keep going back to the well, but it is a veritable gold mine in terms of content. It's not all fluff either, which is rare these days. This time I'm going to be focusing on the real threat in The Last of Us, and it's not the Infected, or other humans, but the spores.

Just by way of the structure of zombie stories, the zombies are usually not the real threat. Sure, they're something dangerous that the characters have to avoid, but they're more akin to a force of nature than actual antagonists. The faceless masses of a zombie horde might as well be replaced with a tidal wave, or radiation, or a cloud of poisonous gas - the individual constituents don't matter, it's the collective whole that you've got to worry about. This is a point I'll swing back to at a later date, but enough of that for now.

Typically, it's the other humans that the characters have got to worry about in a zombie story. This isn't just based upon the idea that they're as individualistic as the protagonist are, enough so that they're able resist joining the faceless masses of society that the zombie hordes often represent. No, there's a pretty basic underlying logic about why humans are the true enemies, and it's because that any human that has lasted as long as you have is roughly as tough as you are. You can outrun a mindless horde of zombies or bash their rotting brains out if one is trying to give you a hickey, but a thinking, feeling and reactive antagonist that has set their sights on you is a much tougher opponent.

This is what it's set up to look like in The Last of Us. The military are willing to kill anybody who doesn't obey their strict commands and you're straight up screwed if they even think you're infected. The Hunters target other humans specifically so that they can take their gear, they've shifted from a herd mentality to a pack mentality... the Infected have less chance of having what they want, so they don't bother with them, it's specifically humans that they target. David's group is willing to hunt and farm to get by, but then they're also more than happy to kill and consume other humans. The Fireflies are willing to sacrifice any and all individuals for their idealistic devotion to the greater good, so even if you're with them they're likely to get you killed. All of these groups are more than happy to kill you under the right circumstances, but they're still not the most dangerous thing in The Last of Us.

The spores are the true threat in The Last of Us, and it's just a shame that the game doesn't reflect this. The thing is that it's also understandable, because Naughty Dog painted themselves into a corner in regards to the spores. Overall the spores basically make sense, the real world cordyceps fungus has spores that infect insects once the fungi begins to bloom. Besides this one-of-a-kind infection method for a zombie virus, the spores allow for unique game play situations where your characters are forced to put on gas masks and enter an area with reduced visibility. Finally, for as deadly as the spores are, they're actually a strangely beautiful sight to behold. 

The problem with the spores is that, realistically, they're a near-impossible threat to combat. A single spore can be carried on the wind, or in the water, or on an animals skin, and it can easily infect a human within a Quarantine Zone. Considering each Infected sends out hundreds of thousands of spores when they start blooming after death, those are really shitty odds. If the spores in The Last of Us were acting at their full potential, then humanity wouldn't stand a chance.

How do you even begin to stop something that spreads on the wind? You'd need to incinerate every Infected that you kill, which means that you couldn't just kill them and leave them where they fall because they'd still be an active threat. You'd have to go into the spore-infested underground areas with flamethrowers and burn them out, then dispose of the blooming corpses down there as well. Good luck if you run into a Bloater while you're down there, because they can toss around spore grenades for some reason.... which just makes things so much worse.

The military tried their best to stop the spread of infection, and so they carpet bombed the area outside of the Quarantine Zones in order to kill as many infected as possible. Which makes sense, if it were just the Infected that they had to worry about. The problem is that explosions tend to push air away as they expand. Some spores might get fried by the heat, but a lot of them are just going to get pushed up and away... say, straight into the Quarantine Zones? 

The Infected themselves even make for inferior vectors for the infection while they're alive. They're constantly trying to chew peoples necks out or rip their jaws off and they're generally going for kill shots, which is a bad way to spread an infection. The idea is to keep the host alive so that the infection has enough time to do its thing and infect the host. Cordyceps is parasitic in nature, so it needs a living host in order to grow, and if the host dies before it has time to take root then it dies as well. Why don't the Infected just nibble on fingers or forearms, the bare skinned limbs that people are more than happy to thrust towards them? One bite is all it takes, after that the Infected can just scamper off and wait a day or two for the infection to make them a new fungi-buddy. The problem is, they're too dumb for that. 

And why aren't humans taking advantage of the spores? Why not walk into a spore-filled area with a gas mask on, get a garbage bag full of spores and then toss them into the soldier's barracks? Or leave spore laden food and drink as a trap for some Hunters? Why not hook a barrel of them up to a building's air conditioning unit and infected everyone at once? Seriously, these spores have a million uses and nobody is taking advantage of them.  

This is a similar situation to what I was talking about in my piece on Radiation over at Post Apocalyptic Media (go check them out). You can't realistically expect people to combat spores, or radiation, and it would actually make for a pretty boring game if they were portrayed accurately. It's why the spores are confined to underground areas, when in reality they'd be drifting all over the place, infecting anyone and everyone. People want to play a game where they're forced to fend of zombies and cannibals, not run around with a can of anti-fungal spray.

I wouldn't mind seeing this play out as it should in future games, with billions of spores being released from collapsing tunnels that infect thousands of survivors across the United States. It would actually give weight to Joel's choice to save Ellie over making a vaccine - all those people could've been immune if they'd had a vaccine, but instead they got infected. So now he has to face the consequences of his choice.

It would make one hell of a closing scene for The Last of Us series, with Joel and Ellie standing with the literal last of us, fighting off an entire continent of Infected. Half of the survivors probably have the infection already, they're just trying to maintain their sanity long enough to take out some of the Infected before they go. Joel's decision to save Ellie would come back to bite him in the arse, literally, as the Infected storm the stronghold and the final remnants of humanity are wiped out for good.

It's a bit too action orientated, and a downer ending, for The Last of Us - but a man can dream.  

Naughty Dog painted themselves into a corner with the spores in The Last of Us, they're the real threat, but they're an unmanageable and boring threat. They really add something unique to the game, but they're just that bit too powerful to be allowed to work the way they really should. Whatever path Naught Dog take with the spores, I'm sure the sequel/s to The Last of Us will be amazing. 
 

Horizon Zero Dawn's Single Weak Point

I loved Horizon Zero Dawn from the moment that first trailer came out a few years back, I loved it so much that I bought the collectors edition of the game when I didn't even own a PS4. When I eventually borrowed my flatmate's console and finally got to play the game, I thought it was fantastic and well worth the wait. Like all the best things in the world though, it's still not perfect and today I'm going to rip into its weakest element - Aloy. 

Now, before anyone asks; yes, I've beaten the game, I've done pretty much everything and yes, I loved it. Besides Mad Max, a game that is structurally similar to Horizon Zero Dawn, I haven't actually gotten the Platinum Trophy for that many games. I felt that HZD was worth it though, so I went for it. I'm not writing this down to toot my own horn, I'm simply telling you this so you don't think I'm just some dumbass video game journo who's played an hour of the game and is basing his opinion off that one tiny snippet.

I think HZD is a fantastic game, it handles like a dream and the setting is amazingly well thought out, with little details scattered around the world that really add a lot of depth. The backstory was great, you really got a feel for how things were before it all went to shit. I don't want to get into spoiler territory in this regard, but what humanity went through before the end of the world was horrifically tragic. The way in which you discover how the old world ended, the build up to it, was long and drawn out and you could feel the fatalistic determination in each recording you found. Those old world people knew they were fucked, but they kept on fighting to give humanity a chance at returning one day. 

The main problem with the game is Aloy, and I'll say it right off the bat - she's a total Mary Sue. 

Aloy was raised as an outcast of the Nora, a tribe that is considered backwater and primitive by all the other tribes in the surrounding lands. I am perfectly fine with her being a badass hunter/killer of men and machines... she was raised out in the wilds and had to do things the hard way. But once she gets out into the world she also starts giving people relationship advice, telling kings how to do their job, settling disputes and showing-up primitive tribals by lecturing them about how the world is actually round. Not to mention the fact that pretty much every major male character (and one female one) has a crush on her. A literal king asks if he could date her and she turns him down, if that's not a Mary Sue then I don't know what is.  

All of this is a problem for so many reasons.

First of all, it's fine that she's had a rough upbringing. She had to learn to fend for herself and become strong and independent, I've got no problem with that. The problem is that she's had no negative effects from this very negative upbringing beyond clashing with her tribe every now and again because of their backward ways. She grew up out in the wilds, with only one guy to talk to, and every other Nora either actively refused to talk to her or threw rocks at her. How does she have such a magnanimous view of humanity after eighteen years of this? Not only that, but how is she giving such worldly advice to people when she's had so little social interaction and has never left her valley? She gets involved in regional politics and gives moral advice to leaders... where did she learn all that?

Rough upbringings leave scars and these scars become the character's traits. While Aloy had the rough upbringing, she hasn't got any scars from these events and therefore no character traits have formed from them. This happens a lot in stories, where a character is given a terribly heart wrenching backstory to make them seem interesting but then that backstory has no real ramifications on their personality. A cause without an effect is just pointless, and this is the case with Aloy. Despite everything she's been through, she's still naive and innocent... yet somehow still worldly, and willing to aid a world that has wanted to ignore her existence since she was born. 

Beyond the weird disconnect between Aloy's background and her personality, HZD has an odd set up in regards to men and women. Now, I've got to get this out before people lose their shit over this next part. I'm fine playing female characters and I couldn't care less about their presence in video games. There are women in the world, it makes sense for them to be in video games too. It's not even a real issue, and any dude who has a problem playing as a chick in a video game has some serious self reflection to do. Tomb Raider is one of my most favorite games, I've bought four copies of that game over the years and gotten 100% all four times. Its sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, was just okay. But when it comes to HZD, all the "good guys" are ineffectual in some manner; alcoholics, inexperienced, rude, dumb or afraid etc, while all the proficient and truly badass men are "bad guys."

I think there's one male character that doesn't fit this mold, her foster father, but that's it... and he dies pretty early on. Beyond that though, she's surrounded by these men that she needs to save because they're useless and these other men that she needs to kill because they're not useless, and they're evil. This has some interesting connotations if you stop to think about it... what were they trying to say with that?

This is accompanied by the fact that there are so few female enemies in the game. When you've reached a stage in the game where Aloy starts killing humans, you're only ever rarely killing women. You could say that female enemies have always been rare in video games, but for a game that places such emphasis on female involvement in the world's events it's interesting that the developers didn't make an even amount of female enemies too. I'm not saying that I want a lady killer simulator, I'm just saying that if you're going for realism and equal representation then you need to take that to its logical conclusion. The world of HZD is clearly full of competent and badass women, so why are so few of them Aloy's enemies?

When you combine all this with the fact that the world was ended by a man's mistake, that the new world-ending threat is started by another man, and that in both cases it's saved by a woman, you can start to see how a lot of people could think that HZD is trying to push a certain agenda. It's almost like the developers wanted all the benefits of equality but also wanted to minimize the drawbacks, they wanted women to play pivotal roles but they didn't want to depict them as being as prone to villainy, or being as expendable, as men are. Equality isn't all sunshine and rainbows, if women are to be depicted as truly equal to men in stories then they need to have the same moral range as men and they need to die just as easily as men.

Now, we could get into the plot point that Aloy is "genetically predisposed to saving the world" but that's a rabbit hole that could lead to some seriously nasty places.... so let's just move on.

By this point though, you're probably starting to question whether or not I legitimately liked the game. While this isn't surprising, I have to reiterate that I did really enjoy it and I'm actually thinking of playing it all over again when I eventually get a PS4. My only wish is that Aloy would have been a bit more of a realistic character and less of a Mary Sue. She's got a great backstory that should have played a much larger role in who she turned out to be. I would've liked to have seen her end up a bit more jaded and socially awkward, not knowing how to operate in her tribe, let alone the outside world. These negative character traits would've given her something to overcome as the story progressed, and I think in the end she would've been all the stronger for it. As it is, she starts out as a strong and independent woman and she finishes as a strong and independent woman, she doesn't really grow from the events of the story.

I'm really excited about this series and I'm keen to see where they take it next, whether it's with Aloy specifically or with just the world in general. I have an idea of where it could go next, there are certain NPC's from the old world that could still potentially be around, but we'll all just have to wait and see. If you take anything away from this, let it be that I loved the game but that I wish the protagonist was a bit more well rounded. Because at the end of the day, you're hunting robotic dinosaurs with a bow and arrows and you're saving the humanity from apocalyptic AI - how could that not be a world you'd want to explore?

Zombies Following Zombies

I'm one of those people that has a difficult relationship with The Walking Dead, it's like that ex you keep going back to years later even though you're no good for one another. There's a long and complicated history there that's left me relatively confused and conflicted about how I feel about it these days.

I started reading The Walking Dead back in 2004, I never got the individual comics, I got the 6-issue graphic novels. This is actually a trend that I eventually brought with me in regards to television - I don't do that week to week shit, I wait to consume in bulk at my own pace. We'll get to that a bit later though. So in terms of being a fan of The Walking Dead, I'm one of those snooty jackasses that read the comics long before the show was even announced. 

I loved this series. In a world of DC and Marvel comics, with their colorful pages and puddle deep narratives, The Walking Dead was a monochromatic zombie-fest that brought with it an intensity that was previously unheard of. Characters died and I was legitimately pissed off. When Glenn was killed, 8 years after I'd started reading about him, I was actually sick. 

But by this stage, late 2012, the show's third season had begun and things had been going awry for a long time. I was really excited when the show was first announced, we'd never had a zombie TV series before because zombies were only ever in movies. By the end of the first season, however, I was very conflicted about the show. The old folks home and CDC compound arcs were never in the comic books, who was this Daryl douchebag and why did they spend a whole season at Hershel's farm? I had to sit down and preform some mental gymnastics to try to reconcile what I was watching compared to what I'd been reading for near a decade at this point. The show wasn't The Walking Dead that I knew, it was an alternate reality of The Walking Dead - not the same, but similar. 

With that framing in mind, I could watch the show and not flip every table in the room. But then I read an article that sent me into a spiral of hysterical self-destruction. There was a rumor that, because he was so popular in the show, Daryl was going to appear in the comics. I lost my shit and sold off all my Walking Dead comics that very day at a second hand book store. I called it quits, because I sure as hell wasn't going to be putting up with that sort of shit. The comics dictate the show and it's a one way street, the show *never* has an effect on the comics.

I continued to watch a little bit of season 3 with some mates and they were all ranting and raving about how evil the watered-down TV version of the Governor was. I'd just seen what Negan had done to Glenn at this point though, so I wasn't that impressed. Eventually I sort of drifted away from the show, I'd watch the odd episode here and there but I stopped following it. Over the next few years I'd periodically get bored and discover that another season had finished, so I'd *^#GO DOWN TO THE STORE AND PURCHASE A LEGITIMATE COPY(%@ and burn through it in a weekend.

When I stopped watching it weekly, and started watching it all in one go, I realized that it wasn't actually that good. It meandered a lot, the characters made stupid choices to drag out the run time and create false tension, and worst of all it relied upon cliff hangers. You become immune to cliff hangers when you can skip to the next episode straight away. As I watched successive seasons, I realized that the show wasn't popular because it was fantastic quality television, it was popular because all these cliff hangers allowed people to have water cooler talks. 

The show has been designed to get people talking about it. People watch an episode and then they're wondering what's going to happen next week and they're hooked for that next episode. They're all talking about it with others at work or at school, then someone else walks by and wants to be included in the conversation, so they go check it out and then they're hooked as well. The show itself is a zombie virus, it infects these brain dead bandwagon riding morons who just want to be part of the cool crowd... and it's not even that good!

Now, you could say that I should just been happy that the show is so popular and be content with the fact that something I love is gaining so much success. But the truth is, I was copping shit from people for liking zombies and the end of the world way before The Walking Dead came to television. Then suddenly when it became the new hit thing to watch, those same posers turned around and said it was the greatest thing ever. And I'm supposed to be cool with that?

People were hysterical when Negan showed up on the show, wondering who was going to die. And because it was the very last episode of the season they had a loooong time to wait to find out who it was. It was designed that way, to get people talking and to create a lot of false hype around the show. I know that sounds obvious, but just think about how much the show relied upon that. When season 7 finally arrived in October of 2016, there was all this shock, horror and revulsion at how brutal the murder of Glenn was, something I'd experienced four goddamn years earlier at this point. After that initial reveal though, the shows viewership plummeted and people were rushing about trying to figure out why.

I'll tell you why, and it wasn't just because the reveal could never match the over-inflated hype that'd been created. What else started in October of 2016? Westworld! It was fresh, it was new and it had cliff hanger reveals all of its own. And all those bandwagon riding zombies migrated from The Walking Dead to Westworld, because that was the cool new thing to be talking about. If you wanted to be part of the conversation, part of the in-crowd, you had to be watching Westworld. People were already watching The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, they didn't have time to religiously follow a third series, so one of them had to go.

And that's the crux of this "Golden Age" of television, it's not about creating good stories, it's about creating social interaction around mediocre stories through a zombie plague-like following. The people who stopped watching The Walking Dead and started watching Westworld were never fans of zombies, or of the post apocalyptic genre, they were just doing what everyone else was doing. They're literally the worst incarnation of those who ride the bandwagon, or the hypetrain, or whatever other euphemism you want to use to describe their sheep-like mentality.  When Westworld is a few seasons in and another show is released, they'll jump tracks like they did last time and go where the cool kids are.

The Walking Dead show was never that great, it was designed to be just good enough to watch and to keep people guessing in order to draw a following. Great TV shows these days often get cancelled after their first or second season because they focus on the story instead of drawing a following on social media. In a world of Facebook and Twitter, it's all about how many people are talking about you and not how good you actually are.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate The Walking Dead show... mainly just the people that follow it. I think the show has really great cosmetics/prosthetics for the zombies and their use of suitably post apocalyptic backdrops has gotten better as the show has progressed. In terms of characters introduced in the show that weren't in the comics, I actually really like Alanna Masterson's character Tara, and Tyler James WIlliams' character Noah. So it hasn't all been bad. It's just a shame they put so much emphasis on being cool and popular, it could actually be a really got show if it wasn't so vapid. 

So that's why I, a long-time massive fan of zombies and all things post apocalyptic, don't watch The Walking Dead. I might go back and get all the comics eventually, but only after the zombie herd has shambled onto something else.