a mysterious benefactor who communicates though notes or recordings
the player (who the protagonist is aware of and can talk to)
… our hero harnesses the power of:
friendship
their own mind
grotesque physical transformations
Jungian archetypes
a childhood hobby or pastime
literacy
… and contends with fearsome foes via:
battles of wits
match-three minigames
collectible card duels
turn based JRPG-style combat
ritualised sports matches
talking about their feelings
… to overcome the forces of:
social conformity.
institutional racism.
divine authority.
gender roles.
inevitable fate.
Capitalism.
In the end, it’s revealed that:
God is evil
the narrator and/or the user interface has been lying to you
this has all happened before, and will happen again
the player character is secretly the villain
it was all a dream – but not your dream
we’re all just characters in a video game
… leading to:
revolution.
reconciliation of sworn foes.
the hero’s ascension to godhood.
the hero’s tragic but willing self-sacrifice.
escape from the prison of reality.
universal annihilation.
Reviewers harshly criticise the game’s:
awkward controls
repetitive gameplay
over-wordy dialogue
short and linear narrative
heavy-handed emotional manipulation
low animation budget
… but universally praise its:
outstanding soundtrack.
outstanding soundtrack.
outstanding soundtrack.
outstanding soundtrack.
outstanding soundtrack.
outstanding soundtrack.
The fandom, for their part:
become obsessed with an incidental side character
argue endlessly over the appropriateness of popular ships
produce vast quantities of angsty YouTube AMVs
harass the developers on social media
attempt to start a religious movement
draw lots of anatomically improbable porn
… thus cementing their public reputation as a bunch of weirdos. Meanwhile, the much-anticipated sequel fails to eventuate owing to the fact that:
the creative lead has left the gaming industry to become a lumberjack.
the Kickstarter spent all its money on novelty t-shirts.
the source code has been lost in a mysterious accident.
the developers all burned out on console port QA.
the writer and the artist had a falling-out and hate each other now.
the cliffhanger ending was just trolling you.
Given that I’ve received several asks regarding which game this or that line is referring to, I feel I should clarify that no, each numbered entry is not vagueing about a specific title.
Each numbered entry is vagueing about multiple specific titles.
It’s all…for much the
same reason things like rape, spousal abuse and child neglect continue: in the
short term it makes abusers feel good. It makes them feel powerful. It makes
them feel like they matter.
As you’ve probably
gathered by now I really strongly believe that fiction matters. That it helps us to make sense of and articulate what is
right and what is wrong in the world around us.
So I’m going to reach
for Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan
for a moment here and ask you to join me and Spider Jerusalem on a roof looking
down over a riot-
‘It’s a show of power. How dare anybody ignore the authority of Civic
Center? How dare a bunch of freaks try and think for themselves? So let’s go
out and stomp on children, lunatics and incompetents, because by damn it makes
our balls feel big.
I can see a blatantly unarmed Transient man with half his
face hanging off, and three cops working him over anyway. One of them is
groping his own erection.
I’m sorry. Is that too harsh an observation for you? Does
that sound too much like the Truth?
Fuck you.
If anyone in this shithole city gave two tugs of a dead dog’s
cock about Truth, this wouldn’t be happening.’
That right there?
That’s why.
Because some people in
positions of authority are made to feel powerful
in the short term and because society in
general is prepared to look the other way.
Because we tolerate it.
Because we allow our politicians and our newspapers
and our stories to parrot lies about torture’s effectiveness and tell ourselves
that victims deserve it.
This isn’t really
something I talk about on the blog very often and by now (less than 300 words
in) you can probably see why.
This makes me fucking
furious.
And it is on us.
We do this. With our
rhetoric about being tough, with our
disparaging of human rights, with our apathy.
We allow this to
continue. By looking the other way. By pretending some people and some parts of
the world don’t matter. By telling each other that some people are just so
horrible they deserve it.
We support it with our
votes to ‘clean up the streets’ and our inability to believe that victims might
be telling the truth.
Because politicians and generals and police chiefs
know that having a bunch of people from the margins of society beaten up plays
well with voters and because popular culture sends out a constant message that
torture ‘works’, that it’s edgy and cool and what real heroes do when
bureaucracy gets in the way. That message reaches
people with no experience, no training, no effective oversight and tells them
what they ‘should’ be doing.
And their bosses look
the other way or actively encourage it because kicking the shit out of
‘terrorists’/druggies/’agitators’/’heretics’/’any racial, sexual or gendered
slur you wish to imagine’, sure makes it look like they’re doing something
productive.
It’s ‘enhanced
interrogation’ honest and they’re pretty sure they’ve got the right person this
time.
Information is not the
point.
Cooperation is not the
point.
Public safety is not
the point.
Justice is not the point.
The point is power. The
point is that when we’re angry and afraid and feel helpless or threatened we
tend to want to lash out. Little things like right and wrong or effectiveness don’t come into it.
Angry yet? I’m so
furious I could go out and hit someone.
See what I mean?
And the flipside of
that is the apathy. Because wherever you are in the world this is happening around you.
I have close to 3,000
followers at the time of writing. That’s amazing. It’s astonishing and humbling
that I’ve reached so many people from all over the world.
Let me take a quick
little over view of the news I’ve collected this year.
I haven’t actually been
paying particular attention to the news this year and that’s nowhere near my
full list of relevant news reports.
How many of these cases
or studies do you think most people are aware of? How many would they click and
read? How many would they throw their time and energy behind as something to
address and change in their society?
This isn’t intended to
shame anybody or call them out. It’s part of the answer.
We’re responsible for
this. It continues around the world because we vote for it, we pay for it, we
justify it and we look the other way.
Composition can be hard, but learning about it can make the difference between making a great illustration or polishing a turd for not solving initial problems. So here are some tips to help you with that, of course you can always watch the video, and if you like this and want more, you can support me on PATREON
A funny thing about introducing a new queen into a hive that has lost its queen (or one that you’ve killed because her brood was too fighty).
You have to introduce the new queen into the hive with these special queen cages that are stopped up with candy, and are open enough to let the hive smell the new queen, but not open enough that they can get in there and kill her.
Because they will kill her.
When you first put the new queen in she smells like an intruder, but by the time it takes the bees to eat through the candy and free the queen, the queen’s pheromones will have had time to work and the hive will have gotten used to her.
From the outside this kinda seems like:
“Yeh, we were all going to murder you to death before, but we’re full of candy now, so we’re cool. Oh yeh, and how about you be the new queen and stuff. Yeh, that’s cool too.”
beekeeping is really weird
Listen, strange bee queens lyin’ in cages distributin’ candy is no basis for a system of government.
The inverse of corruption: the hero has lost, but in a way that forced the villain to face goodness within himself, which spirals out of control and turns him into a hero more virtuous than the one he defeated.
See, see, what I want to see is a villain who actually starts learning good leadership techniques. His Rule Through Fear just plateaus, so he reads some books and is like, “wait, I can make people do what I want without having to micromanage their personal threats and keep track of their families of collateral? Wait what?” So he starts with his sidekicks, and his sidekick turnover time rockets through the fucking roof when he starts listening to them and giving them benefits. He finds that he attracts the COMPETENT sidekicks instead of the bottom of the barrel, so he wants them around. Then he figures out that if he has competent sidekicks that he can DELEGATE. Oh sweet dark goddess, he can hand over an ENTIRE CASTLE AND SURROUNDING ENVIRONS to his second-in-command, and she can more than capably keep it running while he goes off to summon demons for a bit. Because the sidekicks will stick around, it’s also worth investing in them. He sends them for training, lets them in on his secrets a bit, at that works out SO WELL.
His mind is blown. He is so excite. He might have FREE TIME if this keeps up.
Then he’s looking at the rest of his domain going “but wait, is there more?” He sees that his lands’ productivity is shit. They have been shit for a long time because hey, the beatings will continue until morale improves! Instead, he starts (slowly, wouldn’t want them to think he’s going soft) introducing changes. He eases back on restrictions and punishments just a bit, and rewards those whose productivity improves. A few cycles of that, and everything is working so much better. Sure, he has to deal with people being mouthy and ambitious every now and then, but hey, it’s not like he decommissioned the torture chamber, and he finds that the other peasants are more than half likely to turn the troublemakers in, now, because they don’t want to lose their good thing.
His lands go from “that country is a horrible dystopian nightmare avoid at all costs” to “hey, that country offers some free health care, and if you do a good job, you can advance!” It becomes a land of opportunity in a sea of serfdom and grinding misery. PEOPLE START SHOWING UP ASKING IF THEY CAN COME LIVE THERE.
The Evil Overlord is delighted. New workers! Just…walking in!
Not to mention, his existing peasants? Wow, they must be happy, because the birth rate has jumped sky high, ifyaknowwhatImean?
He slowly figures out that making people happy in all sorts of ways WORKS BETTER. Giving women legal standing and rights equal to men’s allows women with talents to move out of the house and oh, work toward the glory of his empire, rather than being locked into one job. Free childcare holy crap allows any woman in the home to take up an outside job or economy-feeding hobby. Stamping out corruption and crime among his minions makes the people happier and makes peasant productivity soar because they don’t have to worry about getting raped or beaten, while at the same time their towns are safer because his minions now have time to go off killing bandits and rogue dragons and hunting down mad serial killers and shit. Giving everyone a village council that has a say in boring, day to day governing takes all that boring shit OFF HIS PLATE. He sends in his emissaries, tells them to work in his interest but let the peasants hash out the small shit, and 9 out of 10 that works fine. It costs him very little and again, everyone feels INVESTED in what they do. They are now WILLINGLY WORKING FOR HIM.
Public works projects improve roads and bridges as well as providing jobs. Raising wages has the same effect on the peasantry that it did on his sidekicks. Allowing limited ownership makes people enterprising and feeds the economy. Social services allow people who get injured or sick to bounce back and remain in the workforce and society, which maintains his investment in them as well as helping morale on the family level. Trading with his neighbors instead of conquering them is much less resource intensive and maintains his investment in his people. Not to mention, when that one upstart country on his southern border decided that they were going to get in a snit, HIS TRADING PARTNERS CAME TO HIS AID. Not that he needed it, but still, it was nice!
And on a personal level, remembering his SiC’s birthday that once started this incomprehensible but incredibly pleasant chain reaction that has resulted in them becoming an incredibly close and effective partnership ifyouknowwhatImean. Which reminds him: must decide whether his proposal gift should be skull-themed or dragon-themed. I mean, she’s a necromancer, so obviously skulls, but is that too obvious? And she REALLY LOVES riding on the dragons, so…hmm.
Inspiration Haven 