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.    

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...