Comic Disbelief

The original Prophet, if you aren't familiar, was a Marvel comic run in the 90's at the height of comics. Flash forward to 2013, and the boring 90’s comic hero stereotype John Prophet has been revitalized to serve as an avatar in a short self contained story collection by Image comics. Each comic a self contained story that explores the alien, yet familiar. John is designed in each as an avatar in which the author uses to interact with absurdly fascinating alien settings. Prophet suffered from many of the same problems of Prometheus and was originally a rather self serving comic. Neither their characters felt true to themselves, especially in the case of Prometheus, they didn't feel true to the Aliens series. The original Prophet was just a Marvel comics hero from the 90's, boring to put it bluntly. What the original Aliens struck on that the Image revival of Prophet does also, is that good stories tell the truth. It doesn't matter if they haven't ever happened or never will. They're truthful in their own ways.

The problem that Prometheus suffered was that of it’s design, something that it could have learned from Prophet’s short story format. None of the characters in Prophet, or the original aliens for that matter, overstay their welcome. It’s this brevity and simplicity of their brand which allow “Game over man.” to hold more emotional weight than say “Big things have small beginnings.” As much as I rag on Prometheus, I really did not hate it. The film is infinitely recommendable on it’s look alone, and acting was top notch, even if the lines they were asked to deliver weren't. Prometheus just suffers from being too clever for its own good, with the gun on the mantelpiece choreographing every potentially interesting plot twist in the film. From the fact that the Charlize Theron’s segment of the ship is a lifeboat to the fact that Noomi Rapace is sterile, Damon Lindelof set his cast up for failure at every turn.

If you’re going to have a film have a run-time of over two hours, you can’t have a collection of themes which overpower it’s characters. As much as I wanted to love David as an analog for Lawrence of Arabia, the film openly contradicts itself on this front. David’s trajectory of pessimism downward throughout the film, in stark contrast with Lawrence, which begs the question why did they even include that entire theme to the film? Possibly if his arc had been left more vague, these schisms would not have existed. Each Prophet story is like stacks of violently beautiful graffiti painted over a wall, overlapping each other but self-contained shining through like peeling plaster. That is the sort of experience I expect out of Ridley Scott, not a comic book.

As I Lay DS9ing

I want to travel into space before I die. But would you really? This fantasy we often create for ourselves of the stars is so wonderfully represented in Star Trek. Unlike it's contemporary The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine accepts the responsibility of having characters which must accept the consequences of their actions. By having a static location, they bear their burdens when mistakes happen and do not claim to a prime directive. When you contrast the two main bars of the two show. Quarks feels lived in, like a place where people would actually go for entertainment & drink while the bar on the Enterprise feels like the 90's fantasy of a bar on a space ship. Stale in it's simplicity and bourgeois in atmosphere, being more of the embodiment of what most fusion cuisine restaurant look like than an actual bar working stiffs would frequent.

From the original pilot it is clear the intention of the show was to establish a moral progeny, which eventually led the show to becoming the most pious & politically charged of all the Star Trek shows I have seen(all but Voyager). The scene which most illustrates the length at which they go would be Quarks critique of  liberalism. With that scene Armin Shimerman owned his role as Quark, which is so uncharacteristically Star Trek in nature, by being so good. The show continues to critique the liberalism present in Star Trek and in doing so divorces itself from the rest of Star Trek. Instead of presenting the fantasy of traveling the stars, DS9 constructs a harsh reality of living among the stars with the inevitability of war.

From the Founders Melian dialogue-esque view toward other races, to the existence of warships in the Federation to the way the show dealt with PTSD, DS9 is unmatched when it comes to shows in the Star Trek universe in covering the human condition through war. It's through these hardships and the fact that they must accept the consequences of their actions that divorces the show from the usual fantasy of Star Trek & delivers a transformative story. The philosophical difference between TNG & DS9 is the difference between a show that always has a good ending and a show that can end tragically.

When viewed in aggregate after I've finished both, the difference in practice is profound. While the former was clearly influenced by television at the time, it's clear to see that the latter was trying for something new for the time that's currently in vogue by shows like Breaking Bad or The Wire where there is true character development. The dynamic between characters on TNG is stagnate, few characters end the show in a different position from whence they started. The irony is that despite traveling thousands of parsecs across the universe, the TNG cast generally leaves the show in the same place that they started. While in DS9 all the universe's a stage, and all it's cast mere players, they play many more parts & trek so far without travelling but a few parsecs from whence they came.

The Ouroboros & the Soapbox

After reading @botherer on twitter mock a blog post from Sean Malstrom which attempted to critique his post on Rock Paper Shotgun I decided that I too shall write about this topic. There has been a steady rise among the enthusiasts press in games to write and talk about the plight of women depicted in games and women working in the industry itself. Good for @botherer, the blog in question sounds as though it was written by a lunatic, but the recent rise of dedication to this one topic for the past year or so has worn thin. I don't know if it exactly started during the #1reasonwhy campaign or when Anita Sarkeesian got her kickstarter funding, but since about a year ago gaming enthusiasts have been writing and talking up a storm about this great injustice. I mean that without an ounce of insincerity, but it's exhausting.

I never knew Machinima was hosting a video on their site of scantly clad women slapping each other on stage until @botherer wrote about it. As an aside, I would love to find out how many people are actually consuming, or even have knowledge of such media before it's added to such a piece. The vast majority of the time I've never heard about something in gaming which is considered sexist until it's plastered on every front page of a gaming enthusiast website. From the number of people in the comments section who write of their support of such articles I assume that I am not the only one who doesn't enjoy consuming such media. The continued coverage on this one topic is really exhausting, and making me wish more outlets would cover other worthwhile topics. Such as accessibility in games. Something @botherer covered earlier this year but very few have. Probably my favorite website to consume gaming content is Giant Bomb, which has two gaming enthusiasts which are color blind but have run no stories on accessibility in games.

As a member of the Giant Bomb community since it's conception, and as such I've had to now endure the comments section Patrick Klepek's #1reasonwhy pieces and let me tell you, it's exhausting. It's exhausting to have something which you love be torn apart by certifiable idiots who deny the existence of sexism and misogyny in every instance. Oddly enough, it's actually more exhausting having to read the torrent of comments telling the idiots why they're wrong and why such things are important. As someone who loves Giant Bomb and just loves reading/playing video games, the most exhausting is having to see the chat section explode whenever Carolyn Petit talks about a game on the Giant Bomb/Gamespot livestream. It's what I described in Patrick's post but worse, and it's a travesty. As worthwhile as it is to read @botherer's enthusiasm in tearing apart the problems of gender present in games, I actually enjoyed much more his writings on Experimental Game Workshop earlier last year and was disappointed there was no such in depth equivalent for GDC. Same goes for Carolyn, the only thing I can think of when I see the chat section explode when Carolyn appears on the livestream "Can all you idiots just shut up and listen to her talk about Luigi's Mansion, she's quite meticulous?!". As wonderful as it would be to engage in the chat with the legion of defenders of Carolyn, I can't help but think that's more destructive than the trolls because it detours the conversation away from the games and it feeds the trolls. At the end of the day I just want to talk about video games the internet, and watch intelligent people who can be funny do the same. The rest is secondary.

Obsessively Lame

A few weeks ago I came across a rant Edward Kelly wrote regarding, to summarize, a fraternal stupidity among many men(& some women) when talking about sexism & women’s rights. Much of it I can agree with off the cuff, whether it’s the stupidity of the Men’s Rights movement or the absurdity of some Republicans insistence that there is no difference between birth control & abortion. The rant left me conflicted due to how broad it was until later in correspondence with Edward, he reiterated his rant to me by clearing up some of his positions & explaining to a greater degree how they connect. In our email I explained to Edward roughly some of my experiences with sexism where I live, and he asked me to write some more about it. So here we go.


I grew up most of my life in Pensacola Florida. I have been told it is America’s first (un)official settlement, whatever that means.  At home I was told from a young age I’ll have to get a high paying job to provide for the lady in my life, enough to the point that she would never be expected to enter the workforce. Among my male peers growing up, a veneer of reciprocity with the opposite sex often times devolved into a zero sum game. That’s what happened when women were present, when my male peers thought women were out of their reach they let their sexual frustration go. Whether it was the tired joke of “leaving your signature” or any other number of unnecessary comments, it was all just lame.


This archaic chivalry I was being indoctrinated with at home and the stale comedy of my peers, all just came off as lame. The starting point among my family and peers in relation to the opposite sex is to treat them as objects. With my family, a woman is no more than a hobby, and among my sexually frustrated peers a woman is no more than a convenient release for their frustration. This wouldn't have been an issue growing up, if not for the sheer volume of it. That’s not to say I can’t be lame, or a woman can’t be lame to a dude, but the sheer volume of it is taxing on anyone.


I guess this is where you tune out, but not everyone was so lame growing up. One person in particular, my English teacher Mrs. Brown sophomore year, was probably the most instrumental person in convincing me that sexism was lame. The first day of class, one of my peers made a comment about her ass. Seeing a beautiful lady such as herself tear into the degenerate was both amusing and built a respect for feminism that I would carry to today. My prior view was that all feminists must have been crusties because that is how they were always portrayed to me, but here was an intellectually stimulating and strong female voice who just was tired of people being lame. Or at least that’s how I perceived it.


Since high school to today, the tools at which my peers and now the internet community at large have to be lame have grown astronomically. Whether it’s the absurdity of comments on any article/video now on the internet, the prolific rise of reply girl to infiltrate suggested searches for just about every popular video on youtube, or hearing about fellow college age males filming their sexual exploits with Go Pros then uploading the on the internet. It’s all just fucking lame, and in the latter case potentially illegal. The anonymity of the internet has taken the once local problem I had in highschool, and globalized it. Now they can all be lame, in aggregate, and I’m tired of wading through the shit. Being in favor of feminism is not about being a trumpet for equality, to me it’s about not being lame, and potentially supporting reproductive rights.

Game review: Congenital hindsights and neurotic dialog with Borderlands 2

In a systematic manner, Gearbox the developers of Borderlands 2 have iterated on their originally revolutionary idea, and conceived a sequel that despite a ton of polish doesn’t quite hack it. The game is riddled with the worst of MMO game design, ie yo-yoing, and contains shared loot which is about as old-fashioned of a farce to co-op RPGs as you can get. These hindsights do not ruin the game, they just make the experience of co-op undesirable since the enemies scale to your level. You are better off hoofing it alone for this loot, which make the arbitrary MMO architecture seem that much more inane. The entire time playing Borderlands 2(72 hours at this point) I thought to myself how much I took Mass Effect 2 for granted.

When you revolutionize a genre, like Mass Effect did with bringing the first person shooter to a neglected genre, I expect the polish and for the concept to continue evolving and expanding. Mass Effect 2 had all those things, Borderlands 2 sadly does not, despite the fact the first game was such an revolution. Evolution is not a revolution, my quibbles with the new Borderlands would be negated if I felt they brought enough new to the equation this time around. Shared loot and yo-yoing would be small blemishes if they had done more than polish the first formula. Some might say well the plethora of voice acting was that evolution, something they clearly invested a lot of resources but that is to me holistically bad with few spots around the edges that were funny, my favorite being the bit that Salvador hums sometimes whenever he uses his skill. The funny parts are less than 5% of the overall, which is just not funny, which is a real shame. This on top of the fact that it's full of enough dumb internet humor that I actively turn subtitles & voice over off, with plenty of immature neurotic story missions which are cringe worthy.

Borderlands 2 story feels like, much in the way Darksiders series have, a cobbled mess of a fever dream a kid had in middle school. I’ve seen various people complain about the game's live action trailers, that they should just show their game, but then I’m reminded of seeing my nephews watching the trailers. As soon as it was done they wanted to re-enact the trailer like it was a game of cops-and-robbers, making me think that while labeled mature, Gearbox clearly knows their biggest audience is pre-adolescents which shines through in the dialog. Borderlands in the end is a series that is really good at doing one thing, bringing the Diablo loot formula to a FPS, but this revolution has made it lethargic to progressing past that formula and becoming it's own.

The veil of ignorance and steroid usage in sports.

Yesterday Lance Armstrong, the 7 time winner of the Tour de France, released a post on his website which basically amounted to him saying enough is enough with regard of the USADA's attack on his character. This is an opinion I've head for a while, but never articulated it here so I will now. It shouldn't be the business of the federal government to regulate doping in sports, and the sports themselves should not ban the use of these substances. In every argument against performance enhancing drugs, the two pillars of the argument which hold up the entire argument are as follow: these substances are detrimental to the athletes health and they give an unfair advantage. Those two arguments are oblivious to how fairness operates in our society, and for that matter are missing the point in regards to creating a playing field for players which is as fair as possible.

It's no secret that performance enhancing drugs are detrimental to the users health, but so is all athletic competition to begin with. This glass house that is caring for the athletes health is quickly shattered when you take into account violence is a quantifiable interest which drives spectators to the sport to begin with. As long as any sport has an audience, Pollice verso will exist to obstruct this idea that you the spectator actually care more for the athletes well being than your own entertainment. The other pillar, the one of 'unfair' advantage misses the point to an extent even greater than that of the previous. Where is the cutoff for what we deem as spectators to be unfair? In Hockey, Baseball and Soccer are we going to change the cutoff date so that some kids who are older at time of the cutoff aren't given an 'advantage' over other kids? Are we going to make all sporting equipment both in practice as during play standard so that some players aren't given an advantage at any period in their development? Are diets now to be regulated?

This idea that we can create equality by starting at the top only exasperates the greater injustices that I mentioned before. Far more children are given unfair advantages early on in their development than these athletes competing at the top, despite this we've created agencies  like the USADA. No federal agency is large enough to tackle true unfairness in sports, so creating one such as the USADA is a superfluous exercise. It is an exercise that would seem to exists to inflate the egos of the spectators, the fans who have nothing to bring to the sport but everything to do to constrain the athletes freedom. True achievable justice lies in not restricting the athletes but giving them as many possibilities at all levels of class or income possible to achieve their desired goals within the rules laid out on the field of play, not restricting what they do off it. If we are to set out in achieving the improbable task that is creating an equal playing field, it is at the bottom not the top where we should start.

The principles that articulate the legitimate rules of sports should be those to which YOU would agree if YOU did not know which role you were going to play. The inequalities that exist and will persist should be arranged so that they benefit the least advantaged members in the sport. The pervasive nature of top athletes all being born in the same month, likely due to cutoff time for when those sports are played is a quantifiable injustice that objectively gives a greater 'disadvantage' than that of performance enhancing drugs because it gives more athletes an advantage. Despite this, we've spent millions of tax payers dollars to go after athletes at the top level of play, when that money could have been better spent in improving athletic programs fairness at the bottom. We've created a sporting environment where trading freedom for utility is a norm, and to me that's disgusting. The only purpose it seems to serve is to inflate the egos of those who spectate.

Classicism in an Age of Empirical Synth

A week or so ago I was reading twitter and I ran across something Robert Ashley said, "It's interesting that their(Animal Collective) influence is about sound more than a particular set of chords or a way to dress, unlike say Weezer in the 90's." Which I promptly agreed with immediately, but it got me to thinking about the subject harder for the next few days. In the time Animal Collective's Today's Supernatural which only lead to more contemplating. From the late aughts onto now, the distinctive sound of Animal Collective's music can be heard everywhere. In the 90's, Weezer's success could be also seen as the successful creation of a brandscape by MTV and the major labels. Inversely with the rise digital downloads, both illicit and legal, you see the dividing line between 'songs are upstaging performance pieces' growing. If you haven't listened to that 99% Invisible Episode, you should, Jon Brion gives a short musicology course on the difference between songs that are easily transmutable, say in a cover between songs that are about a specific performances.

Anecdotal evidence in my opinion of this can be seen by just adding up the number of Skillrex covers on youtube compared to Animal Collective covers. In terms of popularity Skillrex and Animal Collective are both comparable, but Skillrex has about 926% more search results in terms of covers on youtube. Animal Collective while being a band primarily about the performance pieces, they're making a much more lasting impression than Skillrex by having the 'sound' of their music proliferate in other bands. The democratization process inherent, unlike say a band like Fishbone, is actually working to reign in the chaos of their music. Overtime their releases have stayed eclectic, but become proportional and effectively more legible. Some might say the slow shift towards approachability detracts from the experimental nature of the past releases by Animal Collective, but to me it just shows they're coming of age. They've developed an iconic sound, now all they're elaborating on that sound by making it more accessible.

That brings me to my favorite album of the year(so far), which is I Come to Shanghai's Eternal Life Vol II. The band only has two members, Sam Frigard and Robert Ashley, which are obviously influenced by Animal Collective. The album to me does two things exceptionally well. For one, it flows exceptionally well collectively and while it's peaks do not reach my favorite album last years peaks, overall sounds great. Secondly, the vocals are really on point with this record. At times, you got Robert leading vocals in a way reminding me of a passive aggressive Stevie Nicks cruising on less cocaine and more good vibes, which in the end with any record, what more do you need to chill too?