The Real Thematic Core of Indie Gaming Darling Outer Wilds

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Outer Wilds is a game that respects your time and your curiosity. Though I’m going to argue the theme is letting go, you should hold on to the experience of playing it yourself before knowing anything and spoiling it! Stumble around blindly like a cool 4 eyed space amphibian, then come back for some thematic discussion.

 

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Hell and Death and Hell in 2017

With everything getting worse and worse and worse, this year was full of fun entertainment products and 'silver linings' that can only be seen clearly in times of darkness, like the edge of the sun during an eclipse. If you thought 2016 was like a dystopian nightmare, 2017 was a goldmine of things verging way past the noxious, from the full-time resurrection of open Nazism to evidence (that never really leads to action) that foreign actors had meddled in other nations' elections. Democracy was already an outmoded farce facing skepticism from even the most foolish fools, but even with the cover blown off things could still get darker and more scary. Amazing.

Technological progress continued onward, but with the exception of a self-landing rocket and reusable cargo spaceship, and maybe electric cars (more than 100 years of not quite getting there), most technology was either frivolous or part of some nightmarish scheme to either replace or fully entrap humanity. From drones to 'assistants' the technology industry seems to want everyone to rat on themselves constantly, and warnings about hackers are just the tip of the iceberg when you consider that everything you do is already probably monitored. The dystopia is real, and we're just waiting on the cyberpunk aspect.

Sexual misconduct was a hotter topic this year than most, thanks to the revelations that just about all of your heroes abuse their power and lack the self-restraint we typically expect from adults. That actor/comedian you loved? Yep. Though that's kind of a good story, ultimately, that outside of financial fraud and rigging elections and misleading the public, at least the people who are sexual predators get their comeuppance. It's just, yeah, it had to take down at least one man you thought was cool. Solution: stop thinking men are cool, like nearly a full quarter of North America's women already do every day, just to protect themselves and not even from spite (which would be equally righteous).

What could be more fun than the above? How about a proxy war that's created a cholera outbreak and killed thousands of children? Not sad enough for you? Record numbers of murders in South America due to That Drug Problem still not being solved. If you liked natural disasters, this was a fairly average year for those, and they still managed to be astoundingly destructive. Got any more wars, 2017? Of course you do, we're just too exhausted to pay attention anymore.

On the internet I'm sure a bunch of things happened. People complained. Hashtag slacktivism continued to invalidate its own arguments, and the all the nefarious and alienating filter bubbles (which both me and Barack Obama warned about at different times, with my warning several years earlier) came to the surface dispensing gallons of fetid gaseous idiocy and half-baked numbskullery. Delightful! The internet didn't get any smarter but it did manage to make most of us even more stupid and lazy. Plus the internet of things... what a dumb bunch of dumb dumbness. The field of product design managed to shit out a billion turds that all inexplicably connect to the internet to do stupid shit, spy on you, fail to work, and brick once they're no longer supported. And they said the Snake Oil Salesman died in the 1920s!

And if that wasn't enough, the future of America's internet (from which providers across the rest of the free world take their cues) got extremely uncertain and frighteningly extra-dystopic. But 'feminism' was the word of the year, so I guess it all balances out with social media battles being won at the cost of all freedom, decency, and promise in the future.

It was, however, a great year for music, with literally too many future classics being released. So many, in fact, that we'll have trouble looking back to them simply because there were so many and music is such a fractured field dominated by large entities overshadowing interesting efforts from smaller ones that it's like... hell man. It's like hell out there I'm sure.

Essentially, if you were what's referred to as a normal person, odds are this was a year where you went along feeling like your day-to-day was unchanged but everything around you was a nightmare. So you retreated into the filter bubble. Who could blame you. You retreated into whatever refuge you had and waited for the bad dream to pass, for the world to awake and come to its senses. But it didn't. So then you probably decided: well, fuck it, let's drink. Can't blame you there. Maybe you turned to religion. Maybe you killed yourself. That might have been the smartest move of all, given our dismal outlook for the future.

Well. Here's to another year of Hell Lite, overblown vacillation and unrestrained hyperbole. May 2018 be a little less hellish, and may the screeching outraged idiots and their sinister puppet masters all shut up and let the rest of us can get back to the business of improvement.

Uruguay Stays Strong: Prepares to get Stronger

Whether it kills brain cells or kills cancer cells; whether it's a gateway drug or an end-point drug; whether using it is moral or immoral – Uruguay did the only sane thing remaining after years of overblown rhetoric by anti-drug idiots versus pro-drug idiots, and we can only hope the rest of the world learns something.

For this I commend Uruguay, whatever else their problems and failings. Thanks for having actual human beings in your government and treating your populace like actual, rational, grown-adult human beings as well.

I honestly don't know why neither pro-nor-anti marijuana people in the rest of the world have become so humorless about the issue. What a bunch of stunted robot shits, maybe Bukowski was right when he said weed kills your soul – but he was a soulless drunk himself.

The Walking Dread

I've seen and heard a lot of shit talking about the recent Season 3 finale by a lot of self-satisfied idiots and I've got to say a few things in defense of the show AMC's The Walking Dead really is. I remember when a metal kid tried to sell his collection of Walking Dead comics to me after I mentioned to him I'd seen the first episode. I remember the person who introduced me to the show saying "It's fantastic" and showing me the first three minutes before his wife told him to shut it off so we could watch Secret American Boss or something decadent and ridiculous. Spoilers upcoming.

Whenever zombie media is brought up, I have to mention Night of the Living Dead. It's the de-facto best zombie movie. The only one worth watching twice (except maybe Shawn of the Dead which is worth a second viewing to catch references and if you're really stoned maybe a third viewing). Now, that night didn't spawn the end of the world, the movie resolved in fatalistic horror beyond anything, and before established tropes made 70's and 80's zombie movies predictable and half-satisfying (aside: media consumers are zombies and require FRESH ENTERTAINMENT TO CONSUME - cold corpses just won't satisfy bottomless appetites and stunted taste).

The old irony, which used to be a joke and is now itself a shambling corpse of a joke, is that the zombie outbreak scenario has itself become zombie-like. Except it can't be killed at all. It's been shot in the head (lost cultural relevance and profitability) and it's gone right on (until culturally profitable) without changing too much. Movie after movie, book after book, comic book after comic book, concept album after concept album, and finally TV show. AMC's The Walking Dead really debuted at the exact cultural moment (zombies were trending, yo), and had a sense of grit and human drama that pulled in millions of dedicated viewers, some of which told me how good it was every time I'd see them.

Anyways, after months of not watching the show I got tired of hearing about how good it was. Anyone worth a damn knows about Night of the Living Dead is the only zombie thing that will ever be a timeless classic. I am just putting that out there so that tasteless hacks shut up about the #YOLO of zombie entertainment. However, I am willing to concede certain things about AMC's The Walking Dead.

Firstly, the production values are readily apparent. The presentation is not half-assed, and outright better than most movies. The gore is fantastic and the zombies look downright good. There are no cut corners. It's a fantastic effort on the visual front. Abandoned city scenes in a TV show, shot in an actual city? People listed the production values a lot, 'most expensive show ever' etc... and I can't say how true it is but it seems right. This got people thinking that the show could only go up, as if an insanely talented and well-supported group of people could carry the show just by making it look good.

Second, regarding plot. The show stems from a comic book series but isn't an entirely faithful adaptation. This annoyed some people. Well one of the first things I noticed as I watched the first season was how torturously stretched every episode was. It helped for tension, and undeniably hooked an audience, and was admittedly a smart way to set up a 6 episode season. But let me spoil the show for you: it doesn't stop stretching the plot out. That much never changes, and lots of people who bitch about it now are idiots who never saw this habit for what it was. Entire episodes go by (even in season 1) in which some minor thing becomes a huge deal and everyone talks about their feelings for twenty minutes, then there is some shooting and another surprise. It works fine for season 1, annoyingly enough, but the show was new and there was nothing else quite like it. Gritty.

The characters are alright. In the first season especially you'll find that a lot of time is spent exploring how humans and society would deal with the changes of a zombie outbreak. It's pretty cool, and the characters have depth, so what flashbacks there are are not entirely annoying. Cringeworthy moments happen anyways, but for the most part it's eminently watchable zombie television. I won't say the writing is outstanding but it's better than average. Let me spoil the show for you: the writing never gets good enough to justify the stretching. Some characters get tiresome - most do. There is lots of agonizing and less action as time goes on. Entire episodes go by where maybe three zombies are killed. It takes creeping minutes for people to die, say what they mean, or act on their impulses (hah). Hope you like dialogue exploring the sometimes complicated nature of human interaction in a post-apocalypse.

In seasons 2 and 3 the show has settled as the cast has found safety and settled. This slowed the pace and justified all kinds of stretching and lollygagging. Writers had to keep tensions high and inevitably things got a bit less lively and a bit more sentimental. The most tense moments resolve themselves in multi-episode character arcs that tend to end messily. Well. What are you going to do, write the show out of a corner yourself?

Third: commercials. People bitched about this, especially for the recent finale. Nobody likes commercials, alright already: just cool it. Let me be perfectly clear: you're a stupid fuck if you don't think your outrageously popular and successful show with huge ratings is going to be used as a goldmine by its broadcaster. Got that? A stupid fuck. Success has a price (or rather a value) that is non-negotiable.

Fourth: plausibility. This isn't a can of worms worth opening, even if you were using them to catch the largest, tastiest fish in the lake. But between the inconsistencies, the unrealistic portrayals of gunfights, the loose ends, the implausible locations nobody in their right mind would try to shack up in, the outrageous conflicts... not worth it. This is a show about zombies based on a comic book. I know it looks super real but you honestly can't expect any team of TV writers to actually make it an impenetrably realistic depiction, right? Just use your imagination, don't worry about filling in all the blanks – this isn't highschool, nobody is grading you for being sharper than the total colossal dimwit idiots who write for a multi-million dollar TV series.

Let's fast-forward a bunch. The third season has concluded and anyone who has read a book or watched a TV show could tell you what was likely to happen. The whole season varied wildly from tense and exciting to bloated and mawkish. There were some good moments and the whole thing was building up to a huge bastard of a shootout, despite a determined pacifist angle. This more or less got stretched out over multiple episodes, some unrelated, in which everyone was getting guns and soldiers and preparing for a fight. It was annoying but shouldn't have surprised anyone with the attention span sufficient to remember what the first, or second (holy stretches) seasons were like.

AMC's The Walking Dead season 3 finale wasn't super-duper great by any stretch of the imagination. Lots of things were stretched out and painful, there was a weird bit of genocide, and it didn't really resolve to anyone's satisfaction. It left a lot open for the next season, which makes sense because the show is still zombie-popular. There was some heartfelt stuff, and even if it wasn't satisfying, it tied up a few loose ends. Idiot viewerships missed the point, which is funny but kind of sad, as the show isn't really that complex. In general the show delivered what it was going to deliver, based on past seasons, and it was exactly what the viewership deserved. Comic book readers still look down their noses at it.

The writing isn't total shit and the show isn't a piece of shit. People got really into this, just like with any successful TV show, and it didn't deliver perfection. It didn't quite manage to exceed the hype. Entropy, maaaan. Nothing's going to get better. Your biased memories and hopes are generating expectations that cannot be met by a human production. It can't be easy to maintain a juggernaut of a show like that, either. I'm sure the challenge of getting it done on time and keeping the production team together cost a bunch of really good episodes and a better show entirely. Whatever, though, it's TV. It's TV's only zombie show, so with your utter lack of alternatives you will watch anyway.

There it is. It's good television gone slightly wrong, but it's not a big enough deal and not enough has really changed to the point where you can say it's like old/new Simpsons. Don't make the mistake of looking around to see what people think. You'll know when you watch this imperfect bit of zombie television, guilt-free. Just do yourself a favor and watch the real stuff. Then you'll see that getting upset over the show is hardly anything. The theme hasn't progressed much, if at all, because it is undead. Then go out and watch World War Z, and moan about that too. You'll either ignore it or consume it, but as a consumer either way; and as part of the problem, you're not owed a damn thing.

The Nerd Bubble and its Inevitable Collapse

It seems as if every contemporary identity conforms tightly to passively consuming the dismal excretions of this benighted age. Wherever you look, there are people insisting that what they are consuming is correct and necessary to a happy life. There is always the insistence that 'my kind need X too' (as if it were a surprising epiphany) and other ridiculous rhetoric such as inherent uniqueness. These beliefs have always been enthusiastically embraced, ruthlessly mocked, or completely ignored depending on the relative wisdom and maturity of the observer. There is one sort of contemporary identity that excels at absorbing all others and is generally 'on the make' as they say.

In 2007 there began an incredible shift in the behavior of Ur Hipsters, and/or they were found to possess certain interests and traits that, innocently enough, bordered the long dormant cultural powerhouse sometimes referred to as 'nerd culture'. Suddenly the coolest individual at the bar who liked the right music, played on the most epic amateur sports team, fucked the most attractive people, and partied the hardest was busy painting W40K miniatures as a hobby, played D&D on Sundays, and knew how to code. By 2013 there is a weird sense in the air that 'nerdy' pursuits and habits are necessary just to communicate.

It is as a certain bad 80's movie had prophesied. Like any decent historical inevitability, the rise of nerd culture was complex and in many ways self-fulfilling. The smart, awkward kid getting bullied in the 70's and 80's grew up into a normalized yuppie or yupster or suave po-mo individualist making good money doing engineering work or intense research or crucial computer work. Good or bad, they acted as the lifeblood of modernity. Their progeny, the current generation of 'young nerds' and/or the current 'nerd wave' movement, is an entirely different animal. Arguably, despite the surprising population of well-adjusted and balanced nerds, there is evidence to suggest that the much of the modern wave is quixotic, dysfunctional, and generally disinterested in aging measures of success such as social popularity, physical fitness, conformity, and party intensity.

I always get the idea that the mainstream nerd movement left the rails completely in the early 2000s. I get this idea because of the link posted above, wherein (and you might have missed this) a reality TV show tailored to nerds actually existed. The comicbook-style text boxes were so tasteful, so apt. There never was a nerd movement as such (as it was anecdotal to many other factors), but the word itself has gained such traction with increasing numbers of people, that one might rightly be said to exist at this point. And to be perfectly blunt, from the perspective of the modern identity fetish, it was probably a long time coming. Also completely inevitable. Mind you: I am no expert on nerd history, nor would I ever claim to be one.

North American Politics Redux

That the governments of North America function as ears into which special interest groups pour their bile shouldn't surprise a single thinking person. The best part is the most worrying: there is no more point in even pretending to aim for a government which serves the people. The best one can hope for is a government that serves corporate interest, foreign investment, itself, and its elites and prays earnestly for that service to trickle down into the cracks where dwell the invisible, rotten peons which they have struggled to get away from.

In this era, where the American dream could be dismantled for the pernicious, self-destructive, blind and ignorant mess that it is, there are entire groups of people with frothing mouths trying to blame anyone for the demise of their beloved ideal. Instead of doing the American thing and hardening up and finding something better and smarter, they still worship the car cult, the sprawl cult, and the consumption cult. Bridges are fabricated in China and assembled by foreign labor in America. Nobody can do a goddamned thing about it, no matter how shameful it is, because American manufacturing and labor have been gutted in the interests of iPhones, service-industry, and the downright vampiric finance industry (which, rightfully, is more of a quack cottage industry, as its very nature is antithetical to true industry, which creates products of value).

A populace distrustful of its government moves apathetically to cast its meaningless votes into the mire of corruption and ineptitude that will bring them an even more degraded government. Someone says he doesn't  care about roughly half of a country – well of course, nobody ever has, or will, and if this percentage would only dream the right dream of wastefulness and satiety then they could pull themselves out of poverty and darkness.

Meanwhile democracy is a dead byword, remembered by some, but truly forgotten by all. We have several hundred statist, nationalist, authoritarian and totalitarian pieces of shit running the world. All of them are lackeys to the 'real players' who wish, respectfully, not to be named or pointed at. Yet we consume their products each day. It's harder to farm food than it is to process it into unhealthy products to sell to masses, which it poisons into leprous lumps which look forward only to the faded idiotic 'leisure time' involving yet more consumption and little else.

Big bad governments pass hundreds of laws and amendments in so-called 'omnibus bills' which politicians are too lazy and inept to read and understand. All sorts of toxic policy are passed into law without so much as a cursory glance, and the culprits are paid and pampered, travel around the world, and don't even bother to defend their use of public money or trust in such a despicable way. The instigator even allows that it is undemocratic and scary, but continues doing it anyway, because god damn doing work you are paid and trusted to do. Revolutionaries, under these pressures and more, are still branded as idealists, idiots, and heretics. The placid horde feeds on scraps from the table and licks its chops contentedly, smiling at the less fortunate.

In some considerable and old parts of the world, a potentially faked video has caused a number of deaths because it portrays a prophet in an unfair and unkindly light. Free speech is cited and forgotten, and outrage is the rule of the day. If only outrage was the rule of the day, and apathy didn't rule, where truly important and existential affairs are concerned. As we pass into the twilight of this era, hoping for a better tomorrow, we would do well to remember the words of one J.J. Rousseau. That is, if any among us can remember them.

Recent News Suggests that the Swiss are Idiots Too

Recent news suggests that the Swiss, long known for looking down at other countries for wars and stupid decisions, have a tendency to be pretty stupid, too. Having a rave at a zoo is probably one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of, since any legit raves take place in abandoned warehouses or vampire nightclubs.

Stupid event planning like this is bound to lead to problems. This story wouldn't even have existed in a rational world organized by logical thinkers and responsible adults. However... c'est la vie.

The dummy crowd have claimed another two victims, which weren't even human, at literally the dumbest possible event. There were few other outcomes than dead animals and a shocked public. The User Comment Rodeo v1.2x instantly pinged the most interesting and unthinkable response, which I felt compelled to post here so as to offer context:

This scathing, ignorant, and extremely stupid post basically reflects all the many things that are wrong with the story. These animals didn't belong in Switzerland – at all. But whatever, animals in captivity should be allowed to live fruitless and unfulfilling lives for the entertainment of religious wieners who believe that animals in captivity are precious and that there's nothing wrong with harvesting a few for the benefit of the public.

On the other hand this post is obviously a troll, from the double-single-standard animal abuse refrain that the evildoers be made to suffer to the same extent of their animal victims. Fucking dolphins overdosed at a rave. This world is evidently a few idiots away from a critical mass of stupidity, arrogance, and incompetence that will likely remain unnoticed for years.

Some Swiss losers deserve to have their drugs taken away from them, forever, for attending this insane farce of an event. The fools who organized this event should have their event-planning licenses revoked in perpetuity. The zoo is obviously going to buy two new dolphins and I'm sorry for their loss, even if I don't agree with their policies or whoever vetted this insane rave.

90s Science: Demolition Man vs. Judge Dredd

Science fiction movies in the 90s were all over the map. One year you might see gloriously well-presented dinosaur melodrama, the next year you might give up in distress and learn to appreciate art or literature. In many ways, the inconsistency of the past carried into the future. Some people talked about how the 'movies these days' were full of 'special effects', except in that time special effects were something rare and spectacular that tended to be applauded. That or they were incredibly shitty and overused. In many ways, nearly two decades later, things are similar.

90s movies had a certain quality that no longer really exists in the medium. Many of them were totally unwatchable wrecks, many of them aged horribly, and there was much lazy writing and gnashing of directorial teeth. Such is life. I post here today to summarize my experience with two Sylvester Stallone, marginal, action/sci-fi movies from the 90s. Abandon all logic and subtlety, ye who would be so foolish as to follow me. The movies are Demolition Man (1993) and Judge Dredd (1995).

Demolition Man is an insane movie. Stallone jumps out of a helicopter and explodes an entire building before the title sequence. Everything else after that is awesome, but muddled in a stupid, obtuse, poorly-written version of the future. But none of that matters because that future exists only so Wesley Snipes, playing a gleefully violent criminal, can fight Sylvester Stallone, who accidentally killed 20 children when he exploded the building from the beginning of the movie. Both of them were frozen in time because that's how sentencing worked in 1993's idea of 1996.

Demolition Man has an agenda so broad, and so stolen, that even dogs raise their eyebrows when they see it. The future is a utopia, peace and calm reign, but society atrophies because there is no aggression, no uncertainty, no explosions, and no action. Death is by natural causes, spicy foods are outlawed, and people get fined for swearing. It's the original Campy Darwinism. Sandra Bullock and company say shit in the opening half hour that sounds so hideously, hilariously, clumsily out of place that the only explanation is that a computer was given the scenario and two hours to write it. Apparently only intellectual-sounding words would make the future enough of a gutless wimp for two 90s badasses to thoroughly work it over.  "Info assimilated." "Mellow greetings."

In this future, which exists out of sheer laziness, society is childish, naive, and inherited by total fucking infantile eunuchs with too-large vocabularies. But it's still fun. Things get shot up. Wesley Snipes taunts everyone and shoots everything. The whole plot is a weird mixture of old utopia/dystopia books such as 1984, The Time Machine, and Brave New World mixed with basically every science fiction/action film up to its point. It's not particularly smart, or achingly funny, and the satire is dull, but nobody cares. Ten minutes in you know this movie doesn't care. You shouldn't, the movie told you not to. And there's just enough quality action, gun-play, and insanity that you feel okay when you watch it. This was the model for mediocrity. These days it seems awesome only because our current mediocrity is even more slick and bland than the future proposed in Demolition Man. The future-colloquial dialogue is feeble and stupid while trying to make a point about how weakness, pacifism, submission, and herd intelligence are related. Wesley Snipes' awesome action kicks, dozens of quality explosions, at least ten snappy one-liners, and all the swearing make this movie worth it. 1993 was probably just a simpler time.

State of the Internet

There was a glorious time when lots of TV series were freely available on YouTube, and there weren't just nonsense links. That era peaked maybe four years ago, at this point in time. Piracy is obviously still rampant, but when you could rustle up a genuine, entire series on, at last resort, a Chinese or French video site – happier days.  Now you look around and your feet start kicking rebelliously at the leash. Unboxings, music videos, shout outs, 'viral videos': the entire goddamn world's PR department, is what this nonsense is. Oh look, some Minecraft videos, failblog videos, LPs, bro? Rants? No, YouTube is still of some definite worth.

I have been following at some distance The Young Turks' channel on YouTube; they always play a good hand at the stories they go after. Then there's the University of Nottingham's chemistry channel which is a nice blend of theory and sci-porn (mostly the former, obviously). There are also about 20 channels, each with three or four subsidiaries, which show up regularly (daily) in the top 100 - which as a rule I mistrust. Those view numbers are scary things, when you start thinking about the raw amount of time they represent. More or less, though, right?

Russia Today is always worth watching if you're in the habit of watching news and analyzing things as they are reported: I find that, between all the sources you are given as options, you get some shadowy idea of events, but very sharp impressions from the camera. That sounds in theory like a bait and switch scenario, right? I'm not trying to say anything that's just a consequential thought. Valid question I suppose.

And there are lots of niche channels that could appeal to you on YouTube and a fair bit of actually interesting or informative or pirated (good luck to the cyber detectives) material that can be found with the investment of a few minutes' thorough work.

Clearly, every wise person on earth would've thrown out their books if the internet was really the summit of civilization, so I think that book-apocalyptics stories about the internet, while dismally abundant, are still kind of a trite narrative device. So many noxious books have been printed and sold and hoarded and worshiped that, even counting the good ones, you have a general argument that a lot of paper was wasted and a lot of dirty solitary habits created. Some public habits, entire modes of thought, dependencies: you could go and talk about it.

But I recommend you read about it somewhere, instead.