Some gushing about Bioshock Infinite Part 1 (some synopsis, no spoilers)

When was the last time that I spent the vast majority of three nights and two days straight playing through a game, then almost immediately restarting it a getting halfway through before I had some pesky responsibilities force me to lay off for a day?  Not since the glory days of gaming when I was blessed with more free time, and Half-Life 2 came out.  In fact, I would need to step back a few years to the release of Portal 2 since I so eagerly threw my time and undivided attention at a game.  Smart, unique games of quality are just too rare.  Maybe Valve raised the bar too high, or companies have found that depth, plot and intelligence aren’t necessary to sell millions of copies if a game looks good and you can blow things up.  I was prepared to curl up like a halo and die of boredom on the battlefield, while the gears of the god of war performed black ops around my mass ineffectively.  Then, a righteous hand reached out and pulled me from the murky depths of apathy and showed me the light.  I was elevated above the mire and into the heavens. And lo, my inner gamer was reborn.  Praise be to the savior, BioShock Infinite be thy name. 

Sweet Jesus, this game was conceived immaculately.  It allows the player to quite literally ascend above many of the overdone sins committed by most big ticket games.  I once was mute, but now can speak:  That’s right! In BSI you actually play as a character with a name, mysterious backstory, and personality, as opposed to a silent, faceless surrogate. Mysterious Booker DeWitt, Wounded Knee veteran and grizzled gun for hire, rises into the heavens to find a mysterious girl in order to resolve a mysterious debt.  But first, he must accept a baptism that is in no way a metaphor.  The good reverend gets a bit overzealous with the waters of life, however; but thank God, Booker rises again in a veritable Garden of Eden.  Ok, you get it, there’s some religious imagery going on here. He finds himself in a floating 1912 city that never was or could have been, straw hats and anachronism as far as the eye can see!  It’s fucking gorgeous.  The wholesome folk that walk the streets worship the founder of floating city of Colombia, Zachary Comstock, as well as the founding fathers Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin.  Apparently is Comstock a prophet, in addition to being such a fervent religious zealot, racist, warmonger, and believer in the founding fathers that he was too American for America.  He led his followers into the sky and gave a red, white, and blue middle finger to the America that wasn’t American enough. 

So Booker sets out in the city made of fuzzy sunshine and angel farts (Beware Doctor Who fans, this place is littered with angel statues. It somewhat ruins the otherwise picturesque aesthetic if you suffer from PBTSD – Post Blink Traumatic Stress Disorder). He takes in some typical 1912 sights: like robotic horses and freely dispensed potions called Vigors that allow him to levitate people and possess machinery.  Now that everything is lovely, it is necessary for shit to go down, because plots don’t get interesting until shit goes down.  It seems Booker’s arrival was foreseen; and Comstock has made sure to plaster Booker’s tell-tale brand on his hand all over the place warning everyone to be vigilant for the False Shepherd.  It is difficult to keep a low profile when everyone is convinced that you are evil incarnate.  It isn’t long before Booker is made and he fucks things up, because everyone thought he was going to fuck things up, so they attacked him which forced him to fuck things up (Thank you, Yahtzee http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/7105-BioShock-Infinite).  After some guards show up DeWitt turns into Teddy Roosevelt.  The fun, shiny paradise that was Colombia quickly turns into a fun, shiny war zone.  It’s incredibly refreshing to have some time-tested gun violence in a setting that isn’t all broken walls and dirty streets, this alone would warrant at least a partial nod of approval from me, but the fun hasn’t even started yet. 

Columbia’s free-floating buildings are interconnected by a rail system, a piece of infrastructure that someone looked at, and then asked “Can, can I ride that?”  Yes you can, nameless genius, yes you can.  Certain divisions of law enforcement have been issued hand-held magnetic hook devices that allow them to jump on to freight hooks and slide across the sky lines.  Since that idea itself wasn’t quite insane enough, whoever was in charge said “Fuck it, add more hooks, sharpen them, and then add a motor so they spin.”  And thus, the world’s first and only mode of unnecessarily dangerous personal travel/horribly brutal and impractical murder device was invented.  Naturally, the first thing Booker the heretic does is commandeer one of these devices, because why go to a steampunk cloud city if you aren’t going to glide through the air during battles like a zeppelin pirate?  Did I mention there are zeppelins?  Of course there are zeppelins; this game is steampunk as fuck!  I doubt my ability to express in words how exhilarating it is to jump aboard a zeppelin, destroy its engine and dive into the cloudy abyss, watching my own reenactment of the Hindenburg whilst sliding at break-neck speed down a skyrail.  And yes, the first time that happened I said “Oh the humanity!”.  Do you judge me? Fuck you, I’m a zeppelin pirate!  Zeppelin. Pirate.  This is one of the aspects that really set BSI apart from other games I’ve played recently; the steampunk aspect is a functioning and incredibly fun part of the gameplay rather than just an aesthetic choice.  Did I mention that you get to be a zeppelin pirate? When enemies storm out of a building, rather than sighing and preparing myself for a long round of hide-shoot-run-hide-shoot-hide-shoot, I would bellow “Let’s do this!” and take to the rails, raining fire and flying off to punt mo’ fo’s off ledges.

The other aspect that prevents BSI from being a standard FPS are the aforementioned Vigors.  Fairly shortly after violence ensues, Booker is confronted by a “fireman” this type of fireman is a crazy guy in an iron diving suit that SETS fires.  Once this problem is taken care of, Booker gains this ability, because when a mutated mad man that tried to incinerate you drops a mysterious potion in a naked-devil-lady-shaped bottle, you drink that shit without hesitation.  (Side note, the bottles that contain the eight Vigors are all incredibly well-designed and gorgeous.  A skilled glass blower that could make those could make many nerds part with a large sum of money.  Someone get on this.)  So when you find yourself in a fight that is sadly devoid of skylines, you can at least forego the cover-based shoot-out by levitating, electrocuting, possessing, throwing, burning and ramming enemies, or any combination thereof.  Additionally, you can call a murder (+ 2 to wordplay) of crows to peck at enemies for a brief and ineffective amount of time, woo.  Walky, fighty, walky, fight.  You find the girl, Elizabeth, of course in a giant fucking angel statue (Don't look away, don't blink).  I think I’ve already put this down a few times already, but this one is the realest deal as far as gameplay and plot.  This is the one that blows other games off the zeppelin. Elizabeth is the best NPC in any game I’ve played, easily.  This claim can be summed up easily for gamers by invoking the two least liked words in all of gaming:  BSI is essentially one big ESCORT MISSION (listen closely as thousands of gamers who didn’t even read that just now scream “FUCK THAT!”).  Trying to traverse an area with a lump of idiotic dead weight that offers little to no help and is constantly making you fail by failing to stay alive.  Escort missions as a matter of convention are at best annoying, at worst make you want to cyber-punch game developers through the internet (for worst, see Resident Evil 4). 

But no more is this the case! Not only is Elizabeth not a useless meat sack that you have to preserve, she is the main character in the game, often responsible for keeping the player alive as a point of role reversal.  She is a partner, not a task.  She is Booker’s intellectual superior, and in some ways stronger than he is or will ever be.  She asks insightful and important questions while Booker’s dialogue sticks closer to what is probably going on in the head of a lot of dumb gamers, grumbling about getting to the next checkpoint and not caring about the beautiful minutia all around (which will seem so much more significant later).  Elizabeth is a perfect foil for our protagonist, as well as being a veritable instruction manual on how to play the game properly.  She stops and takes in her surroundings, points out secrets and finds money that you otherwise might miss, a constant reminder to not just blunder to the next objective.  You will miss so much that will help to further immerse you in this world and its people if you make it a point to observe everything around you, and piece together plot points via context clues and finding recording of characters inner thoughts.  Not only will she find cover and not die or get taken in combat, she will toss you ammo, and health, usually when you need it the most, an actual life-saver.  Her character model, movements, dialogue and character arc are all but perfection, and do wonders to actually develop a relationship with the player.  This only serves to make the plot better, because we actually care what happens.  Engaging an audience, what a concept!  Let the semi-coherent rambling end for now by simply stating that serious gaming is not dead, it is very much alive in the excellence that is Bioshock Infinite.  Spoiler-ridden discussion coming later...           

Having now reseen all that is to be seen from the first two seasons of Game of Thrones, I thought I’d try my hand at throwing out some predictions about what the main characters might be in for when the endgame comes.  I’m tempted to read the books as I got the distinct feeling, particularly in season two, that there were many details and subplots that were omitted from the show for time’s sake that might help to clarify events and provide more of that great foreshadowing.  However, the publishing of the final books are held up, which might very well threaten the completion of the series.  So, I think I’ll wait until G.R.R.M. is done sitting at a keyboard crackling like The Mad King while he kills every character you like with fire.  Until then I have plenty of other things on my “To read” stack.  But I shan’t let that stop me from wild speculation.  So here’s my take on the survivability factor of our many important, doomed people of Westeros.

House Stark

Rob:  The King in the North and his formidable army of bannermen find themselves the pastrami in the everyone-in-this-area-is-probably-fucked sandwich, the bread slices being the area beyond The Wall and King’s Landing.  He’s lost his only bargaining chip with the Lannisters thanks to mother, and has no idea a monstrous hoard of ice-zombies have mobilized behind him.  He may have the forces, tactics, and scrappiness to take vengeance on King Joffrey, just in time to take a few thousand White Walkers straight up the bum.  At least he has a hot wife to mourn him.  Survivability Index:  There are far worse epitaphs to have than “Killed in battle by an ancient undead frost demon”.

Lady Catelyn: Cat returned from Camp Baratheon with a really promising girl-power duo thing going on with her and Lady Briene: the Amazon of Tarth. She quickly set about ruining that. No one can blame a mother for doing whatever it takes to try and get her children back, but her latest actions have completely lacked sense.  She singlehandedly decided to trade one of the best Lannisters for the worst Stark. That is if Joffery has any sense of fair play or honor to make this trade, and not just have Briene killed and keep both Sansa and his uncle/father.  That’s like betting on her creepy teat-sucking nephew to win a fist-fight versus The Mountain. It’s a bit painful to see a strong, intelligent woman be reduced to such stupidity.  While Rob would never harm her, or let her come to harm, he’d better find a way to control her before her actions start making as much sense as her erstwhile breastfeeding sister.  Seriously, that’s fucked up.  Oh, did I mention she seems to not give two fucks about her youngest two sons getting attacked in her own home by Theon “Please Approve of Me, Daddy” Greyjoy?  Why is she not caring about those children of hers?  Maybe I’m not giving her enough credit, at this point, getting all the Stark children back under one roof will probably be more difficult than getting a Dothraki shower.  At least she knows where Sansa is. I assume from here her actions will only get more desperate as shit really starts to go down. This war will call upon the older generation to make sacrifices in an attempt to protect their children, big sacrifices.  Survivability Index: About the same as her husband’s.

Arya:  No fruit borne of Ned Stark’s scrappy, resourceful, intelligence, dark-haired seed has ripened so quickly as Arya.  Despite her age, she has shown a great knack for recognizing when to run, when to fight, and how to make valuable allies at the right time.  Small, stealthy and able to summon a shape-shifting swordsman with a coin, Arya might become the first ninja in Westeros history.  It doesn’t seem like there are many situations that she won’t be able to sneak or fight her way out of; however I don’t think ‘a man’ can take an entire zombie army, regardless of how many deaths are owed to the Red God.  Survivability index:  You might have some years of living ahead of you, or you might die tomorrow. It depends on how our writer is feeling today.

Bran: The crippled son of Winterfell is on the run.  Ok, bad choice of words. He’s on the being-carried-everywhere-by-a-giant.  Like his previously named siblings, the young lord has shown the remarkable quality to gather a small band of loyal misfits and evade capture and/or death when it seems likely.  Currently on the lam with a capable and vicious wildling, two dire wolves, Hodor and his too-young-to-be-useful brother, Bran is off to do…  something. I imagine he will hook up with Rob’s army and do something significant as a horseback archer/prophet. Or not.  Survivability index: Hodor.

Sansa: I can only try to imagine the secret disappointment Ned and Cat held/hold in their minds for the black sheep of their house.  Two strong-willed, dark-haired, scrappy, honorable people have four strong-willed, dark-haired, scrappy, honorable children…    and one gutless, disgraceful, indecisive ginger.  The would-be princess has spent the entire series allowing herself to be bullied and degraded by Cersei Lannister and her King Ultimate Douchebag fiancée.  She has time and again failed to retain honor for herself or her house, and passed up many opportunities to free herself from her veritable prison in the palace.  She has, in fact done absolutely nothing helpful for anyone in 20 episodes. She has been so pathetic that a man with half of his face melted off pities her.  Luckily, wars are often won by having Stockholm syndrome.   What’s that? Wars are never won by having Stockholm syndrome?  Oh well.  Survivability Index: She said it herself: “The bad ones always live”. By that standard, Sansa will be the last Stark standing.  Or she could die tomorrow, who cares?

Lord Eddard: Still better than Sansa. Survivability Index: Still better than Sansa.

House Lannister

Cersei:  The Queen Regent of Incest and Hateful Eyebrows has excelled thus far at utilizing her family’s wealth and brutal passive-aggression to punish her enemies and keep her children safe and powerful.  A masterful threat maker and skilled manipulator, she has played the game well thus far, however she sits atop a mountain which many strong, violent people wish to climb.  And any eight-year-old can tell you that the first one to the top in a game of King of the Hill is the first to get trampled.  Her intentions are far too transparent, and there will come a day when there will be no King’s Guard or Goldcloaks between her and a hard sword penetration.  And that’s not a euphemism for what her close male relatives already do to her. Survivability Index: At least a few good months left to drink wine, insult people and wait for death by sword, wolf, zombie, or preferably motherfucking dragon. 

Jaime: Every story needs a smug asshole so we can cheer when he gets punched in the face.  The Kingslayer spent most of season two getting punched, berated and left to sit in his own shit, and no one thinks he’s suffered enough. It seems obvious that some kind of treachery will set Jaime free from his captor and he will return to King’s Landing.  At that point we can only hope that the sheer mass of the egos of the complete Lannister family in the same city will cause a black hole of cuntiness that crushes all of them into a singularity.  More realistically, the life expectancy of every cup bearer and hand maiden in the palace will drop as the sharp Lannister wit cuts them all to ribbons, or they look in the wrong window at the wrong time and have a little “fall”. Survivability Index: Far longer than we should be asked to tolerate, and I’m sure he’ll take down someone dear to us viewers first.  But it will be worth the wait when a motherfucking dragon rips him the fuck apart.  

Joffery: Remember when I said “Every story needs a smug asshole”? Welcome to the “Ad nauseum” section of that rule:  King Joffery “Baratheon”, First of His Name, Prick of the Andals and the First Douches, Scourge of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of No one.  The last act of the season for the vicious idiot on the Iron Throne was a hasty, ill-informed decision, agreeing to marry Margaery Tyrell.  This increases the number of hasty, ill-informed decisions he’s made to all of them. He will continue to piss off the entire population of the Seven Kingdoms and the viewership, and his elders will try in vain to keep him in check. Meanwhile, his queen will plot against him under his nose (perhaps he is a Baratheon after all).  Tactics and motivation don’t factor in much here, Joffery will continue to be a horrible cunt, and someone will take him out.  Someone needs to take him out.  I mean it. If there is a single kind or just god, old or new, this kid must die and burn in all the hells. Survivability Index: For fuck’s sake, someone fucking kill this little shit! 

Tyrion: (hold for applause)  The winner of the annual Lannister popularity contest fifteen years running ends season two one a bit of a downer.  He is thanked for his grace under pressure and brave mid-battle leadership with a sword to the face.  Scarred and demoted, where does everyone’s favorite half-man go from here?  Probably something like the Konami code, up and down, side to side, but bringing him all the way down will not be easy.  Tyrion has the intelligence, resources, and humility to ensure a long life.  He protected himself and his most favorite whore brilliantly as Hand of the King.  His worst enemies are his own siblings, which is quite advantageous when you need to know your enemy.  Additionally he can worm his way out of a variety of difficult situations, mainly by convincing brutes, hill tribes and other undesirables with a facility for murder to protect his ass.  The Lannister black sheep fills an important middle ground in Martin’s character structure. Characters like he and Sansa Stark prevent us from making black-and-white statements like “The Starks are awesome and the Lannisters suck”.  Try and argue that point if you want, but for whom will you weep more when they bite it, Tyrion or Rob Stark?  That’s what I thought. Survivability Index: At least two more seasons, if HBO likes viewers and not receiving death threats. 

Tywin: The Patriarch of Dickery has gone soft in his old age.  He has shown trust to his hated, deformed son and kindness to who he thought was a random, out-of-place girl.  He’s openly declared that he’s done with wars after this one, and is concerned only with ensuring that his legacy of douchebaggery lives on, because his old ass isn’t going to make it much longer.  But make no mistake; this old war horse-face won’t go down without a fight.  You should’ve heard the way he valiantly did battle with his enlarged prostate for two hours this morning in the latrine.  Survivability Index: He will go out being cut down on a muddy battlefield, probably making a (somewhat) noble sacrifice.  Or one of his non-dwarf children will get sick of how reasonable he’s being and push him down the stairs.  Too bad Life Alert hasn’t been invented yet. 

The Other Houses and Wildcards

Daenerys Targaryen: The Mother of Dragons finished season two as strong as anyone.  She went from weeping sex token to headstrong Khaleesi, burning warlocks with motherfucking dragons.  We can assume that Qarth is more or less hers, as people aren’t quick to try and fight the one who just locked the most powerful man in the city in a super-safe.  One might think that she could reasonably seat herself on a golden throne in The Greatest City that Ever Was or Will Be with three motherfucking dragons and say “You know what? I’m good.  More wine!”  But come now, of all the words that could have ever been used to describe Stromborn, “content” was never one of them.  And if she could take such a great city as Qarth with a handful of Dothraki and Ser Jorah, how much harder could it be to take King’s Landing?  The series is called A Song of Ice and Fire, this means that there damn well better be a giant battle between a glistening rank of White Walkers and three screeching, motherfucking dragons.  So loot some gold, get some men and ships, feed those motherfucking dragons and get your somehow-not-sunburned-after-a-long-trek-through-the-desert ass across the sea! Survivability Index: Not that great really, she’s a pretty delicate-looking woman.  Look, she’s just standing there looking confident, I can walk right up and stab her.  Here I go.  What’s “dracaris”? The hell does that mean? Dothraki jibberish.  And now to show off my stabbing technique, on three. One, two, FUCKFUCKFUCKFIREFIREI’MONFIREMOTHERFUCKINGDRAGONSFIRE!

Jon Snow: I’ll just wait for the fangirls to stop swooning…    Still?    Oh come on, snap out of it, ladies!  It’s the accent, isn’t it?  Ok, someone throw some cold water on them or something.  Alright, are we good? Everyone’s favorite bastard is a prisoner of the wildlings and is about to be introduced to their king, Mance Rayder, who probably became king by telling them that his name was Mance Rayder.  Because who is going to try and fight someone named Mance Rayder?  Anyway, one of Jon’s comrades from the wall kindly punched him in the face, then took a sword to the chest to make Jon look like a genuine deserter of the Night’s Watch, which is the only thing that is going to convince Mance Rayder not to immediately kill him. Worry not, though, Ned Stark’s super-sperm has proved that it does not give one shit what egg or womb is has to deal with, it is going to make a dark-haired, scrappy, brave kid.  That’s what geneticists call phenotypic dominance, when a sperm dictates to an egg what traits the kid will have (ok, I made that up).  Assuming he can use his inherent traits to not get executed, he seems to be somewhat out of the way of the White Walkers, which I assume are moving south.  And he’ll be alongside the only people in Westeros who are at all prepared to fight or avoid the undead army.  The problem is that we all know John is going to do something bravely stupid, like head south as fast as possible to try and protect his half-family from being impaled by ice-spears.  He really should’ve banged that hot redhead when he had the chance.  Survivability Index: He’ll be fine; the closer you are to danger, the farther you are from harm.  Wait, no, that’s the fantasy world that has a happy ending.  Wildlings, Wildwalkers, Greyjoys not named Theon, Lannisters, Baratheons, motherfucking dragons, these are the dangers he’ll face as he heads south. It’ll be like that Flash game where you fly a helicopter through a never-ending tunnel: you can’t win, you just see how far you can get before you crash and burn. 

Theon Greyjoy: Oh Theon. Theon, Theon, Theon.  All you wanted was some respect and glory for yourself, and you tried so very hard.  If only you hadn’t completely dicked everything up.  You can’t fight, intimidate, coerce, convince, rule, seduce, or properly decapitate anyone, so now you will pay the iron price.  Perhaps your sister or some other circumstances will save you from Rob’s wrath, but then I’m sure you’ll use your new lease on life to promptly dick up something else.  Survivability Index: Probably executed by a Stark, maybe killed fighting alongside his sister, ripped apart by ice zombies has a nice ring to it.  He has one job: die; but he’ll probably somehow dick that up.

Stannis Baratheon: What the hell, man? I mean, honestly, what’s your damage?  You’re shacking up with this redheaded voodoo lady and you father some kind of smoke-monster like this is Lost or something.  What’s up with that?  Am I missing something?  How could you not know that this witch was going to blast something evil out of that demon-vag? Then you use it to murder-kill your brother and take his men. Fine, you know what they say: “It ain’t a party ‘till someone fathers a shadow beast and uses it to assassinate their brother.” So you’re looking pretty good, Mr. Lord of Light.  You’ve got an army and fleet that is more than sufficient to take King’s Landing, but did you honestly think that Tywin Lannister was going to sit around in Harranhal and let you bitchslap his grandson off the throne? I thought you were a good tactician, good tacticians foresee possible scenarios that lead to defeat.  And they consider retreat when they suffer a minor setback, like green fire incinerating half your fleet.  And where was your monster-son while you were losing this battle?  What is the point of turning your sperm into a demon-murderer if you aren’t going to use it in the biggest battle of your life that you’re losing? What the hell, man?  Survivability Index: He will think he has the tactical advantage when he leads a charge with his last 200 men against 5,000 White Walkers. 

Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish: You know your kingdom isn’t exactly on the level when your treasurer is also a pimp.  The Lord of Bet Hedging and Unrequited Love has made out well thus far. He has offered some form of support to absolutely everyone important, and as such has been honored as a friend by everyone who has won/kept power.  We last see him in the throne room stuffing a Baratheon banner up his sleeve while waving Lannister red, as he is granted lordship over Harranhal, because he did something helpful during the battle apparently, though we don’t see him anywhere near the fighting.  It begs the question: What exactly is it about a former fortress that was trashed by motherfucking dragons decades ago that is so appealing to everyone? Tywin Lannister used it as a rest stop/torture chamber for a time, but there doesn’t seem to be anything the least bit valuable there.  Most of the buildings no longer have roofs, or walls, or structure. Is Baelish going to turn it into the world’s largest open-air brothel? Invent the slot machine and make it the Vegas of Westeros?  Either way, he’ll be able to keep it safe from any human armies, since he has many friends in powerful places and deep pockets.  Survivability Index: It depends greatly on whether or not White Walkers can be bribed with money and whores. 

Lord Varys: A question, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a robe, wrapped in a layer of blubber, wrapped in no penis.  He seems to know everything and doesn’t seem to do anything with that information,  he is also never the recipient of any threats, assassination attempts, or nary an unkind word.  He claims to value the good of the realm above all else, good luck finding any evidence to the contrary.  He knows everything about everyone, and the only things anyone knows about him are the things he allows us to know.  He’s like the CIA, only good at his job.  Either The Spider is one of those men that just likes to watch the world burn, or he is the ultimate puppet master who will be the only one left when it all shakes out.  Regardless, his tactics, while smart, lack any sort of courage whatsoever, it’s like the man has absolutely no bal-  oh, right.  Survivability Index: I can only assume that Varys was actually killed years ago by infection after he was relieved of his junk. And now he is a friendly ghost that watches everything that goes on and offers counsel and solace to all the pathetic living who are about to suffer so much.  He does kind of look like Casper…

Ser Jorah Mormont:  The man sent to infiltrate the Targaryen-Dothraki alliance and feed information back to Varys has gone rogue.  Through displays of strength and, perhaps a little something else, Daenerys has won the allegiance, and perhaps heart, of Jorah.  He has since forsaken all from Westeros and has protected and guided the Khaleesi through good times, rough times, really shitty times, and back around to good times.  Perhaps he’s doing it because he genuinely believes in Daenerys and would prefer her side to anywhere else in the realm.  Perhaps he still holds a grudge against Westeros in general, or some people there specifically. Or perhaps he recognized that there was a war brewing; a war where one side would have men and one side would have motherfucking dragons.  I’m certain he will be in the service of Daenerys until he gets cut down, sees her sit on the Iron Throne, or puts a knife in her back to take it himself.  Survivability Index: A knight in a game of chess: takes out some pawns, only to get unceremoniously sideswiped by a queen halfway through.

Sandor “The Hound” Clegane:  A half-faced man with a love of killing, a soft spot for gingers and severe PTSD is now roaming free to do, whatever.  He’s probably not welcome amongst any loyal to the Lannisters, and probably not out to make friends so, what now?  There’s always the possibility of a random encounter with the more important characters.  If he happens to be in a stabbing mood and comes across Arya and her two friends it could end up like a WoW PvP encounter where a level 50 smites a level 2 and two level 3’s just to be a dick.  Baelish’s bottom bitch is a ginger, maybe she tempts the brute and convinces him to be head of security for Litterfinger’s Suck and Fuck Hotel and Casino in Harranhal.  Survivability Index: Will take anyone in a clash of swords, will fare as well as a baby with a rattle against anyone with a torch. 

Briene of Tarth: Westros’s answer to Sporty Spice is sure to spill some blood, but carries a disadvantage that is proven deadly in this game: honor.  “Perhaps one day we will find out” if she can take Jaime Lannister in a fight, I hope to see that.  Too bad that would end with an over-zealous pikeman taking out her knee and ruining everything.  Survivability Index: There don’t seem to be any prophecies in which being “no man” would be advantageous, pity.

A Man from Braavos: I didn’t use the specific names Serio Forel or Jaqen H’ghar because as far as I know there is only one Braavosi in Westeros who just changes his face and ends up in the right place at the right time to help Arya Stark.  Same person or not, shape-shifters that are really good at murder are a deciding factor in most wars [citation needed].  A viewer will be interested to see when and in what form a man will next appear.  A viewer hopes a man can excel at killing a zombie, then another, then another, then another… Survivability Index: Says only one thing to Death: “Not today.” Death replies: “Request denied”.

Mance Rayder: If he’s half as powerful as his name, everyone not named Mance Rayder is screwed.  Survivability Index: The Legend of Mance Rayder sounds like the story of a man who killed everyone.

The Right-Honorable Lord of White Walkers Silas Hok’dorax, Esquire: In lieu of any information about the ancient, frost-wrinkled commander of the White Walkers, I’ve taken the liberty of making up a name and title.  Last time Silas got the bloodlust up, he wrecked so much shit that every human that was somehow still alive decided to build a wall so damn high it makes China’s wall building accomplishments laughable.  Well, a long summer is ending and the Hokdorax  murder-boner is frozen solid again.  In order to throw out any sort of prediction, I will have to make some assumptions, a lot in fact. We can actually glean quite a bit of information from the whole two minutes of screen time the White Walkers get, in the first scene of the series and the last scene of season two that had you screaming “Holy fucking shit! Shit is going down!”.  We can tell that these aren’t your mindless, foot-dragging, brain-eating zombies.  They have the intelligence to ambush rangers, and a clear command structure.  Their lord and leaders ride horses and issue shrieking commands, which the others follow.  Silas looks right at Sam, trying to hide behind a rock shitting himself, and clearly could not have cared less.  This implies that he has mind enough to assess that a weeping fat kid is no threat, and/or marching towards a goal (presumably The Wall) is more important.  The redheaded wildling girl says to Jon of one of her dead: “You don’t want that one coming back after you.”  This implies that when reanimated as White Walkers, the corpses retain some memory or even personality; that a particular White Walker may remember their killer. Or that a dead badass makes a more badass snow-zombie-soldier. This is fucking spectacular and horrifying.  So what does Lord Hok’dorax want?  World domination? It’s hard to imagine such pithy human wants such as gold and thrones are on the agenda of a near immortal yeti-man.  I imagine the plan is more along the lines of: rape everything to death with icicle hate-boners.  Survivability Index: An old wildling joke with a missing punchline: “How many motherfucking dragons does it take to defeat an abominable snow reaver?” I hope the answer is less than or equal to three. 

LoZ Skyward Sword

Taking a slight mental health break after massive amounts of play time racked up on Skyward Sword to write a review thus far. And by review I mean gush about how much I fucking love this game. Ocarina has a metric fuckton of nostalgia points in its favor, but it is in serious jeopardy of being bumped to down a peg as the best Zelda game. There is not a single vista, hill, cloud, stream or structure that isn’t spectacular to behold. As far as environments go, I don’t see any Zelda dev team doing any better. From what I can tell I’m a bit short of halfway plot-wise, and I’ve logged 60 hours. I yearn to explore every bit of environment presented; which is revealed or accessed in a bit-by-bit fashion that never seems to be enough. It’s going to be hard to say much else with any sort of specificity without actually revealing something, so just assume all the follow are spoilers.

The combat controls are as intuitive as ever, but the increased sensitivity of the Wiimotion plus controller (looks much better in gold) adds as true realism to the fights. One of my loves has always been executing a one-man raid on a camp of moblins, taking out scouts with arrows, creating destroying their hovels with some bombs and taking out the last few all at once with the sword of evil’s bane. SS does not fail to quench my blood-lust in this sense, some new and tougher incarnations are litter about in certain areas, and the opportunities for creative kills are still there. But what really gets my inner Leonidas going is the plus control’s call for precise motions in order to execute specific sequences necessary to get the tough baddies down. When faced with upper-tier enemy, a specific sequence of steps and precisely angled slashes are the difference between savagely smearing the blood of your fallen enemy across your face, and removing a sharp implement from your own spleen. This can cause bad timing to lead to untimely death, in fact I found the first two temple bosses to be hard as shit initially. The first is your resident throw-away bad guy Lord Ghirahim, whom you fight right off the bat to: a) introduce him as a character b) introduce you to frustration and c) ultimately provide useful input as the experience makes you a more patient and precise swordsman (which is really the point of the first large section of the game, turning an unsuspecting youth into a chosen hero). I also have to mention this douche because Japan has outdone itself with this villain. I’ve seen plenty of anime, I’ve worn women’s clothing, I’ve seen a man with a big sparkly navel piercing that says “bitch”, this is the fruitiest character I’ve ever fucking seen. Imagine a gay dude, make him as pale a drowning corpse, make him more gay, dress him in skin-tight clothes with a fruity Dracula cape, make him more gay, complete the look with super-emo purple eye shadow and a giant diamond earring, then MAKE HIM MORE GAY. You have just imagined Lord Ghirahim. He teleports, summons a sword and creates other magical happenings with fruity gestures and a flourish of diamond-shaped visual distortions. This is important to note, the diamond magic. This mage is so gay HE’S POWERED BY ARGYLE! Not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just spectacular to think that there is not a non-Japanese person not named Tim Burton who could come up with this character. Did I mention the lizard tongue?

^Proof of concept^

In other combat related observations, the difficulty of the early bosses, while enraging at first really does develop your instincts as a hero. I developed quickly from seeing a giant scorpion emerge and yelling "Oh Shit!" to encountering a huge, four-armed skele-warrior and yelling "Let's do this! LEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOY!" The game then becomes that much more enjoyable when a hideous freak that's supposed to be intimidating starts some shit, I pwn it whilst barely taking damage and I can't help but pump my glorious gold Wiimot "What now, bitch!?!"

Despite looking a bit like rip-off of a certain blue-peopled movie that was a rip-off of Fern Gully, the flight is great. You get all the freedom and excitement you free from previous incarnations of galloping across Hyrule Field or sailing through a windblow sea, only far more hardcore; because your crazy ass jumps off a fucking cliff to get scooped up by a bird-monster that comes at your beck and call to whisk you away. Then once you reach your destination, you jump off your sky-beast and nonchalantly and parachute directly onto the spot you need to be.

And now I rave about the equipment, I'm at the point where I have obtained all possible necessary weapons and utility items, so I can speak to them as a whole: EPIC. Slingshot, which is upgradable with a scatter shot, barely worth mentioning. The bow takes annoyingly long to obtain, but has a charge-up/zoom in aspect that maxes out the amount of fun you can have bulls-eyeing switches and sniping moblins. The lame rope and claw given to us by the Windwaker has been replaced by a personal favorite of mine with nearly the same functionality but makes you fell like Indiana Jones, yep, and fucking WHIP! Grab hooks and swing, grab switches and pull them, steal items from enemies, tame lions, whatever you want, all done with a satisfying whipping motion and cracking sound(complete with a temple and enemy and furthers the fantasy in you head that you are Dr. Jones, I could practically hear Short Round). And now the best: Ever wish you could somehow scout over a ridge or across a canyon to see if you could make it there? Ever wish you could easily grab some rupees or hit a switch that landed on a cliff? Ever wish you could just snip the stem of a Deku Flower or web of a spider and get them out of the way? Ever wish you could call in an airstrike on ranged enemies out of reach? PROBLEM FUCKING SOLVED! Introducing a robotic beetle that's steampunk as hell that launches from your wrist. Scout and hit switches from distance, snip spider webs and send their smug asses dropping to their doom, upgrade the pincers and pick up fucking bombflowers! That's right, friends you are now able to stand in one spot and clear and entire area without taking a step. Instead call on you freaking medieval Predator drone and drop it like it's Libya up in here! Ideal for shutting the hell up some annoying frog-things that like to live in lava and sinky-sand and spit crap at you. It's rude and it deserves hell-fire from above. More later, it's time to play more.

I Think I'm a Troll Now

With more spare time on my hands lately I've spent some time on Omegle. Being able to chat with random strangers, ask them questions and answer theirs provides endless opportunities to mess with others in a consequence-free environment. This seems speak directly to many aspects of me as a person. The smart-ass in me really enjoys giving snide answers to honest questions and turning shameless internet sex talk into a ridiculous situation. The psychologist in me loves trying to come up with just the right phrasing for a question to elicit the reaction I'm looking for, experimental social psychology in purity. Thought I'd share some of the exchanges worth keeping, more later.

Love

"What we actually are is the most humble of all humble things, that in which everything arises. That is the light itself. Nothing is more ordinary, common, everyday than that light; we have known nothing except that. Love is the discovery of myself (the light) in the other; the recognition of the Silence that I am in the other. That is love. Love cannot be given to anyone, you cannot get love; you can't make water wet, because water is wetness. Neither can anyone give you love, no one can receive love from you, you can only recognize love in yourself and you can recognize love in others.

The moment that it happens, there is naturally no other anymore, because you indeed recognize in other, in the most literal sense, notice well, in the most literal sense; yourself. I never speak to anyone except myself, and you never hear anyone except yourself. I cannot underline enough how literally true this is. Love is to recognize yourself in the other, in what you unjustly saw as 'an other' until that moment. But it is yourself that you see there because there is only one Self. There is only one light. There is only one love. The recognition of yourself in the other, of the Silence that you are in the other, of the light that you are in the other, that is what we call love.

It is not a question of giving, it is not a question of receiving, it is a question of recognition."

-Wolter Keers

On Faith in Humanity

It's hard to believe that having some of the most disgusting sentiment I can imagine hit my ears could actually affirm my own faith in humanity. My head is spinning right now and for once I am devoid of any outlet or distraction so the purpose of this blog is once again relevant. A girl came into work tonight, waited patiently in line then hit me with an unusual, but not altogether unreasonable request. She had credit card information written down on a paper, account number, expiration date, code on the back, everything; and asked if she could pay that way since she lost her debit card and had that info from her credit card given to her from her mother in New Hampshire. I didn't have a single reason to doubt what she was saying, being a psychologist (in theory) I'm often fascinated by things like subconscious cues that giveaway liars (not that I'm any sort of expert but I know the basic ones that an expert liar would train against). I gave her the ok and she shopped for about 20 minutes, spending most of the time in the far aisle, dairy cooler and produce cooler (I paid slightly more attention to her whereabouts since she was pretty cute. creep, creep). After ringing her up, I was halfway through entering her information when the perpetually frustrating micro-manager whom I sometimes call boss (you don't want to know what else I call her) sees whats happening and immediately takes up her typical position looking over my shoulder. She demands an explanation, we oblige. She asks the girl for some I.D., a basic precaution I admit that I overlooked, and lets me proceed: Declined. We try twice more with the same result, which visually worried the girl. She asks me why it's not going through and tells me it just worked elsewhere. The only information I could give was the one word the machine gives me: Declined. It should be noted that while we were trying to run the card she took a pair of bottles of Gatorade and other items out of one of the plastic bags I instinctively put them in and relocated them to her backpack which she kept on the floor afterwards.

[Courtesy page break]

My manager informs the girl that we can't let her take the stuff and multiple things happen at once that are a jumble in my mind: my manager clears the register the void the order, the girl leaves (already on the phone to sort out her money problems), the would-be purchase is moved aside, and I hurriedly start ringing up the considerable line that has formed. As I clear the line, Miss Mis-manager decides to scrutinize the declined credit slips, receipt and un-purchased items and discovers two things rung up that are no longer present, two of the three drinks (the two that she put in her bag). I recall watching the girl leave as I'm being cursed for not keeping track of this and "letting her steal" but didn't notice if the timing worked out that she might have taken the time to put the things she wanted to buy back. The boss lets loose a tirade about how the whole story stunk to begin with, how I should've somehow let her know in secret that I had a "suspicious character" in the store and other unreasonable retrospective criticisms that I absorb on a daily basis. She orders the items put back and barges off. The last item I return to the shelf is the third Gatorade in the far aisle, I find the shelf completely full, none missing save the one I'm holding which fits perfectly in the front row. This convinces me of what I had in the back of my mind the entire time I was being given a talking to, she did put them back and before she left. A bit later the subject is breached again and I point out this observation in defense of the girl that has now been vitrified (newcomer to my vocabulary, thank you Portal 2) as a shady con artist; and then the disgusting thing happened.

In response to my emotional and deductive defense of this girl, I'm rewarded with another lecture. I'm told that everyone is a crook. I'm told I'm naive for giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. I'm told I'm to never trust another person with a similar story, or believe a similar "sob story", "I don't care if she cries". I heard this girl vilified alongside greedy telemarketers, Wal-mart, and E-bay (apparently "a scam"). I'm told I won't get anywhere if I let honest looking people take me for a ride. This woman often takes it upon herself to give the younger generation with whom she works unsolicited advice that is always half-baked and usually terrible as far as advice goes; but I found myself particularly outraged that this time her advice was to treat everyone as a heartless criminal waiting to happen. After a brief period of directing disgust towards that entire sentiment, a relieving thought hit me which is what I really wish to share out of this long ass story. I am so thankful that I have faith and trust in my fellow humans. I love absolutely everything that has happened in my life to give me the outlook I now possess. Often I overstate and over think how badly things are when I've had a rough day, and complaining is one of my most indulged pastimes. But I can't imagine how hopeless and wicked the world is to someone who looks into the souls of others and sees only blackness. How exhausting is it to safeguard yourself from the potential attackers that constantly surround you? I choose to automatically trust the strangers I meet everyday and as a result I'm rewarded everyday by the friendly regulars that I know by face and buying habits, if not by name. I don't intend to ever give up this habit. And if a tough life, or long line of hurtful people bring me to the point that I view most people as evil rather than good, I sincerely hope that I am old, cancerous, or otherwise close to death, because I can't see myself living that way. I greet new people as a friend by default and thereby I am, more often than not, received as such. I wouldn't have it any other way.

A Haiku About Serotonin

Happiness hormone

Your absence makes me depressed

Hooray for Zoloft!