Growing up Gamer

Ugh, it's hard these days to have a sustainable gaming habit.

I've been listening to all these gaming ads claiming to have "the most addictive game ever!" which is like saying "this will suck hours of your life away that you'll have nothing to show for, never get back, and will ruin your body!" Sign me up for that.

Let's start at the beginning...

My first experience with gaming came at the tender age of Five, when my brother had an Atari I wasn't allowed to make any sort of contact with.  I remember the Robocop game for it specificaly the way Robocop looked when he died.  I did not say my brother was good at this game.

This all changed soon, when we got our first Nintendo Entertainment System... that big grey box.  I can still hear the sound the power button made... We had some games for it, not many.  I had Mario Bros., not my favorite. We had Double Dragon, one of my favorites of all time.  Slowly but surely we got a whole slew of them up and running...

... then we got it.

The Legend of Zelda.

I have never loved a game so much in my life.  I sucked at it, it was what? Five? Six?  I could hardly figure out how to put items in his hands... but I loved that game.  I spent hours just wandering in circles, trying to find things.  I descovered more secrets there by just aimlessly ambling about.  Nothing compared, I practically ignored the other games.

I played The Adventure's of Link as far as it could go before it made no more sense.  I played SNES, to the point where  I burned out two controllers.  Then came the magical N64.

Zelda came out in '87, '86 in Japan, and basically it made me the same age as Link.  Ocarina of Time came out in '98, making Link and me about the same age.  Unlike before, I was old enough this time to play this game like it should be.

... and I did.

I beat every single minigame and boss, got the Biggoron Sword, and beat the entire game without using a shield.  Water Temple?  It was my bitch.   Sure, I played other games, beat them.  Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Turok, Duke Nukem, Jet Force Gemini, Rocket: Robot on Wheels, Pokemon, Star Fox, Megaman (1-X, and Legends, and 64), and countless others.

Then, PS1, Xbox, PS2, the 360, computer games... World of Warcraft, I played that game for almost an entire year, day in and day out.  I had nothing else to do.  Played it throughout college, and for years afterwards.  The entire time I've known my wife.  Also with a slew of other MMOs, and still console games.

Now, I'm sitting here, looking at the next new thing and wondering if I want it.  Sure, MMOs are fun, but what's the point?  It's constant work with no reward, I gave up on that years ago, I now usually play ones like Guild Wars 2, where I can just play it as if it were a console game with good AI, because I do nothing but PvP there.  That's it, and I enjoy Skyward Sword more.  Hell, I'd be playing it right now if I didn't have this to do.  

I have done all this while maintaining an active social life, exercising, learning new martial arts, writing half a dozen books (two published, a third on the way, and five more midway through), and I look back and wonder... I've grown up a gamer, but what will I do now that I'm here?  I forgo labels such as "Hardcore" or "Casual" since those are stupid and used by stupid people.  If by not playing 30hrs a week, I'm Casual, but still rocking you in Left4Dead... you've wasted 30 hours of your life.

I think this is where I leave myself; done with the game that require me to put in a hundred hours of effort to "play".  Why should I spend my days fighting tooth and nail for a shiny new armor that someone with nothing else to do got a month ago?  Why raid the same instance over, and over, to get a shiny hat that will help me raid the same instance a little better.

I think I am done with MMOs, not because I was addicted, or had problems functioning... but because there's much more to do than play the "You must be this awesome to see the fun part" game.

... but there's a new Zelda game coming out, and yes, I will be getting it.  Also Pokemon, because they are fun.  Fun is that thing we used to have before someone convinced us games were about hard work.

CONDOMS THAT SELL YOUR PENIS TO SATAN!

So, as one can ascertain from the title; this blog will be about bad horror movies.

If I just used the first letters of each word in their titles, the amount of bad horror movies made in my lifetime would literally break the word limit.

So, why am I talking about bad horror movies?  Because I feel like it, but mostly because it's something strange that we all seem to constantly forget about.  And here comes the meanings...

Action movies are an accurate representation of dominant fantasy, where we act out our biggest and bestest fantastical feelings on a big shiny screen.  What's the best fantasy?  Well, let's see:  Pacific Rim.  A fantasy where we are awesomely badass ninja fighters who get into even more awesomely badass giant robots and punch epicly awesomely badass giant robots in the face while partnered up with a super hot and super capable badass ninja girl of epic proportions who has like, a whole awesome story behind her and is interesting to talk to and we just eat food and talk about giant robots and punch giant monsters and...


Yeah, this sounds like the greatest male fantasy of all time, and that's fine.  It's empowering to have a fantasy of being in such control of fate that the world literally rests on your actions.  Also, Hell yes for having an amazing partner.  But we've always known this, that Action was fantasy. 

Side Note: It's fantasy for women too, Bond is hotter than the Sun, X-Men started Hugh Jackman's abs, The Expendables: a movie literally about old action heroes coming back... stars Jason Statham in tight clothing.  Conan the Barbarian: Played by massively muscular half naked men (Mamoa's ass got more screentime than half the supporting cast). 

This is also, perfectly fine.

Horror movies on the other hand, they point out things we're afraid of.  Here we explore the things that scare people to the core, the tiny fears that dominate a person's life.  All the way back to the early days of mankind, humans told two sorts of stories: Horror and Action.  One to inspire, the other to warn.  Carl Jung explained that these are archtypes, universal to more than one culture.

Then come the parts that are mass produced and easy, the ones that are shots in the dark at an audience.  These ones are the subject of this Blog.  Yeah, I know, halfway in and we start, just go with it.

Low budget horror is a staple of film, since it's easy to make and easy to purchase a story for.  Since they are mass produced, they're a great way to look at a culture as a time piece.  They show the fears that are prevelent in society at that time.  While each era has it's own certain flair, substituted for the villain of the week (communism, drugs, gangs, devil worship), it usually boils down to the main fears that never leave society.

Teenagers are Fucking Stupid:  there are precious few horror movies in which the victims are not teenagers who bring it on themselves in some way.  We constantly see teenagers doing things that are insane even to children, but hey, "wacky teens" right?  In reality, teens manage to not die more than they die, because the population is expanding. 

Technology is EEEVVILLL!: We get this alot, there are two sorts of approaches to tech/science in film: it's either the greatest evil mankind has ever created and it will destroy the world.  Or it's just something neat and cool we all like and not the point of the story.  Guess which one is horror?  Yeah...

Other People: We love other people in horror films. Whether they're "strangers" or from other countries, or from another culture (southerners, northerners, gangsters, business people), we believe these people are all psycho murderers looking to destroy everything we hold dear.  Unlike action, in horror, they win, because it's not a warning unless other people die.  In our fantasy, we win, we kill them with massive things of awesome.

So, when you look through the low budget horror, you see all sorts of clues as to a generation.  Like how it's filled with "demon babies", "evil mothers", "evil girlfriends", "evil old people", "evil doctors" and of course "Evil hillbillies".  Evil toys and children are sort of out of style now, and have become more focused on a sort of "glam horror" where it's almost intentionally bad horror.

Aside from all horror writer suddenly being basically manchildren afraid of leaving Never-Neverland, there's an awful lot of these "found footage/ real story" movies, which, I'm sorry, they're not horror.  These are rarely "scary" and more often than not rely on "OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE THAT?!!" scare tactics.  These are haunted houses, but in your tv.

So yeah, I'm waiting for the horror bro-pocalypse inwhich all movies are things that frighten bros.  Demonic Weight benches, protein supplements that make you "not like, gay, but you won't like chicks anymore", protein supplements that make you gay, shades that make everyone not like your hair, creatures that feed off of muscles, and of course; Milfs that seduce young men so that they can steal their things and cut their balls off to make hot girls into evil witches because... like... witchcraft bro...


... and haunted beer.

Rules, breaking them, and why people should stop trying to.

I was once told by a teacher; "You have to know the rules before you can break them", and for the most part, this is a flawed argument.  If you don't know the speed limit, you can still break it. Yay for being a literal person!

The core of the quote, however, is true: if you're going to create something that shatters the rules, you have to know those rules.  Otherwise, it's just open and breezy.  While that's fine for somethings, it does a poor job of breaking the Rules.

For instance: Women in Movies!  Yay! Sexism! Woot.

By now, we all know the words to this argument; women don't get their fair place in the industry.  Usually it's a writer making every female character somehow represent everything they hate about women, best shown by them exhibiting the exact same "positive character flaws" as men, but only shown as "negative character flaws" when it's them.  Yes, character flaws can be good and bad.  Adam Sandler can scream and be generally the equivilent of a crazed man you'd slowly back away from at the store, and it's "funny".  A woman in the same movie does it, and she's obviously the villain in this story.

Or, it can be the genre as a whole: next time you watch an action film, try to see how the women fight.  Do they fight by hurling their dominance on the end of their fist into the enemies smug face?  Crunching bone and sinew?  Do they kick down doors and take no names?  Or do they fight like something out of the Matrix?  Big air moves, lots of flipping and throwing?  Do they do that really cool move where she grabs his arm, leaps up quickly, hooks his face with her legs and hurls him while she sticks the landing?

Yeah, the word is "Waif-fu" and it's used when they want to show that a "little" woman can beat up bigger men.  Part of this is due to the fact you rarely find women in Hollywood who are big and bulky fighter types, but you find a lot of men like that.  That part isn't really sexism, there's just not a lot of actresses who decide to train for that build.  

Now, the point of this is that we see things that try to break this mold constantly, but they do it with such an over abundant measure that we can only roll our eyes at it.  They make it the whole point of the movie that "this is a woman", that we forget that there was supposed to be some entertainment here.  You're not breaking the rules there, you're pointed them out.  When this is done, they tend to forget that there was a reason behind the rule breaking.

All the best films break the rules set in place by the weaker ones.  Kill Bill, Kick-Ass, Avengers, A slew of new Disney (since their job is to be ahead of this curve).  But ask yourself, why?  Why is breaking these rules such a big deal?  Because breaking these rules is what makes us grow, and growth is goddamn interesting to watch.  We love it.  Those three movies up there?  They're super hero movies, and each one of them breaks the rules behind hero movies, even when the rule is clearly seen, they just walk over that line not even looking down.

"Not even looking down" is key there, because when you look for that line, you will find it, and you will find nothing else.  Don't try to break the rules, for the sake of breaking the rules, that will simply leave you and your audience bored.  Yes, we can make a movie where a female character is portrayed as something new and inventive for both genders, but the point is missed if that's the point of the story. 

No one cares if you walk up to a line, and boldly state that you will cross it, wait for dramatic tension, and then cross it expecting applause.  We're too busy watching the person who's just steam rolling through it all, waving massive flag of "eat it" while giving precisely 0 fucks as to what they step on.  Rules would only get in the way of their story.

Unless of course, you're "The Walking Dead" inwhich your first scene is breaking a rule (deliberately killing a child character in a violent way by a hero) in an effort to point out "this is the starting point for our rule breaking".  That is, of course, breaking the rule listed above.

Don't try to break rules, either live in them, or step out of them, but don't spend your time trying to make a point about something that small.