Back On Pandora.

Well, it's not really back on Pandora.  In case it wasn't immediately obvious, I'm talking about the follow-up to the game I had an embarrassingly long obsession with – Borderlands 2^* – that means I'm talking about Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!.  That exclamation mark seems to be quite important and makes further punctuation difficult.  I think they did it on purpose, just to annoy people.  Like me.

I'm going to go ahead and spoiler the shit out of this game.  It's been out for over a month, but if you've stumbled (miraculously, because hardly anyone seems to) on this post, haven't played Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! yet and want to, I'd close the door quietly on the way out and come back when you can tell me I'm talking shite.

I'll come out and say it right out: I enjoy this game.  I've been playing on my own and with my wife since it came out on 17^th October.  I've kept abreast of the digging into the game and know quite a bit myself, so I decided to give my thoughts on it thus far.  A review, if you will.  But I'll say it again, despite anything else I might say, I enjoy this game.  It is flawed, and because I have the best interests of the game at heart I see those flaws and want to salve them.  Not everybody's going to agree with me, but tough shit.  Opinion, man!  OPINION!  But really if I were a journalist, I'd be the kind who meekly writes the most harmless stories when I know the terrible truth and then after years is found overdosed on booze, sleeping pills and painkillers.  I'm brave, me.

So, what do we have?  I'll tell you what we don't have, it's not Borderlands 3.  That's something that needs to be said outright.  From its setting – the time between Borderlands and Borderlands 2 – to its general feel – it's a tweaked version of the Borderlands 2 framework.  Borderlands 3 will probably be an evolution of what's gone before, and although we have some interesting things happening in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! it's not different enough to be that new game.  I can see why some people have been prompted to say it's a glorified DLC, but it isn't that either, fortunately.  The campaign is too substantial and the four, going to six, playable characters are all hallmarks of a separate, if very linked and similar game.

In this game we follow Handsome Jack, the villain from Borderlands 2, as he gets help from a new group of vault hunters to overcome a new threat to Pandora.  This all takes place on Pandora's moon Elpis and involves all the Borderlands-y insanity and ludicrous violence we've come to expect since the first game.  You get a bunch of twists and turns on the road through Jack's inevitable downward spiral.  It's all fun and mostly funny.  Not everything reaches its hilarious potential.  Davis Pickle is a bit of clunky misstep, the Artful Dodger thing raised a smile for a moment and then I started rolling my eyes when he explained every...bit...of...fucking...rhyming...slang^**.   That aside the story bobs along and we're introduced to the Australian-themed moon with all the cultural nods and winks that entails.  I'm sure there are some American-baffling Home and Away and Neighbours references buried in it, fortunately I haven't seen those, and I'd be too embarrassed to admit I had – fucking soap operas.  I giggled a lot at the wider cultural references and, of course, Mr Torgue.

Also to put in the 'cool' category we actually get to hear what the vault hunters think of all the crazy shit that's going on.  Their reactions lend some humanity and, at times, hilarity to the narrative and its nice not to be in control of a voiceless cypher.  Especially as there's the sense that these are supposed to be independent characters and not faceless clay to be moulded like in any number of RPGs.  Some of the dialogue can get tiresome, though, especially if you're playing the game for an extended time.  For the most part it works and is an extension of what was done with the Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep campaign expansion.  And including different voice overs for the two (current, because after the implementation of Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode in Borderlands 2 I'd be surprised if it didn't make a return here) playthroughs was a great choice as well.

The game feels like Borderlands 2 and the characters and weapons handle in much the same way.  The addition of lower gravity and air-poverty are cool.  The need for oxygen in large parts of the game isn't as terribly intrusive as people feared and it's a lot of fun to use it to soar over Elpis and slam down on...I would say unwitting, because some enemies seem to be fucking clairvoyant...foes.  The enemies are still almost mindlessly aggressive, so you have situations where they are trying to shoot at you through walls, which is frankly weird.  The new cryo element is another great addition and much better than slag.

Now, we come to the segue-way from me being purely complimentary to me being critical.  Loot is still a problem in this game.  Mostly, you can charge through with the weapons you pick up, get from the golden chest or missions^†.  What if you want the rarest of the loot?  The legendaries.  There are a bunch in this game, some of which return from Borderlands 2 or look exactly like ones in Borderlands 2, which was a bit disappointing in itself, but not awful and gave a little extra bit of familiarity and a link to the games nominally bracketing Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.  The drop rates are still an issue, one-in-thirty from sometimes quite challenging enemies still feels mocking.  It's even worse, now that I know that legendaries, skins and heads are all linked to the one pool.  Character customisation shouldn't have to come at the expense of hours upon hours of grinding and legendary equipment shouldn't be made even harder to get because those same customisations push them out.  You shouldn't need to fight a raid boss thirty times to get a single legendary, if anything it should have a high chance to drop multiple legendaries.  It all goes back to what I said before about the difference between frustration and fun, dudes.  There have been people who defend this policy, often with empirical data, but the act of playing a game isn't quantifiable with numbers, it's a lot more about how a player feels and if we feel like we're getting a bit screwed (whether we are or not) it's going to impact our enjoyment and whether we pick up another one of your games.  Here's a wee, hastily thought out suggestion for those with the numbers mind: have a sliding scale dependent on the type of boss.  Mini-bosses will have a one-in-twenty chance to drop their legendaries, main bosses have one-in-ten or -twelve and raid bosses have one-in-five for one, one-in-ten for an extra and one-in-thirty for a third.  Raids should never drop anything lower than blue, either.  That would make raid bosses more rewarding and rewarding is what this is all about, right?  I'm sure I'm right.

This neatly moves me onto the other great frustration about the game and that's the non-respawning enemies with assigned loot-drops.  Why have an enemy, with a legendary that has that horrible drop rate, that you can't get to go after again?  It beggars logic and it's ruler-across-the-knuckles mean.  I can see a vague argument that it's in keeping with Borderlands, but why add such an unfair feature?  There are plenty of call-backs to the first game and that's one of the shittier ones.  It's a bizarre decision, but then Gearbox seem to enjoy their bizarre design and gameplay-tweaking decisions.  The most recent of which was lessening the drop rate of a grenade from an uncommon enemy, when most players hadn't seen the drop.  I think it comes from a bunch of people saying they'd seen this item drop a few times.  This was a tiny percentage of a community that, has been said time and again, is a tiny percentage of the overall player base.  It's nice that Gearbox pay attention to the community, but this is just silly – it wasn't game-breaking and the item dropped isn't that great, so why mess with it?

Admittedly, the legendary problem has been mitigated by the addition of the Grinder, into which you can throw items you don't want and possibly get items of better quality.  That's a fucking cool feature, I have to admit.  They've also boosted the quality of the equipment you can buy from vendors, so that legendaries have a good chance to appear in the items of the day.  And it's even better when you can afford them, and it means money actually has value again in a Borderlands game.  Those are design decisions I can approve of.  However, not everyone wants to play that way, they might be weird and messed-up^‡, but some people like to farm allocated drop sources for their stuff.  These people don't want to stand at the grinder hoping to get the item they want, they want to go out and find a high-powered enemy and make them PAY!  Reducing so many enemies to single-instance encounters robs the players of end-game experience.  And we want end-game experience, we want to play this for ages.  Choice is a big part of the Borderlands experience and the choice to get equipment in different ways will extend the life of the game more than making enemies bullet sponges.

And that's the problem, and a problem I understand Borderlands 2 suffered from early on, too, there's not that much to do once you've completed the game a few times.  The single raid boss isn't enough to sate most players.  There is more content to come and that's good.  There is a single campaign add-on advertised.  I really hope this is groaning with content.  An absolute ideal is something that's as long as Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! main game.  That's unlikely, but it would be wonderful if it happened.  Regular events would be another fantastic way of boosting the life of the game.  Things like scaled-down versions of last year's Loot Hunt event would be fantastic, with a weekend or a week of an item or two getting a drop boost.  We've already had the Jack-o'-Cannon in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! for Halloween and it was a great bonus.  You have the power to make us want more, Gearbox!  You know, by giving.

So those are my thoughts on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel after over a month playing it.  It's a great game and, with a few tweaks, can be a terrific game.  I'll be playing it for some time to come.  Shooting insane arseholes in the face is surprisingly addictive.

^* And you can read all about that creeping insanity: here (part one) and here (part two), if you're so inclined.  The first one caused a tiny (not being ironic, it really was barely visible) stir on the Gearbox forums, but hardly anyone read the second.  Maybe I got gun shy after the first.  Some people got quite aggressive and unpleasant and it didn't encourage me to want to discuss the matter on the forum further.  A needless explanation there, for people who didn't care.  And unexpected poetry!

^** His sister, the Pygmalion/My Fair Lady-inspired, Eliza does the same.  Now, she's a character that deserves the hate Pickle gets on the Gearbox community forum.  In a game full of nasty sociopaths, she is one of the worst: screwing people over and leaving others for dead is all par for the course in Borderlands, but we're expected to like Eliza.  Problem is there's nothing about her that is likeable.  Even Handsome Jack's funny.  Eliza is just a monster and it feels off, even for Borderlands, to let her go about her dastardly business.

^† Admittedly, the mission rewards are still some of the best in the game.

^‡ Okay, okay, it is fun to go off and shoot a baddie in the face until he tearfully hands over the legendary you've been after.  Within a reasonable time-frame, not three days.



Will




P.S. Gearbox, gies a writing job.  I can write good!

Goodbye, Doctor.

Well that was a big pile of fucking terrible.  Obviously some of you out there don't agree.  You're strange and wrong, of course.  What am I talking about?  Doctor Who, of course.  That little BBC show that was off the air for about fifteen years and was brought back in 2005, to much fan fare and fandom creaming.  Really, about nine years down the line the shine's tarnished a bit.  And by 'a bit' I mean its now about as shiny as a tennis ball.  So it goes without saying I feel the need to go on a spoiler-ridden rant about it.

Seriously.  SPOILERS, morons.  If you don't want anything given away because you haven't caught up don't read on.  Although, I don't think anyone who is interested in Doctor Who will be behind that much.  You never can tell.

I'll admit I was one of the many people who got very excited when it was announced Doctor Who was going to return.  I watched it as a kid.  From what I learned more recently I was the only one in my household who enjoyed it.  How's that for making you feel shit?  Makes me feel like I was some kind of pre-pubescent dictator of the television.  That just sounds hilarious when thrown out into the ether.

So, the excitement in the year or so before Russell T. Davies brought Doctor Who back to the screen was quite palpable^*.  Christopher Eccleston was a good choice.  An actor with gravitas and the ability to play it light.  And ears, such magnificent ears.  My enthusiasm lasted through that first series.  Even then, there were concerns.

I mean the format for Doctor Who was always multi-part stories, told in half-hour chunks.  Davies came back and changed the format to stand alone forty-five minute stories.  It wasn't too terrible, for a while, but we'll come to that.

Then there was Rose Tyler.  In the first of this new series, the preoccupation with the companion was quite refreshing.  Rose Tyler wasn't a terrible character, and I was surprised how good an actress Billie Piper is, being more accustomed to her previous incarnation as teeny pop performer.  Now I see that's when the rot started to set in.  Russell T. Davies ran with this and Steven Moffat's taken that cue and gone further with it.  The companion being either a fawning cypher or unreasonably stubborn.  Whatever the companion, they shoved in one of my pet hates about modern storytelling: the pathological need to have a romantic subplot.  It's not the pinnacle of story, most of the time it's as interesting as overhearing a loud teenager's phone call.  Now we're here, on the cusp of the abyss^**.

The latest series of Doctor Who has been a dismal affair.  It's not just the preoccupation with the companion, in this case the empty vessel that's Clara Oswald, but let's dwell on it a moment.  In a show that's ostensibly a fantasy/science fiction premise, it felt like a lot of time was lavished on the life of Clara Oswald.  It's happened since Rose Tyler, through What's-Her-Name^† and Amy Pond.  These last series it's been turned up a couple of notches.  To the point it felt like a standard drama with some sci-fi spotted through.  Not even interesting drama.  The most mundane and boring stuff they could dredge up:
     "What's for tea tonight?"
     "Chips."
     "Oh, okay...Oh look.  The Doctor."
Wouldn't have been so bad if the sci-fi stuff counterpointing it was at all interesting, but it was like a shot of beige thrown into a wall of grey.

It doesn't help that Steven Moffat can't seem to write women.  This post here details his many crimes against women characters.  Clara Oswald was a dull character who was supposed to have strong traits, but never managed to show them.  She could have been played by a washcloth on a stick with 'Clara Oswald: Strong Female' stitched on it^‡.  In the last episode of the latest series The Mistress describes her as a 'control freak'.  What?  I never got that.  You can't just say that without having the character display it.  She was deceitful and wilful when she wasn't being a compliant puppet, but control freak?  And her wilfulness was always used in the most stupid way, in order to advance a plot that was in danger of plunging down a hole and managed to find another one.  Not that plot holes worry Steven Moffat much...

...Because, as Cracked observed, Doctor Who currently lives in a fucking plot hole.  And fuck does it.  I couldn't even tell you what the last few episodes were about, they were such a mess.  I have been chided in the past about my stories lacking internal logic.  You know, that thing where, no matter how nonsensical something is in a story, it makes sense in context.  Sapphire and Steel was great at it.  Most people couldn't follow what the fuck was going on, but there was a sense of some underlying logic that you just didn't understand.  Current Doctor Who tosses that out the window BECAUSE SOMETHING FUCKING COOL IS HAPPENING!  That only works in small doses, when entire episodes are full of contradictions it gets tiresome.  It feels like the writers have been throwing things on a page and hoping they miraculously come together.  That only works with stir fries.

I could even forgive the twisted mess the stories have been if they had been interesting, but they have completely lacked any kind of excitement.  You can see they want to be, like the kid who's wearing the glasses and drawn-on scar, really wants to be Harry Potter, but doesn't quite do it.  Russell T. Davies wasn't great at this kind of narrative excitement, but he did manage it, possibly by pure chance, in all the arm-flailing and scurrying around.  These recent episodes have been plodding affairs desperately pointing at the screen and shouting, "See!  Excitement!" while pointing at a tree.  The stakes never felt that high.

The stakes should have felt high, since the reboot, the series has been running on series-wide arcs.  These in themselves aren't a problem, but it's the need for a new story every week that's ground down the poor show.  It's the same problem that dogs American television, with its obsession for twenty-two and -four episode series.  It gets tired.  There's only so much that can be mined out of a premise.  Before for Doctor Who, that took almost thirty years, with the previous longer-form, multi-part stories, but it's been accelerated this time with so many stories being thrown at us in a series.

And the cardinal problem, for me, is that in a show called Doctor Who, we haven't seen that much of the Doctor.  Whether that's actually the case, I don't know, I'm sure some pedant will show me a spreadsheet showing, empirically, the Doctor was in the show the most.  The problem is, stories don't run on empirical evidence, they run on feelings and if you leave viewers feeling like the eponymous character hasn't been seen enough, you've done something tragically wrong.  Yes, they pulled it off in Blake's Seven, but there was actually a valid narrative reason: Blake was dead.  What's Doctor Who's excuse?  Steven Moffat wants to concentrate on Clara and Danny going down to Asda?  We really need to know how many times a week they see each other?  Come on, that's not drama, that's a desperate bid to make people turn off the television.

For me, after discussing it with my wife, it comes down to a basic problem: Doctor Who is a pure nostalgia-fest.  People who watched the original run, like yours truly, and loved it.  We are hoping for a snippet of that feeling, but for me at least, it's not coming.  I've tuned in week after week only to be disappointed and bored again.  Yes, there have been good things, but they're bogged down and buried by the utter shit.  Don't trot out that tired, "it's a kid's show" bit, because that's no excuse for shitty writing.  Doctor Who is tired now and I suspect a proportion of people tune in hoping it improves, only to be disappointed, their little forty-five minutes of sadness on a Saturday night for a few weeks.  This could be the only thing keeping it afloat.

After the Christmas episode, I'm out, and I'll probably cringe my way through that.  I can't handle the disappointment any more.  I can't handle the fucking terrible stories, either.  The final episode of the recent series was an exercise in not creating tension.  It was remarkable that scenes with a plane besieged by Cybermen could be so boring.  It was so bad I can't even come up with an amusing simile that encapsulates tedium.  But Michelle Gomez was fucking amazing.

There are some things that can be done to improve it: for a start, give us the Doctor, doing things, being mad, solving problems like a fucking beast.  He's smart and he's resourceful, but that hasn't come across well recently, because he's been mostly absent.  Ditch the cult of the companion, it's the worst while giving us an interesting companion, even go so far as a non-human or non-contemporary human.  Think through what's happening in the story more, dude.  Pulpish madness only works when there's a baseline somewhere, without that, doesn't matter how mental that baseline is, the viewers are floating around with a nothing plot.  I'd even plump for longer story arcs, two or three episodes to tell a story and let it breath more – the, "woo! thrown into the plot" thing makes me weary.

None of the above will happen, mind you.  Too many people are vocal in their love of Doctor Who, but for me it's lost its appeal.  It's a bit sad, but I'll be off watching things that are fun, instead of hoping for another episode of Doctor Who to end.

^* I may have jumped up and down clapping at one point.  It's out there, deal with it.

^** Hyperbolic?  Me?  I resent your unspoken implication and challenge you to a duel.  That I won't turn up to and call you a prick for going.

^† Yeah, I skipped the series with Catherine Tate, because I found her comedy vapid and unfunny, I couldn't imagine watching her as a companion.  I might have been wrong in my assessment, but that's where we are.

^‡ Before anyone starts shouting at me for some misogynistic slight, Danny Pink could have been played by another washcloth on a stick with 'Danny Pink: Man'.



Will

Yes, We Do Have Priorities.

"Stop talking about this and think about this!" I've been seeing this sentiment a lot recently.  My language might be vague and you're probably already wondering, after a whole sentence, why the fuck you clicked on this blog.  You need to bear with me.  I have a point, but I'm going to waffle a bit before I get there.  Make yourself a cup of tea or relax yourself with some porn, whatever it takes, I'll be waiting^*.

Done?  Got yer tea and biscuits in comfortable reach.  Cleaned up?  Dribbled tea everywhere when you thought you'd be a smart arse and try to do both things at once?  Sicko.  We'll assume you've done whatever thing you needed to relax yourself and we'll say no more.  Especially about the stains.   Oh, the stains.

You know when you see something so odd that it stops you in your tracks?  Sometimes you go, "Oh, right," and carry on with your day and pour out those cold beans from the can and shovel them into your mouth^**.  Sometimes that weird thing gets you thinking.  It could be anything, but let's go with a celebrity's face suddenly changes to something unrecognisable^†.  It's obvious that's she's had work done.  Enough to alter the way she looks so drastically.  Now, I don't think it's fair to shame her, she's a victim of a hypocritical system that pulls women one way then another, mocking them for just about any decision they make.

The small rumble of interest caused a few people to start wailing about all the other things wrong in the world.  Excuse me?  "There are more important things in the world than Renée Zellweger's face!" No kidding, crazy person.

Even stranger, and more odiously, was when Nigel Farage waded into the vague nonsense that was the UKIP Calypso this week.  Now, the song was an offensive piece of crap on a number of levels, and I'm not going to link it.  But the pan-faced goblin that is Nigel Farage got on his high horse in the Independent.  He does the same, "There are more important things to be angry about," rant and then points, obliquely, at Ebola and more blatantly at historical child abuse in Rotherham.  In this article you can almost see the straining erection he has for getting more column inches and air time for such a stupid thing and then thrusts a veiny, probably corkscrew-shaped, stiffy in the faces of anyone close by.  It was easy publicity for a racism-factory that runs on a sticky fuel of grubby attention^‡.

This curious phenomenon of pointing at things that are more important to shift attention away from something seen as fairly trivial does a disservice to people in general.  You are aware that we can give thinking time to other things, right?  Some things make a bigger impact, and time does dull them – be honest, in a few months both of the examples above will be forgotten.  By squealing about them you've got people thinking about them for longer and perversely taking attention away from the thing your trying to point out.  People are weird, contrarian and arseholey about that.

People do need to think about other things than all the horrible shit that's going on in the world – even if it is a minor scandal or uproar – because we would become either fatigued or humourless existers who can't eat because they are stuck in constant sad face.  It's like having a tiny bit of salacious gossip and screaming at the person, "I don't care if he fell into bed with his brother-in-law's wife, what about fucking PALESTINE^§!?"

Yes, giving any thought to the small things is silly, and that's kind of the point.  We're still aware of the giant ogres and injustices stomping around the world, we just need something to take the edge of or we'd go fucking nuts.  I notice no one ever berates anyone for looking at cute animal vids on Youtube.  Sometimes we need something less horrible to be able to deal with the nightmarish shit that's going on.

And then, of course, looking at my half-formed examples above more closely, you'll start to see that they're indicative of much bigger issues with society.  Poor Renée Zellweger is a new poster child for our fucked up attitudes towards women – she shouldn't have felt the need to use surgery to look younger, but she conversely shouldn't be pilloried for doing it.  Nigel Farage and UKIP are fucking cancerous political spectres, stoking hatred against certain demographics, giving voice to the worst kind of bigotry and polishing it up as mainstream politics.  You know why Farage and his particular breed of ghoul are trying to do this?  To line their already pretty money-padded pockets.  They are an expression of our greedy-shit political system, amplified to a chinless, guffawing, hundred pound note-smoking, poor-mocking caricature straight out of a Dickens novel.

In Nigel Farage's case in particular, you have to ask who benefits from the distraction: the song itself was a distraction on its own, but still shone a spotlight on UKIP's spineless dickery, so Farage^§§, the slippery fuck, did a bit of crafty sleight of hand.  He got publicity for the party while diverting attention away from their abhorrent policies.  He's clearly been getting lessons from David Blane^§§§.

So, everyone, just calm the fuck down, take a deep breath and let's just agree that Nigel Farage is a cunt.

^* Just keep thinking about that when you're trying to crank one out.

^** Oh?  That's just me.  Okay.  Fuck.

^† I mean, seriously, if the captions and headlines hadn't said who she was, I wouldn't have known.  No, Russell Brand, that's not a result of getting older.  Ageing a few years in adulthood doesn't cause that level of appearance change.

^‡ And, fucking hell, the BBC have been doing enough of that.  How much of Farage's tainted champagne have BBC execs drank to constantly shove that cunt to the forefront of political debate in the UK when UKIP are still essentially a fringe party?

^§ But really it's still fucking awful there.

^§§ He might be a giant grinning thumb, but he's a sharp grinning thumb, that's why he's so dangerous.

^§§§ Is that charlatan shithead still around?  Levitation, fucking hell.



Will

And Lo, It Happened.

A short one after a long absence.  I've just had all the wind knocked out of my sails.

I write this a week after the No voters won^*.  It's still raw.  I was going to go on a rant, but this post covers everything already.  Just add something about a moronic war and fracking fucking everywhere.

I will say I'm a tiny bit more optimistic than I was last Friday.  There's been this groundswell of political interest as some No voters are realising just what they've done and incensed Yes voters rally to push change.  I say I'm only a bit, because, like the promises made by the three main parties a day or two before the referendum, there is no politic interest or will in Westminster to listen to us uppity Jocks.  Labour and the Tories will simply turn away and pretend it's not happening.  I hope I'm wrong and the collective force of will affects change, but will hope be enough?

^* I say won, but they're swimming in the same shit as the rest of us, only some of them are grinning and gloating about it.


Will

Goddamn It! It's Not About THAT!

I'm going to insult some of you.  Yeah, I've probably been insulting your intelligence in this blog for a while, but today, I'm just going to come out and say it, I'm going to insult you.  To be honest I think the ones I'm going to insult need it.  Probably won't achieve much, but...well, I haven't thought much past that.  Rest assured there's a good reason, I'm sure you'll come up with one, you brainless fuck.

Got this booklet through the door this morning.  Actually, this afternoon, since the poor, overworked postman would be shoving the bloody things through every single fucking door.  The booklet was called What Staying in the United Kingdom means for Scotland.  It claims to be information.  It reads like a fucking book full of patronising orders and flimsy proclamations to me.  It's a publication created by the vested interest of Westminster^*.

And it was the final straw on whether I should go off on a fucking rant about the question of Scottish independence.  I'll tell you right now, I'm for it.  Just get that right out there before any ambiguity can set in.  I'll be voting yes.

Do you want to know why?

Probably not, but I'm going to tell you.  I'm sick of London being the centre of every decision made in this country.  It feels like every political and fiscal decision made by the UK government is for the benefit of the parasitic resource sink in the south east.  I have nothing against London, it's a wonderful place to visit, but that doesn't mean I want every decision made in the rest of the country used to prop it up.  It's not right and it's not fair.  Money and people who would benefit areas like Yorkshire, Cumbria and Central Scotland are drawn to the city to the detriment of these places.  How the fuck is that right?

It's like the clichéd school bully who demands your lunch money and gives you nothing but pain in return.  The rest of the country only gets inflated house prices in return for sending tributes of people and money to the insatiable London.  A whole country can't be used to finance a single city.

Yet we, the Scottish people are urged to stay with this abusive relationship, because, we're condescendingly informed, it's better for us.  Yeah, I like being scudded in the head with a cane while some cunt who has enough money already dips my fucking pocket.  And none of the current national parties will do anything different, because we have a bunch of creepy career politicians who are beholden to equally creepy business interests.  Rich folk helping out rich folk, aye they have our best interests at heart.  Bunch of fucking cunts.

And you do realise why some of the Better Together people are shouting so loud, right?  No?  How about if I say they're MPs?  That help you out?

They are another vested interest.  What happens to all those Scottish MPs in the event of a 'Yes' vote?  That's right, they don't get their subsidised trips to London any more.  Oh no!  Their relevance will twirl away down the toilet.  You know and the nice, generous expenses and chance at a juicy peerage.  But of course the money and title has nothing to do with it, it's all about doing the best for their constituents.  I do wish there was a sarcasm tag.

Let's be clear, too, this isn't some wrong-headed Braveheart^** pish about fucking the English.  That has nothing to do with it.  I think the rest of England could benefit from getting shot of slimy shits that inhabit Whitehall.  The UK government doesn't really represent Scotland or the rest of the country as it stands.  If the current UK government wasn't hacking up the NHS or punishing poor people for not having enough money or being led around by the nose by tabloid journalism, I might waver a bit more, but what we see is Tories and LibDems slashing at the infrastructure of welfare and finger-fucking the wounds.

And that's another thing, all the fuckwits who think "I don't like Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon," is a valid reason for voting no, please take a swim in the North Sea with bowling balls tied to your legs, because your diminutive IQ is dragging the rest of us down.  Yeah Salmond is an egotistical goon, but we don't need to have him forever.  An independent Scotland will still be democratic, we won't suddenly become a dictatorship.  Vote the fucker out once we have our own country.  Simple as that.

I'm sure there's a chance he'll turn on us when he gets into office, but I'd rather take that chance over dealing with the Westminster fuckers who've shown they'll happily slit a newborn's throat if it got them a few extra coppers in their pockets.  The breed at the top in the Houses of Parliament at the moment are the most heartless, corporate and ideology-driven fungal-infections you can imagine.  In it together; or in it for themselves?  You shouldn't need to think about that if you follow the pattern of their behaviour.

Essentially, if you vote 'No' to independence you've forfeited your right to complain about any Westminster government, because you told them you were happy to let them continue to do whatever the fuck they like.  I mean they've already fast tracked privatising the Royal Mail, what kind of shit is that?  Who's to say the next government won't start to renege on devolution, because, "Clearly you want to have more to do with Westminster.  Why else would you stay in the union.  Come, this will only hurt forever."

Tell me you can't imagine that walking modelling balloon David Cameron doing something like that to appease the great Maggie.  Seriously, can't you just imagine him having a shrine to Margaret Thatcher in his bedroom, with the mask he makes his wife wear when he's fucking her hung up next to unnervingly intimate photos of Thatcher?  David Cameron and that smirking goblin Nigel Farage show the same contempt for Scotland as Thatcher did.  It's the same contempt they hold for anyone not as rich as them.  You want a shit-monger like Cameron to still be making decisions from Downing Street?  Fuck, do you want barely there political drone Ed Milliband in Number Ten?  What sort of hell do you think he'll rain on Scotland?  Those adenoids are just waiting for their revenge, people!

Then you have the leaders of the Scottish Labour party and the Scottish Conservative party, Johann Lamont and Ruth Davidson, who hold the people of Scotland in such little worth they don't believe we can think for ourselves.  Johann Lamont just out and said it.  Ruth Davidson hasn't in so many words, but, because she's a Tory, it's an easy bet she believes it, too.

They all subscribe to the same corrosive notion that rigid capitalism is the most sensible economic option.  Yeah, and trickle-down economics works.  Fucking hell, the idea of infinite growth for anything is the most preposterous notion ever conceived.  Not to sound hysterical here^†, but it's a big old lie.  It's a lie to keep already frighteningly wealthy and powerful people in the power and wealth they think is their right.  It's the same lie that's led to sell offs of public services or the barmy notion that public services should be profitable.  That's not the benchmark of a public service's worth; efficiency isn't decided by how much money electricity, public transport, the postal service or healthcare makes, it's how well they're doing to stop society from crumbling around our ears.  Taxes from the businesses these services help to support should be invested, not wrenched in bloated bills from the pockets of normal people.  The fact that Westminster politicians are so cowardly and lacking in imagination to dare deviate from this dogmatic bollocks scares the living shit out of me and it should you, too.

Do you really want to be still part of that shit?  If you do then you're a fucking moron.  You don't deserve my respect.  Or air, for that matter.

I'll concede, though, both sides in this campaign have been guilty of being cagey on several subjects.  It's not been a nice campaign.  The Yes side have stooped as low as the No side and that's fucking shameful.  We shouldn't let this political bickering put us off getting our own country.  The transition won't be easy, my friend, but there's a chance it will be worth it.  Can it really be as bad as what we've had shoved down our throats already?

^* There's a brilliant ripping apart of it here.  Or there was.  The fucking links died hasn't it?

^** I fucking hate that piece of shit button-pressing film.  It's not about freedom, it's about a fucking sociopath annoyed because he can't get his dick wet.

^† Dude, already happened, wipe the spittle away.


Will

Tut tut tut. I'm So Disappointed in You.

It's been a little while, hasn't it?  Not quite as long as before, but I've been quiet for the better part of a month.  Not that you'd notice.

Why?  Well because none of your fucking business, nosy bastard.

I've been waiting for something to strike me just the right way to say something about it.  I've also been holding back on something that will come in time.  Oh, my yes, I got me a big bag of bile right here on that score.

So, this little bit of fuckwaddery was brought to my attention.  Read it and let it sink in, right under your skin, that burning itch is normal.  One Direction fan fiction given a huge advance and now being adapted into a film.  This isn't a precedent, because a previous fan fiction bod got a book deal out of her work.  Loving the Band was rushed to e-book, without much said about the advance.  Actually I noticed the Independent was curiously reticent about giving any kind of details on the deal, kinda weird, doncha think?

The new one seems even worse, because there's this suggestion that there hasn't even been an editing process.  Ahem, what?  Are you fucking kididing me?  This blog led me to this blog.  Our erstwhile writer in the second blog is, understandably, bemused.  I'm fucking furious.

As she points out, we writers^* are told when we start out on the long, frustrating, painful road that we have to be at our fucking best.  Hone our shit to a razor-sharp edge and then, maybe, a publisher might arch an eyebrow in interest.  Once we've been allowed in by the erstwhile gatekeepers we are sent to editing boot camp.  I know a few professional writers who go through the wringer with edits to get their work in what is considered publishable shape.

Yet, we see this girl get her work fast-tracked by the publisher.  Not her fault.  I'm not angry at her, there's no point, she's probably delighted to have her work in print and getting a fat cheque for it and let her enjoy it.  As Jenny Trout points out, there's always a chance Anna Todd might mature into a good writer.  Although looking at Emily Baker, that might not hold.   The people my ire is aimed at are the publishers.

This will probably mean I'll never see my work in print, but, fuck it, the more people who point this shit out, the better.

This kind of thing is part of the same horrible decline that's happening with the film and music industries: risk-averse bullshit where the blandest shit is shoved at us in pretty packaging.  New things are to be shunned if they don't instantly have millions of people clamouring for it.  Anything that makes even a wee bit of money is jumped on and aped, without understanding why it's popular.  So publishing has followed suit, getting quick-fix crap on the shelves and paying the often vacuous cardboard cut-outs we call celebrities wads of money for ghost-written drivel.

It feels like the industry is kicking sand in the face of people like myself, hungry for a break, but told we're not quite good enough or what we're writing isn't quite right.  When poorly-written shit^** is packaged and thrown out for public consumption like it's the pinnacle of writing achievement, we the mass of writers, who feel like we are kept out by this shit, we have to look askance at the big publishers and ask if they know what the fuck they're doing^†.

I don't know where to go with this now.  My anger's played itself out.  Impotent, impotent anger.  I'm going to lie down.  Really we should expect better from the big publishers, shouldn't we?

^*  I'm a fucking writer.  I might not have success, wealth, fame or even earn a living, but I do the work.  That's how it works.

^** Let's not mention that fucking shit-monger E.L. James who hit on the genius idea of shittily re-writing shit fiction.  That's so fucking expired it might cause me a stroke.

^† Don't get me started on self-publishing, though.  The advice for that makes you like a needy arsehole.  Nope, not for me.


Will

Nothing This Week.

Seriously, nothing to see here, people.  But what you should be doing is going back and having a look at the last few months' worth of posts, in case you've missed any.  Go on.  There's a list down the side.

Let's see what happens next week, eh?


Will

Clonk! OW!

I was angry.  I get angry a lot.  Things annoy me and get under my skin on a regular basis.  It's a particular annoyance when something happens in one of the creative fields I have my eye on.  No, I'm not going to go off on one about the misogyny in comics again, although it's something that could currently be talked about endlessly.

No, this rant was centred on something a lot closer to me.  I saw something in a magazine that incensed me and almost had me writing a bitter-sounding screed about the nature of networking, money and talent^* in the comics industry.  I know they don't sound like very interesting topics, but the combination is, and in the most horrible way.  It would have been accusatory and finger-pointy and very probably foamy-mouthed as a tirade.

And that was what stopped me.  Whether I'm right or wrong in my assessment of what I see as people not worth the time getting success doesn't entirely matter.  Every mediocre drop of shit they drop into the creative community is going to make me wince like an abused kid when his father reaches for his belt, but there's a problem when you point it out: you look bitter and jealous.  Jealousy can be healthy in small amounts, it can be another of those initially negative things that turns positive, but no one really wants anything to do with bitterness.  Ya just don't make friends when your mouth is curled into a sneer because shit hasn't gone your way.

I would, and still do, see my anger as justified and clean, shining an incandescent light on the corruption and hypocrisy I see in my midst.

"Can't you be happy for someone's success?" you would be justified in asking.  I can, but not when it's at my expense and at the expense of people more talented than me.

You see?  It sounds like a shrivelled old complainer, pointing his worn walking stick at something he doesn't like and peeling back his cracked lips to spit out some bilious comment.  I'm not that guy.  I want to show the injustices of 'I'll-buy-you-a-drink' job-getting, and I know it goes on, I've heard too many stories from first hand sources to assure me of that, but doing so taints me, too.  Pointing it out marks me out as some kind of malcontent, but I suppose I'm not content with the way these transactions go.  Unfortunately it's a reality of the world I've thrown my lot in with and I don't have the clout to change it.

My lack of prowess when it comes to networking is legendary.  I say, "Hello," and then watch as someone else smooths their way in.  Confidence is, and always has been, my biggest downfall.  I lack it and I also have a deficiency of the bullshitting gland that might help me acquire work.  Bullshitting seems to be a large part of the whole process.  As is money, which I also have a huge lack of.  With money I could at least travel around and practice my ineptitude.  Wow, there's a line that's going to get me a tidal wave of job offers.

If only sarcasm was a marketable skill.

Snarling and bellowing about the situation isn't going to change anything and it only marks me out as some kind of whiner not content with his lot.  Maybe I am a whiner.  I'm certainly not happy with where I am in my writing career^**.  Do you think shouting and (metaphorically) kicking furniture over is my way of disguising the snivelling whinger I really am?

I didn't want to rant here and I don't think I did.  I did, I think, turn a bit passive-aggressive, which I apologise for.  Most of you want to see that about as much as you want to see my wang.  I do think it's something I need to air once in while, even if it does depress the living shit out of you.  I wasn't talking about my wang, there, but if you feel the need to read it that way, go right ahead.

This blog post is dedicated to Ben Eads and Ted Brandt who are getting along merrily on their actual talent and I say congratulations in their recent successes.  It's nice to see people – friends – doing well who aren't anything like the type of dickhead I describe above.  Trying to inject positivity in here, I feel it needs it, don't you?

So next week I'll either have something hilariously angry or you'll get complete silence.  We'll see how my mood is.

^* Or lack thereof, in some cases.

^** That is to say pretty much nowhere.  I'm just full of cheer today.


Will

And Your Pens, Too!

Smell that, son.  It's the scent of fuckwit on the air.  Yes, I know, we're supposed to be an advanced civilised society, but fuckwits and arseholes still manage to wriggle their way to the top of food chains and under our skin.  It's kind of our fault for having a civilised and advanced society that we allow these...um...interesting individuals to burble away and annoy us.  Would be nice to just round a few particularly dicky dicks up, through them on an enclosed plain and hunt them down.  Population control.  Alas the whole 'illegality' and 'immorality' of such a venture bugs some people.  For some reason.

I've been vocal about my annoyance at the sexism and misogyny in two of my favourite art forms before.  Gaming has seen a high-profile debacle with the Game Jam that went down the toilet because of sexist remarks.  You have to applaud the people who put a middle finger up to that shit.  It's not the first incident of its kind in gaming and I don't think it will be the last – not for a good long while, sadly.  I can't help feeling that all the nasty shit some gamers say while playing online might be the desired end result for some games creators, "I'm miserable, so you're all going to be miserable.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"  Or something.

I want to talk comics, though.

Recently this bullshit pushed its sweaty way into my consciousness.  Do I need to tell people what's wrong with this situation?  If I do, then please feel free to go for a walk down the middle of a motorway, you know for your own and everyone else's sake.  It will be for the best.

Going by the discussion and the toxic sludge that passes for forums and comments sections, talk I must.  It's because it talks of a wider problem in our culture, where treating women like punching bags, both emotionally and physically, still doesn't have the stigma it deserves.

Let's go back to that misty time of April 11th of this year, an idyllic time when everyone got along and no one was throwing around rape threats like it was big and clever.

What?

It's never been like that?

Okay, but this part of the story still starts on that date.  A day when a woman decided to critique a recent comic book cover.  She pointed out that while the figure work was mostly pretty good, the composition was dodgy as fuck.  I mean, to me, most of the things around the figures look like they've been scribbled in without any thought about whether they should be there.  That lunch bag in Beast Boy's hand looks especially tacked-on.  She points out something that could be potentially racist.  That last one's hard to call, it could just have been down to the overall iffiness of the composition.

The less ambiguous issue is with Wonder Girl's anatomy.  Namely her gigantic, unreal knockers.  Miss Asselin rightly takes issue with the blatant sexualisation of a teenage girl, fictional she may be, but it's still a creepy thought.  She points out the ridiculous proportions of the character's hips before turning her attention to everything that's wrong with Wonder Girl's breasts.  You can read it in the link.

And that's what people took issue with.  How dare she, a mere woman and non-artist, criticise a comic artist for DOING WHAT A VAST SWATH OF COMIC ARTISTS DO!  Then came the rape threats.  Rape threats.

I'll say that a third time so that those of you who don't quite get it can feel the full horror: rape threats.  We know the people involved know what they do is wrong because they concealed their activities in private correspondence.

This kind of thing isn't acceptable.  This is shit.  It's nasty and unpleasant and, if the all-time number one downloaded song ever is an indicator, disgustingly prevalent.  We have a culture in which threatening rape is a way of dealing with women.  How is this still a thing?  Why are we still letting it happen?  Are we afraid of losing our bros when we call them on having grotesque attitudes towards women.  Let me tell you, you don't need friends like that, yer mate who's always calling women sluts and whores and thinks they're good for nothing but bed post notches is the human equivalent of radioactive waste.  His attitudes are going to reflect on you and give your soul cancer.  You wouldn't sit on an atomic pile would you?  See?

Even in the public domain, people who are supposed to be professionals in the field resorted to, "you have a vagina, so you are wrong," arguments when it was clear their defence of one of their colleagues wasn't going their way.  That's harder to deal with, because they don't seem to see what they are doing is wrong.  That's a problem too big for my puny brain to think up even a bullshit solution for.

And the argument it's the way comics are done is such a huge pile of bullshit there are satellites orbiting it.  We have the capacity to change that particular status quo.  Ridiculously-boobed women (teenagers and adult women) are the juvenile fantasies of a small part of the comics community, yet it's those shit heads who call all the shots.  Yes, they're the loudest monkeys in the enclosure, but they are also the most stupid, selfish and least representative.  Big companies can take away their power with one simple tactic: ignore them.  It's not our fault some essential part of their life is missing.  Get on with doing shit that isn't offensive in every wrong way and start to grow.  You won't be seen as unsympathetic, you'll be seen as smart.  Ignore the fuckers who want comics to stay the same stunted medium forever^*.

What I say to everyone: is shout as loud as you can about these internet degenerates.  Shine a big torch on every reprehensible proclamation.  There should be a website dedicated to this, where women who've been on the receiving end of this crap can post the sickening crap they have to put up with so that the rest of us can laugh and the pathetic specimens who feel it's right and proper to verbally beat women down with grimy threats just so they can feel empowered.  Would such a place work?  Dunno.  It would be nice to experiment and see.  Someone.  Anybody?<sup>**

*</sup> Actually moderating forums and comments sections might be a good start too.  Too many of these places just let slobbering misogyny and any other foul prejudice run rampant without saying much.  Don't feed the trolls is not an adequate way to moderate a forum either.

^** And fucking hell more shit!


Will

Inarticulate Snarl!

Doing things in good faith is a perfect way of getting it in the gub.  It's a life lesson I can't quite grasp, even though it's happened to me so often.  I enter into things with an open mind and end up getting kicked in the brain^*.  I have been approaching some modern horror films with this attitude of late, fool that I am.

I'm still not finished with this little jag; there are a load of horror films from the last few years I haven't seen.  In truth there are some older horror films I haven't seen – wouldn't mind giving Don't Look Now and Freaks a go around.  By the same token I'm not interested in some newer horror films like The Human Centipede 2 or any of the Hostel films.  I am not squeamish, as you'll know if you've read some of my fiction, but the retarded and boring fascination with gore and debasement^** just doesn't do anything for me.  Add to that, the first Human Centipede was some of the most inept film making I've ever seen and it didn't bode well for the follow-up.  Use an idea as the basis for a story, but it shouldn't be the entire fucking thing.

Anyway, I entered into watching a couple of Rob Zombie films a few days ago.  Yeah, I suppose walking into Rob Zombie film-making exploits is a big invitation to getting a toe in the frontal lobe, but I decided I should, just to see if the impression left by House of 1,000 Corpses was erroneous.  This is the point where I stick a disclaimer in your face: I have liked Rob Zombie's music for a long time, going on twenty years now^†, and I was really excited when House of 1,000 Corpses was coming out, abandoning any misgivings about his directorial abilities, because even the promos he directed for his songs are on the shoddy side.  So, yeah, fan of Rob Zombie music.

House of 1,000 Corpses turned out to be an incoherent clusterfuck of a mess.  It's like it has been written by someone who doesn't know what a story is and has the tedious hyperactive style of bad music promos.  Bad film!  Swat it with a fucking slipper.  It was disappointing and quite saddening, that trashy, wild and incoherent style that worked so well in his music didn't stand up to a change of medium.  Should have seen it coming, but I was naive and really wanted to enjoy his film work as much as I liked his music.

I pretended this hadn't happened.  I pretended I was coming into The Devil's Rejects without ever having seen House of 1,000 Corpses, aaaaaand it was still shit.  I will admit it was better written, there was actually the semblance of a narrative.  It was a shit narrative with the desperate need for you to empathise with a bunch of reprehensible psychopaths.  It's almost impossible to empathise with characters who have no redeeming features whatsoever.  Yet there goes Mister Cummings trying to make us care for characters so horrible and twisted there's nothing tangible to hold onto.  They're just a bunch of gurning sick fucks who kill a bunch of faceless people and deserve to die.  Actually they probably didn't deserve to have what little cinematic life was given to them.

What's probably most dull about The Devil's Rejects is Rob Zombie's slavish copying of a particular brand of seventies films.  He doesn't even try to bring anything new to the business, just making a nasty seventies exploitation film a couple of decades too late.  It's witless and artless and a kind of wank material for people who want to see senseless, pointless killing and boobs.  It would be fine if that was all he was trying to do, but there are too many things inserted that make it seem like he's trying for something loftier and when he doesn't get anywhere near them it's difficult to decide whether to scud him on the head for being so inept or pat his weirdly-hatted bonce in commiseration for making an attempt.

And while we're on the subject of mindlessly copying the work of other directors, having seen The Lords of Salem, it seems he'd watched a bit of Stanley Kubrick, only instead of taking the lessons of story-telling and character he took away STATIC SHOTS and DRAGGING SCENES.  So many static shots for no reason.  You're not learning anything, it's not moving the plot along and it's not creating tension.  What's the fucking point, man?

I mean, again, better than either The Devil's Rejects or House of 1,000 Corpses, but still a million miles away from being a good film.  He shows a wee bit of restraint when it comes to the violence, but his need to have waaaaaay too much nudity is yawn-inducing.  Actually, I'll correct that: too much female nudity.  I'm a red-blooded heterosexual male, I enjoy looking at the female form, but when it's just women parading around nude, for no real purpose, it gets creepy.  It does get to the point where a full-frontal naked guy would be something of a relief; it would make it feel less like some leering pervert's sitting next to you massaging himself.  Urk.

I dunno if there's something inherently wrong with modern horror, or if this kind of rot has always been there, but Rob Zombie's films are kind of indicative of something a bit skewed about the genre.  The need to parade unpleasant violence and nudity in place of story and character makes me feel a lot of horror film makers miss the point of the genre.  Like most genres it's about showing us fundamental truths about humanity, yeah that sounds fucking pretentious, but it doesn't make it any less true, but a lot of directors seem to think it's an excuse to show off boobs and wave a dripping pancreas in our faces while screaming, "Ha ha ha ha!  Isn't this fucking awesome!"

Rob Zombie probably isn't beyond redemption as a film maker.  There were a few points in The Devil's Rejects, actually some of the best scenes, where he showed a keen sense of comic timing.  Perhaps ditching horror and making a foray into comedy might work out better.

^* Okay, not everything.  Some things.  In case you hadn't noticed I'm not the most open-minded person.  I'm not the most closed-minded, either.  Receptive to some things more than others.  Like A REAL HUMAN BEING!  Gasp.

^** And don't forget that little smattering of misogyny, that shit gets everywhere and leaves a funky smell.

^† I even got to see White Zombie the one time they toured in the UK.  Throwing that out there for no particular reason.



Will

Gonna Pop a Vein.

You ever cast about like a fucking maniac trying to find something to take up some space?  You ever do that?  Just me?

It looks like it comes so easily to other bloggers.  Every week they have something new to tell us, and here I am, almost in tears trying to think of something to say that will inspire and entertain.  It makes me wonder if I have an extremely boring life.  Might be that I need to get out and do a wee bit more living.  Then I look at my bank balance.

You know that thing about money can't buy you happiness?  Yeah, it isn't that simple.  Having money and just shoving it in a bank account to watch it accumulate isn't going to make you very happy^*.  Having money ready for when you need it and then using to have fun will make you happy.  Well, it will certainly make your life richer in experience.  Sometimes.

I used to have money.  I'll let you pick yourself up off the floor from that bombshell.  You wouldn't think it to look at me, but I used to have quite a comfortable bank balance.  I didn't do much with it.  Then I blew all on stuff I didn't really want^**.  That wasn't the best time in my life.  I should have spent all my money years before^†.  I might not have so many regrets.

Instead of being so dull when it came to summer holidays I should have got myself a passport and zoomed around a bit.  My younger self could have benefited from zipping to comic cons in the US and schmoozing with people in the business.  Ah, if my youthful incarnation had even half the ambition and one percent of the knowledge I do now, he wouldn't have been seen for dust^‡.  Boom!  On a plane.  Bang!  At a convention.  ?!  Profit and enriching experience!

But, then, I did what I did, which wasn't very much at all.  So here I am, banging my head off a desk, trying to think of interesting things to write about instead of thinking about how important money is in the modern world, how integral it is to get by and why this shouldn't be.  Oh, yes and boring you, I can see you nodding.  I'll leave it there and let you snore and dribble.

I think I could do with some cheering up.

^* Or, it doesn't for most people.  There are probably a few Scrooge McDuck types out there who would go swimming in their money bins if they could.

^** There's a whole story there, but it's not for the internet.  Lemme have some kind of mystery about me, you bastards.

^† Really, Will, hindsight?  You really are getting desperate, aren't you?

^‡ He could really have done with his grammar getting a shake-up.  Not that I'm perfect now, but he was really terrible.  It's embarrassing, he needs a slap.


Will

It Had to Happen.

Yeah.  I've got nothing.

Just as I expected to happen, I'm coming up dry.  Not a lot's happening that I feel strongly enough to go on about.  This week has been particularly quiet.

I'll rack my brain for something to say for next week.


Will

Them Ole Square Eyes.

TV.  Teevee.  Telly.  Television.  It's been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember.  As you can imagine I was the weird kid who would disappear home to watch television while everyone else was out playing.  Drove my mother nuts, to the point where she would kick me out of the house so that I would get some fresh air.

As a teenager I was a bit of a recluse.  Not terribly sure why.  I would go to school and then go home and spend most of my time with the television on.  Yeah, I'd sit and scribble things: stories, games and bad drawings.  All the time the comforting grumble of the television going on in the corner of the room.  Film and TV are, unsurprisingly, my biggest influences when it comes to fiction.  My brain is full of flotsam and jetsam from years of watching some of the most obscure things because I couldn't bring myself to hit the 'off' switch.  Oh, fucking hell, does late-night Channel Four programming in the nineties have a lot to answer for^*.

So.  Now you know what my viewing habits were like as kid^**, you get to see the special relationship I've developed with it over the years.  The magpie effect of flicking around when nothing was on means I know things about programmes I didn't chose to watch.  It's had the dual effect of making me more discerning and more willing to try new things.  I know, for instance, bone-deep, that I ain't going to sit through an episode of a soap opera; horrible cancerous things that choke out anything else that might turn up on the air.

In the interests of community-mindedness, I'll give you a little list of the current programmes I'm watching and enjoying.  Should be fun.  Might show you a shocking lack of taste in your eyes, and if that's the case: FUCK YOU, YOU MALICIOUS CUNT!  HOW DARE YOU JUDGE ME!  I'LL JUDGE YOU RIGHT BACK!


















SEE!  THAT'S ME JUDGING YOU!  DON'T LIKE IT, DO YOU?  NOOOoooOOO!

Ahem, anyway, onto the list.

Person of Interest.  I'll actually start with a complaint about this – go me!  Why are we in the UK a year behind on this?  Not everyone has Netflix, motherfucker.  Channel Five have to be applauded for showing it, but it's irritating having to avoid places because there are people who have to talk about what's going on twelve months ahead because it's so fucking good!  I want to know!

The show had a bit of a slow start.  The first half of the first series is almost a write-off.  Then it hit its stride.  It's a fantastic mix of conspiracy thriller, A-Team style good-deed of the week and comedy.  It's exciting, dark and asks some big questions.  Just don't tell me what happens in series three, I will have to have you killed or, at the very least, severely beaten.

The Blacklist is another bit of conspiracy and espionage, but it manages to be far darker and uncompromising than Person of Interest.  We are introduced to the wonderful character Raymond 'Red' Reddington, a criminal facilitator and extremely bad man who drops himself into the FBI's lap telling them he'll give them access to criminals they haven't even heard of, the titular blacklist.  Oh and he'll only talk to a particular analyst.  It's murky in the best kind of way.  There's no question about the people Reddington is handing over are extremely bad, but his motives aren't clear and as it goes on it's obvious a lot of the characters' motivations are uncertain.  I don't know what the fuck's going on and I love it.  You should jump in and not know what's going on either.

Talking about being reeealllyyyy behind on series, I give you Parks and Recreation, a comedy programme filmed in a fly-on-the-wall documentary style^† and we're three series behind on this.  This took even longer than Person of Interest to get into its groove, but in the third series the insanity set in and the documentary presentation gives great opportunities for characters to give silent reactions to the madness around them or getting little interviews to give their insights.  For ages before BBC Four started showing it I was seeing things about Ron Swanson on the internet and got really annoyed, but now I see the appeal, he's a stand-out character in a programme of brilliant characters.

Without Community, I would never have tried Parks and Recreation.  This is another one I'd been hearing about for a while and finally found the whole first series on catch up.  That was a rewarding Sunday afternoon.  For a while we were a year behind this one as well, but last year the Sony channel showed both series three and four.  Four wasn't quite as good because Dan Harmon had been dumped as show runner, but it still managed some interesting episodes.  Community relies on the interplay between the fantastic ensemble, guiding us through their time at a US community college.  It starts off pretty grounded, with some odd moments, but by the end of the first series and the paintball episode it laid the groundwork for the strangeness to come.  Then we have the references, you remember what I said about references, right?  It's chock-full.  A lot of it is self-referential, something a lot of people point out as a bad thing, but I think it's great and gets you invested in the strange family unit of the Study Group.

The most recent addition to my watching is Brooklyn 99.  This is an odd one, because it has a bog-standard police procedural as its basis with all the beats and tropes the genre has, yet it's all wrapped up in a comedic skin.  Yeah, I know a lot of police procedurals have elements of comedy in them, and Castle is even described as a comedy-drama, but the writers will ditch any semblance of comedy trappings in favour of a dramatic storyline.  Brooklyn 99 is straight-down-the-line funny.  Yes, there's a case of the week, and it forms a big part of each story, but the characters' eccentricities make up the rest of the bulk.  It could have been fucking awful, but it, amazingly, works.

There are others, like the slew of crime dramas I watch, like Castle, Rizzoli and Isles, Elementary^‡ and Bones, but the ones above are the programmes I feel most excited about watching of a week.  I highly recommend them if you can get access to them.

^* Now a bit of a sad imitation of its gloriously vibrant and mad landscape.  Late-night television, in general has become a depressingly conformist precession of gambling shows.  That made me a little sad, writing that.

^** Or reiterated for some of you.  Yeah, I'm looking right at you, dude.

^† As pioneered in The Office.  One I never did get around to watching in either its original UK run or its US incarnation.

^‡ That I think in a lot of important ways is far superior to Sherlock, though I did enjoy that too.


Will

Grinding On.

Looks like I wasn't done with talking about Borderlands 2, after all.  How curious.  I will move away from this subject, I promise.  Seriously, I don't want to flog a dead horse, it only gets messy.

I'll just reiterate, though, Gearbox did a good job on building what they'd created with Borderlands.  They've created this fun and addictive game.  The only reason there was so much for me to complain about is because I've spent so much time going through the game.  Having clocked up so many hours^* playing the game the flaws are magnified.  The fact I'm willing to spend so long playing the game says as much on its own.

You see all that content?  Some of it coming out over a year after the game was released is still pretty fucking impressive.  And their still rolling out fixes and support^** in that same time.  While they might look like they're not sure how to handle some of the gameplay stuff, they do have a handle on the technical stuff.

So Gearbox did a good job.  We clear on that?

It still could have been so much better.  My main gripe with it is the nature of the loot drops.  I'm not going to go into it, but this gives a good overview: Evolution of Loot.  I'll give you some time to look through that.  It's a big fucking post.

One thing I'd like to point out is '1 in 30'.  It's the standard drop rate for a lot of the bosses in the game of their best equipment.  This doesn't sound bad, but when you think about it, it veers quite hard into the stingy territory, especially when you consider some of the bosses can be very challenging.  Yes, it's better than the one in ten thousand chance normal enemies have to drop top-tier gear^†, but it still leaves you at Stingy Station with a bit of straw clamped in your teeth.

You shouldn't need to fight the one boss anywhere near that number of times to get their best gear.  Getting to and fighting one boss ten times is a tedious exercise of Sisyphus-like proportions, thirty times can be brain-mushing.  And because it is probability and as close to random as technology allows you're likely to find yourself fighting that boss a lot more times to get the piece of gear you want.  There have been some horrifying statistics posted about how much chance you have of getting certain pieces of gear and they go into the hundreds before it starts to look decent.  That's not fun.  A game should be fun.  No it shouldn't just hand you the good stuff the first time you hold out your hand, but it shouldn't point and laugh at you when you're trying to get it while tripping over your grey beard^‡.  Rewarding you for your persistence in a half-way decent manner without taking a grinder to your patience.

I've thought about how they could do this with my non-codery brain.  My suggestion can't be implemented in Borderlands 2, unfortunately, though I do hope Gearbox tweak the drops before they finally have to walk away.  Perhaps for Borderlands 3?  Maybe?  Perhaps?  Dudes?  Please?

Anyway what I thought would be a variation on the RNG reliance.  The RNG sounds good in principal for the loot drops, but, as many people have seen it actually turns out to be very unfair.  I think the game should note when you've fought any boss.  Each time you fight a boss, a little note to say no loot was dropped and to start with there's that one in thirty chance at the good gear.  If by, say, the fifth boss fight without a drop the game starts to incrementally put its thumb on the probabilities scale.  Each time a boss is fought that doesn't drop its best loot the game weights the probability more and more until it hits a high probability, like one in five.  Once a boss drops its highest level loot the count resets.  Not perfect, by any means, but it would redress the imbalance gamers feel.  Or just really make it more likely to find good stuff across the board, that could work too.

That's the important thing that's forgotten in the reliance on the RNG, it's how the people playing the game feel.  Whether or not its completely random doesn't always register in our emotion-fuelled ape-brains.  We get pissed and start to see negative patterns where there aren't any.  We feel like the game is mocking our efforts^§.  That's not a feeling to be engendered by a game, characters in a game, perhaps, but we shouldn't feel like the company behind the game are sniggering every time we kill Hyperius and get a pile of white gear^§§.  It's childish to think they might be, but in the halucinatory haze you find yourself in while farming^§§§ it's easy to start thinking it.

This unwillingness of the game to part with its most prized items leads to behaviours that are considered cheating: duping and gibbing.  Gearbox have gone to great pains to wipe out gibbing in particular, but neither would be the problem they are if drop rates were more generous, less Ebenezer Scrooge and more Père Noël.  Never going to get rid of people cheating, but minimising it by making game mechanics feel more fair to the players.

No, we don't need these weapons or equipment – well maybe some of it to make progress in the hardest level of the game, but we want it.  Gearbox created the demand for it for those of us with the particular brain damage that makes us crave it, but they haven't quite furnished the supply.  Would it be so difficult for the unsung heroes of the games industry, the quiet programmers and coders, to bump the drops more in the player's favour?  That's the main aim, to create a game with even more lasting appeal, without doing it in a cheap way.

There are other criticisms, like the poor Krieg and Maya players who got shafted in the Overpower levels, but I think I've gone on long enough about the subject, don't you?  Next time something different, I think.

^* I'm now too terrified to calculate it.  My self-esteem can't handle that kind of knock.

^** The most recent one redresses, a little, one of the stingiest drops in the game.  That's pretty cool, I have to say.

^† Which is just jim-dandy, sir.  You don't want some schlubby gimp basic enemy dropping the best stuff, that would just be weird and make it pointless to fight the bosses once you've finished the game.  Yes, I do see the merit in replayable bosses, that's pretty cool.  I just don't agree with the low possibility of good gear.

^‡ Yes, even the ladies, because nature is cruel and hates everyone.

^§ Especially those fucking loading screens where it shows a parade of some of the rarest items in the game.  Three Pearlescent weapons in a row?  You fucking cunt!

^§§ If you don't get the reference, don't worry.  Or maybe you should, you made it this far not knowing what the fuck I'm talking about.  What's wrong with you?

^§§§ A term I discovered last year for fighting the one enemy over and over again to get a piece of equipment.  It's about as boring as my explanation sounds.


Will

Pointless or Ahurgaflurgan?

I may have mentioned before that I enjoy Borderlands 2.  I may have mentioned something along the lines of being a little addicted to Borderlands 2.  You probably don't get the scale to which I threw myself into this game.  It's so bad I'm embarrassed^* to talk about it.  Really, I shouldn't even be admitting to it.  Am I creating strong enough picture?  No?

Right.  I got sooooo into this game that I spent three fucking weeks looking for the rarest weapon in the game.  I found the bloody thing and then Gearbox did their Loot Hunt^**  month and for a glorious day one boss enemy dropped the weapon one hundred percent of the time, and now I have a bunch of them.

This doesn't even cover the HUNDREDS of hours looking for other slightly less rare, but still hard to obtain weapons.  I give one word to people who might know: Norfleet.  I'll now give you two words: fucking Norfleet.

Anyway.  Now that I've given you some idea the extent to which I let this game take over my life, I'm going to go through a few things about the game since it's coming to the end of it's very long cycle^†.  Is it a review, is it an overview, is it me taking an opportunity to whine about things I don't like about the game?  Who can say?  I present this little essay and I'll let you, demented reader, make up your own confused, confused mind.

I'm pretty heavily into the game is what I'm trying to get across to you.

Let's start with what Gearbox got right with Borderlands 2, shall we?  From the outset it's a pretty game.  The overexposed opening reminds those of us who played the first game just how unforgiving the planet of Pandora is.  Each of the playable characters is distinct and quirky, as you would expect from a game as quirky as this.  Once you're knee-deep in the game you're presented with bleak environments and amusing new enemies in wonderful cel-shaded-fi.  Lovely.

We also get to meet the two characters that eased us into the first game: Angel and Claptrap.  There are too many spoilers when it comes to Angel, so let's not bother with her.  Claptrap, I perversely find a lot more likeable than in the first game.  I know he's supposed to be a really irritating character and he was much more annoying in the first game.  In Borderlands 2 he's just kind of tragic and everyone hates him, even though he turns out to be incredibly useful.  Maybe it's my sympathy for the underdog, dunno.

The story is coherent, which is always a plus in an FPS.  I'm staring directly at you COD.  It doesn't suffer being lost quite as much as in the first game, though there's so many side quests to do, there's still that drift and you can sense it on the periphery of you consciousness.  But there are so many amusing asides and so much funny dialogue, you don't actually notice too much and by the time you might be in a position to notice, you're too busy killing baddies to really care.  Which, mostly, is the point of a game like this.

That brings us to the extra content.  So much of it.  A good lot of it I haven't indulged in because it's in the form of skins and heads.  I mean they're cheap and all, but I can't get terribly excited enough to fork over the money to buy them.  It's a clever way to grab a few extra quid without people feeling like they're being squeezed, even though they are a little bit, not a full squeeze of the testicles^‡ just a little pull of the sac.

What I have paid for are the DLC campaign add-ons , and largely I've been happy with what I've handed money over for.  You get a few extra hours of gameplay for about eight quid.  Can't complain even when they don't quite measure up to the main quest, though I was very pleased with the Tiny Tina DLC, which was huge for an add-on.  And then there are the other bits, like the extra characters, level upgrades and the Head Hunter packs.  That adds up to a lot of extra stuff.  And we consumers do like our extra stuff, unless it's hot coffee in the crotch, we're not so keen on that.

The whole package is crammed full of references.  Brimming over, dammit.  I like me a good old reference, and this kept me amused, I'll tell you.  There were so many references I didn't even know them all – not that I'm some kind of pop culture guru, it's just amazing the breadth of things they pulled in.  There's even one I'm sure no one's copped to and that's from the Torgue DLC with one of the gangs called the Burners, looking very similar to a faction in the game Rage called the Scorchers, even having a thing about bikes.  Am I seeing things?  Hmmm.

There is a lot to like in this game.  Perhaps not enough to take it to the insane extremes I've gone to in playing it, but a fun game all the same.

Of course, it isn't all good.  I wouldn't have written this if it were a fannish look at what makes it work.  You're not getting off that lightly, oh no.  I have things I want to say and I want to suggest.  As if anyone from Gearbox is going to read this.  Just like Dean Koontz is never even going to be aware of my open letter.  It's all just honking in the dark.

I'll not bother with bugs and glitches and things, because you could write a book about them.  Borderlands 2 isn't quite as bug-ridden as, say, Fallout: New Vegas, but it has its fair share.

What I am going to say, is repeat what a guy who goes by the Youtube user name Morningafterkill observed about Gearbox's handling of the game: they don't seem to know how to handle it.  The first Borderlands felt slight and experimental and it almost feels like they were throwing stuff at to see what worked.  This extends into the DLCs for the first game which were kind of messy and, in the case of the Mad Moxxi DLC, was just badly put together.  Yes they hit the right notes with some parts of campaign add-ons, but you could feel they were kind of winging it.  For all that Gearbox addressed a lot things to improve the experience of Borderlands 2, there's the niggling feeling of not being sure what to do with it.

Sure their blogs make it seem like they have everything well in hand, but when you look at certain things, you start to see cracks.  It was most illustrated for me when someone on their forum asked a question about one of the big mechanics of the game and the developer who answered essentially explained the point of the mechanic and then said it wasn't desirable^§.  Bit of an odd thing to do when you should be in control of the game.  Their last couple of non-Borderlands games have been embarrassing failures and it makes you wonder how good they are at producing games.

Even the Loot Hunt event had shades of this.  Actually, more than shades.  Huge big signs, telling us, "WE DON'T HAVE A FUCKING CLUE!" The first part of giving players the opportunity to find some rare items, yeah I can get behind that.  It was a fantastic idea.  Gets the interest again.  But the added stuff, like buffing the game's weapons went a little awry.  There were a handful of weapons that got good upgrades and then the rest just got tweaks, like the weapons known for having huge magazines getting an extra one ammo.  One, in weapons that carry hundreds.  A lack of awareness there, Gearbox.  Lots of people were disappointed by that, but what was most disappointing was the inability for international players to help out with the targets.  It was made clear from the start we couldn't get the prizes and no one was surprised, but when we couldn't even help out in the US players reach the goals, it felt a bit like the company couldn't give a shit about their overseas players.  This might not be the case, but you feel that twinge, like non-US players aren't important.  WE'RE PEOPLE TOO!  And if it wasn't apathy, it gives even more this impression of not knowing their market reach.  A tad strange, don't ya feel?

For the record the Loot Hunt is a great idea and wouldn't go amiss being part of the ongoing promotion of a third Borderlands game, and not just for other corporate sponsorship.  Something other than the golden keys.  Keep interest and maintain a cool connection with the fanbase, doing these events one weekend a month or something.  See, I'm still trying to be positive in this sea of criticism.

They added a third playthrough to the game.  It was designed to be very tough.  The main problem you see with it, is it kinda broke the game.  It's actually incredibly difficult to progress in this playthrough without specific weaponry, even with multiple players.  In a game of 'a bazillion guns' it's a little strange you find only about a dozen weapons make doing it feasible^§§.  How much thought did they put into this mode that wrecks the notion of customisable characters?  Probably not quite as much as they should have, as they added in regeneration to enemies that negates another major mechanic.  I can't say that was well-thought out.  It's one of the things the first game got right.  You could go through any mode with gear that wasn't the rarest and have a good time making it through, even when it was quite challenging.

Then there's the tendency to aim to be annoying and frustrating with game mechanics.  Yeah, they actually want to frustrate their player base with enemies.  What the fuck?  Going out of their way to make something so annoying it will make people rage-quit?  Is that really a desirable goal for a game?  I don't want to play a game to be frustrated and angered^§§§.  I want to have fun on a game for a few hours, not have the creators yank my fucking chain.

The rarities of equipment is all fucked up.  It shouldn't take days or weeks to get certain weapons, no matter how good they are.  Fighting a tough enemy for hours or one that has a fight time that's tediously strung out shouldn't yield rubbish and fucking consolation items.  It's not rewarding.  At the moment I'm trying to get weapons that only drop from enemies that only occasionally occur.  Someone quoted these weapons have a drop rate of one-in-thirty.  I started counting and as of writing this blog I've fought ninety of these enemies and not a one of these weapons has appeared, and some people have talked about fighting one or two hundred of these guys and only got one or two weapons.  And remember these are rare enemies already!  If you're going to have these things in the game give a fucking decent chance of a drop^§§§§, because the enemy's rarity is going go on top of the item's rarity.  I'm not some fancy mathematician, but even I can see that.  It's clear most gamers aren't even going to encounter them, as they play through the game once and move on, such deeply buried items seem pointless, don't you think?

Players want to feel rewarded.  It's something that Minecraft – a game Gearbox admire so much they have an entire section pay homage to it, including fighting enemies from Minecraft – understands all too well and though you can spend a long time doing something it never feels frustrating.  Yes, Borderlands 2 is a very different game and that's my point, it's a fast-paced shooter that's repetitive enough with three playthroughs available, adding in sections that need to be done over and over and over and over and over and over^§§§§§ for the item an enemy is supposed to drop takes away from that.  S'not rewarding.  Players want rewards not grinding chores.  The slavish adherence to the RNG in the inevitable sequel^§§§§§§ has to go and with it the mindless 'random is random' mantra.

And finally, probably more personal to me, but I've seen a few grumblings about it: ditch the fucking raid bosses.  This convention of MMOs isn't required in a game like this and it feels like giving the single player or people playing splitscreen at a home a raw deal.  I've told you my feelings on forcing people to play online – I'll give a hint: I don't think it's good.  That's only part of it.  Super powerful, can take a ridiculous amount of damage and, the cardinal sin, most possess unfair attacks you can't defend against marks all of these enemies.  It doesn't fit in with the rhythm of the Borderlands games and, again, feel desperate, like Gearbox don't know what the hell's going on.

There you go, the good and the bad of a game I've spent far too long playing.  There's more to love and more to get annoyed about, but I've rambled enough.  Don't you people ever sleep!

^* And mortifying.  Don't forget mortifying.

^** I think some people were pissed off that the super-rare weapon they'd spent ages looking for was now very easy to get a hold of.  I thought it was only fair of Gearbox.

^† By the time the final DLC comes out Gearbox will have been supporting the game for eighteen months.  Quite amazing for an FPS when most other companies give up on a title after a year.  Unless it's Insomniac games with Resistance 3 and they walked away after about months, the fucking wimps.

^‡ Or ovaries.  Whichever, it all adds up to the same.

^§ I would link it, but I don't have time to dig through the forum to find the thread.

^§§ Although the minority of really good players will claim this is nonsense.  They're talking out of their arse.

^§§§ It will likely happen anyway, but that's not the point.  The creators of the game baiting the player that way is trollish to me.

^§§§§ Yes, yes, they drop other rare items, but only at the top mode and the rare items aren't that good and, again feel like patronising consolation prizes.  I don't want to be patronised any more than I want to be frustrated, man.

^§§§§§ ...over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

^§§§§§§ Because it will happen.  They made too much money on it and had too many high-profile fuck-ups to not support the Borderlands universe with a second sequel.


Will