An Argument Against Maddox

Maddox is a channel based around complaining about things in life in a comedic fashion and it's a channel i've really enjoyed watching and for the most part, I agree with him. That is except for this video, where Maddox discusses his disinterest in videogame stories, well, i shouldn't say disinterest, as much as it is straight up hatred and this is the first video of his where i disagree with almost everything he talks about. So let's go through this point by point.

His first point of discussion is bringing up Super Marios Bros, one of the most successful videogames of all time and talks about how it doesn't need a story. I hate it when people think using old games is a strong argument against videogame stories. The reason why these games were successful back then are because the medium was new and people were just impressed by the fact that they were able to control what was happening on the screen. To compare it to movies (we'll get more in detail on that in a second), back when movies were first being made, nobody gave a shit about the stories, they were just blown away by the fact that we were able to watch moving pictures. But unless the medium progresses and tries something new then it'll die out fairly quickly. You think people would still be playing videogames if they never tried to do anything new? And yes, that includes giving them stories.

Now this isn't to say that every videogame needs to have a complex story with themes and character arcs and narrative structure, but at the same time, neither do movies. Some movies can just be fun popcorn flicks to waste 2 hours of your life, but others have to more complicated and put more effort into their narratives, to challenge the form and the audience and give them a new experience. When people think of the best games in modern days they talk about the story driven games, Bioshock, The Last Of Us, Metal Gear Solid, etc.

The next thing he brings up is how the only genre he feels needs story and characters is role-playing because the whole point to those games is to have a personalised experience. But then he makes the dumb statement of "Why not add a sports element for example? Why don't we just start adding basketballs to videogames?". Yeah and why not just start putting spaceships in all of our movies because sci-fi does it? Because that would be fucking dumb. Stories and developed characters are used in other genres because they can still fit. You can have a story in a first person shooter because it doesn't conflict with the genre's conventions, you can't put a fucking basketball into say a stealth game because it makes no damn sense why a basketball game would be there. Seriously Maddox, use your damn head. One genre doesn't own stories, it's not this exclusive element that has to be told in specific ways, stories can be changed and molded to fit the setting of the game, you can't change the rules of basketball to fit your setting because then it's not fucking basketball.

Now this is where he has his only good argument to be made, when discussing Tetris Worlds, a game that tries to set itself up that the tetris homeworld is dying and when completing a level you come closer to helping the citizens of the planet escape. But the reason why this doesn't work is because Tetris doesn't have any characters, it's literally just a bunch of blocks, it'd be stupid to do so. But that's not to say games like Pac-Man or Super Mario Bros can't have stories, okay, i'm not saying they have to and i'm not expecting The Godfather or anything, but they at the very least have pre-established characters and relationships to work off of, Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man are in love, the ghosts are the antagonists, work your way off from there, or don't, it doesn't matter. But then when he says that Tetris was still a very popular game...no it wasn't. People got bored of Tetris, it's the same damn thing over and over again, when was the last time you saw a let's play of Tetris or an ad for the new Tetris game? It's fun for like 10 minutes, then you don't need to ever play it again. Is a story needed? No. But they need to do something new.

Maddox then goes on to make another comparison to movies, so here's where the comparison to movies and videogames really pisses me off yet again. People...movies and videogames are two separate mediums. Saying videogames are copying movies is ignorant as shit. Why not say television is copying movies? Or movies are copying plays? Or plays are copying books? No one form of entertainment owns the right to tell a story. But yes, he does have a point that a lot of game makers don't have experience in story telling, in fact a lot of videogames design the levels first and try and build a story around that. Does it work? No, not always, but putting the effort into making a story is what differentiates games from each other. If all videogames had no stories then what would be the point in playing Gears of War and Mass Effect? Without the story they are 90% the same game. Or Batman and Shadow of Mordor, or Dragon Age and Witcher 3, or Sleeping Dogs and Grand Theft Auto, or Devil May Cry and God of War? Take away the story and characters and these games are practically the same apart from aestetically or with minor gameplay changes.

His next point feels like it was written by a 13 year old, he complains about unskippable cutscenes "Hey dickhead, i paid for the game, so i should be able to skip whatever the fuck i want." Hey Maddox, someone spent months working on this single cutscene and put a lot of hard work into it, how about you get off your high horse and have some damn patients you whiney brat? "The average age of a gamer is 31, that means we have jobs, families and shit to do" If you're life is so important that you can't spare 2 minutes to watch a cutscene then you clearly don't have time to be playing videogames dipshit.

Then he makes the dumbest possible descion and uses The Last of Us as an argument against videogame stories, you know, that game that was a massive success, was praised by both critics and audiences for it's engaging, intelligent and well developed story? Because that makes sense. His big problem here is "random character babble" where characters would talk about meaningless shit at random moments in the game. First of all, it's not random, the majority of dialogue at these intervals is often about the location they are in or about recent events. When it's not, it's acting as world building and making the characters feel more realistic and well developed, even the smallest of lines can actually add a lot to the character, seeing what they're like in their down time helps flesh them out. Am i a little biased in this case? No, i'm a lot biased, The Last of Us in my opinion is the greatest videogame story of all time, of course i'm going to defend it, especially with a weak as shit argument like this.

"Remember when people played videogames because they were fun?" oh right, because Rocket League, Bayonetta 2, Far Cry 4, Pokemon OmegaRuby, Grand Theft Auto V, Shovel Knight, Super Smash Bros, are in no way fun as hell and focuses more on the gaming aspect than the story. In fact, let's focus on some more story based games and remove the story, do they hold up? The Last of Us would still be an incredibly well put together stealth/action game with great shooting mechanics and customisation to your weapons. Spec Ops The Line has some of the best cover based mechanics to a third person shooter than i've ever seen. Shadow of the Colossus treats it's boss battles like puzzles that are challenging and rewarding, as well as having beautiful imagery and music. Arkham Asylum has one of the most influential combat systems of this generation and is fun as hell. So don't act like story is taking away from videogames, if anything it's improving them, making the format be taken more seriously as an artform and helping it expand it's audience and survive for generations to come. It's a shame because I love Maddox's videos, but this is the first one to make him seem like a douche bag who likes to complain about things just because they're different from what he wants when in reality there is no problem here at all, this isn't challenging comedy of opposing ideologies, this is just whining like a 13 year old spoilt brat.

-Danny

How To Write The Doctor

If you ever have a conversation with a Doctor Who fan, a topic that will always come up is who is their favourite Doctor? Or a more recent topic is their opinion on Peter Capaldi, the current Doctor and whether or not they like or dislike him. More often than not, when people say they dislike Capaldi it's almost always comparing him to Matt Smith, the previous Doctor, sometimes even inadvertently. One of the complaints that I've heard from someone is that they don't like that Capaldi knows what he's doing, the Doctor (to them atleast) is a man who improvises and most of the time he just ends up lucky that he won or he thinks of a solution at the very last minute. Now for a lot of people, this is what makes a good hero, someone who gets beaten down to their lowest and when they rise up and win at the very last minute we can cheer for them. Of course for The Doctor it's mostly a battle of wits (with the occasional sword fight). Smith isn't the only person to play The Doctor like this, Patrick Troughton, Tom Baker, David Tennant, etc, they all played a variation of this trait. But then you have Doctors like John Pertwee or Sylvester McCoy, these men who always acted like they were in control of everything because most of the time they were. So saying it's Un-Doctor like for Capaldi to be perfectly in control is a false statement.

Truth is, it's almost near impossible to identify The Doctor because there is no one way to write him. I've said it before and i'll say it again, The Doctor is everything, he can be your goofy best friend or he could be a cold hearted warrior, each actor plays the role differently and from this large line-up of actors, somewhere you will find a character archetype that you latch onto (FYI, my favourite is David Tennant). But then some might say if The Doctor is everything then how can he be an actual character? Well that's because there are a few traits that are carried over from Doctor to Doctor, keep in mind this is still the same man so each Doctor has to have some resemblance of each other. But surprisingly, for such a complex man, his traits are very simple; the first and arguably most important aspect is his intelligence.

The Doctor is a genius, by anyone's standards, he's thinking 100 things at once yet has a short attention span and always loves to brag about how clever he is. In this aspect, The Doctor is as middle class as you can get, this is the only way whatsoever that he would call himself better than other people, he would willingly show you up in a game of wits, possibly mock you or sometimes just the fact that you know he's better than you will be enough for him. Again, every Doctor will play a variation of this, Smith for example almost felt like he rubbed it in accidentally, but then again Smith was the most compassionate out of The Doctors so far in my opinion. While Christopher Eccleston preferred to keep his intelligence hidden and only use what was necessary, that is until someone starts to try and show him up and he will beat your ass into the ground to prove how smart he is. William Hartnell, the first Doctor rarely rubbed it in, but his disgruntled behaviour with people and how he bossed them around, make no mistake he did think he was better than you, but rather than bring himself up, he'd lower you down. So yes, even with his core traits, The Doctor still has variety in how they're portrayed. Going back to when I said The Doctor is middle class, this also goes along with how he dresses. The Doctor is extravagant, he's flamboyant, he will wear whatever he wants to wear, most of which sit within a realm of dignity and a traditional smart attire yet also being goofy as hell, yeah it's a hard mixture to get right.

The other trait The Doctor must always have is that he is brave, but again, there are multiple ways to interpret this. He could be brave in the traditional sense of never fearing his enemy, but he can also be brave enough to make tough choices and let innocent people die for the greater good, he can be brave enough to sacrifice his pride so he can live another day. Bravery comes in many forms, but whatever you define as brave, at some point, The Doctor has been that. So as far as i'm concerned, those are the only two traits that The Doctor absolutely needs to have, apart from that, feel free to write him in anyway you desire, because, i'll say this one more time, The Doctor, is everything.

-Danny

Should Spider-Man Ever Be Gay?

So this is a topic that has been brought to my attention recently, and given that I am a massive Spider-Man fan, i might have a few things to say about this. Should Spider-Man be gay? Well there are three ways to look at this, from a narrative stand point, a personal stand point and a marketing stand point. Let's start with marketing and honestly, it would be the best time to do it. They're about to relaunch all of Marvel comics, giving everyone a fresh start and altering other characters, not to mention Marvel is big on expanding their roster and making more diverse characters, so having what is arguably their most popular character gay, it works, if they were going to do it then i could definitely see this being the right opportunity. From a narrative stand point, it still works. The main objective of giving Peter a love interest is to show the difficulties he faces in balancing the life of Peter the ordinary person and Spider-Man the superhero, whatever gender the partner is doesn't matter, either can fulfill this role. And should they put Peter back in high school then it wouldn't feel as forced, high school is for a lot of people a time to experiment, to learn who they are and discover what type of person they would be. A lot of gay people discover this about themselves during high school years so it won't feel as forced as when DC comics tried to make Green Lantern gay (Yeah that happened).

Then finally there is the personal choice, do I think Peter Parker should be gay? No. Now creating a gay superhero I have no problem with, altering Spider-Man to make him more diverse, i also have no problem with. My problem comes not from making Spider-Man gay, but Peter Parker gay. When Marvel created Miles Morales as a black Spider-Man, i had no problem with it, this wasn't them altering a pre-existing character, this was them creating an entirely new character, and I love Miles Morales, he's a fresh take on the Spider-Man story and it works without feeling cheap or pandering. If they want to make an entirely new Spider-Man who happens to be gay, i would have no problem with it. But this idea of altering your most popular character to be more diverse feels like pandering, instead of going through the effort to make a new character and make them popular, take the shortcut by changing someone that's already there. Then there's the fact that you're messing with the character traits of said character for the sake of a wider appeal, that's lazy and wrong.

With that being said, if Peter Parker does turn out to be gay in the relaunch, i'm not going to be upset, i'm not going to be writing angry rants online and i won't consider it a mass betrayal of the character, his sexuality isn't that important when it comes to defining Peter Parker i just don't think it's the right thing to do and feels more like it would be pandering to an audience that it would be to tell interesting stories with the character.

-Danny

Talking About Scum.

If you've been on the internet this week then you've seen everyone talking about a person on YouTube who made a video fat shaming. Well actually, she did a video a few weeks ago slut shaming and of course that went big so she decided to run her 15 minutes of fame and decide to insult fat people. She turned off the comments on her video and tries to defend herself by saying it's satire and it's just comedy. Now i'm not going to name this person because i don't want to give her the attention, which is why it took me a while to write about this, if you want to look up more information about her then feel free but i would discourage it as i don't think she deserves it. Now her slut shaming is wrong. Her fat shaming is wrong. People will say that the best way to make this problem go away is to stop talking about it and that is true, but the saddest part is that this woman, despite everyone in the world hating on her right now will never know that she is scum. She's not a comedian, insulting people just for the sake of insulting people doesn't equal comedy, especially not satire. The reason why people make jokes about harsh situations is to make it hurt less, bringing more pain into the world is as far from comedy as you can get. Add this on top of the accusations that she abused her ex-boyfriend, both mentally and physically and what we have here is someone who doesn't deserve to be in the position she's in. What this woman needs is to know that she's not funny, she's not important and she's not good. Within two weeks she'll be forgotten, but if she is remembered then i want her to know she will be remembered for nothing happy, no one will cry for you when you are gone and you're biggest contribution to life is just making it all the more miserable and showing everyone that awful human beings like yourself can become famous just because you are an awful human being. Your life is less than worthless it is honestly making things worse. That is what she needs to hear. Ignoring her doesn't solve the issue, letting her know that she is the vile piece of garbage that doesn't deserve even a percentage of her audience. So congratulations, you left an impact, you made the world a more bitter place because you existed, and i hope you know this, i hope that one day you will grow the brain cells necessary to acknowledge that you are a pathetic immature waste of space who has lead a pointless existence that has brought more misery than it has joy. You. Are. Scum.

-Danny

Up In The Air - The Philosophy Of A Rut

Up In The Air is a 2009 film directed by Jason Reitman and stars George Clooney, Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga. It follows the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a corporate downsizer, basically that means he travels all around the country, firing people. This is his life and this is the life he's happy with, as he says in the film "Last year I spent 322 days on the road, which means I had to spend 43 miserable days at home". Ryan is almost never at his apartment and whenever he is, he has so little in there, it looks more like a hotel room. In my mind, the film is about escaping your rut, what do i mean by that? We all have a system, we all wake up in the morning with an idea about where our day is going to go, whether it's having a 9 to 5 job and coming home to your wife and kids or you spend your days travelling and never spending the same night in the same location twice, we all have a system, a rut that we're stuck in. Up In The Air has it's two main characters have to challenge their rut. Natalie (Anna Kendrick) dreamt that by 23 she'd be married, have children on the way and settled down, her challenge is that she now finds herself travelling around the country to perform her job. Ryan however loves to travel and has it down to a key, knowing where to go, who to follow, what to do, his challenge is to try and settle down for a while, see what the simple life is like, at least for a little bit.

*Spoilers Ahead*

The film never specifies which life style is better and it's good that it doesn't, that comes down entirely to the viewers perspective, whether you'd prefer a life of travelling or wish to settle down, there's not a wrong choice, what's important is that you at least experience the other and don't trap yourself into a rut, because eventually life will disrupt your rut for you. This is where Ryan comes in, his job is to fire people, to disrupt their rut, whenever he fires someone, they usually use their lifestyle as a defence mechanism, saying how they've worked for this company for X amount of years, that they have a family, a rut. In one scene, Ryan and Natalie fire Bob (JK Simmons) and Ryan helps him with alternative options, pointing out his potential as a culinary chef and giving him a new option for a career path and changing his current lifestyle. In another scene, Ryan has to convince his future brother-in-law Jim (Danny McBride) to go through with his wedding and stick to the life he's got, both cases he explains that they'd be better off in these directions, Bob to try a new lifestyle, Jim to stick to the one he's already got planned, because changing your rut may not be the answer, sometimes your rut is what's right for you, as long as you've tried both and you know for sure.

Alex (Vera Farmiga) is Ryan's friend, fellow frequent traveller and fuck buddy whenever the two travel to the same location is arguably the worst character in the film from a realistic stand point. After Ryan decides he's willing to try the settled down life, he goes to Alex, only to find that she has already being settled down and has a husband and children and has been cheating on them with Ryan. In reality this would make her the scum of the Earth, because she cheated on her husband, repeatedly. But in the context of the film and with this interpretation, she's the most well rounded and the only one who doesn't have to question her life choices because she does experiment outside of her rut and try new opportunities, in other words, she's having her cake and eating it too (Never understood the wording of that phrase).

If Up In The Air has anything definitive to say, it's this, you will never truly be settled, you can find a life you're happy with, or a life you're unhappy with, regardless, eventually something will come along to disrupt that for you. But if you want a happy ending then you better make the change happen yourself, rather than wait until life does it for you.

-Danny

Gravity Falls "The Last Mabelcorn" Review

Gravity Falls seems to be stuck in a weird loop these days, one episode will be alright, the next will be awesome. Last episode was alright, so of course, this one was awesome. The Last Mabelcorn actually splits itself off into two stories, don't usually get those, the main story has Mabel, Grenda, Candy & Wendy searching for a unicorn and trying to prove Mabel is of pure heart. The second story has Grunkle Ford preparing Dipper for Bill and eventually telling him the story of how Bill and Ford came to meet.

So the main story focusing on Mabel's group was probably the funniest aspect of this episode, i've never really realised it before but Grenda might be the funniest supporting character in the show, she got the biggest laugh from me this episode when she smashed a rock against her head for no reason, it was so random i loved it. It's also nice to see Wendy again, she's not usually the most prominent character and has barely appeared this season, the last episode where she was a major player in was "The Love God" and that was 10 months ago! Also I liked seeing some more attention be given to her and Mabel's friendship, the two get along so well and actually make a charming pair to see on screen together, and Wendy is not the type of person that would normally get along with Mabel's antics but she not only approves but encourages and respects Mabel for it. So when the unicorn is trying to make Mabel feel bad and Wendy stands up for her, i thought it was sweet. Though i do have to question why Wendy doesn't believe in unicorns considering all the weird shit she's seen this summer. Also fuck that unicorn for making Mabel feel bad about herself!

The B-Plot of this episode, while light on the jokes, gave us a lot of story progression, explaining the backstory between Bill and Ford and informing us on Bill's big plan. Honestly I loved it just so we can see Bill again, because I love Bill. But really this does give us a lot of information, we had no idea what Bill's end goal was and now we do. It is strange how this was the B-Plot of the episode seeing as it has the most story progression, but I ain't complaining, this is what the best episodes of Gravity Falls does, give us a fair amount of detail for the overall story, but also give us plenty of jokes along the way. Also at the end when Mabel & gang showed up after fighting unicorns they were covered in unicorn "tears"...riiiiiiiight.

I liked this episode, like i said, it has everything a good episode Gravity Falls needs, good humour and good story progression, the unicorns were hilariously cheesy, though i can't believe they had an appearance by the gnomes and no Schmebulock! WTF! I give this episode an 8/10.

-Danny

Old Man Logan - Cheap Thoughts

Old Man Logan is considered one of the best Wolverine storylines out there, so good that it now has it's own story in Marvel's on going Battleworld series. The story follows Logan, former X-Man 50 years after the apocalypse when all supervillains teamed up and killed the majority of the world's heroes, leaving America now in ruins (we're never told what the rest of the world is like) and is split off into the ruling of several supervillains known as landlords. In the present, Logan is now a pacifist living in a farming village in California trying to raise a family, struggling with money, the landlords of California are the Hulk family, who tell Logan he has a month to find the money he owes them or they'll kill his family. Logan then goes on a road trip with a blind Hawkeye to deliver a package and get paid.

*Spoilers Ahead*

So the key factor of this story is obviously Logan, seeing as it is a character study and is putting him in a scenario we've never seen him before, he's an older man and refuses to fight anyone, it's not that he doesn't have the temptation, but as it turns out, he was tricked into slaughtering his fellow X-Men and was scarred for life because of it and now refuses to fight anyone and now doesn't even go by the name Wolverine. Interesting idea, though I doubt Wolverine would be able to kill all of the X-Men single-handedly, even if the others did hesitate and hold back, that's still a lot of X-Men for him to kill on his own. Throughout the story Logan is tempted time and time again to begin fighting, but because of his healing factor, he's never put in enough danger to need to fight. That is until the end, where the cause of his aggression comes from Hawkeye being betrayed and murdered by Red Skull's men. What bothers me about this is Logan knows the world is terrible, a blind old man being killed by a villain shouldn't be so shocking to him, you could argue that he's upset that his last friend and fellow hero has been killed, but i don't buy that it would be enough to set him over the edge. It was nice to see him fight using his fallen heroes weapons and tools, but i feel it would have been preferable if he uses them to defend himself without fighting back and then once he finally makes it home, after all that stress and time he discovers the Hulks killed his family anyway, and then he goes on the rampage would have been better earned and more impactful.

Let's actually talk about Hawkeye and the Hulk, they're just dumb. Firstly the fact that Hawkeye is driving the Spider-Mobile across country...the Spider-Mobile is dumb as hell, everyone knows that, but how about the fact that the blind guy is driving the car! Also setting a story in the future and having the archer of the team be seriously disabled in someway (Can you say Green Arrow from Dark Knight Returns). Then there's making Bruce Banner a redneck...whaaaaat. Bruce Banner is one of the most intelligent minds on the planet, yet they completely alter his character here by making him a dumbass redneck, they claim it was due to the radiation altering his brain but i call bullshit on that doing this much to him, there are no similarities between Bruce Banner and this hillbilly. Then the fact that he's now okay with incest and slept with his cousin Jennifer (She-Hulk) because she was the only person who could sleep with him without being crushed by it...again, that is stupid as hell for multiple reasons. One: Bruce wouldn't be that desperate to have sex that he's sleep with his own cousin. Two: She-Hulk wouldn't be stupid enough to do that either! It's an odd and ridiculous change to two great characters for the sake of the story.

Then there's the actual story progression, a fair portion of the middle bit goes nowhere including Hawkeye rescuing his daughter, Dr Doom's land and the macguffin of the super soldier serum that Hawkeye is trying to transport in the first place (Never explained where he got that from). It does help for some world building and shows the distress that Logan goes through on this mission, but from a story aspect it goes nowhere. Then at the end where Logan's family have been killed because apparently that refrigerator is big enough to store a son and daughter as well as a wife (Google it). Then in the end, Logan kills all the Hulks except for a baby Hulk and adopts him to raise him as his own fighter and plans to kill all the remaining supervillains there are...well the problem is quite clear, this is where the story should have started! Have the first issue be about explaining Logan's situation, but the entire story should have been about Logan getting revenge for his family and going on a mission to kill all the supervillains! Yes that is the story in Battleworld right now, but this story was written 7 years ago, they weren't planning on a sequel all the way back then! And if they were then it should have come out a lot sooner!

As for the artwork, i've said before i'm not an expert but i think it looks great, the environments especially look excellent for how desolate and awful the world looks, from a visual stand point above all else is where the world building really shines. The graphic content might throw some people off but it didn't really bother me and i do appreciate the extra detailing. Also while I may complain about the inclusion of the Hulk in the story, I do love his redesign in this story, he looks more like a monster than ever before.

This story has a lot of problems with characterisation and narrative focus, i appreciate them telling a different story, but they chose the wrong story to tell with this setting and they screw the Hulk over royally. The artwork is awesome though and the action scenes were really well done. 4/10.

-Danny