55. Playstation and Prejudice
Remember how a while ago I was saying that videogaming critics are the least prejudiced on the planet?

Well, of course, I didn’t mean videogamers in general; Nintendo bias is prominent, for instance, as is Sony bias, as is even XBox bias. It’s all crap, that. But by and large, and particularly in a day and age where Sonic and Mario are actually fighting each other Olympics style rather than in their own separate outings (which is startlingly similar to real life, in that I’ve often felt sport is the perfect antidote to war, and the Olympics in particular due to their international flavours), that’s pretty much died down.

Unfortunately, from what I read in the most recent issue of Hyper, prejudice and bias is finding its way into the scribblings of said critics. Not subjectivity; in that very issue, a reply to a letter points out that Halo 3 is brilliant in Eliot Fish’s books but not so brilliant in Wilks’. But that’s “not so brilliant” rather than “abhorrent”. In other words, gaming critics are – according to Wilks’ little rant (one which has gotten me finally interested in stuff he talks about; an interest I haven’t had since the days of Daniel Staines’ remarkably thoughtful Game Theory columns) – doing that.

I’ve often thought about why people do this. One of the reasons, I feel, is the need to be different. The need to say, “Hey, everyone’s enjoying this – I’m going to be ‘me’ by openly hating it!” Which is a stupid and petty thing to do. I myself may have done it in the past too, so if so, put me down. But I strongly believe that you shouldn’t say something’s crap unless you have very good reasons to do so; otherwise, just say you don’t like it. Because “I don’t like it” is fine, as it’s not your thing; “it’s crap” is just offensive if other people think it’s brilliant, and it’s also offensive to those who put their time and effort into something only to hear such a simple response.

For a minute, I was a tad worried that I’d suddenly succumbed to this today. As I was walking back from work – before having read the magazine, which is strange – I’d just bought Spiderman 3. One of the reasons I stopped playing Ultimate Spiderman was because the control scheme was too far from what I was used to, and therefore I got sick of it and stuck to Spiderman 2. Spiderman 3 seems to be closer. But that seems pretty petty; until I realised that I didn’t think Ultimate Spiderman was crap, far from it. It has destructible environments, a more consistent graphics scheme and great style within that, and you get to play as Venom (which, apart from being cool, means that you get a completely different control scheme and such). If anything, it’s actually far better than Spiderman 2, with a more consistent graphics engine, more obvious personality and as I said, destructible environments.

56. Personal Playing Preferences
And yet... Spiderman 2 (and I’m talking about the PS2 version, if any of you hadn’t realised yet) is a thing of beauty for me. Not utterly-gorgeous-too-good-to-be-true-“she-must-have-had-plastic-surgery!” beauty, to give a metaphor, but quietly beautiful. Subtly so. For the most part, it’s a simplistic button mashing game of sorts with obvious tasks and such. But the whole presentation exceeds that. It snuck up on me, but it was when I swung up to the highest point in the game, stood there, watched the sun come up, then jump toward the ground at colossal speed before webzipping away in the nick of time that I realised I was in love with this game. I didn’t think it was perfect, I was in love with it. Which, if we’re to continue the girl metaphor, is very appropriate. The flawed but me game.

For that reason, I prefer playing it to Grand Theft Auto 3 and its sequels. There’s something about the freedom of swinging around the city that appeals to me, and it really just shook me up.

But that’s obviously a personal thing, and there’s no way in hell I’d ever say Spiderman 2 is a better game than GTA3. Because it isn’t, let’s face it. It’s got heart, and it tries its best, and its flaws are sweet rather than annoying (dialogue, for instance), but it’s nothing on GTA3. Doesn’t matter to me. I still love it more. I recognise that GTA3 is better, but I have more love for Spiderman 2.

Which is not something, I’ll wager, that these critics are capable of separating. And that, right there, is another reason; that they just can’t fathom the idea that something that isn’t made for them isn’t immediately crap. Boy, it boils my blood.

There’s other examples of me not getting into games for personal reasons. I don’t like the style (the speed, that is) of Sonic, so I’ve never got into that. The single-click system of Command & Conquer simply alienates me, being brought up on AOE2. I don’t have much time for a lot of FPSs like Unreal Tournament in multiplayer, purely because – unlike my favourites, TimeSplitters, Goldeneye and others – you can jump. I didn’t get into Super Mario Advance 2 anywhere near as much as SMA, purely because the former was actually too much like the Mario games I’d grown up with for me to find much interest in it. And whilst I think the first Halo is a very well-made game with some exceptional bits – driving, and the first bit with you and the soldiers and a big ruin or something (that means it’s an image stuck in my head, even if I don’t remember what it actually is. Which means it’s definitely worth something), and the sheer beauty of the ability to look up at the rings of a planet – it’s never been personally wonderful for me. Even though I’ve played through the whole thing, near about. I don’t know what it is, but it just doesn’t grab me as much as I thought it would (though bits do, as I pointed out), and I’m not much of a fan for multiplayer games either that have no bots. I know, that defeats the whole point, you say, but I like fighting bots. I like figuring out their weaknesses and exploiting them to always win. It means, amongst the genuine challenges on display, I can come back to something and unwind by simply being awesome at it. Which TimeSplitters 2 and 3 allow me to do.

But obviously, Halo has a far, FAR better single player mode than the two of those. Even though the level Siberia in TS2 is one of those things I find a thing of beauty, in level design and everything.

57. For One Moooment… I Wish You’d Look at the Stage!
I can’t exactly pinpoint why it’s the “moments” in videogames that tend to make me throw love towards them, but it really is. They’re moments where I just suddenly think, “Holy shit, this is awesome.” The kind of moments that make me annoyed that videogames are dismissed as not being art (Wilks actually wrote about games in general, but his argument can be transposed to art, and he came to the same conclusion that I did; that once the mainstream accept it as such, it’ll be art. I’m glad that it one day will. But as I said, I’m not going to stop doing so now just because others don’t). Here are some that pop into mind:

Spiderman 2 (already explained)

Spyro the Dragon 2
It’s very easy to be put off by a fairytale fantasy setting (and particularly one that has a wisecracking dragon who isn’t funny), but the flaws in the setup actually mask over the bits of beauty. They don’t come in the levels as such, but in the homeworlds, the hubs; the Summer Forest, the Autumn... place, and the Winter Tundra. Each of them is gorgeous in their own way (though the latter overtly so), and the music and pace compliment it just so beautifully. In fact, it’s almost a quiet kick in the teeth after the first normal level to enter such a tranquil place (game developers note; that’s not a bad way to do it. Instead of having everything nasty from the off, have glorious contrasted with nasty). In fact, now that I think of it, it probably reminds me subconsciously of The Magician’s Nephew, where what is simply a forest with pools is the stepping stone for more complex – but less inherently simplistically beautiful – worlds.

The two top moments, anyway, are gliding into a waterfall in Winter Tundra and, the best of them (and one akin to Spiderman 2), being lifted up by blue lines to the highest point in the world that overlooks everything, with a slight breeze audible on the soundtrack. It was so damn beautiful that I choked up inside. And this was only a couple of days ago, too. See? Games don’t need good graphics – they just need graphics that serve the game well, and boy, this convinced me. I was absorbed. It wasn’t entertainment anymore. For just a moment, it was art.

Pokemon Ruby
This isn’t one I grew up with, so there’s not bias inherent. Indeed, since I’d sort of fallen out of the phase of loving Pokemon when this came out, I avoided it for ages and only begrudgingly played it later. And even whilst I played it, and even when I enjoyed it, and even when I thought Ralts and his evolutions were the coolest things in the game, I didn’t think it was as good as its predecessors.

Bollocks. It’s better. No, no, it’s not my favourite either; I’m a Silver man, myself, and that’s my favourite to play. But I don’t have Ruby on my computer anymore, and guess what? I miss it.

Again, two moments. One is entering Meteor Falls for the first time. “Just another cave”, I thought... and then the soundtrack cut in. Funny how Pokemon’s score is so minimal in terms of sound quality, yet is capable of far more beauty than anything in most far more “full” games. And the second – Team Magma’s just fucked it for the world, and turned it into a water-starved place. Suddenly, the whole world’s changed, and there’s a teensy tiny soundtrack, and I was creeped out, and when I actually faced Groudon, in the moment when he came towards me, I was genuinely terrified. Don’t ask me to explain it, it’s just true. Again, it’s a point about seeing something normal and it then going to pot being utterly terrifying and beautiful at the same time (Berserk, the anime series, is yet another example of that, perhaps the most obvious and brilliant one).

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (PSX)
Again, I don’t know. In this case, I can’t even pinpoint exactly what was happening at the time. All I know is that... well... I was exploring Hogwarts. And suddenly, I was absorbed. In the game, absolutely. It’s a feeling that the GBA version didn’t capture, and the more action-oriented level-based (though superior in other respects) Goblet of Fire didn’t capture. I don’t know what it is. But then again, I just downloaded Order of the Phoenix for GBA, so who knows?

Jersey Devil
I can’t pinpoint a moment – again – but it’s the gliding. Which is far slower than Spyro but, if anything, more atmospheric. Okay, more irritating when you really just want to finish the level, but when you’re genuinely sucked in, well. Well, indeed. That’s when it kicks in.

But who knows? Maybe I’m just a sucker for flying. Not flying for the sake of it, or flying throughout a game. Just moments where you can fly. Because then it feels more like real life; mundane, normal, but just for a second, you feel wonderful, you soar. It’s like the meaning behind Radiohead’s ‘Airbag’.

I’m venturing dangerously close to cod spirituality here, but it’s true. I really, really can’t explain it.

Based on this, I’d probably really love Super Mario Galaxy (even though that seems to be all about flying. We’ll see...).

Oh, and I also prefer playing Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (GBA) to Diablo 2, and The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap to all other Zelda games. But that’s not to say I don’t enjoy the others – indeed, in Diablo 2’s case, I remember playing with mates at sleepover parties with LANs – but they didn’t fulfil me like those two did. Maybe it’s part of discovering a game all by myself that few other people really talk about and therefore I suddenly feel alive because I feel alone (if that makes sense).

Games that people around me don’t talk about, that is. Many people talk about Ruby, though. Just not people I know.

I’m sure there are moments I’ve forgotten momentarily but will remember later when reminded – I keep thinking MGS, but keeping forgetting which bits in particular. But yes. Take it as read that there’s more. I will just have to think of what they are.

Oh – I also like Aggressive Inline better than Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Any of them.

58. Found Lying in a Heath on the Bed
Just remembered to note this; Heath Ledger’s dead.

I found out yesterday, of course, but I just forgot to write about it here. Which is odd, because I was genuinely shocked. Indeed, I haven’t been this shocked at a piece of “celebrity news” since Steve Irwin’s death. Anna Nicole Smith’s dead? Er, so? Britney’s off the rails? Righto then.

Actually, that’s harsh; I obviously don’t feel either deserved it. Indeed, the former I never paid any attention to in the first place, so I had nothing against her; but if anything, that’s what made it so passable a bit of news for me. I know, it’s horrible, and I’m a bit ashamed of myself. Though not that much.

Funny thing is, I’m not a Heath Ledger fan either. Oh, I’ve no doubt that he’s a good actor, or a really good one, even though I’ve not seen his movies. Even though I didn’t want to watch his Casanova because I didn’t see how anyone could beat Tennant. Even though he’d been described as an up and coming Marlon Brando-esque actor.

Jimmy Dean, more like.

Though even that’s not true. If there’s a reaction I definitely felt after shock at the news of his death, it was disappointment. Disappointment as to how he died. Okay, so it’s not been confirmed yet, but it seems as if he overdosed on medically prescribed drugs.

I mean, for fuck’s sake, what kind of lame death is that?

Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray, and I suppose that seems pretty low-key compared to what he usually did. But there’s an irony there, almost as if – as Lawrence Miles would say – God was making a point about dramatic irony. Jimmy Dean’s death by motorcycle crash was the same, almost like a wink-wink-nudge-nudge at his rise to fame being through Rebel Without a Cause (without a brake, more like). Pollock? After splattering paint willy-nilly, his blood achieves a similar effect throughout his car when he collides with a tree!

Actually, I’ve no idea if there was any blood involved, but the point is I can imagine that there was. It’s so much more memorable a death.

Had he just finished Candy, he could have died of choking on an impenetrable gobstopper (he no longer wants candy! He... doesn’t want candy!). Or had a fatal sugar rush whilst inside a Cornish abbey. Or having finished I’m Not There, he could have committed suicide and left massive billboards behind as suicide notes. Or he could have broken his back on a mountaineering incident after Brokeback Mountain, or trapped himself in an oven after Brothers Grimm, or died of AIDs after Casanova, or been brutally bruised by a bat after The Dark Knight.

But no, he just... passed away. Peacefully.

That’s what makes it more shocking, and the whole thing even more distressing. When I first read the headlines, I thought that the drugs were illegal. That would have made the whole thing scandalous on some level, but it’s not even that. As it stands, the headlines and extended obituaries have referred to him as being constantly pressured by the public life, and while that’s true, it really does seem that the worst he got from it, apart from being sprayed by water pistols (which is incredibly idiotic of them, I know, but...), was a headache or two. Which he took drugs for, and died.

Arrggh.

Well, Australia, looks like you’ve already lost one of your big names, this early in 2008. Take a bow.

59. Goin’ Wild
‘Course, illegal drug-taking doesn’t actually seem that wild anymore. Similar to what I said about protests ages ago, it’s almost an expected thing; rock and roll is talked of as “drugs, sex and rock and roll”, so presumably there must be some drugs involved. So whilst Boy George’s exploits may have seemed wild and offensive back in the day, Lindsay Lohan snorting coke is barely worth a mention. Now that society at large seems to be more concerned with paedophilia than drugs – and, in my opinion, children rather than teenagers – you could only stir huge controversy if you’re indeed of that orientation. Michael Jackson, must I even mention you? Well, I just did, so sit down and take it like a man.

Ugh, not like... geez!

Sorry.

60. Paedophiles and Playstation (and more prejudice)
But even Hyper was saying how parents in the US were being warned that the Nintendo DS’ Pictochat function put their children at risk of contacting paedophiles. I won’t even bother to go into why this is patronisingly reactionary (to both a videogamer and any intelligent person), as Hyper does it themselves; “The team at Fox News 6 weren’t overly clear as to how children could be abducted over a Wi-Fi connection, nor did they address the prevalence of DS ownership among the sexual predator demographic, but they sure were adamant that any good parent should be very, very afraid.”

And don’t believe that shit about paedophiles being like children, and therefore would be, in this instance, likely to own a DS. Paedophiles are only children in the sense that their sexual awakening and fetish is linked to children, meaning that it’s tied to the way/manner they grew up. But that doesn’t mean it’s stunted their brain or anything. Why the hell would it? What does sexual intercourse, or simple sexual lust for that matter, have to do with the brain? Just because sex is linked to puberty doesn’t mean that paedophiles don’t develop; otherwise they’d actually look like children. Goddammit.

Oh, there’s some band in Brisbane called Small Mercies. I consider it a small mercy that I haven’t heard them, if not a massive one.

Nah, I know... I’m not actually falling into prejudice there, or judging a book by its cover. In fact, I just wanted to be one of the first to make that joke, in the same way that when Snakes on a Plane was released critics made jokes about that name when the internet had been doing that for the last year or so. “We know...” Or, indeed, the game Run Like Hell.

Still, those guys are from Brisbane. That’s always a bit of a concern.

(Alright, alright, that’s prejudice)

61. Pokemon and Prejudice
Speaking of prejudice... along with my thing about videogames before is a contradiction I’ve discovered in myself. That thing I have about TV shows and book series having to change drastically lest I be bored senseless? Well...

A lot of videogames series don’t, and I’m often happy with that.

Pokemon is the prime example. On a purely gameplaying level, they’re basically the same thing. Indeed, the stories are fairly similar, all of the towns are pretty much the same, and you (nearly) always start with a fire, grass or water starter Pokemon, and there’s always a Professor, and you always live in a small town, and there’s always legendaries...

See, that fits into the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” sentence, a sentence I’ve always wanted to fix myself because of its shocking grasp of English. Anyway. Point is, Pokemon hasn’t changed its gameplay massively from game to game, only bits and pieces. Gold and Silver, the Pokemon now carry items. Ruby and Sapphire, they now have individual abilities (an idea gleamed from the cards anyway).

So, how’s that much different from Austen, whose books tend to revolve around the exact same idea, just with different characters and different settings and...?

Ah, who am I kidding. Half of it’s answered immediately. “Different characters”? Yes, so Emma is different to Elizabeth, and Mr Knightley is different to Mr Darcy, and yet... they’re not. Because they’re handed to us on the same platter, and because they’re still caught up in the same trappings of their period, they’re actually not such a radical departure. Sure, Emma’s more of a bitch, and Mr Darcy’s more prejudiced (it seems... ooh, spooky! No, it’s not, actually), but that feels very much like window dressing.

But then again, Pokemon is full of window dressing characterisation. What the hell is the difference between Professors Oak and Elm? No, I mean, really, what is the difference? Beyond the little details, nil. Or for that matter, your character, who never speaks anyway (barring interviews). Indeed, you’ll often get a subculture of Pokemon trainers called Beautys, and then there’s Sailors, and Swimmers, and Bikers, and basically, although their dialogue is different, and their names are different, they’re interchangeable. And their very nature, the descriptive bit to their name, dictates the types of Pokemon, if not the actual species of Pokemon, they’ll use.

‘Course, that’s not automatically a fair comparison. For that to work, Pride and Prejudice would have to have a cast of thousands, even if you only met them for a second. But to even it out, we do have those dancing scenes in the books, where people dance and dance. People who are, I think you’ll find, “people”. As in, “there were a lot of people dancing, but Mr Bingleby had eyes only for Jane Bennett.” Oh, that’s good, but I find it hard to believe there are any other people there. Because there’s not even the slightest bit of description, or even reference, to what sort of people they are. And you know why? Because it’s assumed. Because they’re all the same, regardless. The irony of Pokemon is that even though its actual characterisation is threadbare if not non-existent, there’s more refinement in the setting out of how the world works. It’s never entirely clear – such is the nature of a world that isn’t ours, and one that humans weren’t always around in anyway (wasn’t it Pokemon tears or something that created the world? Ah, who cares) – but on its own terms, it works. There’s a Pokemon Centre, there’s a Mart, yadda yadda yadda. There’s a few caves, lots of waterways to Surf, secret places. It’s the variation on that, what you find there, that’s interesting.

And more importantly, getting back to the people, you could write lots and lots, I’d wager, on the subcultures in the Pokemon games. And indeed, I’ve found myself hating Pokefans, Rich Kids and Beautys, because they’re arrogant twats with no regard for their Pokemon beyond, “Isn’t it charmingly exotic?” Yes, but it’s worth more than that, love. So whilst the individuals aren’t distinguishable at all, that’s not what’s important (and anyway, doing so would be impossible considering storage space), because it’s the subcultures that are distinguishable.

And, even more importantly, the Pokemon themselves, which are really the stars of the game anyway, not the humans. The Elite Four may be impressively titled, but really it’s their Pokemon we’re concerned about, not them as people. Same goes for the Gym Leaders. And each Pokemon is different; subtly sometimes, wildly sometimes. There’s great imagination there, huge imagination.

Because of this, it’s worth playing all of the games, even if one outstrips a previous one. Because although it isn’t an utterly new revamp, it isn’t just a small tick of little things that needed ironing out; there’s enough new there to keep you interested, and enough old there to keep you comfortable. Not that comfort is a good thing, mind, but it helps so that you can immediately see what's different. Whereas there’s no point reading Emma if you’ve read Pride and Prejudice, for instance, and there’s no point perusing Northanger Abbey for that matter either, even though that’s the “ghost story” one. Bollocks, is it. They’re all the same story, and since P+P is easily the best (though still not wonderful), there’s no point. You could read just that one bit and get Austen immediately, and that’s a bit of a problem.

Anyway, only Pokemon is that consistently similar (I haven’t really considered Yellow, Crystal, or Emerald, and that’s because they’re not sequels at all, not even works in their own right) – and anyway, there’s Pokemon Pinball and Stadium and stuff too. But the Mario series changes drastically, and TimeSplitters 3 is very different to 2 (as 2 is to 1), and Perfect Dark – despite being a sequel in all but name, plot and style to Goldeneye – was very different to it, and Spiderman 2 was completely different to 1 because you could actually go on the goddamn ground, and GTA3 is nothing like 2 because it’s 3D and open-ended gameplay, and... basically, once a core idea is hit properly, a series will do its best to exploit it to its fullest, and then move on. So I presume Pokemon will do this one day too... or perhaps not. In which case, I may start to be harder on it.

‘Course, this whole thing makes me look arrogant. I’m talking about Austen and Pokemon in the same sentence, for a start, and worse, I’m pretty much saying that Pokemon has more integrity! Well, that’s not entirely the case; Pokemon isn’t literature. It’s important as a phenomenon, but not as an influential one. Leave that to Final Fantasy and its sequels. It’s only important as the definitive handheld variant, and since videogaming isn’t seen as anything beyond slightly-complex-Fisher-Price-toys yet, that’s meaningless. Whereas Austen is incredibly important. But she – or rather, her books – are literature, whereas Pokemon is... I don’t know, but it’s not that. If anything, it more closely resembles art, but it’s not artsy in any way, just graphically diverse. I don’t know what to consider it.

Damn, this is controversial. Austen and Pokemon. Maybe I can finish off this mini-rant with the following few words to make it look as if I’ve been making silly jokes this whole time:

“Austen. Austen Austen,” said Austenmon. And that’s not what I think the next Pokemon game should be like.

There. Reckon that’ll work?

62. Barbie and I Think I Ken
Well, I’m glad that’s over.

“Glad what’s over?” I don’t hear you ask. Well, Australia Day, of course.

Usually I’m able to ignore the more gratuitous aspects of that day in question, so usually it doesn’t get to me, but I felt irritated throughout the long weekend and was glad that I barely left the house. Because, well, let’s be honest; Australia Day is irritating. The day when the stereotypes come out to play; “barbies” being one. The tourist-y stuff that we play up for some reason. “Look, our cultural identity is a bunch of stereotypes.” I’m as much a fan of barbecues as anyone, honestly, but how often do I actually attend a barbecue – or even cook one myself – and have people say, “Chuck some snags on the baaaarbie!” Never. Possibly because the people who come tend to not be as annoying as that out of luck and/or choosing, but still, I don’t think I ever really hear anyone say it. What I like about the barbecue is – and here’s an irony, considering what I’m doing in this very blog – how it’s rarely pointed out as being different. As in, we usually just have them, eat them, and move on, not really thinking about how “Australian” it is. It’s then that we truly are Australian because we don’t realise it, whereas openly shouting out about it is openly shouting out to be recognised as a culture. And I hate that. It’s gratuitous when Americans do it – which is more annoying than Australians, to be fair – and it’s annoying here too.

Not sure how my cultural pride and shame balance works, mind you. I dislike the stereotypes and the “true blue” aspect, but at the same time am constantly annoyed at how people decide that we should become either Brits or Americans and that we don’t deserve our own genuinely Australian entertainment industry.

And then, within that, I can’t stand country.

Funny that – Western seems to be, to me, the by-far most boring genre (being consistent, as in stagnant and dull), and country seems to be the same in music. And they’re both from the same sort of tree. As in, a country tree.

63. Aus
Speaking of my disdain for things beginning with “Aus”... no, I don’t hate Austria. Yes, this is about Austen again. BUT! This is all-new information, all-new analysis of Austen’s works that I’ve read (all-new for me, that is), and therefore all-new stuff that I can lambast unfairly and yet appropriately.

There was an article in Spectrum on the weekend, see, about the new movie The Jane Austen Book Club, or whatever it’s called, and they had some things to say on the subject.

Well, for a start, perhaps my increasing irritation with her works is typified by this fact: that since the mid-90s there’s been a boom of Austen-stuff, such as the Pride and Prejudice mini-series and film, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey (which goes unmentioned), Clueless and Becoming (fucking) Jane. God. At least most Shakespeare stuff now is recontextualised; Austen’s works only work within her period (more on that later, ‘cos something just struck me**).

Now, it was said, too, that the main characters are female role models, and women read them for that reason. I’m totally unaware of that phenomenon, as I’ve never heard anyone but people in the entertainment business who are required to say such dull things say something like, “I based my entire life values on Elizabeth Bennett!” This seems to be mostly garbage to me. So what if they’re female role models? So’s Miss Summerson from Bleak House, or even Rose bloody Tyler from Doctor Who. There’s such a diverse range of fictional characters to take values from that saying Austen’s works have role models in a manner that implies they’re unique because of it is ridiculous. Particularly in a day and age where “likeability” is a defining point of characterisation in entertainment; it’s not so much demographics as niceness. Either the character’s a complete barstard, an anti-hero, or they’re a complete hero, completely nice. You’d think we’d have moved away from that, and to an extent we have, but ironically we only really investigate those grey areas in the big-arsed epics like Batman anyway. Whereas in, say, Neighbours, you’re either bad or you’re good or your character development is swinging wildly from one end to the other, but because it’s set in the “real world”, it’s seen as more grey than the cutout stereotypes of comic book films. Which is ridiculous and untrue.

“Real world” my arse; as they point out on The Simpsons DVD commentaries, the characters in that show rarely actually learn from their mistakes (except Lisa) and stay the same, and that’s because that’s what happens in real life. Take the episode ‘Bart’s Girlfriend’, where Lisa says to Bart that it’s naive to think you can change someone... and at the end of the story, if you think about it, no-one’s changed. Jessica’s still a bitch, her dad still isn’t listening to her, and Bart, regardless of what he says, is still bowing to her every whim. You can get away with that very easily in comedy, but if that was done in drama it’d be soul-destroying and people would hate it... even though drama is supposed to be more realistic than comedy.

64. Comfort and Cards
Anyway, more on Austen... there’s this massive quote here:

“If Austen doesn’t like a character, she has them play cards. That’s always a signifier... her heroines won’t play cards – they’ll retreat and read a book or write a letter, but the silly women... will play cards... You know that something bad will happen to them. There’s a comfort in Austen’s novels that the good will be rewarded and the bad will not.”

Ugh. Double ugh. You can already guess my opinion on the phrase “comfort” in regards to entertainment, which usually translates to “security blanket”, but the bit right at the end about the good being rewarded and the bad not just cements what I was saying just before about realism. If I remember rightly, the only character that doesn’t turn out exactly right is the poor girl that Elizabeth is friends with, but since she’s poor, that doesn’t matter a jot. Especially since she’s basically never mentioned again, and therefore made no impact on the plot or Elizabeth at all. Seriously. Oh, a counter-argument could be, “But Elizabeth learns to hate upper-class gentlemen offering to marry because of that”, but my argument for that is, “Er, she hates them from the start.”

But the worst bit is the card-playing bit. Seriously, are we supposed to be applauding that? Are we supposed to feel fulfilled that Austen does this? I criticised Pokemon for having subcultures of people, but that was a tad unfair considering the medium, the purpose of the game and the limitations of the hardware; considering Austen’s writing in an infinite realm of a medium (the book, despite having limitations in terms of word count, has none in terms of realising things as long as you try), and considering she’s actually bloody well writing about people whereas Pokemon is about, well, Pokemon, it’s even more annoying that she doesn’t vary this. I can’t say I’ve ever noticed this, because it doesn’t scream out at you (but then nothing in an Austen novel does; it’s not “subtlety” so much as “forgetting that some things need emphasis and some don’t, to provide a balance”), but it still irritates me if it’s true. It’d better not be, then.

Quote de finale*: “Not just a good read... they’re a guide through the complexities of modern life.”

Ah... just breathe in that hypocrisy. You think this approximates real life? Look, I’m sorry, but set in the real world of the period or not, all that these books equate to is – ironically enough – fairytales such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. They resonate with the times, true, but that doesn’t mean they’re in any good. And saying “complexities” and then praising the books for having bad women always play cards and get their comeuppance and heroines/heroes always win is ridiculous. That’s not complex, that’s safe, that’s comfort, and that’s also boring.

*Not a real language. I hope.

**Actually, I can’t be bothered. I was going to talk about the element of period in her works and Shakespeare’s, and recontextualisation and Clueless and all that, but... considering Shakespeare’s works are set in different times, it’s now revealed to me to be a fundamentally flawed comparison and I’m not going to do it. And also, to be honest, because I can’t be bothered talking about it.

65. PIRACY. IT’S SOMETHING THAT USED TO BE A CRIME.
That bloody STEALING IS A CRIME! ad is getting so badly on my nerves now, even though I still find it hilariously crap. I have noticed, though, what the girl in question is downloading off her computer, or rather what films can be downloaded on that list:

Return of the King
The Cat in the Hat
Matrix Revolutions
Paycheck
Cheaper by the Dozen
Peter Pan
Cold Mountain
Master and Commander
The Last Samurai
Mona Lisa Smile

She’s downloading Lord of the Rings, it seems. If anything, I’m happy that she stopped downloading, not because it’s illegal, but because she doesn’t have to subject herself to hours of boring tedium. And most of the other films on that list are no better.

66. Game of the Year… a tad late.
You know how I bought Spiderman 3? I also bought Okami, which was one of the celebrated games in Hyper’s feature on 100 Games You Must Own (or whatever it was). And boy, am I glad I bought it. It’s incredible; the art direction isn’t just beautiful, it’s stylish beyond belief. And the gameplay is ridiculously fun, particularly with the surprisingly-easy-to-use celestial brush (where you paint in the world and it changes something; for instance, you can make it daytime simply by drawing a circle in the sky). It’s so clever, so amazing, so simplistic, so complex, so beautiful, that I don’t think I can talk about it for very long because it’s so good that it’s hard to find words to talk about it. I can’t talk about how wonderful it is unless you actually experience it for yourself. Necessary, wonderful, oh my god.

It’s as good as Scott Alexander thinks he is.