News is still coming in but apparently the magician/acrobat stuntman Boston Brand who performs under the name "Dead Man" was shot and killed during his Vegas stunt show.
I recently found myself in an argument over American fantasy writing, and I wanted to present it here because the fantasy genre fans I met got kind of heated about it:
If someone wanted to write an American-style Lord of the Rings, it should be set in the Old West. The truth is that a lot of what Tolkien had to say about his era was done by deliberately examining the deep past of British and, by extension, European myth and history. He wanted to emphasize what he considered good while highlighting what he considered bad, using tropes from fairy tales and myths that formed the basis of his social structure (Medieval Britain and Arthurian Legend). If you were to do the same thing for America, it would be set in America's Age of Western Expansion; you would have completely different fantasy tropes, and it would feel very different but it would still be fantasy, not a western.
On the one hand, he is shockingly unrepentant and awful, on the other? His awfulness is also perfect for the story and a great send-up of the whole "sitcom lesson" thing. The fact that he's also a hilarious parody of Jackie Earle Hayley's character from Little Children makes the whole thing work on another level because that character is deliberately supposed to be a flawed human character, and this one is basically "I get it, I have offensive sex, and I am okay with that". The way he justifies himself has an internal logic that gives the episode's premise actual weight, other than just "hey, let's shock you by making light of this terrible thing." By making the guy very oddly self-actualized and clear-eyed about what he is, the jokes land so much fucking harder. Terrible person, horrific character, hilarious episode.
So I watched this show, mostly the first season, and I decided it wasn't for me: too many robots, too many changes; it just wasn't grabbing me.
And yet? As I watched it, I learned to appreciate it for what it was. This is a Superman show, a show for people who like anime and are way younger than my forty-something ass. This is a show that translates Superman to an audience that really, really needs Superman. An audience that has been sold evil men in power and Homelander for YEARS. Someone, somewhere decided to meet the younger anime/manga crowd where they live with the spirit, if not the letter, of the characters.
This show's Jimmy Olsen isn't my Jimmy; he's a black nerd who talks like he's a Reddit moderator; he's not my Jimmy. But you know what? He is JIMMY OLSEN, fundamentally! They created a version of the character that people can relate to while still being JIMMY! I deeply appreciate that, truly. Lois isn't my Lois, but Damn if she isn't a version of Lois Lane that people can love.
Far too often, older guys like me get all weird when things get changed for newer audiences but I can't deny that while this isn't a show for ME, it is a show with all the things I love that's projected backwards for an audience to appreciate. I am so glad this show exists.
Dex: Do I really gotta explain why? If there was a rank lower than zero, I would give it; he's so far down the list the sky is a memory. Fuck you.
Dennis: Literally the only reason he's not lower on the list is that he didn't try to kill me (on purpose), and the reward was a sword that isn't as cool as Black Unicorn. Though I do respect the Office Reference.
NCPD Dispatcher: She has an entire police force at her disposal, but she decides to let me get killed trying to fight a literal mutant and more gang bosses than the Double Dragon franchise. Ah well, the rewards are nice.
Dino: My favorite part of this game is how we're supposed to take this guy seriously. He has five total jobs, and they're all me shooting people in the face or stealing something, and he literally employs an actual super spy that could do these jobs in an hour. What a wiener.
Wakako: Okay, the missions are cool, and the sword is bitching, but the fact that she's basically pure liquid evil makes me feel a little conflicted.
Rogue: So, she's diet soda evil, probably sold all her former friends to the corps after Johnny died, and is definitely not my girl Panam's best friend, but also? It does not feel like she respects you as a merc. Her jobs feel like I'm running her errands while she gives the prem gigs to someone else. I think the great irony of Jackie's love of Afterlife is that by the time Rogue gives you jobs, you're usually at Street Cred fifty, and her jobs don't pay that well. She keeps talking to me about how the streets will remember my name, but, lady, my face card stopped a robbery; what are you talking about?
Dakota: She, like most of the Badlands, is kind of empty and a bit boring. Usually by the time I finish all of her missions, I don't need another car. Like, okay, thanks for the truck but I already got a nicer truck from Claire, who is my morally compromised choom. Still, I do enjoy killing Wraiths.
Padre: Is just a straight-up crook with a really cool gimmick, and I kind of respect that, but the constant bible quotes are really giving me a lot of lapsed Catholic guilt. But his reward is a cool gun and shooting Tucker Albach in the face, which I always enjoy.
Regina: I like her, I do, and she seems to have her heart in the right place. For some reason, she's the fixer who has the most work for me to do, and if you time it right, she's your first and last gig. She even helps Skippy find his way home (RIP Skip, that gun is not the same without you). But the reason she isn't higher on the list is that it feels like she's lying to herself. Regina makes a show of helping people and doing the right thing, but most of her missions involve me A) killing people, or B) doing some very morally compromising shit. Like, she gets mad when I kill a murderous cop or insists that I help her scare a police officer into quitting the force, and it's presented to me as the "better" choice. It feels very much like the first two seasons of Breaking Bad when Walt was slowly becoming a crime boss.
Mr. Hands: He sings my praises, showers me with gifts, and he has some of the best fucking missions in the game. So why isn't he number one? Well, first there's his whole Bond villain vibe. Like he literally lives in a pyramid like a futuristic necromancer and sends me out on missions that will help him consolidate power like a Game of Thrones character. Next, I always feel like no matter what I do, he's going to win something from it. Like Mr. Hands is a hundred percent running a Xanatos Gambit on me every single time he calls. It's...a lot.
El Capitan: The hardest part of this list was pretending there was ever going to be a chance that anyone else would be in the top spot. Dude, he's literally Batman with a mullet. El Capitan is everything Reggie wishes she could be, and I never feel like a dirtbag after his missions. The most problematic thing he asks me to do is to spy on some gang goons and then wax their boss. Furthermore, his 'crimes' are a hundred percent funding his one-man war against the corporations, a war which he's kind of winning. This crazy Choom also gives me a cool ass car and champagne as a reward for saving a bunch of kids. God I love this cat.
Aldecaldos: Honestly as far as gangs go, it's hard to really call them criminals. In terms of the game system itself, there's only one group of Aldos who are even hostile to you and they're in Pacifica, where basically EVERYONE is hostile to you. While they're hardly law-abiding, it's hard to say these are anything other than people who don't want to run a rat race towards poverty like the rest of the world. Aldecaldos are basically what the Lost from GTA or SAMCRO from Sons of Anarchy wishes that they were.
The Mox: On paper, the Mox are great! They're a gang of former sex workers who started protecting their own and pushing the Tyger Claws out of their neighborhood. If anything, in a normal video game, they'd be the heroes! Like Betty Friedan with a gun! The sad reality is that they have fallen to entropy and eddies like everything else in Night City. By the time we meet them in the game, the Mox are just another gang, and at least one gang leader is saying the quiet part out loud: "We aren't a charity; we aren't actually going to help anyone, st. Stop asking us for help."
The Animals: Okay, so these are also actual criminals; they run drugs and sex and extort people. They are true dirtbags. So why are they so low on the list? Because from a thousand-foot view they kind of...suck. Like they would be way, way more awful if they weren't fucking idiots with body dysmorphia. Like the entire gang reeks of an undiagnosed mental disorder that can be cured with therapy and some good meds. It also says a lot about the gang that despite being a bunch of roided out, might makes right types, the highest ranking member we meet in the game looks like the world's most evil instagram model who maybe weighs a buck ten in the shower. They're basically an entire army of Claviculars and its sad.
Valentinos: Finally! Actual crooks! Valentinos are regular stand up criminals who do regular crook shit. In a world filled with awful monsters who do a lot of fucked up stuff, the Valentinos are almost a welcome palate cleanser. They rob people, steal stuff, deal drugs and that makes them fairly unique in this game. There's no agenda, no philosophy, there are no illusions that what they're doing is better or worse than someone else, they protect their neighborhood but also just do regular crook shit like criminals are supposed to. One of the best missions in the game is when you go deep into Valentinos territory to shoot a guy and discover that the gang has been hired to do some creepy corporate false flag stuff and intially you think "Gasp, its a conspiracy!" And then you realize, naw, they aren't anarchocapitalists terrorist fascists. It was just some VP at Arasaka paid them and they took the money. Kind of admirable in its own way.
Maelstrom: These guys are pure evil and violent...but just like the Animals they are lower on the list because they're actually kind of pathetic. Maelstrom is basically a gang of meth heads but their drug of choice is cyberization. They've built up this whole mythology and pseudo religious belief around what is functionally just an addiction. And like all addicts, they make stupid choices in service to their addiction: kidnapping people, forcing cyberization on passers by, just doing awful, awful things because they are slaves to an urge they probably don't fully understand. It's sad...but not sympathetic. They suck as human beings in general.
6th Street: Okay, so here is where I admit a personal bias, I hate this gang a lot because I see them as painfully realistic. I live in Louisiana where a lot of gun toting ignorant creeps use Patriotism to justify their own sadism. These guys feel like they would be right at home in a Wal Mart Parking lot frankly and I hate how accurate they are to the same idiots who put up a giant American flag on a used car lot. It's particularly upsetting when you hear them in the game shouting "for the Union" as if they're standing fast against Pickett's Charge but in reality they're just trying to stop you from blowing up their drug lab. Fuck these guys.
The Voodoo Boys: At the intersection of bad people with terrible philosophies sit the Voodoo: Boys, who are happy to sell out the entire human race for power or at least survival. Here's a group that is presented with a simple set of facts: AI monsters live on the other side of the Black Wall. And rather than understand that this is a very, very bad thing, they have decided to endanger most of the human race and the people of the world for the sole purpose of...not dying. Like thats the whole thing, they want to be on the winning side of a conflict that we don't need to fight and I guess they're doing this so they can...worship digital Cthulhu? They're no different than the Lovecraftian cults in a horror movie except these guys definitely should know better. These are people who want to serve humanity up on a dinner platter to monsters so that they can be the ones holding the serving knife at the carving station. No amount of free chicken is going to unring that bell, Placide.
Tyger Claws: Here's where we get into the major leagues! Take a sex offender, give him drugs, cool clothing, then add the kind of car you see in a Fast and the Furious movie and what do you get? A very fast sex offender. Like that's the core issue of the Tyger Claws, they aren't that complicated. They are the bankruptcy at the corps of Night City where an ancient culture with thousands of years history is co-opted by commercialism but at least Arasaka dresses up their Yamato supremacism with a MBA. The Tyger Claws don't bother with that because they're literally just slavers, pimps and sex traffickers who use hard working Asian immigrant communities like a cash register, but they have protection and guns and money. Like they're aggressively terrible people doing aggressively terrible things and they get away with it because they fill a niche that other terrible people enjoy.
Scavengers: In a dead heat for first place are the Scavs who kidnap, torture, and brutalize people for money and then sell their parts. Thats it. That's all they do, they have no redeeming qualities except that some of their members at least love their siblings. They kill people, film it, then sell the scraps. It's so simple and so evil. So how can anyone else be worse than that?
Wraiths: When you turn it into a lifestyle, that's how. Wraiths have been kicked out of every decent gang in the badlands, so they don't have many qualms about doing terrible shit, just like Scavs, but unlike Scavs this is fun for them. We get a front row seat to a Scav snuff film and we're shown that this sadism is entirely a for-profit venture, nothing personal. Wraiths, on the other hand, are entirely implied to be doing all of this for the Lulz. They're here to murder and hurt people but the money they make by being terrorists is entirely incidental because they were looking to murder and hurt people anyway. These guys are nihilism in human form.
Like…why? Because she’s really hot, like Jeri Ryan hot
The Automatic Assault Shotgun from Split Second (in fact, literally anything from that movie because it's a masterpiece), they could call it "Just Big Enough".
The Auto Nine from Robocop because it's big, it's bad, and it would be an excellent power weapon that refuses to be silenced. Maybe you find it in the ruined police station in Phantom Liberty, and Johnny mentions that he knew a gonk who used that back in Detroit. We could name it Murphy's Law.
The M25 Westinghouse Phased Plasma Rifle (in the 40-watt range). Obviously, we shouldn't be able to buy it in stores because it's just what you see here.
Here's where we start the deeper cuts: Poe from Altered Carbon would be a nice reference.
If they had brought in a Warbeast from Death Machine, I would have laughed my head off and then run the other way.
The Gat and the Blunderbuss from Looper would be nice references and fun ideas in general.
Lemme dress like The Strangers from Dark City, please? Just once for a cut scene?
Yan from Love Death and Robots just belongs in the game, like look at her.
Angelina Jolie. Just...her, from Hackers, with that hairdo, make an old man's teenage dream come to life? Please?
Have they ever discussed what was cut from the game because there is clearly a lot of little things, like the half dozen street encounters that look like they were going to be Police dispatch assignments, or the empty areas that look like they could be gig locations.
My good pal, the only legitimate son of Delamain and therefore the only one of his kids who isn't completely screwed up in the head. He always shows up, always has something cool to say, and doesn't speak to me in that creepy GlaDoS voice.
...no I will not be explaining what I mean.
Don't get me wrong, blasting those murderous goons is the butter on my bread. But don't you wish you could...I don't know....join? Get special loot? Curry favor? Something? At the very least, some unique loot for murdering them.
In a lot of ways Night City is a liberal paradise compared to our world: racism seems to be barely present, sexism isn't a thing, and gender reassignment is so routine that I didn't realize there was a trans character in the game until she explicitly told me.
And yet the underlying message of the game is that none of those solutions mean much if you don't solve the underlying issue of poverty, resource scarcity, and corporate greed. Mike Pondsmith and CD Projekt Red really did think this game all the way through.
