“CLARISSA”: Hi! I saw your blog mightgodkingdotcom and we think it’s great! We’d like to open up a dialogue where you would host a sponsored post about HOT AIR BALLONS. Do you think your readers would be interested in HOT AIR BALLONS? We would of course be willing to compensate you for hosting the sponsored post in the amount of twenty-five dollars. Please respond!
MGK: *deletes email*

***

“HARRY”: Hi, I make infographics, and in order to get more exposure I’d like to ask you to post my infographic! It’s about Black Panther! Looking at your blog I bet your readers would like an infographic about Black Panther!
MGK: *huh, this one seems targeted, at least, let’s look at it*
INFOGRAPHIC: Black Panther’ is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Jack Kirby, first appearing in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966) in the Silver Age of Comic Books. Black Panther’s real name is T’Challa, king and protector of the fictional African nation called Wakanda. Along with possessing enhanced abilities achieved through ancient Wakandan rituals of drinking the heart shaped herb, T’Challa also relies on his proficiency in science, rigorous physical training, hand-to-hand combat skills, and access to wealth and advanced technology to combat his enemies. Black Panther is the first superhero of African descent in mainstream American comics, having debuted years before early African American superheroes such as Marvel Comics’ the Falcon (1969) and Luke Cage (1972) or DC Comics’ John Stewart in the role of Green Lantern (1971). The Black Panther storyline which ran through thirteen issues of the Jungle Action series (numbers six through eighteen) is considered to be Marvel Comics’ first graphic novel.
MGK: This is literally just the first two paragraphs of the Black Panther entry from Wikipedia combined with some stolen artwork.
“HARRY”: You don’t even have to post it yourself! Here’s an embedded link that you can copy and paste! We’ll compensate you if you do!
MGK: This is obviously a link to a phishing site.
“HARRY”: But I know what you really want to ask, and yes, we will compensate you!
MGK: *deletes email*

***

“CLARISSA”: Hi, Mighty Go King! I’m following up on my previous email about you hosting our sponsored post about HOT AIR BALLONS. I don’t want you to miss out on this opportunity!
MGK: *deletes email*

***

“GEORGE SCHMIDT”: hello I am an aspiring freelance writer and I would like to post on mightygodking dot com and i would like to send you a sample
MGK: *continues reading out of curiosity*
“GEORGE SCHMIDT”: this sample is about polo shirts, i will pay you ten dollars if you post it for me
MGK: *deletes email*

***

“CLARISSA”: Hello again! I didn’t hear back from you about out HOT AIR BALLONS proposal so –
MGK: *deletes email*

***

“MARK: I came across your blog site while looking for resources for our next blog and I knew I had to reach out immediately, kudos on a fantastic blog. My name is Mark and I do blogs for an online blogging company. Do you accept sponsored blogs? Is this something you would like to blog about? Blog you later!
MGK: *deletes email*

***

“LORI”: Would your readers be interested in entering into a contest where they could win fantastic prizes like quality undergarments! I bet they would, and all you have to do is host one sponsored blog post. Unlike all those other scammers offering sponsored content, we pay up front, and our contest is real. Don’t you owe it to your readers? Wouldn’t they be excited by a chance to win free undergarments, or purchase undergarments at a discount? I’m sure this will excite your readership and drive up your social media metrics!
MGK: *deletes email*

***

“CLARISSA”: Hello once more! I still haven’t heard back from you about our HOT AIR BALLONS blog proposal. I have been authorized to up our sponsorship offer to fifty dollars and I’m letting our network of blog contacts know about this excellent opportunity!
MGK: *furiously typing* You haven’t heard back from me because you are a waste of energy. Nigerian scammers have more fucking style from you. Me ignoring your seven other emails isn’t an invitation to send more, it’s me saying “fuck off” as politely as possible, and you’re not taking the hint. You are literally the embodiment of every commercial sentiment that makes the internet worse with every passing second that you exist. Nobody wants to read your shitty advertorial about ballooning. Nobody will ever read it. You are just creating a sea of endless chaff making it so much harder to get to the wheat that we all want. So, please, just fuck off. Also, “balloons” has two “Os.”

***

“CLARISSA”: Thanks for your feedback on my previous email! Obviously you are not interested in HOT AIR BALLOONS content. However, I note from your email that you appear to be interested in FARMING content. Would this be more to your liking? Let me know! For FARMING content we can offer one hundred dollars per post!

Hello internetters, it’s Justin again, recently returned from a self-imposed comics blogging hiatus, and I wanted to talk to you about Marvel Comics. What are the odds, right?

I didn’t mean to leave it this long; I thought, within a week of my last post, I’d get the follow-up bashed out and posted, but it’s been—gosh, over a month. Why the delay? To find out the answer, I called myself up for an interview on the subject.

Hi, Justin, thanks for sitting down with us.

No problem, Justin.

You’re looking well.

That is a lie, and you know it, but I understand that you want to be polite. I will accept the compliment, insincere though it is.

Fine, let’s get to it. Last time, you said that you “have trouble really connecting with Marvel books these days.”

That is correct.

Are you reading any of Marvel’s current output?

No, actually.

Really? I would’ve thought Mark Waid writing an Avengers book would be an easy sell, at least. We love Waid, as I’m sure you know.

I know! I know. I did actually buy the first issue of All-New, All-Different Avengers. But I couldn’t really get into it. I tried out The Ultimates, too, because I hear such good things about Al Ewing, and the concept is neat.

So what’s wrong with the books that you’re not buying them?

Honestly? I think this is a case of, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

I don’t understand.

See, now we’re coming to why this post has been so long in coming. I’ve starting writing it a bunch of times, but I can’t seem to finish. I keep looking for a way into this post, and each way I’ve tried it so far has left me with a “Who farted?” grimace about my own ponderous thoughts. I thought maybe the interview format would help me get the words out of my head. You could ask questions and we could see how I arrived at my current attitudes.

Okay, I guess. So what do you mean by, “It’s not you, it’s me,” exactly?

Well, most people on the internet with Opinions About Comics like to believe that we are evaluating things based on solid, critical reasoning, right? “X is not good because Y.” And so, when “X” is a comic and it’s not good, you try to solve for “Y”.

You should have warned me you were going to use algebra. Okay, fine, what are some of these “Y” values?

I mean, there are a lot. For one, I don’t understand why writers don’t use narrative captions and thought bubbles like they used to.

“Balloons.”

Excuse me?

“Thought balloons,” not thought bubbles. John Byrne says—

Oh, never mind, the point is, these are fantastic narrative tools that are really only found in comic books, and people shun them now. I don’t understand why you’d cut yourself off from a tool that helps convey information quickly in a medium where space is at such a premium.

Watchmen doesn’t use narrative captions or thought balloons.

I guess. I mean, I suppose I understand if it’s a stylistic choice. But in the first years of the 21^st century, it became gauche to use them, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand why. But you’re right, ultimately it is just a choice. But it’s a choice I don’t like.

Have all the status quo shakeups over the past couple of years put you off?

Yeah. I mean, it’s like Peter Parker is Tony Stark, and Doctor Doom is Iron Man, and several different people are Captain America. Somebody else is Wolverine—it’s a very DC sort of way of doing things. The Fantastic Four aren’t around anymore. There are a bunch of different Avengers teams, and they don’t live in Avengers Mansion—this is a huge deal to me, actually. It all feels wrong.

Even the way the books look. The logos aren’t “comic booky.” There’s no corner boxes. Everyone’s costume seems over-rendered, with all the seams. Computer coloring can do some wonderful things, but I feel like it overpowers the line art sometimes, and line art is what I like about comic art, you know? Even the glossy paper. It just bugs me.

So…basically, it’s not like it was when you were a kid?

Basically, yeah. Basically.

Well, isn’t that kind of…I mean, that’s such a whiny thing to say.

That’s what I thought too! So I fought it for a long time. I thought, “Argh, these guys keep messing it up, they don’t know what they’re doing.” It had to be, right? I had all these “Y” values that I thought contributed to “X is not good.” And then one day, I realized—what if “X” is good, and “X” is simply not for me?

I feel like you’re losing the plot with this algebra thing. Can you explain it a different way?

I just mean that…the things that I like about superhero comics—specifically Marvel comics—aren’t what Marvel comics are about these days.

Well, what are the things you like about superhero comics? What is your platonic ideal of the genre?

Well, Bronze Age Marvel Comics, right? The Bronze Age is the best. Funnily enough, a big part of the reason I think that is because of Wizard magazine in the 90s. People just remember them rigging the speculator market and hyping the crap out of what we called “T&A” books at the time, but those dudes were raised on Bronze Age comics, and they wrote about how great Roger Stern’s Amazing Spider-Man run was, and the Paul Smith issues of Uncanny X-Men, and Walt Simonson’s Thor, and Byrne’s FF. It was actually a huge influence on my tastes.

Wizard. Really? That’s kind of embarrassing.

Yeah. Actually, could you strike that? I want that off the record.

Oh sure, I’ll edit that out. So you’d like modern comics if they were more like Bronze Age comics?

Well, sure, I would. But, here’s the thing. I could spend all my time complaining about how Marvel’s not doing it “right,” and whining that the books should be more like Bronze Age comics. Or, you know…I could just buy Bronze Age comics. There are literally thousands that I haven’t read, right? And if you go to Half-Price Books, you can actually get them cheaper than new comics. I filled out my Byrne FF run at Half-Price Books, most of them at only a dollar a pop.

But don’t you miss out on the “newness” of it? I mean, you know how the stories all end, basically.

I guess. It is kind of a bummer, but I don’t know, even new comics, I don’t feel emotionally attached to them, either, so it doesn’t matter. Like, when they kill someone off or whatever, or that thing with Steve Rogers being a sleeper HYDRA agent and everybody on the internet flipped out…it doesn’t bother me or make me angry. Even big retcons. Like, remember when they said Professor Xavier recruited a whole other team of X-Men between what we see in Giant-Size X-Men #1? That bugged me at the time, but it doesn’t anymore. To be honest, they don’t even take place in the same continuity.

What do you mean?

I have this idea about “the Marvel Universe,” which—to me—is a fictional spacetime continuum originating with Fantastic Four #1 in 1961 and collapsing in the first years of the 21^st century with New X-Men #114. (Arguably the end of Busiek’s Avengers run is the real “end” of the Marvel Universe, as I reckon it, but Morrison and Quitely’s first issue is a clearer line in the sand.) This “Marvel Universe” was a construct that, if you only chose to believe in it, allowed you to view forty years’ worth of comics created by hundreds of hands as a single, unbroken, internally consistent tapestry of events. It wasn’t really, but that was part of the game. That’s why they used to give out No-Prizes! Anyway, the current Marvel comics, I would argue, do not take place in this same “Marvel Universe,” but rather are comics based—loosely or otherwise—on this fictional history. I mean, all of Bendis’ retcons with the Illuminati—do any of those characters sound “right” in context? Do you believe that they really could have happened between the panels? So they are quite welcome to do whatever they like; it doesn’t affect what I consider to be the “real” stuff.

That’s not a criticism? It seems dismissive.

I really don’t mean it to be. You know, I meant what I said in my last post about how it’s great that different, more diverse audiences are getting into Marvel. Like, I’ve heard that young girls like Squirrel Girl. I don’t get Squirrel Girl—I mean, I get it, but it doesn’t speak to me. But like, maybe they shouldn’t have to cater to a thirty-two-year-old man all the damn time. So I actually have made my peace with it. None of this is actually a criticism of Marvel; it’s not me angrily insisting they’ve lost a loyal customer. It’s my deal that I don’t like the books. That’s what I mean by, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

But your tastes haven’t changed at all, it’s the tastes of the market. So it is the books that have changed, not you.

Well…maybe. But, you know, the last time they were doing things that felt “right” to me was the late 90s, and Marvel was bankrupt. (You know, Marvel did have a lot of good books in the late 90s, they just got overlooked in favor of the thirty million X-books they were publishing.) They probably wouldn’t be around today anyway if they kept pandering specifically to me and people like me.

So is that it for you, then? Are you never going to buy a new Marvel comic again?

No, I mean, I still read some things, in trade and such. Waid’s Daredevil run was great, really well done. I would even say I loved it. But I enjoy it in a different way than I enjoy what I narrowly define as a “Marvel comic.” Waid’s Daredevil and some random Bill Mantlo issue of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man both hit the pleasure centers of my brain, but they’re totally distinct pleasure centers. I mentioned New X-Men—I think it’s probably the “best” X-Men comics have ever been…but they don’t really seem to be of a piece with, say, the Claremont/Byrne run, even when they’re explicitly referencing it. And I think I enjoy Claremont/Byrne more. And Joss Whedon’s run was, again, based on the Claremont/Byrne comics, but they don’t really “fit” if you put them side by side.

It still seems like you’re retreating into the past and not leaving yourself open to new things. Remember when you were a kid and you thought it was lame when adults didn’t like to try new music?

I have to be honest, I’m getting to that point about music, too. Part of this, I think, is being a parent of young children. When your day consists of HEY HEY WHAT IS IT WHY ARE YOU CRYING OH YOU WANT SOME JUICE OKAY HERE IS SOME JUICE OH YOU SPILLED THE JUICE GREAT JOB, you’re tired at the end of the day and maybe would rather have something comforting instead of spending your few free hours trying something you might not even like.

That is a chilling analysis of your life.

Well, the kids’ll get older and I’ll eventually get time back for myself. But the point is, I think it’s okay to say, “I like the old stuff better”…as long as you don’t insist that the old stuff is better, objectively, somehow. At the end of the day, you’re gonna like what you’re gonna like. I’m quite happy to dive through quarter bins for old comics, and I’m happy that people like the new comics. And I think if you out there in Blogland reading this feel the same way, that “They just don’t make ‘em like they used to, dammit,” that you should consider what it is you really want and whether forcing everyone into your own box is the best way to go about it.

That seems…healthy, I guess.

I think so. Unless you were being sarcastic.

Oh, I don’t even know anymore.

FLAPJACKS: How do we stop Trump? Oh god how do we stop Trump?
MGK: First off, how would “we” do anything like that?
FLAPJACKS: Don’t laugh. If we don’t stop Trump, we’ll have to move to Canada!
MGK: We already live in Canada.
FLAPJACKS: That makes it even worse because we know what it’s like here!
MGK: But that – oh, never mind.
FLAPJACKS: Thank god you’re finally on board with this. I have plans. Anti-Trump plans.
MGK: Okay, so let’s hear these plans.
FLAPJACKS: Okay. First plan: we tell all the people who like him that he is bad.
MGK: Probably won’t work.
FLAPJACKS: Why won’t it work? People don’t want to vote for bad people. Even other bad people generally want to vote for good people.
MGK: Yes, but –
FLAPJACKS: And there is a mountain of evidence that Trump is a bad person. I mean, the multiple bankruptcies, the multiple divorces, the fraud lawsuit he’s probably going to lose this year.
MGK: But the problem is is that saying Trump is “bad” is a value judgement. We’re talking about a political landscape where each side automatically takes the other side’s badness as a given, and distrusts the other side’s assertions implicitly. It’s quite possible that pro-Trump voters who might not themselves be actively racist are working themselves into a position where they believe accusations towards Trump of being racist are lies concocted by evil liberals.
FLAPJACKS: …so we think there are pro-Trump voters who aren’t racist, then?
MGK: I think it’s fair to say so, yes. Everybody likes pulling out those shocker polls like “twenty percent of Trump voters want to see slavery brought back” but it doesn’t follow that the remaining eighty percent are all thinking “yeah, slavery’s great but I can’t say it in public.” Trump is a white nationalist candidate by any reasonable yardstick, but it’s worth remembering that there are two clauses in that and “white” is only one of them.
FLAPJACKS: So you think there are some Trump voters who are racist, some who are racist AND nationalist, and some who are just nationalist?
MGK: I think that’s broadly accurate. You can quibble about the percentages, but let’s say for argument’s sake that one-third of Trump’s support is the non-racist nationalists – that’s where all his (small amount of) minority support comes from, for example.
FLAPJACKS: Plus white people who are generally well-meaning but are willing to give the racism a pass or are mentally minimizing its damage.
MGK: Exactly.
FLAPJACKS: But don’t you think Trump’s promises are effectively promises of a return to white supremacy?
MGK: Well, here’s the thing. Many of them are dogwhistles, and the point of a dogwhistle phrase in politics is to signal to people who know the context while not alarming the people who don’t know the context.
FLAPJACKS: But the dude said he would ban Muslims from entering the United States. That’s not a dogwhistle.
MGK: But the Mexican border wall thing is. If you’re prejudiced against Latinos, then it’s saying “we’re gonna show those Mexicans who’s boss.” But if you aren’t – at least not particularly – then it’s just a dramatic show of economic protectionism. And economic protectionism is the important thing, because that’s Trump’s real selling point.
FLAPJACKS: So you think “Make America Great Again” isn’t racist?
MGK: I think his use of it has been and is racist, but it can be interpreted in a non-racist light, which is enough for that chunk of his supporters who aren’t actively malicious towards non-whites. Because you can say “make American great again” in a non-racist way as well. You can make it mean “restrict free trade agreements which have seen offshoring of the majority of American manufacturing,” for example, pretty easily. Hell, if you want to go liberal with it, you can make it mean “restore union power and the social safety net.”
FLAPJACKS: I don’t think Trump’s going to come out as pro-union, though.
MGK: But he has been very clear that he wants to restrict free trade, and for a lot of lower-class voters that is a huge deal, because they think free trade has bitten them in the ass. Not unfairly, either, because many of the benefits of free trade are either relatively abstract. “Free trade incentivizes nations not to go to war” is broadly true, but if your job goes to a third-world country where labour costs are cheaper, the war you’re not involved in is not exactly great financial compensation on a personal level.
FLAPJACKS: So you’re saying support for Trump doesn’t necessarily indicate support for tacit racism, then?
MGK: It can and I would say the majority of it does. But you can’t concern yourself with the two-thirds of Trump’s vote (so far) who are racist. They are not votes you can reasonably affect or divert, except possibly to Ted Cruz, and that is possibly the only way you could get them to vote which would be worse, so concentrate on the Trump voters who might be reachable yet and the ones who might be tempted to flip to him despite the racist dogwhistling.
FLAPJACKS: Okay. I accept that pointing out that Trump is a bad racist person is not going to work. How about we go with plan two, which is “he is a silly person who says silly things”?
MGK: The racism wasn’t silly enough?
FLAPJACKS: I’m talking about going after his sense of gravitas now.
MGK: He’s kind of doughy. That’s true.
FLAPJACKS: Well, yeah, but I mean this meme that he’s a successful businessman and thus is good at everything. Because he’s not good at everything! He has tons of failed business ventures and he went bankrupt multiple times and –
MGK: – and he’s worth, even after you discount for his bullshitting about his personal worth, more than a billion dollars.
FLAPJACKS: But he’s being sued right now for Trump University!
MGK: And he’s worth more than a billion dollars.
FLAPJACKS: He started out with hundreds of millions of dollars! If he’d just invested it in bond index funds he’d be worth more money now!
MGK: But regardless, he’s worth more than a billion dollars.
FLAPJACKS: You keep saying that.
MGK: Because your argument is terrible. “Donald Trump should be even richer” is not going to make any Trump supporter blink, because Donald Trump is already worth an unimaginable amount of money. Does it make a gigantic difference if he should be worth ten billion dollars instead of two, or whatever the numbers work out to be? He’s still stupidly rich, and he’s worth more money than he started out with, and the “more money” is a stupidly large amount of money as well.
FLAPJACKS: Come to think: if he invested it all in bond index funds and made more money but didn’t have The Apprentice and own the Miss USA pageant and show up on pro wrestling and all of that, would anybody care?
MGK: Of course not. Is there anybody outside of a bunch of pundits hoping that Michael Bloomberg runs for President? No, and he was actually the mayor of New York City, but it doesn’t matter because he’s a boring rich man. He’s not who people fantasize about being when they are rich, because Bloomberg is still essentially a sober and responsible person. Trump does not give a fuck, and for a lot of his voters that’s a huge part of his appeal.
FLAPJACKS: Both because people wish they did not have to give a fuck and because his not giving a fuck suggests that he is politically independent of power brokers.
MGK: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: But that second one is stupid.
MGK: Yes to that too.
FLAPJACKS: Okay. So, given that you have no actual political campaign experience, how would you solve this conundrum?
MGK: Well, if you’re going to be pissy about it –
FLAPJACKS: No, no. I withdraw my snark. Please enlighten me.
MGK: Well, it’s a two-stage process. You need to both peel away those voters who can be peeled away from him and diminish his credibility with the rest to depress their enthusiasm.
FLAPJACKS: Didn’t Marco Rubio try that already, though? Actually, wait, I withdraw the question, because Marco Rubio is a half dozen small babies in a suit.
MGK: Exactly so! Marco Rubio is a wisp of gas just solid enough to create the illusion of a human being, much in the way that swamp gas makes people think UFOs are present.
FLAPJACKS: Marco Rubio is what happens when you try to give a loaf of whole wheat Wonder Bread sentience with a mad science experiment.
MGK: Marco Rubio is the sum of all of the prepositions in a Sweet Valley High novel.
FLAPJACKS: Marco Rubio is an extra from a scene in an unreleased David Mamet film whose only scene was cut out of the film anyway.
MGK: Marco Rubio is an anagram for “I, a broom cur” and I’m not sure if that’s insulting but it certainly deserves to be.
FLAPJACKS: Marco Rubio is a guy who screams “I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ” into his home-karaoke-machine mic.
MGK: Marco Rubio buys Brooks Brothers clothes to fit in, but in his heart, he always wants to wear a suit made of Jack Chick tracts and guns.
FLAPJACKS: …where were we again?
MGK: Right. So anyway, Rubio tried his best to attack Trump and came a little closer to managing it than people expected, not because his attacks were particularly top-notch but because it’s really actually very easy to attack Donald Trump, because he’s a hateful asshole who really isn’t anywhere near as competent as he constantly suggests. The “con artist” line Rubio kept using wasn’t quite ideal, but it was closer to the mark than most people have gotten.
FLAPJACKS: I hate to point this out, but Rubio got his ass kicked and Trump won most of the Super Tuesday states.
MGK: Well, yes, but that was as much because they only started attacking him a few days beforehand. Trump underperformed as compared to his polls in the majority of Super Tuesday states – mostly only by a few points, but the start of a decline could have meant something if they had started attacking him sooner. He likely lost Oklahoma and Alaska to Ted Cruz as a result of those poll drops and came close to losing Virginia to Rubio.
FLAPJACKS: Which is really kind of amazing when you think about it, considering we’re talking about Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
MGK: Plus there was John Kasich eating up about ten percent of the anti-Trump vote, and Trump’s second-choice numbers with Kasich voters are lousy – they aren’t game-changingly terrible with anybody else in the race, but they’re bad with Kasich voters.
FLAPJACKS: So “con artist” is the way to go?
MGK: Kind of? I think it’s more important to emphasize Trump’s general lack of competence outside of his comfort zone. Say “yeah, he can really work the refs in his favour. What happens when he’s the ref?” Which is kind of a lousy analogy but I think you get the general idea. The reason Trump is not destitute right now is because of the technicalities of U.S. bankruptcy law saving his ass.
FLAPJACKS: Do you mention Trump Steaks and Trump Air and all of those?
MGK: Yeah, but as sidelines. You really hit him on the casinos, you say “this guy couldn’t even successfully manage a casino, where the business model is just sitting there and watching people bring you money.”
FLAPJACKS: Well it seems like beating Trump is relatively easy!
MGK: Except that it isn’t. Attacking him in the right way is only part of the equation, and the other part is the reason why the GOP hasn’t been able to truly dent him.
FLAPJACKS: We’re going back to the economic populism, aren’t we.
MGK: Oh, yes. That’s Trump’s greatest strength. The only other person talking about Trump’s economic issues, even vaguely so, is Bernie Sanders – which explains a lot about those annoying subspecies of Berniebros who say things like “if Hillary gets the nomination I’m voting Trump.” Yes, that’s mostly them being douchebags, but there’s a serious undercurrent there that really shouldn’t be ignored.
FLAPJACKS: But I really want to ignore them.
MGK: I get that.
FLAPJACKS: I mean I really, really want to ignore them.
MGK: Understood. But that undercurrent is still there and it matters, and Hillary Clinton is particularly ill-equipped to fight it. That doesn’t mean she can’t, but it requires taking some policy positions that she might not like.
FLAPJACKS: I don’t think Hillary Clinton’s going to say “let’s end our free trade agreements and build a wall against Mexico.” She might be politically cynical but she’s not that cynical.
MGK: I agree.
FLAPJACKS: Besides, would anybody believe her if she said she was gonna do that?
MGK: No, but she doesn’t have to. The trick is to take populist positions that work with a centre-left view. Like, if the problem is “American companies moved/are moving manufacturing overseas because of cheaper labour costs,” you don’t have to argue for ending free trade agreements, because free trade agreements aren’t the only way to deal with that. You could say “we’re going to regulate and inspect companies who move overseas and make sure they provide safe and humane working conditions, and don’t hire child labour, and suddenly it won’t be so cheap for them to leave America.” You could say “we’re going to tax any company which offshores itself to a friendlier tax regime so hard there won’t be anything left when they leave.” You can say “we’re going to enforce immigrant labour laws so businesses can’t hire illegal labour on the side and force them to pay fair wages.” Those are all left-wing responses to actual bread-and-butter economic issues that affect working-class people.
FLAPJACKS: I get it. You peel off the Trump voters with left-wing nationalism that isn’t racist. You could say “we’re going to build that wall, but with union labour and we’ll put lots of big hearts on it so people know they’re still loved even as they’re walled out.”
MGK: Not really.

I did promise that I’d be providing you with content every week in between Race posts, because as much as I love writing them and as much as some of you love reading them there’s definitely a contingent of people who want something to break up the string of Race-related posts and I don’t blame them.

That said, I didn’t promise it would always be new content. So here’s an old post of mine from my own blog, Fraggmented, that I liked a lot and figured people might not have seen. Enjoy!

The LucasFilm Sale: How It All Went Down

(SCENE: A BOARDROOM AT LUCASARTS, MAY 2011. A KEY EXECUTIVE IS SITTING AT A TABLE, ANXIOUSLY AWAITING THE ARRIVAL OF HIS BOSS.)

(GEORGE LUCAS ENTERS.)

LUCASARTS EXECUTIVE: Hello, sir. You said you had some big news for me?

LUCAS: Very big. I think this could be the biggest thing for this company since 1999.

EXEC: You mean…we’re…?

LUCAS: Exactly.

EXEC: Episode Seven?

LUCAS: Huh? Oh, that. Um, yeah, I have a few ideas I’ve been tossing around. No, I’ve been thinking about new revenue streams for the company. I mean, the movies have always sold well, but eventually we hit saturation on that. People have the originals, they have the Special Editions, they have them on video and DVD and Blu-Ray, and they’ve all seen them in the theater a couple dozen times on top of that. It’s the ancillary revenue streams that keep us in dough, you know that.

EXEC: Um, but Episode Seven would be a new film. They’d want to see that.

LUCAS: But you have to spend money making it, first! Millions of dollars scouting locations, hiring actors, putting them into mo-cap suits so that you don’t actually have to see them on-screen when you’re done…arranging all those pixels into fake aliens costs money, you know. And when you’re all finished, what do people do? Complain that you didn’t do it right and decide not to see it another sixteen times! No, if we’re going to do this, we have to make sure it’s profitable before the first ticket sold. Like ‘Phantom Menace’. That’s where my idea comes in.

EXEC: More merchandising, sir? I’m really not sure there’s anywhere else to go with that. We’ve sold ‘Star Wars’ action figures, ‘Star Wars’ video games, ‘Star Wars’ tissues, ‘Star Wars’ muffin tins…we sold that candy that made you french-kiss Jar Jar Binks! I don’t think we can really put the logo on anything else, not unless you’re willing to sell ‘Star Wars’ toilet paper.

LUCAS: Hmm. Actually, write that one down. But no, I was thinking along the lines of advertising tie-ins.

EXEC: Kids’ meals, drink cups, that sort of thing? I mean, I’m sure we can round some up, no problem, but–

LUCAS: You’re not thinking big enough. Ever watch any sports?

EXEC: Well, um…yes, but–

LUCAS: Not me. Never really had the interest. Not enough CGI. But one of my kids had on a basketball game last night, and do you know where those guys play? Staples Center.

EXEC: …um…

LUCAS: “STAPLES” Center! Don’t you get it? The guys at Staples paid big bucks just to get a building named after them! I looked it up! It’s like, millions of dollars! And I was thinking.

EXEC: OK, maybe we should do a little less of that–

LUCAS: Naming rights! How many of those damned aliens do we stick in the background of each shot? Twenty? Thirty? And every freaking one has an action figure, its own novel tie-in, and something like three comic book series about them! And we’ve just been naming them after our friends and stupid inside jokes! All this time, we’ve had a frigging gold mine right under our noses, and we haven’t touched it!

EXEC: I’ll be honest, sir, this sounds–

LUCAS: Brilliant? Lucrative? Like the future of cinema? Here, I’ve drawn up designs for a few new characters. That’s Wal-Martto, he’s going to be a wacky alien sidekick who does all the bargaining for the heroes. This, this is Darth Verizon. He’s going to be a villain, but a “cool” one. Over here is Starbuck, a new Rebel pilot who loves to fly with the kind of energy only a Chai Latte can give you. And…you’re giving me a look. What’s the look?

EXEC: Well, first off, Starbuck is already a pilot in another series.

LUCAS: I know! And they didn’t charge a dime! Don’t worry, I’ve got a product placement deal going with the BSG people. We’ll get twice the money for the same character, and they’ll get a free ad for their DVD boxsets. It’s win-win…you’re still giving me the look.

EXEC: It’s just that…I mean, doesn’t this kind of cheapen our franchise? I think the fans will see it as kind of, well…lame.

LUCAS: They didn’t complain about Sio Bibble, Salacious Crumb or Elan Sleazebaggano. I think if we can get away with Elan Sleazebaggano, we can get away with Darth Verizon.

EXEC: …OK. Look, George. How much would it cost to get you to not make this movie at all? Or any movies? Ever?

LUCAS: I dunno. Four billion dollars?

EXEC: Let me get Disney on the phone.

(Disclaimer: All kidding towards Lucas aside, I’ll be honest; I really only did this because I wanted to get the name “Wal-Martto” down in print somewhere.)

FLAPJACKS: Let’s make a survival horror video game!
MGK: I’ll bring the random assortment of dentist’s tools!
FLAPJACKS: I’ll bring the creepy doll’s heads!
MGK: Don’t forget to smash ninety percent of the light bulbs! But only ninety percent!
FLAPJACKS: Scary killers/monsters have to see too! It’s only polite!
MGK: Speaking of which, what type of scary killers or monsters do we want?
FLAPJACKS: Well, there are so many options. There are regular people who are grossly facially mutilated. There are body-dysmorphic horrors. And then there are body-dysmorphic horrors who are also grossly facially mutilated.
MGK: It is a smorgasbord of terror!
FLAPJACKS: The important thing is to make people go “ew” when they play our game!
MGK: Speaking of which, what type of protagonist should we have? I think we should have a protagonist whose family have died and who is still haunted by their deaths.
FLAPJACKS: Well I think we should have a protagonist whose family have disappeared and who is driven to find them, no matter how tragic an outcome may result!
MGK: Can we compromise and have a nameless non-entity who is defined only by his abilities which have been mapped onto the keyboard?
FLAPJACKS: My word, it’s like I’m surviving the game myself now! But we’re agreed it’s a dude, right?
MGK: Well of course.
FLAPJACKS: All those little convenient notes people leave behind will have so much more impact if I know my video-game self is a dude.
MGK: It’s only real survival horror if all the notes are in fact voice recordings. You know, as people do. Nobody writes things down any more! It’s the digital age! We talk into our talk-boxes! Voice diaries are a real important thing!
FLAPJACKS: Also with the voice diaries I think we need to give our hero supplies. That way he can fight the monsters. But only briefly, lest he be given some sense of agency! I think we should only give him single, individual bullets. People leave single, individual bullets around all the time! Think how scary it will be when he has only three bullets in his gun – and there are four monsters!
MGK: Bullets? Pffft, you’re not being ambitious enough. He should not have a gun. He should have a knife, which regularly gets dull when he stabs a monster with it, and he needs to find whetstones to sharpen the knife!
FLAPJACKS: He can carry up to four rocks at any time, and whenever he smashes a monster with a rock, it crumbles. He must constantly find additional rocks!
MGK: He doesn’t have a weapon at all, he just has a flashlight!
FLAPJACKS: And he needs to find batteries for the flashlight! Or else he won’t even be able to see!
MGK: What if we don’t give him anything at all?
FLAPJACKS: What if he needs to constantly find vitamins just to not die? Oh wait, I got it, our hero is diabetic and needs to take insulin every so often! He will have to search everywhere for insulin!
MGK: Which will be located in numerous desks, of course. It’s all coming together!
FLAPJACKS: But who will the big villain be? I think we should have it be a crazed scientist. He can make the awful murder monsters from people! All scientists know how to do that.
MGK: I would prefer a demon or maybe an evil ghost. That way the awful murder monsters don’t have to even conform to the slightest hint of scientific logic.
FLAPJACKS: I dunno. I think we want some degree of veracity to make players feel like this could really happen somehow. Otherwise we might as well be playing Mario Kart.
MGK: How about… it is the ghost of an evil scientist who was possessed by demons?
FLAPJACKS: Oooooh, that has some oomph to it.
MGK: Indeed! Who would not want to play this game?
FLAPJACKS: … actually I think I just want to play Mario Kart instead.
MGK: Yeah, me too. Let’s play that.

FLAPJACKS: Hey, do you remember that song “Friday” by Rebecca Black? The really bad one? It was famous.
ME: Yes, I remember that song. I have tried to put it well out of mind, but sadly I have failed.
FLAPJACKS: Well, guess what?
ME: She has a new song?
FLAPJACKS: No!
ME: Good.
FLAPJACKS: But the sleazy company that put out her song has made one that is arguably even worse!
ME: Oh lord.

FLAPJACKS: We begin with a Chinese man talking Chinese over phat synth beats, as one does.
ME: Also I note that this owner of the ostensible Chinese restaurant is cooking noodles on a Mongolian grill. So Alison Gold is apparently in favour of fusion cuisine.
FLAPJACKS: That would certainly explain why the noodles are glittering and emitting rainbows.
ME: I think that’s just how Korean food works. ALL THE ASIAN FOODS IN ONE RESTAURANT!
FLAPJACKS: There is something inherently creepy about a 14-year-old girl singing about heading home after a night of clubbing. She’s fourteen. Is she supposed to be a baby-raver? Where is her glitter pacifier?
ME: You’re complaining both that her song lyric is creepy and then asking where her pacifier is, you realize.
FLAPJACKS: Only ironically.
ME: I bet Miley Cyrus says she is being ironical all the time.
FLAPJACKS: Oh man she is kicking over a trashcan because she’s SO MAD about being hungry. Alison is punk, y’all.
ME: Her lip-syncing is awful in this video. She goes from not actually being able to lip-sync along with the lines she supposedly sings to lip-syncing along with the HEY-shouters in the background of the chorus.
FLAPJACKS: I’m more impressed with how the girl taking her order is totally stoked to be working in food service. Look at her. She is so excited that this white girl has come in and is pointing excitedly at what she wants to order, presumably because said white girl thinks there is a language barrier and cannot simply say what she wants in case the strange foreigner doesn’t understand proper English, even when sung.
ME: Why would the order-taking girl be excited about that?
FLAPJACKS: I don’t know, but I don’t judge people for enjoying their work.
ME: She definitely operates that cash register like a touch-typist. That’s impressive.
FLAPJACKS: I see we’re at the “point at the different types of Chinese food” part of the video, where she names all the Chinese foods she can think of.
ME: So… broccoli, chicken wings, egg rolls, wonton soup and fortune cookies.
FLAPJACKS: I know I was making fun of her for being white before, but man, that is so white. All that’s missing are the sweet-and-sour chicken balls.
ME: …why is she befriending a man in a panda suit oh god this suddenly became terrifying
FLAPJACKS: Look, I’m sure there is a perfectly rational explanation for why they are… uh… skipping through the park together and frolicking… okay, this is definitely weird…
ME: OH GOD THEY ARE HAVING A TICKLE-FIGHT ON THE GRASS THIS IS SOME BIZARRE LOLITA SHIT RIGHT HERE
FLAPJACKS: Don’t worry, it turns out that Panda Suit Guy is actually just ARK Music Factory’s house rapper.
ME: House rapper?
FLAPJACKS: You know how restaurants have a house wine, something not fancy but which will go down acceptably enough with your meal and isn’t too expensive? ARK Music Factory has a house rapper for the parents of the kids who pay for these awful videos. The theory is roughly equivalent.
ME: OH MY GOD IS HE RAPPING IN A FAKE CHINESE ACCENT
FLAPJACKS: …yes, yes he is.
ME: WHY DID YOU MAKE ME WATCH THIS OH GOD MY SENSES SO MANY PAINS
FLAPJACKS: Oh look, they’re playing Monopoly and he landed on Oriental Avenue.
ME: AGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH
FLAPJACKS: Also, what is the deal with all these subtitles? Why are they all in different languages? Are they hoping that this will give the song “international appeal”?
ME: “Look, Alison Gold’s Parents, we know you’re spending your life savings on this video and you want to hit as many markets as possible. We’re going to do that by translating each line of the song into a different language. Then all those foreigners will see the translations of their one line of the song and teach themselves English so they can enjoy the whole song. We have charts demonstrating this.”
FLAPJACKS: “Can we see the – ”
ME: “DO NOT ASK TO SEE THE CHARTS. TRUST THE FACTORY. TRUST THE SECRET CHARTS.”
FLAPJACKS: Aaaaaaand now they’re all dressed up as geishas because all Asians are the same!
ME: I note that Alison Gold’s signature dance move is the “half-hearted shrug.”
FLAPJACKS: And the video ends with the panda flying away on a rainbow, after tossing Alison a fortune cookie with a fortune that says the panda will fly away on a rainbow.
ME: “In bed.”
FLAPJACKS: FORTUNE COOKIES ARE NEVER WRONG!
ME: But fortune cookies don’t work that way! They’re not supposed to tell you what already happened, they’re supposed to tell you the future.
FLAPJACKS: Or compliment you in a sort of kiss-ass way.
ME: “In bed.”
FLAPJACKS: But I was right, wasn’t I? I mean, this was a must watch video about food.
ME: Eh. It’s no Pizza Kids.

ME: So I was watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine last night and
FLAPJACKS: Ugh who cares I wanna talk about the Batman show with no Batman.
ME: Oh, yeah, Gotham. That sounds a bit odd, doesn’t it?
FLAPJACKS: Well, I don’t see what the point is of a show about Batman with no Batman.
ME: For starters, the show is about Commissioner Gordon, not Batman.
FLAPJACKS: Look, that’s a cheat. First off, it’s not like anybody asked for a Commissioner Gordon show. Would you want a show about Alfred, too? Back when he was a British spy and secret agent and wait that actually sounds great so never mind that, but a Commissioner Gordon show is basically just Law and Order unless you put in super-villains. And if there are super-villains, then where the hell is Batman in this show?
ME: Maybe it’s no super-villains and it’s like a show where Gordon is a Good Cop and the rest of the force is corrupt because it’s Gotham City and they are the true villains.
FLAPJACKS: They already did a corrupt cop show and that was The Shield.
ME: Except that I just described the exact opposite of that show. Jim Gordon is the anti-Vic Mackey.
FLAPJACKS: EXCEPT except that thanks to the early promo material for the show we already know there are gonna be supervillains. They all but said so.
ME: They also said that Rage was gonna show up in Agents of SHIELD and that turned out to be a guy called Mike Peterson, which is like the least superheroey name ever.
FLAPJACKS: Was that official promotional buzz or was that nerds trying to guess things by randomly naming black characters from Marvel with super-strength?
ME: I personally cannot tell the difference any more.
FLAPJACKS: Anyway. Look, part of the thing about Batman that people like is that his villains are obsessed with him. Let’s assume that some supervillains are going to show up in this Jim Gordon show, because seriously, why would they not put supervillains in the TV show set in Batman’s city? Isn’t there already a cop show without supervillains on the air?
ME: Well, there’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine –
FLAPJACKS: Sitcom, doesn’t count.
ME: Maybe Rookie Blue?
FLAPJACKS: That’s a coming-of-age show that happens to be about cops.
ME: Almost Human?
FLAPJACKS: Robots are basically supervillains anyway.
ME: Blue Bloods?
FLAPJACKS: That’s more of a family drama than a cop show although you do have to admire Tom Selleck’s moustache, which is very Jim Gordonish.
ME: NCIS?
FLAPJACKS: No.
ME: NCIS: Los Angeles?
FLAPJACKS: That’s the one. See? We’re covered. We have a cop show without supervillains already! We don’t need another one!
ME: I bow to your inescapable logic.

FLAPJACKS: So we have stars. Is this Star Trek? Or Star Wars?
MGK: I doubt it. If it was an established franchise this would make sure all the nerds knew it was an established franchise, right? There would be some ambiguity, but by the end of the trailer there would be an “oh that’s exciting” money shot.
FLAPJACKS: A tease-en-scene, if you will.
MGK: Very well done.
FLAPJACKS: I actually thought of it last month but now I get to use it.
MGK: Guy staggering through the surf.
FLAPJACKS: Maybe it’s Aquaman.
MGK: What did I just say about established franchises?
FLAPJACKS: I know, but I would counter with “nobody cares about Aquaman.”
MGK: …okay, fair point.
FLAPJACKS: Also, the guy is tied up, so that would make sense, right? Aquaman being exiled from his home planet.
MGK: Ocean.
FLAPJACKS: Whatever. He can breathe underwater so being tied up in the ocean, that’s no big deal. In fact he’s being driven to shore because that’s how underwater people execute criminals!
MGK: You’re saying that in Atlantis, beaching is a form of execution?
FLAPJACKS: Yes!
MGK: But why don’t the prisoners just walk back to the ocean?
FLAPJACKS: That’s why they tie them up! But Aquaman can breathe air, so he survives the beaching… and… um.
MGK: You didn’t have any idea as to what happens next, did you.
FLAPJACKS: Not really, no.
MGK: We call that “the Aquaman problem.”
FLAPJACKS: So. There’s also another guy with his lips sewn shut.
MGK: You know he’s probably evil because he has to drink his meals through a straw.
FLAPJACKS: …I have no idea what this is supposed to be.
MGK: You’re not supposed to. Remember when the Cloverfield teasers first came out and people were all “is this Godzilla? Is it a superhero movie?” because the idea of something new scared them, much like the dancing scared the rural people in Footloose.
FLAPJACKS: So in this metaphor I am the strict country preacher who doesn’t get today’s youth?
MGK: Pretty much.
FLAPJACKS: Dang.

FLAPJACKS: So everybody I know is putting up red equals signs on Facebook to show that they support gay marriage.
ME: Why red?
FLAPJACKS: It is the colour of love?
ME: It’s also the colour of anger, danger, stop signs, and retired assassins who are Bruce Willis. What was wrong with rainbows?
FLAPJACKS: I think maybe the guy who started it was all “well, rainbows are too political. But everybody likes red!”
ME: Or maybe he figured American conservatives who consider themselves red-staters would be tricked into supporting gay marriage this way.
FLAPJACKS: That is not the best plan I have ever heard.
ME: For a Facebook campaign it is basically genius-level thought. I mean, come on, it’s Facebook. Politics on Facebook is less advanced than online competitions involving Doritos.
FLAPJACKS: In fairness, Doritos are more important than civil rights to a surprising number of people.
ME: A surprising number of bad people.
FLAPJACKS: Your point being?
ME: I don’t know. Something about Doritos, probably.
FLAPJACKS: Anyway, I was reading that Facebook activism is bad because it makes people think that they are doing something to help a cause when they are actually, in fact, doing next to nothing.
ME: I, too, have heard that.
FLAPJACKS: But I have a theory, which is that that theory is completely wrong.
ME: Elaborate.
FLAPJACKS: Well, people are, for the most part, useless good-for-nothing assholes.
ME: Wow, this theory got dark in a hurry.
FLAPJACKS: Can you prove that I am wrong?
ME: Well, definitive proof –
FLAPJACKS: Right. So we accept that presumption. Moving on, because people are useless, the theory that people are being dissuaded from helping with a cause by internet activism is crap, because – and this is the important bit – they never would have done anything anyway. I posit that the number of people who really would have gone to protest marches or helped with community organizations or written letters to their elected officials or any of that, but instead did not because they were presented the option to express their support instead with an image macro on a social media website of some sort, is in fact very close to zero. Or, if you prefer, just zero. Straight-up zero.
ME: I don’t know that that is accurate. Given that people do tend to follow the path of least resistance, like rivers –
FLAPJACKS: Rivers have use.
ME: I reiterate: you’re awful dark today.
FLAPJACKS: I broke your wok.
ME: Oh. Well, in any case – wait, how do you break a wok?
FLAPJACKS: The handle came off.
ME: But it was bolted on.
FLAPJACKS: It came off!
ME: Anyway. Given that people tend to follow the path of least resistance, I think the argument that zero people are dissuaded from true activism because of slacktivism is probably erroneous. There must by definition be some people who would have done something more substantial, who were dissuaded because of the option to instead express themselves with a cause-oriented lolcat.
FLAPJACKS: But at what point do we say that the effect is de minimis?
ME: That’s a law term. I’m impressed.
FLAPJACKS: I was watching Boston Legal reruns last week. But anyway, I think activists are, by nature, shit-disturbers. And shit does not get disturbed on the internet. If they had had internet in the 1960s, Rosa Parks still would’ve sat down at the back of the bus.
ME: The front of the bus.
FLAPJACKS: What?
ME: Rosa Parks sat down at the front of the bus. Because black people had to go to the back of the bus. If Rosa Parks had been at the back of the bus it would not have been activism so much as “what normally happened.” Don’t you remember “Sister Rosa” by the Neville Brothers?
FLAPJACKS: My main takeaway from that song was that they really wanted to thank Sister Rosa.
ME: Look, I’m not going to get into the dynamics of bus-sitting, racism and how the two intersected in 1960s Alabama, because I am not Wikipedia and Wikipedia is a thing. And I agree that activists are shit-disturbers. But the point of the slacktivist theory is that social media activism provides the illusion of shit-disturbing, because your Uncle Morris who acts like it is fifty years ago gets offended when you post your “I CAN HAZ GAY MARRIAGE” lolcat on Tumblr, and you feel like you have disturbed shit when you have really done nothing.
FLAPJACKS: I get the illusion argument. I just don’t agree with it, because people recognize when something is something and nothing is nothing.
ME: Aha, and now we turn the cynicism angle back to my side, because people all too frequently don’t realize that and treat their Facebook actions like they are real life, because they know you can get fired for being stupid on Facebook so they assume that all actions on Facebook have consequences.
FLAPJACKS: Yes, but those people are stupid, whereas activists – well, activists can be stupid too, but there is a difference between idealistic stupid and disengaged stupid. Your argument doesn’t depend on how kids who thought KONY 2012 was a real thing that had meaning, because anybody who would have given a damn in any other circumstance was able to figure out that the campaign was being run by weird people who had a history of doing dick and all about the issue. I saw more of that on Facebook than actual Kony posts. Which is why I said de minimis. Well, that and I wanted to lawyer you back for once.
ME: And I was duly impressed.

FLAPJACKS: So I hear you’ve been talking about the Dead Space games a lot lately.
ME: Well, yes.
FLAPJACKS: I hope you have touched upon the most important thing, which is that Dead Space 3 is terrible.
ME: I didn’t think it was that bad –
FLAPJACKS: Yes, because you are a wriiiiiiiteeeer and therefore it is all about your precious story. But even you have to admit that Dead Space 3 is an awful, awful game.
ME: Well, I did kind of snicker when you came to those little step-ups where Isaac could clearly just clamber over were it not for Impassable Wall Fiat, so he had to use his magic telekinesis to make a tiny ladder appear and then climb up the five-foot-high ladder.
FLAPJACKS: Yes, that was very stupid. But you forget that vast chunks of the game are just the same six rooms, repeated over and over again. There is The Room That Always Has Baddies In It, The Room That Usually Has Baddies In It, The Corridor, The Other Corridor, The Room That Intersects With The Corridor (And Usually Has Baddies In It), and The Elevator. It got so that I could predict from exactly which stupidly obvious air vents the baddies would pop out from and try to stab me.
ME: I will concede that the game was much more repetitive in its level design than the first two Dead Space games, sure.
FLAPJACKS: Good. Will you also concede that the level design, in addition to being repetitive, is usually stupid? I mean, stupid in the way that calls attention to its limitations. Like, for example, the “puzzles” where the solution is literally painted on the wall right in front of the puzzle itself. It’s like the designers wanted to shout at you “YOU ARE A DUMB.”
ME: I preferred to think of that as password encryption being so hardcore in the Whateverth Century that the only way to truly hack it was to go totally analog.
FLAPJACKS: If that were the case, then why didn’t they just rely on the magical Doors Which Only Unlock When It Is Time For The Game To Let You Go There? I mean, in the previous games, they at least always bothered to come up with explanations for why that shit was happening. “Hold on, Isaac, I am going to hack that shit remotely so you can go through” as opposed to “welp, new objective, go that way, doors magically work now.”
ME: Those silly future people!
FLAPJACKS: Or the “electrical engineering” puzzles which were literally just “can you move both of your joysticks at once – okay then you can pass” challenges. Or the puzzles where the voiceover message of Dead Person Twelve tells you exactly what you have to do. Were the previous Dead Space puzzles too hard for some people? Who were these people? Were they just drooling all over their controllers and throwing a fit when that was not enough to win the game?
ME: Speaking as a true PC gamer in his opinion of consoleheads and Call of Duty players, I have to admit that is a distinct possibility.
FLAPJACKS: And the weapon crafting! Who wasted their time on this? You tinker for a bit until you get the guns you already know are good! “Oh, so if I do this and this, I get the pulse rifle with the grenade launcher? Why would I need anything else, then?”
ME: Well, that’s not fair. In the first two games, there was no gun that had stasis built in to its regular firing effect and which effectively put you in god mode for ninety percent of the game because when you shoot things and put them into slow motion, Dead Space gets hella easier in a hurry. Also, in the first two games there was no chain lightning gun. Did you play with the chain lightning gun?
FLAPJACKS: No. Why?
ME: Because the chain lightning gun hits everything at once. It kills the first guy and then does damage to all the rest of the guys. If you up the damage enough you can generally clear entire rooms with one shot. Also, you give it stasis so it also puts them in slow motion so you can stomp to death anybody who didn’t die from the first shot.
FLAPJACKS: So your point is that they invented a new gun for total no-skill twinks.
ME: Yup! I played it through on hard level and it was… not hard at all.
FLAPJACKS: And then there were the microtransactions!
ME: I do not believe for one second you spent any money on microtransactions for this game, mostly because anybody with even a tiny amount of gameplaying skill would never, ever need to spend money on microtransactions for this game.
FLAPJACKS: Well, no. But I am offended they exist!
ME: That’s fair. Did you also want to complain about how fighting against humans with guns made it seem like a Gears of War clone?
FLAPJACKS: No, that bit was not too bad. It was a nice change of pace from fighting the same six zombies again – and I mean “the same six zombies,” because swapping out the babies-with-tentacles-that-shoot-at-you for dogs-with-tentacles-that-shoot-at-you does not make for new zombies in spirit – especially when I had to fight the zombies and the Scientologists with guns at the same time. That was practically the only challenging part of the game. I think, in total, there was about six minutes of it.
ME: Okay. So I am going to concede all your arguments. Okay?
FLAPJACKS: So I win?
ME: Not precisely. I will cheerfully admit that as a game, Dead Space 3 is ill-thought-out as compared to the first two games, which were… let’s say “competent” or maybe “workmanlike,” because they weren’t really inspired per se.
FLAPJACKS: Excuse me, but not just anybody can come up with “zombies in space” except the writers of Mass Effect and Halo and…
ME: But you’re getting away from my point, which is this: Dead Space 3 isn’t a great game, but it’s still a pretty good story – yes, I can see you getting ready to draw out that word sarcastically, but it’s true. It’s a pretty good adventure story that you happen to be playing along with. And I enjoyed it on that basis, and I particularly enjoyed it because Isaac Clarke is not a douchebag.
FLAPJACKS: Why is that so special?
ME: Because most video game protagonists are douchebags! Nathan Drake from Uncharted is a quippy, smart-aleck douchebag. Kratos from God of War is a roiding douchebag. Ezio Auditore is badass, but he is also undeniably douche-adjacent at the very least. Guy From Far Cry 3 is an entitled preppy douchebag who learns the Simplicity of Native Life, which is the only possible way he could go even douchier. And so forth.
FLAPJACKS: And your argument is that Isaac is not a douchebag?
ME: In the first game, Isaac is in desperate self-denial that his girlfriend is dead – like, “actually sort of crazy” levels of self-denial because he blames himself for encouraging her to take the mission that gets her killed, which lets the evil alien thingy take advantage of his mind. In the second, he has literally been totally crazy for the last three years as a result of surviving the first game. In the third, he is withdrawn from the world and just totally wants to give up on everything as a result of surviving the first two games. Douchebag characters would just be all “whatever, here are some awesome one-liners about shooting limbs off of dead people.” The most Isaac can manage is mild sarcasm whenever life is more difficult because now he has Fetch Quest #80 to do before he can save the universe again. The rest of the time, he is painfully earnest, because he is going through the valley of the shadow of death in real-time and he knows it. Isaac Clarke is a guy who gets traumatized when he has to kill the guy who betrayed them all to the baddies and stole his girlfriend, because Isaac is a good dude.
FLAPJACKS: I like this dichotomy you have set up and look forward to the list of Good Dudes in video games. And also the inevitable jokes about Bad Dudes.
ME: Right. And that’s why, even though Dead Space 3 is a mediocre game, I didn’t mind, because so long as Isaac is a good dude, I am willing to stick around for the ride. Good dudes are the ones whose stories you want to follow. That’s why we all played The Walking Dead even though it was about ten times less of a game than DS3 was: because Lee was a good dude too. From what I hear the new Tomb Raider has Lara Croft being a good dude too, so I’ll probably play that.
FLAPJACKS: Are we allowed to call her a dude?
ME: “Dude” became gender-neutral about ten years ago, dude.

MGK’S BROTHER JEFF: Hey, did you watch Saturday Night Live last night?
MGK: No, I was out.
JEFF: I meant “did you watch it later, like Sunday afternoon or something.”
MGK: Oh. No.
JEFF: I wouldn’t want to suggest you aren’t a social dervish.
MGK: Of course not.
JEFF: Out at the clubs. Working the lines. Making connections.
MGK: You can stop now.
JEFF: Hitting the dance floor. Getting digits. Exploding the pass.
MGK: I’m pretty sure that last expression is just something you made up.
JEFF: I’m ten years younger than you. I know all the hip new things you don’t. I bet you don’t even know about flanging.
MGK: Now I’m sure you’re making stuff up.
JEFF: Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it will be something you wonder about, late at night. You know, when you think about death.
MGK: What does all of this have to do with Saturday Night Live, anyway?
JEFF: Oh. Jeremy Renner hosted.
MGK: And?
JEFF: He sucked.
MGK: That’s too bad.
JEFF: No, I mean he really sucked. Like, Lindsay Lohan levels of sucked.
MGK: That’s surprising. I mean, I like him in action movies well enough. He does a good sort of quip.
JEFF: I think nerds just like him because he looks like a young Nathan Fillion before Nathan Fillion got all fat.
MGK: Well, he does fight people really nicely too.
JEFF: But getting back to my point. He sucked.
MGK: Well, not everybody is Anne Hathaway.
JEFF: …no, but I don’t see your point.
MGK: Anne Hathway is like a switch-hitter –
JEFF: – maybe in your fantasies.
MGK: Nice, but let me finish. She is like an acting switch-hitter – do you want that one?
JEFF: Nah. Not in the mood to expand on a theme.
MGK: Okay. So she is like an acting switch-hitter in that she can go all “actual acting” and be good at it, or alternately switch into wacky sketch comedienne mode and not miss a beat. Not everybody can do this. Hugh Jackman can do it. James Franco, not so much.
JEFF: I get your point. But this was not just a failure to be Anne Hathaway. Jeremy Renner was bad. Like, during his monologue, it was like he actively did not want to be there. I felt bad for him. But also I felt scorn, because he was being paid a lot of money to be there.
MGK: Well, maybe he was totally hyped to do it and then got there and started work and was all “wait, I am not meant to be doing this at all.” That happens. And then he can’t just bail out.
JEFF: Sure he could. They’d call up Alec Baldwin or John Goodman and be all “save us” and they would do it because they are SNL gods.
MGK: True dat.
JEFF: Anyway. For the first time in my life, I appreciated Matt Damon. Because the more I see Jeremy Renner, the less I like him. I mean, I saw one Bourne movie with Renner in it and it made Avengers, like, retroactively worse. Matt Damon never did that.
MGK: Wait, you don’t appreciate Matt Damon?
JEFF: Come on. He’s just sort of there.
MGK: But he’s always good. At everything. I mean, at worst, your argument against Matt Damon is that he’s not flashy in how he’s good at everything.
JEFF: Name three movies that Matt Damon made that are not Bourne movies, which he didn’t really make anyway because he was just sort of there.
MGK: Rounders.
JEFF: Just sort of there. Just because he’s the lead doesn’t make him not just sort of there, you know.
MGK: Good Will Hunting.
JEFF: It sucking was totally his fault. It was his fault. It was his fault.
MGK: Saving Private Ryan.
JEFF: Tom Hanks’ movie. Adam Goldberg and Barry Pepper and Jeremy Davies were all more memorable than Damon. And don’t even bother saying Ocean’s Eleven.
MGK: The Adjustment Bureau. The Informant! The Departed. Contagion.
JEFF: See, I didn’t see any of those, so your argument is irrelevant.
MGK: That’s not terribly fair.
JEFF: Matt Damon has a net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars. I think he can handle it.
MGK: Fair enough.

FLAPJACKS: Hey, did you ever see Junior? That movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger gets pregnant?
ME: No.
FLAPJACKS: I didn’t either. Did they ever explain how the hell he was able to get pregnant without a uterus? I mean, I know he took Miracle Drugs which let him get pregnant even though he was a man, that’s the point of the movie. But he has no uterus. Do the Miracle Drugs like, give him a temporary uterus?
ME: I have no idea.
FLAPJACKS: Maybe they make the placenta into a temporary uterus. But in the movie Arnold is visibly pregnant. Maybe the temporary uterus is inside his stomach lining? The baby obviously can’t be in the stomach because of the acid, though, so that doesn’t work.
ME: I still have no idea.
FLAPJACKS: …aha! The appendix!
ME: Aha?
FLAPJACKS: The appendix does nothing, right? So maybe that is where the baby ends up. In a vestigial organ! My god, I’m brilliant.
ME: But the appendix is connected to the beginning of the large intestine. I don’t think your plan works unless you are going to drown the fetus in poop.
FLAPJACKS: The super-placenta theory takes care of that. It creates a poop-barrier. Not a barrier made of poop, a barrier against poop. +5 versus poop, if you will. Also, if you think about it, the appendix being the man-uterus makes sense because it’s connected to the intestine and therefore provides a natural birthing route for the baby.
ME: …wait, you’re saying that male natural childbirth as in Junior is to shit the baby out?
FLAPJACKS: Well, where else is the baby gonna come out?
ME: Putting aside the question of whether a baby could pass through one’s intestines without A) suffocating or B) rupturing the intestines –
FLAPJACKS: Ahem: Miracle Drugs. Done. Next question.
ME: – okay, whatever, but you’re still talking about a labour that would be at least a twenty-hour shit, basically. Probably much longer, because the baby would be bigger and therefore proceed more slowly.
FLAPJACKS: Well, it is only proper that childbirth take a long time and be somewhat painful. Men should not get out of that. Plus, after you finally gave birth –
ME: I hope to god that is a general “you” and not a specific one.
FLAPJACKS: Okay, wimp, after one gave birth, it would be euphoric in the way that only a truly great bowel movement can be. Except you also get a baby.
ME: I think this is the most awful conversation we have ever had.
FLAPJACKS: How did they deal with the birthing issue in Junior, anyway?
ME: Wikipedia says Arnold had a Caesarean.
FLAPJACKS: Wimp.

JEFF (MY BROTHER): So I saw that you had good things to say about New Normal and Go On in your column this week.
ME: Well, sorta. They’re both uneven. Comedies generally don’t bust out of the gate on all cylinders, you know? Like, you can tell when a show is just going to suck, most of the time. But a comedy can have a mediocre pilot and then become really good.
JEFF: Like Men At Work.
ME: No, that one is just shitty.
JEFF: Are you sure? I mean, you just said all about how you can never tell. Maybe you’re getting elitist.
ME: I stand firm in my conviction that Breckin Meyer does not, as a rule, lead to good things.
JEFF: Who’s he?
ME: He’s that guy. Who’s in things.
JEFF: That’s not very specific.
ME: That’s the sort of actor he is.
JEFF: So he’s a character actor.
ME: Not really.
JEFF: But you said he’s that guy –
ME: I didn’t mean he’s a Hey-It’s-That-Guy guy. Because he’s not that guy. He’s just a guy who acts and writes.
JEFF: Has he done anything I might recognize?
ME: He was the guy who made Robot Chicken who was not Seth Green.
JEFF: I think you have to give him some credit for being involved with Robot Chicken. What else was he in?
ME: He’s in Franklin and Bash right now.
JEFF: What?
ME: Exactly.
JEFF: Okay, I’m gonna iMDB him and see what’s what. Surely this guy has been in lots of stuff you like.
ME: Oh, sure he has.
JEFF: And I’m gonna – wait, what?
ME: Look, I’m not saying he is bad. He is there. Do you understand the difference?
JEFF: Look, he was in Josie and the Pussycats and Can’t Hardly Wait and Rat Race. You own all of those.
ME: You just listed two cameo roles and one where he’s part of a large ensemble cast that has John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, Alfre Woodard and Jon Lovitz in it. Also, Seth Green is in all of those movies, so I think we have established a pattern now.
JEFF: Yeah, but Breckin Meyer didn’t ruin those movies, did he?
ME: No. In fact, he wasn’t even a negative. But you’re missing my point. I didn’t say “Breckin Meyer ruins things.” Because he doesn’t ruin things. I said “Breckin Meyer, as a rule, does not lead to good things.” That doesn’t mean he leads to bad things. Breckin Meyer is just sort of there. I think he played Jon in Garfield, which is the ultimate “just sort of there” role. I mean, at least when you play, say, Dave in Alvin and the Chipmunks, you get to shout at Alvin like you matter.
JEFF: I think this still seems terribly harsh. I mean, he did help create Robot Chicken.
ME: He’s also responsible for Inside Schwartz.
JEFF: Good point.
ME: Actually it isn’t exactly, because I don’t blame him for that show sucking because, again – just sort of there.
JEFF: I hope he doesn’t read your blog and get offended, seeing as how I am sure you will blog this.
ME: It’s my understanding that he has millions and millions of dollars, so presumably he has people to read blogs for him, and even if he stays true to his roots by reading blogs himself, he has millions of dollars so he can afford to not care what I think.
JEFF: True enough. I mean, I don’t have millions of dollars, but I don’t care what you think.
ME: Yeah, but you’re family.

FLAPJACKS: So your problem is that nobody likes you and everybody hates you? Is that more or less the problem? It sounds like the problem.
MITT ROMNEY: Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say –
FLAPJACKS: Right, so nobody likes you and everybody hates you. That’s not a problem. We can work with this. So… hm. There’s this tax return thing. You don’t want to release them.
MITT ROMNEY: You see, I don’t –
FLAPJACKS: Shut up. Doesn’t matter. We’re not going to release the tax returns. What we’re going to do is campaign against the right person.
MITT ROMNEY: Isn’t the President the right person?
FLAPJACKS: No, people like him. Except for the people who don’t, and they are already holding their noses and voting for you because of the aforementioned “everybody hates you” problem. What we need to do is flip the dynamic inverseways. That is a trademarked phrase, by the way. I trademarked that.
MITT ROMNEY: That seems like something you shouldn’t be able to trademark.
FLAPJACKS: You’re just saying that because you’re a billionaire finance guy. See? This is why everybody hates you. But it is fixable. What we are going to do is campaign against somebody else.
MITT ROMNEY: But nobody else is running for President. Nobody serious, anyway.
FLAPJACKS: So what? Look, the next time someone says “Mr. Romney, when are you going to release your tax returns,” you say “well, when is Tom Cruise going to release the terms of his divorce settlement to Katie Holmes? What is Tom Cruise hiding?” This will work because people may be entertained by Tom Cruise, but they don’t exactly like Tom Cruise. You will put Tom Cruise on the defensive this way.
MITT ROMNEY: But Tom Cruise isn’t –
FLAPJACKS: GAH. How hard is this to understand? You will not get people to like you better than Obama. It’s not going to happen. But if you flip the dynamic inverseways tee-em, then you might be able to get people to like you better than Tom Cruise. The choice between you and Tom Cruise is a campaign that maybe you can win. Meanwhile, the President is sitting over on the other side saying “but wait, Tom Cruise is a meaningless distraction” and nobody pays attention because they’re all, like, distracted and stuff.
MITT ROMNEY: But what if I can’t beat Tom Cruise?
FLAPJACKS: Then we go after someone else. Mel Gibson, maybe.
MITT ROMNEY: Actually, Mel donated –
FLAPJACKS: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP. God, you can ruin anything, can’t you? When are you going to start listening to me? We need to work on this. Okay, so if not Mel Gibson, maybe a Kardashian. I don’t want to start out with a Kardashian because that’s sort of like if Mike Tyson fought Ernest Borgnine, but a win is a win.
MITT ROMNEY: So I’m like Mike Tyson, then?
FLAPJACKS: Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Mr. Candidate. Okay, so we’ve got you beating Tom Cruise. That wins you everybody who hates and/or envies Hollywood, plus everybody who is freaked out about Scientology. So, win. But we need more. We need the votes of the people who love Hollywood. And to do that, we must get Hollywood to love you. Or at least tolerate you, sorta.
MITT ROMNEY: And how do we do that?
FLAPJACKS: We have you apologize for your Diet Coke addiction.
MITT ROMNEY: But I’m not addicted to Diet Coke. I’m a Mormon. We don’t drink caffeinated drinks.
FLAPJACKS: Start. Diet Coke is, like, delicious acid. So it’ll be easy. But even better than that, it will humanize you. People think you are a soulless robot.
MITT ROMNEY: I know.
FLAPJACKS: They look for the wires in your back.
MITT ROMNEY: Uh huh.
FLAPJACKS: They ask you how many diodes are in your tongue.
MITT ROMNEY: I get it.
FLAPJACKS: They ask you “what is love” in an attempt to make you explode.
MITT ROMNEY: Can we drop this?
FLAPJACKS: Okay. Soulless robots don’t get addicted to things. So we get you addicted to Diet Coke. First off, it will make you seem sympathetic. People will overlook the fact that you are a rich tycoon who ruthlessly exploited the American financial system in order for your own benefit, because you’re just like them.
MITT ROMNEY: I don’t see it.
FLAPJACKS: Christ, George W. Bush figured this out. Why do you think he became an alcoholic? Whose idea was that?
MITT ROMNEY: Wait, that was you?
FLAPJACKS: Well, no, I was six. But retroactively I am claiming it, and you know I can do that.
MITT ROMNEY: …right.
FLAPJACKS: Anyway, the point is this: Hollywood fucking loves Diet Coke. My god, do they love Diet Coke. They would have it coming out of taps if they could manage it. I understand many of the rich ones do have it coming out of taps. So when you admit, tearfully, that you are not a perfect Mormon and you have a Diet Coke addiction, Hollywood will like you better. Not as much as Obama, who is a smoker trying to quit, because that is golden right there. But they will at least understand your cold, robotic soul.
MITT ROMNEY: And that helps me win?
FLAPJACKS: Maybe. Depends on how the Tom Cruise thing goes. We need to get America to open their hearts to you.
MITT ROMNEY: So I can win their votes.
FLAPJACKS: Well, I was going to say “so you can rip them out like that guy in Temple of Doom,” but then again he didn’t need anybody to open their hearts because he used magic. Do you have any magic?
MITT ROMNEY: No.
FLAPJACKS: Pity.

FLAPJACKS: Dog! We must duel! A duel to the death!
MGK: How dare you call me a dog! We must duel! To the death!
FLAPJACKS: Yes! The Countess’ honour will be avenged!
MGK: …wait, what?
FLAPJACKS: The Countess. Her honour. You know.
MGK: No, not following you.
FLAPJACKS: Look, it is widely known that you poured beer all over the Countess! It angers me to think of you disrespecting her that way!
MGK: I’m not saying that wouldn’t be bad if I had done it.
FLAPJACKS: Precisely!
MGK: Although it would be hot, in a consensual context.
FLAPJACKS: Also precisely.
MGK: But I didn’t do anything like that.
FLAPJACKS: But I heard –
MGK: I did, however, spill beer in The Duchess, which is a pub down the street.
FLAPJACKS: Oh.
MGK: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: That’s kind of different.
MGK: I know.
FLAPJACKS: Are you sure you haven’t offended the honour of the Countess lately?
MGK: I can only wish.
FLAPJACKS: The Duchess, maybe? Not the pub. The human one.
MGK: She’s, like, seventy-five. What could I do to offend her honour?
FLAPJACKS: You could have dropped a hanky inappropriately.
MGK: How does that offend her honour?
FLAPJACKS: I’m not sure exactly, but I know it does. She complained a whole lot when I did it. Old people are weird.
MGK: Well, I haven’t done that lately either.
FLAPJACKS: The Baroness, maybe?
MGK: You’re thinking of G.I. Joe now.
FLAPJACKS: But it is not your fault that she is not in the sequel?
MGK: I don’t think so, no.
FLAPJACKS: Dang. I went and bought this rapier and everything.
MGK: It looks tremendously impressive.
FLAPJACKS: I cut myself on it.
MGK: I was wondering why you had a Voltron bandaid on that finger.
FLAPJACKS: They were all I had left.
MGK: But of course.
FLAPJACKS: Well, anyway, I guess we’re not going to be dueling now, since you haven’t offended the honour of a lady.
MGK: I offended the honour of Michele Bachmann a while back, I think.
FLAPJACKS: Politician. Doesn’t count.
MGK: Really. But it doesn’t matter. We still have to duel.
FLAPJACKS: She really doesn’t count. It has to be someone of noble blood, and just because she is a secret Swiss doesn’t make her a noble. It probably just means that she has Nazi gold somewhere.
MGK: No, I mean you called me a dog. That is an insult, sirrah. A-dueling we must go.
FLAPJACKS: But you’re a dog person. You have specifically said at many times that you prefer dogs to cats.
MGK: True. But had you called me a cat I would be even more offended and we would have to duel, like, twice or something.
FLAPJACKS: What if I had called you a “cool cat”? And how would we duel to the death twice?
MGK: I imagine the second duel would be rather perfunctory, to be honest. And “cool cat” is permissible. But you called me a dog! An insult to mine honour! Imagine that I have just slapped you across the face with a glove. I don’t have any gloves.
FLAPJACKS: You have that pair of mittens.
MGK: Yes, but who is gonna initiate a duel with mittens?
FLAPJACKS: Speaking of things you don’t have, you also don’t have a sword.
MGK: Well, I was going to suggest that we take turns with yours. Since I am initiating this duel, I will go first. Then you can have a go with it.
FLAPJACKS: This seems like a perfectly conceived proposal with no possible loopholes you can exploit.