Updates On Daily Life 03 – Censorship Problems

Trying not to panic at how many comic reviews I have to write this week, I realized “Inglourious Basterds” has finally been released in Brazilian cinemas. Yeah, this has happened just yesterday. Welcome to third-world country. I called a friend of mine and we agreed to meet at 20:00 for the 20:40 session. As I usually do, I went to buy the tickets way before that.

At the queue, I notice a potential problem: the poster for “Inglourious Basterds” has a sticker on it that reads “Not Recommended For People Below The Age Of 18″. My friend is 17, but his birthday is tomorrow. Also, it said “Not RECOMMENDED” instead of “Forbidden”. Still, a potential problem. I did not remember having ever watched a 18+ film on the movie theather with someone younger than me, so I couldn’t be sure how things stood now.

Next to it, a potential solution: “District 9″ — which is still on pre-release here, seriously — was for people above 14. There was a session at 21:10, only thirty minutes after “Inglourious Basterds”.

My turn arrived. In the process of buying the tickets for “Inglourious”, the woman made the kind of face you make when you’re about to ask a potentially awkward question and I braced myself. She said:

“Is your friend above 18?”

“No, but his birthday’s tomorrow and I’m above 18.”

“I’m afraid this doesn’t matter, sir. He cannot go in with you,” roughly translated to English, it might sound like she was rude, but she wasn’t.

I said I’d be right back. She kindly told me I could go straight back to her instead of going in the queue again, but I politely refused because I didn’t want to risk causing trouble, plus I’m a patient person (seriously). I tried calling my friend, but some times, it’s easier to get a hold of someone in the International Space Station, so after several tries I gave up, thought for a while, and went back to the queue.

There was no point in arguing, obviously. I wasn’t talking to the rulemakers here. They were just doing their job. But I wanted some doubts cleared up (as quickly as possible to prevent people behind me from waiting longer in queue).

My turn arrives again:

“Hi, I was just here and was told my friend, who is under 18, cannot watch ‘Inglourious Basterds’ with me. I am 19 — that really doesn’t help?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“But here’s what I don’t get — the sticker says it is not recommended, not that it is forbidden.”

Their supervisor heard that and looked at the sticker like he was seeing it for the first time. He joined the discussion, a bit confused.

“Well, er, he can’t go in regardless, sir.”

“So it IS forbidden, correct?”

“Theoretically, you’re right. But we get the stickers straight from the Ministry Of Justice, they’re already like that.”

This baffled me. The people we pay our taxes to either do not have the necessary brainpower or don’t give enough of a shit to do their job properly. Not that this is anything new, but I had hoped it wouldn’t stretch to something as casual as watching a fucking film. Especially because when it’s available in DVD and blu-ray, no-one gives a flying fuck what your age is when you rent it.

But as I said, as far as I knew, I wasn’t talking to the rulemakers, plus I had spent enough of everyone’s time.

“I couldn’t get hold of my friend, so if I buy two tickets for ‘District 9′ and he decides not to watch it, can I give one ticket back and have my money returned?”

They said yes, as long as I did it twenty minutes before the session. Fair enough. I bought the tickets and left the movie theather, thinking about the sheer stupidity of all this all the way home.

I still couldn’t get a hold of my friend, by the way.

UPDATE: He told me he watched “District 9″ YESTERDAY.

Things That Piss Me Off 02 – Silent Protagonists In Games

I find the Half-Life series to be slightly overrated, but for the most part deserving of the praise it gets — despite a lot of that praise bordering on fellation. Let’s be honest: the second game and its episodes follow a very strict formula of go-from-A-to-B-and-get-delayed-by-an-obstacle-or-a-physics-based-puzzle-every-two-minutes-on-the-way-there. Not to mention some of the enemies are annoying, like those fucking manhacks. But it IS a very good series, and the first Half-Life was indeed revolutionary in every aspect, but one of the things it helped popularize (although it isn’t the first case, only the most famous one) is one of the worst gaming trends today: protagonists that don’t speak at all.

I am not sure why anyone thought this was a good idea, but I have some theories:

1) The game’s developers were complete fucking morons.

2) The game’s writers were complete fucking morons.

3) The entire team was comprised of chimps cuffed to computers.

4) The developers thought having the protagonist speak would be a problem because maybe it wouldn’t be what the player controlling him wanted him to say, or even the exact opposite of what the player wanted him to say.

To elaborate on theory 4, let’s try to imagine the development team meeting, with producer Gabe Newell, writer and director Randall Pichford and writer Brain Hess.

PICHFORD: Okay, so it’s decided, we’ll start the game with a cinematic introduction. The player will be relatively free to explore Black Mesa, interact with things and people before the accident.

HESS: Sounds good.

NEWELL: Yeah, but what about the protagonist? What will be his lines? What’s he like?

PICHFORD: …

HESS: We’re still working on that.

NEWELL: We need to start production, guys.

PICHFORD: We’ll think of something. We…

SOME IDIOT: I have an idea!

NEWELL: Let’s hear it.

SOME IDIOT: What if the character says nothing at all throughout the entire game?

NEWELL: …

PICHFORD: …

HESS: …

ENTIRE DEVELOPMENT TEAM: …

NEWELL: Who are you and how did you get in my development team?

SOME IDIOT: No, hear me out! Let’s be honest here: we’re talking about a guy who is a total nerd but can master any weapon as soon as he picks it up and single-handedly defeats an alien invasion AND government troops. How the hell do we turn that into something believable?

HESS: That’s what me and Randall are working on.

SOME IDIOT: With a lot of progress so far, I see.

PICHFORD: Ha fucking ha. So what’s your solution?

SOME IDIOT: I told you already.

PICHFORD: What?! I thought that was a joke!

SOME IDIOT: Nope. Let’s make the protagonist a mute. Only the other characters will speak, like he’s part of the conversation, but leaving the protagonist’s dialogue for the player to imagine.

NEWELL: That isn’t a solution at all. That is absolutely…

A heavy piece of the ceiling breaks off and drops on Newell’s head, briefly making him stagger.

NEWELL: … BRILLIANT! What a genius idea! Innovative and narratively perfect!

HESS: Gabe? Are you okay? You should sit down…

NEWELL: FUCK THAT! We have a game to make! Let’s make copies of the script for the team to…

PICHFORD: The script isn’t finished, the protagonist has no lines –

NEWELL: PERFECT! I want the first 3D models ready TODAY, crew! La la la!

Newell walks toward the door, hits the wall instead and passes out.

PICHFORD: You have no idea what you have done.

SOME IDIOT: What? It’s not like EVERY game will start doing the same thing!

Anyway. Theories 1 and 3 do not seem likely, since Half-Life was very well-developed and got a staggering number of things right, not to mention all the innovations it brought.

2 is not as far-fetched, but the Half-Life series is far from being badly written. Not to mention it’s the same writing team responsible for the magnificent “Portal”.

So, let’s work on theory 4. I understand the intention behind this. Developers want to offer you total control of your character, they don’t want him to say things you don’t mean him to say. What these developers missed is that some people, me included, want their character to say SOMETHING. In “Half-Life 2″, everyone who sees you — the nerd one-man-army Gordon Freeman — makes some kind of comment. Rebels are praising you, Combine are hunting you, Alyx is totally in love with your nerdy ass and you don’t say ANYTHING at all about any of that.

Here’s a list of things Gordon Freeman could say, in no particular chronologic order:

“Guys? No need to talk about me, talk TO ME. I’m right here.”

“HELP! GET ME OUT OF THIS CHAMBER!”

“No. No, I won’t let you wait here while I solve yet another physics-based puzzle. If I have to cross a lake of radioactive chemicals, the least you could do is to help me pick up the wooden crates.”

“What are you talking about? Resistance? Nobody asked me if I want to participate on any rebel movem — HEY, what is this?! I don’t want this goddamn rocket launcher. STOP PUSHING ME TOWARDS THE STRIDER, YOU CUNT!”

“Hey, could you help me? I just defeated an alien invasion on Black Mesa, blinked and now I’m in a Orwellian nightmare. What the fuck happened?”

“G-Man, sorry if it’s a personal question but… do you have throat cancer?”

“No, I never had any advanced weapons training. I’ve always been a nerd. Why do you ask?” *looks at room of Combine soldiers he’s just murdered practically by himself* “Oh. Well, maybe something in my genes…”

“Where did I learn to drive makeshift jeeps perplexingly well? Bah, it’s like riding a bycicle.”

“Er, no offense, Dr. Kleiner, but NO WAY I’m getting into a teleporter machine that looks like a gigantic blender.”

“Alyx, could you please vault over that railing again? Let me just get a better angle. It’s for science, darling, really. Okay. On three. One, two, three.” *whispering to himself* “Goddamn what a great ass…”

“No, I said ‘goddamn what a great mass’. Of iron. On the railing.”

See? It isn’t that hard. Even if, unlike me, you’re trying to be serious about it.

Really, you CAN’T have full control of your character. That doesn’t happen, and even if one day it does happen I’m not particularly interested — because if full control means waggling a Wiimote around and mimicking movements, count me out. Interactivity, for now, only goes a certain way, and having mute protagonists does not disguise that.

Recently, I finished “Mass Effect”, and considered it one of the greatest games I’ve ever played, with a rich universe and a very good plot (I should make clear I’m biased, since I love sci-fi and astronomy). Part of why it is so compelling, is that your character doesn’t say ANYTHING — without your permission. There are multiple lines of dialogue to choose from (not to mention important decisions regarding the game’s events), and the ones I chose on my first play-through did not cause any problems to the game’s exceptional story. My second play-through, with a different character and therefore choosing other dialogue options, is still underway and going fine so far.

I’m not saying EVERY game needs multiple dialogue choices, but if you want to give the player more control over his character, go for THAT, not removing the character’s fucking mouth. I’m perfectly fine with no dialogue choices, but I’d like dialogue — it might make me like the protagonist, it might make me dislike him, it’s a risk every other narrative medium takes and a risk that is the writer’s responsability to be careful with.

And if the protagonist must be mute — for fuck’s sake ACKNOWLEDGE IT. Don’t have the other characters behave like he’s partipating in the conversation. It makes them all sound like they hear voices in their heads.

But I must be fair — there was one game where the protagonist being mute did not bother me. The game’s atmosphere and story were still great. Surprisingly, no, that game isn’t “Call Of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare”. In fact, that is the ONLY aspect of that game I did not love, otherwise it’s fantastic. But anyway, here’s the game I mean:

“Dead Space”.

Why is that, I wonder? Maybe because I can see the protagonist, this being a third-person game. His body language said a lot, and even his breathing had some personality to it. I guess that helped. I still think him saying something would have improved him, but “Dead Space” is one of the few — maybe the only game — where I could easily overlook this.

I can promise you this, games industry: if the character I control in a game says something I do not agree with, that’s perfectly fine as long as it’s coherent with HIS personality. I did not agree with Niko Bellic’s methods in GTA 4. I still had a lot of fun running over pedestrians and shooting people. That’s the great thing about games: immersing yourself in a new, different world and having fun with the possibilities.

And if my character says something stupid, unreasonable, incoherent with his personality and other negative adjectives, I will not accuse you of trying to take away my interactivity and freedom.

What I will accuse you of is having some really bad writers.

Things That Piss Me Off 01 – Public Bathroom Stuff

I love these kinds of posts.

(What a great way to start “Things That Piss Me Off”, with the words “I love”)

Public bathrooms, then.

Let’s start with hand dryers, those high-tech motion-sensor-activated machines someone thought would be more effective than ripping two pieces of paper out a small plastic box. I try to remember a day when I had trouble using paper to wipe my hands. All I got was the day I ripped two and it wasn’t enough, so I ignored the writing on the plastic box (“Two is enough to dry your hands”, fuck you) and ripped a third one.

But apparently someone didn’t think paper was the final solution for hand-drying in public bathrooms. Perhaps said someone actually had trouble with the paper, maybe he had obsessive-compulsive disorder and ripped fifteen of them, and decided everyone else would also fall victim to such urge, causing the world to run out of paper or something. Or maybe he was just one of those rich smug cunts who think their hands are too valuable to be wiped by, erk, PAPER.

And the hand dryer was born. The ones I hate the most are the motion sensor ones, since its designers clearly think BUTTONS are for thumbless homo erectus. However, being thumbless homo erectus themselves, the designers couldn’t get the motion sensor to, you know, sense motion, so invariably you end up passing your hands below the thing until eventually you’re almost uppercutting it to get it to spew hot wind –

– which often is TOO HOT. It’s a bit complicated to dry your hand when the machine is actually trying to burn the skin off of it. This usually happens on the ones activated by buttons, since the designers had to get SOMETHING wrong after they got one thing right.

(although “right” would have consisted of using the hand dryer to bludgeon its creator to near death, then dry the blood off of him just for a really specific revenge, then kill him)

Another delightful way to dry your hands is, of course, what I call the we-swear-it’s-clean-towel-machine. That hugely hygienic towel that you roll and roll like unrippable paper until you get a bit of it that seems unused (emphasis on “seems”) and wipe your hands (and/or face) on it, trying to ignore the stench of the roughly seven hundred and fifty people who used it before you. I am completely sure that is a small towel that rolls into a very tight mechanism that straightens it out and makes it look unwrinkled and fresh.

And people look at me funny when I dry my hands by flailing them around.

Let’s not forget the public bathroom PEOPLE, too. Oh yes. Starting with those who, as soon as they set foot in the bathroom, before the door has even closed behind them, already unzip their pants, pull their dong out and walk to the still-ten-feet-away urinal while holding the lot on their hands. I can only conclude these people are badly incontinent and also jerks, since they prefer to risk pissing all over other people’s shoes rather than their own velvet pants.

Not to mention the ones who completely ignore the several empty urinals and go take a piss on the toilets, probably missing the target and spilling some on the seats several unlucky arses will sit on. All because they don’t want us – the strange, ruthless race who pisses where we’re supposed to – to find out that they have cocks. So they are suspecting I’d check their stuff out, which implies they’re calling me gay or at the very least curious, which CAN be kind of an insult if you get your tone of voice mean enough.

(okay, so I used to be part of those piss-on-toilets people, when I was an insecure teenager — although I also hate insecure teenagers, so call me a fucking hypocrite)

I also hate janitors, because of the Janitor Mystery: I’ve never seen a janitor USE a bathroom. That’s infuriating. So I hate them too.

I’m going to the movies tomorrow, so I’m already ranting at public bathrooms in advance, you see. Thanks for enduring this.