Life Is Strange: Chapter 5 and Afterthoughts (Spoilers)

Warning: This blog entry contains spoilers for Life is Strange.

So, when we left off, Chloe was dead (again), and I had been drugged by my teacher.  

I wake up strapped to a chair, in Mark's "Dark Room" (which is more well-lit than it sounds).  I manage to look at some nearby photos, and use them to time travel to a few hours earlier, when I was still captive and having my picture taken.  As crazed photographer Mark tries to capture my innocence in film, he tells me all about his evil plans.  Jeez, he monologues worse than Syndrome.

I manage to get him to show me the first selfie I took in Episode 1, and use it to travel back to the beginning of the game.  While there I send a text to David, telling him where to find Mark's Dark Room.  Then I go forward in time to see the results.  Chloe lives!  Mark arrested!  I've won the photography contest, and am on a plane to San Francisco to have my work shown in a gallery!  Life is Perfect (TM), roll credits!

Um... roll credits?

Whoops, I forgot there's still a superstorm headed for Arcadia Bay.  Well, I can't very well be in San Francisco when that happens, what will happen to Chloe?  So I focus on my winning photograph to go back in time to when I took it, then destroy the photo while I'm there... Whoops, I think I broke Time.

Back to the present, and I'm back in Mark's chair.  Wait, so I had to win the contest for him to be arrested?  Oh, because after I destroyed my own work, Mark burned my other photos, which I had previously used to go back in time, so now I never went back in time to get him arrested... MY BRAIN HURTS!

David to the rescue; I never thought I'd be happy to see him.  Of course, I have to give him six or seven warnings to let him survive the encounter.  Then I steal Mark's car and book it to the diner to meet Warren, so I can use a photo of his to go back in time again.  Maneuvering through the storm was intense, like last episode's party scene, it was full of sensory overload.  

I meet Warren and use the photograph, warn Chloe in the past, and do my best to fix everything in the past, present, and future.  But all my time traveling catches up with me, and I end up in a psychedelic nightmare world.  

If you ever played through "The Park", you might remember the final area where you walk through increasingly maddening versions of your own house.  Walking through Max's endless dorm halls had a similar feel (note, "The Park" and Episode 5 of "Life is Strange" were both released in the same month, so I doubt either one actually copied the other).  

Several mindscrews later, I get to walk past the game's events like they were scenes in a museum, until I finally catch up with real time.  Chloe and I have a good talk, and we realize that all the weather problems started when I began messing with time.  The only way to keep everything bad from happening was to go back to the beginning and let Chloe die.

I swear I stared at this screen for 10 minutes.

And then the big moment came.  Now, I’ve known about this game’s ending for a couple of years now.  It was spoiled for me a long time ago, probably by some YouTube video about video game endings.  I might have been more careful about avoiding spoilers, but at the time I had no idea I’d ever play the game.  Come to think of it, the ending of LiS is actually one of the first things I learned about the game, just like the first thing I heard about Metroid is that you turn out to be a woman.

So I knew what was coming, but that didn't make the choice any easier.  I was so ready to say "Screw Arcadia Falls" and skip town with Chloe.  But I couldn't do it.  "The needs of the many..." and all that crap.  I couldn't live with an entire town on my conscience.  Damn it.  I have since viewed the "Chloe Lives" ending on YouTube, and I think I made the right choice.  Leaving the town in that condition would have made me feel like a monster.

Anyway... now that I've finally finished the game, I thought I’d throw out some final thoughts.

After a while, I actually found the time-rewinding aspect to be a little annoying.  I was enjoying the story so much that the rewind puzzles felt intrusive.  Which is weird, because that’s the one gimmick that’s supposed to make the game so unique.  Remember the later episodes of Herman’s Head, when they didn’t show his inner thoughts as often, and when they did it felt forced?  No?  Wait, am I the only one who remembers that show existed?  Okay, remember the second season of Bosom Buddies, when the writers realized that Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari were funny enough without the cross-dressing joke, so they deemphasized the show’s entire concept?  Still no?  Wait, am I getting old, or do I just have obscure tastes?

Anyway, the time-rewinding thing is probably the game’s biggest draw, assuming you’re on the game’s marketing team.  But I found myself so engrossed by the story, the visuals, the music, and the characterization that I didn’t want the story interrupted by rewind puzzles. 

With that in mind, maybe I'll end up enjoying "Before the Storm" even more than LiS.  I doubt it, though.  It's hard to really enjoy a story when I know both main characters are walking corpses.  I've blogged before about my dislike for downer endings, though sometimes they are necessary. 

Come to think of it, Life is Strange combines two of my least favorite things - downer endings, and plots where the conflict was caused by the protagonist.  The latter is annoying because it makes the entire story pointless - the outcome would have been the same if the hero had just sat on their hands.  It's one of the reasons I never enjoyed the Doctor Who spinoff "Torchwood" - not only was it full of downer endings, but several conflicts only happened because the "heroes" decided to play around with the alien tech they'd acquired.

But there are exceptions to every rule, and I can put up with the above tropes if the story is well written.  Chloe was fated to die from the beginning.  Yeah, fate's a bitch, and Chloe doesn't deserve living under such a curse.  But the story works.  Life is Strange was enjoyable from beginning to end, and a megahappy ending would have just felt trite.  

Excellent game.

My choices:

Life Is Strange - Chapter 4 (Spoilers)

Warning: This blog entry contains spoilers for episode 4 of Life is Strange.

It’s hard to find time to play this game.  With most games, I’m content to play for about an hour now and then.  With LiS, I would rather play an entire chapter at once, so I don’t break the dramatic tension.  I’ve read that each episode is supposed to take about two hours, but for me it’s taking almost four.  I just want to go everywhere and read everything, and I take tons of screenshots.

When we left off, I had gone back in time to save Chloe's father.  When I got back to the present, her dad was alive... but now Chloe was was in a wheelchair.  Sometime in the intervening years, Chloe had been in a bad car accident, and was now paralyzed from the neck down.  That family really needs to take more cabs.

I watched Blade Runner with her, during which she fell asleep.  In real life, I've tried to watch Blade Runner twice, and fell asleep both times.  Girl after my own heart.  Later, Chloe told me that she wasn't going to live much longer, and that she wanted to today to be her final memory... and she asked me euthanize her.

It wasn't an easy choice, but ultimately I refused.  I do think someone in Chloe's position has the right to die on her own terms, but I just can't be the one to do it.  Ethics aside, could I live with myself afterwards?  Would the memory of watching her last breath haunt me forever, especially knowing I flipped the switch?  Would people know it was me?  Would I get arrested for murder? 

It didn't matter anyway.  Pull the plug or don't, I knew my next action was going to be more time travel.  I wish there was a way to save both Chloe and her father, but it doesn't look like that's in the cards.  Jaunt back, jaunt forward, and Chloe's dad is dead again.

I swear, this game could be used in ethics classes.  You’re constantly given variations of the Trolley Problem, and even though there are no “correct” answers, I still feel like I lose every time.  

But it was good to see Chloe in full health again, and ready for some mischief.  We broke into the boy's dorms to steal Nathan's phone.  We ran into Nathan on the way out, but Warren protected us.  Warren really went to town punching Nathan.  I was given the option to stop him, but... hmm hmm hmmm... I was enjoying seeing Nathan get his ass handed to him. 

Back at Chloe's house, we got serious about assembling all the clues we'd found.  It's so nice seeing Chloe get excited about something, instead of just getting angry at everything.  She's like a different person when her life has a purpose.  

Yes, Chloe has grown on me.  I said earlier that she’s hard to like, but the more I see of her history (both versions), the more I like her.  Before, I saw her as  a jerk who reacts to adversity in the most self-destructive ways.  Now I see her as more of a tragic survivor desperately trying anything to feel alive again. 

The specifics (drug use, stealing guns, open hostility, etc) initially turned me off.  I’m not against recreational drug use per se; it’s one of those things that’s fine for some people, but not for me.  But allowing herself to get into so much debt to a scuzzy dealer like Frank?  There’s no way she ever needed drugs that badly, unless…  unless...

...well, unless she didn’t care how much debt she got into, because she wouldn't be around long enough for it to matter.  Before Rachel went missing, she and Chloe had been planning to skip town together.  Come to think of it, I’ve been there.  Some of my credit card debt was accumulated during the darkest days of my depression, when getting little things in the mail gave me tiny moments of happiness that kept me going.  I didn’t think about having to pay it off because on some level I didn’t expect to live to see the end of the year.

…huh.  Maybe I owe Chloe an apology.

Anyway, putting the clues together was a little tedious.  I didn't want to try every number in Nathan's notes to unlock his phone, so I made a quick trip to GameFAQs.  It turned out to be his birth date, which I suppose should have been my first guess. 

Our clues led us to a barn in a remote location, where we found the hidden bunker where someone - we assumed Nathan - had been taking drugged women.  It was very disturbing.   Then we found clues to the location of Chloe's friend Rachel.  We raced to the junkyard and found Rachel's grave.  Chloe was devastated, then enraged.  She dragged us to a school party so we could find Nathan.

The party was a noisy reminder of why I don't go to parties.  But that just shows how good this game's programmers are - I actually felt social anxiety walking around all the students.  I saved Alyssa from yet another minor accident, and nearly embarrassed myself sneaking into the VIP area. 

After asking everyone at the party about Nathan, we received a text saying that the evidence was about to be destroyed, and we rushed back to the scrapyard. 

Okay, here's another one of those times when the game doesn't give you a choice, when I very much would have chosen something else.  I get that a game can't give you infinite choices (which is why Dungeons & Dragons will always be superior to video games), but yeesh.  It's weird to have my character act one way when I control her decisions, then make irrational choices when the cut scenes take control.

So, yeah, I would not have chosen to return to the junk yard.  It felt like such an obvious trap.  I realize that normal humans have emotions and all, and don't always think things through, but rushing to the junk yard at this time felt like running straight into a crocodile's mouth.  And I was right.   A mysterious figure stepped up and drugged me, then shot Chloe.

Jeez, she dies a lot.  She's the Rory Williams of video games.  As I blacked out, I saw the face of our attacker.  M... M... Mr. Jefferson?  Well, suddenly I don't feel as guilty about throwing him under the bus at the end of episode 2.  I can't say it was a total surprise.  When the game kept pushing Nathan, David, and Frank as the villains, I wondered if the real baddie would be someone less suspicious. 

Okay, fine, I had no clue.

Nice cliffhanger.  How will I get out of this one?  Pretty sure the answer will involve rewinding time, but I can't wait to see it play out.  It pains me that I probably won't get to play again for a week.  

Btw, earlier this week I watched the Black Mirror episode “Bandersnatch” on Netflix, and I highly recommend it for people who like LiS type games.

Life Is Strange - Chapter 3 (Spoilers)

Warning: This blog entry contains spoilers for episode 3 of Life is Strange.

I find Max's use of time travel to teleport to be a little inconsistent.  So she blew the lock to enter the principal's office.  Once inside, she rewound time to restore the lock, while remaining in the room.  So does she always stay in the same place while using her powers?  I can think of several instances where something bad happened, then I moved a bit before rewinding.  People should notice Max teleporting all the time.

It was cool sneaking around school at night, looking for evidence.  But taking a midnight swim seemed unnecessarily risky.  It's so weird what things you get a choice about, and what things your character just does on her own.  I'm in control when I convince Chloe not to steal the school's charity money, but then Max just agrees on her own when Chloe suggests visiting the pool.  It was a great scene, but I'm just astounded that Max agreed to something that put them in such a vulnerable position.

Hiding from David in the locker room made me feel like I was playing Metal Gear for a second.  It was fun, but I'm glad they didn't draw it out any longer.  It would have been too much of a genre shift.

The kissing scene was a cute tease.  At the moment, all I really know about the game's ending is the final choice, but I don't know what leads up to it.  So while I would like to see Max and Chloe become more than just friends, I also know we're only a couple of days away from the superstorm, so I don't know how much time the game will devote to their relationship.  But if I do get to choose between a romance with Chloe or Warren, I will definitely choose Chloe.  Poor Warren, he seems like a nice guy.

I'm starting to wonder about the "once per episode" saving Alyssa from getting hit by random objects.  Is it just a running gag, or will it be important later?  Is she going to figure out I have some sort of power?  Is the extra waste of my power going to drain me prematurely at a critical time?

I love how it gave me a choice when distracting Frank's dog with a treat - "Throw it in the parking lot" or "Throw it in the street".  Sometimes I intentionally pick the less desirable choice first, just so I can see it before rewinding and picking the one I want to stay with.  But there was no way I was going risk getting a dog run over, not even if I intended to rewind.  What if I get the poor pup killed, and then find my powers stop working again?  He's not a bad dog, he's just doing his job.

The cliffhanger at the end of Chapter 3... just wow.  I saved Chloe's dad but now Chloe's in poor health.  It reminds me of that "Butterfly Effect" movie.  I can't wait to find out what happened.

Aquaman

The Aquaman movie is a blast.

It's silly, it's campy, and at its core it's a by-the-numbers standard superhero flick.  But it's also visually stunning and has some great action scenes.  I can't in good conscience claim that it's a "good" movie, but it's definitely worth the price of a ticket.  

DC needed this right now.  They keep trying to reinvent their superheroes, when audiences are wanting iconic versions first.   Marvel's doing it right.  Thor: Ragnarok reinvented the character by taking away his hammer and changing the nature of his powers.  But they waited until the third movie to do so, after they'd already established an origin story audiences were familiar with.

They let him evolve and mature into a new version of Thor, instead of presenting audiences with an unfamiliar character and saying, "Hey, this is Thor, not like the Thor you grew up on, but we're calling him Thor anyway."  DC is trying to rush things.

There's a lot going on in Aquaman, almost too much.  They flesh out his origin with several flashbacks, he fights two of his most well-known villains (Black Manta and Ocean Master) when a single villain would have been fine, there's a war between underwater kingdoms, he goes on a quest to find an ancient artifact, he fights for his birthright, and so on. 

At 2 hours and 22 minutes, it' a little long.  But honestly, I had too much fun to care.  It has more than enough action scenes, but even the exposition scenes are so full of eye candy that they don't slow it down. 

It was also cool to see Jango Fett as Aquaman's dad.  Hmmm... and I just noticed both Batman and Aquaman have fathers named "Thomas".  I can't wait to see the climax of "Batman v Aquaman".

Okay, I suppose I've got to list the downsides:  The script wasn't great, the plot was full of convenient contrivances, and the acting sometimes felt artificial.  Black Manta especially made me laugh, because with his mask on he sounded like Dark Helmet.  

But this is one of those movies where the end product is so much more enjoyable than its flawed parts.  I wish the current DC movie universe was more consistent with its quality, so I could buy them all and be proud to have them on my shelf.  The series is far from great, but Aquaman is definitely one of the standouts.

Life Is Strange - Chapter 2 (Spoilers)

Warning: This blog entry contains spoilers for episode 2 of Life is Strange.

So, I posted earlier that I’ve been playing “Life is Strange” and its prequel “Before the Storm” at the same time.  So, funny thing… I thought I owned them on different systems.  I was planning to alternate playing them based on whether it was easier to use the PC or the PS4 that day (my wife and I fight over the TV).  Well, I got to the end  of the first chapter of LiS and, whoops, Episode 2 is still showing unpurchased.  It turns out I own both games on the PS4, and it’s just the first chapter that’s free on Steam. 

Anyway, not wanting to buy it twice, I started over playing LiS on the PS4.  I’m no longer planning to alternate games; I’m going to finish LiS before I continue the prequel.  I don’t feel too bad about restarting, because I regretted a couple of choices I’d made.  Though the thing about LiS is, I rarely feel good about my choices, no matter which one I pick.  Even after I rewind time to view both outcomes of a conversation, I still have the nagging suspicion I’ve done the wrong thing.

But I think that’s the point.  The choices you make cause both good and bad things to happen, so there are no right answers… most of the time.  My new choices were a bit braver than the ones I’d made previously.  This time I stepped in while David was harassing Kate, instead of just taking a picture.  And this time I came out of the closet (so to speak) to take the blame when David found drugs in Chloe’s room. 

I finished Episode 2 last night.  Some thoughts:

I'm still having trouble warming up to Chloe.  I know she’s not over her father’s death, and her stepdad’s a jerk, and her friend Rachel is missing, and she has a lot of other problems in life… but she’s just so self-destructive it’s hard to sympathize.  Some of her problems might be easier to fix if she were to stop making bad decisions.  But maybe that’s what the prequel’s for – so you can walk a mile in her shoes.  Between accidentally shooting herself during target practice (Rewind!), and getting her feet stuck in the train tracks (Rewind lots!), I’m beginning to think Chloe was just born under a bad sign. 

The bottle collecting part was tedious.  I walked around that junkyard a dozen times before I found the final couple of bottles.  It felt like something out of... well... a video game.  So many elements of LiS transcend the medium, I guess I just hate it when it goes out of its way to remind me it’s still a video game.  It breaks the immersion. 

The ledge scene… ooooooh the ledge scene.  Look, I’m not new to tense moments in video games.  I’ve escaped the Mother Brain’s exploding base with just seconds to spare.  I’ve jumped from platform to platform while being chased by a mechanical dragon in Dr. Wiley’s castle, knowing one bad landing would send me to oblivion.  I’ve prayed for divine intervention to defeat Giygas.  I’ve watched helplessly while Kefka destroyed half the planet and Sephiroth murdered my girlfriend.  I’ve survived zombie dogs, giant spiders, and nearly becoming a Jill sandwich.  I’ve faced ninja assassins, giant space robots, and the Grim Reaper himself.  But never, in my entire video game playing history, have I experienced a moment that felt as tense as trying to talk a suicidal student down from a ledge. 

First off, your powers are temporarily offline.  It’s a great writing trick, actually – you give a character a powerful ability, then take it away, and they end up feeling weaker than if they’d never had the power in the first place.  And I’ve never felt more powerless than on that rooftop.  The training wheels are off, all you have is your own intuition and charisma to save her.  If you’re properly reassuring, she steps a little toward you.  If you say the wrong thing, she takes a step backwards towards the edge. 

I was doing well.  I’d made time for Kate earlier that day, even when it risked damaging my relationship with Chloe.  So when I told Kate I was her friend, she believed me.  But then I smurfed up.  I told her that I wouldn’t be the only one to miss her if she was gone.  She asked me who else would miss her, and I was presented with four possible answers: Her mother, her father, her sisters, or her brothers.  My blood went cold.  I could tell it was a life or death question. 

I thought back… had she mentioned them in earlier conversations?  Did I see a family picture in her room?  I… think so?  Maybe?  I briefly considered heading over to GameFAQs, but shook that thought away.  If Max can’t use her powers, then I shouldn’t either.  I spent some time mulling it over, straining the limits of my memory, then pretty much picked “Brothers” at random.   I chose… poorly.  “Brothers? I don’t even have brothers! See, you haven’t been listening to me either!”  And then she was gone.  I couldn’t rewind, all I could do was watch the scene unfold.  It was devastating.

Later, in the principal’s office, I had to implicate either Mark (the dreamy photography teacher), David (the douchebag security guard), or Nathan (the jerkass who shot Chloe in an alternate reality).  It’s another example where none of the outcomes really make you feel good about yourself.  I didn’t want to show my cards to Nathan or David just yet.  Both of them deserve punishment, but at this stage of the game they can do more harm to me and Chloe than we can do to them.  I *might* have picked one of them if they hadn't been in the room, but it still seems like a dangerous idea.

So I had to throw Mark under the bus, and I feel really guilty about it.  But all I said was the truth – that I’d seen Kate run off crying after talking to Mark earlier.  I hope this doesn’t affect my grade in photography class.

Like I said in the last blog, I know how the game ends, but I still have no idea how it gets there.  I’m finding the journey very enjoyable, if emotionally taxing.

2018: The Year of the Spider

So this year we had two of the Spider-Man franchise’s most successful offerings, in the forms of a video game and an animated movie.

Into the Spider-Verse is a funny, trippy, visual delight.  It’s probably my favorite Spider-Man movie to date.  The animation is amazing, with a comic book style that never stops being impressive.  The characters from the different universe have their own animation styles as well, making things even crazier.  The writing is hilarious – I wasn’t expecting the movie to be so funny, and for me that was going the extra mile.  This movie would have sold well based on the visuals alone, but they put in the effort to give it a good script.  It’s also very self-aware.  At one point my wife pointed out an overused trope during the movie, only for the movie’s characters to point it out as well five minutes later.

The Spider-Man video game is equally impressive.  There’s not much I can add to the hundreds of glowing reviews out there, but I still want to give it its due praise.  The graphics are beautiful, the controls are intuitive (for the most part), and the overall sense of freedom is one of the best things I’ve experienced since GTA3.  Between missions I love just swinging around the city at different times of day, seeing what sort of trouble I can get into.  I always wanted to play something with the feel of a GTA game, but where you’re the good guy.  To be fair, some of the previous Spider-Man games used a similar template, but this one’s execution is nearly flawless.  Okay, so there are a few special moves that make me feel like I need extra fingers, but that’s a tiny quibble against an otherwise wonderful game.

It's especially funny to me because both the movie and the game were produced by Sony.  After the MCU’s “Homecoming” blew Sony’s “Amazing” series out of the water, it seemed like Spidey was at his best when kept in Marvel’s loving hands.  It almost feels like this is Sony’s way of saying, “We can do better, just give us another chance!”  Granted, they also gave us Venom this year, so they haven’t totally figured out what works and what doesn’t.  But at least there’s hope, now, that more quality Sony offerings are on the way.

All right, Sony, make with the Spider-Gwen movies and games!

Life is Strange and the Evolution of Electronic Storytelling

I played a lot of adventure games as a kid.  At first this usually meant text adventures, where you type “Go North” or “Get Sword” to progress.  Some had graphics, but some of the best ones didn’t.  I still have fond memories of trying to acquire the Babel Fish in “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”, or figuring out the spoonerisms in “Nord And Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail Of It”, neither of which had any graphics. 

But typing is tedious, and I’m a visual person, so I gradually got tired of these.  Later I played the LucasArts games “Maniac Mansion” and “Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders” on my C64.  These used a point-and-click interface where you constructed sentences by clicking words and objects.  It was an easy, intuitive interface and the games had a great sense of humor.  I remember wishing there were more games in the series, but sadly, “Day of the Tentacle” didn’t come out for the C64. 

I didn’t play any real “storytelling” games for a long time after that.  After college I got into role-playing games.  I love RPGs, but no matter how much story they put into them, you still spend a lot of time grinding levels and buying equipment.  Sometimes it’s nice to play a game where you don’t have to worry about combat, like an interactive movie where you just make decisions.  

I've played a bunch of visual novels, but I’m starting to lose interest in them.  They require a lot of time to read, and honestly, it’s hard to find ones written well enough to be worth that kind of time.  At this point if I’m going to take the time to read a book, I’d rather  just use my Kindle.

I’ve skipped a few storytelling games I’d probably like, just for lack of time.  There are several from TellTale games that sound interesting to me, like Jurassic Park and Guardians of the Galaxy.  I tried the GotG demo, it seems pretty cool.  I might come back to these.

Recently, I started playing “Life is Strange”, along with the prequel, “LiS: Before the Storm”.  Life is Strange is a few years old now, but then I’m usually a few years behind everyone else when it comes to playing new games.  Heck, I could probably start a blog dedicated solely to modern retrogaming, given the frequency with which I'm late to the party.

As of this writing, I’m only about a chapter into each LiS game.  I should probably have finished one before starting the other, but I’m weird that way.  Unfortunately the ending of LiS has already been spoiled for me, but I’m still looking forward to it.  And no, I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to pick for the final sadistic choice, but… and let’s keep this spoiler free… I will probably abide by one of Spock’s most famous quotes, painful as it may be. 

I have to say I’m impressed with both games.  The visual interface is simple and stylish.  When you approach an object that can be interacted with, words pop up (with a charming handwritten font) that show which button does what.  The menu screens have a scrapbook theme that fits the story.  The stories are compelling and I like the characters.  You’re presented with a lot of difficult choices, and for a wishy-washy person like myself, making an important decision can be just as tough as a Ninja Gaiden boss.

Graphics have improved in the four years since LiS was released, but I’m still impressed by the artistry of these games.  They make great use of camera angles, landscapes, body language, music, and other nuances that give the story a cinematic feel.  There’s something to be said for any game where I can tell what my character is thinking by the way they’re standing.

The main character in LiS has the ability to rewind time, which not only allows you to undo bad events, it also lets you master the art of conversation.  Accidentally insult someone?  Rewind time.  Find out someone’s secret interest?  Rewind time so they don’t remember telling you, then suggest the interest yourself.  It reminds me a bit of Groundhog Day, when Phil tries to gain Rita’s affections by memorizing her favorite things.  “Before the Storm” doesn’t have this supernatural element, and instead introduces a “Backtalk” system where you can “win” conversations by choosing the most appropriate insults in the context of a conversation.  It’s hard to say which I like better. 

I can tell you I prefer controlling the protagonist of LiS to that of BtS.  Max (LiS) is a photographer, a pastime I can relate to.  Meanwhile, BtS’s Chloe is kind of a jerk (to be fair, her life sucks), and her main artistic talent is snarky graffiti.  I have a hard time making decisions as Chloe, because I can never decide if I should do what I would do in real life, or if I should stay true to her character.  I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to play D&D though, even though it didn’t seem like her style.  Playing a tabletop RPG within a video game was awesome. 

A while back on my other blog, I posted about the lesbian romance novels I’ve been reading lately.  This was possibly my favorite aspect of the LiS games.  I’ll always cheer for any positive LGBT representation in a video game, and the LiS games seriously get it right. 

Yes, some people do complain about the over representation of LGBT characters in video games today.  It seems like every time you turn around, there’s another LGBT character.  Some bigoted critics even accuse the game industry of “shoving it in our faces”.  But I think of it as catching up.  I’ve been playing video games since the late 70s.  If you look at the biggest games from 2014-2018, it may seem like there’s a higher-than-statistically-likely percentage of LGBT characters (okay, I don’t really see it, but some do).  But if you expand your range to 1978-2018, the percentage of LGBT characters is unrealistically low.  Given time, this supposedly unrealistic influx will settle down and even out.  But the truth is, these critics aren’t actually interested in realism; some of them think even one LGBT character is too much. 

Okay, to be fair, in a lot of old games you don’t really know your character’s sexual orientation, and sometimes not even your gender.  It’s not like “Pong” has a deep backstory.  But once games did have recognizable characters, the protagonist was usually male, and they were often tasked with rescuing a female, which establishes some definite cishet gender roles.  

As I’ve mentioned before, my favorite games are the ones where you can create your own characters, or at least choose your sex.  If there’s a romance option where you can choose your sexual orientation, so much the better.  In Dragon Age, for example, I always played a female character and romanced women.  I would have done the same in Mass Effect if I’d ever gotten around to playing it.  The Life is Strange games may not let you create your own characters, but they do a good job of giving you a character I would have created for myself.

Both are excellent games so far, and I highly recommend them.  I'll try to post another blog when I finish them, with a more complete analysis.  They make me really with I had more free time.

“Life is Strange 2” is currently coming out.  It’s being released episodically (as were the others), and as of this writing only one episode is out.  I don’t know if I’ll be as interested.  The main characters are male, and anyone who knows me knows that I’m 50% more likely to buy a game if there’s a female protagonist.  That percentage is even higher if I can play as a lesbian.  On the other hand, I hear LiS2 has some excellent social commentary that would appeal to a raging SJW like myself, so I may still check it out.  I will wait until all the episodes are out, though.  I hate owning incomplete games.

Book: To Stand Beneath The Sun

To Stand Beneath The Sun
By Brad Strickland

After spending a long space flight in suspended animation, colonist Tom Perion’s pod is ejected and he lands in the ocean.  He is rescued by a ship with an all-female crew.  He soon learns that women outnumber men on this planet 8 to 1.  In a society that resembles pre-industrial Earth, women do all the work and have all the power, while men are treated like pets.  From that alone, it sounds like the set-up for an erotic novel.  Instead, this is a well-written sci-fi drama.

The book has a major revelation about twenty pages in.  I won't spell it out here, but it's every bit as impactful as “the Planet of the Apes is really Earth”.  It feels like it's breaking a sci-fi rule to have this type of twist so early.  I can’t help but wonder if Strickland originally wanted that revelation to be closer to the end, only to discover he had more story to tell after the reveal than before it.

It’s a well-constructed world for a one-off novel, and I wouldn’t mind using the setting for an RPG.  The author goes into great detail about the society, the animals, the plants, and so on, but manages to spread it out so you aren’t presented with one huge boring infodump.  A lot of sci-fi authors try to make things alien by just making them weird, but Strickland actually thinks the ecology through, even putting thought into this planet’s evolutionary ladder.  A good rule of writing is to know way more about the setting than you actually put in the story.  In this case I yearn to know what was left on the cutting room floor.  I would love a complete sourcebook about this planet.

This book was published in the 80s, but to me the style feels more like the 60s/70s, when speculative fiction was actually speculative.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the cheesy 80s and modern sci-fi.  But let’s face it, the genre has lost its sense of wonder, and is now just drama that happens to be set in the space.  Sometimes it’s fun to read a story that actually does its homework, especially if it’s written as well as this one.

Excellent book, well worth the read.

Infinity War and Musings on Fictional Death

While it's obvious that the victims of Infinity War's "Snapture" will come back, there's a lot of speculation about the other deaths in the movie.  Mainly Loki, Heimdall, Vision, and Gamora.  Some people are saying, "They better not bring any of these characters back, or those gut-wrenching scenes in Infinity War will lose their impact."

I'm not saying they're wrong, but here's the thing.  I've been reading comics for most of my life, and even wrote my own back in high school.  And there's something I've noticed about comic book death, and it's a rule so important it deserves to be in bold:

The cheesiness of a fictional resurrection is directly related to whether or not the resurrection was already planned when the the character died.

The best writers will plant subtle clues about the character's return, sometimes before the character even actually dies.  You often feel stupid later when you go back and discover these clues.

I'm not saying it's a universal rule.  A good writer can bring back an old character in interesting ways, and a bad writer can make a planned resurrection look like an ass-pull.  But in most cases, I believe the rule holds true.

Some examples:

Loki "dies" in Thor: The Dark World.  He shows up again at the end of the movie, though, like we all knew he would.  Not cheesy in the slightest.

In Highlander II: The Quickening, MacLeod resurrects Ramirez by shouting his name during a quickening.  The writers of the first Highlander movie probably had no intention of ever resurrecting Ramirez (or making them aliens, or having a sequel at all, really), and this comes off as very cheesy.

When Superman died in the comics in the 90s, they'd already planned his resurrection.  His return was long and convoluted, but honestly no cheesier than the Superman comics typically were already.

When Jason Todd (the second Robin) was killed by the Joker, he was meant to stay dead.  Years later he was revived as a side effect of Superboy Prime punching a hole in the universe... or something.  Do I have to tell you that's cheesy?  The animated version had him brought back by Ra's al Ghul's Lazurus pit, which isn't much better.  Todd became a popular character after that, so I'm not saying it was a bad decision... but the actual resurrection itself was pretty cheesy.

A quick and easy rule for movies: If a character shows up by the end of the same movie in which they supposedly died, it's not as cheesy.  Infinity War parts 1 & 2 (or whatever part 2 is finally called) are basically one long movie.  They were written at the same time, partly filmed at the same time, and whatever resurrections happen in part 2 were already planned when the characters died.

I'm not saying Vision or Gamora will come back, I'm just saying don't dread the possibility, you bloodthirsty miscreant.  If they come back, it will be an important part of an already planned-out story.

Beach Buggy Racing

Sometimes you pay $60 for a game, and play it for a week.  Sometimes you pay $5 for a game, and play it for years.

Beach Buggy Racing is basically a discount Mario Kart.  In fact, I'd say it's the closest thing to Mario Kart the PS4 has.  It costs $10, but it goes on sale a lot.  I got it for under $5 during one of the Playstation sales.  My wife and I have been playing it every night for months.  It's one of those games that we just don't get tired of.

It only has 15 tracks, and a small selection of characters and vehicles.  But it's just so much fun!  It was a tablet game before it came to the consoles, which is usually a recipe for disaster.  But somehow it manages to get everything right.  It controls well, has a ton of weapons, and a fair amount of depth.  The tracks are creative and full of shortcuts.

My biggest complaint is that I want more content.  More tracks, more characters, more vehicles.  If they were to release DLC, I would buy it.  I don't think that will happen, though, because they are working on a sequel.  I will say that when the sequel hits the PS4, I will buy it immediately.

If you like kart racers, buy this one immediately.  It's worth it.

Injustice 2, Mortal Kombat X, and My Dream Fighting Games

I'm a little late to the party here - both of these games have been out for a long time now.  But after how much I loved the original Injustice: Gods Among Us, I had to post something about Injustice 2, if only to complain about the gear system.

But let's start with Mortal Kombat X.  It's more of the same, but it's impressive how it takes advantage of the newer consoles to realistically render gore.  The fatalities are absolutely sick now, and much more organic looking than the static fatalities in the older games.  Brains and hearts and tongues now look like separately-rendered objects, and they look fantastic.  Some of the fatalities and X-ray moves are very clever; I especially like Cassie Cage's "selfie" fatality.

I love the guest stars - the DLC characters from horror movies.  Jason, Leatherface, Alien, and Predator are excellent additions, though I miss Freddy Krueger from MK9.  It would have been nice to be able to pit Jason vs Freddy.  And so it occurs to me that what I really wish they'd do is an all-horror game.  I'd rather have that than an MK11, really.

My Dream Horror Fighting Game:

1. Start with the MKX engine, including fatalities, X-ray moves, and so on.

2. Use every horror guest star they've used before: Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, Alien, and Predator.

3. Get the rights to every additional horror movie villain they can get, like Michael Myers, Chucky and Pinhead.  Don't forget classics like Dracula, the Wolfman, and the Mummy.

4. Add a few horror heroes like Ash Williams, Buffy Summers, or Ellen Ripley.  Maybe even some meta icons like Elvira or the Cryptkeeper.

5. Design a few original monsters to fill out the roster, and have a couple of MK characters be the DLC guest stars this time.

6. Skins, skins, skins!  Original and reboot versions of each famous villain.  There's probably a dozen versions of Jason they could tap for inspiration. 

I would play the hell out of that.  Okay, so getting all those rights could make the game cost more than it's worth, I don't know.  MK is owned by Warner Bros, so that should give them access to a couple of them.


Now, about Injustice 2...

I love the graphics.  I love some of the new characters, especially Supergirl.  The multiverse events are kind of neat, much better than the first one's STAR Labs crap.  Beyond that, I liked the first Injustice better.  The difference?  Skins and levels.

They released a ton of skins for Injustice 1.  Neat stuff like a TV-inspired Arrow, classic Harley Quinn, Killing Joke Joker, anime-inspired Catwoman, and so on.  Injustice 2 has a few "Premium Skins", but not nearly enough.  Instead they concentrated on the new gear system.

At first, the gear system sounds really cool.  You get gear from winning matches and earning virtual "blind boxes" from multiverse events.  This gear alters both your appearance and your stats.  You can use these to create custom characters.  It's fun to mix and match different heads, torsos, legs, and other parts to create unique looks for your favorite heroes.  You can even change the colors.

The problem, of course, is that the gear changes your stats.  So you're probably just going to use gear with the best stats, which keeps you from having the look you want.  If you have a favorite piece of cool-looking gear and want to give it better stats, there is a way to do that, but it costs in-game resources.

Wearing powerful gear and leveling up your character only makes sense for the single player mode.  If you're playing against another human, you're going to want the game to be as fair as possible.  The basic versus mode gives players unfair advantages over each other, by letting level 30 characters fight level 1 characters, and letting you choose powerful gear loadouts.

This is a fighting game!  It's a genre that usually puts a lot of stress on balance.  Most fighting games put hundreds of hours into their playtesting just to keep any characters from being more powerful than the others.  These games are constantly updated for balance purposes, and certain characters are banned from tournaments for being too powerful.  Injustice 2 throws that concept out the window.

The good news there's a "Tournament" mode, which is a versus mode that keeps things even.  The down side is that you can't use your gear loadouts, even for cosmetic purposes (I think there's a way around this by adding match rules, but it's a hassle).  You can use the Premium Skins in the Tournment mode, but again there aren't very many of them.  I tend to play the same characters a lot, so I'm a big fan of skins to break up the monotony.

So the biggest problems I have with Injustice 2 could be fixed with a few minor updates.  Unfortunately they're done updating Injustice 2, and they're probably already working on MK11.  But Injustice 2 is so close to being the perfect fighting game for me, it drives me crazy that it fell short.

My Dream DC Fighting Game:

1. Start with Injustice 2.

2. Make more premium skins.  The Injustice 2 mobile app has tons of cool skins in it, and if all they did was import all of those, I would be satisfied.  Importing the ones from Injustice 1 would be cool too.  I would also like it if Green Lantern had more GL Corps members as skins. 

3. Make the default Versus Mode more like the tournament mode, in that all characters are the same level.  Let us still use gear loadouts, but make them cosmetic only.  The current Versus Mode can still be there as an option, but the default should be the most balanced version.  That's what Versus Modes are for.

4. Bring in some (if not all) of the missing characters from Injustice 1, specifically Hawkgirl, Zatana, Batgirl, and Lobo.  I like it when a fighting game makes the older games in the series obsolete.  Some of the later Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat games did a great job in making sure they included nearly every character from the previous games.

That's really about it.  Basically, if you could just combine Injustice 1, 2, and the mobile app into a single game, it would be a few tweaks away from being my all-time favorite fighting game.  In its current form, it's just okay.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

My standards for Jurassic Park movies are pretty low.  I know none of them are ever going to match the majesty of the original, and that's fine.  At this point, I'm mostly into them to see dinosaurs eat people. I like each of the series, even the bad ones, for different reasons.  But Fallen Kingdom is hard to love.

My biggest complaint is the large amount of animal cruelty.  Take all the "capture and torture dinosaurs" scenes from The Lost World, but stretch it out for half the movie, and you have my problems with Fallen Kingdom.  As an animal lover, these scenes are not fun for me, I don't care if they're CGI.

The JP series is full of shallow characters, but Fallen Kingdom's characters are particularly paper thin.  Honestly, my favorite character in the movie is Blue the raptor.  Her performance was much more believable than that of the human actors.  

Most of the JP movies have straddled the lines between action, drama, and horror, but this one in particular felt like a horror movie (if relatively bloodless).  The new dino in this one was definitely the scariest dino in the series.  It felt like a significant tone shift in a series that usually feels somewhat family friendly. 

That means that I don't really feel comfortable holding it to the benchmark set by the original Jurassic Park.  It feels more appropriate to compare Fallen Kingdom to movies like Halloween or Friday the 13th.  It's not as gory, but it fits right in IMO.

There's a plot twist toward the end that feels completely pointless, unless it's a set-up for future movies (which may not even happen given this one's reviews).  In fact, the entire ending felt like it was putting something big into motion.  There's several loose threads, and future sequel writers have a couple of strong options for the direction it takes.

The problem is, I'm no longer sure I care. 

...Eh, who am I kidding, as long as there's people getting eaten by dinosaurs, I'm probably in.

Ant-Man & The Wasp & Introspection Illusion

This past weekend we saw Ant-Man and the Wasp.  Fun movie!  It goes about where you think it would, not a lot of big surprises, but it has a funny script and lots of eye candy.  The writers put a lot of work into finding creative applications for the shrink/grow powers.

Really, though… If I was to actually write out a list all the things I liked and disliked about the movie, I think the list of bad things would be longer the good.  It’s a bit shallow, there’s a lot of Deus Ex Machina, and it tends to handwave a lot of the hard-to-swallow details. 

It also had one too many villains.   The FBI and the supervillain were enough of a threat to carry the movie, but the writers decided to add a silly black market tech dealer to pad the movie’s runtime.  But my biggest complaint is probably the abundance of spoilers in the trailers.  I can’t tell you how many times they’d do a cool shot and I’d think, “That was awesome, I wish I hadn’t already seen it in the previews.”

But you know what?  I still love the movie.  It’s flawed, but fun.  On paper it almost looks like a failure, but the film is more than the sum of its parts.  Some people won’t like Ant Man & The Wasp, and if you ask them why, they’ll list everything I said above.   So why do those flaws add up to a bomb to them, while I can look past the movie’s shallowness and have a good time?

I have a theory that people actually have no idea why they dislike things.  You watch a movie and hate it on a subconscious emotional level, but your brain won't accept "I hate it because I hate it", and has to fill in the logical reasons you feel that way.

For example, I know someone who hates the sitcom Friends.  Her reason?  “Everyone is always so mean to each other!”  I’ve never actually noticed that about Friends, but I suppose it’s there if you really look for it.  Snarky comebacks are a big part of the humor, though I’ve never seen it as mean; if anything it’s part of the bond that holds the group together.

But here’s the thing – this same friend likes several other shows where the main characters are flat-out jerks, all the time.  So that’s a big part of my theory:  Whatever someone tells you they don’t like about a movie/show/book/etc, you can find examples of media they enjoy that contain those elements.

Her real reason for disliking Friends?  Probably the show simply isn't in sync with her sense of humor.  Humor is far from universal, and everyone has a unique funny bone.  If Friends made her laugh, she'd like it.  Not laughing gives her more time to notice the show's flaws.  Her brain won't accept the vague "it's just not for me", so it gave her the flimsy excuse she uses.

Now, if I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s that you can’t talk people into liking things, any more than you can talk them into liking a food.  You can shoot down all their complaints one by one, doing extensive research to prove why the plot holes they found weren't really plot holes, but it won't help.  So I’m not posting this to convince anyone to watch shows they know they don’t like.  I’m just pointing out your reasons for not liking it may not be what you think they are.

I used to know a couple who hated anything mainstream.  Their logic was that most people are stupid, so if most people like something, it must be stupid.  Except… some things really do become popular because they deserve to.  And what if you see a sneak preview of a movie, before it has time to be popular?  Do you have to wait until the box office results are in before you decide if you liked it?

I had one friend who hated Forrest Gump because she didn’t like the ending – she wasn’t sure Forrest was capable of taking care of a child by himself.  Even if I shared her concern, that’s only a reason to hate the ending, not the entire movie.  Surely, while watching the movie in the theater, she’d already decided whether or not she liked the movie by that point.  If she'd had an emergency and had to walk out before Jenny died (um, spoiler alert I guess), would she have felt differently about the movie?  I doubt it.

Titanic gets a lot of haters because it was so overhyped.  As I’ve said before, that may be an excuse to hate the advertising department, but don’t take it out on the movie itself.  I’m not saying I’ve never been annoyed by hype (See Ant-Man & the Wasp above), but I do try to keep a movie and its marketing as separate entities in my mind.

One thing I’ve heard people say about both Friends and Big Bang Theory – “They don’t talk or act like real people!”  This one sets me off for a couple of reasons.  First off, nobody in Star Wars talks like real people either, that’s why it’s fiction.  I can’t remember the last time I went to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters.  Behaving like real people is not a requirement in fiction, in fact, making dialogue too realistic makes shows hard to watch.  Real people clear their throats, start sentences and change their mind, use the wrong word, stutter, and display all kinds of verbal tics that would make me change the channel.

That said, the characters on Friends and BBT remind me more of my real life friends than the people on most sitcoms.  Maybe you’re just hanging out with the wrong people.  Chandler Bing’s snarkiness is practically the foundation of my marriage.  And BBT characters actually make specific references to current media, while other sitcoms seem to be vaguely aware that Star Wars might have had robots in it or something.  Yes, these characters sometimes do unrealistically dumb things to move the plot forward, but the alternative is a plot that never moves forward.

I do it too.  If I were to give you a list of things I hated about Batman & Robin, it would probably include things like Batgirl not being Commissioner Gordon's daughter, or Bane being a mindless henchmen instead of a criminal mastermind.  But to be honest, I probably would have ignored both of those details if they had occurred in a better movie.  Would I whine because the Joker wasn't chemically bleached in The Dark Knight?  Of course not, so obviously messing with comic book continuity alone doesn't make a bad movie.

I could even go on to mention the flashiness of B&R, and how it wasn't as dark and broody as the other Batman movies, how it hyped up the cheesiness and had a lot of bad acting and silly dialogue... but a lot of these problems were present in Batman Forever, which I loved.  A lot of the goofier points of B&R were an homage to the 60s TV series, which I also loved.  Is the world no longer ready for a humorous Batman?  Well, that "Brave and the Bold" cartoon series was pretty popular, so that's not it.

I know one guy who hated 2012 because he thought he saw a plot hole.  He was wrong, and I explained it to him... he still hates it, but at least now he hates it for the right reasons.  But plot holes shouldn't be dealbreakers anyway.  There are some pretty popular movies with well-publicized plot holes.  Citizen Kane, My Cousin Vinny, Ocean's 11... and yet people still love them.  But they see one continuity error in a bland movie, and suddenly that's the sole reason it sucks.  

And some people simply go into a movie with the wrong expectations.  I know one guy who hated Revenge of the Sith because it didn't explain the existence of the evil cave on Dagobah.  That's like the very definition of "I hate it because they didn't make the exact movie I would have made."  I knew a woman who hated "There's Something About Mary" because... and I quote... "They never did explain what it was about Mary."  ...You can't argue with that.

Typical fanboy review:
That movie was terrible, it wasn't enough like the book/comic/cartoon, the director didn't use any of my ideas, and anyone who liked it is an idiot.  That one scene where they showed the watch on his left wrist, then when the camera angle changed it was on his right, just ruined the entire movie for me.  Doesn't the director even read my blog?  Why can't they make a serious movie about a guy who shoots cufflinks out of his ears?  I felt like the director wasn't taking it seriously.  Has the director even read this comic?  Issue #193 clearly states that Captain Cufflink is allergic to shellfish, and yet they show him eating lobster?

A couple of those might be genuine concerns, but the truth is that you would accept all of those issues if a good movie was wrapped around it.  There are some legitimately bad movies out there, ones that earned their 0% rating on RottenTomatoes.  But the movies that are well-liked, that just don't click with you?  It's okay that you don't like them, I just wonder if you really know why.

Infinity War (Spoilers)

If you read this without having seen Infinity War, I will personally whack you with a rubber fish.

When I first came out of Infinity War, I felt like I’d seen half a movie.  I hate cliffhangers.  They make me nervous. What if the world ends before part 2 comes out?  Never mind all the death and suffering, an unfinished Marvel series would be the real tragedy. 

But after a while I started to feel pretty good about it.  You just have to think of Thanos as the protagonist.  He gets some backstory, he has a quest, he experiences personal growth, and finally he wins the conflict.  It helps that he actually believes he’s right.  It’s not like he’s taking over the universe just because he craves power or money.  He truly believes that by wishing half the universe into the cornfield, he’s making life better for the other half.  If you buy into his version of morality, the movie is almost uplifting.

Okay, so he’s not the first Well-Intentioned Extremist to appear in a comic book movie, but most of the others are focused on their own group.  Magneto, for example, wants to make a better world for mutants, but doesn’t care how many non-mutants have to die to make it happen.  But Thanos wants to make things better for everyone, and if half have to die for that to happen, he’s at least merciful about it. 

Infinity War had a lot of funny dialogue and some great action scenes.  On the other hand, it was so heavy-handed (giant metal gauntlets will do that) that I don’t know if I’m going to want to watch it over and over like I do some Marvel movies.  In addition to hating cliffhangers, I also don’t like sequels that undo the happy endings of other movies.  The Guardians of the Galaxy spent their first movie saving the planet Xandar, only to have it devastated off-screen in Infinity War.  Ragnarock’s bittersweet ending is also much more of a tragedy now.

Overall it’s a great movie, but “great” can also mean “large or immense.”  It feels like a gut punch, but it’s a solid story.  I might feel better about it after I see Part 2.  So, what’s going to happen in Part 2?  We already know that everyone who faded away at the end will come back.  Some of them already have sequels in the works, so it’s not much of a surprise that the whole “wiped from existence” thing will be undone.  That may have been the cheesiest part of Infinity War; they might have been smarter to only show characters getting dissolved who don’t have sequel plans.  The actual fading away took far too long, but I think they wanted us to take note of which characters are alive and dead.

Cheatsheet (thank you Wikipedia):

Alive and kicking: Thor, Tony Stark, Nebula, Bruce Banner, Okoye, Rhodey, Rocket Racoon, Steve Rogers, Black Widow, M'Baku.

Dead before the end: Loki, Heimdall, other Asgardians, Gamora, Vision.

Banished from Existence: Bucky, Black Panther, Groot, Scarlet Witch, Falcon, Mantis, Drax, Peter Quill, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man.

Is Loki permanently dead?  I’d say it depends on whether there’s ever a Thor 4.  He’s the easiest one to bring back, since he fakes his death all the time.  But if they never make another Thor movie, then he’s probably dead in this continuity.  For that matter, how many of the other Asgardians survived?  Thor says Thanos "killed half his crew", so which ones did Thanos capture as slaves before blowing up their ship?  If Thor can survive a spaceship explosion, followed by floating through the vacuum space, can’t some of the other Asgardians as well? 

Is Gamora permanently dead?  This one is more complicated to me.  I think she’s a great character and the GotG series will be duller without her.  But at the same time, I think future Marvel movies will lose some of their impact if she’s magically brought back.  Like, what’s the point of even mourning for a character any more, if no one stays dead?  Still, I feel like there’s some clues that make her death iffy.  The way Thanos dropped her – after everything we’ve seen Gamora survive, I’m not even sure if a fall from that height would kill her. 

If the writers really wanted us to know she’s dead for good, they should have had something at the bottom of the drop, like spikes or lava.  To me, keeping her body intact seems like a writing trick – the writers may need that body later.  Her death led to obtaining the Soul Gem.  Maybe that means the gem contains Gamora’s soul.  What happens if that soul gets back to her body?  And the scene at the end where Thanos seems to retreat into the Soul Gem after Thor whacks him... what was that all about?

Is Vision permanently dead?  Well, was he ever really alive?  I love Paul Bettany and would hate to see him leave the series, but it’s hard for me to feel too bad for Vision.  He never really had enough screen time to make me care about him, and the character was so incredibly bland.  He also may be too powerful to use much, like how in Justice League cartoons they’re always sending Superman on deep space missions to keep him from defeating the villain-of-the-week too quickly.  I’m less worried about whether Vision lives than I am about how many tragedies they throw at Scarlet Witch.  If they keep killing off her loved ones, she’s going to be a supervillain again.

How are they going to fix everything?  I don’t know.  There’s probably clues in who didn’t disappear.  When Doctor Strange decided to give the Time Gem to Thanos in order to save Stark, we’re meant to think it was the standard “heroes always show weakness to save other lives” trope, but I don’t think so.  Strange knew that Thanos would kill far more people with the gem than without it.  When he looked into the future, he said he saw a million ways this plays out, and we only win one of them.  To me this means that the only future in which we win, is one where Stark survives.  Stark could still die later in Part 2, but only after he saves the day.

And why did Infinity War go out of its way to show us where the gauntlet was forged?  That seems like a clue as well.  And how will Captain Marvel factor into this?  Her insignia is the last thing we see in Infinity War, and her movie comes out shortly before Infinity War Part 2.  Is her movie going to be more like Infinity War 1.5? (Update: I have since learned that Captain Marvel takes place in the 90s.)

So many questions, so long to wait.  

Who Would Win?

A few years ago I was reading a thread on some message board.  The subject: Could Superman beat the Hulk?  

Of course, hundreds of Hulk fanboys cited their evidence, while Superman lovers brought up their facts.  At least two canon examples were presented of Superman actually beating the Hulk, but the Hulk fans dismissed those issues for whatever reasons.

I think one problem comes from the fact that Hulk fanboys just picture them trading punches until one falls down.  This turns it into a simple mathematical problem.  Who hits harder?  Who can take the most punches?  But it doesn't work like that.  Superman's had his share of fistfights, but he uses his mind as least as often as he uses his fists.  He constantly faces villains stronger than himself, otherwise his comics would be boring.  If he can't beat them with his fists, he beats them with his wits.

So while a strict boxing match could go either way, an actual comic battle might end up with Superman grabbing the Hulk and flying off into space somewhere.  Or building walls around him at super speed.  Or sucking all the oxygen out of the room.  Or zipping off to the Fortress of Solitude and returning with a Kryptonian device that disperses gamma rays.

The question wasn't "Could Superman beat the Hulk in a straight fist fight where no one flies or does anything clever?"  It wasn't "Could the version of the Hulk in 1997 beat the version of Superman from 1983?"  It wasn't "Would Superman absolutely always beat the Hulk in every possible scenario?"  It was a simple, straight, "Could Superman beat the Hulk", a question which was answered with the first actual example from the comics.

Superman obviously can beat the Hulk, since he has.  "Oh, the Marvel vs DC fight doesn't count because that was a version of the Hulk that gets weaker when he's angry."  Sorry, nope, you didn't put that in the question.  There are always going to be external factors.

The Batman ones are especially funny, because the first question asked is always, "Does he have prep time?"  Batman doesn't need prep time, he's been planning for every possibly fight for decades.  One of his defining traits is that he's always ridiculously prepped.  If the Hulk ever showed up to fight Batman, Batman would already have  plan for it.  Despite existing in different universes, Batman probably keeps an anti-Hulk weapon tucked away in his utility belt.

So I hate to burst your bubble, but here is the answer to every "Who Would Win" question:

Any fictional character can beat any other fictional character if the story is written that way.

There ya go.  If Jar Jar Binks can take out a battle tank by tripping over things, then Superman can beat the Hulk.  If Squirrel Girl can beat Galactus, then Superman can beat the Hulk. If Jeff Goldblum can defeat an alien armada by using a computer virus, then Superman can beat the Hulk.

'Nuff said.