Saints Row The Third, Embarrassing You Say?

We’re going to play a little bit of the imagination game here this morning.

So, let say, hypothetically, that you were chosen to be the head of a fairly popular company. Ok? Let’s now imagine that this company that you’ve been ushered in to operate has been under some seriously troubling financial issues and it is now your job to move that company back towards a profitable era. Now, imagine that, as this company head, you had to give an interview about one of your most successful pieces of intellectual property. However, the person interviewing you has now criticized that popular property by calling it embarrassing. What do?

Even Fictional People Do Bad Things

There are bad people in this world.

No, really, there are some exceptional examples of extreme shitheaddery that are carried out in this world. Lying, cheating, murder, rape, thievery, and an assortment of other shitty acts are carried out daily by the world’s worst percentage. No sensible person reading this article would look at that list and disagree with the notion that those actions are horrible, but they are often portrayed in great detail all throughout literature and modern film. Not to mention, many of these acts are so woven into the main plot of a story that removing them entirely would completely negate the work all together. These movies and books are extremely dark and disturbing, but many of them get released without even so much as a hint of controversy. However, when you attempt to use these dark subjects as plot developments in games, a shit-storm begins a brewin’ and it doesn’t take long before every games journalist on the net decides they have to become outrageously outraged by them. So, I’d like to discuss a few of them today.

Chivalrous Heroism In Fantasy And Why It’s Important (And Necessary)

I always wanted to be a hero.

As a child, I had a plethora of outlets in which to find numerous heroes to idolize and emulate. Books, movies, games…these were all places I could find numerous characters ready to face down the hordes of any evil that was thrown at them. However, out of all of these heroic stories, the ones where the hero must walk through hell and back to save his beloved were the ones I enjoyed the most. There was something beautiful in the idea that a man, facing insurmountable odds, would traverse deadly landscapes and fight impossible foes all in the name of love. I daydreamed endlessly of being the kind of hero that would battle death itself to keep love innocent, pure, and unharmed from whatever evil might befall the land. I imagined the most chivalrous type of hero that I possibly could, and I knew that this was the kind of hero I wanted to be someday.

However, it seems that all those years of daydreaming of being the hero I was just daydreaming of being a sexist asshole.

The Grandstanding Of Gaming Needs To Stop

I’m not entirely sure when the wretched tentacles of the real world’s troubles began to wriggle their way in to my preferred form of escapism, but I would really love it if they would stay the fuck out of it. You see, due to  a recent surge in pseudo-intellectualism, it would seem that many gaming “journalists” are desperately attempting to force real-world problems in to the minds of gamers everywhere by drawing parallels between fictional plot-lines and cultural topics that the majority of people do not give two shits about.

“There was a political blog here…it’s gone now.”

Obscure references for the win, eh? Listen to video and then read for full effect.

Way back in 2007, in the aftermath of the 2006 election cycle, I had decided to make a personal blog that was to encompass my thoughts and views on pretty much everything that I had experienced. However, as the 2008 elections grew ever closed, I began to focus entirely on the political aspect of my blog and it eventually consumed every single post I made. Looking back from 2012 I can say that I noticed how apathetic I had become and it showed in my writing. Everything I had written was entirely cynical, angry, or just outright combative. So, as time moved on I found myself essentially hating the one thing that I had initially loved.

Writing.

Everything that I had written oozed negativity and so it made me a very negative person. My constant warring with others over politics had poisoned my writing and I eventually just stopped. I would occasionally come back and try to post something whimsical or topical in an attempt to try to rekindle what I had originally set out to do, but it was all for naught and the blog would remain abandoned again in a matter of posts. So, after quite a few months of deliberation I have decided to start anew and remove all of the political and idiotic posts from my blog.

There will be new content, but it will probably be over gaming and things related to gaming. This wont be a journalistic site and it’ll only be my opinion. I can’t even promise that all of it will be sunny or positive. However, I can assure you that anything that gets posted here again will be of a certain expected personal quality.

To a brighter future in writing!