The RoboCop of Elephants

I don't know if you know this, but they're equipping elephants that were injured in the line of duty with advanced, 21st Century prostheses.

Okay, well that's partially true. The elephants were injured in the line of the duty of being an elephant, which is mostly just wandering around doing elephant shit. By which I mean the shit that elephants do in their day to day lives, as opposed to the shits that they do in their day to day lives. It is actually both, though. The shits are encompassed within the shit.

The power of English!

Anyway, it's pretty much all we should be asking of these guys. The shit and the shits. That and they don't do any of the aforementioned on the people furniture, but you want to be polite about that. Don't antagonise an elephant. That's some life advice.

Write it down.

So, in an attempt to stamp out crime they've now pushed these cyborg elephants into patrolling the streets, essentially making them the 'RoboCop of elephants'.

Here is an artist's rendition:

Okay, not an actual artist. It was me. I photoshopped that. It's the same picture from the top, but zoomed in and tilted a little. Did you notice? I'm not going to do two. Maybe I will, because I also potatoshopped this:

That's his partner. It's a potato. They're a team.

Okay, not all of what I am telling you is true, but you know what? You are not the boss of me. You're not my mum or dad. Well, one of you is my mum and dad. Two separate ones. Not the same one. Probably. I'm pretty sure my mum and dad still read these (Hi guys!).

But you know what else? They aren't even the boss of me either. I'm a fully grown arse adult. I mean, my arse might do some more growing. Summer is coming, and that is my favourite season to 'not ever go outside' as much as possible. I hate the sun, along with a lot of the other outside things.

I've totally lost my train of thought now.

Look, here is a video that will probably clarify those truthful bits of what I've been saying, and what is wild speculation.

It would be fair to say that my version was more spectacular. It's the Hollywood version. The Bollywood version would have a huge dance number.

Huge from the size of the elephants, not the number of elephants. We can only have four, because of the budget.

Not Blade Runner Trivia

As a Blade Runner fan who talks about their affection for Blade Runner in the public arena, I am subject to people telling me Blade Runner trivia in order to gauge the limits of the information I have consumed about the film.

This is fun. I enjoy this. Sometimes there are things that other people have to share that are interesting, unknown to me, and actually true. It is a thing of joy.

The interesting part is a given, because it is about Blade Runner. That is causation. The unknown thing is less common, because I'm across it more than most people. This doesn't bother me. I really like talking about my favourite film. You had me at 'Bl'.

Actually, there are probably a lot of films that start with 'bl'. 'Blade' is probably also not enough, because, you know, Blade and the other ones of those that they made.

You had me at Blade Runner.

The last one is a bit of a weird one, because it isn't something that I can often verify while I'm standing there talking to you while you tell me these things. Sometimes, I know enough about what you're talking about to make a judgement call, but more often than not I will go and investigate it in the afterwards time.

However, there are some quite common bits of Blade Runner 'trivia' that are not in fact trivia. And they're super common. They get told to me a lot. And they all sort of come from a similar place, and concern the source materials of the film.

The first that I'm going to do you for is some combination of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the book on which the film is based) being: A short story; having not enough of a plot to make into a film; and having only a very vague relation to the film.

The novel (which it is) is 244 pages, and the plot of the film is an abridged version of one side of the narrative of the book. Even without touching on the whole digital Jesus preserved as an MMO plot, there are still a great number of major plot elements that happen in the sanctioned android bounty hunter plot that the film simply doesn't have time for.

If you really break down the film, there isn't a lot of plot. A great majority of the film is exposition stacked side by side as they wind through the climax of a much longer story that took place before the film even started. If Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was much emptier than that, Deckard would get some noodles with Batty who'd explain everything that happened prior to their White Dragon dinner date before Deckard shoots him over who gets the last giant, mutant prawn.

The next one is that the title, Blade Runner, is taken from William Gibson's Neuromancer. It isn't. It doesn't even appear in the book. You wan't a citation? How about, on page never the term 'blade runner' appears zero times in quick succession. Fuck you! Never mind that the book was first published in 1984, two years after the film was first released in cinemas. Yeah!

Before I explain where it actually came from, I'm going to put up my last bit of anti-trivia for this session, because I'm going to kill two synthetic birds with one electric stone.

William S. Burroughs, being the other great literary William in my life, did not write the first draft of the script for Blade Runner. I'm not going to lie, I've been so excited by that nugget in the past that I think I've actually promoted it in words on the internet. It might be out there right now. I'm not looking. Admitting failure is one thing, googling it is another.

This didn't happen.

You ready for that stone.

It is well documented that the title was licensed from a treatment called Blade Runner (later published as Blade Runner (a movie), which was written by the above mentioned William S. Burroughs, but instead of being based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? it's based on The Bladerunner by Alan E. Nourse, which is about a medical black marketeer, and was written in 1974. This is noted within the credits of the actual film!

Boom! Birds murdered!

I recommend Nourse's The Bladerunner and Burroughs' Blade Runner, but they're very much in my wheelhouse.

Look at that cover over there. It's fucking beautiful.

I don't hate when people tell me this stuff, but I hate when they argue relentlessly citing non-primary sources. Don't tell me the contents of a book you've never read, when I've read it a dozen times. Don't do that. At that stage I don't really care what your source is. I've read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I know full well what lies therein. You want to tell me about different contextual readings that you've read about without having read the actual book? Let's do that. That is interesting. I'm down.

The first person to tell me about watching Alien 3: The Assembly Cut within a feminist context had never seen any of the Alien films, and you know what, it's a game changer.

Why I love Blade Runner: The Bastion

The Final Cut is the one they did in 2007, for the 25th anniversary of the film, and it is exquisite. It is the way I have always remembered the film when I'm not watching it. That's what they've done. They've cleaned it up. The dialogue syncs with the video, you can't see the stunt doubles' faces, the flying cars aren't on wires, and you can't see off the side of the set in the closing scenes on the rooftop.

It's got all that unicorn stuff that a lot of people don't like, but Deckard was always a replicant to me. Nothing to do with the unicorn, or the glowing eyes. It's just a better story.

Whenever they need one, they unwrap one of these Deckard replicants, install the original Deckard's memories, and then let him go out and get Chinese food, so that they can go and ask him to come back for 'just one more job'. Maybe they let him do more than that. Maybe he has a shower. Who knows? Then they give him a gun, and send him out to kill replicants who weren't engineered to think that they're human. They're basically monstrous, terrifying children. Petulant teenagers who can lift a full grown adult up with one arm.

He could've died at any point in that film, and I assume they'd just send out another one. I'm fairly certain that there's only one in the film, but hypothetically, they could. If he had died, it would've cheapened his role in the grand drama, and it is. That. A grand drama. For Deckard, Roy, Pris, Leon, Zhora, Rachel, and Tyrell (who is also a replicant) this whole story is life and death. It's huge for them. It's completely defining. But they're just playing roles in a game.

Making J.F. Sebastian one of the only humans that gets caught up in this whole thing (him, Holden, and Hannibal Chew), and the only one we really get to know, and everything that we see of him gives us insight into the kind of person that he is. Everything. The grubby workers overalls with precision tools in the front pocket that he wears. Speech, facial expressions, and body language that all move forward in moments, giving us piecemeal thoughts and actions. An apartment that is cluttered and untidy in two rooms, while the rest is in a state of near complete dilapidation. His friends consist of incomplete people, dummies, and children, with the only two that seem to be of any great complexity being a caricature and a teddy bear who're dressed in military getup.

Sebastian is the only one of the humans who're killed that we get to know, and they make a point of showing us that he is essentially alone. I mean, he's not. He's not. He has friends. He has his friends. The friends that he made. The friends that he genetically engineered. It's important to understand that. They're alive. They're living things.

J.F. Sebastian may be only tangentially associated with society, but he's not alone. That's what they're showing us.

He's surrounded by these living things, and the last time that they see him is when he leaves with Roy to see Tyrell.

How complex are their minds? How complex is their understanding of the world? It's stated in the film that Tyrell designs the minds of the Nexus models, but what are the extent of J.F. Sebastian's talents in the area? Their not complex enough not to walk into walls, but definitely complex enough to be wary of Roy and Pris where Sebastian is not. Not enough to look past the gift of human interaction.

So, these replicants play out their grand opera. Their lives and existences are defined, and their epic roles are cast in high melodrama, and in their wake they've destroyed something that was a kind of beautiful, and in reality, there isn't anyone left to give a shit. Not really. It's terrifying, and it's tragic, and it's straight up fucking beautiful.

Then you never see the teddy bear again after Roy and Sebastian go to see Tyrell. Did he understand enough of what was going on that Pris had to kill him? Was she worried that he might warn someone who came by? Did she coax the bear away from JF's other friends and crush the life out of him as a precaution? Did this all happen when we weren't looking?

I'm telling you now that I can't deal with that. That bit's too much for me. It can be argued that you can hear him greeting Deckard when he arrives, but you just don't see him, and that's enough for me. I argue that point, because the image of Pris at her most violently predatory towards this sentient teddy bear who only at the last moment might understand what is happening is too much for me.

But either way, the replicants still go on with what little's left of their lives, and the city rolls on. The Blade Runner unit gets out another Deckard when they need it, and the Tyrell Corporation gets out another Rachel and another Tyrell.

But next time it plays out this funny little guy who built himself his own little bastion from the decaying world around him and populated it with the things in his own mind won't be there, but the friends he left behind will be. Will they always wonder what happened to him? Do they continue to expect him home at any moment? Are they sad? Do they miss him?

It makes me cry every fucking time, because it should.

Wonder Woman: Dawn of Justice

I wanted to say a whole seperate thing about Dawn of Justice's Wonder Woman, because she's not in the title of the film, and really the only reason she isn't there is because it's been so long since she's been really clear in the public consciousness.

But when she turns up in the costume and her new theme booms through the cinema you're pretty certain that she needs her own film.

Outside of the comics she's mostly been an ensemble player since her TV series ended in 1979. Then for years it was Super Friends, then all those Justice Leagues that they've had, of which Super Friends is also one. There was the animated Wonder Woman, which despite being both critically and financially successful compared to other animated DC films is still fairly obscure.

But, I could go on about how much I really like all of the animated depictions of Wonder Woman until the cows come how, but I don't have cows anymore, and even when I did, they were steers. And they never really wandered far enough away that we really worried about whether or not they were home. But I could happily, because there's some pretty wild stuff in that rabbit hole.

Like so many other DC characters, Wonder Woman's public image sort of suffered at the hands of previous mainstream depictions. They weren't necessarily bad when it was that they were happening, except for Super Friends, which apart from that one half of every episode for that one season was more or less entirely terrible all of the time, but those other ones, they didn't age well.

Linda Carter was great, but the decades have flown by in their invisible jet, and she just sort of looks silly, but they all do. Less silly than Adam West, but probably about as silly as Christopher Reeves, except in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace where everybody looks incredibly silly.

I am way off mission here.

This new Wonder Woman is the Wonder Woman that I think she is meant to have been. They've gone back to the mythology. Imagine a more serious take on a cross between Highlander, Athena, James Bond, and Xena: Warrior Princess, which now that I'm saying it sounds really silly, but just try and imagine that, but with a really serious face.

That's what's happening. It's fucking weird if you think about it too hard. But that's who she's always been really. I mean tonally, no. No. DC are bad this, I've said so before, but this is good.

I've spoiled shit already. If you go back over what I've just said, I've spoiled stuff, but that isn't really important. What is important is that this new Wonder Woman is an Amazonian super spy, who's come to wreck shop.

That's her thing. It's one of her things. She has lots of things.

The lasso is there, and the braces, but she's also got a sword and shield, which makes sense as a great Amazonian warrior. The invisible jet is gone. I mean, I assume so. I didn't see it. That was terrible. I won't do that again.

Yes, I will.

Wonder Woman really drives home why as a DC Comics fan I really, really enjoyed Dawn of Justice. There are some weaknesses in the film as a film, but I don't rally care, because there were a lot of things in it that I really enjoyed, and of which I want more, and I want more of Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, which I will get in 2017's Wonder Woman.

We all understand the rush that was put on this movie. We know that it was just going to be the sequel to the last one they made, but with the title fight spin, but they were adamant that they would get their Avengers out of the gate, and I feel like they forced themselves to cover a ton of ground that they perhaps didn't need to, but the Wonder Woman stuff is good. Excited for the future of the franchise good.

Excited that she might spend more time in the foreground of the popular consciousness.

Inclusionary Tactics

I tend to geek out in an obsessive and gleeful sort of way. I've been known to wriggle, squeal, and make databases when expressing my love for something. I'm like Sooty with SQL.

These are observable behaviours.

Beyond the non-verbal vocalisations, and data entry, is another equally observable behaviour. I like sharing the things that I love with the people I love, like, know, meet, and/or of which I am in the immediate vicinity. Some might say 'aggressively so', and indeed some have said that. To my face. It's real! Let me share my things that I love with you.

All I need is your face, and the things that are on it! Your face bits!

I play a game and I want my friends to also love this game (I suppose sometimes I need hands too for these activities). I watch a show and I want my friends to eat fish fingers and custard with me while watching the show. I watch a movie and I see it with as many people as are interested in going even if it means that I have to see Guardians of the Galaxy a cool fourteen times on the big screen.

So cool.

So very, very cool.

When I love a superhero/video game/comic/movie/book/show/album/musical/teddy bear/documentary and I can take something away from our time together that I find joyous or meaningful, I want to be able to 'psychologically motivate' my friends to participate in this thing so that they might also experience that joy or meaning. That seems like an important thing to me. It makes sense in my brain.

In my brain it is a really deep sort of love and affection. Remember this when you have things pressed against your face.

What doesn't make sense in my brain is the idea that anyone should be made to feel excluded by the things that joy me up in my face. And butt. That's where my wriggling starts. Right down in the butt.

Why wouldn't I want everyone to have equal opportunity to feel represented, empowered, and inspired by the mediums that mean so much to so many of us? That seems dumb.

I'm not saying everyone should like everything, because that's unwieldy. It's the kind of idea that breaks things. It's clumsy. I'm saying that everyone should have the opportunity to love everything.

There should be some variety of fair representation within a medium and genre and the services that deliver them to our face receptors. And, I suppose, hand receptors.

Call it a campaign of selfishness, and you can, but just because someone wants something that someone else doesn't think they should have, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't get it.

This is topic du jour, and I'm not contributing anything groundbreaking here. All and all, this is mundane in its passivity, but these are my words on the thing.

I think we should all have a Nightwing. He changed my life. I'm not even kidding. He did that! From his pages! Nightwing is the real hero in the entire Batman franchise. For me. The rest of them are tragic figures. It's bananas gothic up in Gotham.

And Barbara Gordon. She is also my hero. She's fucking awesome.

From the honest places of my self, it frightens me to think of the lives of others without the refuges and representation that I had just because of who I already was when I was born. I feel like it helped me.  I really do.

There should be enough variety so that we can all have a Nightwing (or Barbara Gordon), and we should all feel welcome there. We should all feel welcome in all the Leagues and Squads and teams and Tardises (Tardii? Tardims? Tarda?) and servers. All the servers!

Because I want you all there!

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

(時をかける少女 Toki o Kakeru Shōjo)

As I sit here rewatching The Girl Who Leapt Through Time for the bagullionth time, I find myself pondering yet again, 'Why haven't I ever talked about this on United by Glue?'

There isn't a good reason, and most of the actual reason is that my experience of it predates the blog, which as far as reasons go isn't really a good reason. It's bad.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is very good. Very, very good. It is a very good anime film that I think a lot of people have seen, but probably more should have seen. And should see it have they not.

Unlike Summer Wars (which is a comparison that will make more sense in a few paragraphs time), The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is exactly what it says it is. That's what it's about.

See the picture? I mean she looks a lot like she's falling right there, but you're going to have to take my word for it.

I'm going to be straight with you. She is falling right there in the picture. She leaps and then she falls. She is also god awful at landings. Leap, fall, crash. That's the process.

Regardless, it's not a poetic way of talking about having to suddenly grow up or anything like, which is what I thought it might be before I saw it. It might be somewhere, but not here. Here it is pretty literal.

What it is is a sort of science fiction, high school, comedy about friendship, and romance, and bullying, and family, academia, and some baseball too I guess. There's also some pudding that gets a lot of play too. That drew me in. I love pudding. There is a bit where she time travels so that she can re-eat the pudding. That's when it got super real for me.

I'd do that.

That picture is not the pudding scene, but I didn't get a picture when I was watching it, so I just put one in with some juice. I think it's juice. Unlike the pudding it is more of a bit part foodstuff.

Really, really, and as is so often the case these days, the science fiction elements aren't really there to serve themselves, but to serve the other elements of the story, which is good, because it is essentially all those other things that make the story.

In a really sort of, but kind of of not really at all way it is sort of, but kind of not really like a more positive Doniie Darko. But not really. But also sort of. Things are definitely more straight forward than Donnie Darko. They explain pretty much everything. Nearly everything.

Look, it's not at all like Donnie Darko. I don't know why I brought it up.

The characters are all the archetypes that you sort of expect in a high school anything sort of story, but it is all very charmingly told, and the situation is pretty different to what you might've seen before in other things.

The dude, if there was to be only one, who is behind this is Mamoru Hosoda, who has made a bit of a name for himself of late with his high quality, charming adventures into invisible elements of the real world is also responsible for Summer Wars, which I have spoken about here at The Glue, and Wolf Children, which I definitely will. He also has The Boy and The Beast which is on the horizon, but might have crested it.

I should check.

Yeah, no, it's still on the approach.

But... ah.... hey, look out for that. It's probably going to be pretty darn good. In the meantime though, go and have a look at The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, because it's good. Pretty darn good.

There is also a book from all the way back in 1967, which has been adapted some 10 times, but this film is a sequel of sorts, because it's also still an adaptation of the original book while at the same time being a sequel. Because who said they can't do that? Not me. They've done it. It's too late now. if you did have a problem, there's nothing you can do. You could write a letter.

If you are interested in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which you should be, you can get it in all the regular places that one gets these sorts of things. I mean, Madman and iTumes are where I tend to get this sort of thing, so you can go there I suppose.

I'll try and get that Wolf Children review out sometime soon for you too. I think a lot of people will like that one too. I'll put links here somewhere when it happens.

Yet Another Astro Boy

I grew up on Astro Boy, and my mum sort of grew up on Astro boy too. But different ones. This is because they keep making them. I've said before that they keep wheeling the little guy out to see how the new generation will take him every couple of decades or so, and that is an apt assessment of the way it's been handled.

Anyway. They made it again in 2003, and Astro Boy, in its third go round, is a well animated, science fiction, adventure cartoon. It's much of the same sort of thing as both the 1963 and 1980 cartoons. It's Astro Boy. Like, proper Astro Boy. Not like that 2009 3D, CGI movie that is not Astro Boy. It isn't. It feels wrong.

Have you seen it?

Don't.

That's mean. It tried to be Astro Boy, bless its little rocket socks. It put on the underpants and it went flying high in the sky, and all that jazz, but it just didn't really get there. To the Astro Boy place. It got to the sky. I mean, I think it did. Where does the sky start?

Anyway, the one that is is because it's got most of the old stuff from the first two series with some more focussed storytelling in the major story arcs, and a more deliberately dark tone.

I say that it's more deliberate, because both the preceding series are pretty dark. There was a lot of death, and Astro frequently came out the other side of an episode feeling like no one really won. But they were also more playful and optimistic than the new series. Call it seesawing. Call it tonal diversity. Either way, the new one is more consistent in what it wants to be (unless you watch it in Japanese, in which case it still is, only less so).

It's also slicker. That's probably its main selling point over the other two. It's a slick 50 episode action-adventure cartoon with prejudice, robots, and all that atomic age Pinocchio guff that we get out of bed for.

It's a good thing they did this. Plugging the little, robot guy back in and polishing him up every 20 years or so for another go round is going to be how we mark the generations in eras to come. He's good for us with all his butt machine guns and finger lasers.

Oh, B-T-dubs, did I mention that they're making a new one?

Yeah, that's what that whole Astro Boy Reboot thing was at the top of the post. Did you think that the thing I was just talking about was the reboot? No, that is not the case.

Anyhoo, apparently, someone didn't get the memo, and they're getting him out o' the drawer (P.S. punned the hell out of that) sooner than they meant to. I mean, he's not due for another 7 years, and they go and do this:

Now, there is a lot of implication that my little buddy, Astro, be living it up in some sort of digital environment, where he himself may be a a digital thing, or an avatar of the more modern vernacular.

And, I'm not saying I don't want this, because I do. I want all the Astro Boys. Except the one that I mentioned not wanting earlier. That, I don't want.

But, I guess I'm concerned at the direction they're taking, and I don't really understand yet if they're wheeling out a new Astro Boy or whether they're just wheeling out the brand for a thing that isn't really Astro Boy.

This may or may not be a thing that I want. I mean, perhaps they're trying to appeal to a modern audience with all them computers, and gigabytes, and the like, but robots are just around the corner. They're soon, but not yet.

Does their lack of immediacy make them unappealing to children? I mean robots were nowhere in sight when I was one of those, but they appealed the shit out of me.

Still do.

Regardless, it looks pretty, and I'll probably be watching it.

More AKIRA?

If you know what Akira is then you might be wondering 'more what?'

More of the already epic 2000+ page manga that was written and illustrated by one guy? No, his hands still haven't recovered since the mid-nineties.

Are they making a followup film that abridges the second half of the manga similar to what the first film did for the first half? No. That isn't happening either.

Am I talking about the live action version that has spent more time on production hiatus than than Duke Nukem Forever?

I am not.

What I am talking about is that at a recent comic festival in France, Katsuhiro Otomo (who is the dude that is the one that made it) said after being asked about the future of Akira that they were considering an anime television series.

Now the question was asked in French and then answered in Japanese, so there might be some translation issues all up and in this.

Also, worth noting that we didn't clarify who 'they' were. There was also no real discussion of who would be making it, how long it would run, how faithful or thorough it would be, or when it might happen, because the whole statement is just up there in that other paragraph.

But, look, hey! Let's get a little excited. Akira!

Akira is an interesting duck. The role it played in popularising anime in the western consciousness is unparalleled. If you speak English and you enjoy anime as anime, then this was the catalyst for the culture that exists today that lets that happen.

Anime was popular before Akira, but it was popular as children's television. Shows like the Astro Boys, Robotech, Starblazers, and so many others played a similar role in western culture before Akira as things like Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon did after it.

There were also anime films that were available and watched prior to Akira. That happened. I'm not saying that that isn't a thing. It is.

Also, when I say 'Western', I specially mean 'English Speaking' because I'm a small minded, anglocentric cultural invader. I've said so before. The French and Italians were onto all this sooner. Germans too maybe. Who knows? They probably know. Some of them.

But Akira, or really it should be AKIRA, for us in the English speaking world was our first real 'look at this shit they're making in Japan' moment. And we did. Look. It was incredible. I mean it still is incredible. If you watch it now, it's still visually stunning.

Even on VHS it was stunning. Sound, visuals, everything.

AKIRA still stands as an example of something that live action just couldn't do. I mean, it probably can now, but when you look at it, and the beauty of animation, would you want it too.

I don't. I just don't want that. It's so beautiful. Such an exquisite thing.

I only hope that this anime series that is under consideration is as beautiful. I mean, could it be? Could they just take the film as a base and make more of it?

Not really, because the film doesn't follow the plot. Some scenes are amalgams of ones from the manga. Some are brand new shortcuts to get the plot done in 2 hours.

You could take some of it, but more what I'm wondering is if the film will act as a template for the series in terms of the way it looks. That's what I want.

It should be what we all want.

DreamWeb vs Metrocide: The Illicit Dreams of Adolescence

I made a recent return to Metrocide that reminded me of things that I had left half said the first time around. I originally had a bit about a game called DreamWeb in it, but I cut it out so that I could expand on it here instead of leaving something half said.

The story goes sort of like this:

There are certain key-phrases, attributes of the setting, and elements of presentation in Metrocide that reminde me of 1994's cyberpunk, top-down adventure game, DreamWeb. A game that was refused classification in Australia, which is something I wouldn't know until I read a 1996 article on Australian game censorship in PC PowerPlay. I'm fairly, but not entirely, certain about that. I remember the article, but we're reaching deep into the way back here. Regardless, it was at the time of consumption that I'd had the game for two years.

Had Australia had an R18+ rating for games at the time, I'm pretty sure that DreamWeb would've received classification, even though there are some aspects of the game that might even prevent it from getting classified under the new system.

While the violence is far less realistic than modern games, it is far more immediate. Far less removed from the world we live in. There are also some scenes of said violence, including interrupting a couple mid coitus so that you can kill one of them while the other hides under the bed, and performing a mercy killing on one of your victims that you've already fatally maimed, that might see it refused classification under the new system.

I should explain.

In DreamWeb you play as Ryan, who is either saving the world, or a serial killer who has a dysfunctional relationship with reality and/or sensory input. It's all kind of left open for interpretation.

I remember going back and forth on it throughout my two playthroughs. I remember a lot of the thought processes involved with the playing of that game. I remember the discomfort at the tasks at hand, and I remember trying to wrap my head around what was going on.

I also remember having this distinct sense of dread right up until the end of the game that I would be expected to kill Ryan's girlfriend. It seemed like the kind of thing that the game was going to ask me to do. It was already full of unreasonable justifications for some fairly appalling stuff, and I was genuinely relieved when the game ended, and it had never come up.

It is clear that the developers' intentions were to make the player uncomfortable.

In the prevention of the apocalypse, you're committing some fairly straightforward murder. You might be saving the world, but you aren't fighting most of these people. You're navigating their security systems, while they hide from you, because you're there to take their lives.

It's not the immediate kill or be killed scenarios that games normally present you with, and then there's the potential that Ryan's brain cut loose some time ago, and you're just riding his whole scene into the ground. You aren't a warrior. You're a killer.

Metrocide is similar in this regard, except your killings are less elaborate. You're stalking your 'contracts' with a much more mundane sense of purpose. You're not saving the world, and you're not going to extraordinary lengths. You're getting paid, and you're leaving them on the asphalt. It's less complicated.

This is something to which I am not desensitised. In either game. It's still a jarring experience. Well, I haven't played DreamWeb in close to two decades, but thinking about some of the scenes still makes me uncomfortable. Metrocide is a little more straight forward. It's easier to play. Right up until the game tells you that your mark is on their way home, and that they were carrying a picture of their husband and a carton of milk.

If you're anything like me, this is enough to turn you on the armed gangs in the area in order to achieve your goals, who it is much easier to hold responsible for the state of affairs in which you have found yourself.

Despite these similarities, the approaches are entirely different, and the genres reflect this. DreamWeb is a story and you're there to hit the beats. You're Ryan, doing what you're told, and you're only real choices are whether or not to keep playing. You're a witness. Metrocide gives you a goal and a set of rules, and then it leaves you to make your own mess.

In this way, Metrocide is more reminiscent of the early Syndicate and Grand Theft Auto games, which is a comparison I drew in the review. DreamWeb, on the other hand, is not like anything else that I've played.

If you're interested in playing DreamWeb, it is still illegal in Australia (it was never granted classification), but it can be downloaded for free from the ScummVM (which you'll probably need to run it) website. There are some other games available for free on the site, inclduing the incredible Beneath a Steel Sky, which is another amazing science fiction game.

Metrocide, if you're interested in that fairly excellent thing, is still available through Steam, Good Old Games, Humble, Greenman Gaming, Gamersgate, and the App Store.

The Uncertain Science of Boxes

The Peripheral by William Gibson

I recently picked up The Peripheral by William Gibson, and a weird sort of thing struck me. It feels almost Dickian, by which I mean that it is on its way to the Philip K. Dick flavour zone.

It's turning out to be a weird experience for me. I love both of these authors, and not to suggest in any way that Gibson is losing his own personal flavour, but, the story feels like a polished PKD story. It feels like their worlds colliding.

Saying all of that though, there are distinct elements, and even ideas that feel like bolder versions of things one might've seen in Gibson's very early short stories. The ones in which the page looks right up at you, stares you right in the eye, and says, 'This is made up', but you end up meeting it all the way as it spins wildly, because it's good.

His first trilogy, that started with Neuromancer, is bold and reckless. Jammed with invented terms, mature themes, and cartoon vibrancy, it's completely unsubtle and unapologetic. It's brazen as fuck. Virtual Light and its sequels, on the other hand, are dirtier. Everything feels more real. Their world spins ever so slightly out of sync with our own, where Pattern Recognition is populated with characters that are believable corporate fantasy in a world that spins perfectly in sync just on the other side of the sun. The Peripheral is just the beginning of next world.

It feels more of a classic science fiction than he's written long form before, but it's all still distinctly him. They're his details. They're his characters. It's his world. More than that though, you can feel it in the words. Dick never spun like this.

A Quick Introduction to The Past Doctors

You know I love me some Doctor Who. You know that. Maybe you don't. Maybe you have no idea about me and my Doctor Who and how I get down when the TARDIS howls. I get giddy. Panda and I both get us some giddy. We've never grown out of it. It's not going to happen.

Other things that we're prone to are opinions. That is real. So, you know we have Doctor Who related opinions, and with the new season on it's way, I thought I might rifle through the DVDs and drop some of the aforementioned opinions on stories of Doctors past.

I'm going to roll this out in order, and everyone gets a turn. Also, there are some rules that guided the decisions, but I'm not going to tell you what they are. The general thing is that I wanted to just sort of give you all one fairly solid entry point for each Doctor.

William Hartnell in The Dalek Invasion of Earth

They're coming to invade a planet near you!

I don't know if you've heard of these Daleks. They're bad news. And we don't want them invading Earth. That's where we live. This is a bad scene. No one is keen for this kind of thing. Except the Daleks. They're all about it. They're all like, 'It's Invasi-on like Donkey Kong!' I'm going to level with you. I couldn't decide between this one, The Time Meddler, or The Keys of Marinus, until I thought of that Donkey Kong bit. I mean if you throw in The Romans, The Daleks, The Rescue, and the first episode of An Unearthly Child (which is the first episode of the whole thing) you've got the best ones. They are. Argh! I'm so torn. Damn it, he was good!

Patrick Troughton in The Tomb of the Cybermen

You will never look at Glad Wrap the same way!

I sometimes say to people that the Cybermen not only terrified me as a child, but that they're my favourite classic monster, which often elicits confusion. 'Why?', they ask as they wring their funny little hands. Why do so many people have funny little hands? To which I respond, 'Have you seen Tomb of the Cybermen'. It's basically Doctor Who flavoured classic mummy movie, straight up. Did I use that right? The Second Doctor joins an archeological expedition on a distant planet, and things get out of hand. Like, completely out of hand. Holes are dug. People die. Cybermen are involved. It's pretty much everything you want from a Cybermen story, and to this day it is my yardstick for measuring all those Cybermen stories that've followed.

John Pertwee in Carnival of Monsters

I love carnivals!

Not often cited as the best Pertwee serial, but I really like it. One might even say that I like it the most of his stories. And they would be right. It's plot is a very plotty sort of plot, and there are things happening, and you're watching the show, and if you're like me, you're enjoying it. It starts out as your fairly straight forward sort of 'this isn't where we meant to end up' story (which is a whole thing in Doctor Who), but then it very quickly turns into 'there is something not entirely right going on here' (also a thing), and then you're like 'I think something here is broken'. There are some elements that you'll just sort of take in your stride, because it's Doctor Who, but then there's the bit that is further, which is where this goes, and your stride will be interrupted as a result.

Tom Baker in City of Death

What happens when Douglas Adams sends The Fourth Doctor and The Second Romana to Paris?

That's correct! Douglas Bloody Adams! I'm not even kidding. He wrote two, and this is the better of the two, and the plot is the kind of thing that can only be told in Doctor Who. It's full to the brim of the timeiest of time-stuff. It's laden. It's all over the walls. It's funny. The villain is a Bond villain (it's Julian Glover), and the companion is Romana. She is my favourite. Hands down. I had a crush on her from the age of about five or six until infinite! I love this story so very, very much. Just watch it. If you've never delved far, or at all, into the original run of the show, this is something you absolutely must see.

Peter Davison in The Caves of Androzani

Not really a lot like Dune at all.

When I tell you that it's about the mining of drugs on a desert planet, you're going to say, 'like Dune', and I'm going to say, 'Not really'. You see, it's pretty different to that. There are more robots. A whole army of said robots in fact. Someone once told me at a party (these things always get said at parties) that it's an analogue for a real world historical event. I mean, damn, not the robots. Clearly. But, like the general premise, but this story isn't just historical analogues, robot armies, and drug wars. Not 'The War on Drugs' drug wars, but like a war over who can have the drugs. Well, control the drugs. Everyone wants to have the drugs. Children's television in the eighties. What can I say? Actually, the modern series has had drugs and addiction, so I guess just children's television in general. There are also gunrunners. People get executed. The Doctor milks a bat. It's a good story.

Colin Baker in Vengeance on Varos

Do you see where we're headed? Do you?

It's dark. One of the darkest ones. You might watch this, and honestly wonder how it got aired as part of the same show. It's all up in the 'This is where we're headed with the violence' brand of science fiction. It's an oddity. A lot of what was going on for the Sixth Doctor felt restrained. Not this. There were little restraints involved in this. Not little restraints, as in restraints that are small, but few restraints. It's mostly unrestrained. It's the sort of no holds barred Doctor Who the eighties were ready to make, and then everyone freaked out. Some part of that would be the people dying in acid, but not all of it. Some of it would be the other violence.

Sylvester McCoy in The Curse of Fenric - Director's Cut

With 12 extra minutes!

This was not my favourite Seventh Doctor story when I first watched them on TV, but the recut version on the DVD, and I'm assuming other formats, is a substantially better experience. The narative is clearer and there are more minutes. 12 of them. I think they also redid some of the special visual shenaniganery. It's just better. Not that the original TV version is bad, or not even not good, but it's behind things like Remembrance of the Daleks, which the recut version is not. Some people would probably say that it still is. I am not those people. I mean, it's all World War II spies, and vampires, and ancient enemies and the like. It's great, and you want the best version of that. You also want the best version of the Seventh Doctor, which is this. He's cleverer. In both versions. With or without the 12 extra minutes.

Paul McGann in Enemy Within

The best of the only one. It's the only one.

Back when I was all of 14ish, and after 7 whole years without new episodes of Doctor Who, they told us that there might be more, and that a pilot film had been made. It was this, and it was actually, and irritatingly, titled Doctor Who, but the fans decided otherwise, because, are you kidding? That's the show's name! The story itself is, well, it's not really good a tall, but it's either this or The Night of the Doctor, which is only a handful of minutes long, and you can't hold time. The Doctor maybe can, and Paul McGann is an incredible one of those. A time holder. Amazing, in fact. Unfortunately, all of his best stories are audio stories. If you're a commuter, I would highly recommend getting some of those on your iPod, or mp3 blaster.

Christopher Eccleston in The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances

A zombie child, an unwed teenage mother, and an intergalactic conman walk into a bar.

This was the story in the first season of the new run that made me realise that this show was not only exactly what the 21st century needed, but that it was set to be incredible. Drama, comedy, tragedy, and horror clown-car into two episodes in London during the Blitz. Then there's Captain Jack Harkness at his Captain Jackiest. Also creepy wartime hospitals, and invisible spaceships, and the threat of zombie armageddon. Fantastic!

David Tenant in The Girl in the Fireplace

Not, like, in the fire. It's not about immolation.

This was a hard one. David Tenant had an insane run as the Tenth Doctor, and his first two seasons in particular are heavy with great stories, but I chose The Girl in the Fireplace because it's wonderful, and it's funny, and it's creepy, and it's a little heartbreaking, and it's beautiful to look at, and it kind of does a great many of the things that Doctor Who does so well: Spaceships, history, mystery, monsters, and 'stuff because reasons and plot, so shut-up'. I mean, there is stuff in this. Stuff they don't bother to really explain, but it's good. There's also learning to do. There are real, actual, 'once upon a time, and I'm not making this up' people in this story, and the characters talk about their culture in a real way. I mean, boxes ticked, people. So many boxes, and it's fun. Did I mention the fun?

Matt Smith in The Doctor's Wife

Best kissing on the show ever! Ever! David Tenant gets schooled!

This was another one where there were contenders, but this is great. Really great! It's pretty tonally delicious. It's creepy, and it's funny, and, I mean, the dialogue is glorious. Actually glorious. I am more than a little bit in love with this episode, and we get to see Matt Smith Smithing all over the place. He Smiths it right up, and lead guest character is just this thing that I can't even explain. I can, but it would be ruinsome. Way better to not be ruined. You could have that. Go watch it! Do that! It's so much better than me talking about it.


Some of these guys definitely deserve more of my attention than just one episode. Not Paul McGann. That's all he has. I've covered him. The others though. They can have more.

I'll do that later.

Any disagreements?

Metrocide: A Classic Murder Simulator!

The hum returned again, and it's clearer. It's soft now, but when it's ready it's gonna tear right through the guy.

The tracker stops, but the hum continues. She can make out his e-cig puffs at the corner. She has to move before the pop. She takes a few steps along the wall, hoping to avoid moving out into the street, but she can't make the line. She trusts the M-7 to deliver after the hum, but the shot's gotta be clear, otherwise it's eating wall and Marcel Ortiz is down the street, and her night gets longer. If she steps out now, the night can end now.

She decides it's happening.

The hum's nearly ready, and she's already got it on the guy as she clears the corner. Before her foot even hits the ground she hears the door open behind her, and catches the lady across the street, and right then, they're both up on her passive tracking.

The decision's been made. Right now, these people are going to watch, because she's standing in the open, looking down her M-7 at this guy's head. And they can see it. There's no exchange. No negotiation. They're just going to watch her M-7 eat right into this semi-electric puff-monkey, because she already made that decision.

And the guy who's on the losing end is looking right at her. She doesn't know if he can hear the hum over the din of the police drone down the block, but the lights are on. He knows whats happening. They all know what's happening. They all know what's happening, but no one's moving and no one's thinking. They're all just standing there waiting for the pop.

If you were to imagine a game that was the offspring of Syndicate and Grand Theft Auto 2, you would be understanding what Metrocide is, and as much as those games were, during the 90s, accused of being 'murder simulators', this game is actually much more of that than those games ever were.

Well, at the very least it is more focused. You play as simulated contract murderer, TJ Trench, who is either a simulated woman or a simulated man. The decision is yours.

As Trench, you are faced with a problem: people want you dead, so you need to get out of town. You also have another problem in that you have no money. I suppose that you also have this third problem of a limited skill set, but that turns out to be more of a problem for other people, because that limited skill set is murder. That is what you will be doing. For money. It's only simulated murder though.

You won't just be murdering folk in the super bland present day, though. You'll be busting caps and taking pay cheques in the near future. This mother is cyber-punk as shit, and you know how I get down on that. With a sense self-appointed of authority!

Metrocide is constructed from good ideas. That's its foundation. They're good ideas executed neatly and concisely. The behaviour of the characters, the layout of the city, and the way your tools and weapons work all serve a function that informs gameplay and your decision making.

The cyberpunk setting isn't a party trick, or an afterthought, either. It's intertwined in the gameplay and the behaviour of everything in the world. Unmanned police drones circle the city, while you make your way amongst trash collecting robots and armed gangs in the streets below.

Where a great many small budget games these days feel empty and incomplete, Metrocide feels rich and focused, like a AAA title from another era. The art style is consistent and engaging, the sense of humour is pervasive without interfering, and the game mechanics are refined to the point where risk assessment is totally informed.

Scenarios like the one at the top can and will happen, but you know the risks and possibilities before you step out into the street to release the hum on some fucker. You know, and that's your call. How you deal with it when the shit hits the fan is on you.

It's a whole and dedicated product ready for your digital consumption, which you can do at Steam, Good Old Games, Humble, Greenman Gaming, Gamersgate, and the App Store.

Why I'm not reviewing Amazon's The Man in the High Castle pilot

Amazon has made the pilot episode for a mini-series based on Philip K. Dick's alternative history novel in which the axis powers won World War II, The Man in the High Castle, and some of you can go and watch it for free!

I love Pippy D. He isn't just the Dick du jour for me, but a staple Dick. There are times when he is probably relegated to a sort of background, cosmic Dick, but he's always there.

I love his work. I get deep into it in a weird way. There are lots of things I can say about it that would be generally considered to be pretty negative. Things that would prompt people to then say, 'What you've just said makes me not want to read this book you're brandishing at my face'.

What I can say with absolute assuredness is that Dick's whole psychological wavelength was his own. That, to me, is a truth. The dude thought up some shit that other people simply weren't thinking. Once thought up he would then pen that shit, and go about getting it published so that people could consume it, and eventually mine it for their own outputs.

When The Man in the High Castle came out, it was that sort of thing. The war was less than two decades won, and people were getting deep into the cold war that followed, and people weren't writing about alternate Earths on which the United States is occupied by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, who are themselves now engaged in their own cold war.

It is essentially a 1960s, cold war drama/thriller set on an alternate Earth, and more so the people who live there. That is what it is. Well, honestly there is more to it than that. There are other elements. Things I won't go into here.

Right there, on that alone, it is sort of a winner. It's a thing that people want to watch. It sounds like the kind of thing that you would make into a TV series. I thought so when I read the book so much that I started adapting it before I even finished it.

Now, Amazon agreed with me, and got a lot further with their adaptation than I did, and it looks good.



The Man in the High Castle was the first (and arguably only) Philip K Dick novel to win a 'major' award. He won other awards for other books, but he got a Hugo for this thing.

It is subjectively one of his best books.

Less subjectively, it has been produced by Ridley Scott, who amongst his many achievements directed Blade Runner, which is the single best adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story. Fact.

It looks like everything that it should be, and people can watch it for free over on Amazon.

I can't watch it at all though. I'm Australian, and this activity is therefore verboten to me.

They have made a free pilot, off the back of which they presumably want to sell the rest of the series. They also presumably want to see what the market for such a series would be to markets outside their own so that they can try and convince those other markets to buy it in order to resell to the people that live there.

That makes sense to me. That sounds like a solid and open model.

'Do you want this thing we're thinking about making?', 'How many of you want this thing?', and 'Is it worth it for us to make this thing?' seem like really good questions to ask and on which to gather the sweet, tasty data.

That isn't what's happening. Everyone is essentially locked out until someone takes a punt on their region, which I kind of get (but still think is stupid), but I don't get locking out regions from the material you are using to see if people are interested in the product.

This is part of an unreasonably protracted slow death of an archaic model.

It would make a lot more sense if you could watch it on YouTube, seeing as it is, at this stage, essentially a promotional episode.



Dear Amazon,

Why are you making it so hard for us to like you?

Kind regards,

The Australian Market

Erik Wernquist's Wanderers

There is something that burns deep inside me for this sort of thing. A part of me that will sit in awe when I see things like this.

And, short as it is, Erik Wernquist's Wanderers is my favourite science fiction film for a very long time.

It is this perception of space; a habitable, working, and usable space that has reenforced the foundations for which everything else that I love about it is built. It is this awesome and incredible thing that accommodates and allows all those fantasies of space persist. Because where the fantastic yearn to be possibilities, this boundless neighbour into which we must engineer ourselves is a promise.

Gravity Falls

Gravity Falls is this show that's going around at the moment. It's the sort of show that is very definitely my cup of tea. 'Meine Straße', to quote a friend.

I'm not above watching children's television programming. I've never said or implied otherwise. Maybe I have. I don't know. I'm not though. I don't think anyone is. People say that they are, but they're dumb. It's a dumb thing to say.

Gravity Falls is not dumb. I like it. It's funny, and more than a little morally obtuse.

It's about these twins (Mabel and Dipper) who are spending the summer (which apparently lasts multiple seasons) with their great uncle (gruncle) who owns and operates a tourist trap in Gravity Falls, Oregon. He gets a mysterious journal. She gets a pig. Paranormal adventures ensure.

It's good stuff.

I could go on about how it feels more like a classic Nickelodeon cartoon than it does anything that I've ever seen from Disney, but that about sums up that point. No. Wait. I might anyway. There is something in the vein of Hey Arnold!, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and at times Ren & Stimpy by way of The X-Files going on here.

The ongoing plot is kind of engaging with its conspiracies, bizarre villains, and frequently unexplained dialogue and plot points, but if you do keep watching it will probably be because the voice cast is incredible, the script is funny, and the characters are endearing. It's a funny show. It keeps you chuckling.

It's a mirth machine. Mostly on account of its good-spiritedness. It's good-spirited. Even when the characters are doing morally questionable things (which is pretty frequent) they've got such wonderful intentions.

Well, a lot of the time they do. There are times when they range from 'just misguided' through 'selfish' all the way up to 'pretty much entirely morally bankrupt'. Regardless you will find it easy to invest in their victories and misadventures on account of that endearing nature of the characters that I mentioned earlier. It's good fun.

Look, watch this short credits sequence, and you'll understand (on some level) what kind of thing you could be watching if you were watching Gravity Falls. On another level this is just a great clip, and the show is pretty diverse in its comedic approach.

Yep, she taped the pig to the goat, and then married them.