Representations of Violence in Kick-Ass

The movie Kick-Ass, based on the comic series by Mark Millar, came out yesterday. Went to see it tonight with some friends. People familiar with Millar's work will probably know immediately if this is a move for them or not. If that name means nothing to you, well, the name of the movie is probably a pretty good indicator. For my part, I was plenty entertained, but be warned, it is very violent and profane and obscene at times, too. Lots of critics have talked about the amount of violence in Kick-Ass, particularly whether or not it's reasonable to have so much of it being perpetrated by a character who is supposedly 11-years-old. For my part, I was just fascinated by the completely different approach the movie took with filming violence depending on the character perpetrating it. Spoilers ahead, obviously.

Let's start with the title character. Kick-Ass doesn't actually engage in a whole lot of violent activity; and when he does, it takes one of two distinct forms. At the start, when Kick-Ass first goes out and starts picking fights with criminals, the action is chaotic and uncoordinated. This is obviously fitting. Kick-Ass isn't really a fighter. He has no training and is in completely over his head; and he gets his ass kicked as a result. At the end, when Kick-Ass is actually living up to his name, it is in the most ridiculous, nerd, wish fulfillment ways imaginable. In those twin moments, Kick-Ass is living his dream.

Hit Girl, on the other hand, gets several impressive action sequences in which she brutalizes her enemies mercilessly. The over-the-top, hyper-stylized approach taken here is also fitting. Hit Girl, being a child raised to think that this is normal (and, as her father says, to look at it sort of as a game), likely has no real concept of what she's doing. She's acting on instinct, doing as she's been taught. Not thinking so much as responding. There are two exceptions to this rule: The scene in the lobby of D'Amico's building, and the showdown with D'Amico himself. The first scene comes just after Hit Girl is overcoming the death of her father. Suddenly aware of the stakes of this game, she talks her way into the building and does what she needs to do efficiently and coldly. Notably, she isn't wearing the Hit Girl costume in this scene. Once it's back on, the theatricality and sense of distance return. The fight with D'Amico is different because it's the only time she ever seems to be in real danger, and she responds to it. There's a sort of panic hindering her, and some of the chaos (and lack of coordination) of the Kick-Ass fights enter the picture.

The one time we see Big Daddy taking out multiple opponents is strikingly similar to Hit Girl's sequence in the lobby. The scene is visceral and clean. If there is chaos, it is only on the part of the thugs as they try to figure out what is happening to them. Unlike his daughter, Big Daddy knows exactly what he's doing and why he's doing it, and, as a result, he moves with purpose and efficiency. It's stark in its contrast from most of the rest of the film.

Not much else to say on the matter. I just thought this was interesting and figured I'd put it here instead of bugging people over and over with it. Like I said, I enjoyed the movie, and I'm particularly glad that, even in what was entirely meant as a popcorn movie, Matthew Vaughn took the time to add touches like this.

On iPads

I posted earlier today why I dislike the iPad indirectly, as Apple's latest, greatest foot-soldier in the ideological war about what mobile computing specifically and the Internet in general should be. I have plenty of reasons for disliking it as a device as well: namely that just a few short months ago, I was incredibly excited for what it might turn out to be and honestly thought it might be the first Apple product I'd ever own. Here is what I dislike about the iPad from a tech/spec perspective. None of them are anything you haven't heard before, but they're all worth consideration.

Aspect Ratio: This may seem incredibly finicky, but this is actually my biggest complaint. Apple is trying to advertise this as a device that will revolutionize the way we consume media; and then they gave us a format that's only fit for a single type of media: eBooks. 4x3 does not work for video anymore. Everything is produced in either 16x9 or 16x10 these days, and I want to watch it in those formats without letter-boxing on my portable media device. I prefer 16x10 for normal use, too. It lets me have multiple pages/applications open simultaneously. Oh, wait, that's another inexplicable failure on the device. We'll get to that later.

If you do want to use the device as an eReader, maybe 16x10 isn't quite as natural, but it allows for longer pages and you'll get used to it. Moreover, with all of the talk of eBooks evolving beyond plain text, of providing their own multimedia experience (an idea that I'm leaning towards disliking, even if only for the sake of codgerliness), you would think that people would be pushing eBooks into the landscape layout and using the additional horizontal real estate to provide a dedicated place for these supplemental materials or for improved navigation options.

Really, the only reason I see for the 4x3 aspect ratio is the ease of providing digital versions of magazines/comics. If the screen is the same layout as the original publication, there's no need to reformat for the new device. If reading Time or Spiderman (probably for no cheaper than you could get physical copies) is really what you want an iPad for, though...well, you're not exactly a person with reasoning with.

Multitasking: This isn't a major complaint, but I hinted at it earlier, so I may as well cover it now. On a device this large, I want to be able to have multiple applications running simultaneously. I want to be able to take quick notes on the page I'm reading or have a chat window open alongside my browser. That doesn't seem like it's asking a lot. The only good reason to disallow multitasking is to improve battery life; but that doesn't seem like a good enough reason for me. If I need to conserve the battery, I'll be careful about what I'm doing. God.

Flash: So long as I'm discussing things that are relatively minor complaints, lack of Flash is just stupid. Any talk of Flash killing the battery life has been stuffed by the existence of hardware accelerated Flash, and with the state of the web being what it is, not having Flash is crippling. Also, if I ever actually hear somebody claim that the iPad's lack of Flash support is causing people to abandon it, I will strangle them. Not to death, but certainly to discomfort. The iPad user base will never be more than a minute fraction of the Internet using population. HTML 5 is changing the Internet. It has been and will continue to do so regardless of what formats the iPad supports. It has been months since YouTube required Flash in either Chrome or Safari, and as more browsers adopt HTML5 standards, more people will switch away from Flash.

Expansion: Really? No USB or SD support? How on earth am I supposed to move media between my home computer and my iPad? I need to sync it with your proprietary software (and probably use your proprietary media formats)? Ummm...no thanks. I've already got several SD cards and USB drives littered with music and video that I use with my existing devices and that I'd much prefer to continue using; and I see no good reason why I shouldn't be able to (other than the fact that whatever file system running on the device likely isn't capable of it).

Camera: Again, no good reason to not have a camera built into the bezel. One of the major selling points of the device is that it's everything you use the Internet for without the hassle of a whole computer; but video chat is a major app of interest these days, and a tablet like this is a perfect vehicle for it. If this thing could use Skype, I would buy one for my mother so she would finally leave me alone about getting it set up on her (ancient) XP machine. The only reason I can see for not supporting it is because people would find ways to use it over the 3G connection, which would piss off AT&T. Is this a good enough reason? Not even kind of.

Profit Margins: Nobody makes $250/device on bleeding edge technology, or at least they shouldn't. Sony is still barely turning a profit on each PS3 sold. The fact that Apple is making that much per device at a minimum is proof of just how much better the iPad could be at the same price point. What's most frustrating, to me at least, is that the 3G option costs an additional $130 (plus a separate data plan) when, by industry estimates, it only adds $30 to the production cost. I'd be willing to pay a premium of $50 for 3G on this sort of device, but $130 is just ridiculous.


So, there you have it. Even if I weren't supremely pissed off by Apple's business practices and ideology, I would never buy this device in its current iteration. Instead, I'm looking forward to Tegra powered devices, particularly the Adam, which seems like everything I hoped the iPad would be back before its official announcement. We'll see where tablet devices head in the future, but if Apple succeeds without improving the functionality of the iPad, I will be seriously disappointed in humanity.

On Apple

There's plenty to say on this topic, but I'm going to keep it brief.

Long story short, I will always, always prefer open standards and community driven moderation of quality over proprietary mediums who have their content governed by a single entity. However, a commentator on NPR this morning drew up an apt analogy that makes me understand, to an extent, why some people are perfectly happy using the knee-capped system Apple has in place. He noted that using an iPhone/Pad is much like belonging to a gated community. Standards are put in place to ensure that your perfect little existence remains as unblemished as possible; and if you're willing to deal with the inconveniences and the isolation, that can be a fine life. It's just certainly not for me.

It's also worth noting that, in most gated communities, the residents are either allowed to be part of the decision making or at least have the possibility of becoming part of the board that makes the rules. No such luck here. As so many have noted, Apple has seemingly become the Big Brother it pretended to be rebelling against in the (in)famous 1984 ad; going so far as to tell us which generally inoffensive, scientific words cannot go in our book descriptions. Nobody really cares, though. Apple is doing it for The Greater Good (The Greater Good).

Oh well, I just hope that there are enough of us who aren't willing to sacrifice free access to information that the market will continue to count us as worthwhile and that Apple doesn't get big enough in the field of pervasive computing to kill Net Neutrality in a way that service providers never dreamed possible. Long live Google.

Blurring Genres

People who have seen me play action games, especially games that allow me to save anywhere and reload quickly, know that I have an odd habit of not being content with merely completing a section of the game. By and large, I feel challenged to a way of progressing through the challenges posed to me in a way that causes me the least damage while progressing through the sequence as smoothly as possible. Depending on the specific style of the game, this can mean anything from stealthily removing guards one by one from the shadows to removing the heads of every enemy from the greatest distance possible to using surgical explosive strikes to deform the environment and eliminate the threat.

This could be understood as a desire to preserve my characters life in case another difficult situation is right around the corner, but I intuitively understand it more as a path finding exercise. I feel that, of all of the possible ways to get through a game, there must be some ideal path, one that the game mechanics best support and that is most in line with the character I am manipulating and the atmosphere I'm working in. In this way, the game is much like a puzzle for me to solve, and the experience of iteratively improving my solution is therapeutic in a way.

Now it seems that the fine folks at Ubisoft, and particularly the team behind the Splinter Cell series, have come to the same conclusion. I downloaded the demo for Splinter Cell: Conviction the other day, and while I will say that it doesn't feel like Splinter Cell as I know it, it is a perfect, even planned example of the action game meets puzzle game approach. Mike Fahey at Kotaku came to a similar conclusion during his hands on last month, but I couldn't have realized the extent to which it worked until I played the game for myself. Figuring out where enemies are, the order in which to mark them, and finding the proper guard to melee in order to set off the chain is entirely a matter of trial and error, of learning the level, and of following the path you've decided on until it either shows its imperfections or gets you through the level ideally. You can make up for a botched sequence by getting back to cover and either popping off the enemies individually or sneaking back into the shadows and starting over again; but doing so is both harder and less fulfilling, seemingly be design.

I'm not certain if Splinter Cell: Conviction is a game I'd actually go out and buy, but it's interesting knowing that other people see these games the way I do and that maybe I'm less "weird as hell" and more "ahead of the curve".

On Bromance

I really need to be writing any number of other things right now, but none of them are working for me at the moment and I'm hoping that cranking this out will get the juices flowing again. In any case, I think that this is an interesting topic and one worth talking about briefly, so without further ado, here we go (warning, gross generalizations ahead).

A few months ago, I was talking with a friend about something or other and mentioned that I had a new man-crush brewing (in this instance, it was Rick Bayless, who is my culinary man-crush). She laughed a bit and commented that, for as much as I and others talk about man-crushes, there was no real female analogue. This made me sad, as I can't imagine life without the stupid grin I get when I think of Captain Mal Reynolds. What made me sadder, though, was when I realized that no analogue to the man-crush meant no analogue for bromance. Lord, life without bromance *and* having to deal with menstruation? Talk about short end of the stick! No wonder women tend to be more high strung than men.

To explain exactly what I mean by all this, I suppose I need to quickly break down a man-crush and explain how it relates to bromance and why, exactly, bromance is such an awesome thing. In short, to me, a man-crush is basically a deep seated admiration for another man. A recognition that, if you could, you would echo the abilities or attitude of that individual in your own living. Sometimes man-crushes lead towards emulation, but more often, a man-crush acknowledges that the desired skill or trait is somehow inimitable. That doesn't mean that we don't strive for advancement in admired area; just like a normal crush, the a man-crush motivates us to improve ourselves in hopes of earning the mutual admiration of the crush.

Another way in which man-crushes and normal crushes are alike is that our strongest man-crushes tend to be directed at unattainable individuals. We learn to see the flaws of the people who are actually in our lives, and therefore we cannot idolize them to the same degree; but we can definitely have man-crushes on our friends. And, just as romance arises from a mutual crush between two individuals, bromance is the end result of a reciprocated man-crush. And just as actual romantic relationships far exceed the benefits of a simple one-sided crush; bromance improves our lives vastly more than a simple man-crush.

For one thing, there's something incredibly empowering about knowing that a man you admire admires you. Perhaps more important, though, is the knowledge that somebody has your back. It's simple fact that men desire to protect the people they care about. Failing to at least make an effort take care of your own is reprehensible, and no man would risk the respect of a person he admires by not being there for support when shit goes south. Again, the comfort that comes from knowing that you've got unwavering support when things start to fall apart, whether that support comes in the form of a drinking buddy or a wingman or a second cannot be overstated.

Now, I know that all of this sounds kind of sexist. I know that women admire and support their friends, too, but there's a difference. Not all male-male friendships result in bromance, and we certainly still support and respect those friends. In those friendships that can be described as bromantic, though, there's just a certain...purity and earnestness that seems absent from normal male-male friendships and virtually all female-female friendships. Those few women I've talked with about this seem to agree with this assessment.

I offer the following thought experiment as inadequate proof. I was watching Superbad today, and there's a scene towards the end of the movie where one of the characters, drunk as can be, picks up his passed out friend and carries him as he runs from a party that the police are busting. For most of my friends, I would try to rouse and warn them. I would wonder if they got away safely and call them later to find out. But I would not pick them up and run with them. For my truest friends, though, this is exactly what I would do; and they would do it for me (you know, if they could). Women out there: can you honestly say the same? If not, well, :(

On Fanfiction

Last week, courtesy of Facebook, I learned about a fanfic called My Immortal. It is widely, and rightly, regarded as being among the worst fanfics ever written. For a couple of hours, a friend and I regaled ourselves reading through it, laughing, reading especially heinous passages aloud, and generally celebrating our superior intellect. While I'm not anywhere near to endorsing either My Immortal as good writing, I am going to take a moment to build a mild case for why I was too hard on it and why we can't simply write off all bad writing as being without value. If nothing else, we need to acknowledge the value that it has, or at least ought to have, for the author.

Like many young nerds with an active online life, I tried my hand at writing a fanfic when I was in high school. And like many young fanfic authors, my story was a self-insertion. I could try to defend myself on the grounds that I was not making an effort to radically disrupt an existing canon or that my character avoided most of the teenage author Mary Sue pitfalls; but that doesn't change the fact that it was generally a poor story (no matter what the other members of the message board I posted it on said).

After a couple of hints and a lot of stalking, I recently found a similarly dreadful fanfic that a good friend wrote around the same time period. While I was gently teasing her about it, we came to the shared conclusion that neither of us really regretted writing these things. Why? Because we learned a lot about writing. We learned about persevering and finishing a story -- my story was 13 pages, hers a whopping 60. We learned the basics of how characters interact and how to build drama. And, in looking back, we learned how *not* to do a whole lot of things and a bit of valuable humility.

I have legitimate hope that the author of My Immortal eventually got over her angsty teenager-ness, kept writing, and uses the reaction to her (fortunately anonymous) early writing as motivation to improve. Writing is hard. I doubt that anybody can do it well without lots of practice; and for lots of people, working with an established, familiar setting is a nice crutch for flexing creative muscle and learning the basics of style and form. I may be mildly embarrassed by my character story, but no more so than I am of many of my old essays or even half of what I write on this blog; and I am in no way ashamed that I wrote it. In fact, I'm mostly ashamed that I haven't done more fiction writing since. If I were to somehow crank out another 13 page story, even if it were just as bad as that first one, I'd be damn proud of myself.

So, try not to be too hard on the poorly assembled day dreams of aspiring writers. We all need to start somewhere, and so long as you reach a point where you're willing to accept the flaws that exist in what you've made and learn from them, there is no shame in trying.

On a final note: no, I will not share my story with all of you. Near as I know, only two people outside the original community it was written for have read it; and I'm happy to keep it that way. If you know way too much about my message board junkie days, you might be able to track it down, but after some searching of my own, I can tell you that Google won't make it easy for you.

The Significance of Statistics in RPGs

Mass Effect 2 just came out, and it is incredible. It's not without fault -- if I wanted to, I could pick out plenty of gripes both minor and less than -- but these faults are only apparent to me when I analyze it from outside the experience. At any time that I have actually been playing the game (and that's nearly 40 hours at this point), I have been absolutely enthralled by the characters, the story, and the gameplay.

One thing that the developers did in an effort to make the game more accessible was to streamline the combat and the bookkeeping. There's much less equipment to deal with and fewer abilities for each character to sink experience into. Looking at reviews on Amazon, I see that this has caused a furor among many shut-in genre snobs complaining about how this somehow diminishes the game as an RPG. To these folks, I have one word: bullshit.

In the days of pen and paper role playing, stats were assigned to player characters to allow the game master some way of determining what was feasible for the players to do in the game world. It's that simple. In the modern era of videogames, no human being needs to determine what players are or are not capable of doing. We can write elaborate rules that determine that for us and hid them away behind the scenes in physics engines and other computations. Even if hit points and damage modifiers are in effect, the player only needs to be made aware of their existence and general impact, not every specific facet of how they work. This allows us to have rules governing player behavior that are infinitely more complex, which allows for scenarios that are more consistent and more elaborate, and the players' blindness to the exact functioning allows for an experience that is more engrossing.

In the early days of videogames, it wasn't possible for players to have any control over the plot or the game world. For the most part, if there was any sort of significant plot, everything ran on rails with the player being the vehicle for advancing the plot, not an agent actively participating in its progression. Combat, then, was the only thing that the player had any sort of say in. So, in order to give a sense of individuality, games gave players more control over how they were to engage in it. Statistics and customization, tools that formerly existed to provide regulation of the game world, turned into mechanisms by which players were allowed a sense of personal identity in their character. Certainly, pen and paper games had player controlled proficiency development of this nature before the era of videogames; but they weren't essential to the genre. Unfortunately, the proliferation games allowing player directed character growth and boasting that they have "RPG elements" has apparently made it the defining aspect of the genre.

Truth be told, these sorts of customization options only lead to min-maxing and metagaming, the eternal enemies of immersion. Agonizing decisions about what's best instead of what's fitting; elaborate plotting of intended builds and ideal combinations; overwrought mappings of stimulus to optimal response. How can an interactive story survive when the player is more concerned with how he or she intends to play it than with how it will unfold? How can you effectively extend yourself into a character when you are entirely preoccupied with controlling him or her?

Statistics and customization are not the defining characteristics of the ideal role playing game. They are a cancer. What was once a healthy, functioning component of the genre has swollen and now threatens its very livelihood. They are a parasite, slowly killing the host on which they rode into popularity while simultaneously attempting to assume its identity. The folks at Bioware recognized this and have made an attempt to put them back in their proper place, and the result is hatred.

Statistics do not make an RPG. Role playing makes an RPG, and the Mass Effect series, taken as a whole, allows for deeper role playing than any computer game I've ever seen. I never could have predicted the way that certain decisions I made in Mass Effect 1 could have impacted the game world in Mass Effect 2; and I've spent the last couple of days consumed with questions about what the final effects of choices I made in this middle chapter will turn out to be. I am very nearly as curious about what this universe would look like for characters with other tendencies (as anybody who has heard me discuss a hypothetical "violent space lesbian" is aware). I am more attached to the character of Commander Shepard as I have brought him to life than I have been to any other character I have ever played.

Certainly, there is nothing wrong with player control over statistics or ability development. They allow you to impart some notion of who you feel your character is and how they interact with the reality around them. When they become the focus, though, something has gone terrible wrong, at least if you're trying to create a pure Role Playing Game. Anybody who discounts Mass Effect 2 not as a game, but as an RPG because they tried to relegate character growth to its proper place is missing the point and shutting themselves out of one of the best gaming experiences of all time.