That last post sounded more bitter than I intended, and that made me feel kind of bad because the people I'm bitter with are almost certainly not the same people who will be reading my blog, meaning I just dumped all that annoyed rage of mine on you poor innocent souls. So I thought I'd post something happy to help cushion the blow.
Remember those times I mentioned that I'm working on a novel titled Sara Barton and the Argo? No? That's probably because you haven't read all the articles on this blog. Go read all of them right now. It's okay, I'll wait.
Are you back? Fantastic. So yes, I have been writing a novel. Well now it's done!
Sort of. It isn't available for purchase or even pre-order, and likely won't be for a number of years, and in actuality I've only just finished the first draft, but who cares? I have an actual, 78k word completed manuscript that I'm proud of, a state I haven't been in since... well shoot, since eighth grade, really.
This is really, really huge for me. I feel like I've broken through some kind of glass ceiling. Gotten my mojo back. I've proven to myself that I can do this. I can write a good original novel, start to finish, the whole shebang.
I'm thrilled.
The good news doesn't stop there. As I may or may not have mentioned, Sara Barton and the Argo is part of a larger shared universe of novels and serials that I have planned. While in the process of writing SB&A, I became inspired to finally iron out an actual plan for the shared universe beyond just existing, and as such have created a plan to keep me busy for at least nine more years.
So I've got a finished manuscript and a plan for another seventeen. I'm feeling good right now. Go me. And you know what? Go you. All of you, sitting at home reading this. Follow your dreams. Unless you dream of becoming a serial killer, in which case, follow these nice men who'll take great care of you.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Half-Life is All Dead (And I Don't Care)
It can't be too hard for the average joe to pick up that I'm actually pretty into video games. I quite enjoy playing them, and I also tend to enjoy following games media.
For those of you who don't know, Half-Life is a first person shooter game created by the company Valve that, according to the word of mouth, was a really good, genre redefining title. It's sequel was also apparently really good, it got two more episodic sequel... expansion... things. No one's really clear on it. Most people call them additions bolted on to Half-Life 2, but apparently there are those at Valve who saw them as the first two pieces of Half-Life 3. If that's the case, they really shouldn't have put "Half-Life 2" in the title. I mean seriously, it just confuses people like me.
And lo have we stumbled upon the point of this article. The last time the Half-Life series was heard from was in the year 2007, when Valve released Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (Which is apparently the fourth video game to bear the name "Half-Life." It's as pointlessly confusing as it sounds). Thing is though, I didn't really get into gaming until 2011. I have never played a Half-Life game in my life, and what with modern graphics technology making the look jarringly outdated, I'm not sure I could get into it even if I tried now. So I do not, and will never get, why Half-Life is such a big deal.
That's always put me in a bit of a weird position, since the more long standing members of the gaming community (that's my nice way of saying the old people) seem to hail it as the greatest thing ever to be forged by man. To make matters worse, the last installment of the series left things on a cliffhanger, leaving the internet forever full of mewling Valve fans crying out for another installment. It's been eight years, and they're still mewling, despite the fact that Valve very obviously just doesn't do game development anymore.
Imagine that cocaine suddenly vanished from the world, and there was only one person on planet earth who possessed the knowledge, equipment, and legal copyright to produce it. All the addicts would gather outside that person's house demand day in and day out for something to sate their addiction, but it's never going to come because that guy's given up drug dealing for a much more lucrative and low effort money laundering scheme. That's where the internet and Valve are at right now. And I'm someone looking at all the addicts going, "Seriously guys, just find something else to do with your life. He's not going to make any more."
I'm not the first person to point this out. There have been numerous other articles and videos pointing out, and often satirizing, the fact that Valve does not make video games anymore. So why are people still waiting for Half-Life 3?
Actually, don't bother finding me an answer to that, because I don't care. That sounds callous, and that's probably because it is. I'm just sick of people willfully ignoring the obvious neon writing in the sand that's also been conveniently written in the sky in thirteen different languages.
I made that cocaine analogy earlier because that's also literally the only explanation I can think of for why people are also still treating Valve with any degree of pedigree. Sure, they've made some undoubtedly solid games, but that's in the past, and you should always care more about who a person is now as opposed to who they used to be. Speaking as someone who's actually never played any game by Valve, my interactions of them have been exclusively spent trying to navigate their over saturated storefront, rebuying games said storefront has deleted from my library, and watching the studio continue to coyly ignore the outcries and expectations of fans that I frankly don't think they deserve.
The point I'm trying to make is, I have zero interest and investment in Half-Life as a series. I don't care if it's cliffhanger never gets resolved, because it was before my time. And the more years go by, the more people like me there will be in the world. Someday soon there will be seasoned gamers who not only have never touched Half-Life, but have never heard of it.
Half-Life 3 will never be release. Actually, that's a lie. If Valve ever goes public it absolutely will be. But Half-Life 3 should never be released. For the sake of the fans and the company, that game should never see the light of day. Because at this point, it's been eight years of waiting, and every passing day it isn't released only raises expectations and at this point expectations are already so high that if the game does not transcend the very fabric of space and time and cure at least three types of cancer, the fans will go rabid and burn Valve to the ground with internet hate fires.
*see Duke Nukem Forever*
For those of you who don't know, Half-Life is a first person shooter game created by the company Valve that, according to the word of mouth, was a really good, genre redefining title. It's sequel was also apparently really good, it got two more episodic sequel... expansion... things. No one's really clear on it. Most people call them additions bolted on to Half-Life 2, but apparently there are those at Valve who saw them as the first two pieces of Half-Life 3. If that's the case, they really shouldn't have put "Half-Life 2" in the title. I mean seriously, it just confuses people like me.
And lo have we stumbled upon the point of this article. The last time the Half-Life series was heard from was in the year 2007, when Valve released Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (Which is apparently the fourth video game to bear the name "Half-Life." It's as pointlessly confusing as it sounds). Thing is though, I didn't really get into gaming until 2011. I have never played a Half-Life game in my life, and what with modern graphics technology making the look jarringly outdated, I'm not sure I could get into it even if I tried now. So I do not, and will never get, why Half-Life is such a big deal.
That's always put me in a bit of a weird position, since the more long standing members of the gaming community (that's my nice way of saying the old people) seem to hail it as the greatest thing ever to be forged by man. To make matters worse, the last installment of the series left things on a cliffhanger, leaving the internet forever full of mewling Valve fans crying out for another installment. It's been eight years, and they're still mewling, despite the fact that Valve very obviously just doesn't do game development anymore.
Imagine that cocaine suddenly vanished from the world, and there was only one person on planet earth who possessed the knowledge, equipment, and legal copyright to produce it. All the addicts would gather outside that person's house demand day in and day out for something to sate their addiction, but it's never going to come because that guy's given up drug dealing for a much more lucrative and low effort money laundering scheme. That's where the internet and Valve are at right now. And I'm someone looking at all the addicts going, "Seriously guys, just find something else to do with your life. He's not going to make any more."
I'm not the first person to point this out. There have been numerous other articles and videos pointing out, and often satirizing, the fact that Valve does not make video games anymore. So why are people still waiting for Half-Life 3?
Actually, don't bother finding me an answer to that, because I don't care. That sounds callous, and that's probably because it is. I'm just sick of people willfully ignoring the obvious neon writing in the sand that's also been conveniently written in the sky in thirteen different languages.
I made that cocaine analogy earlier because that's also literally the only explanation I can think of for why people are also still treating Valve with any degree of pedigree. Sure, they've made some undoubtedly solid games, but that's in the past, and you should always care more about who a person is now as opposed to who they used to be. Speaking as someone who's actually never played any game by Valve, my interactions of them have been exclusively spent trying to navigate their over saturated storefront, rebuying games said storefront has deleted from my library, and watching the studio continue to coyly ignore the outcries and expectations of fans that I frankly don't think they deserve.
The point I'm trying to make is, I have zero interest and investment in Half-Life as a series. I don't care if it's cliffhanger never gets resolved, because it was before my time. And the more years go by, the more people like me there will be in the world. Someday soon there will be seasoned gamers who not only have never touched Half-Life, but have never heard of it.
Half-Life 3 will never be release. Actually, that's a lie. If Valve ever goes public it absolutely will be. But Half-Life 3 should never be released. For the sake of the fans and the company, that game should never see the light of day. Because at this point, it's been eight years of waiting, and every passing day it isn't released only raises expectations and at this point expectations are already so high that if the game does not transcend the very fabric of space and time and cure at least three types of cancer, the fans will go rabid and burn Valve to the ground with internet hate fires.
*see Duke Nukem Forever*
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Lazy Sunday Post: I am Machingunsaur!
The Lazy Sunday Post, as I'm sure you've all picked up on, largely exists so that I can reveal the inner machinations of my mind without having to put the kind of effort in an actual post would take. I truly enjoy it as a segment in which I can throw professionalism out the window... well more than usual, I mean. This place has a largely shameless degree of unprofessionalism (shut up Google spell check that is a word), but the Lazy Sunday post is so shameless it actually crosses over into whatever the opposite of shame is. I'm aware shame has an actual antonym, and I just remembered what it is, but I refuse to type it out of principle.
Anyway, Lazy Sunday post is lazy. Big shocker there. Let's move on to what I actually came here to talk about.
Sometimes, when I'm incredibly bored or just experiencing some sort of ADHD episode, I suddenly stop whatever I'm currently doing on my computer, open a new tab, and Google the first thing that pops into my head. For no reason, usually. Though I will take a second to say googling the phrase "laser vision" yields incredibly underwhelming results. Get on that Google.
And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that with seven billion people on the planet, there are no original thoughts anymore. Once, attempting to google something no one had googled before, I typed "squirrel is batman".
 |
| This is ONE of the results. ONE. |
OR ARE THEY?
For you see, ladies and gentlemen, I have had... AN ORIGINAL THOUGHT!
Or at least, original enough that when I googled it, I got zero results, a feat usually only achievable by toddlers and cats. That thought?
"I AM MACHINGUNSAR!!!" (Trio of exclamation points not used in search.)
This was a phrase I would often belt out, exhausted, after a hard days training. Training that usually involved running many, many miles at speeds which would make the jaws of mortal men touch the floor beneath the feet of those very same mortal men. It's a stupid phrase, but it's my stupid phrase, and it's always been a very empowering one for me.
So yeah, the Internet, just remember that even if you finally catch up and popularize Machingunsaur as a gun totting, mother f*cking T-Rex, or a dinosaur with machineguns mounted on the back of its machine gun hands with machine guns for teeth so that its machine guns can machine gun while it machine guns... I thought of it first.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Tomorrow People: Before and After
So I don't know about you guys, but I'm kind of hard pressed for something to watch on Netflix right about now. *raises shield to defend against House of Cards and Orange is the New Black recommendations* Jesus, you people are rabid, you know that? As I was saying, in scrolling through the endless grid of movie options, I saw a whole lot of stuff that looked to be incredibly not my cup of tea. Yea I judge books (well, movies and shows in this case, but whatever) by their covers, so what?
Then I stumbled across an apparent recent addition to the Netflix gallery, The Tomorrow People, which according to its description boxes was a show about psychis from the future who fight bad guys.
This grabbed me not just because of the premise, but because it was a premise I had just thought of that day. Basically my idea was that in the future, all of humanity evolved to gain various telepathic abilities as a result of a very widespread population shrinkage event. Hoping to prevent said cataclysm, a psyhic human journeys to the past to unlock earlier man's latent psychic potential, but he's a total jerk about it, so some of the new psychics have to learn how to deal with their abilities so they can tell him where to shove it.
And with that fresh idea in my mind, I'm wondering how The Tomorrow People compares. So I figured I'd give it a watch, and then write down what I think about it because why not. I'm a writer. I write things down.
[One Netflix binge later...]
Huh. Not what I was expecting. Good. But not what I was expecting. I should keep watching this so I can-
WHAT?!
...
I'M BUSY!
...
IT'S FOR AN ARTICLE!
...
NO, I'M NOT GETTING PAID, BUT-
...
OKAY, OKAY! I'M COMING!
[Several weeks, and an additional Netflix binge later to finish the thing off...]
Okay! I finished the entire first season of The Tomorrow People, and can now share my "after" thoughts on it. For starters, it turns out I was misled by the Netflix description. The show does not feature psychics from the future. Rather, it takes the X-Men route of the supernatural characters being "the next stage of human evolution," albeit with a bit more evolutionary sense to it.
Seriously, (cue sidebar) hasn't it ever struck anyone else as wierd that Marvel claims all of its mutants are born from the next stage of the evolutionary process of humanity, and that mutanthood is dictated by the X-gene? Because that doesn't really explain how they have such a wide range of abilities. Surely one mutated gene appearing in the human population would lead to a race of people with similar abilities, not a bunch of people with that many different abilities. Right? Or at least admit that the mutants aren't all the same species, and they all actually made evolutionary leaps in their own directions. Although really, that many organisms making that many evolutionary leaps in that many different directions in that short a span of time seems... impractical?
Ah who am I kidding, this is comic books we're talking about. Let's get back to the good stuff of shooting lases, punching bad guys, and having stupid amounts of fun!
I digress.
Yeah, it is a tad X-men-y (not an adjective but it is now) what with the super powered people being given the scientific name "homo superior", human evolution being used as an excuse, and there being serious tension between humans and mutants. And then towards the end we get a very clear Magneto type with his "Argh, we can never share this world with the humans, rah!" shtick.
Nevertheless, the show is pretty solid. The action's nice, the effects are good aside from one single solitary scene where a telekinetic raises the dinner glasses of everyone at the table in a toast (which by the way is kind of rude, taking the choice of raising the glass out of their hands.), and the writing is solid. Most of the characters are pretty believable and complex, with the possible exception of Kara who seemed to me to switch personalities as convenient to the plot a couple of times.
And then there were the sex scenes. I have sort of mixed feelings about them. On one hand, all of the involved parties are, to put it bluntly, incredibly good looking, and what's on screen is pretty steamy. That said, I can't help but wonder if the production crew might have caught wind that they might not be getting a second season and made a last ditch effort to save the show by injecting more sex into it, because it becomes a lot more frequent in later episodes and sometimes drew out longer than was necessary from a narrative standpoint.
TV/movie visual shorthand for sex is usually intense kissing, followed by removal shirts, hands roaming, then fall into bed and fade to black. The show, especially in later episodes would get to the fall into bed part, and then just linger on two people making out in their underwear in pre-foreplay to the degree that my reaction was usually along the lines of:
"These two are about to have sex aren't they? Oh, shirts are coming off, they totally are. They hit the bed... and we're not fading? ...still not fading? Wow. Okay, look, this is kind of hot, but I have family in the room right now, so I'm just going to pretend to look at my phone until this is over. Well maybe one more look. Okay, back to the phone. Done yet? Oh thank God, the plot to the rescue."
Which is not to give the false impression that this show is softcore porn. Far from it. This was probably something that happened... six times? In a twenty-two episode show? Way more than I'm used to, but I'm sure it's tame compared to some of the stuff out there. Still, I noticed it.
As I may have tipped off earlier, this show did not get a second season. I learned that information about halfway through, and was immediately worried that I was going to get a giant unresolved cliff hanger like what The Flash did to me a few months ago. So it was with fearful uncertainty that I approached the closing episodes, which proved quite an enjoyable ride, coming to a mostly satisfying conclusion.
There were a couple loose ends, but enough were tied to leave an overall satisfying conclusion while still offering up possibilities for the future. A future this show will never see, but still. Good work Tomorrow People. You were nothing like what I expected you would be, but you were an enjoyable romp. Give it a watch if you're looking for something to watch and have already seen Daredevil, The Flash, Doctor Who, Young Justice, and Arrow, which I have officially declared mandatory viewing for all of humanity.
Lil' Note:
Does anyone else find it funny that Robbie Amell is playing a character named "Stephen," which also happens to be the name of his cousin Stephen Amell? No? Just me? Aw.
Then I stumbled across an apparent recent addition to the Netflix gallery, The Tomorrow People, which according to its description boxes was a show about psychis from the future who fight bad guys.
This grabbed me not just because of the premise, but because it was a premise I had just thought of that day. Basically my idea was that in the future, all of humanity evolved to gain various telepathic abilities as a result of a very widespread population shrinkage event. Hoping to prevent said cataclysm, a psyhic human journeys to the past to unlock earlier man's latent psychic potential, but he's a total jerk about it, so some of the new psychics have to learn how to deal with their abilities so they can tell him where to shove it.
And with that fresh idea in my mind, I'm wondering how The Tomorrow People compares. So I figured I'd give it a watch, and then write down what I think about it because why not. I'm a writer. I write things down.
[One Netflix binge later...]
Huh. Not what I was expecting. Good. But not what I was expecting. I should keep watching this so I can-
WHAT?!
...
I'M BUSY!
...
IT'S FOR AN ARTICLE!
...
NO, I'M NOT GETTING PAID, BUT-
...
OKAY, OKAY! I'M COMING!
[Several weeks, and an additional Netflix binge later to finish the thing off...]
Okay! I finished the entire first season of The Tomorrow People, and can now share my "after" thoughts on it. For starters, it turns out I was misled by the Netflix description. The show does not feature psychics from the future. Rather, it takes the X-Men route of the supernatural characters being "the next stage of human evolution," albeit with a bit more evolutionary sense to it.
Seriously, (cue sidebar) hasn't it ever struck anyone else as wierd that Marvel claims all of its mutants are born from the next stage of the evolutionary process of humanity, and that mutanthood is dictated by the X-gene? Because that doesn't really explain how they have such a wide range of abilities. Surely one mutated gene appearing in the human population would lead to a race of people with similar abilities, not a bunch of people with that many different abilities. Right? Or at least admit that the mutants aren't all the same species, and they all actually made evolutionary leaps in their own directions. Although really, that many organisms making that many evolutionary leaps in that many different directions in that short a span of time seems... impractical?
Ah who am I kidding, this is comic books we're talking about. Let's get back to the good stuff of shooting lases, punching bad guys, and having stupid amounts of fun!
I digress.
Yeah, it is a tad X-men-y (not an adjective but it is now) what with the super powered people being given the scientific name "homo superior", human evolution being used as an excuse, and there being serious tension between humans and mutants. And then towards the end we get a very clear Magneto type with his "Argh, we can never share this world with the humans, rah!" shtick.
Nevertheless, the show is pretty solid. The action's nice, the effects are good aside from one single solitary scene where a telekinetic raises the dinner glasses of everyone at the table in a toast (which by the way is kind of rude, taking the choice of raising the glass out of their hands.), and the writing is solid. Most of the characters are pretty believable and complex, with the possible exception of Kara who seemed to me to switch personalities as convenient to the plot a couple of times.
And then there were the sex scenes. I have sort of mixed feelings about them. On one hand, all of the involved parties are, to put it bluntly, incredibly good looking, and what's on screen is pretty steamy. That said, I can't help but wonder if the production crew might have caught wind that they might not be getting a second season and made a last ditch effort to save the show by injecting more sex into it, because it becomes a lot more frequent in later episodes and sometimes drew out longer than was necessary from a narrative standpoint.
TV/movie visual shorthand for sex is usually intense kissing, followed by removal shirts, hands roaming, then fall into bed and fade to black. The show, especially in later episodes would get to the fall into bed part, and then just linger on two people making out in their underwear in pre-foreplay to the degree that my reaction was usually along the lines of:
"These two are about to have sex aren't they? Oh, shirts are coming off, they totally are. They hit the bed... and we're not fading? ...still not fading? Wow. Okay, look, this is kind of hot, but I have family in the room right now, so I'm just going to pretend to look at my phone until this is over. Well maybe one more look. Okay, back to the phone. Done yet? Oh thank God, the plot to the rescue."
Which is not to give the false impression that this show is softcore porn. Far from it. This was probably something that happened... six times? In a twenty-two episode show? Way more than I'm used to, but I'm sure it's tame compared to some of the stuff out there. Still, I noticed it.
As I may have tipped off earlier, this show did not get a second season. I learned that information about halfway through, and was immediately worried that I was going to get a giant unresolved cliff hanger like what The Flash did to me a few months ago. So it was with fearful uncertainty that I approached the closing episodes, which proved quite an enjoyable ride, coming to a mostly satisfying conclusion.
There were a couple loose ends, but enough were tied to leave an overall satisfying conclusion while still offering up possibilities for the future. A future this show will never see, but still. Good work Tomorrow People. You were nothing like what I expected you would be, but you were an enjoyable romp. Give it a watch if you're looking for something to watch and have already seen Daredevil, The Flash, Doctor Who, Young Justice, and Arrow, which I have officially declared mandatory viewing for all of humanity.
Lil' Note:
Does anyone else find it funny that Robbie Amell is playing a character named "Stephen," which also happens to be the name of his cousin Stephen Amell? No? Just me? Aw.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Oliver Queen's New Suit
As I'm sure some of you may have heard, the CW's hit DC show Arrow recently had itself a grand old time at Comic Con as it does every year. Plenty of things were teased, hinted at, and confirmed. Diggle's costume, gay Mr. Terrific, Barrowman's ring, some other shenanigans that are probably currently escaping my mind because I'm still picking pieces of it off of the walls.
And that's just the news for Arrow. There was also a ton of bombs dropped for its spin-off shows The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Vixen. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which I follow for the same reason you would follow a drunken friend who just walked out of the house carrying a salad fork instead of his car keys, also showed off a new trailer.
As you can well imagine, being the intrepid blogger that I am, my heart swelled with the possibilities this news provided me with. What to write about? What not to write about seems like a better question, really. Not going to lie, I'm excited. I'm positively giddy and I'm bouncing off the walls.
That said, I did eventually have to pick something to write about. I'm an independent blogger scrapping a living almost entirely off of borrowed money. I do not own a press pass and thus am not the kind of person who has any business "breaking the story" as it were. I do, however, find myself in a nice comfortable position from which I can analyze the story, and offer up opinions that would otherwise be wasted in the comment sections of other people's articles.
So, right now, I'd like to talk about the latest image of Oliver Queen's new suit. I don't want to risk my humble little digital desk being overturned and burned by the WB legal team, so I'm not going to include the image here. Instead I'll just post a link to it.
Seen it? Awesome. Now let's talk.
To start with, I like the suit. I find it to be an interesting new direction, and it definitely feels more superhero-y, if that's an adjective (and if it isn't it is now), what with the exposed arms and what not. I had a feeling the sleeves were coming off the suit eventually, given that the showrunners have always stated an eventual goal is Green Arrow in all his glory.
That said, I think I like the old suit more. It was kind of cool how it was slowly modified and updated with necessity and opportunity. It almost felt like a character all its own, growing and changing but still being the same original object. This new suit change isn't an update, its an all-out swap. Which, actually now that I think about it, could work from a character standpoint. Huh. Well played, writers. You're transformation symbolism is duly noted.
So yeah, overall I like it. It's more comic book-y (also probably not an adjective but it is now) which is a direction I can get behind. What I do take issue with is one particular area of skin the Green Arrow's costume leaves exposed. Go ahead and take another look, and pay special attention to the bow arm.
Those new gauntlets the Green Arrow suit has leave Oliver's inner forearm completely exposed. As someone who has operated a bow and arrow multiple times in the past, I can tell you first hand that this is not an area you want exposed when a high tension cord is zipping mere centimeters past your arm after you just used upwards of sixty pounds of force to draw it back. One wrong move, and that bowstring is going to drag itself across your forearm, potentially slicing it open if the bow is powerful enough.
Now I understand my capabilities with a bow and arrow border on the absurdly novelist, and Oliver Queen is literally the most skilled archer in modern fiction (thank you Stan Lee's Fan Fights for settling that debate), but even still. You can't tell me that in the heat of battle, bullets whizzing everywhere and maybe having just been punched in the face, that there isn't even a chance that Oliver will mess up on his form a little and get slapped by his bowstring. Well, you could, and there's actually a chance you're right, but there's also a chance you're wrong, so HA!
Anyway, it just seems odd that an archer superhero's costume would leave exposed an area that archery stores sell gear specifically to protect. But whatever. The suit's great. That forearm's gonna bug me. Can't wait for Season 4. Hi Tom!
Arrow returns to the CW October 7.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Crackpot Theory: The Infinite North Korea Theorum
Despite repeatedly insisting it wants to destroy us all and become the dominant species, most of us sensible nations are content to pat its cute little head and reply "Of course you will, dearie," every time it threatens Armageddon so that we can focus our attentions on countries with more oil.
 |
| Like those. Those'll do very nicely. |
Our planet is the North Korea of the galaxy.
While you pick your jaws up from the floor, I will elaborate. As previously stated, North Korea is pretty poor, comparatively speaking. A lot of people within its borders seem to be going hungry, or so I'm told from the Grade A journalism that is The Interview. In the past people have attempted to alleviate this by doing what people always do, send in aid. Unfortunately, North Korea is pretty notorious about not being so gracious with accepting aid.
This seems, at least to me, to be a pretty foolish position to take, up there with shooting yourself in the stomach and then punching anyone who offers to stop you from bleeding to death. But hey, to each their own, right? Because now, I want you to picture this:
A galaxy full of space faring, interplanetary traveling, alien civilizations. Some civilizations are bit better off than others, there are a few unstable military regimes and downright horrible places to live. And then, in that one corner of the galaxy, is that planet.
You know the one I'm talking about. So woefully behind in technology they've only occasional been to their own moon. Full of starving people, poor as poor can be, and incredibly hostile to outside cultures. You've heard rumors of people who visit the planet being locked up in government facilities, never to be heard from again because they're being interrogated and tortured and experimented on. The governing bodies run by eccentric man children. In the 50s, it had a big political split it still hasn't mended.
The government of the planet insists it is capable of going to war with the rest of the galactic superpowers, and puts out streams of propoganda attesting to this that also paints outside cultures as hostile forces out to destroy them and their way of life.
Luckily, these days, most of the galactic community is content to ignore this backward bizarro world, patting its cute little blue head and saying "Of course you can, dearie" every time it threatens War of the Worlds so that it can focus on planets with more magic space elements.
 |
| Like this one. This'll do very nicely. |
For all the looking down on North Korea we here on planet Earth do, there is a proportionately equal amount of looking down on Earth being done here in the Milky Way. And it doesn't stop there, for it also follows that just as the Milky Way looks down on Earth, so does the local galaxy cluster look down on the Milky Way. And just as the local galaxy cluster looks down on the Milky Way, so too does the universe look down on our local galaxycluster. And just as the universe looks down on our local galaxy cluster, so too does the multiverse look down on our universe!
Best of luck with coming to terms with that.
003 out.
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