So far to go, so little to see

This post is going to be largely related to video-gaming again and in particular sandbox or open-world games. I for one adore a good sandbox game, the freedom to explore the entirety of a game's world as you like and progress through its story at a variable pace is great, but it has so much more potential to it than is being exploited. For one thing a lot of games seem to adopt the guise of an open world setting, usually in advertising, then they turn out to be nothing of the sort. Games like the remake of Bionic Commando look to be offering a whole world to explore but then they stick in some macguffin like radiation or robot turrets or giant killer shrimps to keep you following a linear path. Sure, you can see a distant and interesting landscape before you, but it could be a painting of a landscape, just a wall or an endless sea of molten lava, the gameplay would be unchanged.

The issues with the games that actually employ a truly explorable environment are two-fold, firstly: it often feels like a complete chore to travel around them and secondly: a great deal of them are just fucking dull places to be. The first one is admittedly less common, there's a long list of games that tackled it admirably, Spiderman 2 and Prototype made a point of making travel a highly significant aspect of gameplay and making it great fun as well. GTA IV and Just Cause 2 dealt with it by simply offering you so many ways to travel that you were highly unlikely not to find one that suited you. Mercenaries jazzed it up by just throwing random jeeps in your path, if you're anything like me playing that game you'll take hours to get to each mission because every time a technical drives by you cannot help but stalk it like a starving eagle before finally nailing it with an RPG, still one of the most satisfying enemy dispatches in any game. Destroy All Humans made it more interesting by providing you with the option to either blast and anal probe your way through towns full of mid-1950's generic dullards or don a disguise and follow them around mind melding to keep your energy levels up (then getting bored and killing them all anyway). In the lesser games you just walk/drive/hop around counting the minutes of your life tick away as you get closer to your objective, zero fun sir.

The second problem is bigger by far, the worlds are becoming depressingly cut and dry, even in the good ones, Mercenaries with its endless grey field of hills where the sun never shines and Just Cause 2 with its endless repeating power plants and towns that stretch on for miles and miles. The worlds often just feel like a set up for destruction and whatever else, you feel distant, separated. The world should be as much a character as the player and NPCs. Wind Waker understood this, Colossus understood this, Brutal Legend did too (about the only point in that game's favour). Even then they're just cities and fields, you can't really interact with them. In Silent Hill the map was constantly gleefully fucking with you and trying to make you not alive, there was a constant air of menace and threat. Still, more can be done.

Minecraft is an interesting example because you're free to shape the world however you please, you could burn it all down, replace all the trees with towers of obsidian and craft a golden throne for yourself or you could round up all the dogs, bury them under the ground and build a barking town (it's been done, possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen). I have a theory that minecraft turns you into a terrible person, though. On my map I found myself uprooting trees purely so I could get a better view of my villa from the giant stone AT-AT I was building. I've killed cows and pigs simply because they were in the way of my construction project. There's a portal to hell on my roof. Still, minecraft is one of my favourite gaming worlds in spite of all that, because it has multiple plains that distinctly differ, you've got the snowy areas, the green areas, hills, waterfalls, caves, the netherworld, all interesting in their own right and given enough time you could swap them all around.

What I want to see, however, is an open world that no human could ever come close to experiencing, I mean, you could go to random bits of Norway or New Zealand, put up a few tasteless sculptures and voila, Brutal Legend. Buy a few hundred smoke machines and fill a backwater American town with clockwork mannequins and bam, Silent Hill. I've had an idea for an open world that would be properly interesting to explore for a while now, it would actually be closer to home than any before it. The idea is simple, an open world game where you play as a borrower, or similar creature. If you've read the book, seen the abysmal Hollywood adaptation or the amazing Studio Ghibli one, you'll know what I mean, for everyone else, borrowers are just tiny people, scarcely bigger than ants. Imagine an open world which was just a house and a garden but was enormous relative to your size, you'd have to find items you could re-purpose to scale cupboards, find nooks in the skirting board to escape a hungry cat (just the one AI cat, impossible to kill, coming and going from the playable map at regular intervals) and you could even construct your own home and means of regular travel within the house and outside in the garden. Don't tell me that wouldn't be amazing. You'd have to avoid preying insects, hunt the smaller ones, find human utensils to use as tools, there could even be a time frame, say the occupants have gone on holiday for a week, which plays out real time like Dead Rising and you have free roam of the house to complete whatever ultimate goal by the time they get back. There was a game that tried something like this, Chibi-Robo, but you were pretty limited in what you could do. I actually got the idea from a counter-strike level somebody made (modded levels in that game represent some of the best level design in any game). I have other ideas too, like a game that exists on multiple planes of existence, each one fully explorable or a constantly changing dreamscape that's never the same for too long. The borrower idea however I feel is the strongest, if you have a massively intuitive inventory system and properly realistic physics, books that could be pulled from shelves, gigantic viscous raindrops, twigs that break at the pressure point. It would be a huge job, but if done right I think it would be amazing, designers take note.

Of Birds, Bugs and Beasts

I don't really know why, but lately I seem to be valuing the company of animal life just as much as the company of humans, I could burn hours of my life patiently observing and interacting with different creatures and will often stop in the middle of the street if I catch a glimpse of something interesting. I think part of it comes from all the nature shows I grew up with, between 3 and 7 or thereabouts our TV was less an electronic transmitter with 5 fuzzy channels and more a hyperadvanced zoo exhibit, constantly flickering between families of elephants, packs of wolves and the insides of a magnetic termite mound. I would talk endlessly about my interests in nature and desires to work in Kruger national park when I grew up, my paper-mache and yoghurt pot creation 'dinosaur mountain' was the pride of Papworth nursery. The problem, which still exists now, is almost that I'm too passionate about animals, I have a very bad habit of anthropomorphizing them, which is a mentally akin to dressing up your dog or having conversations with your goldfish. For me it's more like creating a narrative in my head, with all the fiction I write and all the films I watch/make it's hard not to think in terms of characters, shots and storylines. Yesterday I was out walking the dogs when I stumbled across something on the road about a foot from the verge, a devil's coach horse (pictured below). Purty, ain't it? It's a
type of beetle that you can find all around Europe, famed for being distinctly aggressive and having a bite easily capable of drawing blood from a human. When I saw it I instantly stopped to take a closer look at the jack head sized critter, but he took notice of me too. He started backpedaling, gnashing his impressive jaws and flexing his tail so it curled over the top of his head, two little white polyps emerging out of it. I later found out that said polyps produce a very unpleasant smell and it's a secondary deterrent against attack (the mandibles being the first). I found the whole affair fascinating and watched it play out for a good two minutes, imagining what he would be saying if he had a voice, probably words to the effect of "Hey, bugger off! You don't want to fuck with me!" or maybe "Come on, bring it! I don't care how big you are! I ain't backing down!" the notion that this was a 'take on all comers' sort of beetle absolutely slayed me. In truth he was probably just reacting reflexively, no real thought processes involved, hell I don't even know if he was a he but I found the display so endearing I half wanted to take him home.

It's a strange quality in many people that they can find almost human levels of personality in animals when often there markedly isn't any at all. Sometimes there is, I'm currently staying with my parents and our 3 dogs, 2 cats and gecko, the dogs in particular all have very distinct personalities. Firstly there's Preston, the oldest at about 15, he's a lithe, skinny old boy who's breed is a unique blend of whippet, doberman, labrador and up to 54 others unknown to all. He has a habit of wandering around aimlessly like a senile old man and will often blunder into a room and stand there seemingly trying to remember what he can in for, then leave, only to repeat the process ten minutes later. He's black with sandy brown paws, ears and eyebrows, he is in fact the only dog I've ever known to have an eyebrow pattern and they give him a look which makes him seem a little forlorn, as if he just lost his balloon, doubly adorable when he walks over and rests his chin on your knee, looking sorrowfully up at you with his big brown eyes.

The second is the middle child, Daisy, who's a German shepherd/golden lab cross (again seemingly unique, save for her sister who belongs to my uncle and his family), she's the crafty one, she's clever enough to follow more complex vocal commands like 'shake' and 'heel' but she's smarter than that even, she's a schemer. Sometimes when I walk her she'll find a dead bird or something and she'll stop and look right at me, she knows I don't want her to eat it and I know she's going to try, so she grabs it and runs off, she won't respond to my shouting until she's swallowed it, knowing full well that I can't run fast enough to catch her (Ussain Bolt would struggle, she's like yellow lightning). She gets punished anyway but the damage is already done, she got away with it. She's pulled stunts like this so many times that she almost always wears a look of guilt when we get home from wherever, regardless of whether or not she's done something wrong, it's like a screening process, she figures if she always looks guilty we'll stop getting suspicious. She also likes tall men, a very unusual trait, but whenever my uncle Andrew or my best friend Sam come around, being that they're both very tall and broad, she won't let them out of her sight, constantly huddling up to them affectionately, it's bizarre to say the least.

Finally there's the young one, Ossian, he's a black lab and he's also possibly the stupidest dog there's ever been. I've seen him walk into walls, growl at his own reflection and start barking out the window when someone knocks on a table. He also talks, particularly when you get home, he'll start doing this half bark, half growl while raising and lowering the pitch like a broken lawn mower that can't quite start, as if to say "Where have you been!? I'm hungry!". He's prone to taking leftovers from the other two, sometimes from their very mouths, eating his dinner so quickly that he throws it back up before it even reaches his stomach (only to eat it again immediately) and jumping up to let his front paws rest on your lap so he can properly survey the dinner table. He's a pain but when he comes ambling into my room in the middle of the day with a baleful look on his face before letting his head rest on my leg I forgive him all his failings, all the dogs are cute but he's a beautiful animal, I haven't met a single person who contests this.

It's difficult to deny that all three dogs have miles more character than any insect but is applying character where there isn't any such a bad thing? I think it can actually be to the benefit of many animals. Much of the wildlife renounced for being nasty and unattractive is consequentially considered to be soulless and mindless. Sharks, spiders, snakes and the like are touted as cold, unthinking killing machines. It's an unfair judgement to say the least, all animals are fundamentally good natured, 'evil' animals don't exist. Some are capable of ruthless imperialism (ants) and others actually toy with the corpses of fresh kills (orcas) but all these animals mate, have children and defend them from harm. That's why character is so important.

Recently Animal Planet has become a disgraceful bastardisation of its former glory, broadcasting nothing but vet and pet trainer shows and prattling on about how adorable cats and dogs are, only very rarely giving room to any of the other billions of animals that live in our world. We don't need television to tell us how funny it is to watch a dog chase its tail or the palpable frustration when a cat tears up the curtains, we've lived it. Recently the BBC has brought back a landmark show called The Natural World which has been on periodically for years, recently it's been specialising in shows that provide a reasoned and fair view of some animals often regarded with distaste. It revealed the mammalian-level intelligence of the giant Komodo Dragon and spanned the 8 year cycle of a honey ant nest from its founding to its purging at the hands of another colony. The show regarded these animals with depth and interest akin to any story about people, the ant episode in particular panned out like a Shakespeare play, full of deception, betrayal and sacrifice but never did it exaggerate the truth of what was happening, all hemmed by the expert narration of Mr. Andy Serkis.

Remaining distanced from wildlife is a given but that doesn't mean that we can't regard it with the interest and scrutiny that we so voyeuristically apply to our own kind, every animal on the planet is interesting enough in its own right to warrant at the very least an hour long TV episode and none should be dismissed. In particular, if you're reading in the UK, it's going to be a very good year for Tenegeria Duellica, aka the giant house spider (pictured below). I'm sure you're all
more than a little familiar with this gorgeous beastie. They can be seen skittering across kitchen floors and trapped in baths during the autumn and this year there's going to be hundreds of them. Most people regard them with stricken fear, given that they're a damn sight bigger than your average common spider, the fact of the matter is that most the ones you see from place to place in the house will be lovelorn males wandering about looking for a female to romance, so killing one is a bit like ruining a love story before it even starts. I'm a well established arachnophile myself, I love spiders and I've been researching tarantula care for years in preparation for the inevitable day when I finally give in to temptation and buy one. I love observing spider activity, over the summer a footpath near my parents' home undergoes a transformation, it becomes 'spider alley' as dozens of labyrinth spiders set up shop in the undergrowth beside the tarmac. Labyrinth spiders build tall sheets of webbing with an entrance at the bottom leading to the maze of tunnels from which they get their name. I always make a point of examining their behavior in the 2 or 3 months they spend there every year. I urge anyone who isn't a fan of spiders to at least try to take an interest in the comings and goings of the Tegeneria, you might find yourself becoming curiously endeared to them as I have been, like I say every animal is interesting enough to deserve an hour special, if you just look closely enough.

Women as action heroes, somehow it just seems to work better

Hi there, my blog, been a while. About half a year if the dates of my posts are to be believed. I realise that the infrequency of my posting kind of prevents my blog from ever becoming as significant an internet based pastime for me as my tumblr or facebook but I'm determined to keep posting anyway. Structure is really what I need, there's a full moon tonight, perhaps I'll start posting a new entry every time there's a full moon, that's nice and regular, say what you will about lycanthropes, at least they value scheduling.

I want to write about something that's been eating at my subconscious for a while now, which is the female protagonist, or more specifically female protagonists in an action oriented setting. It's ground well trodden but I've never been quite able to get my head around why it appeals to me so much until recently. In The New Yorker, Tom Bissell quite rightly pointed out that most men who play video games do so not just to have fun but to garner a sense of empowerment, which is why title characters in games are so often male, sad but true. I'm an exception to that rule, being a film-maker and having written a great deal of fiction my appreciation of single player focused games always comes from a strong engaging storyline.

Looking at the pile of games above me, there's a set of them that I've played less than half of: Killzone 2, Crysis 2 and Demon's Souls. Then there's a bunch of them I've played near to death: L.A. Noire, inFamous, Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect 2 (there's also a pile of multiplayer games but they're exempt from this for obvious reasons). The former pile consists of a bunch of story light, action heavy shooters that I very quickly got bored of once the veneer of cathartic viscera that comes with shooting people's noses through their skulls and slicing them in twain wore off. That's not to say they're bad games, quite the contrary they're all very good but I just don't find them hugely appealing. The latter half are all the opposite, with story being a far stronger focus. If I were to list my favourite games, they would almost all be of this ilk. Bearing this in mind I don't really tend to project myself onto the characters I play as in games, or at any rate I try to avoid doing so, one of the easiest ways to establish the distinction between me and the character is to make her a woman. I'm not saying that games with male characters and good stories are any less appealing and often times such games have had to try even harder to make the player character so distinct that personal relation is damn near impossible (read: John Marston, The Nameless One and Wander) but given the choice I nearly always pick a woman (with the exception of the latest 2 Fallout games wherein the face animation is so hideous I couldn't bring myself to).

The appeal stretches beyond merely having a character that you are interested in rather than projecting your own personality on to, popular culture has been stapling the idea of a capable male hero onto our collective foreheads since time immemorial and with that image came the image of the fair princess he gets as a reward once he's done beating up the bad guy, hence the 'passive' and 'active' character role theories (which if you really read into reveal some startlingly medieval representations of women in popular culture) and the 'male gaze'. Getting the attention of a discerning reader/viewer/player is often as simple as rejecting this commonplace formula. Easiest way to do that? Once again, make the protagonist a woman. This is especially true of the action genre because a woman who does the majority of the ass kicking instantly breaks any preconceptions about representation, she doesn't even really have to do anything else and she's already interesting. Prime example: Samus Aran.

Horrible puns aside, Samus Aran (of Metroid fame) is a great framing device for this argument that a female protagonist instantly makes a story more engaging. If you compare her to Master Chief it becomes even more clear. Starting with similarities: Samus and Chief are both extra-ordinarily powerful, they both prefer to fight solo, they both wear specialised armour, they both have military experience, they both shoot aliens and they both communicate mostly through their guns. Master Chief has actually had more character development than Samus (until recently, but we'll get to that) and yet he tends to be considered the less interesting character. All that Samus had to do to become more interesting than him is be a woman in the first place, all she really does is fly around silently shooting things and that's all we need. All men have a predisposition towards violence and often heroism in men is characterised as such, Master Chief's ass kicking abilities are legendary but the idea of a man wearing cool armour and shooting every funny talking purple Muppet in sight is nothing revolutionary, the psychology is there and everybody knows it (he's called a spartan for Pete's sake). A woman doing all those things is different, it's difficult to deny that the mind of a woman is different to the mind of a man, female hormones do not typically incur violent outbursts or any desire to act violently, long story short if a woman is flying around shooting holes in the galaxy, there's going to be a complex motivation behind it. Unfortunately Metroid Other M came along recently and reduced Samus to a jabbering daddy's girl who spent inordinate amounts of time droning on and on about a generic back story neither Samus nor the player deserved to have inflicted upon them, thus negating the small, enticing nuggets of character that players had previously been treated to. Weaving exposition into a story is the best way to develop it, not just doling it out in massive lumps of dreary dialogue, but yeah that's a whole other thing.

Female characters often fall victim to very unfair representation, even meeting halfway seems to be a preferable alternative, anime is good example of give and take in that regard. A great deal of anime shows and movies involve female characters that have undergone well thought out development beyond the basic sex object/dominatrix/Electra complex/widow presets (there a probably a few more but those are the only ones I can think of right now). I'm not saying that these characters are always interesting, many aren't, but at least they've made that little bit of extra effort. So that's the give, the take comes from the visuals, often times said women are insanely hot and wear next to nothing, examples include Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop, who's a shrewd gambling addict who refuses to consciously acknowledge her need to be in the company of others and is missing the first twenty-odd years of her life, she dresses in short shorts and a crop-top that leaves almost nothing to the imagination. Another prime candidate is Revvy from Black Lagoon, she's an ass kicking latter day pirate with a blood splattered past that's molded her into a gun toting psychopath willing to kill almost anyone on a whim, at the same time she develops a curious affection for a hopelessly physically inept Japanese business man who joins her company, I tend to get discouraged by romantic subplots, oft unnecessary as they are, but when the bloodthirsty pirate woman starts falling for a man who hates guns, always wears a tie and favours diplomacy over violence my ears prick up. So that's her character, guess what Revvy wears? A ridiculously revealing black vest and jean cuts offs so short they might as well be denim underwear. I suppose male gaze isn't ever really going to go anywhere and of the two options I'd rather have well thought out female characters that adhere to a ridiculous standard of beauty than badly written characters that adhere to a realistic one. If I wanted the latter I'd just watch Eastenders.

Tattoos

Yeah, I know, really imaginative title right there, unless I end up talking about something else. I've been thinking about tattoos more and more of late, I was thinking about them more or less all day today so since I haven't done a blog entry in months I guess now's as good a time as any. At present I have one tattoo, a lizard on my right arm representing Saffron, the gecko I've had since I was eleven. The tattoo doesn't look like her at all, due to it being done in a very unrealistic style, it's supposed to look like a cave painting. I've got another one in the pipeline that's going on my back which is the 'vital point' symbol from Shadow of the Colossus. Think what you will about getting a tattoo based on a video game, frankly I think that games are as valid a source of inspiration as anything else, particularly one as incredible as Shadow but that's another point of discussion entirely. I plan to get a fair few, until I have enough to cover a decent portion of my upper body, mostly on my back but also on my upper arms and chest, I'd like to make it so that you can't really see any of them until I go topless. It's not really an ego thing, but what is it? Not just for me but for anyone? What makes people want tattoos on a fundamental level?

For some people I suppose it's just about looking good, tattoos never go out of fashion and they have the potential to look very sexy, at least in my opinion, a girl with a lot of ink will get my attention very quickly indeed. I know for a fact a lot of men get more female attention for it as well. It was never about that for me otherwise I'd get more of them in noticeable areas and maybe choose designs that looked cool in general, rather than just meaningful to me (my gecko has been referred to as both 'queer' and 'stupid' by various people, this bothered me a bit, it shouldn't really and I try not to care). To some people it's a case of their bloodline, Japanese Yakuza and people of Maori descent in particular (it's a very bad idea for someone outside of that culture to get that sort of work done). Again, not why I got mine. I suppose you could link the main fundamental reason to the saying "Fashions change, tattoos are forever".

It's one thing to go through life constantly changing hair, clothes, jobs, houses and even lifestyle but if one day I can stand in front of a tall mirror and trace back my entire life through what is etched on my arms, chest and back I think that will mean so much more. It almost forces you to single out what is really significant to you, it took me six months to summon up to courage to get Saffron done and I love that little gecko more than any worldly object that I own. The vital point has taken me even longer, largely because it's out of artistic appreciation that I'm getting it, rather than love. That old, worn-out view that when you're 85 you'll be ashamedly looking over a collection of wrinkly blurs on your body is fairly redundant as far as I'm concerned. Yes, there is an element of narcissism about it, when I'm 20 and conscious of whether or not I look good, when I'm 85 I won't care, I mean who the fuck am I trying to impress? The nurse? My butler (here's hoping)? Frankly if I look all weather-beaten when I'm old, I'll be delighted, it's the sign of a life that's been lived, not squandered. 40 years of happy, thrilling, fulfilling life is better than 90 years of drinking nothing but fucking herbal tea and sitting in ergonomic chairs with good lumbar support.

Every tattoo should tell a story, evoke a memory, it's just another form of self expression so I guess it goes back to my whole Bruce Lee thing. That's kind of why I don't understand getting Chinese characters if you aren't actually from there, it doesn't add any additional meaning, it's just a way of putting it in code, it's almost pretentious, like you believe that Kanji script has some spiritual significance beyond that of our alphabet. Having said that I am planning to get a Sak Yant tattoo at some point in my life. Sak Yant tattoos such as the ones pictured on the left are Buddhist and done traditionally via a long stick with a sharpened chisel-like end (supposedly it hurts like hell). This may seem like a contradiction but I love the idea of getting a tattoo in a style as old as tattoos themselves, done in a traditional way. No I'm not Buddhist, I'm not Thai, I don't believe myself to have a spiritual connection to them, I just want to get one of their tattoos both to show my appreciation for tattoos as an art form and because I know for a fact that going to Thailand to get one would be a defining point in my life. If I die with a rich collection of interesting artwork on my body I think one that represents tattoos themselves is a must. Call me cheesey, but hey, it's my body, I can do what I want with it.

There be Monsters

I know that I already did an entry based around survival horror games and a lot of that is going to recur in this article, but recently I've been thinking about monsters and how much they fascinate me personally. My hope is that when I make my dissertation film I'll be able to make one that involves a brilliantly designed, written and most importantly, truly terrifying monster. Not a metaphorical monster like a tornado or Augusto Pinochet a proper monster. But what is a monster, exactly? Well, etymologically it comes from mostrum, a latin term for a disruption of the natural order that represents divine displeasure, it is seen as contrary to nature, alien, unknown and hostile. The idea of a monster can be used to create both fear and wonder, as with the examples I'm about to list, which represent in my opinion the best representations of monsters in the history of storytelling:

The Colossi (Shadow of the Colossus)

Not a big shocker really, it's my favourite game and probably as close as any game has come to reinventing mythical storytelling in an interactive format (no, God of War, you're not even in the top 10). What it seems to understand better than most games is the necessity of a simple set up with a distinctly un-simple conclusion, aka development. Look at any Greek myth, particularly ones like Perseus and Theseus, the set up is always somewhat basic but houses mysterious complexities, such as the origin of the Minotaur, the motives of King Minos or the true nature of the gorgons (yeah there were actually three of them, one of which had brass hands). Within other related stories these things were explained but as isolated myths the creatures described were perfect vessels for fear and intrigue, mysterious, malevolent and inevitable obstacles for the hero. What's great about Shadow of the Colossus is that while in those stories the hero's motive is a hallmark of his bravery and you identify with him as he presses on, in a game you're controlling the hero, initially you know very little of the backstory, Wander arrives in a mysterious wilderness with a young woman who's either dead or in a very deep sleep indeed, he pleads with a demon god to revive her and it tasks him to kill 16 colossi in order for this to happen. You control him and while he's driven by his love for this girl you are driven by intrigue, marred by the gradual apprehension of seeing that the black essence bled from each dead beast is slowly killing Wander, but you must go on, much as he refuses to stop. The crystallising moment in this respect is (spoilers approaching) when just before the final colossus a bridge crossing goes horribly wrong and your faithful horse and only real companion on this quest plummets into oblivion. Wander clearly mourns his loss deeply but has no choice but to press on, it becomes painfully clear at this point that while you merely wish to know what happens in the end, Wander no longer holds his own life in any real value, so long as he kills this last colossus.

I'm rambling now, anyway, to the monsters themselves. What's so effective about them is that they feel almost god-like, a higher presence with a very clear purpose (albeit one that doesn't become clear until the end). They don't feel like a blight on the land they live in but almost integral to it, they have grass growing all over them, rocks protruding from their bodies, many of them actually crawl out of the ground, most however are found sleeping, you get the impression they have been sleeping for a long time. Their actions feel tired and laborious, like they are ageing, their attacks against you seem less like malevolence and more like function, they have to protect their territory, as long as you remain you are a threat. Some don't even openly attack you unless you attack them first, one doesn't attack you at all. Most importantly of all, when they die it is a mournful thing, they sigh a last, heaving breath and slowly sink to the ground to the hums of a solemn choir. They are monsters in the sense that they pose a threat to you and they seems detached from nature, but they only feel detached in the sense that they look more ancient than any animal or plant, elemental. You feel as if you are facing something as old as the earth it walks on and often feel uneasy watching them die, like you've done irreparable damage to the balance of the land. What makes the confrontations so unsettling (and equally the exploration of the eerily quiet landscape) is that you feel like an intruder, a disturber of a peaceful balance. The colossi would never attack a bird or lizard, but you, you don't belong there.

Grendel (Beowulf)

What I love about Grendel in most if not all of his incarnations is the simplicity of his nature, yet the mystery of his motives. He goes to the same hall at the same time of night and does the same thing, kills as many men as he can, drags their carcasses away and leaves. Why? Hatred? Hunger? Boredom? Who knows, who needs to know, really? Grendel is a malevolent creature and his presence is a constant looming threat. In some circumstances knowing what a monster is going to do is just as frightening as not knowing (we'll come back to that). I wasn't so sure about how they portrayed him in the recent Robert Zemeckis film, much as I enjoyed it, a lot of the intrigue was taken away when we found out he was doing it because all the partying was playing havoc with his ultra-sensitive left eardrum. I did like the fact that he was the illegitimate son of a king and a creature posing as a seductress, scarred and deformed with hints of humanity behind a mask of pain and rage; my preference however is for the Grendel in the 90s animated version of Beowulf narrated by Derek Jacobi. I have fond memories of watching it at school and the Grendel seen in that was a merely a black, almost formless shadow with a green glow centred around where the head would be, his movements unnatural, he almost seemed to be made out of darkness, the abstract nature of his movement and attacks giving the impression that this is not his literal form but rather a traumatic recollection recalled from the mind's eye of a disturbed witness. That notion neatly brings us to another hallmark of monster effectiveness, the less you know, the scarier the beast, keeping that in mind...

The Demon (Paranormal Activity)

Certain of my friends from university will gleefully recount to you the stark contrast between my enthusiasm to see this film and the genuine fear that took hold of me about half-way through it, with the emphasis very much on the latter part. I was so scared at points watching Paranormal Activity that I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, a fact that my friend Dave is often swift to remind me of (as well as my having shed a tear or five at the end of LOST). The fear of the unknown is implemented so masterfully in this film because for all the speculation about what the creature is or what its intentions might be, they remain just that, speculation. The best part is that the creature is completely invisible so its true appearance remains almost entirely unknown, though it most definitely has physical form (in an attempt to track its movement, Micah lays down some talcum powder outside the door, which reveals the creature to have cloven feet). Once again predictability is key to its effectiveness, every time the hand-held camera switches to the tripod night shot of the bed, you know it's coming. The video will fast forward as the couple toss and turn in their sleep, then slow to normal rate when an 'encounter' is imminent. The best ones are those that wrong-foot you. In one you the usual heavy footsteps as the demonic creature approaches but then they peter out, to give way to silence, the couple wake up, clearly unsettled, sit for a while, then out of nowhere a blood curdling screech and and a huge bang. When they eventually summon the courage to go downstairs and check what's happened, nothing is unusual at all. What the creature is actually doing is often unclear, but in direct opposition to Grendel, its motives are. It wants Katie and it wants her boyfriend Micah out of the way, his interference only serves to enrage it (hence the shrieking, which directly followed a daytime scene involving a medium). While what it wants is clear, what it's going to do to get it is a constant concern, sort of like David Blaine when he was trying to keep us interested. Beyond that, possibly the best thing about both the demon and the movie is that it becomes increasingly clear how little either character can do about it, ultimately they have no power to defeat, bargain with, control or even escape from this thing and when this becomes clear it's one of the most bitterly terrifying moments in film history.

The Truck (Duel)

I suppose Jaws would be an equally valid entry considering the concept and ideas are very similar indeed but I found the truck to be more effective a monster than the shark, although in fairness that's mainly because up close the shark looked like the result of a collaboration between Roger Corman's design department and Jim Henson. One could argue that Duel is actually about a psychotic truck driver but I always thought the intention was to portray the truck as the antagonist and I don't care what you say, a 16 ton truck that is actively trying to kill you is definitely a monster. What's most effective about this one is that it's something you see every day, something that because you're used to you never see for the colossus, the lumbering, dangerous, ugly brute of a machine that it is, just something that slows you down on the way to a business meeting. This is exactly what happens to Dave Mann, the protagonist of Duel, then when he cuts it up it decides it wants him dead. Something familiar is transformed into something malevolent but the idea of that happening is so outlandish that nobody else is going to believe it unless they see it, as shown in a palpably frustrating scene in which Dave stops to try and push start a school bus but attempts to evacuate the children in a panic when the rig reappears, the driver and kids dismiss his panic as stupidity and then to add insult to injury the truck push starts the bus as the children drive off gleefully chortling at him; seconds later the truck is back on his tail. The best characteristic of Duel by far though is the way it initially defines the road as a danger and being on foot in diners and such as safe (if tense) then in one short sequence near the end utterly shatters that one modicum of security we clung to and absolutely jacks the tension for the remainder of the film. The exact same thing happens in Jaws admittedly but watching Quinn get munched by the shark I always end up picturing the countless times he must have burst out laughing had to do the take again, because he was essentially in a giant rendition of the squeaky shark that played a minor role in the first Toy Story.

Vermithrax Pejorative (Dragonslayer)

Okay first things first, if you've not seen Dragonslayer, fix that. It's an amazingly good 1980s mythical adventure with plot twists up the wazzoo and possibly the most incredibly, fist in the pumpingly jumping on the couchingly screaming at the roofingly awesome climactic moment in cinematic history. Vermithrax Pejorative (man I could say that again and again) is a dragon, or technically a wyvern if you're conscious of the taxonomy of a fictional creature (if this is you, stop reading this immediately and bang your head repeatedly on the desk until you're either cured of your boring-to-the-point-of-justifiable-homicide-syndrome or braindead, whichever comes first).
Pejorative is reputedly indestructible and the protagonist is tasked with killing it, so you know it's going to be a long, hard road. The best thing about this monster though is her absence from the first half or so of the film, when she turns up she's every bit the hideous, unrelenting, bloodthirsty killing machine y ou expect, but beautifully animated to boot. The speculation is what makes things interesting, an unknown entity is always going to merit speculation on its nature and motives, two elements that keep coming up in this who's who of monsters, the film cannily experiments with this notion having people trying to kill it, trap it, reason with it and even worship it (an interesting cameo from Ian McDiarmid serves that purpose, his lightning bolt hands would have done him no good against this bugger). Granted it all ends the same way, but the idea of this ambiguous, lurking threat that everyone's trying to come up with an answer to is a genius way of tackling the monster problem and is as far removed as possible from the 'here it is, it bad, you kill' approach of shockingly bad efforts like Outlander or that stupid Godzilla remake. Keeping the latter in mind...

Godzilla (Godzilla)

I'm keeping him within the context of the original movie and almost nothing beyond it here, there are dozens of Godzilla movies and many of them are an utter joy to watch if only for their hilarious disregard for the laws of physics (watch this, fucking watch this) but it's the underlying idea that spawned Godzilla that interests me the most. I know I said I wasn't looking at monsters as a metaphor, but Godzilla remains the exception that proves the rule. One of the biggest scars on the façade of the world's wartime history is the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that's not to ere on either side of the argument but just to say that it was a tragedy and a sad day for humanity. Japan were the first nation to experience an atomic bombing and now they are the front-line of the effort to make sure it never happens again. Godzilla is a prime example of that ethos, the story goes that he is the result of nuclear testing. He's huge, violent, ugly and incredibly angry, he is the embodiment of everything that's bad about nuclear arms. Sure enough the plot is pretty cut and dry but the idea that the persistent memory, the guilt, the knowledge that we created the most horrific, mass murdering weapon in history is not just a memory in that world, it's stomping around Tokyo breathing blue fire on people. In one of the movies they even try and unleash him as kind of an anti-monster insurance policy against King Gidorah, but of course once he wins the fight he turns on humanity again. In the same film his origin as a surviving dinosaur is seen, the man who discovered him had an emotional connection to that creature, but is killed when he tries to reunite with the monster after he's been mutated, showing that a creature once capable of compassion is now left twisted and, once again, inconceivably angry, it's like Godzilla is angry at the human race for creating nuclear weapons, his constant rampages a ceaseless reminder of that. Until he sold out and turned into a good monster that is. Also, fun fact, his roar was originally the sound of a gloved hand being run up and down the strings of a double bass.

The Weeping Angels (Doctor Who)

Man I love these things. If you aren't a fan or follower of the newer version of Who, then the monsters you're most likely to associate with it are sentient tin cans and octopus men. Even then you'd be generalising, some of the stuff that turned up in the old Doctor Who was far more interesting than Daleks, Cybermen and the like but they've really gone all out in the new one. Granted they are still some duds and they spend a ridiculous amount of time rehashing matter from the old series but every now and again they introduce a creature that really gets your attention, the empty child, the Krillitanes, the clockwork men, the Isolus and of course, The Weeping Angels. Their debut episode, Blink, is genuinely the best episode of Doctor Who I've ever seen and one of the best pieces of television in history, I reckon. The angels themselves are statues of angels covering their faces, or at least they are when you're looking at them. The hook is that if you turn your back or even blink they'll be able to move and attack you. Initially the blow is softened by the fact that they kill you be displacing you in time, throwing you back in time so that, from anyone else's point of view in the present day you'll immediately be either dead or dying, but you yourself get to have a long, fulfilling life in the past. They canned that in later episodes and just had them break people's necks, as if they weren't scary enough already. What's brilliant about them once again draws on the unknown, as well as a lack of control, it's almost infuriating that you can see them, interact with them, touch them, but you can't stop them because they are strongest when you are weakest, when you can't see. Equally, because you can only comprehend them when they're 'dormant', you never see them express their intentions or any form of character or personality, just cold, hard stone. Being completely powerless against something is a terrifying idea and never has it been better explored than with the weeping angels.

The Diclonius (Elfen Lied)

These are possibly the most deceptive monsters in the entire list, in that they look like normal people, for the most part. In fact, the Diclonius actually look like young girls, the only thing to distinguish them from other humans being the horns on their heads which are usually only barely visible. The Diclonius are the next stage of human evolution and posses something called vectors, extruding limbs that are made up of concentrated kinetic energy, both invisible and impossibly powerful, their range and power varies between each subject. These things needn't be regarded as monsters, but the show creates a beautiful irony by suggesting that they have become monsters by being treated as such. One in particular is kept in high security store for her entire child-life, the only communication she gets is via intercom, when first released she appears docile but quickly turns, brutally murdering her carer without a single hint of regret or hesitation. The psychology of them and the definition of the rift between their monstrous side and their human side makes for some fascinating and often disturbing characters, it's often difficult to know who to side with in Elfen Lied, ultimately however the Diclonius come across as tragic, abused characters whose violent actions are a result of inhuman abuse at the hands of their masters and nearly everyone they encounter, as a result of being 'different'.

That's about all the ones I can think of, there are more great examples but they'll have to wait for another entry, as will all the monsters I've ever come up with in my short stories, hopefully one day I'll come up with something as good as the above examples.

The Decapitation of British Cinema

For those of you who haven't yet heard, this just happened: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jul/26/uk-film-council-axed

Jeremy Hunt in his infinite wisdom made the sudden and shocking decision to dissolve the UK Film Council. The 75 council members and all affiliates and associates therein received no warning and were given no quarter for negotiation, this is happening. Let me give you an idea of how detrimental to British cinema this course of action will be:

The UK Film Council contributes over 4 billion pounds to the UK's GDP.

Since it started 10 years ago the annual box office gross of British films has risen exponentially, most recently hitting the £1 billion mark for the first time in history.

It supports the best part of 50,000 jobs.

In its lifetime it has contributed £160 million to British cinema.

Films funded by it have cumulatively grossed £800 million worldwide, making £5 for every £1 it initially invested.

It has more or less written the map for public investment in UK film, rather than the old system which relied on private investors and the backbone of Hollywood.

Numerous film societies, independent studios, education programmes and festivals were born out of its charity.

It is largely responsible for the increased distribution of world cinema in the UK.

It is largely responsible for the advent of digital cinema in the UK, which has the most digital screens in the entire of Europe.

A list of films that were made with the help of the UK Film Council:

Bloody Sunday

The Last King of Scotland

Fish Tank

Man on Wire

Brick

The History Boys

Harry Brown

In The Loop

28 Days Later

London to Brighton

This Is England

Nowhere Boy

These films have won awards at Cannes, Berlin, Sundance and hundreds of other festivals worldwide as well as Oscars and BAFTAs, all of them have made 'best films of the decade' list, many of them are listed among the best films ever made.

It is one of the great triumphs of the British film industry and has allowed it to evolve independently of the Hollywood monster.

Now they're getting rid of it. This act by our new 'elected' government is a travosty, they are removing the most essential institution to a profitable industry as a method of cutting the national budget to deal with the recovery from the recession. Yet the bankers, the ones who dropped us in this steaming shit hole to begin with, are being very well looked after and still receiving big fat bonuses on account of their aristocratic, elitist ties with members of the Conservative party. They have made the decision to remove it based on the £3 million spent per year on administration, which is a tiny saving in national terms. The nature of how film-makers in the UK will access funds now is uncertain but in an interview today John O'Connell from the taxpayers alliance said "If a film's going to be profitable in the long run, a canny [private] investor will know that and make a decision accordingly". That statement just sums it up for me, for decades the British film industry was a 3-legged workhouse almost totally reliant on money hungry private investors making no contribution to the UK GDP, seeking only to line their own pockets. Once again, the UK film council is a PROFITABLE success story and the decision to get rid of it is as Martin Spence put it "economically illiterate and culturally philistine". That's a very polite way of defining the decision, I'd call it a fucking cult of personality. We're now privy to a government that will happily run the gauntlet of destroying the UK film industry to protect its wealthy elitist allies, hanging art in the name of raised profit margins for those they really care about, which clearly isn't us, the people studying to join the film industry and more importantly those already involved in it.

The money is still there but without a body to govern its use it now sits in limbo until a new method of funding can be thought of, nothing they do think of will be cheaper or more efficient. I don't think the film industry in this country will die because of this, but it has been severely wounded, numerous film-makers will now attempt to make their name outside of Britain and the great reputation for cinema Britain has been building for the past decade, punctuated by the enormous success of Slumdog Millionaire will take a long time to reattain the reputation it rightfully earned. The final words in the UK Fil Council's intro film are 'if that's what we could do in 10 years, imagine what the future holds'.

I hope Jeremy Hunt is proud of what he has done today.

Oh good lord... He went there.

I'm going to talk about religion in this entry.

Yup, that.

This is partially as a reaction to the film Religulous with Bill Maher which I just watched and found both amusing and thought provoking so straight off the bat, so you'll get an idea of the tone I'm just going to say, I'm an atheist. I do not believe in god. I used to think I was an agnostic but then I thought about it more and I realised that although I don't doubt that there's more to this life than meets the eye and that some things are beyond any logical explanation (until we find one), I don't attribute any of those things to any kind of supreme being, no matter how good said being might look in a Gandalf costume.

What bothers me about the way religion works is that there seems to be this idea that the basic moral code of humanity is up for interpretation, you can agree or disagree with certain parts of it. Take the ten commandments: 'You shalt not steal' and 'You shalt not murder', OK fair enough, that makes sense. What isn't present is 'You shalt not rape', 'You shalt not torture', 'You shalt not destroy people's homes and possessions' etc. etc. No-one's going to argue that they're allowed to rape someone because there is no commandment against it (well some people might, I wouldn't be surprised) but still. Effectively rewriting what's fundamentally wrong and right because you believe a man in the clouds made the world in seven days is, to me, a corrupted and possibly even evil thing to do. Look at the story of Abraham, specifically the binding of Isaac, god supposedly told him to follow his every command, then asked him to take his son to the top of a mountain and sacrifice him. Sure, when he got there an angel stopped him and said it was a test to see if Abraham's faith was absolute. He would have willingly burned his son, a child, alive because god told him to. FUCKING JUSTIFY THAT. It's a conflict of interests with other Biblical teachings (don't give me any of that 'interpretation' crap, it is) and it's just wrong. I don't care that he wasn't actually having to do it, the murder of a child is wrong, end of story and this book which is supposedly the code we live by is telling us we need to be ready to do it on a whim as a measure of our faith!? I can't believe that people consider the religions that teach this story and its morals, that would be Judaism and Christianity, to be the more logical of the faiths. News flash. There are no 'logical faiths', that's a fucking oxymoron.

I know you might be thinking 'yeah yeah Callum, attack the God Squad, it's the cool thing to do' but I'm not just attacking organised religion here, I'm not explaining why I'm not a believer either, already did that in a sentence. What I'm doing is looking at the fundamentals and history of religion and expressing the fact that I think basic, principle morals are the only thing you should adhere to in life not ultimately determined by you personally, let alone really old books about whales swallowing people, a guy who was beheaded and now has an elephant's head who you pray to when you're moving house, mosques that move around following the direction of some guy's toes or prophets who could, respectively, walk on water and split the moon in half.

To be honest my issues with it spread beyond religion, I dislike the fact that these days everything seems to have a philosophical grounding, everything from books to films to demonstrations to deja vu can have a profound and 'spiritual' effect on you. It seems like these days if something doesn't work on at least two levels, those usually being literal and spiritual, it ain't worth talking about. I don't like that. Let my cite an example: I have a tattoo, it's a kind of tribal, aboriginal looking depiction of a gecko as if it were crawling across the top of right arm, moving towards my shoulder. A lot of people asked me what it symbolises, which special meaning it holds to me. None, particularly, I chose a gecko because I have one and I think they're beautiful animals, I wanted the image of an animal, I like geckos, ipso facto. I wanted it to look tribal because tribal and aboriginal because I thought it would look cooler in that style. I don't think I was a gecko in a past life, it does not symbolise my 'cold-blooded resilience' or my 'nocturnal nature' or my 'love of the freedom expressed via climbing to high places'. I like geckos, OK? Now stop asking and if I hear spirituality again I'll adopt a faith that believes people who say that word are actually asking to be punched in the dick. Then I'll punch you in the dick.

That's a real world example of something that happened to me and it's only really a small complaint, but how would you feel if you were forced to throw yourself screaming from a window thousands of feet above the ground to escape the heat, smoke, flames and debris slowly consuming the building you worked in and the only justification that the perpetrator could give was that he'd been taught to interpret it as a good thing to do that, largely because he'd get to be a pimp in heaven after he was done? Psychopaths convince themselves that they are justified in murder for righteous reasons, terrorists are convinced by other people who were convinced by other people who were convinced by other people who were convinced by stories about a violent man who got told to do stuff by god. You know exactly what I'm getting at with this. I know that only a small fraction of Muslims are terrorists and a lot of them practise and preach peace via Islam, the same thing applies to Christianity, Judaism and all the others. That's all well and good but even as an exception to a general rule, the scary thing is that people aren't going around hating and killing because they're misinterpreting these passages, they're taking them very seriously and very literally. It all goes back to my 'live life by basic human morals and beyond that live it by your own values, not those of others' idea. As long as a human being knows not steal, hurt, rape and kill, they don't need all this ancient scripture as a framework for how they live their lives, especially if these scriptures might in fact contradict basic human morals. Why do you think socialism and major religion have never really been as unified to the same extent as individualism and religion? People want god to help and save them, right? You couldn't ask god to save England because our country is guilty of so much past evil, a lot the men who committed said evil believed they were doing right by god. The same thing goes for America, Germany and any other country you care to mention.

I can say all of this stuff, but you can't just ban religion because that'll make things worse, there's no ultimatum I can offer. All I can do is talk about it, even if I do that to vehemently I'll have people howling for my blood. People aren't going to listen to me, largely because I have my own ideas, people listen to people who may not have even existed, but they rarely listen to people who do. In the 60s South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm severely oppressed the Buddhist contingent of the country. There were numerous protests which ultimately lead to no result. Then, in 1963 a monk named Hòa thượng Thích Quảng Đức burned himself alive in the middle of a busy road in the hope that such an act would win his people freedom from further oppression. The protests continued, special forces raided pagodas, many monks were assaulted or even killed, more monks burned themselves to death and Thích Quảng Đức's remains were actually seized, it wasn't until 5 months after the initial act, when Diệm himself was killed, that Buddhist monks began to experience some liberation from this crisis. This man genuinely believed that he had to die so that his fellow men could live and even after he was gone many more peaceful, innocent monks were both killed and committed suicide following his example. I acknowledge that what he did was a major turning point in that crisis but it saddens me so deeply that any act that brought any change or made any major statement linked to any religion, even one so peaceful as Buddhism, will normally be attributed to murder, suicide or hatred. All that in the name of stories from thousands of years ago. Imagine if in the year 4000 team Edward blew up a train because of friction with Jacob priests, it sounds stupid and it is. I'm glad stuff like 'raptor Jesus' exists, so at least I can take solace in the fact that I'm not the only one who doesn't take religious scripture any more seriously than anything I'd pick up in a WHSmith at a service station.

Here's something slightly different than usual to bookend my thoughts:

Talking about doing your own thing in life, Aaron Funk could have just made music, instead he took music, chucked it in a giant blender full of genius and thus we get this result.

Until next time my droogs.