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Mand'alor Dash

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  1. Mand'alor Dash
    (For your debating pleasure, I never delete comments. The staff still does, though; and I can't do anything about that. Please post responsibly.)
     
    A few days ago, I declared myself to be amoral. What did I mean by this? I meant that I'm done with the idea that certain deeds are inherently wrong or right simply because they are. I'm done with the insistence that certain ideas are above logic or reason simply because one path is "moral." I'm done with buzzwords and thought-killing cliches being used to replace rational thought, and discourage dissent.
     
    I'm fucking done.
     
    The abortion debate is one such issue where morality has gone batshit insane. We have reached a point where neither camp wishes to confront the cold hard truth of what they advocate, and hides behind buzz-phrases to "encode" it behind a layer of illusory morality.
     
    "Pro-abortion" doesn't sound buzzy and moral enough. You don't want the world to think you're in love with the idea of little babies being ripped from the womb and given the Freddy Krueger treatment, so if anyone asks, you aren't "pro-abortion," you're "pro-choice." Oh, so does that mean you support school choice? Or the choice to refuse service when you own a business, or for an individual to choose what goes into their own bodies? No? Then you aren't pro-choice, you're pro-abortion, and you're trying to hide behind morality. If you believe that life begins at birth, you are expected to make a biological argument to support this position, not call your opponents "misogynists" who just want to turn women into baby-slaves.
     
    And don't walk away smug, "pro-lifers." Are you anti-war? Anti-death penalty? You think we should take an honest look at police brutality? Do you believe that the one and only good reason to kill another human being is that they pose a direct threat to another human being? No? You're not "pro-life," you are simply "anti-abortion," and wish to manufacture a false moral high-ground when asked about women who stand to lose 9 months of their lives due to being raped. If you believe that life begins at conception, you too are required to provide a biological argument for why you believe this.
     
    Morality, or more specifically, the politicization of morality, is something that I will no longer support. The root of the problem is that as a human construct, a majority of moral decisions are completely subjective, and we are attempting to find reasons for why our own personal morality must be forced upon everyone else. We build hypocritical walls of morality designed to shield ourselves from responsibility, while simultaneously casting stones upon anybody else.
     
    "Greed" is my favorite example of this giant glass house. Once you begin under the false premise that putting one's self and one's family over strangers is, by itself, morally wrong, how easy it becomes to cast blame.
     
    I'm a semi-regular gamer. I've avidly followed the Mass Effect series since the very first game, and I have yet to regret any of my purchases. I think the series is of exceptional quality, but I also realize that BioWare and EA aren't making it out of the goodness of their hearts. A new game costs $60 US, and the DLC costs about $15 a piece. It's steep, but there's no trickery. In the digital age, there's no excuse for not knowing exactly what you are paying for. A business needs to make money. If you feel like their goods are not worth the asking price, then nobody is making you buy them. I haven't bought most of the DLC myself, because it really is pretty steep.
     
    But there is nothing more entitled than to disregard the reality of the world, and demand that you have a moral right to a product that you have not paid for.
     
    There is no trickery at foot. In any store, the game and its expansions are clearly listed as two separate items. If you only buy the one, do not feign outrage at not being offered the other one as lagniappe. But of course, you're right because greed.
     
    A private company with a responsibility to its shareholders is selling its goods on an honest market. This is greed.
     
    A consumer sees the prices for the goods offered, has the ability to look up every fact behind these goods at the swipe of a fingertip, and still demands that he receive goods for free because he bought another good. In some cases, the individual in question even steals the goods they want, rather than pay for any of it at all. This is not greed.
     
    There is a presidential candidate currently in the top three, who runs on a platform of taking people's money by force and giving it to his voters. Guess who the greedy party is.
     
    I'm greedy. And this is no rhetorical device. I am greedy by my own admission. I'd love to be successful, and I would put my own good over that of somebody I don't know, and I would expect them to do the same.
     
    Most systems of morality do not consider this to be a righteous action. I don't care.
     
    But what of those moral principles rooted in sound logic? Surely, there must be merit to those, right? Take the case of racism. Obviously, racism must be a grand moral principle because it is illogical to judge somebody on skin color instead of merit. How can this be an issue?
     
    Well, way back in the year IDFK A.D., some logical man looked at how his neighbors were mistreating and prejudging people based on superficial properties without any attempt to get to know them, and decided that it didn't make a lick of sense. Racial prejudice was (rightfully) considered illogical, and the term "racism" was coined as a shorthand for this phenomenon. Then, thanks to a whole bunch of centuries where racism got out of hand, and committed many grievous wrongs, it was adopted to become a moral issue. I won't deny that the good guys won a couple of important wars thanks to this, but as soon as you fast forward to the 21st century...
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Even when morality adopts a principle from logic, it manages to pervert the premise beyond recognition. But it gets better.
     
    The third image is a tweet from SJW activist Suey Park, infamous for pioneering the "cancel Colbert" campaign after comedian and left-leaning commentator Stephen Colbert made a joke about Asians. I like Colbert. I think he's a very funny man. I don't really agree with him on politics, but he's a likable enough sort that that never really becomes an issue.
     
    This sentiment was not shared by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, whose politics were the occasional subject of jabbery on Colbert's behalf. #CancelColbert happened at a time when I was a somewhat stereotypical moralistic conservative, and I held a great deal of respect for Ms. Malkin. She managed to flush away every single last bit of it with only one tweet.
     

     
    Above, you see a conservative activist joining an SJW censorship movement out of immediate political convenience, and hiding it all behind the false guise of morality.
     
    I'm fucking done.
     
    I was inspired to write this after having just read Watchmen. 30 years late; I'm aware. While I was reading, I found something of a bond with Rorschach, of all people. Mind you, I don't share quite the extent of his misanthropy, or his "New Frontiersman" politics, but there were moments where his sheer cynicism echoed through my brain like a scream in a cave. In particular, one relatively minor moment from the oh-so eventful chapter 6:
     
    (This actually is a spoiler. Do not open unless you have read the book.)
     
     
     
     
    Morality is a disguise. Worn by ideologues to silence dissent, by consumers to cast blame, by leftists to line their pockets, by SJWs to bully their fellow man, by evangelicals to enforce holy law, by Michelle Malkin to censor detractors.
     
    Logic was born when man looked upon the world, and judged it in his own eyes. Morality was born when he declared his interpretation to be the only one.
     
     
     
     
    I'm fucking done.
     
    I am amoral.
  2. Mand'alor Dash
    A year after its release, I've finally finished playing through Undertale for the first time, and all I can say is that it was... underwhelming. It's not bad, in fact there are parts of it that are actually very smart, but I really feel like I had gotten a bad experience from it.
     
    If you're going to play Undertale, the only way to play it is completely blind. If you've had an obsessive fan spouting off in your ear for the past 12 months like I have, then your experience is probably already colored, and you're not going to get very much out of it. In fact, every minute I played it, I had my little sister looking over my shoulder, telling me everything to do and every route to take and every person to talk to and every word to say. By the end, I felt more like I was forcing myself through it. It wasn't fun.
     
    Undertale relies greatly on discovery. Without this, it's just a woefully shallow RPG with some funny dialogue. I'll give developer Toby Fox props for being a good writer, but the gameplay is far too dumbed down to interest even the most casual RPG player. You can equip a grand total of one weapon and one clothing item (neither of which show up on your character), and have a whopping one attack. The "combat" diversifies when you take the pacifist route, since then you need to read a monster's rather obvious personality to figure out how to appease it, but this too becomes dull once you run into the same monster more than once. It isn't fun to run through the same set of actions 12 times, it's just busywork.
     
    But I guess you need to fill hallways somehow. Besides the frequent puzzles and abundant scripted events, Undertale is basically a whole lot of hallways with enemies in them. Very long hallways, some of which consist graphically of a single, solid color.
     
    You will find a love for your enter key, since the game's 8-bit "art" style strictly forbade having voice acting, and each text box has to be manually closed in order to progress in the game's mostly passive conversations. Occasionally, it'll let you make a binary choice between two dialogue options, some of which have some rather interesting consequences; but other than that, the dialogue system is very passive. Characters talk to the player, not with the player. It's undeniably well-written at points, but not enough to carry the entire game.
     
    Maybe there will be a day when people stop talking about this game, and new players can finally just hop in and enjoy it. Even then, I get the niggling sense that some of its meaning might be lost.
     
    This is a minor spoiler, so stop reading if you haven't played it yet, but Undertale is something of a deconstruction of RPGs. In fact, during a certain piece of late game dialogue, it makes this abundantly clear and removes every last bit of subtlety from the equation. It's also really late to the party, since KOTOR 2 brought up all the same points that Undertale did and then some; but Undertale's treatment of these messages seems lost for another big reason. It's just not that much of an RPG. It's a puzzle-adventure game with a really, really, really thin coat of RPG paint.
     
    The RPG audience most likely to appreciate the game's themes will be underwhelmed by the game's almost condescending simplicity, while new RPG players may feel right at home with the simple gameplay, but won't have the RPG experience to look back on when the themes become clear. It's like reading Watchmen if you know nothing about superheroes, or playing Spec Ops: The Line when you haven't played Call of Duty. You need to have experience with the original work in order to appreciate the deconstruction, except the core gameplay does not attract fans of the original work to begin with.
     
    The morality is black and white enough to make Bioshock blush, though I definitely have to give the game some credit for turning being the good guy into a puzzle. You can't just select the good guy options and get good guy points like you can in most RPGs, you have to really make a commitment to not hurting anyone. This is a good idea, but it sucks that every good option always has a good consequence, and every bad action always has a bad consequence. Pacifism is always rewarded, violence is always punished. Again, these consequences are much farther reaching than in most games (owing to its very short length), but it all just seems so binary. What if that guy I spared turned out to be a serial killer? Maybe not every saved life is exactly for the best. These are some very basic morality questions, and Undertale doesn't really incorporate any of them.
     
    Undertale is good. It's very ambitious in its structure (if nothing else). But there are key elements that the developer clearly dropped the ball on, even as deeply rooted as the game's target audience. There are certainly moments that are inspired, or dare I say, brilliant, but it's all so easily spoiled and rendered moot, especially in the present day when everyone and their mother is talking about it. Next to that other indie game that took the drooling masses of the internet by storm, I'd take Undertale in a heartbeat. But it still didn't set me on fire like everyone told me it would.
  3. Mand'alor Dash
    I still don't like Game Theory.
     

     
    To give Mat a bit of credit, 2013 was before he started shouting every word of his videos like we were hard of hearing, so at least this video was a lot easier on the ears than the last one I did.
     
    That said, the research has dipped to such inconceivable lows that it skirts the boundaries of Poe's Law. There are going to be those who argue that this video is a joke, due to the ending segment; others will maintain that Mat is actually being straight due to the fact that he makes an honest attempt to back up some of his claims. I lean toward the latter camp, but I honestly can't decide. The sheer batshit insanity of the "predictions" Mat draws in this video, combined with his failure to research the actual dates that many of these games take place in, makes it a very difficult line to draw.
     
    To start off, I can actually get behind the premise of the video: that you can string seemingly unrelated video games together to create a (mostly) cohesive story. In fact, I agree so much that I've been working on one such timeline for upwards of seven years now. If you do your research, pay close attention to dates and plot details, and accept that it's all just fiction in the end, you can actually piece something together that makes sense.
     
    HOWEVER, there is one other essential component that Mat never thought up, and one that I learned very early on. Any timeline incorporating works of fiction will invariably need to branch off at many, many, many points. For a quick example, L.A. Noire is set in a realistic depiction of 1947, in the aftermath of the Allied victory in World War II. Wolfenstein: The New Order, on the other hand, is set in 1960 following an Axis victory in World War II. These two games can not be placed on the same timeline, unless you allow for a branch point during World War II.
     
    For a more futuristic example, Mass Effect takes place between 2183 and 2186, with backstory elements that place humanity's discovery of FTL travel in 2148. Mat called this correctly. What he missed was the fact that he set Fallout (more specifically, Fallout 3) prior to Mass Effect, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.
     
    A cursory comb of the Mass Effect timeline will find no references to nuclear war whatsoever. But the Fallout timeline is another story altogether. As readers of my first post will no doubt be aware of, this is far from the only time MatPat has fucked up on Fallout lore, but it's hilarious nonetheless. MatPat predicts that the "apocalyptic period" will last between 2090 and the 2140s, and he prominently cites Fallout, whose apocalyptic period stretches from 2077 to basically forever. Fallout 4 takes place in 2287, still with no end yet in sight.
     
    If Mat thinks that Fallout and Mass Effect share a universe, then that'd set the events of the ME trilogy in the midst of the apocalypse, about 20 years after Fallout 1, and more than 90 years prior to Fallout 3.
     
    Yup. This is what happens when you don't account for branching... and when you actually call it a prediction instead of a story.
     
    He gets plenty of other settings wrong as well. Metro 2033 is set in its namesake year, not after 2090. Halo is set in 2552, not "2525." Metal Gear Solid 4 is set in 2014 (in 2008, that year was futuristic as fuck), not the 2030s. Zombie games are typically set on or near the present day, not in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Killzone 2 is set on the planet Helghan in the 24th century, not on Earth in the 21st.
     
    To be fair, there is a backstory element in the Killzone universe that does incorporate a nuclear war circa 2055, but it is never explicitly mentioned in Killzone 2, and in fact takes place three centuries before that game. It's strictly there for lore junkies, and is not actually the game's setting.
     
    And bear in mind, all of these problems that I have listed thusfar are just with the problems with his timeline as fiction. As actual futuristic predictions... holy fuck...
     
    Admittedly, there are a few coincidences, the most notable being Deus Ex and the World Trade Center, but he uses this to justify super robots in the next decade, nuclear war on the precise year 2077, two separate space ages, separated by the ending to Mass Effect 3, something something Xenosaga, and whatever the shit Boombots is about.
     
    To be fair, though. I think he was at least joking about the last one. I hope.
  4. Mand'alor Dash
    I really don't like Game Theory, or MatPat. Whether he's shamelessly jumping on every bandwagon that rolls under his nose, deliberately misleading viewers with clickbait titles and thumbnails, spewing SJW bullshit to an impressionable audience, nakedly selling lies to please his sponsors, or just wasting people's precious attention spans with verbal diarrhea, he's not exactly a model youtuber.
     
    But it's the way he conducts his research that I hate the most. Rather than going in any logical direction, he just spins a wheel and picks one completely at random. While I have neither the time nor the expertise to debunk his videos about physics or medicine, there's an especially low-hanging fruit in his library that should serve as the perfect example.
     
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln342caKBHs
     
    For someone who claims to know Fallout, I've never seen anybody get so much about the series wrong. Only a minute and 30 seconds into this video, he cocks up the most basic premise of series lore by claiming that "World War II never really ended." Of course, since he later identifies the point of divergence (incorrectly) as 1961, this leads me to question whether MatPat knows as much about real history as he does Fallout history.
     
    No, World War II ended right on time in the Fallout universe. 1945; Allies won. It's the Cold War that never ended, though the Soviet Union gradually declined and was replaced by Maoist China over the next century. America, meanwhile, grew into a much stronger stereotype of 1950s exceptionalism, and was dragged into war when the world's resources began to dwindle. For a better explanation, here's a good youtube channel.
     
    I'm not even going to get into how Mat refers to ghouls as "zombies" to appeal to his 13 year old fanbase, because by then I'd have exhausted my will to write and there's still so much bullshit to comb through.
     
    The premise of Mat's video is already stupid, since Pre-War Money is an item that exists in the newer games, and at the time the video was made, it was always valued at 10 caps. The wiki page even points out that the blue strap indicates that each stack is worth exactly $100; so 100 dollars divided by 10 caps means that each cap is worth 10 dollars. Wow, now wasn't that a much easier calculation than whatever MatPat cooked up? Now obviously, since the US government no longer exists in the year 2277, and the dollar is no longer legal tender, that's going to skew the equation a little, but that's still the most direct comparison you can make.
     
    So, how does Game Theory try to answer this question? In two incredibly stupid ways, the first of which is considerably stupider.
     
    Mat decides that the best barometer for value in this situation would be the price of gold, which would be great, if there was any way to determine the value of gold in the alternate, post-apocalyptic year of 2282. In lieu of that, here's some mental gymnastics. As previously discussed, Mat comes to the dumbfounding conclusion that Fallout's timeline diverged from our own in the year 1961. A conclusion he supports with one release date of one song in one radio station in one game. Once.
     
    The exact date of Fallout's divergence is left purposely vague in the lore, but there are several dead giveaways that point to a far earlier date. If you want to go really far back, you could say it diverged in the early 17th century when a samurai was abducted by aliens, but even if you stick to the events following World War II, there's still much more to consider. The most obvious example, and the one most commonly referenced as the reason why technology took such a drastically different turn in the Fallout timeline, is that the transistor was not invented until 2067; 120 years after its historical invention.
     
    If it's that easy to find a major divergence as far back as 1947, why did MatPat go through all the trouble just to find a song from 1961? I honestly have no idea, but it speaks volumes about how nonsensical the logic in his videos is. He'll go the longer path to find a less accurate conclusion rather than just sticking to the truth.
     
    Anywho, once Mat was sold on 1961, what was his next step? How exactly does the point of divergence help him calculate the price of gold in the alternate year 2282? He assumes, point blank, that the price of gold froze in place at the exact moment of divergence, and remained exactly the same for more than three centuries.
     

     
    Three centuries. Matpat actually believes that the price of gold stayed at exactly the same rate through not only time itself, but also resource crises, wars, societal collapse, nuclear Armageddon, and countless failed attempts to restore a functional society.
     
    Even if you buy into the misconception that American culture in Fallout froze in place following divergence (it didn't; some things advanced as normal, such as the civil rights movement), that still has next to no effect on the price of gold. That's dictated more by... y'no... economics. But fuck it, let's expand the misconception. Let's say that after 1961, not only did culture inexplicably freeze in place, but so did the economy, as well as the price of gold. Fine. That still leaves the issue of the atomic fucking holocaust that devastated the world in 2077. I have my doubts that the price of gold would remain comparable after an event like that.
     
    And that's how Mat arrives at his first figure of $1.67. It's ridiculous, obviously, but at least there he began in the right place. If there was a way to determine the dollar value of gold in the alternate year 2282, then he would have gotten a much better answer. He screwed the whole thing up royally, but at least he had a foundation. Another solid foundation that he had was much earlier in the video, when he mentioned that caps were backed by water. This is actually true (at least in Fallout 1), but for some reason, Mat just abandoned it and moved on to the gold method. Again, this all goes to show just how random and illogical this whole train of thought was. Why ignore or brush aside perfectly good avenues of inquiry to focus on utter bullshit?
     
    Anyway, his second method is much more forward and to the point. He wants to know what the raw materials themselves are worth, and then assumes that to be the price of a bottle cap. Because that's how currency works, right?
     
    Obviously not. In the US, for instance, our coins are never worth exactly what we paid to mint them. Pennies, infamously, are actually worth about 2/3rds the cost of the materials needed to mint them. Bottlecaps, should they become currency, would be no different. A currency's value in trade has next to nothing to do with its raw materials.
     
    Mat then goes through extra trouble to call the offices of a real life cap manufacturer to get an exact composition. I guess this is meant to impress me, but when he's still using the ridiculous 1961 year as his basis in all this, it still feels awful pathetic. Mat goes through all of this trouble just to come to a number even more ridiculous than his last one: about $0.0000175 per cap, or less than 2 cents for a minigun. Suffice to say, it's not that.
     
    And that's basically the end of this stupid video. After that, he goes right to whoring out his sponsor (which is a health food service, for some reason), and finishes with a few vaguely Fallout-related jokes and memes. Not something I can really debunk, but it did make it hard to take the shotgun out of my mouth.
     
    I know this is just one video, but this should be indicative of how bad Mat's research is. If he was too lazy or stubborn to actually learn the first thing about Fallout lore before making this video, then I don't even want to think about how many times he's potentially fucked up on more difficult, more sensitive topics.
     
    MatPat probably isn't going to read this. I understand that, and I don't care. I'm not the only one talking about how bad his videos are, and I don't expect him to read and respond to some nobody who posted mean things on a brony website. This is meant for the people who still take his crap seriously. Maybe they can look at Game Theory for what it truly is: the Nickelback of YouTube gaming channels.
  5. Mand'alor Dash
    A fair warning about religious debate: I don't delete comments on my blogs, but the mods might if you act like an ass. I'd like it if ye all would stay on topic. Danke.
     

     
    Christian-themed movies have been making a comeback recently, and I have nothing against that in concept. Many profound and groundbreaking worldviews first made their debut in the form of art. Religion, in particular, is something I feel humanity needs to have a more nuanced discussion about. Modern hugbox culture has succeeded in polarizing theists and atheists against each other, while poisoning the well to the point that argument quickly descends into a melee.
     
    The current batch of Christian movies is not helping matters. Putting aside the fact that most of them fail on purely a quality standpoint, the sad fact is that they only seem to be made to pander to people who are already devout Christians. There is little intention of explaining their side to Atheists, or Jews, or any other denomination apart from their own.
     
    But I'm not one to bitch without offering solutions. A lot of what I write below is devil's advocate, but I want to prove that it can be done.
     
    Inevitably, the first issue I can hear people screaming is that I don't really believe in God, so how could I ever make a movie that portrayed God (and Christianity) positively?
     
    God, in our world, is akin to Schrodinger's Cat: nobody knows for sure what the truth is, but everyone has an opinion. And my personal opinions on what exists in our universe do not affect what exists in the universe of the film. A good storyteller must divorce their feelings about the world they stand on from the world they write of. To put it simply: God exists within the film's context because I say so.
     
    And with this established, we must now ask what God's relation is with the planet Earth and our human characters. The Problem of Evil being what it is, obviously God doesn't hand out miracles willy-nilly. Free will and the laws of nature still very much apply, and can be responsible for incredible tragedy. A storyteller must speculate on the reasons why God did not prevent the Holocaust, or end world hunger, or stop any other of the countless tragedies which would naturally be simple for an omnipotent being.
     
    The answer to this puzzle must fit an additional condition: It must assume that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. All-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving.
     
    This isn't the only possible answer to the puzzle, but the one proposed in the Futurama episode Godfellas always made the most sense to me. God knows that if he interferes in any noticeable way, things are only going to get worse. Therefore, the world must turn on its own. Bad things are going to happen, but a small miracle here or there can hopefully mitigate the damage without creating an even worse situation.
     
    And if we can look at one of these miracles, and instantly discern that it was God's doing, then he's already failed.
     
    God can not interfere significantly with our characters' lives, yet he must still be a central driving force in the plot. The way I see it, we need to look to the real world for inspiration. The best stories of faith involve God as an inspiration for mortals to achieve something great, and throughout history, this has proven true. God's role would best be served as the messenger and motivation to our human protagonist, with one free card reserved for a tiny Deus Ex Machina later on down the line.
     
    Speaking of which, what of our human protagonists? Contemporary Christian films have protagonists that range from "Devout Christian whose faith saves them from a crisis and is reaffirmed" to "Atheist who does a 180 and becomes a devout Christian."
     
    They are answering the wrong question.
     
    Before you can give a character their traits, you must first give them a motivation. The question is not "who is this character," but instead "what does this character want?"
     
    Recall what I said earlier. God, in the context of the story, must motivate our protagonist to do something incredible. But what? Could they change the world? Could they inspire the next great wave of change-makers? Or could they simply make a profound difference on one life?
     
    Films about a man and his child against a cruel world are not uncommon, but I feel that this would be the best framework for our storyline. To get a sense of what I mean, I suggest you watch the film Life is Beautiful, which is the story of a Jewish man in wartime Italy who must keep his son alive in a Nazi concentration camp. Stories like these may be familiar, but they strike universal appeal for a very good reason. Everyone has someone they care about, and we all know how horrible the world can be.
     
    The character in our film wants to save their child from one of our world's very shitty situations. This is his motivation. Now that we have this, we can expand further into asking who he is.
     
    I decided early on not to make the protagonist an atheist. The reason for this is very simple. God is going to be aiding this man, albeit in intangible ways, throughout the story. Enough so that, by the end, any man would be a believer. Character development is all well and great, but you need to think about what you are portraying as a positive or negative character trait. It would be real patronizing to have an entire character arc be all about how this "heathen atheist" turned his life around and conquered the odds all because he found Jesus. You need to have shades of grey when you talk about real world issues, and an objective examination.
     
    For similar reason, he also can't be a practicing member of a different religion, or else the film's message becomes "convert to our God because yours is shit." Arguably, that's even worse than the previous example.
     
    On the flipside, our character also can't be a devout Christian, or our problems are two-fold. Not only does this leave no room for character development, but it also makes him unrelatable to much of the audience. Denzel Washington's film The Book of Eli made this mistake. The main protagonist was an already established devout Christian on a mission from God, and this made him extremely self-righteous and preachy. This wasn't his character flaw, though. His character flaw was that he didn't stop and help every single person he came across... in a nuclear wasteland.
     
    Basically, characterization is a minefield. If you look at it only as a sliding scale between "christian" and "not christian," you're only going to be choosing between two types of patronizing. That's why I chose to look at it in another way.
     
    Our protagonist believes that God has forsaken mankind. He believes that man's actions have left us beyond salvation, and that we are being left to decadence because God no longer believes in us. Whether he is correct or not is left up to interpretation, however, it is implied that his is the good soul that may redeem our species. This approach is superior because it brings the human element to the forefront, along with asking a question that resonates with both Christians and non-Christians. Everybody walks away with a new perspective, and nobody is patronized in the process.
     
    To finish off, I'd like to talk about the film's setting, and attempt to tie this thing into a cohesive premise. I have decided against using a historical setting, against my better wisdom, and opt to set the tale close to the modern day.
     
    In an unnamed middle-eastern country, a marauding force of invaders is conquering cities one-by-one, and slaughtering all who think or look differently from them. Our hero lives in a suburb near the capital with his daughter, when the marauders begin their siege. The government declares a lockdown. Nobody gets in or out. Every able-bodied man must pick up a rifle and fight. When our hero's draft order comes, he instead waits for the cover of night, and slips out of town with his daughter.
     
    The two must head north, and cross the border into a more stable country. A wanted deserter and his five year old daughter against the perils of the desert, and all the demons of a forsaken race. Along the way, he is tested in numerous ways by powers beyond his control. However, it is not his faith which is being tested, but his virtue and resolve.
     
    And that... would be a damn good movie.
  6. Mand'alor Dash
    As I watch the year tick up with every single post, I can't believe we've already reached the 80's. I've got a few ideas for this decade, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed planning them.
     
    Let's just ram right into this crazy decade face-first. It's The Police, with Don't Stand So Close To Me.
  7. Mand'alor Dash
    I feel as strong as a bull moose, but there are only so many years in history, and so far I've covered every single one of them from 1900 onward. All that's left is the present day. I guess it's time to return home.
     
    Have one final blast from the not-so-distant past, as Lady Gaga performs a little ditty off of her exceptional Cheek to Cheek album. Lush Life. Incidentally, the only song on the album not to feature Tony Bennett, who I had already featured in 1999.
  8. Mand'alor Dash
    May as well finish up with a running motif.
     
    This will be the last daily post, I'm afraid. Nowhere left to go from here except, perhaps, the 1890s, and finding recordings from the 1900s was hard enough without looking for even older stuff.
     
    I'll tell you what, though. Send me surviving recordings from between 1890 and 1899 that don't break the one-per-artist rule. If I can get all ten, I'll put together a short ten-part series featuring these recordings in the near future.
     
    Until then, I hope you've enjoyed our journey through music and history, and I hope it's inspired you to look back at the songs of previous generations with an open mind. Tallyho.
     
    Postmodern Jukebox, with their cover of Gangsta's Paradise.
  9. Mand'alor Dash
    "The latest in the 'Arab Spring' protests seems to have turned violent after thousands of anti-government fighters stormed the Libyan city of Benghazi. Gaddafi issues a televised statement promising..."
     
    "...And where is President Obama in all this? I'll tell you where: sitting on his ass as thousands of people..."
     
    "Are they any better than Gaddafi? These are radical Islamists we're talking about..."
     
    "Loyalist war crimes continue to pile up..."
     
    "...Obama is just like Bush. Read my lips: Just. Like. Bush!"
     
    "...sacked and looted by rebel forces. Civilians gunned down in..."
     
    "...And we're supporting these..."
     
    "...report Gaddafi's death in the resulting firefight. The war is over. Libya will begin its transition to..."
     
    Adele. Set Fire to the Rain.
  10. Mand'alor Dash
    As it happens, this entry was written on the day of Leonard Nimoy's death. I can only wonder how many more will have passed by the time it releases.
     
    A fitting theme for a year this late.
     
    Elton John, with Candle in the Wind (1997).
  11. Mand'alor Dash
    Double feature as we approach our Closing Time on this fine Sunday morning. I'm going to miss making these. Who knows, if enough people want one, I might do another one featuring recordings from the 19th century, rare as they may be. In the meantime, check back in 1999 and I'll hit you Baby, One More Time. Word of warning, though: It's not a pop song.
    Britney Spears and Semisonic.
  12. Mand'alor Dash
    I think I perplexed a few of you when I featured opera last year. Allow me to offer an explanation.
     
    Today,The Black Eyed Peas shall demonstrate just how low we have sunk, and why I needed to look to opera just to find a decent song.
     
    My Humps.
  13. Mand'alor Dash
    What sort of world do we live in? A world where terrorists can behead an American on camera, post it to the world wide web, and millions of people will watch it. What the fuck is wrong with us?
     
    Thomas Ades, Overture to The Tempest.
  14. Mand'alor Dash
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4Uv_4jGgAM
     
    Peacetime is always so short-lived. Arm some anti-soviet rebels in the 80s, they drag you into a quagmire in the new millennium. Funny how that works out.
     
    Lose Yourself, by Eminem.
  15. Mand'alor Dash
    "Good mornin', Big Apple. We're looking at midday highs of about 86 degrees; overnight lows of 63 degrees here in Manhattan. Overall, expect the temperature to be juuuuust right as you make your way into work today on this crisp September morning. We're looking at clear skies today, but a slight chance of rain on Friday and Saturday. It's 8 A.M. on a Tuesday, and we'll be right back with your morning traffic report. But first, here's Brandy and Ray-J with their rendition of Phil Collins' Another Day In Paradise."
  16. Mand'alor Dash
    And today, our century-long journey arrives at its end. I hope you've had as much fun reading/listening to it as I have writing it. I've never finished a project this grand before. It feels... liberating. Like I beat the odds. Far too often, I was tempted to just give up. But I pushed myself long and hard to keep these years rolling out on time. I learned alot from this experience, and I can only hope you all have too.
     
    And so, I leave you in this new millennium with a genre that, until now, I had never thought to cover. This is classical composer Phillip Glass, with Concerto Fantasy.
     
    Good night, and good luck.
     

  17. Mand'alor Dash
    "...Today announced the complete dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. On December 31st, 1991, all Soviet Institutions are to cease operation, and the nation will be replaced, both in name and in function, by the new Russian Federation. A new era is beginning. Not just for Russia, but for all of humanity."
     
    The Wind of Change. This is The Scorpions.
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