On Benny’s Video: a failed attempt at commentary on a film & our society

The media has replaced your reality with Folger’s crystals. Let’s see if you notice.

I recently viewed the film Benny’s Video, a 1992 film described by the all-knowing Wikipedia as a “horror of personality” film. In discussing it with friends I’ve drawn connections with the film Requiem for a Dream: this isn’t a film you watch for vicarious thrills or to relax and be comfortable. Watching Requiem for a Dream is as comfortable as laying down on a bed of rusty nails: if you let yourself get too comfortable you get stabbed and it hurts. Benny’s Video is much the same but where Requiem discusses the dehumanizing addictions of modern society, Benny’s discusses the idea of lack of grounding in reality that comes from viewing violence on films.

The 30 second summary of the film is that Benny is an upper middle class teenager obsessed with film and video. He films his life and his family’s life constantly and rents violent films from the local video store. When his family has a pig killed for food, he videotapes the death of the pig and eventually, while watching the film with a girl, they play with the gun used to kill the pig. It doesn’t end well. Hijinks ensue.

Hijinks is the wrong word. This isn’t a murder is funny movie and it isn’t a thriller about trying to hide the body. I’ve described the film to a few people who think it’s going to be a “dawn of a serial killer” film but it isn’t even that. Benny wrestles with guilt. It’s never clear if he wanted to hurt the girl or if it was just an accident. In the moment after the girl is first shot, even Benny seems surprised.

For some reason I was constantly thinking of the violence in a show like Dr. Who, where the special effects are weak and the violence often involves a lot of running. Especially in the Eccleston and Tenant years, the Doctor is portrayed as a creature of immense guilt, at times callous but always aware of the lives he hurts. Benny watches movies constantly during the first part of film and is exposed to cartoon violence, serious violence, dramatic violence, and none of it really touches him. In the first days after the murder, he barely seems process what has happened. It isn’t until he watches his film of it that things start coming together for him.

The director, Michael Haneke, describes in an interview how much safer film is than reality. Haneke says we “allow feelings more when faced with an image but not when facing a person because it’s more dangerous. The image can’t react anymore. the images is finished. That’s why you can be relaxed and look at it.” In the case of Benny’s Video, Benny only process himself when he watches himself through a video screen. The moments of the film that he doesn’t film vanish from his life, forgotten, even a fairly major argument with a friend disappears by the end of the movie.

In an era where so much of our dialogue is public and online with blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc, I wonder if this isn’t more relevant: the arguments I’ve seen on Facebook seem so much more real now that they sit there on your screen and can be revisited years later. An evening of questionable decision-making fifteen years ago would leave memories, now the photos are more spread than ever and the damage reaped can be so much more serious.

Or… is it? I often argue that the most powerful tool in our repertoire of psychological healing skills is “self acceptance” and maybe these things allow us to see ourselves more clearly- a better mirror than hazy memory. A person with passive aggressive tendencies can look back at their Facebook statuses and see the record of their passive aggression, an alcoholic has the records to help them face the consistency of their drinking problems.

The director discusses the control that possessing film and video records gives us over our pass in ways that describe it as a bad thing, describing filming vacations as “perverse” and discussing feeling of control people gain by having videos and photographs of events. “If I have an image,” he says, describing the prevailing mindset, “I own it.” He talks about being able to rewind and undo moments and describes this as a disorienting, damaging thing. Partially, I agree.

After all, the public record of videos and photos in media (both social media and professional media) has given us a sense of distance from our actions and for some people, that distance results in a lack of conscience. For others, it results in serious consequences when they fail to account for what happens when others see what used to be private or, at least, unrecorded. I’m reminded of some commentary concerning the recent Miss Teen Delaware Melissa King and her supposed “sex tape.” The existence of the film ruined her career as a Miss Teen, yet some people have articulated that the resulting media furor may be “the best thing to happen to her career.”

Shared media concerning our flaws has ruined so many lives and careers from politicians sending pictures to young girls over twitter to teenagers hazing fellow students by photoshopping images to damage their reputation. If we have the image, we own it; even if it never actually happened.

But there is a counterthought I have as well: these flaws, these moments of failure and weakness where we make mistakes and due stupid things caught on record in some ways are a gift. They allow us to revisit those moments and learn to accept ourselves, even the parts of our selves that may embarrass us in front of others.

In focusing on blaming the media of video or photography for making us disoriented, we miss a key role these media can play in our lives by reminding us of our pasts. In essence, sometimes the media can be a messenger, revealing a truth that we were afraid to face about ourselves. In these cases, though, it seems we blame the media instead of the root causes.

I’m reminded of the recent Seth McFarlane Oscar hosting debacle where McFarlane received much criticism for pointing out the sexuality and gender expectations that happen in Hollywood. I won’t say he is blameless, but I will say the pressure for nudity and the disrespect of women/minorities in Hollywood existed long before comedians joked about it. In a sense, it seems like we as a society blame the “truth teller” instead of the underlying factors.

In the film Benny’s Video, Benny is certainly desensitized to violence by his relationship with it on film, but he also uses film to come to grips with his actions and their consequences in a very real situation. He doesn’t want to forget what he did but he also doesn’t revel in it and as his parents try to make it disappear and avoid all mention of it, he takes ownership of his crime despite not fully understanding his actions. I argue that sort of behavior: owning your past instead of hiding it, understanding your transgressions instead of denying them, is the only road to truth, self acceptance, and ultimately emotional health.

This film raises many questions for me and it’s cold, distanced delivery can leave the viewer numb to all the emotion that the characters experience even as they attempt to forget the experiences they have. I highly recommend it but the movie offers the viewer only as much respite as the characters in the movie give themselves.

Rating: Definitely see again soon.

Here’s the trailer:

I Don’t Normally Make Announcements, But When I Do…

So this blog and my twitter and generally everything thousandheads has been rather quiet for awhile. I’ve received a few inquiries about the new media track for Balticon as well as concerning the podcast and the book. So, here’s the important stuff:

1) New plans regarding the podcast being redone as a regular reading are getting off the ground due to my hand injury. Very sad but also awesome. Plus it’ll be the whole book released at once for free.

2) Regarding guests for Balticon New Media, I’ve connected with some people with unofficial invites but by “to contact” list is very long. I may just not have gotten to you yet. If you’re anxious about whether you’re on my to contact list, drop me a line via twitter @thousandheads or email thousands at gmail.com to let me know you want to come.

3) You can also volunteer other people who do New Media stuff you think is cool. If you have a thought, drop me a line.

It’s too early I think for me to give a definitive list of people but there will be some pretty interesting new faces along with some familiar people. Please drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. Thanks for checking in.

This has been a special message from your humble Deputy Head of New Media, me.

My City Was Gone: Turning Mythosbuilding into Worldbuilding in the Township of Garvey

Any time a writer builds a world, their obsessions show. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings had linguistics and industrialization. Roddenbery’s Star Trek had utopian idealism. My own Farrakan has psychology and environmental impact. In this post, I begin investigating the process of worldbuilding by building one town where all themes of a good Farrakanian story come center stage.

Whatever the writer builds the world to explore ends up being what is most fully fleshed out and whatever is not relevant to the narrative the writer wants to tell tends to be forgotten. One of the truly majestic things about Tolkein’s Middle Earth is how in depth his understanding of the entirety of Middle Earth is. Even the greatest recent epics- Simmons’s Hyperion, Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant series- have limitations of scope based on what is relevant to their narrative. Hyperion shows us much more of the worlds politics, science, and literature than it does of the education system. Thomas Covenant, especially early on, focuses on the lifestyle and idyllism of the mystic otherworld called The Land.

In running a roleplaying game set in my world of Farrakan, I’m constantly forced to explore things that may be of interest to me, but weren’t required for the purposes of the novel The Horde or any of the short stories so far. In building Farrakan for more stories and for my players, I’ve opted to go with a method outlined in Ron Edward’s Sword and Sorcery supplement for the Sorcerer roleplaying game, where he suggests emulating the construction of Vance’s Dying Earth and Howard’s Hyboria by building the world one city, one story at a time as it integrates thematically. The first true place I take my players to is the town of Garvey, far distant from the outskirts of the Dameon Empire where the Horde begins.

In constructing Garvey as a place for players to experience and for me to set more detailed stories, I needed to stop being psychological and start, as MTV’s The Real World would have it, getting real. First, I needed inspiration. The adventure I’m using as a template was originally set in 1930′s Cleveland, Ohio and so as I’ve built the town over the past week, pieces of that filtered through the eyes of Kenneth Hite, author of Trail of Cthulhu and the adventure I’m using as source material, helped shape this town, adding a number of details that I had never considered when Oren first spoke about his homeland in The Horde.

I began with geography and names. The town is largely composed of names reflecting a Semitic origin as discussed in a previous post. However devastation keeps repeating itself across the world of Farrakan a large influx of refugees create conflict here. The largest refugee group has been using Scottish names as influence to help highlight that they originate far afield.

Garvey was originally designed as a collection of villages, the largest and most powerful of which give the name to the region and predominantly rule the other townships in a rather unorganized fashion. When I actually began mapping the area, however, I did not begin with Garvey Proper.

One of the oldest landmarks in the area is the ever-present Road, an ancient unknown construct resembling asphalt that wraps around Farrakan like a belt. The Road and its origin is a major plot point in The Horde but largely irrelevant to the day to day lives of the people of Farrakan. It has been around so long and has done so little that many people simply accept it as being part of the world, like the sea.

I placed the Road on the map running North to South off both ends of the map, with one end vanishing into the waves of the ocean, the shoreline of which runs northeast to southwest. Somewhat to the west is a river that, while natural and thus neither uneven or straight, runs roughly parallel to the Road from the ocean. On the shoreline between these two, is the 800 foot tall tower of a long dead wizard, known as Terminus by the locals. I’m not set on the name for the purpose of storytelling, but it works for the purposes of creating a setting.

This geography and prominent landmark drives the development and history of the area almost automatically. Once I had those pieces laid out, I simply had to let the words flow and the region basically built itself. I haven’t yet touched on how the central mythology of the world of Farrakan came into play.

In my next post I will discuss how I transformed a river and a road into a fully operational township ripe for heroes to come and explore and how this ultimately yielded a windfall of new inspirations for stories to tell about my dying planet.

Naming the Characters of Farrakan or The Man with No Name Tag Has A Horse With No Name

Names are important for a character- an animating force that instantly connects the audience with the fictional person before them. Some names threaten, some amuse, some suggest character traits, others suggest running jokes overused the world over to death.

Too soon?

Even the lack of a name is a name. A title can give us enough to connect to a character, to relate them in our world. The Emperor from Star Wars is all the more menacing for his lack of identity.  No name can be a deliberate disconnect between reader and the character, a mystery, or something more. The Man With No Name is, of course, one of the most iconic of these characters and doubles as being a major inspiration for much of the setting and world.

He has no name, but he has a Lego figure.

When I write, the names often come first, long before I really know who the people I’m writing about are. If I recall, the first sentence I ever penned of the Horde was “Bridan walked the Road.” Two names but no idea what they meant- why is the Road capitalized, who is Bridan? Why is he walking? They tend to come to me naturally or after linguistic design of whatever setting I’m writing- I tend to find them easy to produce.

Tomorrow I’m inviting a few total strangers and one old friend to join me in the world of the Horde to adventure and explore. When we first met I spoke about the history of Farrakan: the ruined world, the metaphorical slavery that perverted both master and servant, the mix of modern technology and medieval living powered by the magic of a dying world.

The characters we created together are quite fascinating and go many places that are exciting for me to explore. They have hopes, dreams, fears, conflicts, complications, abilities, but when we left after our character creation meeting, there was one thing they didn’t have- names. I didn’t think much of it.

Then I started getting the names- the repentant killer turned musician came in with the name “Bardo the Bard” later revised to be “Bardo Bardissian from Bard City” and I realized there might be a problem.

It’s a total surprise, right? Not really.

So back to the drawing board and with the help of a favorite name supplement of mine, I had to create some guidelines or inspiration. I took the characters of the book and realized most of the characters from Farrakan remain unnamed or are named only through their title- “Emperor” or “Mayor” or “Beastman.”

Most of the major characters don’t even care about the fate of Farrakan, it’s just one more place they travel through on their journey. This may be a spoiler, but of the released chapters, only one named character was born on Farrakan: Oren.

Oren in the story hails from the area we’ll be starting the campaign in- the huddled villages in an area known loosely as Garvey for the largest of the settlements. It sits on the edge of the wastes of the landlocked portion of the former Tilean Empire- near many ancient secrets and wonders but utterly uninterested in them.

Oren, as I understand it, is a name of Jewish origin, referring to the Ash tree. When I first chose for the character, I picked it at random out of my head and didn’t even know it was a real name from Earth. The Old Testament Bible connections this suggests are intentional, but likely to be misunderstood. Still, with that inspiration, here are some names if you decide you might want to try making a character for the Horde RPG.

Male names: Aaron, Abel, Adam, Ardon, Armin, Asher, Ben, Chaim, Daniel, David, Eli, Eliazer, Elinu, Ephraim, Efran, Elam, Elisha, Ethan, Ezer, Gabriel, Gideon, Hagai, Haim, Hiram, Herschel, Isaac, Jared, Jordan, Jonah, Joseph, Lavan, Lazar, Lyle, Mattias, Meyer, Melech, Michael, Morris, Moses, Mikkel, Nathan, Noah, Pascal, Raphael, Rubin, Shaan, Seth, Simeon, Sinon, Samual, Shimon, Solomon, Tabor, Thaddeus, Thomas, Tobias, Uriah, Yacov, Zachary, Zane, Zeke

Female names: Adara, Adene, Adine, Ahelia, Annikke, Amariah, Alisa, Aviva, Anna, Bethany, Carolyn, Carmelia, Celia, Chava, Dalia, Davinia, Derora, Deborah, Donna, Dorothea, Elaine, Elisavet, Eliora, Elizabeth, Esther, Eva, Gabriella, Hadara, Hannah, Henriette, Honora, Johanna, Josetta, Judeena, Josepha, Judith, Kadya, Kelin, Kezia, Kyla, Lilah, Lilith, Livana, Leah, Madelena, Maribel, Magdelen, Margot, Martha, Mary, Miriam, Martel, Michaela, Mina, Naomi, Nira, Ranica, Rosana, Rachel, Raya, Rebecca, Roza, Ruth, Sarah, Sharon, Sapphira, Shira, Susan, Selma, Shifra, Samara, Shoshana, Simha, Susannah, Tamara, Temira, Talora

This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list and focuses only on one portion of the world. Where the Horde begins, the characters have more Danish names. Modern Tileans living in their isolated cities might draw from Hungarian or Croatian names whereas the ancient Tilean Lords of Wizardry might draw from Abyssnian names.

Generally when creating characters or ideas for other areas on FarrakanI do from Eastern European nations though a very large portion of the planet that I have written only a little of is very Arabic in origin. The Dameon Empire is largely western European/Early American. Of course characters from other worlds have completely different origins.

Players, I hope this helps. Others, I hope this was an interesting suggestion at what might really be going on in the doomed lands of Farrakan. I’ll be blogging about the game as we explore more along with progress on other topic as news arrives.
In addition to the internet an other websites, one major source I use for naming is The Everyone Everywhere List Random Name Generator by Erik James Olsrud. It’s the perfect cure for Bard Bardissian the Bard from Bard City.

For now I’m off to listen to that old Goo Goo Dolls song about names since it’s now stuck in my head. I wonder why.

“I won’t tell no one your name.” Seriously. I won’t. Mostly cuz I forgot it.

-Patrick

Someone asked me the other day, “Why don’t you blog no more?” I corrected their grammar with a chainsaw.

Someone asked me the other day, “Why don’t you blog no more?” I corrected their grammar with a chainsaw.

Not quite like this.

To say I’ve been busy is a bit of an understatement. My brother got married in Hawaii and immediately forbade me from posting any photos of said wedding or related shenanigans. Then he was so married that he had to have a second wedding reception stateside to celebrate just how blissful his weddedness is.

People who’ve kept up with the blog don’t need a reprise of my health issues so I’ll just hop, skip, jump, and polevault over them in honor of the Olympics.

Exactly like this.

Suffice to say my hand is feeling better to the point that episode 21 of The Horde being released in the next few weeks is a solid possibility, complete with the bizarre musical holistics you’ve come to expect hif you’ve kept up with the podiobook. This suggests I should try to find my podiobooks password, doesn’t it?

No wait, I remember it now.

Despite my internet silence apart from spreading the love for webcomics far and wide through the twittertubes, I’ve not been completely remiss from creative projects. So for those hardcore headcases that care, here’s some info:

Kickstarter Backers will be receiving E-book versions of the first quarter of the Horde in the next month. I’ m massively behind on this but this shall be my opening salvo in catching up and making amends.

Secret Project #1 is proceeding nicely through the early outlining stages and hopefully well result in a fun little app for your browser to play around with written by yours truly.

Secret Project #2 is still very very early stages. Thus, secret. But it may involve comics. You know, since I’ve been obsessed about them lately.

Secret Project #3 has found willing victims who may not know what they’re in for. The Horde RPG will have it’s first character generation session this coming Wednesday where the early ideas get vetted to see just how well they work. So far everyone likes the way they sound. More on this later since I’ll be posting the information as I gather it (both for the players and for other interested parties). I posted a bit about this before but now I’ve got hard and fast details.

Plus the Horde RPG is exciting for me because I’ll be using it to flesh out the world of Farrakan and set other stories there. The Horde never explores it to the degree I’d like and it’s one of the better fantasy worlds I’ve designed. Plus it’s built to be my unique surreal take on sword and sorcery. I don’t remember the reason I never delved as much as I wanted to into the background of Farrakan.

No wait, I remember it now .

Some of my attention (but not nearly enough) has been taken up by being the Deputy Head of New Media for next year’s Balticon. Hopefully I’ll get some more stuff ironed out and share-able on that but I’m still figuring out the details myself. No one has responded to my suggestions about have a November Balticon New Media Sleepover + Marshmallow Roast but I’m hoping it’s just people being busy or the fact that I never actually sent the email.

Production of the podiobook musical will resume shortly a drastically reduced pace. After injuring my hand and losing most of my data (along with making not one but three computers explode) I will want to keep this relaxed so I don’t end up injuring myself again. Musician friends of mine are a little shocked when they realize that it basically totals 20something 30 minute albums composed, recorded, edited, and released in the space of six months. I felt like sometimes the quality suffered form the pace so I’ll be going back at a slightly slower one. Plus, there was some reason that I needed to figure out how to record all over again. Something happened to my old set up… what was it? I can’t recall…

No wait, I remember it now.

So in terms of what the blog will be, it’ll most likely end up as a periodic centerpiece of ideas and thoughts that don’t belong anywhere else as well as news about what I’m up to. Also featuring bad jokes and random images strewn about liberally.

I’m taking bets on how long I’ll keep updating in this particular series. Please make your guesses and wagers in the comment section. Also mention if you’d prefer a marshmallow roast or a weenie roast. Till next time,

-Patrick

It’s my blog and I’ll revise if I want to.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from playing Katawa Shoujo, it’s that if you don’t honestly discuss your disabilities and shortcomings with the people around you, you end up drunk, dateless, alone, and falling to your death from the rooftop of a school building. Since i only have a desire to be two of those things, let’s get down to brass tacks whatever the heck that may mean.

Getting down to brass tacks seems uncomfortable

In effort to post more regularly and help ward off the “no producing anything for public consumption” blues, I wrote a few posts that, to put it simply, meandered. Except meandered isn’t generally considered a simple word and if I recall was on my SATs. That is beside the point, whatever that means.

Anyway, the long and the short of this is I think it might be fun or at least good practice to go back and rewrite those posts. My 2500 word nonsense piece about dating Battlestar Galactica, for example, is really three separate posts with three separate agendas (one of which isn’t even based around a bad joke). So my intention, at some point soon, is to go back to revise and republish these like I would with any English paper a student of mine would submit that needed heavy heavy refocusing.

I’ll probably comment on the process too since revision ideas and tips might be more insightful than my potentially backhanded but potentially praisefilled compliments to the creators of Battlestar Galactica.

Don’t let this be the last thing you see just because you lied about your heart condition to the cute blind girl.

In keeping with that, I found an old mission statement I wrote up for this blog back in the early days last year. It primarily focused on one thing: keep posts under 1000 words. Given the difficulties I’ve had concentrating lately, this is probably a good place to go back to. Yay?

Anyway, bonus points for people who can spot all the English language idioms cleverly hidden in this post.

 

10top Video Game Spoilers: Wham Moments To Steal From

“Are video games art?” is a question that arouses nothing but apathy in me. If yes, then let’s get pretentious. If no, then let’s insult people doing cool stuff. One thing is for sure, however. Video games offer a plethora of wham moments for the storyteller to imitate or steal from. Here’s ten of my favorite. Add your own in the comment section or pick my list apart. It’ll be fun.

Wham moments are when something in your narrative strikes the audience from left field, upending expectations and creating a sense of vertigo that, when done well, gives the reader a perverse combination of pleasure and pain. When these happen to people in “real life” they’re usually unpleasant and mean the life we’ve been living up till now must be reevaluated, often with unpleasant implications.

The wham episode lets us, as with many other fictional tropes, experience these vicariously. We get to experience the pain and pathos of a sudden surprise without having to endure the life-changing agony of “you’ve got cancer” or “you should never have trusted them.” At their best, I feel they help us learn to deal with such unexpected but inevitable events. Failing that, they’re usually pretty frelling awesome. Tvtropes.com has multiple articles on the subject.

I keep hoping that before M. Night Shmayalan directs another film, he spends a lot of time studying this since the last movie that had a twist I really felt in my gut was The Last Airbender. The twist was “it’s horrible and he didn’t even bother to put in the gigantic super water monster taht would have saved the entire finale of the movie.” And yes, I mispelled his name on purpose. The Last Airbender really made me angry in ways few things can.

Anyway, back to the topic, the best part of these moments is great ones maximize the audience’s engagement. I remember when I finished J Daniel Sawyer’s Down From Ten, the first thing I did was go back and listen to the podcast a second time just to look for clues to the ending. That’s part of the fun: did the wham make sense all along or come ridiculously from so far out of left field that some poor hack in the stands could only be responsible for the plot twist?

These moments often make or break a story. In the Horde podcast, the most positive feedback I’ve received is the moment I reveal exactly why it is Terry, my narrator, can fly around invisible in an alternate dimension as a weird crystal dragon thing. I spent a ridiculous amount of time layering the clues to this and other whams and this is the first one the listener gets to hear, both paying off a number of weird things I set up earlier but also, from the feedback I’ve received, getting good will from the audience regarding the other crazy stuff I’m doing that seems to make no sense. If I rewrote that part now, I’d have it or another wham much earlier just for the suspension of disbelief it buys.

Anyway, enough commentary. On to the list! Just so we’re clear, spoilers abound. Remember the 10top list is not in order nor is it exhaustive. Feel free to give me yours or comment on mine.

1. Final Fantasy VII: Cloud’s a loser. FF7 gets a lot flack for almost singlehandedly bringing bishonen badasses with angst to the forefront of the Japanese role playing game (JRPG) scene. What people often forget is that Cloud, the hardened ex-supersoldier whose dead inside but carries a giant sword and is destined to save the planet, is really just a loser with a case of hero envy. About halfway through the game, you find out that everything Cloud has said about his past, including his personal history with the main villain, never happened to him at all. His dead best friend actually is the butt kicking supersoldier and all Cloud did was appropriate his sword and life story post-mortem. The main villain barely remembers Cloud.

This wham moment completely shatters Cloud’s sense of self which, since he stole someone else’s life rather than live his own, must not have been that strong to begin with.  I have may issues with this game’s plot but this particular twist can be felt from the first moments and makes Cloud’s recovery and heroic pursuit of the main villain all the more gripping. After all, he’s not a hero. He’s just some dude who looted the right corpse.

2. Final Fantasy X: Tidus doesn’t exist. Yes, another Final Fantasy. Say what you will about the series, they’re usually pretty solid on the wham moment. So here’s the setup, Tidus appears to be some sort of weird time traveller at first. His city is destroyed and he wakes up in an alternate/future/who knows world where monsters are real, technology is all gone, and somehow his status as an angst ridden underwater soccer star blesses him with awesome in the eyes of those around him. It’s impossible, really. I mean the way they worship underwater soccer is pretty freaky.

The whole game you learn about this weird trait of the world: pyreflies. They imprint with the spirits of the dead and, if not banished, they go nuts and transform into monsters that hate the living over time. Over time you find out this is the basis of the whole world: summon monsters, random encounters, the giant civilization destroying monster, even most of the manipulative villains are rooted in this whole “dead people imprint and if they don’t get help, they get an angry monster body instead.” People can literally build alternate virtual worlds with enough of these crazy little ghostbugs.

The big awesome spoiler? Tidus isn’t real. His whole city that was destroyed is just the pyrefly memory of an actual city that was blowed up centuries ago. In other words, he’s a dream ghost thingy that mostly by accident slipped outside and is now wondering around totally confused. But it gets better.

The way to fix the horrible situation, ultimately, involves disabling the entire existing network of pyreflies, putting monsters and most of these weird ghost things out of existence. Yay, that’s great, save the world and all. Oh wait, but that means Tidus isn’t real so when they pull the plug, he’s just going to vanish like a dozen powdered sugar donuts on my office desk, leaving only a slightly powdery white residue that might be embarrassing to explain. It’s one thing to kill your hero to save the world, especially when he’s in a pretty nice love relationship with the heroine at the end, but it’s another to say he doesn’t exist, shouldn’t exist, and never should have existed then wipe him from reality.

Thinking about it, Final Fantasy has some serious issues with self identity just looking at these two examples.

3. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: A Sith lord is you! Two big bad Sith lords destroying the eponymous Old Republic. One vanishes and the other goes even more nuts bombing any planet that moves (hint: that’s all of them). Luckily you pop on the scene heroically to save the day, a random nobody who no one has heard of but who gets adult Jedi training (violating the Darth Vader Oops rule) and who, in super fast movie time, becomes a Jedi superman. Too bad that remaining Sith lord is always on your trying to kill you for some strange reason and the people responsible for killing the other vanished Sith lord gather round you trying to help you stay on the light side of the Force.

You guessed it. You’re Revan, kidnapped by the Jedi council and brainwashed into being a good guy with no memory. It’s often cited by my friends and drinking buddies as one of the best whams. It’s there, it’s real, and once you find out it has serious narrative impact. I’m not alone in having played a light side hero who decides  “Screw this. I’m gonna kill Malak to get revenge then I’m going to destroy all the Jedi ever.” It’s pretty much a game defining moment and I hate spoiling it for people. Sorry, people. It also comes with a great montage of “look you were bad all along.”

4. Super Mario Bros: Sorry Mario, but you just wasted 800 coins worth of life and a thousand dollars worth of hallucinogens getting here. It’s a simple concept really, you fight what you think is the final boss but you ultimately find out that the princess isn’t even in the castle you were storming. We’re all so jaded and this one is so old but think about the genre unsavvy fourth grader who got this the first time, back when plot development in a video game meant “based on a movie, go see it for the plot.”

5. Planescape Torment: The bad guys don’t know Ignus. Planescape has a complicated plot. Go play it. Now. But if you don’t listen, check this: one major player is Ignus, who is a mage who spends the entire game ON FIRE, making him already awesome. He’s also pretty nasty and insane. He’s not evil, he just likes to burn stuff. If you play the game right, in the end game, you can talk to the people (they happen to be your earlier incarnations but let’s not confuse things) who are responsible for the plot. The crazy one is crazy and doesn’t give you much information. The good one is mostly quite and doesn’t say much. The evil one laughs about all the evil stuff he’s done to try to fix the problems caused by the plot including seducing a woman then manipulating her to die so her ghost can serve as an eternal infodump in case he fails to stop the big bad.

Anyway, the bad guy lists all his deeds and doesn’t hide them. Then you ask him about Ignus, who one of your past incarnations drove mad and helped turn into the crazed burninator he is today. His response? “Ignus who?”

So your evil past life didn’t create Ignus and neither did your crazy one. That leaves… the good one. Who also turns out to be the most evil and is only good now cuz he doesn’t like the idea of going to hell. It’s 100% awesome.

6. Final Fantasy IX: But wait, there’s more boss! You get to the end and the interesting, nihilistic, kind of awesome “brother to the hero” villain has been defeated. But wait, there’s a bigger evil. It’s some sort of world eating thing and it has powers. Or something. It doesn’t really make much sense but it turns one boss into like three or four. Ok, this is always lame. Surprise! A boss with multiple forms! It was old on the Super Nintendo.

The real 6. Dragon Quest V: Congratulations, you’re a slave.  Most of these spoilers were mid to late game and involve revelations about what’s gone on so far. But that’s only one way to wham. In DQ5, fairly early on, you’re wondering around as a kid with your super strong dad busting up an evil cult that keeps popping up. You go to a fairly routine dungeon with your best buddy, a spoiled brat prince who at least does stuff in battle, and end up watching your father killed by a miniboss. Said miniboss then owns you and your spoiled prince friend and sends you to work in the mines for something like eight years.

You don’t see it coming but that’s mostly due to narrative tropes and the very human “it can’t happen to me” rule that seems to rule most tragic surprised. If you look back over the build up to that moment, it makes sense. You’ve got an evil cult kidnapping people and forcing them to help build some crazy temple thing. It’s a miracle you didn’t get killed or captured early in the game, actually.

The best part is this is only one of a half dozen such moments in DQ5 that, while coming from left field, keep damaging the sense of plot protection you’d imagine would guard the poor little hero.

7. Dragon Quest VII: Congratulations, you saved God but whoops you were tricked. There’s a rule in Star Trek: if it calls itself God, it’s probably lying. At the beginning of DQ7, the world appears to be one tiny island and endless ocean. In the past, God had split the world up into numerous little pocket dimensions to stop the Devil from rising to power but now he needs your help putting the world back together. After an epic quest involving some pretty neat adventures, you manage to unseal the rest of the world as well as release God from where he was trapped. You even manage to summon his Super God Tower that is where he keeps his stuff.

Just one problem though. The dude you freed wasn’t God. He backstabbed God for quadruple damage right as the world was split up and ever since then he’s been biding his time in the Super God Tower, drinking all of God’s best liquor and putting his feet up on the couch. He even redecorates so it goes from looking like a God Tower to the Super Devil Tower. It has horns and stuff.

It’ll be okay though, all you have to do is find the real God, right? Sorry, but Nietzche’s comments about God were actually about DQ7. The Devil totally killed him and there is absolutely no chance to bring him back to life. None. So not only did you free the Devil, there is literally no one but you who has even the slightest chance to stop him. Wham!

8. Metroid: If you can’t see the girly bits it must be a man, right? Samus Aran. Famed bounty hunter. Super powered suit wearer. Last hope of the galaxy. Somewhat clumsy jumper. Also, not a man.

The expectation of most genre is that if you can’t see what gender a character is, assume it’s a man. Numerous movies and books have used the gender neutral seeming character femme reveal because it works. Even today it can surprise audiences, which is a whole other issue and better reserved for someone’s feminism blog.

But back in the early days of video gaming, sneaking a female hero into an action game that eventually became one of the most popular and actually defined a genre was a pretty awesome move on the part of the Metroid creative team. Yes, the players all thought she was male (unless some jerkhead told you) and many didn’t even know after playing because she only reveals herself as a woman if you are particularly awesome in the game.

It’s really actually a pretty sweet twist given the expectations of the time. First, she’s “as good as a man” (bleck). Second, he skills are superior and she has a decidedly unsexualized outfit at this point (a formless stormtrooper suit basically). Third, to get the twist secret that Samus Aran (who no one knows the true identity of, like Batman or something), you must be exceptional in beating the game. In other words, to know Samus is a woman, you must prove how awesome she is.

Since then there’s been a lot of backtracking in the series, especially the horrid game where she has a codependent abusive relationship with her commanding officer, but that moment was a pinnacle of messing with gamer expectations. Of course, that jerkhead who said, “She couldn’t do that, she’s a woman” even after the reveal probably deserved getting hit in the head with a medicine ball, not that I’m responsible for throwing it.

9. Phantasy Star II: catfights can be serious. People mention Final Fantasy 7 as groundbreaking for killing a major character dead for real really with no way to save her. Bah, it’s been done. It was done best in an old Sega Genesis game. You’re some sort of scifi psychic space cop on a world where mutants are growing out of control due to a computer glitch in the biosphere computer or something like that. Your best friend (possibly love interest) is the beastgirl Nei, who you rescued from some monsters and now live with. She’s pretty fast, an awesome fighter, and just genuinely cool.

Then you get closer to the end of the game and fight your way to the cloning facilities. There you find Nei waiting for you. Except it isn’t YOUR Nei, it’s the first Nei clone, who kills your beloved most useful ally without hesitation. No you can’t save her. Not even at the end of the game. She doesn’t even get the FF7 “she lives on in the spirit of the planet” crap they tried to shove down your throat in the ending. This is a “now it’s for real” moment of the finest order, doubly powerful for the genre expectations it breaks.

10. Final Fantasy VI: Everything? No? Ok, I’ll pick just one part. FF6 is an opera and an epic. There is a huge cast of characters each with their own secret surprising back story. I could pick one of my favorite tiny character defining moments but I have to go with the big one: you lose and the bad guy blows up the world. Seriously.

You’re on a floating island with the statues of primordial power battling the evil empire with all your allies all ready to try to save life, the universe, and everything from the bad guys who are united against you. Except they aren’t. Bad guy 1, the evil emperor, is contemplating how to take advantage of the statues without destroying the world. Bad guy 2, the insane clown, has other ideas. He backstabs the Emperor while you’re busy then tosses him over the side of the flying island. Then he pushes the statues out of alignment, possibly just for giggles, which results in massive energy blasts ripping continents apart and killing most of the people on the planet.

You barely escape with your life and even then your airship is destroyed, your party split up, many of the side characters die of starvation, end up brainwashed, or just give up and consider killing themselves. All the while, the insane clown now has a posse of worshipers along with a giant laser of doom that he aims at anyone who doesn’t worship him. The game keeps going and yeah you can stop but it never fixes the world or brings the dead back to life. Life is going to be hard for the victors. Evil, in a way, wins.

So there’s my 10top video game spoilers and wham moments. Give me yours. Blast my decisions, my comments, or my bad jokes. What’s your wham?