See Spot Run... Into The Woodchipper

So, I'm not going to be covering anything super special today. Which is depressing, because today I want to talk about plot-killing dogs. Short of movies actually about killing evil dogs (and Old Yeller), no one is ever really down with a dog dying on film. Its almost never justified to murder a puppy for story, its not a plot-crucial action, just blatant, cheap emotional manipulation. Movies and shows kill animals to demonstrate how cruel a villain is or vengeguffin for the protagonist in whatever hackneyed premise the author has devised.

Contrary to how it sounds, my problem today is not so much that they do it, its that they still do it. So much so in recent years that I'm beginning to suspect some kind of Jon Petersesque situation where some big name producer just has the most massive hard-on for killing man's best friend. I get why they do it, a dead dog is a surefire way to get the audience in the feels. The cheapest, most disrespectful way to force emotional investment in the audience next to rape (which is also disgustingly clichéd these days). It works, even if we hate it, even if every reviewer ever has commented on how lazy and contemptible it is. I have to admit, I don't have a solution here. Even if we did start boycotting (lol) movies and shows that kill the dog for cheap pathos, they'd just find another easy target. I just hate the intellectual sloth that this kind of thing demonstrates and what it says about the way we go about entertainment. I'm all for telling a story, just maybe have enough respect for your audience to earn their attention.

And the Whole of the Law Shall be: Don't be a Cuntwaffle

We here at Kinda Whatevs have been known to discuss gaming and gaming culture from time to time. Today I plan on tapping a relatively controversial (though less than say, systemic sexism) topic. Yes, today we're going to discuss exploitation, and not in the conventional sense you'd be likely to see here. I'm not going to talk about how we as gamers are being reamed by certain profit models, or how games exacerbate underlying stereotypes and body image issues. No, today its personal. Today we're talking about cheating.

I am a card carrying Video Game Cheater. I cut my teeth on Game Genie back in the day, spent some time voiding warranties with a Game Shark, and have spent more hours than I care to admit to getting various "Mods" to play nicely together in order to tailor my gaming experience to my design. And that's all it has ever been; me trying to get the most out of my games. There are endless, vile arguments in forums all over the webs about the evils of cheating in video games, and some of the points raised are quite valid. If you cheat in an online game against people who are not cheated, you are a cuntwaffle and you deserve the ban that is probably coming to you. If you cheat in a way that actually destroys your game, well fuck, guess you shouldn't have fucking done that. Be more careful next time. My issue comes from the fact that, honestly most games are kind of insufferable to me without at least a little bit of modification. A little bit of god mode goes a long way towards making that psycho with a chainsaw feel like the vindication I crave. I will freely admit that some of the time my desire to cheat is a blatant power fantasy, but that's what escapism is fucking for. I don't, as my previous comments might imply, cheat on games where there are other people who aren't or might not be cheating. The idea of playing out the aforementioned power fantasy on other actual people is spectacularly shitty, that's how social conservatives happen. But there is nary a single player game out there that I haven't run through the paces of Cheat Engine or modded beyond recognition.

I do it for fun. Many of my friends and I have cheated the hell out of games we loved and grown to love them even more with the cheats. Most cheats are harmless as long as you aren't a dick. Now, I realize this is a Rant Fantastique at this point but I do have a reason for it. Recently, Bioware removed an apparently stable and very, very fucking useful exploit from Dragon Age: Inquisition. The exploit in question was item duplication, under specified, reasonable conditions. It allowed players to acquire good gear and made the economy in the game somewhat more reasonable. It had also been available in every DA game in almost exactly the same form. It was removed. That means that it had been intentionally implemented, as evidenced by the fact that they continued to fucking include it, and then patched out.

This bugs the hell out of me, and I realize that it's a little thing but cheating at games is a great joy to me and many other players. I'm being long winded here but I feel like this is on some level an issue of other people dictating how I'm allowed to enjoy myself and that is supremely fuckered.