Hitting that nostalgic note

On November 28, 2018November 28, 2018 By longandshortofitallIn Quick and dirty, Random but worthyLeave a comment

It’s late, and I’m clicking through Youtube watching random clips while waiting for the cheese in my chorizo and mushroom toastie to melt. All my neighbours are likely in bed, and no cars drive by on my street this late, so the only sounds are coming from my laptop and the sandwich press. I scroll through the suggested options, pick a video and watch as it takes two seconds to load up the inevitable advertisement. It starts, and I hear it. Six notes that hit me deep in the frontal lobe; the opening riff to the Battlefield series theme.

Duh dun duh duh duh Daaaah!

And suddenly it’s well over a decade ago, and I’m at a mate’s place watching him put a rocket through the hatch of a German tank in the original Battlefield 1942. I’m in high school and internet cafes are a thing, me and the lads are hanging around Burwood Westfields; we watch a movie, we get lunch, maybe we hang in the park, then we disappear into a well-lit room filled with rows of computers to gun each other down in Battlefield 2 or Battlefield Vietnam. I’m at home and killing time on Battlefield Heroes, free-to-play, casual-as-fuck, a-lot-of-fun, and maybe the only time I’ve ever been good at an online multiplayer shooter (funny how much I’m reminded of that goofy browser game, that no-one else remembers, whenever I see Fortnite – makes me happy to see a goofy browser doing so well). Hell, I remember going paintballing for the first time when I was sixteen, at a place over in Rouse Hill with an old decommissioned tank sitting in the parking lot, humming that song as the others laughed and joined in.

I realise that I haven’t played a Battlefield game since Bad Company 2. A mate leant it to my brother so he could play the multiplayer, and I went through the campaign. It was fun. Not amazing, not ground-breaking, but I probably would have played the sequel that was promised at the end (but never came, you dreadful teases). I lost interest with the series (as did everybody else) with the forgettable 2142, all the way back in 2006. I played a bit of 1943 when it came out a few years later, but completely ignored 3, 4, and definitely Hardline. What the fuck even was Hardline? Like yeah, EA has a problem of trying to hop bandwagons with its shooters (think Medal of Honour 2010, and Warfighter), but who were they trying to copy? Maybe Rainbow Six: Siege. I haven’t played Battlefield 1 either. The very concept felt odd to me. That brutal, crawling war of attrition did not seem like the best setting for the fast paced, mechanised fights of a Battlefield multiplayer match. Nor did what I saw of the Single Player campaign appeal to me (not least because it seemed more than a little America-centric – please feel free to correct me if that wasn’t the case).

And really, for all the nostalgia, the Battlefield series was never really that important to me. I played a lot more Age of Empires, Civilization, and Command & Conquer. Even looking at the shooters I played, there was a lot more Medal of Honor and Call of Duty in the house. But that was back when single player mattered.

So I hadn’t put that much thought into Battlefield. I mean, I’d seen a few trailers before, and a few things had caught my eye. One of the campaign gameplay trailers (which I looked for but couldn’t find) ended with a lady with a European accent and a prosthetic arm beating a Nazi to death with a cricket bat, and, if I’m being honest, that is actually a very specific kink of mine. But for all that, I have no interest in any online multiplayer anything, so it just isn’t worth it. And I forgot about it.

But then…

Duh dun duh duh duh Daaaah!

Suddenly I want this game, I actually want this game all. Because I’m remembering shooting down my mate’s helicopter with the main gun of a tank, or playing cat and mouse with another sniper in an otherwise empty section of the map, or watching a good friend put rocket after rocket into panzer after panzer. And I know that those experiences were specific to where me and the mates were at the time, and I know that I can’t re-create those memories, and I do not give a shit about online multiplayer at all, but goddamn I want that game.

I’m not going to buy the game new, at least not at full price. I cannot emphasize enough for some reason that I do not play online multiplayer, but I’d like to play the campaign at some point. Because one-armed lady beating Nazi’s to death with a cricket bat. So I’ll wait for a sale.

Before, I wasn’t going to buy it at all.

The power of a piece of music, aye?

A quick thought on the Playstation Classic

On September 22, 2018September 22, 2018 By longandshortofitallIn In the News, Questions of culture, Quick and dirtyLeave a comment

I’m not a fan of Tekken. There’s nothing wrong with the game, I’m just not a fighting games is all. Nor am I fan of JRPGs or racing games outside of Mario Kart. So when news dropped about the Playstation Classic, a miniature PS1 with twenty classic games from that era on pre-loaded on, I really felt was a great big bloody “meh.”

Now, only five games out of the twenty have been made official (Tekken 3, Wild Arms, Final Fantasy 7, R4: Ridge Racer Type 4, and Jumping Flash), so there’s every chance that the other 15 games on the list will get my heart racing. But if I’m going to be honest, probably not. Certainly not enough to get me to fork out however fucking much they decide to gouge us for it down here in Oz. Mind you it still got me thinking and asking myself a question I hadn’t really pondered before: which games from that era do I actually love? Which games would I actually pay to play again?

Y’see I’m definitely someone who’ll give in to nostalgia, but I’m also a fairly practical person who’ll discard a property that doesn’t live up to my rose-tinted expectations. There’s been a number of movies, shows and games that I’ve gone back to over the years for a rewatch or a replay, only to dismiss them because of bad narrative and dialogue, problematic themes, jokes that were a lot funnier when I was 10, or wonky controls. Oftentimes it’s a combination. That doesn’t necessary mean I suddenly dislike a property (though sometimes it does), it just means I can’t get through it again.

The big example for me is Red Dead Redemption. I fucking loved that game. I still love that game. But when I sat down after a year to try a replay I didn’t even make it to Mexico before I got tired of it, put down the controller and went to something else. Thing was I’d forgotten how unintuitive, janky and all-round frustrating the outdated controls were, and what got me through the first time was exploring the stunning world, the compelling characters and the fantastic narrative. When I picked up the game again, however, I’d already explored the world, I remembered the character beats, and I knew how the story ended. Without those things to distract me, well, the troubles involved with just shooting a bloke were a lot more apparent. So I couldn’t play it again, but I still call it one of the greatest games I ever played.

On the other side of the scale, I’ve played the original Mass Effect game through to completion probably close to a dozen times. Add another half-dozen playthroughs of Mass Effect 2 and just under of Mass Effect 3, and you’ve several hundred hours of shooting Geth and, a lot of the time, making the exact same decisions (though sometimes a little more violently). In fact one of the most frustrating things about changing consoles from the Xbox One to the Playstation 4 (when I moved) has been the lack of backwards compatibility. I would quite happily buy all three games again if it meant I could play through them on my PissPoor. That’s something I’d spend a hundred bucks on.

From the generation before I can name KotOR 2 (and the original KotOR for that matter), Jade Empire, the original Killzone, the original Call of Duty, Star Wars: Battlefront, and bloody Lego Star Wars. Fuck, there’s actually a lot of games from then that I’d still play (and do if the option is available).

But from the original Playstation? Fucked if I know.

Y’know what, maybe the first Medal of Honor. I played through that game, Christ, I don’t know how many times. It was probably the first FPS I bought with my own money. Not the first FPS I ever played, that was probably Goldeneye on the N64 at my neighbours house, but the first First Person Shooter I owned, that I bought with my own money. I loved that game when I played it, and it was a great game for its time. I mean this was the title that launched what was, for a bunch of years, one of the biggest franchises in shooters. For a long time (amongst the cool kids at least) you went to Medal of Honor for your single-player campaigns and Battlefield for your multiplayer, until Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came along and took both those titles.

Funny thing is that right now I don’t have fond memories of the gameplay, but I do of the narrative. This was the era of the truly silent protagonist, the briefing for each mission lasted for about as long as it took to load the game, and there were about three characters that I can remember in the whole game, including the player character, and only one of them spoke (Colonel Stanley Hargrove, voiced by William Morgan Sheppard). Yet it managed to make me care a whole lot, and started a whole bunch of tropes.

And that’s about it. That’s the only game I’m keen on trying again. And I paid twenty bucks Aussie for it a decade-and-a-half ago or so, I would not be keen to pay one hundred US. But that’s me though. Truthfully, I came to the PS1 scene late and I never got to stick my feet in the water as much as a lot of other people. We were poor. It happens and it doesn’t.

What I’m getting at is that people are getting excited about this, which is very fine. Truthfully we’ve been talking about a need to archive old games for years and this feels like a step in the right direction, even if it’s not a big enough step and it’s a little bit expensive (give me ports or give me death!) I’m already seeing plenty of “what should the other fifteen games be?” lists being written by people with much more experience, and people who like Tekken and JRPGs are already pretty happy about what’s on the Playstation Classic.

Let’s remember though that rose-tinted glasses do not provide the best view.

This is a step in the right direction, yeah. But maybe give me ports as well, aye?

Good art in gaming

On December 10, 2017 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of culture2 Comments

So recently (as in over a month ago – I moved recently, give me a break) Cary over at Recollections of Play (great blog, check it out) posted an answer to the question, “are video games art?” The short version being yes, and the long answer being maybe if video games can be considered more than their code, cartridges and consoles. She raised some excellent points about how we define art and how that affects our views of what is and is not considered art. Great post, MS DOS is brought up, check it out.

Thing is, however, I’m not a big fan of the question.

Are video games art?

I hear or read this and my first response generally falls along the lines of, “Fuck off son, we’re doing this again?”

I mean, it’s been eleven years since Roger Ebert declared that “Video games can never be art” and seven years since he wrote an extended article on that subject, in which time we as a community have written millions of words that amount to “what the fuck did Roger Ebert know about video games anyway?” (something that Ebert himself reflected on only a few months later). Art is an experiential thing. Without an audience, without emotional interaction, a painting is just paint, a sculpture is just broken rock and a video game is just code. If you’re not part of the audience then you have no right to judge it either way, and those of us who do experience it – those of us who make emotional connections and find our thinking being adjusted – have generally come to the conclusion that yes, video games are indeed art (at least as much as any other narrative media). Much like hardcore pornography, it’s hard to define but we generally know it when we see it.

So, are video games art?

Well, yeah. We’ve all pretty much agreed on that right?

Now, before I go on I want to make it abundantly clear that I don’t think there is anything wrong with having this discussion. Such weighty concepts as the definition of art should be constantly debated, lest our culture stagnates or some fuckwit compares Justin Bieber to Tennyson or Shakespeare or Kanye. Nor am I saying that the opinions of those who disagree – those who say, “no actually, video games are not art” – are wrong. To the contrary, that’s a perfectly valid thing to believe and I’d love to hear your arguments as to why. There can be no debate without respectful opposition. I mean, I’ll probably still end up telling you to fuck right off, but that’s just how I converse with everyone.

No, my problem is not that people keep trying to answer the question, it is that we as a community keep asking it. Over and over and over again. Even after all these years we seem unable to move past it, and that’s a problem because this is first year – first semester – Bachelor of Arts shit. Philosophy 101. The introductory chapter of that far-too-expensive textbook.

So what question should we be asking? Let’s start with “what makes a video game good art?” and go from there.

Let me put it this way: we don’t have a video game equivalent of the film Citizen Kane, often called the perfect movie, something that was pointed out by Roger Ebert himself. But then again, how the fuck would we know? Citizen Kane is considered a masterpiece because enough people – whose opinions we as a culture consider to be expert – tell us it is a masterpiece. They tell us that, according to the technological limits of the time, the direction and photography is perfect. They tell us that the acting is incredible. They tell us the script is superb. They tell us the story is incredible. They don’t tell you that you need to enjoy the movie to recognise it as a masterpiece (I personally think it is boring as fuck), but recognise it as a masterpiece you must. They have criteria, which the film in their subjective but educated opinions meets, so it is a perfect film.

We need our own. Narrative, gameplay, mechanics, style. What boxes need to be ticked, what weight should we place on the importance of each, and does a good game necessarily need to be good art? If we don’t figure this shit out then we won’t know when that perfect game comes along, or if it already has.

So yeah, video games are art. Now let’s start arguing about what video games are good art.

Hopes, dreams and more than a few memories: On Age of Empires 4

On September 10, 2017September 10, 2017 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of culture, Random but worthyLeave a comment

I must have been ten years old when I was given the Age of Empires deluxe pack. I can’t remember if it was Christmas or my birthday, but I remember it was my Aunt who gave it to me. First game, second game and their respective expansions across four CD-Roms, an artbook and a manual. Goddamn, remember when there were manuals? Lotta kids don’t.

It’s what we had before wikis were a thing, children.

Anyway, I played hours and hours of those two games, especially the second. The first was and remains a classic, of course, but Age of Empires II: Age of Kings stands in my mind as the pinnacle of real time strategy games, something that I reckon a lot of people would agree with. And it wasn’t just me: my parents played almost as many hours as I did (mum, in particular, was fucking ruthless). I remember watching that opening cinematic for the first time, the excitement and joy, the exuberance at what I was going to be able to do. What I would build and what I would destroy. The theme became a key part of the soundtrack of my childhood.

After Age of Empires came Age of Mythology. Again I found myself disappearing into an epic world of Ensemble Studios’ creation for days at a time, leading armies of Centaurs, Valkyries and Anubites against the poor bloody infantry of my many, many enemies. The first time I watched a cyclops pick some unfortunate pixel bastard up and toss him across the map was pure magic. It was about this time that my brother started playing video games – too young to fight a campaign, he’d park himself on the scenario creator and put together epic battles of blue versus red. Christ, I wonder if he remembers that. He must do. I should ask him one of these days.

Finally came Age of Empires III. Fuck me dead, the base game came out in two-thousand-bloody-five. That’s twelve years ago. I’m getting old. Anyway, whereas the first three base games (and their expansions) from the franchise were instant classics, AoE III was not. Now I’m not denying a bias on my part, I was deeply disappointed by this game and its expansions, but it received mixed reviews across the board and hasn’t found its way onto any “best ever” or “most influential” lists that I’ve ever seen. Don’t get me wrong, I played through the game. I built up my home city, burned my enemies’ colonies and bought all the expansions hoping that it would get better, but it never did.

For me, I think the most disappointing thing about it was the campaign, a fucking ridiculous tale about multiple generations of a family fighting an evil secret society that wants to obtain the fountain of youth. No, really, that was what the campaign was about. Compared with the simple yet stunning campaigns of AoE II, which allowed me to follow in the footsteps of William Wallace, Atilla the Hun, Joan of Arc, Frederic Barbarossa and Saladin, it was ridiculous and riddled with cliches. Even when AoE III‘s second expansion, The Asian Dynasties, brought the story campaign back to actual history, they failed to understand that a bit of solid voice over work, a decent script and a couple of sketches will create far more emotional investment than watching a tiny rendered figure, indistinguishable from all the other tiny rendered figures around him, committing seppuku ever could. Whereas Age of Kings cemented in me a love of history and will forever stand as one of my favourite examples of the possibility of interactive education, AoE III will forever stand as one of the games that left me the most disappointed.

Regardless, that last expansion was released in 2007. Microsoft would announce the closure of Ensemble Studios a year later, and one of the greatest franchises ever (despite a disappointing younger sibling) seemed to go out with a whimper.

Then 2013 came and an HD version of Age of Kings was released through Steam, to much fanfare. Not only that but two new expansion packs, The Forgotten and The African Kingdoms, have since been released. I can tell you right now, they hold up. But they weren’t a new game, and it didn’t seem like we were going to get one.

Until now.

Ye-heh-eah you gorgeous bastards! Ten years on and being developed by a different studio, but I haven’t been this excited about an announcement trailer in I don’t know how long.

Months. Years maybe. Man, I used to get so excited about new releases. I mean, I still do, but I’m not quite the rabid fanboy I used to be. Is that another sign of aging? Shite, it probably is.

Moving on, with Ensemble Studios no longer being a thing the reins have been passed over to Relic, famous for the Dawn of War and Company of Heroes franchises. Considering that this is really the only information we have so far, we really know fuck-all about the game. I mean, yeah, we don’t know the era or the art style, but we also don’t know much about the mechanics beyond that it will be an RTS. Of sorts. Whereas you know more or less what you’re going to get with other studios (you know roughly what a Firaxis turn-based game will look like, or how a Creative Assembly grand strategy game will work), Relic constantly shake up the formula, even within the same franchise as is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by the profound difference between the first Dawn of War game (which had fairly standard RTS base-building and resource collecting mechanics) and the second (which played more like an isometric action RPG). In all likelihood Relic won’t shake up the classic AoE formula that much, but we can’t be certain.

I’m excited to learn more though. To find out how the mechanics will work, what era/s the game will be set in and how the campaign and single player will work. Who will I be able to play as and who will I be able to crush.

But as excited as I am, all this is tempered by the fact that I probably won’t be able to play it, at least not soon. I’m a Mac user, y’see, and this is a Microsoft game. There is every chance that this game will not be released on my platform of choice, at least not until well after the initial release. Yes, yes, I am aware that there are emulators and Bootcamp, but the former is generally pretty shit while my computer is getting too old and fat to adequately run the latter. It might be released on the X-Bone, but my experience with Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 on the 360 was not a positive one. So yeah, bit of a mood killer that. Almost as bad as how old I’m feeling as I write this.

Anyway, I’m still happy to see one of my favourite franchises, the series that more than any other got me into gaming, is returning; I’m glad to see it given to a studio with such a fantastic pedigree; and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to add another AoE game to the ‘Best of…’ lists. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Tracer might be gay but everyone wants to f*** Mercy (Part Three)

On March 13, 2017 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of cultureLeave a comment

The ongoing success of a game, franchise or IP is reliant on its fan base, this much should be obvious. But is a fan base reliant on the fanart and fanfiction it produces and shares? That is a more difficult question to answer. In my (as always, admittedly uneducated and inexperienced) opinion the short answer is “no”. The longer answer is still “no,” only with a “but it’s still important to a great many fan communities, and clever developers and publishers recognise that fact” attached. But we’ll come back to this in a minute.

In Part One of this series I explained how the decision by Blizzard to put Tracer in a canonical same-sex relationship – thereby making her the first canon LGBTQI character in Overwatch – was the safe choice when considering the less-than-LGBTQI-friendly portion of the Overwatch community, since it didn’t affect their power-fantasies. Part Two I explained the “everyone wants to fuck Mercy” thing, how she is both the most conventionally physically attractive character on the roster (by current societal standards and stereotypes of beauty) and also fulfils the broadest range of character archetypes, making her the most appealing (fuckable) character on the roster. In this final post we’re gonna tie those two things together, and we’re gonna do that by talking about fanfiction. Buckle up kids, it’s gonna be a wild ride!

No. It isn’t. It’s actually pretty tame. I’m sorry for lying to you like that.

The easiest way to claim that Mercy is more popular than Tracer in the fanfiction/fanart community is to punch their names into a search engine and look at the numbers that come up. When I typed “Tracer Overwatch fanfic” into Google.com.au it came up with 112,000 results. Typing “Mercy Overwatch fanfic” on the other hand achieved about 225,000 results. Problem is that if you swap “fanfic” for “fanart” then Tracer is the winner, with about 725,000 results compared to Mercy’s 672,000 results. Not exactly a two-to-one difference like the former, but evidence against my argument nonetheless. Change things a little though, specify, add “Tumblr” on the end and the numbers change back: Tracer gets 794,000 results against Mercy’s 846,000. Trade “Tumblr” for “Twitter” and Mercy wins again with 774,000 results while Tracer languishes with a mere 536,000 results. But these numbers are malleable and inconsistent with each other, not to mention ever-changing (what is correct as I type this will be incorrect tomorrow). Punching certain words into Google (AUS) is simply not scientific, not to mention I can’t be arsed dragging up the numbers for every single character on the roster.

But I don’t really feel that scientific evidence is necessary to the point I’m trying to make. To quote The Castle, “it’s the vibe of the thing” that I’m trying to get at, and that vibe is that Mercy is the most appealing and, therefore, the most shippable.

For you folk who’re new to internet fandom – which I imagine is actually fuck-all of those reading this, but whatever – to “ship” characters (or sometimes real people) is to imagine them in a (usually) romantic or platonic relationship. It’s one of the most common themes in fan communities and the art they create, and Overwatch is no different. At least one website I’ve visited marks the original ship as being between Widow and Tracer, mostly because they were amongst the first characters revealed, and because of the Alive short that saw the two trying to actively kill each other (nothing says “I love you” like attempted murder). Another popular ship is between Soldier 76 and Reaper, two former friends and comrades ripped apart by jealousy and betrayal (again, attempted murder). But the most frequently shipped character that I have seen, personally, is Mercy.

Before everyone’s favourite sniper granny, Ana, was introduced I saw her frequently shipped with older heroes like Reinhardt or Soldier 76, the perceived maturity I mentioned last week placing her in a maternal role (while whoever she was paired up with filled in as dad). I’ve seen her laugh at Tracer’s enthusiastically delivered jokes, get drunk with Mei at a college party while talking microbiology, blush at the sight of Zarya at the gym, gently chide Junkrat for not caring more about his own safety as she patched him up, and be protected by an opposing Widowmaker. Most commonly though it’s Pharah that seems to have won her heart. The Pharmercy ship might be the most famous and popular ship in the community, it’s hard to say. It’s the vibe I get, but maybe I just follow a lot more artists that ship them than anybody else. Going back to Google again, however, and comparing Pharmercy against Widowtracer (as I said, arguably the original Overwatch ship), the former got 482,000 hits against the latter’s 232,000 hits. Even people who don’t agree with the ship acknowledge its popularity and prevalence in the community.

So what does this have to do with Blizzard’s decision to make Tracer its first canonically queer character? Well, let’s go back to that question I asked in the first paragraph and extrapolate (love that word) a little more on the answer.

Simple fact is that, in order to thrive, fan communities rely on new and canonical content from the owners and creators of that property. They need it to exist in the first place so of course they need it to continue. Yes, a fandom can putter on long after a property has effectively died. They can even grow, as new people discover these games, shows and books that have long since ended. I still saw fanwork for Psychonauts well before the prequel/sequel things were crowdfunded, and I still see fanwork of shows from the eighties and nineties that I haven’t even been looked at – as far as we know – for a reboot (Swat Kats fan for life motherfcuker). Shit, there’s a reason nostalgia-driven crowdfunding has been so successful and every other toy commercial is being remade. But for a fandom to really thrive it needs canonical updates from the creators (or the current owners, if the original creators aren’t available). Notice the sharp uptick in the Legend of Korra fandom’s artwork when the first preview for the new comic came out, or the art the appears whenever J.K Rowling mentions anything to do with the Harry Potter universe (I imagine mine wasn’t the only Tumblr dash swamped with images of Professor McGonagall announcing her retirement after Rowling announced that it was one of Harry Potter’s sons’ first day of school).

This doesn’t mean that fan communities can’t self-perpetuate (fucking hell, a fair few modern reboots and at least one recent movie I can think of could very easily be called fanart or fanfiction), but even the eternal fandoms (Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Studio Ghibli etc) keep on fighting the good fight waiting for new, official, canon material to be released.

But that doesn’t mean that fan art is unimportant. You dismiss it to your peril, and the peril of your bottom line. There’s a reason why most developer and publisher social media accounts will have days and competitions that highlight fanart (though rarely fanfiction). It’s creators connecting with creators. A very simple way to acknowledge and appreciate the people who love what you have made enough to make something of their own (and, let’s be honest, are providing a bit of free advertising as well), especially since these artists and writers – in my opinion – by their very nature tend to make up the loudest part of a fandom. So fucking be nice to them.

And that’s why Mercy couldn’t have gone down as the first canonical queer character. Because she’s the star of too much fanart and fanfiction.

Y’see, Blizzard had already announced plans to reveal characters as non-heteronormative well before the release of their Christmas-themed comic book (fuckin’ hell, this has taken me a long time to write) but there were only so many choices available to them in how the reveal would happen. A character simply announcing that they’re into the same gender would be considered half-arsed at best, awkward and shoehorned in the middle, and ignorable at worst. A bit of side-eye or flirting would amount to the same. So would, quite frankly, a character waking up from a one night stand. Yeah, I know, but a surprising number of people seem to think that sex doesn’t prove sexuality. You’d have more than a few blokes going, “yeah, Zarya woke up next to a strange woman she picked up at a bar in Vladivostok, but the rest of the time she’s all about the penises.” Well, maybe not in those exact words but you know what I mean. It comes from that same ridiculous and homophobic train of thought that produces lines like “how do they know they’re gay if they’ve never even fucked a [person of the opposite gender]” and “all that lesbian needs is for a man to give her a good fucking.” Additionally this would go against the character archetypes of quite a few Overwatch characters.

Now, that might all sound anecdotal (it is) and based on my own completely baseless opinions on the thought processes over at Blizzard (totally baseless), but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong (it probably does) and following this path (because it’s my blog and we’re gonna assume I’m right anyway) the best remaining choice for Blizzard was to put whichever character they chose into an actual long-term relationship (again though, totally baseless). Long term relationships – when they’re not being actively used to propel the conflict in a narrative – generally show a character happy, comfortable and content within their sexuality, whatever that may be, and make arguments by observers that “it’s just a phase” much more difficult (but fuckwits’ll do what fuckwits must anyway).

This raises a fresh question though: who do you put your character in a relationship with? Do you pair them up with another character from the roster, an already introduced character from the background lore or someone completely new?

Most likely it would be the former or the latter. Glancing through Blizzard’s released material there aren’t a whole lot of plausible candidates amongst its non-hero characters, but people love it when folk in the background are brought to the foreground. Again though, there’s not a tonne of options there so it would either be another hero or someone completely new.

The problem with putting two heroes together is that you’re revealing two characters are LGBTQI at the same time, and that is a risk I expect most developers (that don’t rhyme with “Mioware”) aren’t willing to take. People still got upset when they found out that Tracer was gay, and while Zarya might fit the cliche of the butch lesbian fuckwits would still have been annoyed to have it confirmed. Double the game characters coming out of the closet doubles the outrage from a single comic. Unless creators have a reputation for queer relationships (which Blizzard don’t) they just aren’t that brave. (How fucking sad is it that revealing characters as LGBTQI is still considered brave?) Creating a new character is the safest option, bringing outrage down to a minimum and giving the fans someone knew to draw or fit into their fanfictions. Thus we have ranga named Emily sharing an apartment with Tracer, officially and canonically pashing on the couch.

And everything ultimately comes back to that single word, with all its suffixes and synonyms. Canon. In order for them to reveal without any doubts that Tracer was gay (or Bi or Pan or whatever, labels suck) they had to put her into an official and canonical relationship with someone on the same end of the gender spectrum. And the simple fact was that Mercy was too popular to be put in a canon relationship.

Fandoms need canon material to thrive. Few things excite a fandom more than when a theory has been called correct or a favourite ship is made official (as the reactions to Bubbline and Korrasami’s official status amongst the Adventure Time and Legend of Korra fan communities, respectively, shows). But it de-legitimise fanart and fanfiction more often than it does the other way. How many fan theories have been brought down by a quick “nay” from an author, how many ships declared null and void when a favourite character hooks up with the wrong fucking person?

But thinking about fan reactions is important to a lot of creators, and Blizzard has a solid reputation for listening to and communicating with the fans of its game. And that’s why I don’t think we’ll ever see Mercy put in a canonical relationship. She’s just too bloody popular, and to put her in an official relationship would be to de-legitimise every single bit of fanart and fanfiction, every ship and theory, floating around the internet. Tracer was the safer option because her and Emily was less of a tragedy than what Mercy would have been.

Everyone wants to fuck Mercy, so no one can. At least that’s how I see things as having happened.

Sort of reminds me of how the Medieval church fetishised Mary (Jesus’ mum), but I wanna wrap this up so we might talk about the Virgin Mercy another time. Thanks for sticking with me. And seriously Blizzard, well done for putting your poster-girl in a same gender relationship. That took guts.

Tracer might be gay but everyone wants to f*** Mercy (part two)

On February 18, 2017February 18, 2017 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of cultureLeave a comment

Guys, gals and preferred, I’m gonna be very blunt in my writing over the next few paragraphs, I’m a straight white male, I’m going to be assuming both knowledge and agreement over a few issues, and everything is going to be very anecdotal. That tends to make things a bit problematic, but I’m trying not to be. It’s just the way I tend to write things. I’ll also remind you that I don’t play Overwatch but am claiming peripheral awareness. Feel free to disagree with me, and please let me know why you disagree. Did I need another disclaimer after last week? Maybe. Fuck it, I felt like another disclaimer.

Alright, so last week I claimed Blizzard’s revelation that Overwatch poster-girl Tracer is not heteronormative (we discover in a Christmas comic that she’s in a romantic relationship with a ranga named Emily) was a laudable (seriously Blizzard, well done) but ultimately safe decision.

The first reason I gave for this is that, bluntly, making a character like Tracer gay (or however she identifies) is less likely to inspire the kind of hate or backlash that making any of the male characters would have. Tracer is a high speed manic pixie trickster and a joyful giggling optimist, so is already outside the brooding, hyper-masculine power fantasies of characters like Reaper and Soldier 76. Her being gay thereby doesn’t crush any fragile and probably homophobic masculine egos, thereby being the safe choice to put in a canonical same-sex relationship. At least to start with.

But today I want to talk about how Tracer is the safe choice when it comes to the ostensible pro-LGBTQI fandom as well, at least in the way Blizzard chose for her to “come out.” And for that we have to talk about how fuckable Mercy is in the eyes of the fandom. I’m not just talking aesthetically either, but that’s as good a place to start as any.

Let’s get it right out of the way, Mercy is the most conventionally attractive character in the Overwatch roster. She is the most objectively hot character in the game. Now, I know what you’re likely screaming impotently at your screens right now. That you can’t objectively judge a subjective topic like beauty and attractiveness, especially with regards to a fictional and stylised computer generated character. That my standards of beauty can’t be applied to others. You don’t think she’s all that hot. You prefer a woman with more curves or more angles or something. In fact, you don’t prefer a woman at all. You think I’m a fucking idiot and Bastion is the hottest character in the roster. Oh yeah, you want you some sweet, hot and oily robot lovin’. Well guess what? This is my article and my opinion is the only one that matters right now, and I say that Mercy is the most conventionally attractive lady on the roster.

In all seriousness, there are a number of attractive ladies (and lads… and robots) on the roster, but I’d argue that Mercy fills out more of the boxes than any of the others. White flawless porcelain skin, long-ish blonde hair, looks like she’s aged somewhere between 25 and 35, larger bust and hips but with a narrow waist. While other female characters are conventionally attractive, they don’t quite fill out a suit of flying armour like Mercy does. Pharah is muscular and aggressive looking, Zarya is just muscular, and Mei appears overweight. Symmetra and Sombra are dark-skinned and the Western culture that I am a part of has spent decades teaching the idea that brown is not beautiful and should quite frankly be ashamed of itself. D.Va is too young and Ana is too old. Even Widowmaker and Tracer, the femme fatale and the other petite-yet-curvy white girl, might be called too stylised (I’ve read more than one comment about Tracer’s “anime hair”). Now, while you can argue that none of the characters are unattractive and will appeal to a wide variety of tastes, fact is that institutionalised sexism and racism are – ironically – equal opportunity employers. So I stand by my remark. By current standards of beauty, Mercy is the most attractive female character on the roster.

Do I personally think she’s the hottest character on the roster? I don’t know man, Sombra looks fun and Reinhardt seems like he’d be a tender lover.

But it goes beyond looks. Honestly, how conventionally attractive a character is doesn’t really mean much when it comes to fanfiction and fanart. If you’ve ever perused a fanart board (I don’t use the word “peruse” nearly often enough) you’d know that what a character actually looks like matters very little. Fuck all. Changing weight, gender, body hair, race, disabilities and age are just par for the often unsettling and frequently prejudiced course. Good fanart, however, stands out when it maintains the personality of the character despite these changes. You might draw a punk rock Pocahontas, but she better have a garden and play her wooden electric guitar beneath a willow tree. Definitely have a mohawk. So yeah, it’s all about the personality, corny as that shit sounds, and it’s her personality that makes Mercy so fuckable. Corny as that sounds.

More accurately it’s the collection of tropes that she fills, tropes that other characters do not, which appeal to a wide variety of kinks, fetishes and interests. Taking a walk through TV Tropes (as you might have noticed, one of my favourite sites to take a walk through) it’s not hard to find that she fills a number of archetypes. Her height alone (she’s 200cm according to the game’s website, about six foot six) makes her a Statuesque Stunner, while her place in an arena shooter makes her an Action Girl by default. But her position as healer, her apparent pacifism, and her choice of aesthetic makes her a White Magician (and her place in the party makes her a Combat Medic). It being a fairly feminine aesthetic (not quite tit-armour but it’s more than a little form-fitting, and very clean) makes her a Girly Bruiser.

I could go on. And I will, in a moment. The point I’m making here is that she falls within a broad range of archetypes, possibly even the broadest of all the characters on the roster. Just looking at the lady characters Pharah is a Hot Amazon (as is, arguably, Zarya); Widowmaker is not, despite the accent, a Femme Fatale, but she is a Manchurian Candidate, arguably a Lady of War and the falls under the broad Ice Queen umbrella; D.Va is an Ace; Tracer is a rather Nice Tomboy and Genki Girl. Now I’m not saying they don’t themselves slot into other archetypes than the one’s I’ve mentioned, just not as attractively as the broad range that Mercy does. And then there’s the archetypes that the fans have put her into, in the art and fiction not put out by Blizzard. The ‘fanart’ and ‘fanfiction’ if you will. Crazy, right?

What I mean is that there are certain roles that the fandom has applied to her that they haven’t really applied to the others. A lot of this is because of relatively unconscious assumptions based on stereotypes drawn from the official character background. In a little plainer English, we draw automatic conclusions about a personality from what we know about a person’s background, and that goes doubly for fictional characters. Mercy is Swiss, so we expect her to be efficient and punctual. Mercy wears flying, angelic ‘Valkyrie’ armour, so we expect her to be partial to the odd bit of Wagner. She’s a doctor and so we bloody assume. We assume she’s educated, because doctors are educated by default. We assume she’s disciplined because getting that education requires discipline. Because Mercy is a female doctor, we assume kindliness and good bedside manner (because only male doctors in pop-culture are arseholes). Most of all we assume that she is mature. Paternal. She becomes an Action Mum, a Substitute Parent, the Team Mum, or at the very least a Big Sister character, at least in the fanfiction and fanart.

And that’s what we’re gonna finish on next week. Swear to God it won’t take me another month and half. Pinky promise.

Tracer might be gay but everyone wants to f*** Mercy (Part one)

On January 4, 2017 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of cultureLeave a comment

Let me put it right out there, I don’t play Overwatch. Two main reasons for that. One, I didn’t have access to a computer or console capable of playing the game when it came out, and I’ve never had a great experience joining a dedicated multiplayer community months after a game’s release. Two, I don’t play multiplayer games anymore. Haven’t for years, they’re just not for me. But in this day and age with a property as big and pervasive as Overwatch that doesn’t really mean a bloody thing. Sort of like how you don’t have to have ever seen an episode of Doctor Who to know what a Dalek’s favourite word is. More importantly for this particular conversation, the community and fandom that’s grown around the game since its release is a vocal one, as is to be expected from a Blizzard property. Being such a major property means that news is covered by the mainstream gaming press, since what happens with the game, surrounding media and community can have long-reaching repercussions for the medium. So if you care about gaming culture at all you care about what’s happening around Overwatch, and keeping an eye on the what’s what is as simple as visiting a few sites regularly, following a few mates’ social media and signing up for a Tumblr account. What I’m saying is that while I don’t play the game and am not a member of the fandom and community, I feel like I know enough to have an opinion on the matter. If you disagree let me know and I’ll happily tell you why your opinion doesn’t matter. Well, this has been a very long and possibly unnecessary paragraph. Fuck it, I felt the need for a disclaimer.

Alright, so, the other day Blizzard came out (heh) and released a Reflections comic centred around the character Tracer as she searched for the perfect gift for her romantic partner, a woman named Emily. Now once you get over the shock that a badass, time-hopping, cockney test-pilot is attracted to gingers, you might also note that Emily is in fact a lady, making Tracer the first canonically LGBTQI character in Overwatch‘s roster of playable heroes. As best I can tell she’s the first canonically LGBTQI major character in any of Blizzard’s properties (Blizzard fanboys feel free to correct me if this is wrong), and she’s not a small character either, having been included to some extent in several different videos (alongside Reaper and Widow), and is the face on the bloody packaging. She’s quite literally the poster girl for the game, so writing her as LGBTQI is no small thing. Blizzard deserves some respect for that, even if they also wrote her as being keen on rangas. Good for them. And yet I can’t also help but feel like Tracer was the safe choice to give a girlfriend.

Why is that? Well, let’s start with the lack of backlash. Now, I’m not denying that there was backlash from the less-than-stellar members of the Overwatch fandom, there definitely was. Demands for refunds on the Overwatch community boards and the like (with at least one great reply that it was too late, their money was gay now) popped up almost instantly. Upset lads declared that Tracer was no longer their “waifu.” There was anger that once again a game company was shoving their SJW/PC agenda down the white male consumer’s throat.

Usual homophobic shit that I imagine by this point most companies and developers just ignore, that being the easiest option and their opinion meaning about as much to Blizzard as my opinion does to the French (the champagne-guzzling poncy socialist bastards). But these are the kind of folk who’d throw a hissy if the comic had merely revealed that Tracer’s unseen third cousin Terry had brought his ‘special friend’ to the family dinner a couple nights back (and gran was not impressed). Any sexual inclusiveness at all was gonna receive some hate. Because some people are just arseholes.

Thing is though, Tracer being gay (or bi or however she identifies) doesn’t effect the fantasy for a lot of other arseholes. Bloody hell, I suspect a few would reckon adding Emily into the mix an improvement on their fantasies. Which is gross, but arseholes generally are. But could you imagine the kind of backlash that might occur if Blizzard released a comic revealing Reaper or Soldier 76 – the characters meant to appeal most to teenage boys afraid of bright colours and the CoD crowd respectively – in a same-sex relationship? Mate, mate, mate, now that would ruin a few angsty adolescent empowerment fantasies right there. If you don’t think that would spark the kind of massed nerd-boy outrage that even monoliths like Blizzard and Activision would not be able to ignore, then you’re either part of the problem or are completely oblivious to it (in which case, welcome to the internet!)

I’d say this can be applied to any of the male characters, from Mcree to Genji to Reinhardt (with the possible exception of Junkrat and Roadhog, who are obviously a couple), but Reaper and Soldier 76 are the most obvious examples of the male empowerment fantasy that come to mind, with their gravelly voices, jaded anger and cynical worldviews. Tracer on the other hand, the cheerful laughing manic-pixie speedster, already falls well outside this fantasy of stoic masculine power. So making her gay is not as big a deal. She’s a safe option in that respect, one of the least likely to crack those fragile male egos and cause the shedding of bitter male tears.

Y’know what? I honestly doubt that Blizzard would have even dared thinking about announcing a canon LGBTQI male-identifying character first. A lesbian is far more acceptable (’cause lesbians are hawt) and a good way to measure the response to differing sexual orientations in your audience, even if in most mediums they have a pretty low survival rate. Especially recently.

Here’s the funny thing though, she was also the safest bet when considering the pro-LGBTQI Overwatch fandom as well. The artists, the identifiers and the shippers. Because, as I mentioned in the title, everyone wants to fuck Mercy.

Come back next week to find out what I’m talking about.

On DA:I, Varric Tethras and Cassandra Pentaghast.

On December 14, 2016 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Questions of cultureLeave a comment

It’s been about a month since I got back to Australia and I’ve been busy. Ish. Busy-ish. Usual stuff, meeting people I haven’t seen in nearly two years, drinking, looking for work (’cause as I’ve established before, cocaine and hookers are expensive), and replaying Dragon Age: Inquisition. One of my favourite games from one of my favourite developers (as I’ve established before, I am a raging Bioware fanboy), I figured that before I settled into a long slog with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Rise of the Tomb Raider I’d start a new playthrough and play through the DLC I’ve missed.

So I’ve immersed myself in the world of Thedas once again, and I gotta say it is great. It’s great to once again explore the expansive universe – the lore, the gossip, the politics – and dive into the intricacies of the main plot and smaller side quests. And of course, it’s great to be back amongst old companions. It’s funny how attached you grow to fictional characters, how invested you get into their interpersonal relationships, and I’ve been loving listening to my party members’ banter with each other as we stab our way across Thedas. But as my elf rogue murdered yet another group of heavily armed strangers (who may or may not have been bandits) and the game decided it had been long enough since the last time any party members had spoken to each other, I came to a startling conclusion. Namely that Varric Tethras is a massive dick towards Cassandra Pentaghast. No, really.

Cassandra was apologising, y’see, about nearly decking Varric earlier that morning after discovering that he had in fact known the whereabouts of Hawke all along. That might count as a spoiler for DA:I (and probably DA2) but honestly you’re probably not reading this if you don’t know the exact moment I’m talking about already, and it’s otherwise not a big enough spoiler to worry about (even the characters point out how telegraphed it is). Anyway, Cassandra tries to apologise (quite sincerely, I might add) for letting her temper get the better of her and almost punching him, and Varric sarcastically remarks that “I’ll mark this on my calendar! Cassandra had a feeling!” I mean, c’mon man, she knows she did wrong and she’s trying to say sorry. Maybe you can cut her a little slack?

This was just the point that I noticed how one-sided much of the animosity was. Earlier in their conversation cycle Varric makes a point of insinuating that Cassandra doesn’t have any friends, and that the only way she was capable of recruiting people for the Inquisition was through kidnapping and threats. While Cassandra is somewhat deserving of these remarks – she certainly comes off as guarded and prickly through most conversations, obviously doesn’t have a whole lot of friends, and did actually ‘arrest’ and threaten both Varric and the player’s Inquisitor – it still feels uncalled for, partly because of all the attempts that Cassandra makes to reach out to Varric; partly because she’s a professional; and partly because she’s a massive fan of his.

On the first point, as I’ve already mentioned, Cassandra makes the point of apologising when she does wrong. She also makes the point of trying to start a conversation about the rebuilding efforts in Kirkwall, a conversation that Varric shuts down pretty harshly. And while admittedly Cassandra doesn’t show a great deal of gratitude to Varric for sticking around to help the Inquisition out shanking demons, it’s not all that surprising that she might be a touch suspicious of Varric’s motivations (he is a somewhat notorious liar and opportunist, even if he is a sentimental one).

The third point, that Cassandra is a massive fan of Varric’s work, I find his behaviour to be most unusual. Varric is protective of much of his work (when the Inquisitor asks questions about his Tale of the Champion, saying the wrong thing can lead to disapproval) even if he feigns nonchalance (I’ve really gotta use that word in more of my writing, sounds so sexy). An entire set of War Table operations is devoted to tracking down some arsehole who wrote an unnofficial and terrible sequel to Varric’s most successful work, Hard in Hightown. And Cassandra is a massive fan of his, reading Tale of the Champion twice, making a comment on the difference in writing style between Hard in Hightown and its atrocious sequel, and reading and rereading her copies of his Swords and Shields romance serial, going giddy with relief and excitement when he presents her with the next issue after a cliffhanger. She even asks him for advice writing, to make her reports more interesting. Quite frankly, while it seems that everyone has read Varric’s work, Cassandra is his only open fan in the Inquisition. Yet it just becomes another point of mockery in his arsenal against her. Writing the next issue to Swords and Shields is just another joke to him and her request for advice is met with a half dozen synonyms calling her boring. I mean, it just feels like a really shitty way to treat someone who respects your abilities and loves the work you produce.

But it’s on the second point, that Cassandra is a professional, that I really want to focus on. Because Varric generally respects professionals, but he tends to hold grudges and perhaps doesn’t fully understand Cassandra or her motivations. Cassandra is a fairly typical strong woman archetype, but not nearly so two-dimensional as to fit any single stereotype. She’s a character defined by a determination forged through faith. She has a job and wants to see it done as best she is able, is an idealist and an optimist, but never strays across that line from professionalism towards fanaticism. Because fuck fanaticism. Seriously that is probably the moral of the whole game, comparing the “at-all-costs” and “any-means-to-an-end” attitudes of the (spoiler alert) Venatori, Templars, Mages and Grey Wardens who at various points oppose the player, with the cool professionalism of the Inquisitor’s advisers and companions. The good guys fight for a cause without sacrificing the world, and are able to distance themselves (with varying levels of success) from the bloody work that needs to be done saving it. Fanatics are the evil bastards who’ll sacrifice everything to get what they think they want, and they need to be stopped.

That’s not to say that there aren’t members of the Inquisition who aren’t fanatics, and that your companions aren’t sociopaths. They absolutely are. There’s a good chance your Inquisitor is as well. But all of them, the ones you see at least, from The Iron Bull to Sera to Cassandra to Cullen, are professionals about it. Maybe not Solas. But fuck Solas. Guy’s a racist arsehole.

So Cassandra is a professional. Just doing her job. Her job is either stabbing people or threatening to stab people. She’s pretty good at it. So why doesn’t Varric respect that? He respects other people for it, as we see time and again. When the Inquisitor asks why Varric isn’t the spymaster instead of Leliana he flat out tells you that it’s because she’s better at the job, because of her ability to distance herself from her agents and informants. She’s more professional about it. Varric’s language about Cullen and Josephine follows a similar bend, with him remarking about how effective at their jobs they are. He talks about his editor – who once murdered someone over incorrect punctuation – quite highly, and while he disparages the Dwarven Merchant’s Guild, Carta and Coterie regularly he still shows genuine respect to their members who know what they’re doing and do it well. I can’t even be bothered to go into the examples from DA2 beyond just pointing at Aveline and Isabela, on opposite ends of the legal spectrum, who Varric simply accepts and befriends, completely understanding and forgiving threats of arrest or the occasional betrayal.

What I’m getting at is that Varric is supposed to be the sort of guy who would accept an excuse of “nothing personal, it’s just business.” So why doesn’t he accept that about Cassandra? She needed information about Hawke, and he was not forthcoming about that information until threats (and actual violence) were used. Well, the easy answer to that is to say that Varric holds grudges. We saw it with his brother, we see it with anyone else that directly harms him or those closest to him. But then why doesn’t he hold the same level of grudge against Leliana (who if not a direct participant, tacitly approved of Cassandra’s interrogation) or against other earlier members of the Inquisition, like Cullen?

My guess is that it’s because he thinks he understands the others’ motivations better than he understands Cassandra’s. By the time we get to DA:I Leliana has gotten dark and violent, ordering executions, assassinations and sacrifices without hesitation in the name of duty (thank god that duty includes saving the world) beyond making sure she’s shanking the right bloke, bird or miscellaneous. But she’s also an incredibly loyal person, and Varric can see that there was something more to her relationship with Divine Justinia, something unquantifiably deep, that was lost when Justinia was assassinated. Varric understands the desire for revenge and the mixed feelings it produces. Cullen is driven by his failures, as a commander and as a person, haunted by failing to prevent the spectacular destruction of the Fereldan and Kirkwall Circles of Magi and blaming perfectly innocent mages in between. Again, Varric understands feeling of failure, personal and professional (yes I know I’ve been using that word way too much in this essay, piss off, you’re not that perceptive… sorry, don’t piss off, I need you).

But Cassandra is driven in her duty not by vengeance and failure, but by her faith in the Maker, his plan and his institutions (even if she believes they needed to be changed). Varric doesn’t understand faith, quite understandably. He has issues with trust, let alone something even more indefinable and intangible like faith. It freaks him out. Cassandra isn’t the only one who suffers from Varric’s incomprehension. In DA2 Prince Sebastien, squeaky clean and fresh back from the priesthood to avenge his murdered family, is a similar subject of mockery for his virtue and righteousness despite never once stabbing a book in Varric’s lap. So because Varric is unable to understand her motivations, he is unable to brush off her actions as just “doing her job.” That makes it a personal attack, even when it shouldn’t, and Varric holds grudges. For most of the game, at least.

Towards the later game the banter between the two shifts, becoming less confrontational and even friendly. They develop a certain intimacy thanks, in no small part, to Cassandra’s own sense of fairness and genuine honesty. They appreciate each other, and become companions even they don’t necessarily become friends, joking about the book stabbing with each other instead of at each other. Attachment and sentimentality and all that. There’s even suggestion that they continue travelling together even after the Inquisition has completed its mission, something which both find crazy but not impossible.

So what’s the point to all this? Just wanted to point out some great writing, basically. I’d call this one of the most interesting and layered relationships in the game, and they do it with a couple pages of dialogue and some great voice acting. Not much more to it than that.

Life in the Avenger’s Barracks (19)

On October 6, 2016 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Not at all trueLeave a comment

Chapter 19: Journeys

Flashes of green lightning through the haze of smoke and ash. Shining eyes floating across the horizon.

Blood on his hands, blood on his face, blood on his clothes, blood in his nose, blood in his mouth. Screaming in his ears.

Private Smit on the ground, trying to hold in his intestines while considerate boots stepped around him.

Smoke and shadow, hiding away what he wanted to see. What he hoped to see. Curling around and away from reality, revealing only the horror and despair and hopelessness of the world.

Corporal Davids pressing the barrel of a pistol beneath his chin and firing his last round. The back of his head exploding, blood and brain spurting in a graceful arc like water from the mouth of a fountain.

Private Khumalo’s chest bursting in a pulse of green light, his limbs flying away and his head bouncing towards his friends. Eyes wide. Mouth open. No pain, not even surprise on his face. Just open and slack. Neck a smoking stump.

The screaming in his ears getting louder. Being joined by roars and commands. A steady thumping that he could feel through his feet, his hands. His own heartbeat maybe?

He’d never bothered learning their first names. It seemed a waste of time. Now he wished he knew them by something other than ranks and family names he might’ve made up. No one else would remember them or how they died. He should have learned their first names.

Lieutenant Botha’s face, made of smoke and ash, peeling away, flaking away, blowing away as he nodded at the captain’s orders. Only the eyes remaining steady as he turned towards his soldiers. The last of his soldiers.

No more ammunition. They had no more ammunition.

There was no hope of retreat on Botha’s face. No chance of regrouping. His face was falling apart. Being rebuilt by the smoke.

He spoke. Two words.

“Fix bayonets.”

Joseph Ballo woke up.

***

The Commander looked pissed. Brows furrowed, eyes narrowed within the dark rings that seemed to have become a permanent part of his complexion, a slight downward twist to the corner of his mouth. Warning signs for the members of Menace One to be on their best behaviour as they filed into the armoury and gathered around the projector screen that had been set up for the briefing.

Not that the Commander was pissed off at them, Emily thought as she watched Li Ming limp over to one of the scattered chairs that had been left free for her. No, from what she’d heard from CO Bradford – via Martin Singh via Gerty Wilders – the Commander had taken the recent loss of three X-Com operatives in a single mission very personally, as if it was all his fault that Michelle and James and Dori had died.

Ambushes happen. Enemies are unpredictable. Sometimes you lose control of a situation and people die. Everyone knew it, and they still went out anyway. Emily wondered if the Commander had someone to tell him these things though. Wondered if the Commander had ever had someone to tell him these things. Christ knows she had needed someone.

“We missing anyone?” the Commander growled as Emily found a spot beside Navneet Banerjee, whose eyes were looking a little red and hair was damp from what was probably a recent shower. CO Bradford shook his head and the Commander stepped over to the projector screen, “Then let’s get started.”

A world map appeared on the screen with an audible and completely fake click (Emily wondered if the sound effects were a leftover from whatever ancient software their current had been built over, and who had been nostalgic enough to keep them). There were two red dots on the map pulsing ominously, one in central Africa and the other in south-eastern Europe.

“Alright folks it’s been a rough couple of weeks,” the Commander began and everyone seemed to nod agreement, “but thanks to some recent breakthroughs from our Dr Tygen and Miss Shen,” Emily couldn’t keep herself from picturing the locked doors of a hold far below decks and Allie’s grumblings about busted machines right before they’d begun necking last, “we’ve got two targets to hit, and maybe get some payback.”

The Commander’s eyes tracked over the gathered soldiers, then shifted to the map as he reached across the screen to point at the red dot in Africa, his arm casting a shadow like some dark god stretching a vengeful fist across the world.

“The facility here, on the border of the former Central African Republic and Chad, is going to take some preparation before we hit it. We need to establish contact and relations with some of the closer resistance cells before we can go in without fear of being flooded with reinforcements. The target in what’s left of Romania, however,” he raised his arm and tapped the second dot on the map, causing the whole screen to ripple, “is ripe for plucking. The Avenger will be heading to a resistance camp in Poland in-” he checked his watch on one wrist while redirecting his other towards the Avenger’s destination “-twenty-three minutes. From there we’ll… Are you alright there Mister Banerjee?”

The whole space, Emily included, turned to look at Navneet at the same time. He was leaning heavily against some crates, his normally darker skin looked pale and drawn, and he seemed to be paying more attention to the deck than to the briefing, at least until the briefing began paying attention to him.

“Just fine, sir!” He said, standing a little straighter and placing his full attention on the Commander, where it was supposed to be, “Perhaps a little tired.”

Fuck, was he slurring a little? Emily wasn’t sure, but…

“Alright then,” the Commander nodded, but his tone sounded like he’d noticed something in Navneet’s as well, “Make sure you get a full night’s sleep tonight.”

“Thankyou sir. I will, sir.”

Fuck, he was definitely slurring.

The Commander kept an eye on Navneet but continued the briefing, stepping away from the screen as the map clicked over to a few fuzzy pictures of a sparse tree line.

“This was as close as the locals were willing to get. They reported on strange sounds coming from the forest and generally agreed that people who enter don’t tend to come back out. Firestarter took a few long range Gremlins nearby in the skyranger. Scans didn’t show-” the Commander paused for a moment and looked at Navneet again (who seemed to be watching the wall on the opposite side of the screen with a blank smile on his face), but didn’t point it him out again, “scans didn’t show any signs of a building or structure in the area. They did, however, detect some crazy shit if Shen is to be believed.

“There’s an alien power source in the area, and it is doing something strange. I, for one, would like to find out what. Before we get into operational details, however,” the Commander looked over his shoulder, “Mr Bradford, could you please escort Mr Banerjee to the Barracks for some rest.”

A murmur ran through the assembled team, not words exactly but more like a collective gasp or growl.

“Sir,” Navneet took a step forward, “I’m fine, sir.”

“No Mr Banerjee, you’re not.” They’d dimmed the lights as the briefing started, but Emily could see the Commander’s hands tighten into white-knuckled fists, illuminated by the reflected glow of the projector screen, as he spoke, “We will discuss this at length when I think you’re actually fine enough to hear it, but first you need to sleep it off.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Emily wouldn’t say that she was exactly best buds with Navneet, but he wasn’t a bad guy and something about the Commander’s voice seemed to indicate that the Pakistani with the fancy English accent would be lucky to not have his face rearranged.

She cast a glance towards where Else was standing, arms crossed under her chest, to see how the German woman was reacting. Else kept her eyes on the screen, her face a blank mask as Bradford placed a firm hand on Navneet’s shoulder and led him out. That was… strange. Else wasn’t the type for emotional outbursts, but Emily would have at least expected a raised eyebrow as her boyfriend was escorted from a briefing. Unless…

Fuck, Emily had missed something. Judging by the surprised looks, she wasn’t the only one. But Else had always been a good friend… And Emily had always been a shitty one.

“Alright,” the Commander’s voice was tight as he continued, “let’s move on then.”

***

Ballo cracked two eggs into the tiny cooking pan and set them over the slightly larger fire he’d managed to get burning in the centre of the old hut, and set about rearranging the contents of his rucksack for the third time. He’d found the building a few days before with Duchess, the crumbling remains of what was once a small but proud farm, with its roof intact and a working well out back. As good a place as they were likely to find in the middle of fucking nothing to hole up and rest for a bit while Duchess healed.

She was sitting across the room, watching him carefully place the last of his canteens at the top of his pack, her leg and arms wrapped in fresh white bandages and her hair falling unusually loose around her shoulders. She grinned as Ballo lifted the bag, feeling the weight and balance of the thing that he’d be carrying on his back for hours at a time.

“There we go,” he grunted approvingly, “perfect.”

“The first sign of madness is talking to yourself,” Duchess smiled at him from across the across the fire.

“But I’m not talking to myself, I’m talking to you,” he looked around the hut and spotted the chicken that had so kindly provided breakfast, “or her. She doesn’t talk back much though.”

“I should hope so.”

Ballo stepped back over to the eggs and lifted the pan off the fire. They hissed softly as he prodded them with a fork and smelled better than anything he’d eaten in a long while.

“Would you like some?” He offered the pan towards Duchess, but she just shook her head.

“You know I can’t eat anything.”

“I do, but it seemed polite to offer.”

“You’re nothing if not polite.”

“I blame my parents.”

“Raising a well-behaved child, the monsters!”

Ball laughed and it felt good, like he hadn’t laughed in a long time. He let the pan cool for a moment then began to slowly devour the eggs, savouring every bite. The chicken, almost the same colour brown as the hard-packed dust outside, wandered over and began pecking at his boots.

“Which way will you go?”

“North,” Ballo replied around a mouthful, “then east. Step by step towards the coast.”

“That’ll take days.”

“Weeks I expect. Unless someone picks up my message.”

“You should eat the chicken.”

“What?” Ballo said, reaching down and scratching the hen’s head. It clucked appreciatively.

“You should snap its neck and take it with you,” Duchess replied, unperturbed, “Cook it tonight when you set camp. It’ll become something’s lunch eventually, it may as well be yours. I’m surprised its lasted this long.”

That made sense, and Ballo knew that she was simply voicing some very practical thoughts from the more logical parts of his brain, but still…

“No,” the hen hopped over his boots and skittered towards the entrance, Ballo watching it as it went, “no, you’ll not die today. Not by my hand at least.” He turned back towards Duchess, whose smile had turned indulgent, “Would you like to come with me? When I leave?”

She shook her head again, “You know I can’t.

“I do, but it would be impolite not to ask.”

“And you don’t want to be alone again.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

The chicken clucked, grabbing his attention for half a second. When he looked back across the dying fire Duchess was gone, back into the grave he’d dug for her yesterday thirty paces from the well after the infection that had taken her foot and arm finally took the rest of her.

Ballo sighed and checked his watch. It was almost time to trigger a pulse with the transponder hanging from his waist. Maybe someone would hear this one and he wouldn’t have to wait so long as last time to have someone living to talk to again.

“Other then you, of course,” he said to the chicken, who didn’t speak back.

***

For some reason Neil had expected the skyranger to be louder. He wasn’t sure why, since it weren’t his first time riding its hold, but he’d expected more than the muffled whine this time. A dramatic roar like an iron-scaled dragon charging into battle, or maybe just enough noise to drown out his own thoughts.

They were finally (finally) sending him on a mission, and it was a damn important one as well. There was something powerful and alien that needed finding, and when they did it would need either blowing up or taking back to the Avenger. But it wasn’t just the objective, whatever that was, that made this mission important. They needed a win, what with all the casualties and the ‘doomsday clock’ above the world map getting closer and closer to “out of time,” and he was one of the people chosen to get that win.

They should have sent Galina. Out of the two of them the Russian had always been the fiercer one, the one that laughed at danger like it was one of those old comedy shows Miss Fatima liked to put on. If she was on the skyranger she’d probably be laughing right now. At the very least Neil doubted that she’d be damn near vibrating in her seat like he was.

How the hell did the others do it? Neil was all nervous energy, shifting and bouncing and tapping his feet like a damn fool, drumming his fingers against the grip of his new plasma rifle. James King’s old plasma rifle before he’d been blown up. Not a good thought. Need to have less of those.

The others all looked more or less normal. Mister Leroy was playing with his Gremlin, Miss Else was polishing her round glasses, Mister Dekker looked like he was checking the power levels of his damn huge storm gun. Karen Nilsen might have been twitchier than Neil, but everyone was pretty positive she was at least half crazy anyway so that was pretty normal. Even Miss Tiffany – sorry, Miss Tiff – looked relaxed. She was just leaning back against the skyranger’s hull, legs stretched out in front of her, ankles crossed and eyes closed. Her first mission as well and she might have been goddamn dozing as far as Neil could tell. How the hell was she that calm.

Then again, Galina wouldn’t have been that calm. Galina would have been excited. Eager. A damn bloodhound straining at the leash. They should have picked her for the mission. Less chance of her pissing herself before they even got there.

Hell, he needed to breath. To get out of this tiny hold. He needed to think or clear his head or something.

The Commander said they’d be running into those crab-monsters again. The ones that had killed three of theirs in a single mission. What if they did? What would he do when he saw all those teeth and all those spikes? How would he react? Would he be able to react? Or would he just freeze? Freeze, and get himself and everyone else killed.

Can’t screw this up. His fingers drummed harder against his rifle. A dead man’s rifle. Can’t screw this up. Can’t screw this up. He could hear the breath whistling through his nose and knew everyone else could hear him as well. Can’t screw this up. Can’t screw this up. Can’t screw this up.

A hand reached across and came to rest on his, silencing his drumming fingers. He followed the hand to an arm, to a shoulder, to the face of Miss Else who was sitting beside him. She gave a wink then turned towards the intercom where Louise Seo was saying something, but didn’t remove her hand. He felt his own turn into hers and grab it tight. Still she didn’t pull away. Left it there until they swung over the LZ and the ramp lowered, finally letting in the sound that Neil had been waiting for.

Maybe he saw Miss Tiff give her a grateful smile as they all stood up and turned towards the waiting zip lines.

Neil jogged to the end of the ramp and grabbed one of the lines. They should have picked Galina for the mission, he thought, but as he rappelled towards the twilight forest below he was glad they’d chosen him.

***

Ballo walked for hours, stopped sometime after midday to eat something, then walked again. He had enough ration packs – old pre-war things long past an expiration date that didn’t seem to matter – to last him a few days before he’d feel the need to start trapping, skinning and gutting his meals, but he had no idea where he was and how long he’d be walking. There was a very real possibility he’d die out here. That didn’t bother him all that much. Not much did these days.

He set up camp when it grew too dark to keep walking without stumbling into something’s home or turning his ankle on a stray root. He ate again and sang a song to himself. Duchess didn’t make an appearance. That was disappointing.

That night he dreamt of faces he could barely remember the names for and injuries he could never forget, fire and blood and screaming. A final order, “Fix bayonets!” And then he woke up, like he always did. Funny, the nightmares didn’t bother him like they used to either.

Around mid-morning he found an old road. It was cracked and overgrown, barely more than packed earth and gravel, and didn’t look like it had been used for years. But it led in the right direction and was easier than picking his way through the scrub that had started to grow thicker and thicker. That was a good sign. He’d need to find water soon.

“In that case perhaps sticking to the road is a bad idea,” Ballo told himself.

“We’ll see,” he replied, and kept to the road anyway.

At certain times of the day he’d switch on the transponder on his waist, hoping that someone would pick up the ping and then come to pick him up. It was an old code that few still alive would remember, but there was still those few, and Ballo had become an optimist in his old age. Well, old by his standards.

“It doesn’t matter one way or the other,” he told a gnarled, dead tree that he was pissing on, “but I would prefer to not have to walk halfway across the continent. It gets boring after a while.”

The tree didn’t reply, but he felt like it agreed with him. And still, he kept walking.

Life in the Avenger’s Barracks (18)

On August 31, 2016 By longandshortofitallIn Longer rants, Not at all trueLeave a comment

Chapter 18: Nobody’s ever really ready.

The three men in suits came on a monday when Neil was eight. His ma offered them sweet tea and cookies that she said she’d baked that morning but Neil knew she’d bought from a store the day before. They shook their heads and said thanks but no thanks, there was a girl waiting in the car. Another “special” child that they were taking to the “special” school halfway across the country.

They asked if Neil was ready to go. Asked him, not his parents. He nodded and hugged his ma tight, the straps of his heavy backpack digging deep into his shoulders, then turned to his pa standing in the shadows with an angry look on his face.

Pa didn’t like this, didn’t trust the government men who’d come to take Neil away. Didn’t trust the government before the aliens took over, started hating them after they took away his work. He’d been a ranch-hand once upon a time, would make Neil laugh til it felt like his gut was about to burst with his stories about being a real cowboy. Then they’d banned cows, and pa weren’t a cowboy no more. Now they were coming to take his son, and he weren’t gonna be a father either.

But he couldn’t stop them. They had papers with signatures that gave them no choice. Neil was going with the men in suits, whether pa wanted it or not. Whether Neil wanted it or not. But ma was prouder than he’d ever seen her before about her “special” son, and that was something at least. She began to cry as he climbed into the back seat beside a girl about the same age as him, who said her name was Bell and had hair the colour of dried grass tied back in a messy ponytail.

One of the men stayed behind with Neil’s parents – to fill out paperwork or something – while the other two climbed into the front seats. The car started with a low hum and Neil pressed his face against the window for one final look at his parents. Ma was standing at the edge of the footpath, sniffling and waving but with a big smile on her face. Pa stood in the doorway, arms crossed, still scowling but his eyes locked on Neil’s face. Bell reached out and took his hand as the car rolled away from the curb and his parents disappeared from sight. It would be the last time he ever saw them.

The men didn’t talk as they drove, just switched on the radio to some random music station (the kind pa hated, made with computers instead of real instruments) and kept their eyes on the road ahead. Bell didn’t talk either, but she held on to Neil’s hand as tight as a bird with a worm. He got the feeling she was scared. He sure as heck was.

It weren’t long before they’d driven past the town limits and were driving down one of the long, straight highways towards the city-centres. In a visit before they’d come to pick Neil up the men had said they’d be taking him to Dallas, where they’d put him on a train that’d take him to the new school. He’d been excited about the idea of getting on one of the ADVENT trains. His teacher said they used magnets to float across the tracks faster than a jet plane, and that had sounded like the coolest things ever. Now, watching the sun set over the miles and miles of what his ma would’ve called desert and his pa would’ve called scrublands, he weren’t so excited. Eventually the sun went down completely and he couldn’t even see anything past the white lines on the edge of the road.

The driver cursed something fierce and the car came to a screeching stop, throwing Neil and Bell against forward against their seatbelts. Neil leaned around the driver’s seat and stretched his neck as far as he could to see above the dashboard. There was another car parked across the road lit up by their high beams, with its hood up. There was a man perched on the roof, smoking a cigarette and playing with an old-fashioned looking laptop. A lady was walking slowly towards them, shielding her eyes with one hand and waving with the other, a large, sorry smile on her face.

“Think it’s an actual breakdown?” the driver asked the second man.

“I doubt it, but nobody else should know we’re out here so it might actually be.”

“Right across the road.”

“I’ve seen stranger. Still, safeties off and call it in.”

The second man climbed out of the car, unbuttoning his jacket as he went then raising his left hand like a stop sign and resting his right hand on his hip. No, not his hip, on a gun hanging from his belt. Neil’s eyes went a little wide and he glanced at the driver, wondering if he had a gun as well. Wondered why these men from this “special” school needed guns at all. The driver was frowning at his phone, punching buttons and not seeming to like the results. Outside the lady had stopped.

“Sorry to bother you,” she had a funny accent, not local and not even from up north or down south, “but we went over something and spun-”

“Ma’am,” the second man spoke over her, “you’re going to have to move your vehicle off the road now.”

“Yes,” still smiling, “that’s what I was trying to ask you for help doing before you interrupted me.”

“Shit,” the driver growled and climbed out of the car, “our signals are being jammed. It’s a trap!”

Neil looked over the dashboard at the lady and saw her eyes flash purple. No, really, purple. Then the second man spun around and his face was scared and he had his gun out and he began firing and his shots were so loud. Cracks louder than fireworks that rolled like lightning through the car into Neil’s eardrums. Bell began to scream and Neil pulled her towards him, tried to hold her whole body like she’d held his hands.

The driver began jerking as blood began squirting from new holes in his chest and neck, like miniature red fountains. He collapsed on the hood of the car and the second man kept firing. Blood sprayed across the windshield and the second man kept firing and Neil shut his eyes tight. Kept them tight until well after the shots finally stopped.

There was a tap on the window and Neil nearly jumped clear of his skin. He opened his eyes and looked up to see the woman give him a small wave through the glass. Neil looked around and saw that the second man was still standing in the same spot, his eyes wet with tears and the gun pressed up under his chin. His finger was pulling the trigger, but the gun must have been out of bullets. Then the man who had been on the roof of the other car with the laptop walked up beside him and blew half his head away with a big shotgun. The body collapsed out of sight like it didn’t have no bones left. Like how Neil imagined an octopus would fall over if it was crawling over land.

There was a thunk and the lady opened the door, Neil looked back at her and pulled Bell in tighter. The girl had stopped screaming but had buried her face deeper into Neil’s shoulder. He tried to look threatening as the lady came down on one knee – he guessed so she could look him in the eye – and it must’ve worked a little ’cause she stayed out of arm’s reach.

“Hello there,” she said in her funny accent, “Would you be Mister Neil Perry?”

Neil nodded and the lady seemed to become a little brighter. She had short black hair and a tan like pa used to have when he still worked outdoors, with a square jaw and small, pretty mouth. Younger than ma and pa, but not by much.

“I presume the young lady you’re doing such a fine job of comforting is Miss Isabelle Franco?”

Neil shrugged, hard to do when he was holding Bell so tight. He didn’t know her full name.

“Excellent. My name is Annette and that man over there is my friend, Monsieur Said.” She raised her voice a little on that last part, and Monsieur Said smiled behind his cigarette and gave Neil a little wave, “I am sorry you just saw what you did. That was…” her eyes flicked to the blood on the windscreen, “messier than I had hoped it would be. But I need you to trust me right now when I say that I did it to keep you and Miss Isabelle safe.”

The lady, Annette, reached towards him slowly, like Neil was a wild animal. She stopped halfway, smile never leaving her face.

“I need you to come with me, so I can take you somewhere safe. You need to know I will force you if I have to. But that is not something that I want to do. Please. Please, take my hand.”

Neil looked down at Bell, then back at the lady. Something in the back of his brain told him that she didn’t need to ask him to trust her, that all she needed was for her eyes to flash purple again and Neil would do whatever she wanted. Just like the man in the suit shooting the driver. But her eyes remained the same colour, and her smile stayed the same and instead she was asking him.

Maybe that was why he reached out towards her outstretched hand.

***

The skyranger bounced as it hit some turbulence. Michelle King felt her stomach drop, then her ears pop as the air pressure began to change. One of the red lights above turned green and she heard Louise Seo’s voice speak into her ear, “Beginning our descent, five minutes to the L-Z.”

Michelle sighed and gave the scarred photograph one final look. Three little girls sat around a smallish dog with a reddish coat and its tongue hanging out, laughing at the camera. A real laugh, with lots of teeth and tears in the eldest girl’s eyes. Tiff Martz couldn’t remember what she’d said to make the girls laugh like that when she’d taken the picture, just mumbled that she was “always fucking hilarious” and proceeded to tell her all about the dog (half-dingo apparently, making it bloody difficult to fence in). Michelle smiled, folded the photo and slid it into a makeshift pocket of her armour.

Those three girls were a different part of her very compartmentalised life, a part that she hadn’t given herself time to think about since arriving at X-Com. It was easy enough to ignore between all the training and nearly getting her face blown off and James’ annoying-as-shit deathwish, but then Tiff had turned up. And brought photos.

She still had the same smile on her face as she pulled out her gatling gun and spun the barrels, performing those last minutes checks and rechecks to make sure the weapon would fire when she told it to. It took her a minute to realise that her brother James kept glancing at her as he did the same.

“What?” she asked sharper than she meant to, subconsciously scratching at the scar on the side of her head.

“Nothing. Just haven’t you smile like that in a while.”

“Like what?” Shit, again more defensive than she was planning.

“Fucking honestly happy, I think,” there was a laugh behind the words, “Don’t die on me today, alright?”

“Alright,” Michelle rolled her eyes, then added, “you too.”

“I’ll try to avoid it.”

“I think we should all avoid dying,” Li Ming Cheng added, and elbowed Michelle in the ribs.

“Seconded,” Doreen Donaldson piped up as she fiddled with her Gremlin.

“It would be my preference as well,” Thierry Leroy added sombrely.

“Yes,” Cesar Vargas grinned around the hold, “let us all try not to die.”

Michelle laughed and began checking her grenade launcher.

***

“Do you two ever leave this fucking room?”

Neil was startled enough at the voice coming from right outside his chamber that he nearly jumped out of his chair. He looked up into the smiling face of Miss Tiff, leaning her forehead against her forearm against the ballistic glass.

She seemed to read his mind as she said, “Sorry, door was open and I thought I’d let myself in.”

She was wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with a white, long-haired, somehow female-looking skull and the words “Violent Soho,” fatigue trousers rolled up to her calves and a great deal of dark eye-shadow. It was… a hell of a lot different to what she looked like when she first turned up in the Psionic Lab. It made Neil feel overdressed in his neatly pressed coveralls. Over in her own chamber Galina Zinchenko raised her hand in a sort of fist, with her pinky and pointer finger extended.

“Rock and roll?” she asked, one eyebrow cocked.

“Yeah,” Miss Tiff chuckled, “rock’n’roll. Seriously though, you two ever even been on a mission?”

“Have you?” Neil asked, a little more defensively than he would have preferred.

“Not for X-Com, but I’ve only been here a few days. You two have been here for weeks, yeah?”

Neil looked at his feet sheepishly. This had been a sore point between him and Galina for a while now. She thought they were ready for action, was chomping at the bit to fry some poor alien S-O-B’s mind with her newly learnt powers. Neil was happy waiting until the Commander felt they were ready. Yeah, he’d volunteered for this and figured the ability to float things around with his mind was a pretty good trade-off for eventually fighting the war, but he was in no rush to get into combat. Miss Tiff didn’t need to hear all that though.

“We’ll be sent on a mission when we’re sent on a mission,” he said with a bit of a growl in his voice, “that’s all there is to it.”

Neil went back to what he’d been reading before Miss Tiff had come in – some old paperback called ‘Don Quixote’ that Dr Tygen had found for him in Cesar Vargas’ growing library of random books – trying very hard to ignore the dark-haired woman who was still smiling down at him.

“I’d like to ask a favour.”

That weren’t what Neil was expecting her to say. He looked up and saw that she was pressing an envelope against the glass of the chamber. Neil stood up and stepped closer to get a closer look at the letter. Not that there was much to see, it was just a plain white envelope after all. His eyes were drawn instead to the pattern of tattoos that he now saw ran from beneath Miss Tiff’s shirt, down her arms and hands to the her short fingernails, an intricate pattern of vines that looked like a solid mass of black green from any distance surrounding a few larger images – on her right arm he could see a clock face, a stylized castle, a rifle crossed over a bunch of arrows.

“Got the rougher ones done when I was in prison,” she said and Neil realised she’d seen his eyes wander, “the finer stuff done when I got out.”

“Why were you in prison?” Neil asked, them mentally kicked himself for asking such a personal question. Ma and Miss Annette hadn’t raised him to pry.

“I killed a lot of people.”

“Why?” Galina asked and probably didn’t give a damn about prying.

“I had my reasons,” Miss Tiff answered in a tone that said she wouldn’t be spending anymore time on the subject, “Bradford says you write regularly to your Night Witch. Next time I want you to send this letter along with yours. Please.”

“What’s on the letter?” Neil asked and wasn’t able to keep the suspicion out of his voice.

“I’d rather not tell you.”

“I need to know what I’m sending before I send it.”

“No you don’t.”

“That’s right, but I wanna know anyway before I send Miss Annette anything.”

“Miss Annette?” Miss Tiff cocked an eyebrow.

“You don’t think everyone walks around calling her the damned Night Witch all the time, do you?”

“Huh,” her eyes narrowed, as if she’d never considered someone with Miss Annette’s reputation might have been given a real name, “I suppose not.” She tapped the envelope with her finger thoughfully for a second than said, “They’re names and a location. Two little girls. ADVENT came for them when they were younger because… because I think they’re like you. Whatever you are.”

“You want Miss Annette to find them?”

“I want Miss Annette to be able to find them. They’re safe enough now, but if this,” she rolled her head around swivelled her eyes to gesture the whole ship, “all goes tits up that might change.”

“Of course we’ll send your letter,” Galina said and Neil saw no reason to disagree.

“Thanks,” Miss Tiff shot the Polish woman in the other chamber a gratefull grin, “I owe you both one.”

“You don’t owe us anything,” Neil grinned, “helping other kids escape whatever the aliens have planned’s part of the job. Who’re the little girls.”

“They’re my reasons,” Miss Tiff said and her smile became a little more… honest.

***

Michelle’s smile had lasted until they’d made it off the Skyranger.

The air was thick with smoke coloured black and grey or stained orange and red by a dozen different fires. The air tasted of soot and metal and stank of burning shit in a very literal, gag-inducing way. Shadows danced in the half-light followed by twitching barrels and twitchy trigger fingers as Menace One leap-frogged through the wreckage of what had been a small but bustling resistance community, looking for survivors as they made their way towards the sound of gunfire on the opposite edge of the camp.

Pickings were slim and there were a lot more bodies without a pulse than with. They found a small girl huddling with her father hiding behind a woodshed made of scrap-metal, and a teenage boy hiding up in a tree. They were given instructions to head where the skyranger was hovering where Simmons would swing down to pick them up. Dori looked pale as a ghost as she watched the civilians race towards the treeline, and it occurred to Michelle that this might have been the first time the Scotswoman had seen this side of the alien occupation. Wondered if any of the others had made it all the way to X-Com without seeing them murder a bunch of people and then convince everybody else it was all their victims fault.

Leroy screamed a warning over on their left flank and the whole squad swung in his direction. Leroy was firing as something emerged from the smoke, something big and purple running around on too many legs with sharp looking spikes running down its spine and sharp looking mandibles and sharp looking claws, drooling from a gaping mouth like the gates of hell. It screeched out a high-pitched roar (Michelle had thought those were two seperate actions until right that moment) that reverberated through her bones and made her insides feel like jelly, charging at Leroy too quickly, Michelle thought, to stop it from grabbing him between those fucking horrific looking mandibles.

Thankfully she was wrong. Li fired a long burst that tore through the creature’s armoured hide, making it stumble but not killing it, then Cesar finished the job with his shotgun.

“Shit,” Michelle’s voice was calmer than she expected it to be, “shit, shit, fucking shit. What the fuck is that?”

“We called them Crabs when I fought them during the invasion,” Leroy said, with a look on his face that Michelle hadn’t seen before. Not anger, not shock, not worry…

Terror, she realised, shit, he’s fucking terrified of these things.

“We called them Chryssalids,” the Commander spoke into all their ears from the Avenger’s bridge, “Though Bradford informs me there haven’t been any confirmed sightings since the end of the first war.”

“Don’t let them get too close,” Leroy said, breathing hard, his eyes twitching across their surroundings, “or they will impregnate you.”

“What?” Dori growled, “What the fuck do you mean impregnate?”

“I get the feeling that we don’t want to find out,” Michelle said and touched the armour over the photograph.

“No,” agreed Leroy, “you don’t.”

***

When the gun went off the first time Allie squealed and nearly dropped it. The bullet hit the very edge of the paper target and while Emily hadn’t been able to see them, she guessed that Allie had probably squeezed her eyes shut as she’d squeezed the trigger. Still, a hit was a hit and the Italian engineer’s face lit up like a fireworks show as she spotted the small chunk missing half a metre to the left of the bullseye.

“Ha!” she yelled triumphantly as she turned grinning towards Emily, though thankfully remembered to keep her pistol aimed downrange, “I got it!”

“Yes you did,” Emily tried one of those for one of those ‘cheeky’ grins that Michelle was fond of giving, “now let’s see if you can hit any closer to the bullseye.”

“I assure you,” Allie said, her voice pure confidence as she turned back towards the targets, “it is only a matter of time.”

The sound she made on the second shot could probably be best described as a “squawk.” She missed the target completely this time and Emily couldn’t contain a giggle.

“Are you shutting your eyes when you shoot?”

“No!” Allie replied a little too quick and a little too defensively to be believable.

“It’s a lot easier to aim when you can actually see the target.”

Allie fired again, squeaked as she did so, but this time managed to hit the target only twenty centimetres wide of the bullseye.

“See what I mean?” Emily laughed.

The two women had been spending a lot of time together since Allessandra Mancini had joined the crew, rescued from an ADVENT cell by a Menace One team that had included Emily. It had taken Allie a few weeks to recover physically from whatever it was that the aliens had done to her, and so far Dr Colin Lynch (effectively the Avenger’s on-staff therapist) was the only one who she talked to about it, but she and Emily had quickly fallen in together. Having a few drinks off-duty, watching a film together, playing checkers in the common room, working on Allie’s English and teaching Emily a few words of Italian. It had been a time, even with the deaths.

Truthfully Emily had noticed the other crewmembers pushing them together. Michelle and Li Ming had been the most obvious about it, but Cesar, Gerty Wilders and Charlie Otembe had made efforts to get them in the same room and then leave them alone to their own devices. It’d seemed… what’s the word? Presumptive. It’d seen presumptive at first. Yeah, Emily had forced herself past an unrequited crush on Lily Shen and was very prepared to look somewhere else, but just pushing two people together who had, presumptively, compatable sexual orientation doesn’t make them compatable relationship. Being gay can’t be the only thing you have in common the same way that being straight can’t be the only thing you have in common. But it had been a good time, and Emily really did enjoy spending time with Allie.

It had still been a surprise when Allie had asked to be taken down to the firing range in the belly of the Avenger, next to Engineering, and taught how to shoot. Emily had scratched at the bandage still covering the newest scars on her arm and asked why. Allie had laughed and said that she wanted to see what Emily did to relax. Other than drink Louise Seo’s ship-made gin, of course.

Allie kept firing until the magazine was empty and the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, squeaking all the way through. Emily wondered how anybody could be that fucking cute while holding a loaded weapon. She’d managed to get closer to the bullseye with her last two rounds, though thankfully all the other shots had still hit the target.

“Nice,” Emily had a fresh magazine in her hand already and was reaching towards the pistol still pointed downrange to reload it, “you’re still a little tense when-“

Allie stepped in close and kissed her, a touch really, a peck on the corner of her mouth, then stepped back and turned away. Emily’s eyes went wide. She heard the sound of something metal landing on the deck and realised she’d dropped the magazine.

“I’m sorry,” Allie said, all the confidence having left her voice and a blush starting to spread across her features, “I should have asked.”

“N-no. It’s alright. May I kiss you back?”

“I would like that.”

***

Were they smart enough to have used the corpse as bait, Michelle wondered, or had they simply not given a shit? Left it in the middle of the road because that’s where whoever he’d been had fallen and moved on to find their next victims? A bloody mound of meat with terror written across a middle-aged face, torso split apart and a purple pod (that had already burst open) grown from his guts. They’d approached, morbidly curious, and for a second everyone had focused on this violent artwork that not even Leroy had seen before.

Then the shooting had begun.

Cesar was behind a tree towards the front yelling numbers and Cheng was scrambling behind thick, jagged stump.

James was firing at something Michelle couldn’t see through the smoke. A screeching roar ripped through the air as Dori slid behind a fence. She stood up. Aimed somewhere to their rear. Fired. Smiled as another roar was cut short. A burst of plasma fire slammed into her back and she toppled forward into the mud, shock on her face and blood spilling out her mouth.

Michelle might have screamed then. Or it could have been someone else.

It began to rain.

There were chryssalids coming now, left and right, burrowing up from the ground. Michelle fired a burst and saw one stumble a little but then hurl itself behind a pile of boxes.

Heavy drops struck her face, her arms, splattered and hissed as they touched the barrels of her cannon.

A muton appeared forward of her position only to be cut down by Cesar’s shotgun. Maybe it was the one that had shot Dori. Another chryssalid charged around Cesar’s tree but the Mexican commando already had his sword out and swung it at waist height into the creature, through claw and exoskeleton deep into the crab monster’s neck. Pieces of it fell in different directions as it slid off the hissing blad onto the ground.

Rain tickled Michelle’s neck and slid down her armour. She had no idea where the rain had come from, where the clouds had been until this moment. They were firing as fast as they could at whatever they could but it wasn’t enough. Shit, Michelle couldn’t even see everything they needed to kill, rain and smoke turning the world to vague shadows and flashes of colour.

Cheng tried to move towards Dori only to have a burst of plasma force her back behind cover. Dori’s gremlin, Titus, was buzzing over her body in tight circles, as if it was unsure what to do now that its master couldn’t give it instructions.

There was a roar, a proper growling roar, and something big and maybe pink began stomping towards them, alongside two other somethings. Leroy fired at and it seemed to shudder but not fall.

Shit, why would nothing just fucking go down when they shot it?

There was a scream that Michelle knew too well and she turned to see James on his back trying to fight off another one of the chryssalids as it trampled over him, orange spines and feet like knives stabbing down again and again and again. Blood, spraying in gouts from his stomach.

“Jimmy! Jimmy!” she bellowed hoarsely and spun her gatling cannon towards the fucking crab monster and fired, watched as it shuddered and jerked and fell aside into a steaming heap. Watched as James reached towards his Gremlin, hovering a few feet away, waiting for instructions. Watched as something landed in a puddle not too far away. Watched as it exploded and tossed her brother through the air.

He landed in the mud, a few feet from his Gremlin, and didn’t move.

“No!” Michelle screamed, “NO! NO!”

There was another screech, close behind her.

***

Her name was Dr Mary Song, and she was the daughter of an American soldier and South Korean mathematician. She was a physicist, having developed something of her father’s love of numbers, and had been sent to join Dr Tygen’s team six weeks before by the resistance in return for recovering some key intelligence. Unlike the soldiers of Menace One, who were rotated regularly to avoid being burnt out by the stress of combat, it often seemed like Tygen’s scientists were only occasionally let out of the lab. Dr Song had just happened to decide to spend her one night off in a fortnight getting drunk in the Avenger’s bar at the same time that Navneet Banerjee had decided to do the same.

He’d called her Songbird. She’d laughed and called him unoriginal. Later that night they’d fucked behind some crates in a storage room just off the armoury.

Since then they’d seen each other a few times discreetly, when Else was on bridge duty or otherwise distracted, though never while she was on a mission. Screwing around behind her back while she was risking her life somewhere was a step further than he was willing to go. It was a small thing, but he wasn’t a complete bastard.

Not that it mattered. Because Else found out anyway.

He sat in the bar, alone, with a bottle of the rotgut Louise Seo distilled somewhere in the hangar, trying to forget the look on Else’s face. Angry, yes. Sad, definitely. The worst part though? The complete lack of surprise. Maybe because of his age, maybe she’d spotted his wandering eye, he didn’t know exactly how but as he looked at her upset, furious face he’d seen no sign of disappointment. She’d known this day was coming, and whatever they’d had (and Navneet still wasn’t sure what it had been) was over.

So he went to the bar, wished he had someone to talk to, and decided to get very, very drunk.

Maybe he wasn’t a complete bastard, but he sure as hell felt like one.

***

There was pain, hot and cold at the same time, as the chrysalid slid its mandibles through her armour and into her guts. Michelle felt herself lifted off the ground, the creature raising her up like an umbrella, arms and legs dangling, eyes watching drops of water slip down her nose and land on its spiked back. Then she was flying through the air and the rain, hitting the ground, bouncing along and leaving pieces of her insides as she went, until finally coming to rest on her side.

Someone yelled her name. Or at least Michelle thought she heard her name. She realised she’d lost her gun, tried to look around. There it was, next to the cunt that had gutted her. That was a bit of her intestines stuck to its face, wasn’t it?

A hail of gunfire ripped apart and Michelle gurgled out a laugh. Probably Li. That was probably Li yelling her name as well. Someone was definitely yelling her name…

She managed to reach a hand around and hit a buckle, unfastening the grenade launcher from her back, clutching it to her chest and rolling off her side. It didn’t hurt as much as she would have expected. But it felt weird, wrong, like there was something moving inside of her. Probably like whatever had come out of that poor bastard in the middle of the road. Shit, she didn’t want that to happen to her as well. Didn’t want to be torn to pieces from the inside out, giving birth to something that wanted to murder her friends. She could fucking feel it though.

Michelle twisted her head around. There was Li, still fighting. So was Leroy and Cesar. Three shapes in the rain, taking cover close to each other that weren’t friends then. No, ’cause Dori was dead. ‘Cause James was dead. Shit, who tell their mum and dad? Got to at least give them something to bury. Somewhere for Tash to visit one day. She smiled and felt blood dribble down the corners of her mouth, hot and thick where the rain was cold and sharp. It splatted on her face and fell into the big fucking hole in her guts.

“Li!” Michelle’s voice sounded huge in her ears but it might have been a whisper for all she knew, it was raspy enough, “Li Ming Cheng!” no point waiting for an answer, she doubted anyone would hear it, “You kill whatever’s inside me! You fucking kill it Li! I don’t… I want to be in one piece Li! When they bring me to her. I want her to see me,” shit, she could feel it getting bigger inside of her, “not some fucking cocoon.”

She couldn’t hear the answer, not over the rain hitting her skin, her armour. The hostiles were still moving in the corner of her vision, but Michelle still had a grenade launcher. Maybe. It was worth a shot.

Twisting slightly, she rested one elbow on the ground and wrapped the opposite hand around the grip. Couldn’t raise her head high enough to look down the sights but it was pointing in the right general direction. Maybe.

Fuck it. Michelle pulled the trigger. Heard the whomp of the grenade leaving the barrel and felt the launcher nearly fly out of her numbing hands. A second passed and she heard the crunch of the explosion, a scream that was not human.

Michelle breathed deep and let the grenade launcher slip into the mud, looked up into the sky. Couldn’t see much, just grey and black and a little white. Always thought she’d die in the sunlight. Not sure why, just seemed like when she’d go. Outside, hot sun blaring down. If she was lucky, Tash would’ve been nearby. But not here, not in the mud, not in the rain. Wrong. Right. It didn’t matter, did it.

Worst thing was she’d been writing a letter to Tash. She wouldn’t be able to finish it now.

Michelle hoped they’d send it anyway as she rested her head in the mud.

The Long and Short of it

Tag: video games