HOW I SPENT MY DAY

written at 8:36PM

Played Fallout 1 for most of it. Got sick of trying to fight the Deathclaw Mother and quit around that point. Seriously, it wouldn't be a pain if I could actually do SOMETHING to mitigate its damage. The only companion I have left alive is Katja, and if she's lucky she deals about.... 1HP damage to it. This thing has 320. Not to mention Initiative 27 (Initiative/Sequence determines who goes first in RPGs. A player's initiative is 2x their perception, and I intentionally set it pretty high at 7 so mine is.... 14. not great.) and this inhuman ability to tank pretty much any damage.

And I'm not even underleveled or anything, I have power armor on and I'm STILL taking crits for 50 damage and being obliterated, even after doing everything the guys on Reddit and GameFAQs told me to do (use a sniper rifle, aim for the legs, heal in-inventory, use a rocket launcher). The difficulty curve isn't a curve, it's a straight line upwards. This is the last thing I have left to do in-game before the ending, pretty much. I've cleared out Junktown, Necropolis, Vault 15, MOST of the Glow (loot isn't that great, it's not really worth the struggle for me since I already have excellent gear)

I could write a whole post on my Fallout 1 experience alone. Point is, I've finally gotten into the hang of things and don't have to constantly check GameFAQS! Still frustrating though. Solutions to quests are a bit more open ended than Fallout 3's, but a lot less forgiving.

Also played some Darkstalkers & Marvel V. Capcom, as well as some Stepmania (playing it though Project Outfox so it's actually playable on PC). I could go on all day about it, which is why I'm writing this blog. So I can write about all this dumb crap instead of dumping it in my friends' DMs.

But yeah, I was having a pretty awful day (generally depressed, cried a bit) so I decided to bike down to the library and read some comics. My friend Noita (again, calling him that because he likes Noita the video game) said I should read The Walking Dead when we went to that comic shop in the city, so I picked Book 1 up! It's got 12 issues in it. I went in with an open mind.

The Slogging Dead

Now, I'm going to try and leave my personal biases and hangups out of these reviews. I know my style of reviewing stuff can be very picky and personal and honestly a bit arrogant. Too focused on trying to sound smart and on top of things. Having watched a bunch of movies and shows with Noita, I know he's heard plenty of me bitching and nitpicking about minor things I didn't like. Plus I watched The Wall by Doug Walker and I have been trying my hardest to Not Sound Like That (overly personal review more focused on inserting his own personal hangups about life into it rather than, well, actually reviewing). So I'm going to go into this in (hopefully) good faith. Noita, if you're reading this, man, I'm sorry. It was not my thing.

What I did like about Walking Dead Book 1

It had cute art. No, seriously, I liked it. It might have made all of the characters indistinguishable at points (if I'm having trouble telling apart Rick and Shane, that's a problem) but I thought the use of grey shading in Vol. 1 was charming. It felt almost webcomic-y at points. Just a very cool style that felt less dc-comics-y and more indie comics-y, if that makes sense. (I always describe style in these abstract terms. It's a bad habit, I know.) Even if they switch from that visually distinct look to a more.. 'cinematic' look, with Mike Mignola Shading and scratchier lines later on, I can confidently say the quality of the art was pretty good!

What I didn't like

Again, Noita, if you're reading this, man, sorry. Feel free to object to as much of it as you want. I know you heard me bitch about Death Note plenty when we watched all of it, so instead of unloading this in your dms I'm writing it here.

Art: The composition of the panels in Vol. 1 was janky. The pacing of the scenes was a bit choppy, and I had a hard time comprehending how much time passed from panel to panel. Sometimes months would pass in dialogue and you wouldn't really notice until you went back and read it? Don't even get me started on the sheer amount of dialogue crammed into each bubble. Even if it's a conversation you can space it out in panels!!! It got better in Vol. 2 though. Again, not really my greatest concern. Jank art doesn't mean the pacing, narrative, themes, or characters are also going to be jank.

Pacing: On second thought, I think the issues I have with the pacing are moreso about the narrative/themes, so I'm just going to merge those.

Narrative: The story is about this guy, Rick, having to keep his family alive through a zombie apocalypse. Now, I don't have much experience with zombie media. I had (and still have) an intense psychological fear of zombies as a child, so I naturally avoided anything revolving around those like the plague. But I do have some experience with apocalypse fiction, so I can say one thing:

Apocalypse fiction is on a literal level about the apocalypse, but it is also societal commentary. By flipping the world upside down, in a global freeze or nuclear war or a really, really, big storm, you push humanity to its limit. You can explore a lot about the human condition, and what humanity clings to/sheds in the process of trying to survive. Sure, on a literal level it's about a dude (usually a dude) surviving on his own in a harsh wasteland or preparing for annihilation, but it's usually not just about that.

Examples I'm thinking of as I write this:

• Fallout
• On the Beach / Alas Babylon
• There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
• War of the Worlds by HG Welles (yknow, the novel that stirred a massive panic about actual alien invasion and UFOS?)
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

The Walking Dead, the bits I read anyways, is less about the human condition and more about the guy with a gun. OK BACKING UP, I have to give it some credit. It does try to explore human behavior in the face of danger. It just sucks at it. The behavior of the characters lacks believability and the moral dillemas it poses are facile. Again, I'm going to go into specific examples so I don't sound like I'm pulling this out of nowhere. One of the most praised elements of Walking Dead is its characters, so I better have evidence to back this up. I'm going to go into it in best faith.

the believability of the characters

Starting off, what ticked me off first was the portrayal of women in this. NOW. Again, trying to go into it in best faith here. Society instills ideas of acceptable gender conduct in every one of us from the moment we're born. Gender norms are not going to stop existing in an apocalypse. One of the biggest gender norms is that of practical skills/hobbies. Men are supposed to like physical things, while women work in the house, society dictates. Of course, that means in the event where the world and society suddenly went to shit, it would be difficult for men and women to adjust to this sudden loss of 'acceptable gender conduct' - the zombies aren't going to go easy on you because you're a woman, but you've been taught your entire life hunting and self-defense are "man things", so you don't have much if any experience in those fields. But it would be an interesting idea to explore: how would the men and women of the post-apocalyptic world fend on their own? Would they be able to maintain these societally constructed ideas of appropriate behavior for each sex when they're being ambushed by flesh eating zombies every day?

The Walking Dead, to my chagrin, does not try to explore this. It shuns the issue entirely. When a female character (Donna), says it's unfair and misogynistic that the women have to do the survivor party's laundry while the men hunt, Rick's wife (Lori) says something along the lines of "I can't shoot a gun, my husband can, and he's not good at doing the laundry anyways. Stop trying to make it a women's rights issue, it's about being realistic."

Now, again, there's a lot to unpack in this argument. Lori believes that doing things how they've always been done is best for now. That being that men do the physical tasks, women do the house chores. It also implies that because she has no prior experience using guns, and her husband being incompetent at house chores, that it wouldn't be worth it to bother putting in the effort to learn. Again reinforcing traditional ideas of appropriate behavior for the sexes. And that's not a bad thing! A character saying that, or a story not really challenging ideas about gender. (PLUS the obvious: a character's views ≠ the author's views.) Perhaps that is the way it'd turn out in an apocalypse. But it's also notable that this is the only conversation between women in this book that isn't 100% with or about their husbands. While the men talk about grief, their chances at survival, guns, the women talk about.. how much they love their husbands. They don't really get their chance to express their thoughts on the zombie apocalypse or much of anything, and when they do, it's framed as unreasonable nagging.

Also it implies laundry is on the same level of difficulty as hunting. Cmon. It can't be that goddamn hard for Rick to wash his underwear.

Again, take Lori. She's constantly worried about Rick going off to get supplies, or her son possibly being killed. But they're positioned in the story as her being unreasonable, unyielding, not understanding the stakes of survival. I need to include this here because the idea of giving a seven-year old a pistol to defend himself is hilarious. like, NRA commercial hilarious. It's got the safety on, Lori! Stop being such a bitch about it!

2 notable things about this development: - Lori doesn't provide an argument for why a seven year old boy shouldn't have a handgun in an apocalypse scenario. She just gets mad and walks away. The EXACT same thing Donna does in the laundry bit! Without letting her actually rebut Rick's argument for why a SEVEN YEAR OLD having a handgun is safe, it makes it seem like her complaints aren't reasonable and made out of emotion. Like all of her other actions so far- worrying about her husband, worrying about her kids, worrying about other people.

• there's a scene later on where Lori tries to shoot a zombie, drops her weapon, and her SEVEN YEAR OLD SON saves her by sniping it in the head.

Using someone else's image here, but it reminds me of how I "critically missed" in Fallout 1 and dropped my rifle. Unfair bullshit, but also pretty funny.

And this is supposed to vindicate Rick here. He's right, Lori's wrong for having the slightest concern about a SEVEN YEAR OLD CARRYING A GUN! Lori admits her faults, they reconcile. This is how pretty much every conflict between them goes. Lori's always apologizing, Rick's always there to accept her apology.

Donna is tough and judgmental. Lori is maternal and fucks Rick. And Shane. Because women- scratch that, EVERYONE in this post-apocalyptic hellscape needs to fuck and breed and bring more babies into this world IMMEDIATELY.

I'll make a separate sex paragraph later- I don't think this comic's portrayal of sex is bad because of how weak the female characters are. I think it's bad because the author can't write people, much less women.

Like Shane. He's completely unreasonable and doesn't have a single good argument for any of his decisions, goes crazy, and immediately tries to kill Rick. It feels completely forced. The "character snaps and goes crazy and tries to kill everyone" thing is a well established convention in apocalypse fiction, but without any buildup it falls flat. I didn't care about their relationship in the first place since they fought pretty much the entire time up until Shane's death, and again, there's no dilemma there. How do you defend yourself against someone you know and love as a friend trying to kill you? Can you even talk him out of this? They essentially had the exact same argument 3 times, with Rick providing a good argument and Shane providing... the exact same speech, rinse and repeat, with no indication that Shane was going to go crazy. Plus no motivation provided either other than Shane fucking Rick's wife. ¹

• then Rick's 7 year old son immediately kills Shane with a cleanly targeted shot to the neck. So it goes. I find that a bit ridiculous but that's a moot point given the tone of this comic. See my "suspension of disbelief" paragraph.

¹ Which seems a bit too unhinged to be believable, but the Walking Dead characters would do ANYTHING for sex.

Last thing I'll cover before the sex paragraph: the "Herschel believes the zombies are ACTUALLY human, tries to contain them and then ends up getting bitten" bit doesn't raise any interesting questions. It answers itself from the start. It could have given Rick an actual moral dilemma about the righteousness of his actions, forced him to actually deal with a situation without immediately shooting it.

Of course, it immediately gets resolved with a huge gunfight where everyone dies. Because of course.

Also Herschel being cartoonishly evil, again, makes no sense given 1) he just lost NEARLY ALL OF his children to zombies, wouldn't he want more people for defense? Food might be an issue but he HAS A FARM? Speaking of which, how has noone mentioned agriculture thus far? they can't hunt enough food for well over a dozen people forever. But this is a minor nitpick. Fallout 3 doesn't have anything about agriculture either even though it's a game about RESTORING WATER TO THE LAND. That doesn't hurt the (already shoddy) story. An apocalypse story doesn't need to focus on every little element to be good.

SEX

Holy shit, you'd think the characters in this need to fuck more than they need food or water. Yes, people are horny. People want to have sex, and get frustrated when they can't. Especially when everyone's dead and the earth is a wasteland. So exploring how sexual norms crumble in-apocalyptia is a pretty big deal in apocalyptic fiction!

I think at this point I started realizing this wasn't really a piece on structural flaws in Walking Dead, but what I didn't personally like about the story. Noita said it was supposed to be melodramatic, the zombies taking a backseat to the struggles of the characters. People aren't going to stop being people because of impending doom and surreal situations. On the Beach is a really good movie about this. The entirety of the Fallout series is about this.

And that brings me to my biggest gripe with The Walking Dead: all of the elements of drama and conflict and relationships are there, but none of it lands. We have all of these bits about grief and sacrifice and moving on, but none of them work when the characters and the circumstances are beyond believable. TWD takes "suspension of disbelief" and makes it an over-the-head wedgie. I'm going to specifically focus on this from the angle of sex (in the 2 volumes that I read).

First, Lori's pregnancy. Now, unplanned pregnancies happen. A lot of my friends are 'happy accidents' (i can't imagine having that kind of conversation with my parents, personally). And it's presumably supposed to set up tension and drama: her pregnancy will make child rearing and being a wife and doing the goddamn laundry and, well, actual survival difficult.

But she becomes pregnant AFTER the zombie apocalypse starts. Again, unplanned pregnancies happen. People aren't always cautious sexwise when they're horny. But mid-apocalypse, when food is already scarce and there isn't any medical help ANYWHERE... would a woman that's already been pregnant, had a child, knows the burden pregnancy puts on her body, really be fine with having unprotected sex? Even in the throes of passion or whatever? It seems a bit more than irresponsible, even unlikely. Maybe a nitpick. Maybe Shane just couldn't pull out. Things happen. TWD is all about last-minute, regrettable decisions. It's about how humans can't help being humans, selfish and disgusting, even in the face of death. At least this is consistent with that overall vision.

Second, the relationship between Andrea and Dale. Dale lost his wife of 40 years. He's grieving her tremendously. He doesn't know how to move on, but he finds comfort in Andrea and her sister Amy, because they clean and do housework and it reminds him of his wife. The other characters are put off by this, because they are college aged and he is a balding man in his sixties. 2 explicitly express their displeasure:

• Rick says that Dale has "earned the right" to "keep 2 pretty young women" around because of his good deeds. So apparently it's creepy and weird for an old dude to be around 2 young( I couldn't tell an exact age, but they look pretty young - Amy is a college junior, Andrea is getting her master's) women, but if you're a good enough dude, you've "earned the right" to keep them. Like what, they're fucking trophies? Dale defends himself against these accusations, saying his erectile dysfunction would stop him from fucking them anyways.
• Donna says it's weird and unchristian that Dale is living in an RV with 2 younger women. Like everything Donna says, this is quickly combated with a quippy one-liner, to which she responds with a "whatever" and storms off. Silly reader, Donna's opinions don't matter, she's just an old busybody.

Anyways he ends up fucking Andrea after her sister dies. This is framed as the two of them bonding over their shared grief of losing a family member. Are there really no ways for them to bond other than, ah, fluid bonding? Apparently so. The road to sex is paved with platonic intentions in TWD. Every unoccupied male/female pair must fuck. Even when they're about to be mauled by zombies. The drive for sex transcends all reason in TWD. It's why Shane dies. It's why Andrea and Dale fuck even though it's the least interesting way to explore their relationship. It's why this 7 year old says sexy and kisses the other 7 year old even though it feels clunky and out of place and less "wholesome children dialogue" and more "a bit Adam Sandler would do".

Conclusion

Whew, I've been writing this for almost 4 hours now. Even though this was mostly a rant about what i DIDN'T like about the bit of TWD that I read, I still appreciate its vision. After all, if I didn't care about it in the slightest, I wouldn't have spent 4 hours writing this. It made me feel something, and I'm grateful for that.

I'm sure there's more to TWD than the little bit I read. My conclusion is that "humans will be human even in the face of a zombie apocalypse" is a good scenario, but the drama and conflict between the humans is hard to relate to because of how it's executed. Having characters talk about rape and sex and randomly go insane and start murdering people doesn't make for a mature story. Having adult subjects doesn't make for a mature story on its own. Not only that, but your characters should be somewhat believable to feel like a real, human story, and not a Garth Ennis flick with zombies. Again, all of the elements for a really fascinating story about human nature and conflict were there. But when most of your characters spit out motivations in unchallenged, 4-paragraph long speech bubbles, at other undeveloped antagonist characters, it's hard to get invested in any of the characters.

That's all I had to say. It's 11:47. Geez, I said I was going to start sleeping earlier this week...