By Michelle Perez
When you want blood to really run through your genitals you either engage in sexual acts, or turn to the erotics. The literature, raw sexual flowing poetry or the dirty VHS tapes. Or you have the dopest imagination or some combination thereof. Years ago I could get off to Mexican soft-core that had no penetration and I could call it a day.
When I want blood to run through my whole body I read Cormac Mccarthy, and if I want that blood to make me feel like dying I’ll make the mistake of drinking while reading his work. I was on a flight to consummate a relationship with My Woman and I had whiskey with a side of coffee and “The Road”. If you ever want to have a religious experience where you pray for the protection only an ethereal being can give with the omnipresent thought of dying with many people in a giant metal tube in the sky, I suggest you emulate my actions, and then break your own jaw with your fist. The book was finished in one whole sitting. I was never more happy to see someone after a flight in my whole life. The desolation and terror and love dripping off the ashen narrative ran through me like the kind of broken electrocution chair power only that haggard old southern man can muster. Man, you know these video games? I want them to impart that level of personal and spiritual exhaustion.
We need more violence in video games, really. Really taboo stuff. Modern Warfare 2′s “No Russian” sequence doesn’t get enough credit for actually trying to go there and do something screwed up. They took what people perceived to be the perfect American protagonist for what could’ve been that segment of the game and had you mowing down unarmed people in a densely populated airport.
Bring on the children deaths; I want something emotionally undeveloped idiots call tasteless! I’m killing digital people in this game with guns for the duration of this experience, at no point is “No Russian” gonna make me feel that bad unless it tries to actually do something that messes with my head. If you’ve ever been to an airport and met up with someone you haven’t met in a while, then you’ve known that bit of warmth when you’re there and when your bags aren’t late. You want to get the hell out of the airport. I couldn’t honestly get that shocked on a personal level if I’m doing something out of a Tony Scott movie. You gotta have kids with Teddy Bears, or a kid holding up a sign for his papa in Russian. He looks over at you as you pull out that massive machine gun and while his mouth is still smiling HIS EYES ARE CLEARLY NOT SMILING. You can take that one for free, video game designers.
It’s hard to really get someone invested in a video game character as much as someone from, say, an excellent film or a soaring piece of literature. Sometimes even comic book characters aren’t as one dimensional as Man From First Person Shooter Who Is White and Happens to Own Many Guns He Earned From Killing Other White Men and Brown Men With Guns. You gotta have soul crushing moments that make you want to curl into a ball in front of other people in public. A lot of game characters exist in a Batman-esque void. They are roused to action in the face of a bad thing happening. Faceless guy dies? Time for Batman to kick justice into them. How many civilians in Gotham had names you could remember? How many were referred to in number only? That’s horrifying, if the plot devices only exist for a hollow purpose, which is to kick dudes. Like a grim “every time a person dies a Batman gets his feet” function of the universe.
What’s the harm in giving a name? Afraid you might feel something?
