"Moms are Tough."

When Final Fantasy branches into the realm of philosophy and does well, it does it exceptionally well.

However, when Final Fantasy branches into the realm of philosophy and botches, it fuels my rage.

For instance, let us consider the seemingly unobtrusive statement in FFXIII, "Moms are tough," spoken by Hope's mother, first when she accepts a weapon from Snow to assist in the breakout, again after using a rocket launcher to save Snow again. At face value, this is a throwaway line trying to invoke some sense of admiration in the player, much like the idea of "Real heroes don't need plans." The writers are counting on you to not analyze it and to simply accept it much like it expects you to accept most things in XIII: as a superficially and aesthetically pleasing thing which sounds and looks good, which therefore means it must be good.

However, these three little words are far more problematic than one might initially think.

The very first thing one should ask when looking at this quote is perhaps the most obvious of the five Ws: WHY, exactly, are Moms tough? It's important to ask this, because for the short time we know Hope's mother in this game, this is the only line of dialogue which gives us any insight to her character. It's what is supposed to make us feel sad for her when she dies, while, much like Snow, remaining completely indifferent and emotionally void in regards to everyone else who dies on that bridge. So if the game wants you to feel bad for this character, it's worth wondering WHY this mother is tough.

The immediate answer that the game provides is because she is willing to pick up a weapon and fight. Fair enough. Yet this in turn raises the question: is that the only reason she is considered tough? The willingness to fight? The game answers yes, because on a completely superficial and skin deep level, this is what it considers bravery to be. But what about the other half of this little scenario: the fact that she leaves her son completely alone, without any kind of guidance, who might become lost or get injured in her absence, and who has shown that he is somewhat incapable of standing on his own at this young and impressionable age. Also, she is willingly and knowingly placing herself in a position of extreme danger which, as we see, may result in her death, which would then leave her son completely and totally alone and forced to fend for himself in the middle of a subterannian prison with.

Is that complete and total disregard for the wellbeing of her child also considered being tough?

The response, of course, is that the reason she goes to fight is because she wants to protect Hope from further disaster. On one level, yes, this is true. On the other, it does not excuse an incredibly irresponsible piece of parenting which winds up traumatizing the son in question.

At any rate, this is not so much a discussion about whether or not her going to fight was necessarily morally right, but rather that this act that the game triumphs as being "tough" is, in fact, far more complicated than it lets on. There is a negative consequence to this action which the game does not stop to think about when it's busy congratulating Hope's mom on going to fight. It wants to say that she is a figure of complete and total admiration, thus warranting our sympathies when she dies, and wants us to not think about how the situation is clouded.

A second way to look at the sentence is to put more emphasis on the first word: Moms. This is where the true flippancy and disregard of the quote can be seen, and it's overall value further crushed. If viewed this way, the phrase means that Moms (note the plural) are tough simply by virtue of being moms. What this then means is that the actions of Hope's mother mean absolutely nothing in dictating why she is tough. She didn't need to pick up a gun and go fight: she's already tough, because she is a mom. The end.

A further complication: given that the tone of the quote is to use the word "tough" as a strictly positive thing, therefore meaning that the toughness present in all mothers is admirable, then if we apply this sentence to FFIX, does that mean that Queen Brahne, too, is tough and deserving of our admiration? Of course not: the actions of Queen Brahne are extremely questionable. But that is exactly what this quote by Hope's mother is saying! By value of her own words, Hope's mother is admirable simply by virtue of her existence and not through her actions, and that this applies to all otehr parental figures regardless of their actions or their personalities.

Why does this matter? First, you should always be thinking about what it is you're consuming for entertainment: you should know what it means for the game and what it means for you. Don't just appluad something because it's cool or catchy. Second, as I said prior, this is the only line of dialogue which sets us up for the death of Hope's mom, and is the only thing that tries to make us feel sorry for such an event. Yet the line is empty and without merit, and thus the attempt to make me feel sorrow about her death fails.

Then again, Snow get's over the death in about two minutes, so maybe in the context of the game, this emptiness is acknowleged.

Mario and Meaninglessness: Super Nihlist Galaxy

Poor Mario: underneath those constant “Woo-hoos!” and that fun loving smile, there is an existential crisis that would make even Descartes weep. Consider the life of Mario as we know it, from the arcades to the NES to the Wii. Every weekend, Mario knows exactly what he will be doing: Princess Peach will get kidnapped, Mario will have to traipse about various kingdoms and worlds, and no sooner will he rescue the Princess and cart her home than another villain will take note and kidnap her, starting the whole process once again. One the one hand, one has to admire Mario and his sense of perseverance, not to mention how much he is willing to go through for one he loves. On the other hand even the most die-hard Nintendo fan has at least once wanted to look the mustachioed one in the eye and ask him, “Buddy, she’s cute and all, but is it worth it? I mean, isn’t it pointless?” Mario would likely completely overlook the question, shout “Let’s-a go!” and hop away, but not thinking about it doesn’t make it go away. The question remains: is Mario’s perpetual quest to save the Princess pointless? Worse, is Mario’s life altogether meaningless? The answer is yes, but in a sadder and more twisted way than you probably imagined.

When we say that something “has a point,” generally we mean that an action results in something, be it emotional, physical, affecting several people or just one. What matters is that the action has a consequence that will affect someone or something in a matter of space and time. Conversely, when an action does not result in anything other than simply the execution of the action itself, then the action is considered to be “pointless.” The best video game metaphor to explain the idea of having a point is any number of RPGs. Every time you run into a battle, be it random or scripted, something results from it, be it receiving experience points, money, or even having someone in your party die (hey, having a point doesn’t mean being positive). The thing is, no matter how random an encounter might be, the characters and the player have gotten something out of that encounter. What’s more, the consequences of the encounter are lasting: you’re not likely to lose EXP as the game goes on, and any wounds or damages you might have taken will stay until you have cured them in some fashion (which is in itself another way to look at the analogy: the point of curing is to get rid of damage. On the flip side, curing a person whose HP is at 100% will not make the patient any better than he is, and thus is pointless).

With this in mind, we can look at how this point/pointlessness might apply to Mario’s situation with saving the Princess. Now, on an immediate level, of course there is a point to what Mario does: Mario saves the Princess from her kidnappers so that she is no longer kidnapped. It’s as obvious as eating so as to not be hungry. The problem, however, arises when you consider whether or not the Princess is truly saved at all. Yes, she is bailed out of her current predicament, but no sooner is this the case then she finds herself in the same bind once more. From “Super Mario Bros.” on the NES to “Super Mario Galaxy” on the Wii, Peach is still in the same position as she was when Mario first set out to go save her. No matter how many times Mario might save her, it would seem that she is no more safe than she was before Mario saved her. With this in mind, the problems of trying to find meaning behind Mario’s actions start to become apparent. Within a microcosm of a single game, the point of saving the Princess has an obvious end, but when you consider is in a macrocosm, it would appear that there was no lasting consequence to Mario’s actions at all: he saved the Princess, only to have to save her again, and again. It isn’t as if it becomes any easier with time, either: Mario still has to plow through all the worlds and enemies again, as if he hadn’t done it before at all. Compare this to the RPG example: when the RPG character rises against and overcomes obstacles, it provides him with either a weapon, power, or experience required that will aid him to overcome the next obstacle. Not so with Mario: he continues to roll the proverbial boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down to the base every time. Saving Peach is pointless, because Peach can never really be saved: she is in a perpetual state of being kidnapped. Each time Mario saves her is just part of the cycle that sees her kidnapped again. There is no lasting consequence, no meaningful end result to Mario’s saving the Princess. The action cannot lead to anything other than the action itself, and thus is pointless.

This is a sad mushroom to swallow, certainly, but the truth is, it only gets worse for Mario. The cynical fan might point to the fact that if one half of the equation can’t be solved (that of Peach being kidnapped), could you not then solve the other half? That is, if Bowser can’t get over his crush on Peach and insists on kidnapping her, nulling your efforts to save her, couldn’t you just remove him (and other would-be kidnappers) from the equation? Sure, Bowser might be lovable at times, but if his existence sticks Mario in a nihilistic universe, maybe Mario really should just off the dinosaur once and for all so that he and the Princess can get on with their lives. Well, not only would that harm the E rating, but the fact is, killing Bowser would solve nothing, when you consider that Mario /has/ killed him. He’s killed him multiple times: in “Super Mario Bros.” you drop him into a pool of lava on more than one occasion. In “Super Mario Bros. 3” he falls to his death. Heck, in “Super Mario Galaxy,” you hurl the poor guy into the sun! Yet no matter how many times Mario might kill Bowser, Bowser will not stay dead. Whether he has some piece of the Triforce or a whole lot of Phoenix Downs, the fact is that Bowser, even if defeated, will not /stay/ defeated. This is perhaps one of the biggest indications of pointlessness in Mario’s life: the point of killing something is to make them dead (to put it in Modus Ponens: if a person is killed, they are dead. Bowser is killed, therefore he is dead). Yet, even if Mario kills Bowser, Bowser does /not/ stay dead, and thus Mario’s version of killing is pointless, in spite of generally most other people’s act of killing having a logical point. Tying it back to the problem with the Princess, Mario cannot remove the instigator of the problem, no matter how he tries, and thus the problem of Peach being kidnapped remains. Mario cannot stop Bowser from kidnapping the Princess, therefore being unable to truly save the Princess, and thus his attempts to try are pointless.

“Well,” says the gamer, “it sucks to be Peach, then, because I’ve had enough! If there’s no way to save her, and if it’s useless to try, I’m not going to try at all!” A logical enough idea, even if it means that Mario’s not getting any cake for a long time. But while the gamer is free to switch off his system and go read a book or do something other than trying to save Peach, Mario does not have that option. Say that I’m playing “Super Mario 64” and it occurs to me that I’m through with Peach, and that Mario’s going to go home and drink a refreshing soda and watch some TV. The problem is, that pipe you pop out of at the beginning of the game does not reappear to let Mario leave. Walking over those hills around the castle either results in you sliding back down or hitting an invisible wall. The fact soon sets in that Mario cannot leave the castle, or do anything else, unless he saves the Princess. You can waste time in Bob-omb Battlefield for as long as you like, but that does not change anything: Mario is condemned to stay in this castle, because Princess Peach needs to be saved, and he may not leave until he does so. In other words, Mario does not even possess enough free will to choose anything other than the meaningless existence that has been laid before him: he can’t save the Princess, but he can’t do anything else. This is even more apparent in the original “Super Mario Bros.” when you are denied the power to even go backwards on the screen, and that you are constantly being timed: Mario is not permitted to do anything than pursue the quest to save the Princess, and if he takes too long, he is punished. There is no choice for Mario to do anything than embrace his meaningless existence: so long as the hoop is there to be jumped through, Mario must jump through it. His nihilism is absolute, for there is no way for him to escape it. It’s a meaningless road, and worse, it’s a meaningless road that Mario /must/ walk.

We then get to the darkest part of the whole thing: can Mario, well, just end it? Take the proverbial honorable way out? Not fear the Reaper? First off: that’s harsh, yo. Second: no, no he can’t. How many times have you been cruising down Dinosaur Island, hopping on platforms, when you mistimed a jump and plummeted into an abyss? Or been gobbled up by a giant Cheep Cheep? Or lit on fire, or drowned, or had anything else unfortunate happen to Mario? The man dies all the time. He’s died more times than the Undertaker. And for most people, being dead means that it’s the end: you’re not getting back up. Not so for Mario: he can die in any number of ways, but after the screen goes black, he will find himself back on the same world he perished from, as if nothing happened. The very act of death, which is supposed to have a point like nothing else possibly can, has been rendered pointless for our hero. There is no end to be had for him. So what if you run out of 1-ups? Your screen might say Game Over, but sure enough, that title screen is going to roll open again, and Mario will still be there. Worse, he will have to do things over again, going through certain levels once more, meaning that the other times he went through them were pointless as well.

Every possible ounce of meaning has been drained from Mario’s life. He cannot save the Princess to the point where she is truly saved, but nor can he /not/ save the Princess. He is doomed to live in a perpetual cycle from which he cannot escape, with even death providing no solace. He exists in a nihilistic world that constantly mocks his happy smile and excited body language. Mario might be blissfully unaware of what his doom is, but that does not make his efforts to save Princess Peach, or indeed his very existence, any less meaningless.

You all know what that means, right? Luigi really /is/ the better brother to be.

"Animal Crossing" and Plato's "Republic": Building Platopolis

Let’s pretend, for a moment, that we live in a quirky sitcom, and through some wacky hijinks and machinations, our project for the science fair winds up activating a time portal, summoning the ancient Greek philosopher Plato into modern times. After a few minutes of Plato hilariously misinterpreting cars as horseless chariots and being despondent that internet forums aren’t real forums, he eventually makes his way over to the TV and turns on the Nintendo Gamecube. After fiddling around with the controls for a bit, Plato gets the hang of things (he’s a surprisingly quick learner) and starts playing. After approving of the work ethic and bravery of the Pikmin, he stumbles across “Animal Crossing.” Plato starts a new file, and is perhaps a little terrified as the giant talking cat confronts him on the train and asks him what his name is. After naming his character “Socrates” and the town he is heading to “Platopolis,” Plato immerses himself into the world of “Animal Crossing” and finds, perhaps to his surprise, that he quite likes it. Even if interior design and fishing aren’t necessarily his cup of tea, the social structure presented within the town is surely to his liking.

In Plato’s “The Republic,” the character of Socrates enters a discussion with local youths regarding the topic of justice. After refuting claims that justice is just a matter of what you can get away with, or that it is just imposed to benefit the ruling classes, Socrates tries to show the origins of justice in the community by constructing a fictional town and developing what he feels are the ideal conditions for a nation state, and how his construction would give way to true justice. Although the more extreme elements of eugenics and ultra-censorship are noticeably absent in “Animal Crossing” (it is rated E, after all), there is a great deal of similarity to what Plato is looking for in the ideal city. Whether or not Plato planned on having his “Republic” populated by talking animals, it is within this game that his definition of true justice can be found.

The first thing that Socrates does in his quest for justice in the community and the individual is to look at how a town is founded in the first place. It’s decided that people come together in order to minimalize the hardships they can’t overcome by being alone. This means that the classes of merchants, farmers, and other classes start converging into one mass, and with it diverse levels of skill sets, wealth, and duties within the greater social construct. One of the primary themes discussed in “The Republic” is the specialization of social tasks and duties. Plato believes that it will be more beneficial for an individual to work on a single occupation and thereby mastering it fully, rather than trying to wear many proverbial hats and only gaining some skills in each subject. In other words, a fisherman should focus on fishing, a carpenter should focus on carpentry, and rulers should focus on ruling. It is for this reason that the ideal city put forward by Socrates is certainly not a democratic one: Merchants, farmers, and all the rest have neither the time nor skill necessary enough to partake in politics in a knowledgeable fashion, and thus the power to rule should be placed in the hands of a select few who have specifically trained to rule. This ensures that the nation works in an almost machinelike matter, ensuring that the management of the city goes smoothly and without disruption due to social climbing or political ambition. Plato was concerned with too many cooks in the kitchen, as it were, and thought that having the uneducated layman partake in the politics of an entire country was a bad idea, preferring to leave such matters to those who had dedicated their professional lives to such matters and thus could make more educated decisions. Odd though this might seem to a modern day society which triumphs democracy, this form of social structure is exactly what we find in “Animal Crossing.” The people of the town all seem to specialize in one job, rather than try and multitask: Tom Nook runs the local store, and nothing else; Pelly handles the mail, and nothing else. Indeed, all of the local mainstays have found a niche within the society that they have mastered fully, and prefer to focus on those topics 24/7, 358 days a year. This holds true for the ruling class as well: no matter how long you play the game, and how many years pass, there’s yet to be a single election run in town. Mayor Tortimer and the police force of Officer Copper and Booker consist of the sole authority and power figures present. No one seems to question this, as everyone is too busy with their own tasks, and thus the government of the state is permitted to operate in its specialized rule, without having to watch its back for political machinations.

But are Mayor Tortimer and the police force suitable for the task of ruling the nation? As he lays out how his ideal city will natural develop, Socrates sees that as more people move to the city, it will naturally expand, thus conflicting with neighboring cities, and therefore instigating conflict. To this end, he develops a class called the Guardians, who are tasked with protecting the city in times of need, as well as policing it during times of peace. Plato spends a good portion of “The Republic” explaining exactly what it takes to be a Guardian, how they are to be educated and developed and the qualities they must display. Physical training is an obvious necessity, but in order to prevent the local police from just being a bunch of meatheads, Socrates insists that they be educated, especially in the topics of mathematics and philosophy; that way, they can see greater truths in the universe, and know when and how to use their powers for good. They must not have any sort of personal property, lest they be inclined to use their powers for corrupt purposes: that means they have no wealth of their own, and share their housing with other Guardians. In tune with the specialization of tasks, their primary concern must be with the upkeep of the town, and they must dedicate themselves to it fully; personal happiness is of no consequence. Socrates also explains that the Guardians would be bred with a specific education permitting very little freedom of thought so that there would be no deviation from their duties, but as we don’t really know how Tortimer was raised and educated, that doesn’t seem to apply here.

With these Guardian guidelines presented, we can see that Mayor Tortimer, Officer Copper, and Booker all hold up very well in Plato’s ideals. Again, we don’t know that status of education of our would-be Guardians, but every summer, Copper holds morning exercises, and Tortimer can be seen participating, ensuring that they will physically fit and ready should the next town over decide to raid the local Nookingtons and steal all the Blue Couches. They are at least in a constant state of readiness, and not inclined to grow idle in times of peace. Next, they clearly have no personal property or wealth that we can see. Officer Copper and Booker seem to make due with camping out in the Police Station, which is presumably owned by the public, and spend most of their time giving possessions away via lost-and-found. As for Tortimer, it’s true that he owns a nifty top hat and looks to be reasonably well kept, but we only ever see him napping in Town Hall (and not even with the benefit of a bed: the guy sleeps at his desk) and every holiday he too dispenses gifts to the town, rather than hoarding them himself. They are living, if not exactly in a Spartan fashion, at least frugally enough to assume they’re not abusing their power for personal gain. As for the factor about dedication and the devout love of the community they are upholding, there is no question of that. Copper never even goes to sleep in the original version of “Animal Crossing,” preferring to stand his post day and night to make sure all is well. In later versions, he and Booker can be found guarding the gate to city at all times. As for Tortimer, there are no taxes in the game, so he presumably isn’t getting paid, and the rewards appear to be few, yet he’s dedicated his eternity (or at least until you erase the game file) to running the town, apparently for the sole purpose that he wants to do so.

It seems, then, that at least at a (admittedly very) basic level of interpretation, the ruling class of “Animal Crossing” meet a portion of the requirements laid out by Plato. Socrates explains that the most mentally gifted and able of the Guardians will be made the Rulers, and the rest shall assume the position of Auxiliaries who act as more of the foot soldiers (Tortimer is the former, Copper and Booker the latter). But what are to be the tasks of the Guardians? It is made very clear that justice has a place in both peace and war, and when times of peace occur, it is up to the Guardians to ensure that harmony is maintained. One of the main concerns of Socrates is negating any social element which might cause conflict between classes and individuals. One such issue involves the topic of wealth, and how the Guardians must manage it. While Plato certainly does not want to abolish class systems, he believes that if there’s too much difference in the distribution of wealth, it will inevitably cause conflict; the Guardians, then, must make sure that the harmony between the poor and wealthy must be kept up, and that it is distributed fairly. Next, the education of the city has to be micromanaged. One of the more questionable parts of Socrates’ city is how any myths, stories, or lessons highlighting less-than-desirable characteristics in human beings are to be censored with prejudice, and the people will only learn the lessons that will mold them into the pro-social characters that Socrates wants. Whether ethical by today’s standards or no, Socrates’ train of thought is that if people cannot learn any evil, they will commit no evil, and it is up to the Guardians to make sure that this is upheld in the education system. Most importantly, as part of the primary theme of the city, the Guardians must ensure that everyone does their job and sticks to it, thus making sure that the social machine runs smoothly as possible. This includes the day-to-day policing of the city, making sure that dissatisfaction with the social structure is quelled, and that everyone stays in line as per the decree of the Ruler. It should be noted that this is obviously something of a police state, Aristotle makes it very clear that the Guardians, especially the Ruler, have been trained and educated to be as wise as possible, whose goal is for the betterment of the society as a whole and are concerned with the people and their wellbeing, thus differentiating this city from the social structure of the Tyrant.

While the laid-back attitude of “Animal Crossing” does not appear to strictly adhere to this construct laid out in Socrates’ imaginary city, there are indeed some similarities to be found. Consider the aspect of wealth: Within “Animal Crossing,” Plato’s concern of wealth polarization leading to class conflict is avoided by the relative de-valuing of money and personal possession. In Platopolis, the character of Socrates might have paid off his debt to Tom Nook quicker than Thrasymacus, and might enjoy the advantages of a basement and second floor as opposed to the regular animal population, but this is never built up as a matter to be jealous of. Money is readily available (you can beat it out of rocks, for Heaven’s sake), thus making it less a thing to hoard and more a thing to spread through the community. Furniture and nick nacks can be found in large enough numbers that the more wealthier members might be inclined to give away the things they don’t need. With this more open form of wealth distribution, citizens are not as inclined to commit injustices for personal gain, thus negating Plato’s fears on that level. The level of micromanagement of education and speech might provide Plato some cause for concern, though: there never appears to be any censorship of the mail, and citizens are free to write whatever they want on the billboard. However, in spite of the lack of mind and media control present in “Animal Crossing,” the law and mutual respect of the citizens does not seem to be lessened as a result. Indeed, whether it is actively enforced by the Auxiliaries or not (though it should be noted Copper never sleeps…)the citizens never seem inclined to deviate from the social plan laid out by Tortimer. Crime never seems to be an issue, and when you consider that every door is unlocked, that is no small feat. There is no sign of social climbing or conflict: no matter how many floors you add to your house, no one really seems to hold it against you, and the status you hold in the town stays the same. Not to mention that no one attempts to overthrow the established job system: no one can own a store but Tom Nook. This complete lack of apparent will to upset the status quo indicates that even if the education system lacks the apparent censorship Socrates advocates, there is still no signs of evil or ill will present in the citizens. It can be assumed, then, that the Guardians are doing their task very well: the social structure is being kept in harmony, with no one trying to throw it out of balance or even thinking about altering the layout the Ruler has provided.

The primary point of Socrates’ musings is how to find the origins of justice within society, and then display how this also applies on a micro level to individual people. According to Plato, this ideal city should have four characteristics: wisdom, courage, self-discipline, and justice. Wisdom is found in the Ruler, who after all has been chosen for the position based on his superior intellect, and from whom can govern the city and all its parts to their preferable outcome; Courage is found in the Auxileries, who have been raised to know no fear and always face a foe; Self-Discipline is found in the citizens, who are to focus on one thing and one thing alone, never deviating from the path set out for them by the ruler and accepting their lot in life. Justice, according to Plato, can be found in the harmony of the other three elements working together: if wisdom can decide how best to use courage and self-discipline without either gaining the upper hand, then there is no desire to commit an injustice by allowing base instincts to take over: you won’t steal if the self-discipline is managed, nor will you commit malicious violence if the courage is not allowed to run amok. And as we’ve seen, this form of justice exists in “Animal Crossing.” The Wisdom of Tortimer is allowed to rule, whether we see it or not, and observes that the town is run to its full efficiency. The Courage of Officer Copper and Booker act as the sole figures of potential aggression and policing, but they only use their powers to uphold the law, rather than abuse their powers. The citizens of every town focus on their own lives and act with great Self-Discipline, never upsetting the status quo. And with everyone acting in complete harmony, knowing their role and minding their own business, true justice can be found in Platopolis.

Let it never be said that an E rated game does not contain substance. Next time someone triumphs how super-special-awesome “Call of Duty” or any other M rated titles are, feel free to shout out “Yeah, well, Plato prefers ‘Animal Crossing!’” They might look at you funny (believe me, it happens more often than you’d think), but at least you know that the ideals laid out in Plato’s “The Republic” can be found in the quirky but fun “Animal Crossing.” Batman might be taking out criminals over in Gotham, but true justice in the community is present in Platopolis.

Even if Crazy Redd still totally over charges for everything.

Kingdom Hearts, Descartes, and Does Roxas Exist?

“A Nobody does not have a right to know, nor does it have a right to be.”

Thus says DiZ in the opening act of “Kingdom Hearts 2,” in reference to Roxas and his status as main protagonist Sora’s Nobody. Nobodies are the remains of a person after their heart is stolen: they can no longer feel genuine emotions, they are shunned by both Light and Dark, and according to DiZ and Yen Sid, Nobodies do not truly exist at all. Given that the player’s sympathies are with Roxas, who acts as the would-be protagonist of the game before the switch is made to Sora, DiZ comes off as being a big jerk here, rather than being insightful. Not helping the matter is that Roxas’s life, such as it is, consists of little but constant anxiety and torment: the life he thought he was living only minutes before turns out to be a virtual-reality lie, and his real life prior involved watching one of his best friends die in his arms, his other best friend more or less deceiving him, and Organization XIII, the antagonists of “Kingdom Hearts 2” and Roxas’s former business associates, driving him to the point of betrayal, leaving him with nothing. And now here’s DiZ saying that he might not even exist at all? Roxas has every right to be a little upset about that, and so might the player. But if one can get over the image of the puppy-dog-getting-kicked motif that is Roxas, it might be seen that DiZ may have a point. Maybe Nobodies /don’t/ exist, at least not in the sense that you, I, and Sora exist. The main lament of the Nobodies in “Kingdom Hearts” is that they can’t have genuine feelings, but the problem permeates further than just one of indifference: it could very well be, as we shall see, that their presence in the world is indeed just a superimposed one without any real substance. Maybe underneath those puppy dog eyes and insane cowlick, Roxas is little more than a figment of our imagination, not worthy of our pity, as his very being relies on keeping a part of Sora from being restored, and whom we should curb stomp unmercifully until he gives that power back.

Of course, curb stomping Roxas would make you the worst person on Earth. Come on, the guy is as nice as can be, identity theft notwithstanding. Still, does he have a right to be?

Into this question of Nobodies and video games comes a man who’s never heard of Kingdom Hearts, but is very concerned with the soul and existentialism. Rene Descartes was a 17^th century philosopher who pondered the idea of how confident he could be that he existed. To this end, he attempted to deconstruct everything around him until he found a point where there were certifiable truths which could not be deconstructed. This process included questioning whether he could trust what he saw, felt, thought, and experienced, and whether he could rely on any of them as proof that he existed at all. Looking at his book, “Meditations,” we can apply his thoughts on the matter to the situation of Roxas in “Kingdom Hearts 2” and see whether the Nobodies can hold up in the eyes of Rene Descartes.

When we first meet Roxas, we learn that he’s a regular teenager with a regular teenager life. He and his close group of friends (Hayner, Pence, and Olette) live in Twilight Town, and are enjoying the last week of their summer vacation. We watch as they encounter obstacles such as dealing with Siefer and the local bullies, partaking in the sport of Struggle (which entails beating your opponent with a whiffle bat and knocking orbs out of them. Fun for all ages), and trying to complete their homework. However, on the second last day of this vacation, Roxas wakes to discover that his friends not only no longer see him, but that, evidenced by a photo of the three of them without Roxas at their side, they have never known him at all. Further investigation reveals that the town Roxas lives in is a digital recreation of Twilight Town, and that all the experiences we have had up until now have been utterly fake. He had been captured by DiZ and put in a virtual reality to live out his days as his real body is slowly siphoned back into Sora. The opening of the game, then, never actually happened: Roxas didn’t really win the Struggle Championship or investigate the Seven Wonders of Twilight Town: he was just mislead to believe that he did. Yet, had there not been the big reveal as to this falsity, or had the game simply ended after the end of the fifth day with Roxas being put back into Sora without even realizing what was happening, neither Roxas nor the player would know that Roxas’s life as presented in the game was a lie, and that the true origin of his experiences were created as per the wishes of a third party.

The possibility that his experiences and sight were capable of being manipulated, or at least that they might not be trusted, occurred to Descartes as he sat in his chair and thought deep thoughts. He might have reason to believe that he was indeed sitting in a room by himself, that he lived in the Netherlands, and that this was the 17^th century: through immediate experience he could believe he had walked in the room and sat in his chair, and long term experience would say that he had been in the Netherlands, and that it was the 17^th century, for some time. For all he knew, all his memories and his waking moments indicated that what he saw at this moment in time was what truly was. But what if, thought Descartes, all those experiences he had which hammered home the fact that he lived where he thought he lived were somehow untrue? He might not have thought that someone like DiZ had created a virtual world for his Nobody (would that make him Dexcartes?), but it might have so happened that he was knocked on the head and suffered brain damage, meaning that his reliance on knowledge of place might be muddled. It could be that the room he walked into had red wallpaper, but due to a strange biological quirk, Descartes’ eyes were unable to see red, and thus he was not experiencing the room as it truly was. Heck, what if he was just really, really drunk, or inhaled a ton of ether, and was just hallucinating every waking moment? Experience, then, could not be trusted as an indication of existence or truth, because experience was easily manipulated. Not just via a Matrix-like machine such as DiZ had created, but through basic, real world possibility. What you see and experience on an everyday basis, emphasized to the point that you take it for granted to be true, cannot be verified beyond certainty as real, and thus cannot be relied on as proof of existence.

This deconstruction of the existence of experience critically hurts Roxas’s bid for existence, moreso than it might Descartes or any regular person. The Roxas we know in “Kingdom Hearts 2” is, for the most part, presented only as he is in the faux Twilight Town. Now, the Roxas we hang around with at the beginning of the game is a nice guy who might fumble the ball now and again, but he means well and really cares for his friends. But the thing is, the friends he cares for don’t exist. The woman who owns the candy store that Roxas talks to early on can verify that Roxas has been her favorite customer for years, but she doesn’t exist either. And if she doesn’t exist, then of course those years of patronage that Roxas had does not exist either. The day to day experiences that Roxas has, as well as past experiences which might lead to the here and now, are shown to be constructs of DiZ’s world. Everything that Roxas believes in is shown to be wrong, and thus the player has reason to believe that the Roxas they’ve been playing as is not the person they know. If the world we’ve been playing in doesn’t exist, than the actions Roxas has been committing don’t exist. He didn’t laugh and have fun with his friends, he didn’t sit on the clock tower to eat ice cream. And if all the elements that have constructed the Roxas we think we know do not actually exist, then Roxas as we know him does not exist. If not for the benefits of a few flashbacks and a separate game centered entirely around him, the player would have no idea of what Roxas was really like before he entered the fake Twilight Town. If DiZ’s world can falsify the experiences of Roxas, so too might it alter his personality, his thoughts, even his looks. The Roxas presented to us at the beginning of “Kingdom Hearts 2” is revealed to have been potentially manipulated and reconstructed in every conceivable way, and cannot be thought of as truly existing. Just as Descartes cannot trust his eyes and his past experiences, neither can we trust this representation of Roxas.

Of course, thanks to the appendix game of “358/2 Days,” we do know that there was a Roxas before being inserted into the fake Twilight Town, that he was more or less the same guy, personality wise, and had experiences of his own (unless you want to embrace the idea that all the narratives of “Kingdom Hearts” are similar fabrications, but that’s taking things a bit far). The game fills in the gap of time in between the first and second “Kingdom Hearts”: coming into creation as a Nobody after Sora’s heart is removed in the first “Kingdom Hearts,” Roxas joins a group called Organization XIII, made up of powerful Nobodies, who seek to find Kingdom Hearts so that they might regain their hearts and become complete people once again. In the universe of the game, a person consists of a soul, body, and a heart. When a heart is removed by the stock baddies of the game, known as the Heartless, the remaining body and soul form into a Nobody. The Nobody might look like the person they were previously, but they are unable to have genuine feelings: what emotions they might have are triggered by memories from their past life, and are not truly theirs. The idea of not being able to feel emotion might sound more the topic for high school poetry than metaphysics, but it triggers some interesting questions.

Like a pesky Darkside that keeps screwing up your attempt to beat “Kingdom Hearts” on expert mode, Descartes arises once again to ruin Roxas’s life. After deciding that the world around him might not be there, Descartes wonders whether the world /inside/ of him might not be there. That is, his thoughts, his feelings, and his senses may also be deconstructed. The problems with senses trace to the problems with experience: if you cannot rely on experience, then you can’t rely on the senses you derive from that experience. You might feel awfully comfy sitting on your couch while playing video games, but if that experience of sitting on the couch is fabricated, than so too is the sense of feeling comfy. If you are inclined to believe that we are products of our experiences, and that our minds and thoughts are formed as such, than those too are under attack, or at least, not beyond the realm of scepticism. And what of the possibility of mind control? Descartes goes so far as to say that there might very well be an evil genius controlling his thoughts, which, if somewhat absurd sounding, has enough plausibility behind it to cause doubt as to the sanctity of thought.

The mind-control theory might seem a bit bogus at first, but when you apply it to Nobodies, it actually seems to work. To use an analogy, consider a table top RPG. Say my character is a knight named Dave, who is walking through the Temple of Malicious No-Goodniks. Dave encounters a large bat and instantly flies into a rage, as his family was killed by bats (which makes his family kind of wimpy, but whatever). The emotions Dave feels are anger and the desire to kill, and he attacks. Of course, Dave isn’t really feeling anything, because Dave doesn’t exist: his backstory, emotions, and current state of affairs are being projected onto a miniature as per my wishes. Dave exists only as an extension of my thoughts, and without me to superimpose a personality upon him, Dave ceases to be the Dave I have described. Nobodies have the same sort of situation as Dave, where their looks, memories, and personalities are superimposed by a pre-existing person. Vexen only acts the way he does because Even was like that first before having his heart removed: Vexen’s personality is not his own, and of course, neither are his looks. Nothing they are has been created by themselves, but are created as per the specs of another person. As such, it could be said that Nobodies really are in a state of mind control of a third party, and that their existence is not genuinely theirs, being that what they are now depends on what someone else has made them. Their thoughts come about based on what their previous selves might have thought, their personalities come about based on what their previous personalities might have been, and all they become is a projection of what someone else once was. They exist only based on what their Somebodies existed as, and thus their own existence in disingenuous. Just like Descartes believes his sensations and thoughts are potentially being manipulated, Nobodies are in the same boat of having their existence essentially meddled with, and thus may still have their existence brought into question.

By now, Roxas has every reason to hate Descartes as much as he hates DiZ, because if DiZ didn’t do him any favors, Descartes is hardly lending a helping hand either. But Roxas fans might hold up some hope yet. In his musings, and deconstructing both the act of experience, memory, sensation, and the possibility of being constantly manipulated, it seemed to Descartes that, if this was all happening, then clearly there was something there to be manipulated: you couldn’t manipulate thought if there was no mind. This idea was coined in the now paraphrased: “I think, therefore I am.” Even if everything else about him was fake, there was a mind to process that which was fake. The ability to process information could not be deconstructed, and thus Descartes knew that if nothing else, his mind existed. And Roxas might have comfort in this: he only exists because of Sora, his experiences might be completely fraudulent, but at least there is something for DiZ to mess around with. Everything else might be fake, but because Roxas is able to perceive this, than to a certain extent, he exists.

Should you decide that, the next time you’re going through “Kingdom Hearts 2,” that Roxas is ten times better read than most junior high students usually are, feel free to imagine him pointing at DiZ and shouting “I OBJECT!” as he hurls a copy of “Meditations” at his red-taped head. And then imagine him somehow earning the Summon ability early, and with it Summoning Descartes to rain down fiery existentialism down upon him. And then, standing before the still comatose Sora, you can imagine Roxas proclaiming that at least he has a mind, and that he /does/ have a right to exist.

Of course, since Roxas is obligated to have the worst life ever, Sephiroth comes down from the ceiling and runs him through with a six foot sword. Hey, just because he exists doesn’t mean his life is any better.

Denying Existence: Why Dr. Robotnik is a Credible Villain

It is very hard to take Dr. Robotnik seriously as a video game villain. Saying “Ganondorf is coming to kill us!” or “Sephiroth is attacking an orphanage!” or even “Mother Brain is eating all the cupcakes and leaving none for the rest of us!” will garner something of a reaction from the knowing gamer, because these figures have been established as legitimate threats capable of destroying planets and becoming Gods. But to say “Dr. Robotnik is coming!” will doubtlessly result in laughter and have the same reaction as saying that the Tetris blocks are having a revolution. The man simply cannot conjure the same kind of fear and instant dread that his video game peers might. His appearance is clownish, with an impossibly goofy orange mustache and a perfect spherical body that suggests he once had a past life as a bowling ball. He is constantly upstaged by woodland animals in spite of the fact that he has an arsenal of tanks and machines at his disposal. And if you were really cynical, you might ask “Exactly what are you a Dr. /of/, Mr. Robotnik?”

Yet, once you get beyond the silly image and cartoony off-kilter behaviour of the good doctor, Robotnik really is quite terrifying. In fact, he has more power in his villainous acts than perhaps even he knows. Far from being an impotent baddie, Robotnik can do something which many villains cannot: he can destroy a person. And not just in the sense of rending the body and killing it: he destroys the very meaning of what it is to /be/ a person. Worse, he can inflict this state of not-being on a person for an eternity unless the gamer stops him via blue hedgehog. With enough deconstruction of what it is that he does, Dr. Robotnik stops being awfully goofy and becomes awfully, well, awful.

One of the things that can make a villain truly ominious and threatening is the size and scope of his potential destruction, how many people he can affect, and whether the gamer can see himself or herself as a potential target of this action within the context of the game. Try though he might, Bowser will never be the most horrifying of villains, because his targets are always focused on a very small group of people: even in “Super Mario Galaxy”, when Bowser finds the ability to control the universe, he still only uses his cosmic powers to nab Peach and temporarily inconvenience Mario. Compare this to Ganondorf in “Ocarina of Time,” who steals the Triforce, the very essence of the Goddesses, and in turn becomes himself a God of sorts, taking complete control of all of Hyrule and leaving literally no person in this world untouched. Even the relatively insignificant Lon Lon Ranch receives the brunt of Ganondorf’s malice. Worse still, he’s taken over the Sacred Realm, which can be read as Hyrule’s equivalent of Heaven, and corrupted it: the very promise of goodness and transcendence has been twisted by Ganondorf’s evil. You then have a sort of spectrum where on one end, you have a villain who effects only a small group of people (whether it be by stealing their purse, murdering a significant other, or kidnapping a princess), and on the other, a villain who affects everyone and everything, from people to plants to time and space. This, in turn, affects the gamer and how they identify themselves with the events in the game. Bowser might kidnap Peach, and while Mario might lament the loss of his girlfriend, the love interest is so ultra-specific that the gamer, unless they have secret fantasies about Princess Peach, does not feel that their own love life has taken a blow as a result of Bowser’s actions. Conversely, in the case of Ganondorf, the villain has taken away everything good that the world has to offer and replaced it with his own evil version. If the player has placed themselves in this world vicariously, then it doesn’t matter who they are or what they do, they’re still affected as a result of Ganondorf’s actions.

Where, then, does Dr. Robotnik fall in this spectrum? First, let’s look at what it is Robotnik does as a villain. The good Doctor acts as the threat of Man vs. Nature, in which Man is trying to destroy all that is good and wholesome about Nature, usually by exploiting its resources, rending the landscape, and replacing it with some kind of man-made structure or creation (be it building a house or pollution). Robotnik takes this to the cartoon extreme, however, in that there does not appear to be any economic or functional payoff to his wanton destruction of the environment, merely doing it because he’s a jerk like that. The key word in that sentence is “cartoon,” because the near randomness of these actions undermine the threat they might have. Surely, the destruction of the environment on a scale this massive is good for no man, if only because the air and water quality have been decimated to the point where even the most animate right-wing party member would have to call foul. Thus, the tentative argument could be made that Robotnik’s actions are indeed affecting everyone on a grand scale vicariously. Yet there are no real discernible benefits for Robotnik to go about doing this: being human (presumably), he would suffer the same detriments of this mass pollution as anyone else, so to have environmental destruction on this scale is nonsensical in terms of personal gain. You could argue that the mad doctor is, well, mad, in that there is no logic or reason to his actions, and that he is partaking in meaningless, anarchistic action, yet there seems to be some kind of rhyme and reason to his deeds: he obviously does not appreciate Sonic attempting to stop his mass pollution, indicating that he has an end goal in mind, even if said goal is just pollution for pollution’s sake. So the threat that Robotnik might provide on the environmental scale, while potent, is undermined by the sheer ridiculousness of it.

Second, Dr. Robotnik is trying to nab the Chaos Emeralds in order to help him take over the world. What exactly he plans on doing with said Emeralds is ambiguous. We know that when Ganondorf steals the Triforce, he gains control over everyone and everything. It’s none too clear as to what Robotnik hopes to do with the Emeralds in the event that he gets them. All they do for Sonic is turn him a sparkling yellow and give him the ability to fly, which, while cool, wouldn’t really do much to make Robotnik more terrifying. In fact, the sight of a roly-poly man flying about the sky like a deranged superhero would be kind of funny. So nothing overly threatening there, aside from speculation on what Robotnik /might/ do with the Chaos Emeralds.

But then you get to an aspect of Robotnik’s evil actions that isn’t so laughable. In fact, I would say that it’s not only potent, it’s threatening on a certain level that other villains can’t quite top. He takes sentient creatures (in this case, anthropomorphic animals) and turns them into robots.

This warrants some deconstructing. Ultimately, what Robotnik is doing is taking one thing and turning it into something completely different. This is nothing too shocking if all you’re doing is taking a toaster and turning into a door stop, but in this case, it’s being done with a sentient being, presumably against their will. What’s more, in the case of the toaster-to-doorstop, all that’s really changed is the function of the item and how its being used. The toaster is still a toaster, in that it looks like a toaster, is built like a toaster. All that’s changed is that it has stopped being used as a toaster. With the case of robotization, the person or thing being transformed retains nothing of what they were prior to being a robot. If a person (I’m going to use the word “person” just because it seems more, well, personal than saying animal) becomes a robot, they have essentially lost everything that made them a person in the first place. “What does it mean to be a person?” one might ask. There are enough tomes out there on the subject to sink the Bismark, and I’m not game enough to try and tackle the whole issue here. A few simplifications for the sake of argument might be made. First, there needs to be some kind of anatomy and bodily systems that make the person alive, allowing us to make a distinction between a person and a rock. Second, there should be some kind of sentient awareness of one’s own existence (or at least, the potential to have such an awareness), coupled with a brain capable of thought process, allowing us to make a distinction between a person and a flower.

But what happens when a person is robotized? The anatomy is altered entirely, the switching of essential vital organs over to machine parts, and the bodily functions and systems that made a person distinct from a flower (or brick or any other non-living item) have vanished. The higher brain functions, unique to humans (or the anthropomorphic equivalent thereof) have been replaced with circuitry and pre-programmed thought, further removing distinction of what it means to be a person. Robotnik has taken the very essence of what it means to be a person and made it nil: there is no fundamental difference, in terms of existence, between the robotized person and an inanimate object. Moreover, if we refer back to the toaster example, the toaster, even it has ceased functioning as a toaster, still retains some kind of identity of being a toaster in a past life: if someone were to see it being used as a doorstop, they would be more likely to say “What’s that toaster doing down there?” instead of “Nice doorstop.” The person who has become a robot has lost that identity entirely: it retains nothing of its past life, having lost the very essence of what made it what it was before. Any attempts to view the robot as the person it was in the past are superimposed, for the very ability to /be/ a person has been removed altogether. They cannot fundamentally be the same person they were five seconds prior to becoming a robot.

Not only has the subject been stripped of its status as a person, it’s lost its status as an individual. Personality, will, and thought are all things which differentiate one person from the next. Yet upon becoming a robot, no one person is any different from the next. Certainly, the form and shape might be different (you might be turned into a Caterkiller or a Motobug), but those are merely cosmetic differences. Everything that makes you /you/ has been rendered moot. Ideas and thought have been preprogrammed, free will replaced with systematic obedience.

If they cannot be a person, then what can they be? Simply put: a machine. The robotic body is all that’s left. Everything else has been stripped away. The subject in question has no choice in the matter as to whether they want to be a machine or not, because they no longer have the ability to be a person at all. They cannot be what they were, and thus their status as a person has been altered beyond reconciliation. The example might be stretched beyond just becoming a robot. Say Robotnik’s gimmick was he turned people into planks of wood, or marbles. He would still have the ability to shift the fundamentals of what it means to be one thing and convert it into the fundamentals of being another thing. In having this ability to upheave existence on every level, Robotnik have made the idea of being anything somewhat arbitrary: it doesn’t matter what you are now, because you can be easily made into something else. The existence of the person as a person, then, doesn’t matter, because Robotnik has managed to destroy the essence of /being/ in any meaningful fashion.

That’s not bad for a guy with a silly mustache.

With this in mind, Robotnik manages to stand up a little better when compared to Ganondorf. Ganondorf has made the existence of every Hylain miserable; Robotnik has challenged existence itself. He can make a person /not be/, essentially erasing everything about them from the world. The fan might then point out: “Yeah, that’s a little rough, but he’s still not out there killing people.” It’s a good point, to be sure, but more deconstructing is still required. Robotnik isn’t killing people, but by /not/ killing the people he robotizes, he might be doing something worse. With the death of a character, there’s at least some kind of closure. Either they go to the afterlife of their choosing, or simply die and go nowhere, or wait around in their spirit form until Yuna or some other summoner comes to Send them. If nothing else, there is an end of some kind provided for the character. This is not the case with Robotnik’s robots. Evidenced by the cute animals that hop out of the robots after Sonic jumps on them, the creature that has been robotized is still alive after the process. But what if Sonic does /not/ destroy their robot form? The state of non-being as previously described remains imposed on the creature perpetually. They are not allowed to live, but they are not really allowed to die. They don’t get to go on to a better place after Robotnik is done with them: they stay in their metal prison, still without identity, free will, or personhood. If one is inclined to believe that nothing happens to you when you die, and that you enter a state of non-being anyways, this might not be as horrifying. If it is believed that there /is/ an afterlife when you die, however, then Robotnik is committing a terrible crime: he is denying the soul to pass on. The soul present in the creature is trapped in every sense of the word: the physical body is contained, and the mind has ceased to be relevant. There is nothing left of the person for the soul to inhabit, but without the person actually being dead, the soul is unable to go anywhere and remain in robotic limbo. Robotnik has rendered the soul nil.

Tying this back to the scope of villainy, Robotnik’s status seems to grow. A good villain is measured by the size of the threat he offers, and how many people it affects. Robotnik threatens identity, existence, and the soul, threats which affect every living being. He does it on an industrial scale, mass producing robots out of sentient creatures, meaning that he can affect many people in a quick and efficient way. With the ability to destroy what it means to be a person, and do it on a grand scale, you’d best believe that Dr. Robotnik, silly mustache and all, is indeed a threat to be reckoned with. If Sonic does not defeat him, then the people he has robotized are doomed to not-be, and to not-be for eternity.

So the next time you’re zipping through Green Hill Zone and you run into the bald red-head in his drill-tank, your reaction should not be laughter. It shouldn’t even be considering how easy it is to just jump on his noggin multiple times and render his take useless. You should look at Dr. Robotnik and think about all those critters he has put into a state of non-being, and how they are doomed to a worthless existence (if they exist at all) unless you put an end to his machinations. You should feel that same hate that you feel when you walk into Hyrule Castle Town and see it overrun with Redeads. This is a video game villain that is worth your time.  Every time you blow up one of his ridiculously extravagant machines, be sure to shout “I EXIST!” into the wind. That’ll show him.

State of the Union

So, as the lack of updates over the last month has shown, I've reached another impasse in documenting wrestling. You can tie it all back to the episode of Raw after Elimination Chamber, when the show opened by claiming that Eve was apparantly just using Ryder the whole time, that she intended to use Cena (thus the kiss) and that the whole storyline of Kane's assaults over the last two months was pointless. Further, Cena not only did /not/ embrace the hate, he did not even address the Kane story at all, meaning that it didn't matter in the long run. Now, when the show admits that the best storyline it had going in years was pointless and didn't mean anything, that's a little hard to take as a guy who's main focus on wrestling was the plots. It also didn't help that the story build for Wrestlemania 28 was lackluster in general, leaving me very underwhelmed.

It basically came to the point where I don't really feel like writing my reviews of the wrestling shows anymore, because there really is no point. As such, I'm switching the purpose of this blog from just wrestling to more general topics in nerdom, like video games and movies and the such. It just gives me more things to write about and room to work. Don't worry, I'll still discuss wrestling, I just won't be focusing on it exclusively.

Thank you very much. Have a nice day.

Quick Pre-PPV Notes

Due to multiple technical problems, such as my computer deciding it doesn’t like Microsoft Word randomly and my PVR not working properly, as well as just not having a great deal of time, I obviously have failed to do reviews of the last two shows prior to the Elimination Chamber tonight. Of course, it would be this week when a good portion of important things happen which require commentary that my system fails… As such, I’m going to do an abridged review of the week, focusing less on matches and more on plot points and characters.

1.       The debate between the Elimination Chamber participants on Raw.

I was a big fan of this segment, and the set up. Granted, staging it as a debate might seem silly, given that nothing was really debated at all, but it served its purpose extremely well: it allowed all six men mic time to make an impression going into the PPV and give the audience a reason to care about their presence. There wasn’t a whole lot of time dedicated to making us care about the storyline prior to this, and thus a lack of emotional connection as to the outcome. Perhaps even worse was that the only character rivalry going into the match was between CM Punk and Chris Jericho, which left everyone else in the cold, so to remind the audience that there are other people in the match was much needed. Also, though I think it’s too late to make anyone believe that the outcome of the match is going to be either Jericho or Punk, giving everyone a moment to remind us why they’re important at least makes the match a little deeper in its conglomeration of potential winners. I especially liked Kofi Kingston’s piece, commenting on how he was certain everyone thinks he’s an afterthought, and that he aims to prove them wrong. Kofi always seems to be wanting for mic and screen time, but when he gets it, he makes the most of it. It’s true that out of all the people in this match, Kofi seems the least immediately relevant, and to have the character acknowledge this shortcoming directly is an interesting technique. On the same note, I liked the Miz’s rant as he tore a piece out of every other member. I don’t know why Miz always seems to be in an uphill struggle to remind us he’s important, given that he’s been in the upper card for over two years now, yet almost invariably his best stuff as a character comes when he’s being overlooked. I think it’s because the Miz character is an egomaniac who’s trying to prove all of his haters wrong, and that being overshadowed only fuels his Little Ceaser-esque rage; so that when the actual events of the show so happen to emphasize this motivation (such as with Punk and Jericho being the focus here, or when Miz and Truth fought the Rock and John Cena), it makes it all the easier to get behind what Miz is saying and makes his character more potent and understandable. R-Truth gets an honorable mention for consistently finding a way to scene-steal. While he may not be likely to win the title just yet, Truth has managed to consistently grow in relevance and screen presence. I like how they’ve managed to convert his insanity to eccentricity, and how his ramblings have a kind of charm in how off kilter they are. You get the sense that he’s having fun with what he’s doing, and the audience is able to attach to that emotion and sympathize with it. Oddly, the person I had a problem with the most in this was CM Punk, and I think the reason can be found when comparing his responses during this segment to Chris Jericho. When Miz was talking down to Jericho, Y2J was returning the death glare, intent on the man who was insulting him, and regarding him seriously; When Jericho was delivering his lines against Punk, Punk made a joke about Dancing with the Stars. I would have preferred it if Punk were to be somewhat more serious in this set-up, rather than laughing it off as a joke, especially when there hasn’t been much building in the intensity of this match’s plot thus far. If the Champion, who is in danger of losing his title, doesn’t care about its defence, how am I supposed to care?

2.       Eve

The big story on Raw was, of course, Kane kidnapping Eve, Cena saving her, the two sharing a passionate embrace, and Zack Ryder walking in on them and having his heart crushed. There’s a bunch of things to look at in this set-up, and the first is Eve. I’m actually surprised at the over-reaction of the internet to Eve kissing the man who seems to be consistently saving her on a regular basis, not to mention the apparent obliviousness to an obvious set-up to create dramatic tension, but whatever. There are a few problems that I do have with this, though, the main thing being that Eve really is just a tool in an obvious set-up to create dramatic tension. Eve has had a couple of really powerful moments in the past few months, most notable being her standing up to Laurinaitis on Zack’s behalf, and even calling out Cena for causing them misery. Now, she’s kind of been reduced in stature a great deal, almost to the level of a prop. If I thought that her going for Cena had something to do with her character, it would be different, but the “love triangle” is there so Cena can have something else to cause turmoil in his life. I just wish that there was some kind of payoff here for Eve and her story, like with the relationship of AJ and Daniel Bryan.

3.       John Cena

On the flip side of the spectrum, this turn in the story does wonders for Cena and his current plotline. It’s one of the few times where Cena is in a problem that he can’t just fight his way out of. He can Superman over any villain in his path, but now he’s in a situation of his own doing, and he clearly doesn’t know how to handle it. Much like with Eve, I really don’t care for the kiss itself, because it’s just screams PLOT POINT and doesn’t come naturally at all, but the fallout from it is what’s interesting. I especially liked when Ryder slapped Cena, because when someone as likable, friendly, and heroic as John falters in the eyes of his friends, you know that this is going to eat him up to an extent. Case in point: Cena has to stop himself from hitting Zack back. There’s obviously more than a little turmoil in Cena’s head right now, and that’s a very good thing: it means that the story thus far has had ramifications and consequences. Also of interest is that Cena is being resented by the man he’s consistently saved and promoted for one small moment of weakness, much like the resentment from crowds in spite of being a genuinely good man. The set-up was contrived, but the payoff is worth it.

4.       Triple H vs. The Undertaker

There has been a vast improvement in my interest in the storyline, all of it due to the fact that Trips’ motivations seem to be more complex than “I’m too cool for the Undertaker now.” In his confrontation with Shawn Michaels on Monday, Hunter laid a couple of things down that made me take interest. First is that he no longer considers himself to be “that guy” who would destroy the legacy of the Undertaker just to say he could. Right there, Triple H admits that he might have some issues himself: it’s not just the Undertaker who has changed, but him as well. He’s come out and said he’s not the King of Kings anymore, which means that he’s at least aware that he’s no longer a Nordic God. Like Cena’s Superman character being tarnished, a change for Triple H is a good thing. It makes him more real and more interesting to watch, rather than just have him come out week after week and say “Look how great I am.” So what is he if not “that guy?” As Shawn Michaels put it, Triple H is a sell-out. Gone are the glow sticks and ball caps. He’s now a suit wearing corporate stooge. And Hunter more or less admits to this: he says he can no longer afford to think of Undertaker as an obstacle, and has to think of him as property. This is the first time since Hunter took over the WWE that he’s actually had to deal with a change of landscape. Prior, he was still the old Triple H, just with more power. Now, he’s had to come to terms with reality, his age, his position, and his responsibility. In the course of one promo, Triple H’s character developed more than it has in roughly the last decade. It’s put him in a format that’s both new and challenging, and much like have to see Cena try to figure his way out of a situation that he’s not encountered before, so too must Triple H figure out who he wants to be. Also of interest is when Michaels tells Triple H that a real man wouldn’t back down from the Undertaker, and given how much investment Triple H puts into being manly and tough, the realization that he’s more or less turned his back on what he said during the “walk out” was so important gives him more complexity. His is the character who has to work through mind games, and the change of scenery is refreshing and interesting.

5.       Randy Orton out…

I bring this up not so much because I have a ton to say about it, but mostly that I’m glad that the WWE caught the concussion in time and decided it would be better to not have Orton smash his head around further inside of the Elimination Chamber, in spite of the potential loss of revenue and fan interest as a result of his being left out.

6.       …Santino in

You’d best believe that there’s a lot to be upset about here. First, as I’ve said many times, Santino is worthless in any match, especially one with ramifications about the World Heavyweight Championship. He’s not going to win, he’s not going to add to the match, he’s not going to do anything hard core in the chamber, and the comic relief he might provide is woefully misplaced inside the Elimination Chamber. Second, the website people clearly aren’t talking to the Smackdown producers, because it was announced that Santino was going to be taking Orton’s place on Wednesday, while Smackdown still tried to pull it off as a surprise main event on Friday. Third, the battle royal to decide who should be in the Chamber saw Santino do tremendously little. Literally every other person in the ring did more work then him, and then to have him steal the spot just seems like a smack in the face to everyone else. Fourth, Drew McIntyre.

7.       Daniel Bryan

With his hitting Orton with the belt on Monday, and his lambasting of the fans on Friday, it seems Bryan has officially declared himself heel, which I don’t actually like, believe it or not. What worked about Bryan’s character so well was that he was completely unaware that the fans might resent him, or that he’s anything except a hero. His sugar-coated fantasy land was fun and entertaining, while also presenting an interesting piece of motivation for the character. Now that he’s officially turned his back on the fans, he’s lost that sense of naïve heel nature that I liked, and is kind of ripping off the Miz’s motivation of saying that none of them believed in him, and he proved them all wrong. Don’t get me wrong: Bryan still works fantastic as a heel, as proven with how he managed to get Sheamus DQ’d on Smackdown by provoking him into a fit of rage. I just liked how he was going about it before a little better.

I believe those are the main points I wanted to discuss. Hopefully, in the event that my computer doesn’t explode again, reviews will be more forth coming in the future, and I hope the Elimination Chamber will prove to be enjoyable.