The New Doctor is IN - 5 things that need to change for Series 8

WOW, THAT Christmas special huh? I liked that bit where that guy turned into that other guy but they're both still the same guy. Okay I was tempted to do another rundown of the Christmas episode similar to the anniversary episode but that would involve watching it twice and...I can't be bothered. So instead let's look to the future and focus on the new series and more importantly the new DOCTOR, and run down five things head writer Steven Moffat needs to knock off for this fresh start that is pretty much unique to Doctor Who. 

This list is focused on tropes mostly associated with Steven Moffat himself, obviously the show has a lot of other issues that crop up regularly under the pen of most writers (overuse of the Sonic Screwdriver, deus ex machina etc.) but these are things that effect overarching subplots and themes of the show rather than ruin individual stories (even if there is still plenty of that). To be clear, I don't hate Moffat, now that he's been running the show nearly as long as Russell T. Davies did I maintain that he is the better writer of the two. And as much as certain things he does irk me Moffat has never written anything nearly as putrid as Journey's End or The End of Time, he also never let the Doctor beat the Master with the power of Jesus. 

1 - Stop with the gosh darn self fulfilling prophecies  

Okay, easy start. Any hardcore Who fan knows exactly what I mean here. Everyone knows Moffat has a hard on for messing around with timelines and the laws of such with his stories. It was super cool in Blink (which is probably why he keeps he doing it), it was kind cool in The Big Bang, but now as we reach the end of 2013 and turn towards 2014 it's getting seriously old and borderline frustrating.

Without diving directly into Who narratives and discussing what does and doesn't make sense, I'll just say this in general. As a viewer, I hate the feeling that everything I'm watching is pre-determined. Now, you might think that's a silly point, it's a drama with a script of course it's all pre-determined, but you shut that out of your mind. It's harder to do that though when the show is actively throwing in your face "YO, THIS THING ALREADY HAPPENED FOR THIS CHARACTER ON THIS TIMELINE SO IT'S GUARANTEED TO HAPPEN." It just sucks for me, and maybe a lot of other people too, but it feels like I'm watching a story that's already ended, it's already resolved. Either past Doctor or future Doctor or the rebooted universe or whatever has basically already fixed it we're just taking the slow route of watching him get there.

Now Doctor Who tries to get around this with its "time can be rewritten!" shtick, but that doesn't work, but we're not stupid that doesn't work. If Matt Smiths first episode ends with the prophecy of "Silence will fall when the question is asked" then obviously the show is going to resolve that, because everyone would hate it if they dared try to "rewrite time" to get out of it. Maybe you can argue that from a lore point of view it's possible, but from a TV production point of view the audience knows that it's not possible, the show would not lie to you like that. 

 It's even worse when the show does kind of cheat. Like when the Doctor gets out of "having to be killed by an astronaut" thing by having a fake Doctor die with him inside it. Like what was that? Do the rules of time really fall for what this kind of technicality? Like as long as "The Doctor" is filed under "dead" in some circumstance the time streams just stop caring? So yea, knock this off, it's overdone and old, it makes the show less fun when you don't cheat and it makes it unbearable when you do cheat.

2 - Tone down all the sexualisation...sweetie

I'm not some moral guardian here, this has nothing to do with offending the audience, 

my objection to this is that it's just...weird. I don't mind it so much when it's the side characters, if you want to have a Victorian lesbian reptile/human couple running around fighting crime then that's fine with me. It's just when The Doctor is sexualised and implied to be running around boning whatever he can find. 

I mean how does this work biologically speaking? Can he breed little Gallifreyian/lizard half breed mutants if he wanted? He seems anxious about sexual things but is inarguably not a virgin, so what is he into? Is he just anxious because he's crap in bed? Does he olay around in the TARDIS on one of his centuries long stints alone in there? It's been implied he has a thing for the TARDIS, has he ever...done stuff to it? Is it stupid/redundant to be thinking about any of this? YES. Does it add anything to the character or the stories? NO.

It just brings up issues and questions about the character that the audience shouldn't ever think about because it's just distracting. With Capaldi being about 80 years older than Smith and the fangirl moisture levels automatically being about 25% less out of the gate this is a problem that should hopefully resolve itself, but please stop making me think "will they, won't they" with Doctor Who because it brings down a science fantasy show that covers all of time and space down to the level of Strictly Come Dancing.

3 - Stop having arcs last 100s of years

I could look up a fan made timeline or something to check this, but I'm writing on Christmas Day and can't really be bothered, so I'll wing it and say that in terms of timelines Matt Smiths Doctor may have been the Doctor for longer than all the other incarnations combined. In the Christmas special he claimed to have been knocking around for centuries, and then the story itself lasts 300 years (or possibly a lot more). So that's already a minimum of like...600 years, he was only 900 a few incarnations back so...what?

That's a minor niggle really, what I don't like about it is these huge implied time leaps just help plotholes grow, either that or they just make the characters seem really bone idle. Take the Christmas special for example, there were literally like a dozen armies intent on attacking Trenzalore with no other objective than KILL THE DOCTOR and he fought them off for hundreds of years? HOW?! Maybe you could just say they were too busy fighting each other, that's still a lame example, but the episode makes it clear that the Daleks basically kicked everyone else's ass (more on this in a bit) so 1000s of Daleks couldn't just figure out "shoot the guy", when "shoot the guy" is basically the only character trait a Dalek even has in the first place?

Again, this is another thing that makes Moffats job more difficult for himself which makes it more confusing. No-one's lived for 100s of years (other than Bruce Forsyth, but he's only saved the world like twice and is a bad example) so you're giving yourself the more difficult job of writing a guy who's been alone for that amount of time and...not handling it very well...if at all if I'm honest. 

4 - Stop having all the villains show up together

Again, potentially a personal niggle that no-one else cares about, but I really don't like this. The villains should all be their own little clans in their own little pockets of the universe, with perhaps the occasional crossover here and there for maximum fangasm when appropriate. But having them all show up together in unison, collectively shaking their fists/plungers at the Doctor it diminishes all of them. There's really not much you can do with it either, I mean when the Daleks are involved, either the Daleks act bizarrely out of character and don't kill everyone, or they kill everyone else and make them look like low tier garbage.

After all, when it's established that the Daleks can kill everything no problem, and The Doctor can (consistently) sort out the Daleks no problem, then what's the threat...ever? In any situation? The Doctor is God. Everyone else loses. Game over. It's times like this where you have to start resorting to "rebooting the universe" for storylines. Oh yea, it doesn't deserves its own placement on the list, but also stop rebooting the universe.

5 - Sort out your side characters

The other regularly criticised thorn in Moffats side, his handling of side characters in Who isn't always great. Amy Pond and Rory were fine at first, their relationship was starting to get a bit hammy by the end though. Clara Oswald however is an abject failure, she was never a character she's an idea Moffat had once, and it's probably a testament to Jenna-Louise Colemans talent that she's likeable at all because you could paint lipstick on a brick and throw it into the Doctors timestream and it would have the same effect. Unfortunately we're stuck with her for Series 8, fortunately that nonsense about her saving the Doctor seems to be basically covered and there's an opportunity to focus on her as more of a...y'know...PERSON.

This problem isn't just tied to Moffat though, T. Davies suffered with companions somewhat as well at times even if his were generally stronger. Go watch the Christmas Invasion again like I did (for reasons even I don't understand), Rose spends the entirety of the episode crying about how worthless she is and how helpless humans are because The Doctor is gone for less than a day, then spends the reminder of the episode gushing over him when he's back. 

Obviously "sort out your side characters" is a ridiculously vague and douchey demand for a non-fiction writer such as myself to demand, but here's something to get you working in the right direction. A companion doesn't need to "have a thing", she doesn't have to be the most important thing in the universe for that week, The Doctor is lonely and likes having someone around to show off in front of, and he takes interesting people with him because they're kind of cool. Focus on the "interesting" and "kind of cool" aspects and not their grand place in the universe first, and you might get someone who's a character and not just a prop. 

WRAP UP THOUGHTS PARAGRAPHS

On reflection, most of these complaints come down mostly to one thing, one thing that has plagued New Who since the show came back in 2005. It's too egocentric, it's too about The Doctor, it's too...fanfictiony. The events of the entire universe circle around the Doctor, he's sexualised because the fangirls love him, stories drag on for centuries because the Doctor is more important than anyone around him, the enemies group up in fear of the Doctor and throw all their own characterisations and motivations to the wind to focus on him, and the side characters are crap because they're not characters as much as they are fragments of the Doctors universe. The writers have just got to get over themselves a bit, the best episodes of New Who (Human Nature/Family of Blood, Blink, The Doctor Dances, Midnight, The Eleventh Hour, The Doctors Wife just to name the first ones that come to mind) were all good because of interesting concepts and gripping drama. In the case of most of them focused on the story rather than the man who flies around in a box because the story was ultimately more interesting.

As I have written before, The Doctor is an amazing character, but he's not more amazing than the entirety of space and time and everything in it so it continues to be dumb how much a show that can tackle any story, any issue or any genre it pleases constantly refers back to this one character. 

Gaming Review of the Year 2013

I was going to call this the "Lesmocon Review of the Year" or some equivalent dumbness but this isn't going to be remotely structured enough to be considered an actual "thing". Limited finance (and let's be honest, interest) have kept my gaming experience relatively low for 2013, but even so even I can tell you it was a way better year for the industry than 2012. Although in fairness, they could have released nothing but 30th Anniversary Game N Watch machines this year and it still would have been a better year for the industry than 2012 was. 

Having said that, here's a bunch of text on a bunch of stuff that I played this year, and I'm making all of this up as I go which may potentially force me to recall memories of games I didn't actually play. You've been warned.

GAMES THAT I ACTUALLY DID BUY AND PLAYED A LOT OF AND REALLY SORT OF LIKE (Or my Top 5 of 2013 if you're boring and lame and don't put sugar on your Shredded Wheat)

The Last of Us - If you're a regular reader (and please get in touch if you are because I would LOVE to have regular readers) then you know I have a lot of problems with this game...or rather, the reaction to this game. This is one of those games that has the worst kind of fanboy, the ART fanboy, who claim to love it because it's too wonderful and perfect not to as opposed to say, Sonic the Hedgehog fanboys, who love it because they're mentally and/or biologically 12 years old and get weird confused feelings whenever they watch Space Jam and that creepy girl bunny shows up. People who love The Last of Us are the sort of people who get snippy and correct you if you refer to it as a "zombie game" because it's THE INFECTED, IDIOT because they're actually convinced that it makes a remote difference and is more ART that way.

Drooling fanboys and the frankly embarrassing "The Last of Us is perfect interactive entertainment/made me cry etc." articles gush parade aside, there's no taking away from the fact that The Last of Us is one of the best games of the year, that's basically not debatable. Maybe I do have to concede that such a story and strong writing heavy video game being such a smash hit is good for the industry in general even if I do think it didn't mix that with the gameplay as well and it ought to. 

I have an unpublished second (maybe it's a third? I don't even remember anymore) review of this game sitting on my harddrive, I might put it up in the New Year sometime or I might just let Naughty Dog have their victory for their hard work and let it go. Also, I played the multiplayer for the first time recently and I unironically think that that's really good.

Metal Gear Rising - Platinum Games really are the internet darlings of the mainstream gaming scene, their games aren't necessarily lacking in quality as such but....eh, their products still have a long way to go. Bayonetta, Vanquish and Metal Gear Rising are three games that could (and perhaps should) circle on the borders of perfection but all have really stupid flaws that almost knock them out of the echelon of "good" entirely.

As far as Rising is concerned, the dreadful story, pointless talky sections, repetitive boss battles, limited level design and bizarrely out of place and flat out dumb stealth mechanics all hold back what is otherwise an excellent (if really short (No! This is the praise part of the paragraph shut up (man, it's comfy inside these brackets))) production built around a satisfying and strong central mechanic of parrying and swordplay. If you love this game then great, I had a lot of fun with it too, but don't get bitchy when people point out it could have been a lot better and Platinum Games aren't fallen angels of game design, because it could have been a lot better.

Completely off topic: Thinking about Platinum Games out of control reputation, the same sort of thing happened with Rare in the 90s. Is this just a result of companies getting great feedback on early mediocre titles and then stagnating or something? By the way, if you haven't caught on yet, I'm saying (most) Rare games suck. Come at me bro.

Mighty Switch Force 2 -

The game is pretty good too.

Grand Theft Auto V - Rockstar games are always a pain to review because on the one hand they're usually a mess of tutorials and unpolished gameplay mechanics wrapped in a tightly written immersion bubble. It wasn't even that well written this time, the story is pretty much a mess too all things considered, but the series got a bit more colourful again after the depression parade of the fourth game and fun was once again possible. 

I don't even know what I liked about GTAV that much, all I know is it stole about 2 weeks of my life and refused to give them back, games just don't do that me my non-existent attention span fights off that constantly in my adulthood, but still the last week of September and first week of October are but a blur.

This would have had a shot at being my Game of the Year if the online had a proper matchmaking system that didn't eat its own farts and actually ALLOWED ME TO PLAY THE GAME WITH OTHER PEOPLE. There's still time to fix that Rockstar, I'd jump back on that tomorrow if you announced you were changing that, maybe I'll even retroactively give you the GOTY Award. Actually, screw that, because there's no way I'm taking it away from...

The Stanley Parable - These five aren't in any particular order, but THIS is absolutely my Game of the Year. I'll keep things brief because I already did a full review of the game on this site, but long story short I adore this game for expressing and making me laugh at all my frustrations with modern video game narratives. One of the reasons why I feel less bitter towards The Last Of Us and was mature enough to put it on this list like it rightfully deserves is because The Stanley Parable flushed the bitterness out of me towards that game. Anyone who finds themselves rolling their eyes at current videogame "storytelling" HAS to play this game.

RAMBLINGS ON OTHER GAMES I PLAYED THIS YEAR

Sonic Lost Worlds - Played two levels of it at a con, was slow as hell, didn't control that great, didn't really have any fun with it. Got a lot of dirty looks from Nintendo employees when I started sniggering at the guy playing the demo before me jumped at the wrong time into a setpiece section of a level, which screwed the game up and the setpiece ended up shooting Sonic backwards through a series of springs and whatever was going on, forcing the guy to run into it again and watch the exact same thing happen in reverse. Probably isn't terrible, but certainly doesn't look any good either. Won't be buying this any time soon (ever).

Ace Attorney Dual Destinies - Also did a review of this one on this very site, but I can't be bothered to get the link this time. You're a big boy go find it yourself. I'm a fan of the series so I had fun with it, it's just severely lacking in legitimate character and it makes up for that with lame, LAME fan service. I could write a "Why Sonic Sucks" length essay on why Phoenix Wright shouldn't have been the main character of this game. 

The fifth case especially suffers for the decision, it's basically revealed that two characters are strongly linked together but there's no drama to it, there's no development or tension, it's just "oh this happened and X and Y were strongly affected", and then for some reason Phoenix Wright is THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SOLVE THIS even though he's only tangentially related to anything going on and it's...it's just weak. I understand why they brought Phoenix Wright back from a franchise/business point of view, but this story does not work with him in the lead role as well as it could of, needed a rewrite/DIFFERENT F'N STORY.

Beyond: Two Souls - This "game" is awful. It's awful. It's hilariously awful. Almost too awful to be hilarious, and in some ways it is, but you have to laugh at it, it's the only way to survive it. Some twats have claimed that "oh yea, the gameplay sucks but the story is AMAZING", they're lying. The story jumps around to try and convince you that ART is happening, but in all honesty it's probably just there to distract you from the amount of near rape scenes/boredom/flat out nothing/randomness going on. It sucks, and its ending that implies a possible sequel and strange moral of "if you miss your family, kill yourself an go hang out with them in the Infraworld!" (seriously what?) can piss off. Worst game of the year. 

Bioshock Infinite - I HAVEN'T PLAYED IT. The exact same thing has happened with the first Bioshock, it hit, a million people claimed it was the best game ever. A month later, a million other people countered those million people and claimed it to be the worst game ever. Now my general perception of it is "meh" and I can't be bothered with it. It's probably okay.

Super Mario 3D World - I haven't played much of this yet, but I've played one level of it in four player mode and that's enough to tell you that the four player mode is garbage. Maybe it would potentially be fun if you were playing with four people of equal skill...which would never happen, but as stands all that ever happens is either you'll fall behind and get teleported through the level, or run ahead barely able to see what you're doing and teleport other people to you. Nintendo need to stop putting focus on local multiplayer for Mario games, all that happens is it turns into a big troll off which might be fun for a bit but gets real old real fast. Play it alone, like I do everything. 

Dragon's Crown - Listen to me nostalgia blinded 90s kids and games industry, the traditional side scrolling beat-em up genre died because it's monotonous and stupid, it's not some tragically lost genre. Games like Castle Crashers do well because they add stuff to ignite the formula and make it interesting, any game that comes out playing like a pretty looking Golden Axe is still going to suck as much as Golden Axe does and possibly always did. Maybe this is fun with friends, but it's basically a button bashing monotonous side scroller like MOST OF THEM but as an added bonus you get to sit through boring Flash Dating Simesque story segments, micro manage all your equipment and pretend it's an RPG! It is pretty though, and about 10 billion times better than Double Dragon: Neon so I'll give it a pass for weirdos who like this sort of thing.

There's probably some other stuff that came out this year that I played enough to talk about, but I'm hungry. So...ermm....until next year!...eh...

AJ Lee Vs Michelle Beadle - The Internet LIE Machine

I used to make sure that I stayed on top of my wrestling rumours and "news", I have always taken everything on those sites with MOUNTAINS of salt, but I've done my work for a wrestling site here and there and if nothing else it was important to stay on top on what people were talking about. The more I read and actually processed of what was being reported and the more I studied journalism in my higher education the more I realised that the vast majority of online wrestling news sites are GARBAGE. They aren't just poorly written, poorly researched and unreliable from every conceivable perspective, but they are liars. That is not an exaggeration and I don't say it without full understanding of the implications, but it is my experience that many of these people intentionally lie to you to hide their own irrelevance.

I'm not going to name and shame any particular websites or writers, partially for potential libel reasons if any of them were to see this and get a major case of butthurt, but also because there's really no way to tell where the lies start. It's unclear if it's genuine misinformation that they just report knowing full well it's unverified, whether their (mostly always unnamed) "sources" are the liars, or whether they just make up the sources entirely. Since all the top websites also have a nasty habit of copying and pasting content from each other it's hard to pin down where faux stories originated. Often Meltzer and his "sources" are credited, I don't think David Meltzer is a liar but he's wrong just as often as he's right  and gets far more credibility in terms of HOT BACKSTAGE RUMOURS than he deserves. 

The point of this post is to demonstrate how worthless of a source these wrestling websites are, to the extent that most fans would be better off simply ignoring them entirely. Whether the misinformation is intentional or not is irrelevant (I personally believe it is more often than not) but the lack of faith you can place in this form of journalism certainly is.

Here's a quick personal anecdote to get you in the right frame of mind for what comes after. I was helping with updates on a popular wrestling pages Facebook page once upon a time, at that time this particular page has about 80,000 fans and a reach of over a quarter million, that's not a bad chunk of the Internet Wrestling Community to have on board. One day I posted a link to a new article from Kayfabe News that I thought was especially entertaining. One of the fellow members of the team saw this and had never heard of Kayfabe News before, and decided he was now a big fan, and thanked them for their work by going onto their website...to copy and paste entire articles and post them directly on the page itself.

Not the link, the actual text from their website directly posted onto the Facebook page itself without context or credit. So obviously some morons on the page thought it was real news (for those that don't know, Kayfabe News is basically the wrestling equivalent of The Onion), some smarter people caught on they were joke articles and praised the page as such, and there was a handful of voices pointing out that it was just stolen from Kayfabe News. I bitterly thought with the head Administrator of the page to knock this off and either post the links or stop posting their content entirely, it took about 1-2 hours of argument to reach a compromise where they would continue to do what they were doing but put a little "From Kayfabe News" in brackets at the very BOTTOM of the post, so still no acknowledge of their actual website in any shape or form. 

Needless to say, I stopped working for these people very soon after this, and also walking away from the biggest audience I've ever published in front of. The point is, these people in charge of an extremely popular wrestling page not only didn't mind intentionally stealing other peoples content, taking it out of context and presenting it as the truth, but I had to argue with them for hours to force them to concede any fault whatsoever. They are cretins, they are worthless dog turds in terms of being people and of being journa..no, they're not journalists. They're twats. Twats with keyboards who lucked into an audience. And before anyone starts accusing me of hypocrisy, I'll have you know I haven't got to the "lucked into an audience" part yet. 

ANYWAY, on to the business at hand. 

In what I consider to be a really boring story, it is being reported across the board in the online wrestling world that AJ Lee is majorly in the doghouse with WWE officials because she "chewed out" some TV personality called Michelle Beadle who was part of their annual Tribute to the Troops show. This all happened last Wednesday (11th December 2013).

Here is a snippet from a wrestling website chosen at random on how this story was ORIGINALLY reported:

"According to a source, Lee saw NBC personality Michelle Beadle (who was on hand hosting the event) chatting with CM Punk backstage at the event and "freaked out." More specifically, Lee threw an obscenity-laced tired at the popular television personality. As you know, AJ and Punk are dating in real-life."

The article goes on to explain that Beadle confirmed that some kind of incident did occur on her Twitter account, insisting twice that WWE officials were there and she took it to be "a joke". Later in the very same article we get this little tidbit. 

"Judging by that tweet, it sounds like AJ may have gotten jealous of Beadle talking/flirting with her boyfriend CM Punk. That is NOT confirmed though. We hope to have more shortly. " 

 Let's be brief here because it's probably fair to say that most people are familiar enough with the methods of certain journalisms to see what's going on here for themselves. This is a hell of a leap by the writer, the article is painting the most dramatic and most interesting picture it possibly can with the limited information, and the "THIS IS NOT CONFIRMED" line attached to it ironically confirms that this is just made up. When you subtly add in that interoperation of a breaking story you are going to make the audience think that and the writer absolutely knows this, it doesn't matter if you put NOT CONFIRMED in bold after it, that's what you're saying and that's want people to think. This is a get-out clause for later when the story does develop and it's basically guaranteed that this isn't even remotely true. But it makes for a juicy story now.

The story was updated later the same day with the following:

"Responding to an upset AJ Lee fan on Twitter, Beadle remarked, "Hon...it was done in front of company people. I didn't say a word. I thought it was a joke." Beadle's tweet gels our report, as we noted on the podcast that Lee's Tribute to the Troops incident took place in front of many important people."

Oh, it 'gels your report' does it? The fact that she confirmed the fact that other people were there and saw something happen between her and AJ Lee does not confirm anything about the "jealousy" you mentioned in the last report, or the abuse that AJ was allegedly making. The fact that your early report got one of the basic facts vaguely, vaguely correct does that confirm your credibility to comment on this story. 

Another thing to mention at this point, this report has also contained a prediction that AJ Lee will probably lose the Divas title at Tables, Ladders and Chairs which happened this past weekend. More on that later.

The third report is where things start getting interesting, by this point the website has retracted all the dumb stuff it made up about jealousy and confirmed that AJ Lee didn't confront Michelle Beadle during a conversation with CM Punk, but rather Beadle had talked to Punk earlier in the day and confronted her later on without Punk present. So by the third reports admission, the first two reports were worthless dribble. Now, you might now make the very fair point that in this modern Twitter based world of journalism where everything is updated around the clock it would be unreasonable to suggest that these sites hold off from reporting an incident entirely due to not having all the facts...and you'd be right. 

But the important part of this is to note that not having any facts didn't stop them from building their narrative. It is a well known structured narrative in backstage gossip that AJ Lee (along with Dolph Ziggler) are in trouble with WWE management, they took what little they knew about this story and not only reported it in a way that made AJ look as unprofessional as possible, but they tried to use their own narrative as evidence for a Pay-Per-View prediction. It's all a desperate struggle for credibility, they make up stuff they don't know, use that stuff to put a story in your mind, and then use that story to speculate on WWE storylines so now you think you're in the loop. 

NOW, you'll be sitting there with your friends watching the PPV talking about how "AJ will probably lose because she's in trouble backstage and I'm smart and stuff". These sites know that smarks love that, they crave that, and they will lie and manipulate reports to give you that, and that is the danger of reading these horrible websites. Because even if a totally reliable report comes out that AJ really didn't do anything wrong whatsoever, this image is burned into your mind, there's no way for her to come out of this well any more whatever she did. 

Now, a spanner is thrown into the works when it turns out that a WRESTLER saw the whole thing and gives their (uncredited...as ever) account of what happened:

"One wrestler who witnessed the incident is denying the claim of Lee raising her voice and cursing at Beadle. "Anyone who said that is a liar," said the wrestler, who spoke under the condition of anonymity."

So now we have ANOTHER narrative from an unnamed source that everything said up til now was a lie, and whoever the original source was made up a lot of stuff to make AJ look bad. We have a "source" that deduced that Punk talked to Beadle at some point of the way (they couldn't have possibly seen that conversation because no-one knows what Beadle actually said to him) and saw AJ kick down the door guns blazing and shot her mouth off and went crazy, and a "unnamed wrestler" who says none of that happened.

Already the waters have been muddied enough for us to not have a clue of what actually happened. The writer of the reports has already shown their contempt for the truth and the audience, and in terms of information we have two equally unreliable sources that completely disagree with each other. Note that none of these reports are comfortable in commenting on who was actually present for this incident, how many there were or who they were, they only mention the fact that there was at least SOMEONE there who was high ranking enough to get AJ in trouble for this...allegedly. 

By the end of the third report, you get this lovely little paragraph:

"Many people within WWE are embarrassed and angry at Lee over the incident. She is expected to be disciplined for her behavior. As seen at WWE's TLC pay-per-view, AJ defeated Natalya and retained the title so they pulled the "swerve" that we hinted at earlier. We wouldn't be surprised to see a rematch on RAW or in the very near future."

Even with developments that potentially show that everything you've said up to now is completely wrong, the writer re-confirms the anti-AJ narrative, and acknowledges that as it turns out AJ didn't actually lose the title at TLC as their last report predicted. But it's okay, they weren't "wrong" they just didn't do it because it's a "swerve". Yea, the WWE creative team were changing things up last minute in direct response to them...or something. There's no humility here, any misinformation is just a "development in the story", patched up so this website can drag you along on this rollercoaster of lies and still come out of it with as much credibility as possible. 

Things get even more complicated though! Just for old times sake, let's nab a quote from Bleacher Report on another development!

"Meanwhile over at WrestlingNewsWorld, Richard Grey has dismissed the story entirely, claiming Lee had merely been told to cut a scripted promo on Beadle backstage for the WWE app, only Beadle and no one else around were actually aware the whole thing was a work."

I'm sorry what now? 

Personally, I have no opinion on what actually happened, mostly because based on the information available it is impossible to determinate what happened and unlike these websites I don't claim to know...also it's boring and who cares. Let's recap what we have though, these are the four narratives:

1. AJ went up and mouthed off at Beadle while in a conversation with Punk out of jealousy.
2. AJ talked to Beadle after the Punk conversation and WENT NUTS.
3. AJ talked to Beadle after the Punk conversation and didn't go nuts.
4. AJ went nuts, but it was all scripted and planned but no-one knew about it.

This. Is. Impossible.

I don't mean that it's impossible for all four narratives to be true...well, I do, but I mean it's impossible for these four misconceptions to happen. Either AJ was being abusive and using profanity...or she wasn't, there's no "source opinion" on that, it's a yes or no answer. The complete lack of sources and lack of key and mysteriously basic information on all four narratives makes all of them unreliable. 

Either this "unnamed wrestler" is completely for real and the original story was a lie, either this guy is a liar (or maybe someone just made this up), or as for the WWE App theory, Michelle Beadle is a liar. The WWE App theory is actually kind of scary, if someone made that up its the dumbest possible lie ever, I think that kind of lie has to be considering trolling like they were genuinely curious if someone would be dumb enough to post it. But if it's true, then in their unprofessionalism and lack of integrity the online wrestling news sites have unintentionally helped the WWE get a storyline super over by not only reporting their lie, but reinforcing it with their own resources and narrative. 

Again, which one is true, if any, whether anyone lied or not is all irrelevant. By this point of this story's development, my argument has been made.

Whether it's because of their own lack of ability to distinguish reality from showbusiness, lack of ability to get reliable sources, or lack of ability to be good writers and journalists, the stuff you read on these websites is GARBAGE. It's about as reliable as just making up your own rumours and sharing them on social media, hey guess what, consider this as extension of my personal anecdote from the beginning of this post; PEOPLE ACTUALLY DO THAT.

If your curiousity really does take you online and you feel the urge to keep yourself in the loop, please don't forget the mountains of salt required. The ONLY fact of this story is AJ Lee had a conversation with Michelle Beadle, that's it. Literally all we can say based on the evidence, motivations, tone, consequences, as much as these sites refuse to admit it...is all conjecture. 

Consider this a public service announcement against these horrible websites, their content is rubbish and so are the majority of the content creators. It's all a narrative, it's all (bad) entertainment in itself, they don't know nearly as much as they claim to and stories like this will always show that for people willing to pay attention, and they DO flat out lie sometimes. 

Don't have nightmares.

The WORST Wrestling Column Ever - "Triple H Attacking Randy Orton was idiotic and selfish"

Things do get bitchy around here don't they? A few months ago the worst gaming review ever written got trounced on this very site, and now we're moving into the world of wrestling. 

Now when I say "worst ever" that needs clarification, because this is the internet, you can always find something WORSE if you're willing to dive deeper. In this context, it's the most unintelligent, moronic, worthless opinion packaged in a structured way and presented to a large audience. Last time it was IGN, this time it's Bleacher Report.

I don't think anyone needs informing that the general quality of wrestling content Bleacher Report ranks somewhere around Superman IV, it's not great. Normally it's just pseudo "smark" stuff of people who don't understand anything about narrative, wrestling booking or human psychology whining around championship relevancy or their favourite superstar not being "over" or something. 

This particular article wins the grand prize of being the most baffling article I've ever read on the site, but more importantly made me laugh harder than any other. And so you don't think any of this is just being made up, here's the link to the original article:

 http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1884162-triple-h-attacking-randy-orton-was-idiotic-and-selfish

A little background, this is in response to the final segment in the Slammy Awards edition of Raw, where Randy Orton and John Cena cut promos about their upcoming championship match at TLC, the crowd went nuts for Daniel Bryan, and it all broke down in what Lesmocon is officially announcing as F'N AWESOME. If you missed it here's the important part of the segment that shows you what you need to see.

Anyway, same business as last time, we'll copy and paste chunks of it and riff on it accordingly. Some of this article is just really boring though so some of it may be skipped for the sake of brevity. 

"For a moment, try to imagine Eric Bischoff beating up Hulk Hogan on Nitro six days before Hulk’s title match against Sting. Imagine Vince McMahon giving The Rock a Stunner before an upcoming title shot against Steve Austin. It would be ridiculous; it would be bad for business. It would be flat-out idiotic."

Try to imagine if Mae Young powerbombed Batista through the announce table! C'mon man, is this seriously how you're starting this off? You're comparing two non-competitors to someone who (in WWE lore) is one of the greatest in-ring superstars, and is still jacked like cray and clearly still in ring shape. It was less than two years ago the guy was nearly beating Undertakers streak, him getting a surprise pedigree on Orton isn't unfeasible for a fans mind to process. 

Even if this doesn't end up being your mind point for why it was stupid this is such a terrible and misguided way to start the article you've instantly branded yourself an idiot in the heart and mind of the reader. No-one could be stupid enough to think that the examples you give are in any way the same thing...except...you...I guess...

"But this is what we saw on the Dec. 9 edition of Raw when Triple H took out the WWE champion because he caused his wife to fall to the ground. With a title unification just days away, what purpose did that distraction serve? Why was that moment chosen to close a hot segment?"

Hey good for you! You actually bothered to figure out what the date was for the episode, I couldn't be bothered earlier that's why I just put "Slammy Awards", and if it wasn't the Slammys I probably would have put "the ones that a couple of weeks before the Christmas one they do" or something. But anyway, what purpose did it serve? I thought the subtext was kind of obvious, but to cap off the chaos it was to imply that the Authority has no favourite in the match any more because of Cena having the assets Orton does and the tension between Orton and Triple H. It was basically a guarantee that that crap that happened at Survivor Series won't happen at Tables, Ladders and Chairs.

"As the promo concluded, a series of rapid-fire finishing moves broke out. It was chaotic and a lot of fun. The final one, though, ruined the good times. Triple H laid out Randy Orton, the WWE champion, with a Pedigree. He then stood across the ring looking down at him along with Cena and his wife. The champion, two weeks in a row before a huge title match, looked incredibly weak."

How exactly does one move that comes at the end of a chain of other moves "ruin the good times"? This is "smark" logic at its absolute worse, "oh hey this is all awesome I love this...WAIT WHAT? Why did they do that don't they understand hitting the heel before the PPV will kill their buyrates!?!? WHAT WHAT!!?" Getting hit by a random finisher in a chaotic moment from someone you wouldn't expect to attack you doesn't make you "look weak", especially not when you're Randy Orton and basically solid anyway. But let's say it does...where's your bitching about CM Punk taking a Sweet Chin Music from Shawn Michaels unanswered? Punks in a big match at the Pay-Per-View too, by your logic that should suck too right?

There's really not much else to say about this bit, it's just silly. No-one in the audience had "their fun ruined" by the Pedigree, and even bitter smarks like this guy only had their fun ruined retroactively when they realised there was bitching to be had in this. Moving on.

"The final attack just doesn't make a lot of sense from a storyline or business standpoint. Ever since Orton won the title, it's been a rough road with him and Hunter. One week they seem to love each other, the next they're at odds. This doesn't appear to be leading to a match between the two, so it's just inconsistent writing."

We covered the business part of this in the last bit, you're suggesting that a development in an overarching storyline kills a PPV buyrate and that's ludicrous, it's not like Orton jobbed to 3MB or something. As for the storyline, I agree that the writing hasn't been great, but it's been implied (not very subtly either) that Triple H and Stephanie want Orton to be champion for business reasons, but he's got a bad case of spoilt brat syndrome and has been difficult. Also...Triple H considered him responsible for Stephanie getting hurt...there's your making sense from a "storyline standpoint" for ya right there. 

The storyline hasn't been amazing or anything, but it hasn't been hard to keep track of either, it's points like this that make you sound unqualified to be writing in the first place. 

"It looks like we're headed towards a Punk vs. HHH match (because that worked out so well last time), and Orton's next opponent isn't yet clear.

So what possessed HHH to insert himself into this angle so heavily just days before the show? He basically answered that question himself the week before when he called the upcoming TLC match “the biggest match of this generation.” No wonder he couldn’t keep himself out of it."

And thus your true colours are revealed, you're one of those people. Triple H was involved in something on television so obviously he has no motives other than putting himself over yea? Again, I know Bleacher Report isn't some prestigious venue to have your content displayed, but I find it embarrassing that even they let this kind of wank on their site. I bet when this guy sees a scout helping an old lady cross the street he yells at them about how they're just doing it to get into her pants. That's a joke of course, I seriously doubt this guy goes outside at all...

Also your Punk Vs HHH comment, umm, just, what? Are you seriously suggesting that match shouldn't happen because the match two years ago surrounding a totally unrelated and extremely rushed storyline didn't work out? That match was still kind of good you know.

"There are some who are speculating that HHH will somehow, someway leave TLC with the Unified title. That’s a terrible idea, but you can’t put it past him in the least. The fact that it's even in the back of the minds of fans goes to show how egotistical and out-of-touch HHH has become.

For all intents and purposes, he's retired. Competing once or twice a year isn't the life of a wrestler, that's a Vickie Guerrero in-ring schedule.

What would make Hunter capturing the gold so bad is that without two champions, there will be no one to defend a world title at house shows. He's not going to show up for them. That takes away a big drawing card for fans. What's going to be in the main event? A U.S. title defense?"

He backs this idea up by linking to another terrible article on Bleacher Report about how this is a legitimate idea. Dude, the fact that it's on Bleacher Report doesn't make it some grand, respected, totally possible idea that people respect and you need to refute or acknowledge. If you need proof of this then scroll up because YOUR article is on Bleacher Report. 

I don't know what else to add to this, just look at it. It's an idiot's distorted vision of another idiot's terrible idea, the fact that this is on a platform where it can viewed by thousands if not tens of thousands is so depressing I don't want to dwell on it further. 

"Ok, so even if this doesn't lead to a Hunter as champion scenario, it's still hard to find the point of it. A COO knocked out the WWE Champion who is 10 years younger than him. That's flat-out bad. "

NO. You cannot throw a statement like this out without clarification, Triple H is COO in storyline but other than that is a legitimate, perfectly in shape and well respected performer in WWE lore. What does being 10 years older have to do with anything? Should no-one who's got years on anyone else ever get a move in on them? Also, see above for the HBK/Punk kick that you agree was totally fun, and HBK is in infinitely worse shape than Triple H right now. I just wanted to give this paragraph its own bit because it perfectly sums up this writer. 100% sure and arrogantly certain about hypocrisy, stupidity and ignorance. 

The next couple of paragraphs are just a bunch of smarky whining about how the title unification should be happening at Wrestlemania and blah blah, there's a debate in that somewhere but we're not having it with this guy so let's hop to the end.

All Raw needed in order to have a fantastic, coherent ending that effectively built toward the pay-per-view was to leave the boss out of it. As we've seen the past few months (and quite a few times over the past 15 years), it doesn't happen as much as it should.

And just in case you didn’t think this segment was really about Triple H, take a look back and see whose music was playing at the end of the show. Rightfully it should have been one of the challengers' at the pay-per-view, right? But it wasn't. It was HHH’s, because why wouldn’t it be?

Your lack of ability to see the overarching storyline developments that will take us into the Royal Rumble and therefore Wrestlemania are hilarious, it's kind of ironic that this level of short-sightedness actually makes you perfect for the WWE creative team. As we went through earlier, Triple H getting involved in this segment doesn't make the match about him it confirms the match won't be about him, or makes the audience believe that long enough to actually buy the show. They want people to be deceived into thinking the Authority could side with either guy or neither at all, which does make this move about the match.

As for the music, personally I don't think they should have played music at all as it cheapened the moment somewhat, but given this is tacky WWE stuff and they're basically contracted to end the show on some cheesy theme music whose music did you expect them to play? Stephanie's? Yea that would have been great for the moment of her getting knocked out, the sight of her barely concious accompanied by WELCOME TO THE QUEENDOM, I MAKE YA LUVMELUVMELUVMELUVMEEEEE.

So that's that, this article is really awful and this guy needs to never write about professional wrestling (and preferably anything) ever again. What starts off as an insincere attempt to analyse a narrative development breaks down into moronic territory pretty quickly and a chance to deliver potshots at Triple H because people on the internet believe every single bit of gossip they hear from the WWE backstage...even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff. Jeez, it's like a religion. 

There's no arguing with people like this, they will just alter or bitch at reality until it forms into something they're satisfied with. Which is great for them at all, not so great for their audience or my e-mail account when Bleacher Report insists on sending this dribble directly to me. ZERO STARS.

Four Video Games that are Basically PERFECT

It's pretty fair to say that gaming still has a long way to go as an art form, it's come so far in so little time it's easy to forget how young the medium truly is. Which is all the more reason to hate nostalgia blinded people who proclaim that anything "retro" is ABSOLUTELY better than anything "modern" and seem to think game design was magically perfected around about 1994. That's not to say they haven't also got a lot right, but it's important to be looking ahead.

That being said, let's take a lot at four video games I consider to be PERFECT. Why four? Is this some sort of attack on the establishment, rejection of conventions and statement of independence? Nope. It's because I could pretty much only think of four, and I thought HARD. Don't get me wrong, I'm certain there's more than four in the world and that I've definitely forgotten something that I'll feel stupid about later, and of course there are mountains of games I've never played at all with some classics buried within. 

Here's a shout out to a bunch of games that I adore which were considered but either have that ONE thing that keeps them off the list or I just haven't immersed myself in them enough to claim post-analysis that they are "perfect". These games include Cave Story, Street Fighter: Third Strike, A Link to the Past, Super Meat Boy, Shadow of the Colossus, God Hand, Pac-Man Championship Edition and Braid. Also that Astro Boy game on the Game Boy Advance is really good, that probably wasn't actually considered, but it deserved a shout out nonetheless.

Games that absolutely weren't considered even for a second include Super Mario Galaxy, Halo, any 3D Zelda, Metal Gear Solid 4, God of War, any Sonic, Donkey Kong Country and that game you're playing right now that you really like. Seriously that game SUCKS, what is wrong with you...

To clarify, these games are PERFECT because they have little to no faults in their core design, can be played (if not necessarily beaten) by basically anyone and are absolutely timeless. Let's go - IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Portal 

I feel like talking about why Portal is really good on the internet is about as fresh and relevant as Rick Rolling all of you. So we'll cover this one quickly, excellent minimalist writing that slowly builds and implies a huge dark secret, meme sparking sense of humour (actually, internet culture may have retroactively ruined Portal enough to knock it away from perfection, but when every volcano erupts at once and destroys all civilisation and aliens from the planet Reggie come down and play archived versions of Portal in 20,000 years they'll still think it's great) and unique, stunningly realised core mechanics wrapped up in a package with particularly zero repetition and a perfect length. 

This is the inherent problem you get when you commit yourself to having to discuss "perfect" games, like it's PERFECT what more is there to say, and smarter people than me have covered why Portal is good thousands of times so run along to them. Personally, I wasn't a massive fan of the final boss, so there, SOME CONTROVERSY HERE ON LESMOCON.

Super Mario Bros 3 

This games existence makes me mad for two reasons: 1) That people argue whether this is better than Mario World or not and 2) that people argue whether this is better than Sonic the Hedgehog or not. If you're one of those people who like World more than 3...that's fine, you're just a bit misguided and mistaking fluff for innovation, we've all done that. If you think Sonic is better than Mario when this game exists...just get out, you are disqualified from all future game design discussions forever. LEAVE, you won't agree with the list anyway, and you'll probably just send me e-mails about how I'm a prick for not mentioning Killzone or something.

Super Mario Bros 3 is perfect through it's imperfections as well as it's ermm...perfection. Like how some people find it bizarre that the infamous clockwork shoe power up that has a really weird feel to it is only in one level in the entire game, and even then it's not immediately obvious how you can get into it. But that's exactly why it's left an impression on so many people, you'd never get that in a Mario game today, they'd probably give all the Goombas Adidas sneakers and have Toad given "how to tie your shoelaces!" tutorials at the start of every stage. 

The core platforming is all based around momentum so perfectly fine tuned it must have taken up 90% of the development time. And the secrets, just bursting out of every corner of this game. Pointless, excessive, completely avoidable silly secrets packed in with the love and effort that I fear is starting to exist less and less in game design. You can play Mario 3 differently every time and however you want, levels are rarely based around specific items but just the thrill of running and jumping and it's up to the player to fill in the gaps between A and B. Hey, you could just get a warp whistle and not play half the game at all, it's debatable whether this is good design or not but the fact it exists at all offers wonderful opportunities and incentive for exploration that the majority of game just don't.

It's the best Mario, and considering the general standard of the series I know this may rub some people up the wrong way, but I'd say it's the best Mario by far and I don't think a game like it will ever exist again. Well they sort of exist, but they're just ripping off Mario 3, I mean a game that will make the same impact.

Pong

Oh shut up.

Really, how can you say Pong ISN'T perfect. Sure it's primitive, but honestly who couldn't sit down with Pong and have fun with it? Even if it was only for 10 minutes? You have a ball (well...square) and two bats with a line down the middle, nothing else on the screen other than some numbers to keep score. You don't need to understand anything about game design, be predisposed to any video game logic, you don't even really need to know anything about sports.

All you need to know, turn your paddle one way to go up, the other way to go down. A feel for the games momentum and control instantly communicated to the player, and then it's just you and the other people in a battle of reflexes and skill. There are very very few games that have updated this model and maintained the perfect amount of instant accessibility and balance that Pong had and still has to this day. Keep an eye on Action Button Entertainments upcoming Videoball though...

Tetris

I. ADORE. TETRIS. 

All these games might be perfect, but make no mistake, this is the perfectest of the perfect. 

I don't know if I can say Tetris is simply the perfect puzzle game for the brain, but it is unquestionably the perfect puzzle game for my brain. A lot of people drink coffee or something when they need to perk up, I play a session of Tetris and go as long as I can and by the end of it my brain is buzzing...then I down three litres of Cola because COME ON you do need the caffeine. 

Seven shapes, all with near infinite possibilities of fitting into each other and the landscae of existing blocks already on the screen. I dream about Tetris, it's sort of disturbing, I have genuinely played entire games of it in my brain while day dreaming thinking about the blocks, I'm pretty sure I cheat so it's not quite as simulating as the real thing. It's the perfection of puzzle parts that just slide next to each other perfectly, combined with the satisfaction of slamming parts together to create landscapes juxtaposed against the rage/stress of getting a piece that doesn't fit anywhere, an issue which is essentially unavoidable eventually. 

You have your own little goals of lining blocks up to attempt to score four lines for a Tetris, or deliberately sabotaging your own progress for the extra challenge of working your way out of it in a game that has a thousand little victories...ironically in a game you can't actually win...only delay the inevitable failure. Anyone can play it, everyone will play it differently and will come back for more. Tetris is on the frontline as an argument for how video games can be infinitely more simulating and engaging than other media if their potential is met.

I really like Tetris.

We're done here, I'm going to go play Tetris. 

Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures Review

I break my own rules pretty regularly, but generally speaking I don't like things here to break down into "f-ing and jeffing" through some irrational fear that it'll chase away some massive sponsor. Although I may have written myself into a corner here by choosing to review a game where one of the levels is called "Assholevania". 

Based on the webseries of (almost) the same name, Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures is a retro style platformer stuffed with 100s of callbacks to the show and digs at the games that it emulates itself. If you haven't seen the show then, well, if the average Lesmocon strip down of a game during a review involves linking its nipples up to a car battery then the average AVGN review involves striking it with a bolt of lightning as it descends into a car crusher. It's flat out brutal really, also he says ass a lot. 

If nothing else this really is an audiovisual treat with lovingly crafted pixel art and wonderful music (which also shovels in a few little in jokes an references of its own). What's nice about the comedy in this game is it never shoves your face into it, the gags are just kind of there and you get them or you don't. A great example of this is the tutorial stage where Navi from Ocarina of Time acts as the annoying "state the obvious" information box, but the game never pauses itself for any of this dialogue, you can just ignore it entirely if you don't care. This is a relief when compared to say, Conker's Bad Fur Day, which would make every box of text in this game into its own 10 minute unskippable cut scene and end up being far more insufferable that the things its supposed to be parodying. 

One nice touch is the message you get on each death is some randomly generated line of profanity about how much the game you're playing sucks by the AVGN himself. It's a somewhat clever way around the repetition issue with comedy that most games have, it's also probably a fair representation of how the average AVGN episode is actually written. 

Gameplay? Yea it's alright, think Mega Man as the basic framework, but with 8 direction shooting, way more checkpoints and tons more cheap stuff. A lot of people have made a huge stuff over the difficulty in this game, and although it is fairly tough it's really nothing that bad it's just the kind of game where you might die a couple of times on each bit but basically figure it out. Veteran retro gamers, all things considered, shouldn't have too much of a problem getting to the final stage, and then getting further than that is up to your personal patience.

There is one HUGE issue with this game though that almost takes it out of the orbit of "good" entirely, and that is the difficulty. Well, not the "difficulty" that was discussed in the last paragraph, but the "difficulties". This whole thing is so irritating it deserves to be analysed in full:

• Easy Mode - Unlimited Lives, Six Hits, Unlimited Continues
  
  This is silly because the game is pretty generous in terms of checkpoints, and half of these checkpoints don't have deadly pitfalls or instakill blocks on them. You have six hits, and there's very few checkpoints where it's even realistically possible to get hit six times before you make it to the next one, so there's nothing stopping you from just kamazeing your way through half the game. So there is no "easy mode", this is "cheat mode", it's utterly pointless to play the game like this.

• Normal Mode - 30 Lives, 3 Hits, Unlimited Continues
  
  So in other words, how the game was supposed to be played. 3 hits and unlimited continues are reasonable enough, but 30 lives? Let me guess, Konami Code, it's a joke I get it yea yea. The Mega Man games have always had this weird issue where you have 3 lives, but if you beat a level with less than that remaining it doesn't top them up, so when you start the next level you may as well dunk yourself in the first pit 2 times and refresh yourself. You have unlimited continues, and you might waste a lot of your own time by attempting a level on one life, so why wouldn't you?
  
  In Mega Man this was just a silly little quirk of the game design that wasted some of your time, imagine how much worse this problem is when you have THIRTY!
  
  There were loads of occasions in this game where I beat a level using about 10-15 lives...then what's the games attitude? Either I get ballsy and attempt the next level that may be way tougher with not that many lives left, or I have to dunk myself in the first pit like 15 times?! That death screen and joke might be nice when you're casually playing the game, but when you're dying a lot in a row and you realise it's non skippable and not that fast it really starts to grind.
  
  I know some people will take issue with this and say that I'm complaining about the game "being too hard" or something. But how is this making the game harder? The level is still the same, I can get through the levels reasonably comfortably with a few failed attempts, all having a lives system (and this one is especially bad) does is waste more of my time for failing. That doesn't make the game any more difficult, it just pads out the length by making me redo stuff I've already proved I can do and are sick of doing again. It certainly makes the game more frustrating, and it wastes more of my time, but if you think either of these things are identical to being "challenging" you need to go play some Super Meat Boy RIGHT NOW.

• Hard Mode - 15 Lives, No Continues, No Saving
  
  Oh god, I don't even care, hard mode is for the hardcores and they like this sort of thing so more power to them. But what is this "No Saving" business? You do realise I can just pause and minimize the game right? Like is it a sign of weakness if I get a power cut while playing a video game? NO, REAL GAMERS PLAY ON AN EXERCISE BIKE AND GENERATE THEIR OWN ELECTRICITY.

So all in all, Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures is a pretty good game that fans of the show will love, even if it is slightly ruined (like a lot of indie games) by the developers refusing to acknowledge that a lot of the design choices in old Nintendo games were kind of rubbish. It walks the line better than most retro style games and it's way ahead of most comedy games, but never forget that deliberately annoying is still pretty annoying. 

The Day of the Doctor - Wonderful Fanservice or Massive Letdown?

Before this thing even aired I knew I had to avoid other people's reactions to it because they would almost certainly make me hate my life. If Doctor freaking Who has ever made you cry, then you're a bitch, I ran this hypothesis past a panel of experts on little bitches and it's actually like a fact now so don't even bother trying to refute it. 

Now that the endearing opening paragraph is out of the way let's get into The Day of the Doctor, the 50th Anniversary special starring two legitimate Doctors, one they made up and a couple of MILFs. Any work of fiction that gets into "crossover" territory is going to be a bit messy, even if it is crossing over with itself; it's also particularly guaranteed to be dripping in fan service so we have to give it a bit of leeway. Really, the question here is was the special strong enough to stand up on its own merits, and whether it actually benefited the future of the show or just wallowed in its own glory days.

Having said that, let's break the special down into its good and its bad points, and then see if we can get a nice wrapped up analysis of it by the end of this thing. So let's take a good hard look at The Day of my Doctors Wedding.

THE GOOD

The Timelords are Back! (maybe)

It's debatable how good a job he's been doing, but Steven Moffat has slowly but surely been retconning all the dumb changes that were made to the franchise during the T. Davies return era. Now he's finally got to the big one, and we can finally move on from the freaking Time War...

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand why they added this to the show during the reboot. New audiences may have been put off with having to accept there being a whole planet of time travelling weirdos as opposed to one cool guy, it also gave the show a little more edge as the Doctor was now a much angrier character who didn't have anyone's rules but his own to follow and it also made him a bit more special. The third part is the one that got out of hand...and now the Doctor has become the centre of the entire universe and it seems nothing can happen anymore without him or one of his companions being central to its event somehow. The Doctor is a great character okay, but he's not more interesting than the entirety of space and time and the majority of New Who issues can be linked to this nonsensical fanfictionesque writing. 

The point is; bringing the Timelords back and perhaps retconning some of the other consequences of the Time War might actually give the show some context again. The Doctor was interesting when there were Timelords because he didn't care about THEIR RULES MAN, in the new series he's basically just God and can do whatever he wants...I mean the universe can apparently just get rebooted whenever he screws things up too much so whatever. The future of Doctor Who now has the opportunity to have some direction and not get constantly lost in self-fulfilling prophecies. 

Some will (and have) complain about how it was done or how it's a cop out, and my response is basically that it wasn't as stupid as the story T. Davies came up with in the first place. The Time War was wrecking all of creation...and the Doctor blew up Gallifrey...somehow...which also somehow killed all the Daleks...everywhere...although not really because they totally survived so it was pointless...but the Doctor seems pretty capable of handling millions of Daleks in other stories...by myself...and by my count there's been three Dalek genocides since the show came back so...yea it's a dumb story okay. And Doctor Who lore is better off without it frankly.

Regarding the Timelords themselves, Doctor Who seems to have the same problem with them that Superman has with Kryptonians, in that we're constantly told about how sophisticated and cool they were and how sad it is that they're all dead, but whenever they actually show up they're a bunch of stupid assholes. If you are planning to bring the Timelords back properly Moffat...get to work on that...

Zygons were Surprisingly Hype

I'll be honest; I rolled my eyes when I heard the Zygons were the choice of enemy for the 50th anniversary. I suspected it was another case of a monster being brought back for no other reason than Moffat and Gatiss had a little squirt over them when they were 10 years old (or 40). But they were genuinely a good villain in this, their design gets that nice blend of kind of creepy but mostly silly that Doctor Who goes for, the alien jizz that they trap their subjects in was creepy, and shape shifters that the Doctor can't immediately recognise could make for some interesting stories...mostly because they're not really the type of enemy (unlike Cybermen or Daleks) where "blow them all up" is a reasonable story conclusion. Also their voices are awesome, enough to make otherwise okay lines like the following really memorable:

"We are not armed, you may relax."

"Weeeee areee armeed, youuu mayy nottt."

John Hurt was cool

Well obviously, this was the big selling point for a lot of people. I was concerning he would just a miserable old guy and basically an entirely different character, but he was given just enough personality to be the Doctor...yet a more jaded and tired Doctor. Moffat did a good job overall of writing the three Doctors with their distinct personalities and all three actors gave good performances, and I say that being in the minority of people who don't really care for the tenth Doctor.

Actually INTERESTING Ideas...

Following on from the "not blowing everything up" thing, this episode has some actual nice concepts at work. I liked the solution to the Zygon invasion the most, "the key to a perfect negotiation is not remembering what side you're on" that's actually INTERESTING, one of the handful times New Who has actually casually dabbled in a bit of basic philosophy. I wish they explored that more than they did, but it was interesting, there was actually a storyline reason for why it was possible and it was actually clever on both the Doctors and the writer’s part. Although it does lose some marks for the slow mo as they came out the painting, THAT was ridiculous. 

I also liked the idea of "Timelord Art", not only is it a clever little tool for the story (although, was it ever explained how the Zygons got a hold of it? I watched it twice and I don't recall there being an all-round convincing explanation) it was also a clever way to get the 3D shots in. I didn't actually watch it in 3D I'm not mad but when Moffat was saying in interviews that he had worked 3D into it I was expecting Matt Smith to be throwing Fez's directly into the camera or David Tennant just getting his dick out...although on reflection these thoughts may have actually been unrelated. 

Billie Piper wasn't Rose

I was terrified when Billie Piper was announced for this, her pseudo-boning thing with David Tennant is basically what attracted all the weirdos and annoying girls to become a more vocal part of the fanbase and made Tumblr unviewable to rational human beings. Fortunately, they kept all that out of it and decided to go for "Bad Wolf Rose", I'm not sure if that was actually a part of the plot though. Like, could "the device" open holes in time anyway or was it channelling Bad Wolf Rose to do that...both are stupid but the second one feels less pulled out of your arse Moffat so you should have made that a bit clearer.

Also, unlike Journey's End Billie Piper actually seemed to be trying this time. Thanks Billie! 

Fanservice!

Let's get this out of the way, I detest pointless fan service, and I hate how it's basically infected all of pop culture now. Video game designers intentionally put archaic garbage mechanics in their titles for the sake of "nostalgia", writers take over the scripts of their own favourite franchises and rewrite the entire universe around their favourite characters (*heugh* Moffat) and everyone wants to reboot everything. I went into The Day the Doctor Ate Everyone expecting it to have unbearable amounts of fan wank in it, but it was actually fairly restrained...and funny controversially. 

Don't get me wrong, in-jokes and call-backs and "big ups" to past Doctors were all over the place but not in a way that got in a way of the plot. Personal favourites go to "Confusing the polarity" "the round things" and Peter Capaldis cameo, which I think was probably the best one second tease for anything ever. Of course, not all the fanservice was great...more on that later...

It had to follow Series 7...

...so in that context Moffat could have got away with showing Manos: The Hands of Fate with a few Doctors faces edited into it and it probably would have been cool by comparison. In all seriousness, even with its flaws, it was actually nice to be enjoying Doctor Who in some capacity again...

THE BAD

Christopher Eccleston is a big dumb jerk and I hate him

See above.

It didn't really feel -that- special

Under past circumstances it certainly would have been, but this goes back to the Doctor seeing the centre of his own universe. If the Doctor was still a mysterious character who we rarely learned anything about having a big anniversary special focused entirely on him would be a huge deal. But New Who can't stop obsessing over him anyway so in many ways this entire episode was business as usual. Also, it really hasn't been that long since David Tennant left the show, maybe I just don't care because I'm not a huge fan, but it really hasn't been long enough for me to miss him. Also see above.

Queen Elizabeth I Fanfiction

Okay, so we did get some weird and terrible fanservice in this episode...for Elizabeth I fanboys. Seems a weird demographic to go for, it hasn't been the 16th century for at least 100 years and the last remaining survivor Jimmy Savile died two years ago. Literally everything Queen Liz does and says in this episode is ridiculous, just ludicrous. Every line, action or reaction to something has its own little plot hole attached to it. I know its Doctor Who and everything, but were we seriously supposed to believe that QUEEN ELIZABETH stabbed up a Zygon, snuck into their ranks, found out their plans, deceived them all into believing she was the commander, had no questions and didn't freak out, saved the Doctors, and figured out all the stuff with the paintings and ugh...it's all a mess. Watch it again and remember that the Queen Liz you see after one has been "disposed of" is always the real one and see how little sense it makes.

Clara Oswald is Low Tier Garbage...but the show won't admit it...

GOD DAMN IT MOFFAT, will you please just admit you failed here and stop shoving this character down our throats. There's nothing awful about Clara...but that's the point, she's bland and utterly uninteresting. She's just a generic "nice and smart gal", but every story seems to desperately force how smart/capable she is by putting her in extreme situations that only further reveal how dull she is. The fact that Clara was basically responsible for changing the Doctors mind and fixed everything is nuts, I liked my idea of leaving her floating around on a trash heap in space way more. 

The Final Shot

Just...fire everyone who was responsible for that. It looked awful on my laptop, it looked awful on my plasma TV and I can only tremble in fear at how awful it must have looked on a 3D cinema screen. 

The thing that confused me the most was all the Doctors were in a line but William Hartnell was in the middle behind everyone else for some reason. Was that supposed to make him stand out because he was like the first one or something? It just made him look left out to me like the fat kid at school, like Matt Smith was refereeing a 5-a-side football match between the other 10 doctors and no-one picked Hartnell for their team cos he's old and stuff. Don't worry, I'm sure Christopher Eccleston will storm off the pitch before half time and not come back so he'll get subbed in. 

Also, on the BBC broadcast they let the announcers jabber all over the credits, THAT, WAS UNACCEPTABLE.

How do the Daleks get wiped out again?

Umm...yea, this was one of the more glossed over plot points, but let's go over it again. So, the Doctors, all of them (somehow, even William Hartnell knew to work on the calculations too, I guess he had plenty of time to work on the substitution bench) freeze Gallifrey in a pocket of time in another universe or whatever it was. The Daleks meanwhile, are stuck in the SKY TRENCHES, what's a sky trench? No, that's not rhetorical I'm actually asking you because I don't know either, is there such thing as "Sky trench foot?" Are sky trenches actually in the sky or is "space trench" more accurate? If they are sky trenches then wouldn't they be part of the planet’s atmosphere and the Daleks get frozen in time along with everyone else? What about the Daleks already on the ground, seen utterly failing to murder civilians like good Daleks should? Do these Daleks just factor into the "calculations" or what? WAIT, in that preview thing you released on the BBC website that looked like the tutorial to a Sega CD game you said the Daleks got through the sky trenches! WHAT'S A SKY TRENCH, THIS DESERVED EXPLANATION.

Anyway, while they're all in the SKY TRENCHES the planet disappears, and the Daleks all blow each other up in their own crossfire. This plan kind of relies on a lot of luck and stupidity on the most genius evil creatures in the universe doesn't it? But let's say it DOES work, how does that wipe out ALL the Daleks again? There's a line slightly before this that the Daleks would send "reinforcements" if they knew there was three Doctors, so there ARE more Daleks not attacking Gallifrey, so by the episodes own confession this plan can't possibly work. But in fairness, this is a far more reasonable explanation for how Daleks survived the Time War than the shite T Davies came up with. Zombie human Daleks, do not blaspheme yadaydaydaydayda...

But yea, this is a pretty huge oversight in the script and it is hard to ignore, I guess the shows attitude is it doesn't really matter since we all know the Daleks weren't ever actually wiped out and the important part is that people think they were wiped out. 

Why can't the Doctor recognise himself?

This is a minor nitpick, but why is this always an issue in these multiple Doctor things? It's long established that Timelords still recognise each other regardless of regenerations, but they can't tell when they've ran into themselves? It's not really important, but it's just silly...especially when it comes to...

Tom Bakers cameo was too much

Who was this guy? It's heavily implied that it's the Doctor from the distant future, but it's nicer to think that it isn't because then we're trapped in another self-fulfilling prophecy...

It was awesome that Tom Baker had a cameo, but this was a bit overbearing, but I will give it a pass as this is more for a veteran Who fan than me. You're still a bitch if you cried though.

The Doctors get along too well

Another minor point but the episode was far too chummy, especially when it was supposed to be the "Doctor darkest day". They had a bit of bickering about plot stuff but there wasn't really a clash of personalities here, it was just Tennant and Smith bantering with each other and exchanging one liners. It's fine if they come together by the end of the episode, but the Doctors shouldn't really be friends during these things, maybe the fangirls drench their seats seeing them buddy up but I think the episode would have been more entertaining if they were at their throats. 

THE CONCLUSION

All things considered, this episode was dealt a bad hand from the start. The Time War is an inherently stupid plot point that's been cemented in New Who lore from the outset, and it was always going to be a near impossible corner to write out of. Considering that T. Davies basically made it impossible...this was probably as cool and as logical a way to do it that wouldn't also destroy the canon. You do have to suspend your disbelief on a lot of things, the existence of the weapon and its ability to open time windows even through a "time lock" is pulled out of the story's arse, as is the Doctors meeting up in the first place, and the whole stupidity with the Daleks etc. Maybe these things are breaking points for some people, but as someone who believes the things this episode pulled were for the good of the franchise, I'm willing to let a lot of it go.

Overall, the episode has some great lines, good performances, a cool villain, genuinely interesting ideas and even though its logic is nonsense is it quite skillful in how it wraps itself together...and it was actually funny in a way that didn't seem inappropriate or stupid (The Crimson Horror). I'd say the special had more good than bad, and most of the bad things were done with good intentions even if they fell a little short. 

The main praise I can give The Day of the Doctors Budget Cuts is that even if this feeling is short lived...I actually kind of care about Doctor Who again. Now I have hope, which is exactly what I didn't have.