Your Eyes, Vacant & Stained
Ch.4 - 5k
Pairing: Frank Iero x Gerard Way
A handful of loud snapping sounds came from nearby, "Uh… guys?" Ray's voice sounded panicked.
"Yeah?" Gerard yelled back, Frank checked the mirrors but didn't see anything.
"The house with the red shutters!" Frank saw Ray pointing towards a house.
Warnings
Gore, Death, Murder, WORK-IN-PROGRESS, not completed (and chapters unknown) but I know the ending, trust me guys I will write it, I just need people to love this idea with me, Zombies, Gay, mcr??
Support my AO3 with part four otherwise, enjoy ♥
Chap.1 | Chap.2 | Chap.3 | Chap.5 | Chap.6 | Chap.7 | Chap.8 | Chap.9 | Chap.10 |
The truck could only fit two comfortably, three if they squeezed, Ray and Mikey decided to take the trunk since they were both large in the shoulders. The roads were far from clear on the way to their next city, Gerard called it Mesq “With a Q”. He spoke with an accent that sounded like a cowboy impersonating a French man that made Frank laugh.
They drove slowly through large pile-ups, around bodies and potholes. Frank hung his arm out the window while Gerard drove. They didn’t come across many undead that were still walking, but when they did, Ray or Mikey would usually wind up their bats and spike their heads. Frank’s gut twisted every time one’s head blew up, he wasn’t able to comprehend how they were so okay with murder.
He checked his phone over and over again, but there were no new notifications. Frank wasn’t the type of person who was on social media, he barely gave anyone his phone number. But it was over forty-eight hours since he was in contact with anyone he knew, so he had forced himself to reach out. If Gerard was telling the truth, New Jersey wouldn’t have been hit yet, The Virus was barely into Utah.
His first outgoing text was to a group chat he created with his parents and brother, at first he had no idea what to even say to them. He wasn't the type to reach out, but he told them he would let them know when he got back from this trip, which was supposed to be the previous day. He texted them as the group was piling their stuff into the truck. Frank sat in the passenger side with his duffle at his feet. He stared at the phone for a long time, typing up whole texts just to hate them and delete it all. Eventually, he settled with “Got caught up, not sure when I'll be back. Get to safety, if you’ve heard about the zombies, they’re real.” Now, they’d been driving for almost an hour and he hadn’t heard anything back. Frank gnawed at his lip but shoved his phone back into his pocket, attempting to push away the thought of his family.
Gerard glanced over casually, his sunglasses hid it from Frank. The handful of CD’s Frank discovered in the truck earlier didn’t satisfy Gerard, but he always kept two albums with him, he expressed they are "essential to him no matter the circumstances"; The Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and Nirvana’s In Utero. They weren’t Frank’s favorite, but he didn’t judge. He wondered whether or not the music choice was why Ray and Mikey offered Frank the front.
Besides the numerous pile-ups everywhere, the skies were clear, the desert stretched far and the mountains cooked in the sunlight. As they drove, the trees got thicker and grass began to cover the ground. They drove almost an hour and a half before seeing the city sign they were looking for. They slowed down in front of it. A truck has driven through half of the sign, leaving just M-E-S-Q. Frank wondered if Gerard had scouted up here without him knowing, when he checked the map on his phone, it said they were in a city called Mesquite, but he continued to refer to it as Mesq, mimicking Gerard's bad accent every time.
A church had finished burning to their left, all that was left was charred pews, blackened ceiling beams had smashed into the confessionals and steeple. The giant marble crucifix with Jesus was still standing, though blacked from the smoke. A green field began to spread in front of them on the opposite side. Gerard had slowed as they drove into the city. A burning police car was turned over in the middle of the street they were following with more cars on either side like a barricade, bodies were everywhere, a semi was tipped over, crushing a few cars, a patch of cacti and more body parts. Between each mountain pass, Frank was able to see they followed a river and before long the mountains fell.
“I think we made it…” Frank’s low voice reached out the window to Ray and Mikey in the bed.
Ray turned his head in towards the truck's back window, “Guys, is that a golf course?”
Gerard chuckled menacingly, “I think you might be right!” He sped the car up, Frank gripping the handle above his door. Mikey got off his butt and started squatting in the trunk, looking like a meercat making sure it's safe to keep going, while Ray used his arm to hold on to the frame around them. Gerard swerved around some bodies but drove over ones that were macerated and unrecognizable.
They followed the golf course until it ended, then they took the first ramp off highway 15 and quickly found the entrance to the course. The course reminded Frank of the hotel he woke up in. It wasn’t free from bodies and blood but there was a lot less dead here than the last few cities he'd gone through.
“Okay, before we settle here, we’re going to drive around a little bit,” Gerard explained to everyone but mostly for Frank. “We scope the neighborhood out in the truck first, for an easier getaway. This truck is… louder than what we like but at least we can outrun them.” Frank nodded in understanding and Gerard went past the course.
They didn’t go too far, another church was surrounded by a neighborhood that spanned three blocks. They turned down a street and Gerard instantly noticed a half eaten woman who was being dragged by three dogs, the dog's leashes were tied to her wrist, “I don’t think we’re in a safe-zone anymore…” Gerard grumbled.
Frank had his chin resting against the open window as he watched the zombies stand around, fumbling in their yards, he even noticed some inside the windows just staring at their tv’s that still aired reruns of pre scheduled shows. Occasionally one would notice they were driving past and Ray or Mikey would have to wind their bats up again. Ray made a joke about mailboxes and zombie heads feeling the same against a bat, but Frank’s ears were ringing as Rape Me by Nirvana played for the nth time. It wasn’t loud, but to Frank it sounded like the volume was on max.
Frank’s ears rang more, the truck's buzz was gone and he saw black fuzz around his vision again. Kurt Cobain’s voice moaned “rape meeee…… rape meeeee, again……….”, the louder his voice became, the more muffled it sounded. Eventually Kurt’s repeated screaming made Frank feel like he was at a bad house party, trapped in the bathroom while the music pounds at the door. A memory attempted to form, but Frank fought back. As his vision blackened slightly more, he whipped his head up and around to look at Gerard. Gerard wasn’t singing anymore, he definitely didn’t look relaxed.
The bathroom Frank felt trapped in shrunk and his breathing got hard. Claustrophobia suddenly kicked in, Frank didn’t feel claustrophobic often, he knew he didn’t know how to handle it as his body grew hot and his head felt light. Anger bubbled in his chest like a cauldron about to boil over. He smashed the eject CD button and threw the CD down to Gerard’s feet. He turned back out the window, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath in while a thick gust of air blew into his face.
Crunching gravel prevented a silence from happening, and it happened too fast for Gerard to realize what was going on. Frank opened his eyes again and turned back to Gerard, he pretended not to notice Ray and Mikey also staring in at them. “Sorry. Sorry, I just- It- Ugh.” Frank took a deep breath. “We’ve listened to that song a lot.” Frank’s head hung. Ray and Mikey quickly turned their backs to them again.
“Hey,” Gerard stretched his arm out and grabbed Frank’s leg. “You’re safe with us, there’s only a couple of us left, we gotta stick together.”
The cruise ended early when the truck coughed. Every zombie at the six closest houses whipped their heads towards the truck. Gerard cursed under his breath and grabbed the wheel with both hands, the zombies began approaching quicker than before stumbling over their own feet, some dropped hard onto their faces as they ran.
Frank frantically looked around in front of them, attempting to remember which way the golf course was.
A handful of loud snapping sounds came from nearby, "Uh… guys?" Ray's voice sounded panicked.
"Yeah?" Gerard yelled back, Frank checked the mirrors but didn't see anything.
"The house with the red shutters!" Frank saw Ray pointing towards a house.
"A good couple of these houses have red shutters, dude!" Gerard hadn't noticed Ray pointing, but Frank moved to stick his head out the back window to see which house it was.
A pack of hunchback creatures on all four paws were creeping out of a nearby home. Most of their jaws were intact and drooling a mix of saliva and blood. The creatures seemed to be dog-like, but most had chewed off tails or ears, and some of their legs were swollen with muscle. They were a sickly ash-brown color with huge circular lesions all over their bodies that were most likely bites that got infected. One of the creatures was much larger than the rest, thick with muscle but still covered in lesions, this ones skin was drooping and slopping off onto the ground. This one was also missing it's entire snout, a weird array of teeth protruded from the chunk of meat that was left of his face.
Their eyes traced the truck as the group stared. Swollen bloodshot eyes with little white left, their irises almost glowed neon yellow at certain angles.
The ones that were able to snarled and snapped, Gerard had slowed the car unintentionally as he was distracted by the hyena-esc scene developing before them.
“You guys never mentioned zombie animals!” Frank’s frantic voice cut Gerard back to real life. A zombie screamed as it slammed its arms against the hood of the truck, all of them had been so distracted with what was behind them, they didn't realize the zombies were closing in. Francis realized quickly he was trapped.
In one swift move, Gerard shook his head, grabbed the wheel with both hands and said, “We didn’t know about them, either” before smashing his foot into the gas pedal. The zombie on the hood slid off and Gerard turned the wheels around it, crushing it's legs and making the truck jump on one side.
Frank fumbled with his phone to get a map up again, Ray was making frantic sounds behind him that he couldn’t make out while Mikey stayed virtually silent as he smashed the zombie from the hoods head and watched the hungry beasts barrelling down the road at us.
The houses all looked the same as they rounded the corner and Gerard turning down every random turn he could didn’t help. To them, it felt like an infinite loop until ever so often the sound of a loud smash and pop as one would get too close and Mikey would use its skull for batting practice.
“Take a left!!” Frank’s arm shot up over Gerard’s vision. Gerard slapped his arm down, swerving off the road momentarily.
“Where?!”
“HERE!” Frank grabbed the wheel this time and twisted it, Gerard felt a slight burn and the whole truck tipped more as Mikey got onto his knees and nearly hung out the side of the truck bed. Frank looked out the back window, “Mikey, I know we’re in danger, but can you sit FOR FIVE MINUTES?!” His anger was bubbling up and he knew it was the lack of alcohol.
Mikey’s stern face, although emotionless, sent a cold chill down Frank’s spin when they finally met eyes. “Drive better, I’m the only reason you’re alive right now.” Mikey turned away without giving Frank a second thought, only making Frank’s alcoholic anger boil. Ray was incoherently yelling still as he smashed down two more zombie dogs that had attempted to bite him.
The golf course began emerging from the horizon like a mirage and Frank began laughing with relief. Gerard looked over at him a couple of times, unsure of how to respond as he noticed Frank was silently weeping as he laughed.
Gerard checked the rearview, Mikey and Ray had taken out a good few dogs, he could only see four left. Each of them were running at different paces, snapping at the wheels and the back bumper. The most muscular one was staying behind the pack, Mikey had been watching that one since the houses. When it wasn't the first to attack, Mikey became suspicious.
“Give me your gun.” Frank held his hand out to Gerard, who was frantically looking back and forth between the road and mirrors.
“What?”
“Give me your shotgun!” Frank pointed at it.
“I can’t,” Gerard grabbed the gun and wiggled, it was seemingly stuck between his seat and the car door.
“You didn’t notice?!”
“We were driving for TWO HOURS!”
“GUYS!!” The sound of a loud popping made Frank and Gerard stop and turn to Mikey. He smashed another dog down, now only three were chasing. Ray was waiting for his moment to hit another. “The golf building is open.”
Gerard and Frank followed Mikey’s point to see a giant gate to an employee’s only parking lot was now totally open, tall brick fences protected the lot and two people stood just inside the gates. They were getting close, “You need to slow down!” Frank shouted, a splattering pop interrupted him and he winced. Only one dog was left.
Gerard let up his foot and let the car cruise to a slower speed, the dog was bounding at them now, snarling disgustingly with saliva and blood splattering everywhere. Ray and Mikey both got onto their knees and readied their aim as the final dog came at them. The two bats greeted one another after a loud splattering pop, aluminum meeting wood, the wood splintered loudly.
The final dogs head was gone and it's body slumped. Gerard and Frank attempted to catch a glimpse of the dog when Ray screeched. The creatures legs continued to run. At first they slowed and nearly stopped, but they quickly started running in place as if it was still going after them. Then the body started to wiggly more and Ray yelled about needing to get moving.
They rolled up to the golf course parking lot, carts and RV’s were littering the space. A large gate that separated the lot from the street closed behind them.
Two women stood together in matching uniforms, guns held defensively towards the truck. The truck slowed and came to a stop right in front of them, the women stood motionless but the gate behind them creaked shut.
Gerard gave them a wide grin and energetic wave. As either girl walked around each side of the truck, they demanded everyone get out, drop their weapons and undress. With very little protest, the group complied. Ray and Mikey left their bats in the trunk and raised their hands as they hopped out, Gerard and Frank flashed the girls their weapons before placing them on their sits.
"Make sure the gun isn't stuck next time..." Frank whispered to Gerard as they were putting their weapons back. Gerard's face went red before they turned their backs to each other.
"No! Not out here!" One of the girls exclaimed, everyone turned to look and saw Ray was taking his shirt off in front of the shorter of the two girls. "Go inside." She hid behind one hand as she pointed forward into the garage with her gun. Ray slid his shirt back down, chuckling before starting forward. Each girl stood behind two of the guys with their guns to their backs.
The girls introduced themselves as Scarlet and Charlotte, both had been employees and working when the virus came through. Their uniforms looked clean enough minus a few bruises and some torn seams. They made the men strip to check for bites, “Our boss turned after he claimed he wasn’t bitten,” Scarlet huffed out as the group got their redressed.
“We knew we couldn’t trust him, we won’t be that dumb again.” Charlotte finished and both girls sneered together at the thought of their now-zombified boss. They kept their guns pointed at the group, but brought them back outside to grab their weapons.
When the girls first introduced themselves, they had to reassure the group they were not related. Although, to the guys, they looked as though they could be twins, they looked exactly the same yet completely different.
Scarlet was nearly a foot and a half shorter than Charlotte, Charlotte’s small but long arms resembled slender man whereas Scarlet's short, round body was closer to the Venus of Willendorf. Scarlet kept her hair long and blonde whereas Charlotte’s was short and very clearly dyed a bright red. Charlotte kept her face bare, Scarlet, although smudged, still had a full face of make-up with lashes still attached.
Charlotte led the group, Scarlet followed behind everyone, through a small lobby area, then a hallway and a few doors. A small grouping of cubicles had been dismembered and recreated into a good sized barracked room. They had two makeshift beds made out of two couches and a handful of loveseats. A mini-fridge still ran in the corner next to a floor fan that wasn’t on, they had dismembered some of the desks in order to cover more of the windows that faced outside much like what the guys had done at their warehouse.
Maybe this group getting bigger is a good thing... Frank's head swam as everyone filed into the room. It felt cramped even with Frank and Ray standing by the door.
Gerard and Mikey each found a hole in the blinds to peer through and saw the perfectly manicured green stretch for miles; they couldn’t see the end. The green also had a handful of zombified people lingering slowly, a couple golf carts were overturned, some with struggling and unmoving zombies stuck under them.
“Oh hey, if you see the fat, old, bald man with the giant “fuck-you” hat, that’s our boss.” Scarlet chuckled, not holding back.
“Yeah, we weren’t really able to kill him…” Charlotte added, quietly.
“Well, how many are out there? There’s six of us now, I’m sure one moaner can’t take six of us.” Gerard wondered out loud innocently.
“Well I can tell there’s more than-” Mikey began speaking when Charlotte and Scarlet busted out laughing.
“Did you just say MOANers?!” Charlotte howled, Scarlet held her stomach.
“I told him it was bad.” Frank interjected, Ray snickered next to him but covered his mouth with his hand.
“God, do most men only ever think with their dick?” Scarlet wiped a tear from her face.
“What do you mean?!” Gerard pulled from the window defensively, Mikey ignored him and continued to search outside.
“It sounds like boner!” Charlotte and Scarlet made each other laugh again.
“I told you.” Frank looked at Gerard who was red in cheeks but not backing down.
“Okay then what would you rather call them? Zombies like every other cliche?! Who even says they qualify as zombies?!” Gerard was throwing his hands around as he spoke.
“That's what they are!” Scarlet, Charlotte, and Frank all said in unison causing Scarlet and Charlotte to start giggling. Frank didn’t take his eyes off Gerard, Gerard lingered on Frank so long he wondered what Gerard was thinking.
"They can't die unless you kill their brain, so," Scarlet began.
"What else do they need in order to "qualify as a zombie"." Scarlet and Charlotte air quoted in unison as Charlotte finished.
Ray leaned close to Frank's ear and whispered, "I know they said they aren't blood related but I'm starting to think they were one brain that was split between two robots." Frank covered his mouth as they giggled together, Gerard was too distracted by the girls to notice.
“Come on, there’s a million names we could use, do we need to use the sexy one?” Scarlet said.
“How is it sexy?!” Gerard defensively crossed his arms.
“Besides it rhyming with boners, it’s literally Moan. Moaners. Moan.” Scarlet mocked a moan as Charlotte explained.
“That. Is. The. Sound. They. Make.” Geoff overemphasized.
“Actually it sounds more like a gurgling, growling screech but-” Scarlet jumped in.
“Guys!” Mikey’s deep voice boomed off the small walls as he pulled away from the window. “Can we move on from this? Who cares what they’re called. They can't die unless we smash their entire bodies, actually, so we need to learn more about this virus before we should even care about what we call them."
“Smash their entire body...?” Scarlet started.
"Everyone, come here," Mikey moved back to looked out the window, eventually, after moving a desk, everyone was able to find a spot to look outside. A handful of people roamed aimlessly, bodies still wriggled under some turned over carts. It took a moment to find again but Mikey directed everyone's attention towards a creature on all fours, missing a head.
The creature was walking around, if it bumped into something, it would just turn towards a new direction and start aimlessly walking again until it hit something else.
"What... is... that..." Scarlet whimpered.
"Has anything had zombie dogs before?" Charlotte sounded panicked.
"A few things have, actually," Mikey told her, "but I've never seen a zombie continue to work after it's head has been decapitated."
"Is that the same-?" Ray trailed off, Mikey responded with a quick 'yup'.
Okay, so, we we all saw that things head explode, but it's still moving... Frank was going over every trope he could think of, "Maybe we need to burn the bodies?"
Gerard groaned. "If we need to burn their bodies, they might as well be braindead vampires."
"But they don't suck our blood." Frank argued.
"No, but they do still eat us." Mikey interjected. "So, we'll need to keep an eye on that." He pulled away finally and everyone copied. "We should become more acquainted if we want to work together." Mikey was so stoic and straight forward, Frank thought sometimes he was a robot, he never saw him even crack a grin.
How do you not cope with humor?
“Weeellll... This is where we sleep! And eat… and hide for most of the day.” Scarlet attempted to help Mikey move the conversation on. The creature was outside, therefore not an issue until they needed to go outside again. Frank and Ray had stepped back towards the door to eliminate the closeness from the window gazing.
“But, we have another whole set of cubicles just a little farther down the hallway, we just haven’t been back there to do much.” Charlotte began walking out, Frank and Ray moved to let her through then followed close behind.
The cubicles down the hall were disheveled and abandoned but there were no bodies and most of the blood that did plague the room was stained into the carpets and dried.
“We don’t have much more for furniture…” Scarlet interrupted from the back of the group, each person slowly moving in.
“But we can definitely probably break into one of those RV’s in the back.” Gerard was always looking for some way to commit a crime in a lawless land, Frank’s stomach twisted with excitement and hope for a real bed to sleep in. He wondered if they’d have to share RV’s, he couldn’t recall how many were in the lot when they pulled up since he was more concerned about the dogs that were chasing them then the guns being pointed at them. He hoped if they did have to share, he’d be able to convince Gerard to be with him.
“Is there a reason you guys haven’t tried that yet?” Ray’s voice snapped Frank out of his daydream that almost went too far. Scarlet and Charlotte exchanged a nervous look and laugh before addressing the question.
“We just weren’t sure if those RV’s were clear of zombies or not so we figured it would be safer in here,” Scarlet began.
“Our boss was helping us, it was the three of us left, that’s how we have these.” The girls held up their weapons before Charlotte continued. “He had a bat, we just aren’t sure where it went… Before he turned, he asked us to…”
“Y’know,” Scarlet put her thumb to her throat before slicing across it. “So we brought him outside, thinking we’d keep the blood outside and not contaminate anything else in here. Right when we were about to do the deed,”
“We realized we totally forgot the gun.” When Charlotte took over again, Frank felt a pulse behind his eye and his whole skull cap THUMPed… THUMPed… “So we had to go back inside,”
“Find the guns,” Scarlet pointed out.
“Find the guns,” Charlotte reiterated dramatically. “Then go back outside,”
“And LITERALLY old yeller the guy. So, we head back outside, right?”
“We round the corner where we left him and BOOM!” The four men each jumped at the same time as Charlotte yelled in their faces.
“He’s totally gone.” Scarlet tightened her lips in disappointment. “So, obviously, we weren’t going to just sit outside and wait to be eaten.”
“HELL no. We came back in, hunkered back down in here and watched outside for a little bit before we saw him drag his ancient feet across the green.” The girls stopped talking, looking satisfied with their story.
"Well." Ray broke the silence that lasted too long. "We can take care of him before we leave,"
"Are you guys thinking about leaving already?" Charlotte interrupted, looking around panicked.
"We don't have to come with you, but we need help getting our boss!" Scarlet pleaded.
"Yeah, we wanna at least fulfill his wish before we lose your help..." Charlotte added.
"We definitely aren't leaving yet," Gerard said. "And we aren't opposed to you guys coming with," Frank noticed Mikey roll his eyes and slump against a wall. "But, we'll definitely need a bigger car, so breaking into those RV's might be our only option..." Gerard pondered out loud while the two girls exclaimed excitedly together.
As soon as the room quieted down, Frank's stomach growled, he keeled over a little with embarrassment but they had not made enough food for him to get more before they left this morning. God dammit... Everyone turned to look at him.
"We'll go to the kitchen next." Scarlet walked out the door before anyone could say anything, and they all followed, twisting through only a couple doors. The kitchen was huge, bigger than the rooms they were sleeping in, and all of the appliances were stainless steel.
Multiple refrigerators and bread racks held buckets worth of food. Some prepped foods sat waiting to be put together, an entire parties worth of premade and wrapped dinners also took up most of one of the refrigerators. "We've basically been living off of these," Scarlet handed one up to Frank, he was the shortest one in the group but Scarlet made him feel tall, she barley made it to his chest with the top of her head.
He pulled the saran wrap off the plate to see a pile of mashed potatoes, a smaller pile of mixed vegetables, and three breaded pork chops laying neatly half off the last one. Scarlet continued to hand out the pre-made dinners to everyone, including Charlotte, who took two, most likely so Scarlet could eat as well. No one denied the food, Scarlet pointed to a set of three microwaves all stacked next to a bread baking oven that they all convened around as they warmed the food.
Over dinner, Gerard and Ray explained everything they knew about the virus to Scarlet and Charlotte much like they had to Frank the first night he was with them. This time Frank added his own story of how he woke up in a hotel room with two of his dead coworkers, Charlotte 'aww'-ed but Frank shut it down saying he barley knew them, he was just afraid he had killed someone. He chuckled at himself but no one else responded how he thought they would, he cleared his throat and got up, putting his plate into a sink that already had a few empty plates it in, left them there as they continued the conversation.
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An excerpt of Tycho rambling about Wolfenstein II
Okay so for the past couple weeks, I’ve been playing through all of the new generation Wolfenstein games from Bethesda and Machine Games, having platinumed both Old Blood and New Order. I’m currently one trophy away from platinuming New Colossus(take a wild guess as to what trophy it is), and I was discussing some of the games themes with two friends of mine over Telegram.
This isn’t going to be me doing a proper review or evaluation of the game, this is just a sampling from that conversation, keep in mind one of my friends chose to omit their contributions so the context is a little skewed.
Hope you enjoy my inflammatory ramblings, I’m half tempted to muster a proper critique of New Colossus because I’ve been spending so much time with it, but I’m really lazy so here’s my off the cuff ranting.
Me: New Colossus is fucking nuts man. I’ve made it halfway through the game thinking “I wonder how BJ is gonna get the outfit he’s wearing on the cover?” and then they answered that question in the most what the fuck manner possible.
My Friend(who shall be referred to as “E”): I heard it was nuts. The one clip I saw was so nuts that I decided to not buy the game lol Eh, maybe I'm just being a picky asshole again lol.
Me: It's worth picking up, I love any game that takes the risk of mixing disturbing subject material with absurdist comical elements. Having played both back to back, I can say there was a definite retooling and redesigning of a lot of stuff between New Order and New Colossus, and I think NC is the superior game overall as a result.
Me: is that an unpopular one? I knew some douchebags were butthurt about the marketing campaigns, but I dont think anyones gonna throw a fit over me saying its better than New Order.
Me: I mean, I'm not saying I dont fancy the position of unpopularity, it seems to me a lot of negative attention towards New Colossus is from people who're either A. racist scumbags in their own right who dont appreciate a video game portraying people who share their ideologies(Nazi's, the Klan)as the bad/incompetent guys. Or B. standard run of the mill privileged white male gamers who just dont get the humoristic overtones and satire that the narrative is presenting.
Me: The ignorance part is true, but I'm of the opinion that ignorance is held and espoused by that particular subset, hence why the biggest "criticism" of the game I've seen goes along the lines of accusing the story and narrative of being "SJW, liberal pandering power fantasies" because the main cast consists of Jewish characters, many black character who're also members of the Black Revolutionary Front(1960's civil rights group), neurodivergent characters, gay characters basically all the groups of people the Nazi's tried to exterminate. The main character, however, William Joseph Blazkowicz, is a stereotypical all American square jawed Aryan white male soldier that comprises a vast majority of video game protagonists because again, game companies are encouraged to appeal to that repeating demographic(hence why Booker DeWitt is on the cover of Bioshock Infinite, and Elizabeth is not). And William’s features and status as that stereotype are brought up frequently over the course of both games, its a plot point, when this white westerner warrior is forced to confront the reality that before the Nazi's took over in this fictional world, minority groups were already being oppressed by the American government and people, not just the Germans.(In the words of J, "Before Hitler, before the Germans, YOU were the Nazi's.") and the second revelation: while the war was going on, there were plenty of Americans back home saying they should just let Germany win and take over the world, that America and Germany should fight together to ensure the white mans superiority, hence why when America surrendered to the Nazi's their transition of power went so smoothly(For real life historical context, 50,000 American Nazi's gathered in Madison Square Garden in New York to express their support for Hitler and the Third Reich in 1940, so American Neo-Nazi's isnt an outlandish concept.) These shocking realizations are shocking to William and most likely to the white members of the audience base, who have been told their entire lives that all Americans are and were totally opposed to Nazism, because America is always the hero and never to the antagonist. While William grapples with this internal and external conflict, the brainless saps who lob accusations of pandering and SJW agendas get pissed, because their natural knee jerk defensive reaction whenever these subjects are brought up is to shout it down and decry it as attempts to exploit "white guilt". So yes, Wolfenstein is a power fantasy game, but it includes themes and ideas that spoil the already existing fantasies of pasty, privileged white gamers who've grown used to getting exactly the message they want out of their consumed media, and throw a hissy fit whenever elements they dont approve of are included in a mainstream product.
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Me: Exactly, BJ is a great character because he's a stereotype, but the creators are self aware enough to understand that he's a stereotype and that lets them invert a lot of things to make him interesting and engaging rather than a milquetoast slab of boring white bread. Also as an aside, this really tripped me out because at one point BJ goes back to his childhood home in Mesquite Texas, which is where I grew up to.
Me: Also, didnt include this in my massive paragraph, but I wanted to mention how at the beginning of the game William is wheelchair bound because he was blown up by a grenade at the end of New Order. You get a suit of powered armor that lets you walk again, but your health is halved and they make it a point to say that his legs wont work again and he is now impotent. So again, you have this character who's an embodiment of white American masculinity not only physically disabled, but his dick doesnt work. Two themes that likely interfere with the power fantasy the aforementioned pissed off douches were trying to have, rather than appreciating the game as a parody of power fantasies, again people missing the entire point.
E: Also, I watched a clip of the game and it was stupid ridiculous and over the top that it just shattered my suspension of disbelief for the game.
Like how do the nazis take over if they're so incompetent that 20 of them and their 2 war machines can be murdered by one pregnant woman?
And how does the rebellion still talking like they're taking risks when the one dude they send out comes back with a billion nazi scalps?
But like I said, stingy asshole. Maybe I'll pick it up when it goes on sale for cheap.
Plus I could also be just mad at Bethesda.
But then again I did really like Prey.
Also, I heard the game was short.
Like shorter then New Order.
Me: Like I said, I think it's worth buying, and I got it cheap at 30 bucks. As for the realism factor, it's an Id game, gritty STALKER esque accuracy and believability isn't what I expect from them. Short? Not that I've experienced, it's structured and progresses differently but I'd say both games are of comparable length and content.
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