Congratulations Fanny Pack Thug!

Your target’s car will be right there, parked outside the bar where the snitch told you it would be. That means, or at least should mean, that your target will be inside, in his usual spot, just waiting for you to step inside, ram your gun into his face and then pull the trigger.

Sure enough he’ll be in the corner, talking and laughing to a man you don’t know, a man with a beard. You won’t know him, but he’ll look the way most street-level operators do: like he barely knows his ass from the trigger of a SIG. You won’t pay him any mind. You’ll just walk right up, put your gun to the back of the target’s head and pull the trigger.

“OH SHIT!”the man will shout. The patrons of the bar will scatter and you’ll drop your gun and start to walk away, job done, time to vanish. That’s when the man with the beard will notice something and speak up.

“Is that a fanny pack?” he’ll ask, staring at your waist. You’ll stop in mid step, draw your gun again and stomp back up to him, eyes ablaze.

“It’s the best way to carry my spare clips,” you’ll tell him, flipping your gun’s safety off with your index finger. “Can you think of a better one?”

He’ll pause for a moment, stroking his beard in genuine consideration.

“A bandoleer?”

You’ll shoot him in the knee.

“Bandoleers are conspicuous!” you’ll shout at him, spittle striking his grimacing face.

“So are fanny packs!” he’ll shout back. “I just noticed that one!”

He’ll have you at that, so instead of shooting him in the face the way you usually do with people who criticize your decision to wear a fanny pack, you’ll smile, flip your gun’s safety back on and tuck your piece back in your pants.

“Thank you for your honesty,” you’ll say, nodding as you consider what he’s told you. Then you’ll walk out of the bar, get into the car you stole to drive here and drive off, wondering if there is another, less conspicuous way to carry an extra clip or three, like maybe pockets or something.

Congratulations Fanny Pack Thug!

Congratulations Ridiculously Oblivious Husband!

Today your wife will ecstatically declare: “I’ll be in the guest house with the pool boy, the gardener and the appliance repairman!”

“Don’t hurt yourself unsticking that door!” you’ll shout after her as she leaves the house. Then you’ll go back to reading The New Yorker, occasionally chuckling to yourself at the cartoons and mumbling “Oh, Heathcliff!”

Congratulations Ridiculously Oblivious Husband!

Congratulations Openly Gay Dictator!

Dictatorial reigns have long been a straight person’s game. There were some rumors about Stalin and just what that moustache meant, but given how often he raped people most folk are willing to just factor the occasions where he raped men into the law of averages. And Castro’s beard was way too dumb for a gay. Only a straight man would ever think that a chin beard was an appropriate indicator of authority.

But today you, in a slimming tan suit with short shorts attached, will take control of Latviastonia in a horrendously blood coup, proving to the world that gay people can be every bit as terrible and psychotic as straight people under the right circumstances. As you press into the capital city on a tank covered with babies, in order to dissuade your opponents from firing upon it, you’ll speak from inside the tank to a loudspeaker crudely attached to its roof.

“LATVIASTONIANS!” you’ll cry. “THE REIGN OF UNFASHIONABLE STRAIGHT PEOPLE IS OVER! THE REIGN OF TRUEST OF FASHIONS, THE FASHIONS THAT WILL CHANGE THE WORLD, HAS BEGUN! BOW TO ME! TO MY SHORTS! TO THE POWER OF TAN!”

At this point you’ll raise your nation’s new flag, a plain square of tan, above the tank. The people outside the tank will begin screaming hysterically, but you’ll hear the sound as cheering, cheering for the glorious reign you’ll usher in, a reign where long pants are forbidden and outfits that do not include the color tan are punishable by death.

Later that day you’ll execute the entirety of parliament. This will cement your hold over Latviastonia for about three years. After that you’ll be executed by a splinter group of considerably less stereotypical gays who hate the way you’re portraying their sexual orientation. Your death will be heralded as another marker for progress, as you’ll no longer simply be the first gay dictator to come to power through a violent coup, but also the first gay dictator to be assassinated after your insanity has become glaringly obvious to the people who once supported you.

Congratulations Openly Gay Dictator!

Congratulations Last Guy Who Speaks Latin!

Classics departments used to have all the hottest ladies. WE GET IT! All those togas and hats made of leaves and the sandals? OH GOD THE SANDALS!

But here’s the thing: no one speaks Latin anymore. Some people speak Greek, sure, or permutations of Persian and Farsi, but no one gives a shit about Latin. It’s a well known fact, introduced to our discourse largely by the hit HBO show Rome, that everyone in ancient Rome really spoke English, sometimes with British accents, sometimes with strange speech patterns that only actually manifest themselves during stage performances.

So you wander the offices of your classic department shouting things in Latin, hoping someone will respond to you. You do it every day as you enter the office, as you leave to get lunch, return from lunch and depart for the evening. Today, following your evening-departure-shout, something glorious will occur. A young woman will emerge from her office, following your shout of “QUIS HUC LATINE LOQUI?” with a smile on her face and lust in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, is that Latin you’re speaking?” she’ll ask, chewing on the end of a pen in the most suggestive way imaginable.

“Yes,” you’ll declare, puffing out your chest. “Yes it is.”

“Hot,” she’ll moan, grabbing you by the neck and pulling you into her office for desk-sex. Later, you’ll discover she’s married to the chair of your department, which will make life hard for you, but hey, at least speaking Latin finally paid off!

Congratulations Last Guy Who Speaks Latin!

Congratulations Pterodactyl Porn Star!

The video remains burned in all of our minds. The woman, perched atop one prone pterodactyl-man whose wings are splayed out uselessly beneath him. Your compatriots, arrayed around her, penises clutched in her hands and you, star of the show, in a sense, will stand there between them with your phallus in her mouth as she lolls her tongue futilely, desperately.

But that was a long time ago, and it turns out that pterodactyl porn star isn’t exactly the best paying gig in the world. In fact it is, arguably, the worst, given the hours you spent researching the role, the time you spent constructing your own costume out of a combination of felt and old wire coathangers and the endless reshoots in different locations, ranging from a natural history museum after hours to a forested area of a public park. All for a fifteen minute dinosaur fetish scene in a movie no one knows the title of that everyone has seen and been simultaneously aroused and repulsed by.

And the years since have been unkind. Turns out it’s difficult to get a job when the only bolded entry on your résumé is “pterodactyl number two in pornographic movie.” Even porn producers aren’t terribly psyched about employing you, despite your fervent declaration that you are “hepatitis free” at the bottom of résumé. But there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. Because today you’re going to be interviewing for a job as a forklift operator at a warehouse specializing in the shipping of paper and office supplies. And while you’re in the office of the floor foreman, who is actually a woman, she’ll look you dead in the eye and ask you a question no one’s ever asked you before.

“Do you still have the pterodactyl costume?”

You’ll be so shocked that you’ll spit up a little coffee on your shirt. The fore-lady will laugh and hand you some paper towels, with which you’ll feebly attempt to mop up the spill as it seeps into the fabric. She’ll smile, shake her head, and ask again.

“Sorry, but do you?”

You’ll laugh uncomfortably for a few seconds before nodding.

“Yeah, it’s in a box at home.”

She’ll smile, get up and walk behind you, to the door to her office. You’ll hear the lock click behind you and then you’ll feel her arm as it drapes over your shoulder and around your throat.

“You can start on Monday. Be sure to bring it,” she’ll murmur into your ear as her free arm snakes down your body to your crotch, where it will settle and begin petting, as if she’s found the world’s most interesting cat.

Congratulations Pterodactyl Porn Star!

Congratulations Constant Reminder of Our Failures!

Twenty-two years ago Sexy Results Future Agency was young. It was hip. It had dreams and the means by which to pursue them. But one day Sexy Results Future Agency got all up on another Future Predicting Agency, who it loved very much at the time, and it was so excited it forgot to use protection and nine months something that we probably should’ve seen coming came out: you.

We were proud of you at first, because you were pretty much just our accomplishment for the first two years of your life. But as time went on you started doing things like walking, talking and manipulating objects. Since then it’s all been downhill.

Today you’re going to really hammer home just how disappointing every single action you’ve ever taken since you became an independent entity we weren’t responsible for have been. You’re going to move back in with us following your graduation from college.

Sure, you’ll be welcome here. We’re not assholes. But we’re not going to curb our drinking in the least, and we’re still going to have loud sex with our new girlfriend, who will try to act like she’s your new mom even though she’s barely ten years older than you and isn’t really equipped to deal with her own emotional baggage, let alone yours.

Our new girlfriend is a website that sells handbags, by the way.

After a few weeks of this you’ll be pretty sick of us. But your exhaustion will be nothing compared to just how disappointed we are in you. Your total lack of gainful employ, your exceedingly entitled opinions about life, the world and everything, and your total reliance on our meager salary will all combine into a perfect storm of depressing awfulness that will compose your absolutely shit life so far.

We’ll come to resent you just as hard as you come to resent us, until it explodes in a spectacular argument that leads to you tromping out of the duplex one night in a huff to go call your mom, who doesn’t really talk to you that much since you graduated from website college, mostly because of some things you said about the time she spent as a porn site to support you when you were younger. On the upside, you two will mend some fences, but in the end you’ll come back to stay with us, just as disappointing as you ever were.

Congratulations Constant Reminder of Our Failures!

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Cthulhu Saves The World Saves The Mythos!

Immediately after graduating from college back I moved back into my parents. It made sense at the time, but in retrospect it was the dawn of a bleak era, a year long period where I had absolutely no mastery over my own fate. That it followed four years of relative freedom made it that much more sour. I was, at the time, a helpless thing, incapable of paying my own rent, relying on them for healthcare (as opposed to just not having it). After almost a decade of being told I was smart and special I was cast into a workforce that didn’t give two fucks how smart of special I was. It was around this time that I first sat down, really sat down, with the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.

Cthulhu isn’t the biggest player in Lovecraft’s mythos, which might surprise you given how much press he usually gets. Fish men and their foul overlord, many-titted demons, super smart space worms, and sentient colors all take up equal page time. But he’s one of the more interesting ones. His home doesn’t adhere to our laws of geometry and the imagery surrounding him is striking. He’s also got cultists. Lots of cultists. He’s a popular guy, even though he’s really just hanging out in one spot all of the time. And maybe readers and authors have picked up on this popularity, which is why they’ve made Cthulhu such a major feature in popular culture and interpretations of Lovecraft’s work at large.

I connected with Lovecraft, with his portrayal of Cthulhu, the nameless Swede’s madness and the general sense of smallness in a massive world utterly unconcerned with your survival or well being. It resonated with me at that time in my life and, indeed, it’s kept resonating with me as I’ve hopped from place to place, constantly reminded of how disinterested the world surrounding me is in who I am and what I’m capable of, and how vastly superior so many of the forces within that world are at simply…doing things. They’re just better than me at it, most of the time, bigger than me, and when they’re not hostile they’re usually unconcerned with me to the point where they won’t even consider stepping on me instead of over me to get something they want. This aspect is at the core of Lovecraft’s fiction.

But Cthulhu Saves the World possesses none of these qualities.

It is instead a celebration of what the Mythos has become, a star (that’s kind of a pun if you’re familiar with Cthulhu and friends in general) studded cavalcade of maddening creatures laid out against a delightfully forgivable (or impressively punishing, if that’s what you’re into) combat system that carries you through a lighthearted, textually aware story about the tropes of storytelling and the manner in which fandom influences work. It’s a spot on reconsideration of the old school RPG, one that recognizes its place in time while simultaneously dismissing the manifold flaws of games of old, instead focusing on their whimsy, the varied elements we remember fondly rather than the painful grind we spent so much of them endeavoring to avoid.

It’s the rare title that completely understands what made its source material great without actually holding on to a single scrap of it. While it looks like an RPG and uses characters from the Cthulhu world there’s nothing Lovecraftian about it, and there isn’t a lot of old school RPG action going on. Instead there’s a battle system that feels very smooth and intuitive and a story that in no way takes itself seriously and never, ever, ever waxes poetic about how we’re all just stellar meat patiently awaiting our demise from some greater force that sees us as the feeble meal on two legs that we are.

So if it abandons all the conventions of its source material, what forms (and informs) Cthulhu Saves the World? Fun, to put it simply. It’s a game about celebrating nerd-dom, esoteric knowledge and the RPGs you used to enjoy that there just isn’t enough time for now. It’s a stripped down, re-designed relatively grind-less RPG, one that’s eager to be your friend and be liked. Every aspect of it winks, from the first character you meet (a clear send-up to the perennially encounter love interest JRPGs normally throw at the main character as quickly as possible) to the last (an affable demonic dragon who turns into your airship which, in turn, catapults you into the late game, wherein the restrictions of the world map no longer have meaning).

Paired with a system designed solely to dole out interactions with these characters the aim is clear: this isn’t supposed to be a grinding, onerous return to form. It’s a fluffy reminder of what was, pausing at times to invite characters into have casual conversations with we’d normally only see at crucial junctures in a more conventional RPG. It loves the absurdity of RPGs of old, darting between wacky settings, some of them more in line with Lovecraftian ideas than others, most of them places where battles would rarely, if ever, occur in a traditional roleplaying game.

Are there more enriching things to do with your time? Of course. Cthulhu Saves the World isn’t a game changer. It could be said that Breath of Death VII was, in that it both birthed Zeboyd Games, Cthulhu’s most recent creator/collaborator, and breathed new life into the 16 bit RPG. But Cthulhu Saves the World is just good, clean, kinda guilty fun. It’s liking frosting off a butter knife. It’s tacos with too much hot sauce. It’s good, even if it can be a bit much, but it’s over fast enough that you’ll finish it wanting more. And there’s more to be found. There are more bonus quests and alternate game modes available after completing CSTW than I’ve stomach to attempt, and while I’m skeptical as to just how much they’ll change the experience of play, but their presence is something of an inspired choice in my eyes. It’s the rare developer who scales up the “bonus material” of their game and provides a front-end experience targeting casual gamers that allows them to complete an epic-feelings game in a meager eight to ten hours.

What I’m saying, I guess, is that Cthulhu Saves the World is everything the writing of H.P. Lovecraft isn’t: it’s upbeat, it has a lot of Cthulhu in it, it’s really well paced and when I finished it I felt pretty happy. Heck, I even sort of wanted to come back for more. And I definitely wanted to settle in and play Penny-Arcade’s latest episode, which seems to owe its resurgence in no small part to Zeboyd’s rise as a game developer. Cthulhu Saves the World is a pleasant inversion of everything you’d imagine it to be. Play it. It’s like five bucks, and if you’ve ever spent time with a 16 bit RPG, it’ll make your week. If you haven’t, maybe you’ll get a hint of the magic we once all swore by.