Congratulations on Bringing About the Arockalypse!

Anyone who’s on the internet saw that Lordi video, back when it first came out. With the high school girls and the devils and the dancing and shit? We all had a good laugh about how stupid it was to think that a metal band would summon devils out of the earth and make the dead walk and attack people who support the social structure.

Well, those same weird, freakish devils will be the ones laughing come Thursday. See they’ve been building towards this for a while, planting suggestions in the minds of unsuspecting teens and helping local contractors craft public buildings in such a way that their daily use encourages the acquisition and storage of demonic energy. They’ve been laying the ground work carefully, but today it’s all going to come to fruition.

You’re going to be walking through the halls of your carefully designed Swedish high school, listening to Swedish death metal like most of your classmates. You’ll be having a bad day so you’ll stop in the bathroom for a quick cut. As your blood dribbles down your thigh and into the toilet the water will cloud with red quickly, blossoming with color as the fluids mix.

It’ll be the same boring blood blossom you make every time you cut yourself, except this time the water won’t suddenly grow still. Instead it’ll swirl and boil and rumble. Before long the toilet will be threatening to crack with the force of the liquid inside of it. Horrified you’ll run out of your stall and back into the halls, blood trailing behind you.

When you emerge from the stall chaos will have taken your once mundane school. The halls will be filled with demons on every variety, fiendish creatures with gnashing teeth and limbs stretching at odd angles. The popular kids will be tormented by them, many of them already dead. And the outcasts who listen to Swedish death metal, they’ll be celebrated by the beasts. The creatures will dance around them, testing them, prodding them, giving them gifts. Occasionally they’ll take a guy or girl who strikes their fancy out of the line up and have their way with them but for the most part they’ll just be quite nice to you as a “thanks” for getting this whole apocalypse thing rolling.

You’ll be scared for your safety until the lead singer of the band Lordi advances on you in what you thought was make up but it turns out is actually just how he looks all the time.

“Thanks,” he’ll say, extending his hand to you. You’ll nod at him and take his hand before holding out your CD player for him to sign it. He’ll do so amiably and go back to tormenting your students, repeatedly sodomizing the captain of your handball team with his barbed phallus. It’ll be a great day for everyone!

Congratulations on Bringing About the Arockalypse!

Congratulations Fishmonger!

“FISH FOR SALE!” you’ll cry to the passers-by as they go about their business, cupping your hand to make a make-shift megaphone for your voice. They’ll ignore you by and large, bustling about their business in Victorian garb, smoking pipes and adjusting their top hats as needed. Occasionally they’ll look at you, shake their head, then walk away, off to Long John Silver’s or some shit, as if to say “we want fish, but we don’t want real fish, so fuck you buddy.” It’ll be enough to make you break down and cry the way you do alone in your apartment with a bottle of gin, but you’ll stand strong and continue your ceaseless efforts to sell the freshest of fish to the assiest of holes.

It’ll all come together for you when an adorable orphan girl comes up to you.

“I’d love some fish guv’na, but I haven’t any money,” she’ll say, wiping some soot from her cheek with a sooty hand, making her entire facial-situation that much sootier.

You’ll look at her face, then your stall full of unsold fish, then at her face again and shrug.

“Have a bowl of fish and chips!” you’ll loudly declare, handing her some grease soaked newspaper filled with food. Then your business partner will see you and shout “Robbers!”

A pair of men in masks will leap from a side street and beset the little girl, knocking her fish to the ground and grabbing her and holding her in the air so that her little girl legs can do naught but kick and kick and kick.

“What ho!” you’ll shout just as loudly as you declared that the little girl should have some fish and chips. You’ll leap up with your shout and clock one of the robbers right in the face with your British-style punch, then threaten the other one.

“Mercy, m’lord!” he’ll cry, then run off, leaving the young girl to weep over her fish and chips. A crowd will be gathering around her by this point, their interested piqued by a child’s weeping. That’s when you’ll come to her rescue a third time, heading back to your cart a third time to hand the girl one last newspaper full of fish and chips.

“My apologies for your hardship, young lady,” you’ll say to her in a stage whisper before handing her another batch of fish and chips and stepping back to the stall, where a line will already be forming. At the head of it will be your best friend, who you’ll have paid to show up today and do this. He’ll be holding money in his hand before you’re even back at the stall and, as you hand him a newspaper full of fish and chips he’ll declare:

“This man puts all the care he gave to that young woman into crafting these fine fish and chips!” he’ll shout, grease dripping down his chin. Then a loud hurrah will go up from the crowd and, by day’s end, you’ll sell out every single fish in your stores.

From this day on business will boom for you. You’ll always sell out your stock and you’ll always have enough money to pay your mortgage and to keep making payments to all those actors you hired to help get your business up and running again to keep them from telling the press. You’ll even make enough to save some and plan for a rainy day, or retirement. It’ll be good for you. That is, until you snap in a fit of paranoia and then murder everyone who helped you get your business back up and running, inevitably being captured after you kill that sweet little girl who pretended to be an orphan in exchange for nothing more than free fish. Aside from that little hiccough it’ll be nothing but smooth sailing for you.

Congratulations Fishmonger!

Congratulations on Flossing!

The blood will flood your mouth, tangy copper mixing with the taste of your own fingers as you probe and pry, checking the consistency and integrity of each tooth. You’ll see him behind you in the mirror, the man making you do this. His frown will stretch, a poor man’s moustache dragging his whole body down. He’ll lick his lips as he watches you, getting ready to make his move. But he won’t do it while you’re checking. That would be rude.

You’ll spit the blood into the sink, a diluted red mixture that won’t stain the basin under the flow of water. It’ll be disappointing. You want to think of your blood as crimson and bright, vibrant. An embodiment of your energy as a person. The shit in your sink will look rusty, and it will be gone before you can even get a good look at it.

You’ll duck your head down and rinse your mouth, swishing the water around to make sure the blood has all been cleaned away. He’ll smile at you with each step of the process, each cleansing measure removing a little more of his handiwork, proving his dominance over you with each showing of fluid.

When you’re finally finished his wrap his arm around your belly and kiss the back of your neck.

“Was that really so bad?” he’ll mumble into your ear.

You’ll run your tongue along your teeth inside your mouth, profoundly aware of each individual piece of bone now. You’ll want to say “yes, actually, it was” or “there’s a reason I don’t do that often, you know?” But his hand will go to your crotch with gentle insistence and you’ll simply mumble at him, “No,” as he leads you to bed.

Congratulations on Flossing!

Congratulations Bitchface!

There are people on the earth with faces that just make them look like bitches. You are one of those people. You are a Bitchface.

You lead a quiet, unassuming life, doing your best to compensate for the bitchiness your face implies to everyone who gazes upon you. But sometimes life challenges your desire for anonymity, and you’re forced to come out and reveal yourself to actually be a full on bitch or to something less than a bitch.

Today isn’t going to be one of those days. Today you’re just going to win the lottery. It’s going to be pretty cool, and you’re going to get a few extra thousand off the power ball ticket you bought on a whim. It won’t make you look like less of a bitch though.

Congratulations Bitchface!

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Dawn of War II: Retribution!

My devastators settle behind the rocks. They’re patiently waiting for something, anything, to wander into their field of fire so they can light it up. Heretics, orks, guardsmen. It doesn’t matter. I’m just waiting for them to move in so I can bring down a mailed fist of fury on my foes. See, I’ve got a handful of scouts and tactical marines sitting just a short distance away. And once my devastators pin whatever foul heretic is unfortunate to wander into their sight down my tacticals and scouts will swarm them, withering them with a combination of bolter fire, sniper rounds and plasma charges. It’s a perfect setup, ideal for combating ranged forces, appropriately distributed so that jump troops can be dealt with with acceptable losses. It lets me watch the whole southern victory point and scout the enemy’s power harvesting operation at the same time. In the old Dawn of War II, it would guarantee me a victory over my baffled and infuriated opponent.

In the new game my devastators seem oblivious to the fact that this tactic no longer works. They sit and stew behind their rocks, looking dumbly as spotters sit nearby and sight on them. And when the artillery rounds scream down and the guardsmen charge up, rifles blazing, it’s kind of heartbreaking to watch my veterans topple to the Guard’s combined might. But it’s also kind of impressive. I want to learn how to do that, how to guide fire from the sky and crack even the toughest defenses without batting an eyelash. I want to learn how to coolly walk my army up the middle of the battlefield, quietly scout out enemy positions and then eradicate them, cover and all, with a few well placed shells. This is what Dawn of War II: Retribution has on offer.

Many expansions seek to redefine the way a game plays. Brood War, for example, changed the balance of the game with the addition of a handful of new units and some new technology shrewdly distributed through the various races. These seemingly minor additions rewrote the rules of Starcraft. Zerg could suddenly turtle. Protoss had new options for making quick and dirty raids. Terrans became even more unbelievably tough. A few changes, small ones to the idle observer, changed the entire scope of the game in a wonderful and unanticipated way.

Dawn of War II’s expansions don’t really work that way. Sure, there are new units for each faction. Most of them are heavy ground vehicles that most people won’t see until a game is already decided, things like Land Raiders and weird ork vehicles with misspelled names and humorous subtext to their design, and the rest are super specialized or difficult to acquire units. None of them really change the overall balance of the game. What really shakes things up, aside from Relic’s thorough and at times infuriating balance changes, is the addition of entire new factions.

Factions in most games make a dramatic impact, sure. But Dawn of War II’s primary mode of play, Team Mode, is all about the interaction between factions, the way they shape and control the map and the flow of combat within it. Factions might seem completely different in Starcraft, and the coordination between say a Zerg and a Protoss player is totally unlike the coordination between a Zerg and a Terran player. But the manner in which the maps play isn’t something that changes. Terrans will buckle down and then roll out their forces when convenient, Protoss will try to find a balanced strat that involves a very similar tactic, and Zerg will roll the dice and hope whatever strategy they choose pans out, be it rush, boom or turtle. The maps might effect the mentality of these choices, but the races themselves will never impact the way each map plays out.

But in Dawn of War the factions have an impact on the terrain, in some cases literally. Hive tyrants and Chaos Lords will rush right through heavy cover, ruining it for everyone. Eldar can set up cover that friends and foes can use, Imperial Guard can establish bunkers and, as previously mentioned, also call down devastating artillery that eradicates not only units but precious, precious cover that those units were using to buckle down in. This is to say nothing of how each faction utilizes cover, how each unit functions in the careful balletic interplay that is combat in Dawn of War II. The way that factions interact in Dawn of War II is fundamental to the game and impacts the ebb and flow of play, the pace and the context of the game. It’s difficult to really elucidate in general terms. It’s almost ethereal, with map-control translating into resource control and, by merit of those resources, victory. But the addition of the Imperial Guard drives the nature of this quaint mixture and the importance of adding a single new faction into the mix home.

See, with a Guard player on the opposing team it’s never safe to be still. While there’s no assurance that the Guard player will choose Manticores, their meat-and-potatoes artillery unit, it is quite likely. And every Guard commander has some sort of artillery-like ability imbedded in their Zeal tree, so even if they don’t grab Manticores they’ll be able to do things like drop mines along your fixed position, or walk a devastating artillery strike into your advance that, no shit, is actually considerably more potent than the five hundred Zeal air strike that serves as the Guard’s “ultimate ability.” The end result is a faction that can eliminate or severely disrupt a fixed position at any time, without warning. There are similar abilities sprinkled throughout other factions, but no one is anywhere near as dedicated to forcing the battlefield to be dynamic as much as the Guard.

Which is ironic, because their other strength is setting up static defenses. Again, most factions have some sort of turret in their tech tree. Orks and Space Marines both have heroes dedicated to producing them, and everyone’s got some sort of static suppression unit available at tier 1. But the basic Imperial Guard unit, your dumb, hapless grunt, knows how to set up a turret and dig in cover right off the bat. Special abilities let them call in heavy turrets, bunkers, you name it. Paired with one of the most impressive aforementioned static suppression units in the game and a basic unit which can eventually become a wall of lasers they’re nigh impossible to root out once they’ve dug into a position. Unless, of course, you’ve got your own Imperial Guard teammate who decided to build some artillery into his army.

And that’s how they change everything. You can play a game without the Imperial Guard and things will be more or less the same, sure. You might see some new units but most of the tactics from Chaos Rising will still be effective to one degree or another. But if even one Imperial Guard player is in a match the game has become something new and incredible. It’s still a game about territory control, but the rules of that game have changed. Instead of being about maintaining a fixed position it’s about the cost-benefit of building fixed emplacements when they’re likely to be torn down in a few minutes. It’s about building an army that can overrun an opponent who has dug in and use their static position against them. It’s about adapting constantly to the ebb and flow of the battle, following and avoiding the fight as the situation warrants.

Every faction in Dawn of War II carries with it a set of rules and conditions it brings to the battle. Orks move like a tide, their strength amplified by nearby greenskin allies. Tyranids are a different kind of tide, an overwhelming one which fractures when bigger units are killed, giving the impression of an inhuman horde filled with mini-bosses that demand your attention. Space Marines of both Chaos and regular flavor consist mostly of costly, powerful monoliths of units that demand specific responses and have specific powers, but will barely function at a task they’re not designed for. The Eldar emphasize the importance of a mobile force, suffering greatly when forced into a fixed emplacement for all their defensive abilities. And the Guard? They’re the underdog, the faction that clings to victory by the skin of their teeth, turning the fight around in one brilliant measure and then holding their ground against a superior force.

If you’re looking at Dawn of War II: Retribution as a multiplayer product (and most people probably are since the single player campaigns, while enjoyable, have never really been what made Dawn of War II great) it might seem a bit light, especially given the thirty dollar price tag. The Chaos Space Marines already feel like a flavor of Imperium, and the Imperial Guard were a weak-sauce faction in previous Dawn of War games, a bit of fluff thrown in for true fans which couldn’t really hold their own against superpowered mutants, robots and fearsome peace-loving aliens. But unlike Chaos Rising, where the multiplayer wasn’t much of a draw for me, something about the changes the Imperial Guard have made to the dynamic of Dawn of War II is really alluring to me. It could be the rose-colored glasses that I get when I’m playing a new game, or that I’m still learning about systems which will soon lose their mysticism and appeal as I come to understand them better. And the Imperial Guard are far from a dud faction in Retribution. In fact you could make a case that they’re a bit overpowered, with a collection of Tier 2 units capable of steam rolling all but the best established defensive positions. Retribution made me reconsider the underpowered unfortunate faction from the first series of games, made me look at them and see an impressive army based around conventional, modern day tactics in a world filled with armies based on magic and space-lasers. It made me look at an old game I loved and see new tactical depth to it. It offered me a set of new experiences, all of them as rich and fulfilling as anything I’ve seen since Fallout: New Vegas made me give a shit about video games again. I don’t imagine the single player portion to be anything so divine, but I don’t expect it to be terrible, just adequate and perhaps a bit repetitive. But hey, it’s an RTS. It’s supposed to be repetitive. The key is letting that repetition break every once in a while and letting the wonderful chaos of the game shine through. Dawn of War II: Retribution does so beautifully, and while I’ve no doubt that it won’t make a big commercial splash it’s well worth your attention if you’re interested in the genre of RTS at all.

Congratulations on Getting Rid of Your Poster!

“FUCK YOU!”

She’ll storm out of your dorm room still wearing your shirt and underwear, walking barefoot through the snow to her dorm. You’ll want to scream at her that she’s overreacting, that she should at least put her shoes on. That she has warm winter clothing and that she’ll likely catch cold the way she’s strutting about. But you won’t be able to find the courage to utter a word.

Instead you’ll watch her as she goes, watch the motion of her ass in your underwear. You’ll both be too young to think that this will last, too foolish to realize that sometimes never means forever. You’ll be particularly unconcerned with the thought that she’ll never be back. Women frequently leave your bed in rage and come back several days later, since you have a thing for emotionally damaged angry women who flip out at you.

What will be wearing on you will be the fact that, as she walks across the quad she’ll be clutching the lion’s share of your poster of two girls kissing. You know the one, the one that every single douchebag in college has posted above their bed. She’ll be ripping it up as she goes, knowing that this is going to hurt you, knowing it’ll make you angry the next time you’re together even if you’re inside her.

She won’t turn back to see you looking out after her through your rapidly fogging window. She won’t have to turn to know you’re there, seething, pressing your tongue against your teeth, wishing you could open your window, shout the price of the poster (fourteen dollars and seventy five cents American) and then slam it shut. But you know if you do that then she’ll really be gone. This is her way of winning, her way of taking away your control. You won’t even know she’s doing it.

But she will. And you won’t see it, but she’ll have a tiny smile on her face as she rips the two kissing women in twain, letting the scraps fall to the ground, stumbling a little as her feet go numb.

Congratulations on Getting Rid of Your Poster!

Congratulations on Realizing Your Mom is a Lesbian!

There have been signs. Many, many signs. Like when she made you watch The Kids Are Alright with her and talked at length about how she’d be totally cool with it if her mom revealed that she was a lesbian at a late stage in life and how sometimes lesbians have sex with men for reasons that aren’t entirely clear at the time. And when she made you go to all those roller derby games and talked endlessly about how hot all the girls were. And when she grabbed your French teacher’s ass that one time during a parent teacher conference.

You’re kind of dumb for not getting this earlier. But today you’re going to be confronted with proof even you will not be able to ignore.

You’ll be coming home from school a little bit earlier than usual. A bomb threat that your girlfriend Sally called in will have vacated the premises sooner than scheduled so that she could get to a Sleater Kinney tribute show that your mom suggested to her the previous night when she was hanging out in your room with the two of you talking about how great young pussy tastes. You’ll step into your house and drop your bag on the floor loudly, causing your mom to shoot stock upright, completely naked, from the couch. Her mouth will be covered in some suspicious liquid. It’ll become clear what that liquid is when your next-door neighbor and general neighborhood-bad-girl-back-from-college Collette (real name Colleen) Mathews arches her back to get a good look at you.

“Fuuuuuck,” she’ll exhale.

“Honey, could we have a second?” your mother will ask.

You’ll nod in response and walk back out doors with your head hanging, baffled by what you just saw. You’ll be out there, staring out across the street, while the sounds of soft conversation and apologies echo from within the house. After five minutes, on the dot, Collette will emerge from your house, fully clothed, with a grin on her face.

“See you later,” she’ll say, winking at you as she saunters back to her house. You won’t notice until she’s almost at her front door that she’s holding her underwear.

Your mom will emerge a few minutes afterwards. It’ll be clear that she didn’t want to have to restrain herself in front of you from the way she’s panting. She’ll be wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt without a bra, and she’ll be glowing.

“You’re gay, aren’t you?” you’ll say before she has a chance to speak.

She’ll bite her lip in silence for a few minutes after that, licking her lips occasionally as if she was planning to speak. The two of you will be out on your porch watching traffic for a good long time. Eventually Collette will even pass by, winking at your mom, who will smile back at her. It’ll be nearing darkness when your mom finally speaks up.

“Your dad is okay with it. If that makes a difference.”

Congratulations on Realizing Your Mom is a Lesbian!