5 Things I Still Don’t Get About BioShock Infinite

 

I love BioShock Infinite. BioShock Infinite is one of my favorite videogames, and probably my favorite FPS of all time (maybe that means I just don’t “get” videogames, but the P is way more interesting to me than the S). That said, in any story involving parallel worlds, time travel, alternate history, quantum physics, girls whose menstruation gives them the power to control space and time, and magic potions that let you shoot birds out of your hands, there are bound to be a few things that don’t make sense. Try as I might, there are a few parts of this game I still can’t wrap my head around, and I’m not sure which of us is at fault for that.

 

1. Why does Booker respawn in his office?

We know from the Luteces’ tally board that we begin the game as the one hundred twenty-third version of Booker who has attempted to rescue Elizabeth from Columbia. The Luteces have previously recruited Bookers from 122 alternate universes to fight 122 alternate versions of Comstock, and each of those 122 attempts ended in failure; as Elizabeth says, “Songbird always stops you.” Depending on the player’s skill, it’s possible, even likely, that Booker 123 will fail as well.

The idea behind the respawn mechanic seems to be that when you die in combat and Elizabeth isn’t around to revive you, the version of Booker you were playing as actually does die. The Booker who subsequently spawns in his office is another Booker from another universe, and you continue playing as him. This is a clever way of organically integrating gameplay into the narrative, but it doesn’t seem to work quite as well as the Vita-Chambers in BioShock.

If Booker’s character is to have any kind of meaningful arc or progression (which it must, because that’s the point of the game), every version of Booker we play as throughout the game must be basically the same person, with the same history, experiences, and personality. Say Booker 123 is killed because you kept fighting when you should have taken cover to recharge your shields. When Booker 124 reenters the game through the waypoint of the office and continues from where Booker 123 left off, 124 must have done everything in the game exactly the same as 123, except for not taking cover when he should have. But since the office returns you to the moment after your previous Booker was killed, we have no control over and no way of knowing what the new one did differently.

Since you retain your previous upgrades and find all the remaining loot where you left it, it’s almost as if Booker 124 is picking up from Booker 123 in the same universe where Booker 123 left off. But the Luteces don’t bring new Bookers into the same universe where a previous Booker already failed. I mean, when we first enter Columbia as Booker 123, it’s obvious that 122 versions of him haven’t previously been there shooting up the place. Every respawn must be a new Booker entering a new Columbia

So since we don’t see how Booker 124 survives whatever killed Booker 123, how do we know that 124 did everything else the same as his predecessor? With this in mind, the narrative becomes a fragmented mess seen through the eyes of various different Bookers who didn’t necessarily make all the same decisions that you’ve watched play out under your control.

The Vita-Chambers in BioShock smoothly integrated the game’s respawn mechanic with its narrative.

I’ll admit, maybe I’m putting too much thought into what’s really just a simple gameplay mechanic. The more pertinent question may be: why the office? Booker respawns in his office, then steps through the door back into Columbia and you continue playing from there. But what is this intermediate trip to the office supposed to be? At the end of the game, we see how the Luteces first pulled Booker into Comstock’s world, and it didn’t involve him stepping through his door into a white light.

At various points in the game, when Booker loses consciousness but doesn’t die, he dreams that he’s back in his office because that’s where he was first hired to “bring us the girl and wipe away the debt.” But what is the connection between these muddled subconscious memories and the way the player takes control of new Bookers? Is there one? Is it just the hallucination of another reality-hopping Booker trying to put his scrambled brain in order? Maybe it doesn’t matter, but with so much thought put into every aspect of this game, the developers must have had a reason for this, too.

2. Why aren’t there infinite Luteces? Alternatively, why isn’t there just one? Also, what the hell?

Just to clarify, because a lot of people still don’t seem to get this: the Rosalind Lutece who appears in the game is originally from Comstock’s universe, and the Robert Lutece who appears in the game is originally from Booker’s universe. The only time Robert Lutece traveled between universes (before Comstock’s assassination attempt scattered his consciousness throughout the probability-space) was when he and Comstock took the infant Anna through a tear back to Columbia. The Luteces’ dialogue in that scene, as well as Rosalind Lutece’s voxophones about her brother’s altered memories, confirm this.

But although we know where the Luteces originally come from, it’s never adequately explained how they fit into the game’s version of the multiverse. Are the Rosalind and Robert Lutece who help us throughout the game just singular individuals from two different universes, or are they the total sum of all Luteces from across all possible universes? If the latter, why isn’t there just a single Lutece, since Rosalind and Robert are just alternate versions of the same person? If the former, is there an infinite number of other spatially displaced Luteces helping an infinite number of other Bookers, and they just never appear or are mentioned in the game?

Every Booker can’t have his own unique Luteces, because the Lutece twins who appear throughout BioShock Infinite have already recruited 122 Bookers prior to the Booker as whom we start the game. Maybe these specific Luteces are the only ones in the entire multiverse who survived Comstock’s attempt on their lives. But why these ones?

The Lutece “twins” are at the heart of many of the game’s more confusing elements.

Furthermore, the baptism after Wounded Knee is supposed to be the critical point from which all relevant timelines diverge, but Lutece had already been born by that time. In the universe where Booker rejected the baptism, Lutece was born a man, and in the universe where Booker became Comstock, Lutece was born a woman. So the timeline had already diverged, by at least one chromosome, before Booker even had the choice to be baptized. Doesn’t that mean his choice is preordained and not really a choice at all?

Let’s suppose that every universe where Booker rejects the baptism is not necessarily a universe with a male Lutece, and every universe where he accepts it doesn’t necessarily have a female Lutece. If Lutece’s sex is a variable like Elizabeth’s pendant or Booker’s choice at the coin toss, that avoids the issue of predetermination.

But this supposition doesn’t seem to mesh with the revelations at the end of the game. Unless our Robert Lutece has the combined consciousness of all Robert Luteces from across the multiverse, he isn’t the same Robert who bought Anna from Booker 123; more likely, he’s the Robert who bought her from Booker 1.

So when Elizabeth returns Booker to the night she was taken, is the Robert Lutece who absconds with her through the tear Robert 1, the same Robert who has guided us through the game, or Robert 123 (or whatever number Booker the player finishes the game on), an alternate version of the character we know? If both undertook the same actions in their respective Bookers’ pasts, is there even a meaningful distinction?

For that matter, are the details of that night even unique to whatever Booker we finish the game with, or are they a constant that played out identically in every universe? If the latter, then we arrive back at the idea that Lutece is a woman in every universe where Booker became Comstock, and a man in every universe where he didn’t. This is the real circle that needs to be broken!

While we’re on the subject, do the Luteces have the same conversation every time they recruit a new Booker? When Elizabeth takes Booker back in time to relive being pulled through a tear by the Luteces and losing his memories, their dialogue suggests that this is the first time they’ve successfully done this. Which we know it isn’t; they’ve recruited Bookers from at least 122 other universes before our Booker.

So do they just have the same conversation every time they drag a new Booker into a new Columbia, or was our Booker somehow reliving the memories of the first Booker they ever recruited, even though that never happens anywhere else? Did Elizabeth intentionally show him the first Booker’s recruitment instead of his own? If so, why?

3. Why does no one act like they’re in a parallel universe?

The Comstock who Booker drowns in the bird bath isn’t the same Comstock who stole his daughter, since Booker and Elizabeth have passed through two tears at that point and end the game in a different universe than the one in which they started. So when Elizabeth is captured, shouldn’t that universe’s Comstock wonder why he now has two Elizabeths? It’s established in the voxophones that the Elizabeth from this universe was moved to Comstock House from Monument Island before Booker (the one who was killed during the Vox Populi uprising) got there, so what happened to the original Elizabeth from that universe? Why did Comstock try to brainwash our Elizabeth instead of his own?

On that note, why does the Songbird from this universe have the same crush-damage to his eye as the first Songbird we encountered? Is Songbird somehow cracking his eye in the exact same pattern a constant in every universe? This also means that the Songbird who helps us at the end of the game and is then murdered by Elizabeth isn’t even the same Songbird who raised her. Doesn’t that somewhat mute the pathos of his betrayal and death?

Every version of Songbird encountered in BioShock Infinite is treated as the same individual, regardless of his universe of origin.

It’s like the characters don’t understand that they’ve crossed over into a different universe. Upon failing to find Daisy Fitzroy’s guns, Booker and Elizabeth travel through a tear into a world where they can complete their mission and trade Fitzroy her guns for their airship. But why would this universe’s Fitzroy uphold the bargain made by her counterpart? How do they know such a bargain even exists in this universe, or that she even has their airship?

Maybe this was done intentionally to show that the nuances of parallel worlds are beyond the ken of a thug like Booker. But by and large the game seems to treat all parallel versions of a given character as the same individual we had encountered before, in however many earlier universes. This makes sense for the linear progression of the plot, but not so much for the concept of infinite worlds with infinite possibilities.

I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better for the player to travel back to the original Columbia the game started in, maybe just before Elizabeth is captured. At least that way the final Comstock and the final Songbird we encounter and kill would be the same ones we met at the start of our adventure. Otherwise, if the game is going to treat every version of every character the same, why does it make an exception for Robert and Rosalind Lutece, and for Booker and Comstock?

4. Why are there other Bookers and Elizabeths at the field of lighthouses at the end?

How can any other versions of Booker have succeeded in their mission? They must have, because when Elizabeth becomes a time goddess and takes Booker to the metaphysical sea of doors, they see other versions of themselves exploring other lighthouses. So that means other universes’ Bookers were also successful in destroying the Siphon and giving their universes’ Elizabeth the power to rewrite time. “We swim in different oceans but land on the same shore,” Elizabeth explains, explaining nothing.

This cheapens the game’s story, which seemed to be that we were playing as the only version of Booker that finally broke the cycle, but more importantly, how does it make sense? The Luteces’ chalkboard tally and dialogue about Booker never rowing suggests that they recruited all their Bookers linearly. When one failed, they went to another universe and tried again. But since our Booker succeeded, when and why would they have recruited another Booker who also succeeded?

Was this Booker recruited by one of the mysteriously absent alternate versions of the Lutece twins? Are there an infinite number of Bookers who destroyed the Siphon and an infinite number of Bookers who failed? If so, shouldn’t Future Elizabeth’s woeful assertion that “Songbird always stops you” really have been “Songbird only stops you about 50 percent of the time”?

5. Who drowns Booker?

Who is the lead Elizabeth who drowns Booker at the end of the game? Her character model is the same as our Elizabeth, but she’s missing the pendant that’s remained the same in every scene up until Booker enters the final lighthouse. This in itself could be a simple coding oversight, but Booker seems to confirm that she isn’t who she appears to be: “I remember—wait. You’re not . . . you’re not . . . who are you?”

If she’s not our Elizabeth, why does the game seem to give her special significance, having her remain after all the other alternate Elizabeths have faded away and leaving it ambiguous as to whether she also fades? More importantly, where is our Elizabeth and why didn’t she enter the last lighthouse with Booker? If she is our Elizabeth, where is her pendant, and why does Booker seem to think she’s someone else?

Who are you supposed to be?

To me, these issues are all much more befuddling than any ambiguity over the twist ending. That said, none of them really ruins or even significantly damages the game. These kinds of problems and contradictions come up in every story that involves time travel or parallel worlds. In BioShock Infinite, at least, you have to put in a good deal of thought before you realize that not everything completely adds up. Compare this to something like Looper, which is highly enjoyable as a movie but the time travel mechanics of which make absolutely no sense and continually distract from the story being told.

Then again, maybe these aren’t even really plot holes or inconsistencies at all. Maybe they are intentional gaps in the narrative left to be filled by the player’s own imagination. I can see no other explanation for the post-credits scene, for instance, than the explanation you invent for yourself. No matter how many times you play it, BioShock Infinite will likely always be a game that raises more questions than it answers. Given the hand-holding we can expect from most major media titles, maybe that isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Why NBC's 'Community' Deserves a Second Chance

 

Real talk: season four of Community was not very good. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather watch Abed Nadir hallucinate Muppet Babies parodies or Jeff Winger hit on Caprica Six by impersonating a praying mantis creature than catch even the end credits of most of today's multi-camera comedies, but the first two seasons of Community are nearer and dearer to my heart than perhaps any show I have ever watched.

Obviously new showrunners David Guarascio and Moses Port had some big shoes to fill.

And here’s the thing: I’m willing to let them have this one. Community was one of those rare shows that put its best foot forward directly out of the gate. It’s faltered since, and it will never be that good again, but by all rights it never should have been that good to begin with. Fellow Comedy-Night-Done-Right shows The Office, 30 Rock, and Parks and Recreation debuted with weak, forgettable first seasons, only to increase their quality a thousandfold their sophomore year. From a production standpoint, season four of Community was in many ways a massive reset button being hit on the show. Dan Harmon had steered his ship into rough waters, and instead of trusting their talented but eccentric captain to bring them safely home, his investors turned on him, throwing him overboard and replacing him with two new co-captains who had never before set foot on this bridge.

For the first half of the season, they floundered, and May 9’s season finale was a disappointment on almost every level it’s still possible to be disappointed by this show. But during the five episodes in between, from “Herstory of Dance” to “Heroic Origins,” Community 2.0 started to come into its own, to recapture some of that old spark that had burned so brightly in seasons one and two. Guarascio and Port will never be Dan Harmon; their biggest mistake was trying to be. They know that now, and their ability to right their sinking ship mid-season speaks only good of what they could accomplish a year out from Harmon’s formidable umbra.

Do I suspect some miraculous turnaround, an unprecedented rise in quality to match or exceed the Harmon Era? Of course not. The show has gone on too long and lost too much to behind-the-scenes drama and politics to ever again become its ideal self. But nor am I ready to throw in the towel and be satisfied with the adventures of the Greendale 7 ending on an image of two evil doppelgangers from a parallel reality. That’s just silly. So I’m going to call a mulligan on season four; I think the new showrunners have earned that, if nothing else. After all, the first season of even Seinfeld is almost unwatchable compared to what it would eventually become.

Obviously, not everyone is going to be in favor of granting amnesty. Before Community’s renewal for a fifth season was announced, Maureen Ryan of The Huffington Post wrote an article called “‘Community’ Season Finale Should Be Its Series Finale: Why Some Shows Need To Die.” Supposedly, this was an argument in favor of Community’s cancellation due to its declining quality, but the article itself offers very little specific reasoning for this beyond the author's dislike of the season finale. Mostly it just serves as a sounding board for Ryan’s belief that some shows deserve to be forcibly euthanized. A fine topic for an opinion piece, perhaps. But why pick on Community specifically if you’re not going to make a specific argument?

The one line in particular that jumped out at me was when Ryan admits, “I was a ‘Community’ doubter until Season 3’s ‘Remedial Chaos Theory’ turned me into a full-fledged fan.” Now, “Remedial Chaos Theory” is a great episode. But if a show takes 53 episodes to catch your interest, how interested in it can you really be? Community fans are uniquely possessive of their show, a survival mechanism honed by years of schedule tampering and dwindling viewership, and my gut reaction was to dismiss Ryan as not a “true fan.” That attitude, however, is both unfair and unworthy. It’s up to the individual to define the qualifications for his or her fandom, and I would no sooner deny Maureen Ryan’s claim to be a fan of Community than I would refuse someone who only likes Return of the Jedi the right to call herself a Star Wars fan.

That said, I don’t understand the rationale of someone who appears to be a fan of only one quarter of the show at best (and a single episode at worst) deciding that the show should end because it no longer meets her personal niche of standards. There are levels of fandom, and while there’s nothing wrong with the casual fan who watches infrequently, didn’t really care about the show until season three, and even then didn’t care about it enough to go back and watch the episodes she’d missed, this is not the type of fan who is qualified to say what Community should be and when it is no longer capable of living up to that ideal.

Ryan even admits that, if Community is renewed (which it since has been), she can just stop watching it. This line of thought should have been the end of the matter. In a 2011 article where she asks fans to recommend the best episodes because she doesn’t have time to watch them all, Ryan confesses that the shows she favors “aren’t usually obsessed with meta-commentary and often aim for emotional immediacy and aesthetic realism.” She classified Community as “Has its merits but just not for me” and stopped watching halfway through the second season. She wrote a letter to NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt protesting Community’s midseason removal from the 2011-2012 schedule not because she loved the show, but because she admired how much other people loved it. And now that she has again lost interest in a show that was never really to her tastes in the first place, she’s calling for it to be canceled without even the dignity of a real finale. She can always stop watching; why should the fans who loved the show for years before it caught her interest be forced to do the same?

I say all this not to attack Ryan’s credentials as a fan or as a TV critic, but to point out the untenability of her position on Community. I don’t deny that she is, or was, a fan of the show, but it’s clear that it was never special to her. She may have enjoyed it, even loved it on occasion, but it was never hers. If it was, she wouldn’t have been so reluctant to embrace it, and so quick to cast it aside. Community fans are possessive; they support their show with such ferocity not because it’s their underdog cause of the week, but because it’s their show, just as surely as it was Dan Harmon’s. Like the Greendale 7, Community and its fans are a group of oddballs who found one another fumbling in the void, and, against all odds, came together to create something special, and to recognize something special inside each other. Fan is short for fanatic, after all. From what she’s written about the show, it seems that the strongest feeling Maureen Ryan ever had about it was that it needs to die.

In an episode from early season two, an episode which Ryan must have seen but found unremarkable, Pierce’s mother admonishes him, in a message from beyond the grave, “Life is only worth a damn because it’s short. It’s designed to be consumed, used, spent, lived, felt. We’re supposed to fill it with every mistake and miracle we can manage, and then we’re supposed to let go. I can’t force you to do that for yourself, Pierce, but you can’t force me to stay.” I don’t want Community to last forever. Despite the occasional moments of brilliance it still musters, it will never again be as special or meaningful as it once was; the magic of the Harmon Era is irrecoverable. But I want all those miracles and mistakes, and to watch the study group experience them in that special place where they found each other and invited us to become part of their community. Guarascio and Port deserve a second chance, and Community deserves more than to be shot in the back of the head, pushed into a shallow grave, and forgotten. It deserves an ending.

Six seasons and a movie sounds about right.

Its Emptiness was Absolute

Ben: Who the fuck is this Callahan guy, is this a reference to something?

Me: I think the darman poured poison sand in his ear one time.

Ben: In all honesty I've forgotten absolutely everything about this character, including why he got on that bus in the first place.

Me: Don't worry, Stephen King recaps 'Salem's Lot later in the book.

Ben: Why the fuck did I read the book then?!?

Me: Summaries can't compare to the full story!

Me: I guess you could have skipped the first four books and just read the recap at the beginning of Wolves though.

Ben: No, because then I would never have begun to nurture this burning hatred of Susannah.

Me: You fucking racist.

Ben: I don't hate black people, I just hate Stephen King's black people.

Me: What about Stephen King's black women?

Ben: I also happen to hate Stephen King's women. Susannah never even had a chance.

Ben: "He felt like a character in a silly festival play, saved at the last moment by some improbable supernatural intervention."

Me: Stephen King summarizes all of his books.

#02 The Visitor

Narrator: Rachel
Cover tagline: No one knows who they are.
Interior tagline: Nine lives are better than one….
“My Name Is...”: My name is Rachel.
Page count: 175
Publication date: June 1996 (first edition), May 2011 (re-release)

Publisher’s description:
If someone told you Earth was under a silent attack, there’s a good chance you’d think they were pretty strange. If that same person said Earth’s only means of defense depends on the actions and powers of five kids, you’d probably start to look for a quick exit. Guess what? It’s all true.

Rachel and her friends knew they were in for some pretty strange stuff from the very beginning. How often do you run into a dying alien who gives you the power to morph into any animal you touch? But that was before they knew what they would be up against. Now they know. And they know what they have to do. Before it’s too late . . .

* Okay so that summary gives absolutely no information about the plot of this book. Already I am intrigued.

* This time we open up with “My name is Rachel.” Like Jake, she won’t tell us her last name, or the name of her town, school, or state. In fact, whenever she does use a last name, she assures us that it’s a fake. Except I think she forgot to run a find and replace command before going to print because Chapman’s name is still Chapman when he appears in books not narrated by the Animorphs. Whoops.

* I said last time that Rachel was the least developed character. Since this entire book is from her point of view, we should hopefully learn a little more about her, like when Tobias challenges her to a flying race and she tells us that she usually doesn’t turn down a challenge. Unless the challenge is not leaving Jake to be killed by monsters in a construction site, right, Rachel?

* REVERSE FORESHADOWING (POSTSHADOWING?) ALERT: “Tobias was the smoothest flyer. That was partly because red-tailed hawks are natural acrobats. Partly it was because Tobias had much more practice flying than the rest of us./

“Too much practice.”

* Um why is this written like it’s a secret setting up for some reveal? We already know he’s a bird. That happened in the last book. Focus, K.A.!

* Anyway the kids are all testing out their new bird morphs that they got from Cassie’s barn. Rachel is a bald eagle, Jake is a peregrine falcon, and Marco and Cassie both morphed the same osprey. Um, why? Couldn’t one of them have been a little more original?

* They come across some teenagers drinking beer in a pickup truck who start shooting at them, as teenagers are wont to do. Rachel tells us that Tobias “has special reasons for disliking anyone who would shoot at a bird.” Can we put this dog to bed yet? SPOILER ALERT he’s a bird.

* The Animorphs decide to take revenge on these teenage creeps by circling around behind them in the forest and divebombing them out of the trees. If Rachel hits one of the trees at that speed, “[she] was Spam.” I don’t even know what kind of reference to count that as.

* They steal the teenagers’ gun and beer and Tobias almost scalps one of the kids with his talons, because if there’s anything the Animorphs hate more than alien invasions, it’s underage drinking. Chester, who you know is a creep because he has a ponytail, says, “That ain’t right. It ain’t right that no bird should take my rifle like that.” Which is possibly the greatest line in any work of young adult fiction. Despite clearly climaxing here, however, the book goes on for another 164 pages for some reason.

* Rachel dumps the rifle “about a mile out in the ocean.” Fortunately for Rachel’s attempts to disguise her location, every state in America is bordered by an ocean.

* The Animorphs return to the bell tower of an abandoned church, where they left all their clothes and shoes. “Ay, nyew donk luk so good yourself, Rachel,” Marco says, his mouth distorted by growing out of a beak. Clearly he said, “Hey, you don’t look so good yourself, Rachel,” but because we are all idiots, Rachel has to clarify this for us immediately afterward.

* Every book in the series begins with a multi-page summary of the Yeerk invasion and the Animorphs meeting Elfangor and getting the morphing power, because you never know, maybe some poor kid will want to start reading with book #54. But when Rachel gets to the part where Visser Three eats Elfangor alive, she says, “You know what? I really don’t want to talk about that. . . . You’ll have to ask Jake.” Damn you for promoting the other books in your own series, K.A. Applegate!

Star Trek references: “The steel door opened. It slid into the wall like the doors on Star Trek.”

Lord of the Rings references: “She looks like one of those solemn elves in a Tolkien book.”

’90s references: Itchy and Scratchy

Animatopoeia:
Zzzziiinnnngggg!
Zziiiinnnnngggg!
Zoom. ZOOM!
Zoom!
SAWWWAPP!
Crash!
C-R-R-R-U-N-C-H!
B-O-O-O-O-M!
Slam!

I Just Didn't Want to Be a Loser Anymore

Ben: I will give you my current page number.

Ben: OK sorry apparently they didn't bother to number the pages in the foreword.

First Comes Smiles

Ben: What comes after AMNESIA? Is it THE TALISMAN or is it WOLVES OF THE CALLA?

Me: WOLFS. Then I think you alternate between Dartower and non-Dartower.

Ben: Why does the table of contents to WOLFS use the same goofy font as the HARRY POTTER chapter titles?

Me: You're going to find out.

Ben: It seems that Stephen King is so starved for beginning-of-chapter quotes that he has been reduced to quoting his own books.

Me: Did he say something about the hand of God?

Ben: "First comes smiles, then lies. Last is gunfire." ~Roland Deschain, of Gilead

Me: These are the most important books of all time, Ben.

Ben: They're certainly the last books I will ever read, at this rate.

Me: Have you read nothing else in the last three years?

Ben: *SOB* 

Mem-o-rees

Me: You got the taste in u boy, that evil got in and it aint never a comin' out.

Ben: Did you enjoy Keyboard Ron? 

Me: Sometimes I wake up in the night and I can't move and I just see him sitting on my chest. 

Ben: Playing your face with his stick arms. 

Ben: Staring into you with those dead eyes. 

Me: Why did you have Christmas a month late? 

Ben: Uh because I had to hold off for Chinese New Year. 

Ben: Respect my heritage, you sack of shit. 

Me: China is the most evil country in the world right now. 

Me: Anyone decent is boycotting that shit. 

Ben: Lol good luck with that strategy. 

Ben: When the invasion comes I'll be sure to show them this chat log. 

Me: I've been preparing for Red Dawn all my life.
 
Ben: Oh speaking of the Dark Tower. 

Ben: J/K how about that Insomnia review. 

Me: That book was fucking boring. 

Me: I would have liked it if it was 50% shorter. 

Me: The last half was good, most of the first half was just old people and abortion.

Ben: God damn you.

Ben: The first half was the good half, the second half was just the typical Stephen King bullshit buffet. 

Me: Hahahaha. 

Me: I'm a catfish in your mother's nightgown. 

Ben: Man I hope when we finally meet the Crimson King he hasn't yet changed out of that disguise. 

Ben: I mean, the... Something King. 

Ben: Sadly I can't misremember his name anymore because I've been listening to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlNantlznCA&list=FLjxlsFYLqndkgqdPKVq95DQ a lot lately. 

Me: Good fucking song. 

Ben: Do you think there's some kind of connection between this song and Stephen King? 

Ben: Anwaya 

Ben: Playa 

Ben: == Spanish for beach. 

Ben: Where was I? 

Ben: There's a theme lurking in here. 

Ben: Which is 

Ben: that Stephen King likes to imagine really interesting premises and then drowns them in stupidity. 

Ben: But gradually. 

Ben: It sneaks up on you. 

Ben: You don't realize how stupid it is until you're all the way through. 

Ben: I really wish it took more cues from the movie. 

Me: Did you skip the chapter where Robin Williams jumps over a pile of logs? 

Ben: That's like my favorite scene. 

Ben: I think. 

Ben: It's honestly the only scene that I remember. 

Ben: So it must be my favorite. 

Me: What was the interesting premise and what was the stupidity? 

Ben: Just this old guy slowly going insane from the insomnia. 

Ben: And the potential ambiguity of whether or not all these events are just the mad, fevered dreams of a wasting mind. 

Ben: But no it was little space aliens from another dimension. 

Ben:  Sorry. 

Ben: An upper floor. 

Ben: Would have been better if it was a spider. 

Ben: There better not be a spider at the end of this series. 

Ben: I will set your books on fire. 

Me: But they needed to save the magic kid to defeat the Bulldozer King. 

Ben: I'll give you this. 

Ben: It was the best book yet written that has actually involved the Dark Tower. 

Me: This was your favorite book so far?? 

Ben: No. 

Ben: It was the only book yet written that has actually involved the Dark Tower. 

Ben: Listen you can't just call the series "The Dark Tower" and then see the Tower three times in the exact same rose dream. 

Ben: It's like if you never actually ever met Harry Potter until The Order of the Phoenix. 

Ben: Sirius falls through the mirror and then Harry walks around from behind and is like "Hi I’m Harry Potter, what did I miss?" 

Ben: "You missed the entire fucking series, you asshole." 

Ben: So in short Stephen King is like the writers of Lost in that he likes to think of potentially interesting premises and then overextend and fail to deliver. 

Ben: Except unlike the writers of Lost he never wrote the character of Daniel. 

Ben: Or Dingo. 

Ben: Or Charlie's baby. 

Ben: Anyway. 

Ben: When is DARTOWER IIX coming out? 

Me: Didn't Stephen King die yet? 

Me: What are your impressions of the Crimson Catfish as the incarnate evil of the Stephen King mythos? 

Me: How can Roland defeat him if he doesn't bring a fishhook?

Ben: "Didn't Stephen King die yet?" 

Ben: I want this on my tombstone. 

Ben: How can Roland beat him when he doesn't bring magical space aliens and unexplained old men and deus ex machina emerald golems? 

Me: Roland was in this book. 

Ben: I hope he was the unexplained old man. 

Ben: Living out his life after his quest was complete. 

Me: No the story cut to him in the desert during the first Dartower book at one point. 

Me: Do you need to reread it? 

Ben: ... 

Ben: FUCK. 

Ben: Maybe I caught that reference. 

Me: It's towards the end after Ed Deepthroat and the Caterpillar King have been vanquished. 

Ben: I guess not. 

Ben: Give me a page number. 

Me: You have the book you asshole. 

Ben: Right you dumbass how would I look up the page without the book. 

Me: 617 right before subchapter 6. 

Ben: That's a pretty shitty cameo. 

Ben: Like, omg do we really need another reminder that this book makes absolutely no sense to anyone who hasn't read the previous shoebox? 

Me: Hahahaha. 

Me: Work on your reading comprehension. 

Me: This series is all about the connections! 

Ben: Where the fuck are you, Callahan? 

Ben: WHRARYOU 

Me: Did you see BATMAN 3: DARKNIGHTER yet? 

Ben: Yeah 

Me: It was okay. 

Me: Kinda lame that Batman's career lasted like a year and a half though. 

Ben: Uh like 10 years. 

Ben: He was just a cripple for 9 of them. 

Me: He was sad for 8 years. 

Ben: He's been sad his entire life, you asshole. 

Ben: MY PARENTS ARE DEEEAAAAAAD

Ben: Remember that time I came up to you and put my gum in your hair? 

Ben: Good times. 

Me: Then spat water in my face in subzero temperatures. 

Ben: Then broke all your fingers. 

Me: Then broke Tim's spine. 

Ben: Then made sweet love to your brother. 

Ben: That's why he always so quiet around me. 

Me: Why would you lie with him? 

Ben: So that I could stew in my own... concoctions.

Me: SO BEN HOW MANY STARS DO YOU GIVE INSOMNIA? 

Ben: Ummmm. 

Ben: Eight stars. 

Ben: There is no upper end of this scale. 

Me: The sky's the limit. 

Ben: All paths lead to the Dark Tower. 

Me: Hurry and start WEREWOLVES OF THE CALLIOPE. 

Me: You have dallied too long. 

Ben: Hold on first I need to reread THE STAND to make sure that I didn't miss any crucial Dartower connexions. 

Me: Yeah Randall Munroe is going to come back with his army of Bronze-Age Ethiopians any time now. 

Ben: He's playing the long game. 

Ben: He's going to evolve those tribesmen into the master race. 

Me: Spoiler alert they will never be mentioned again.

I Hope I Won't Forget You

Me: Isn't People's Choice Awards where Rosie O'Donnell gives someone an orange blimp and then they get slime dumped on them?

Ben: No you're thinking of the Kids' Choice Awards. Kids aren't people.

Me: Rpatz/Kstew Best Kiss 5 years running.

Ben: TRAMPIRE.

Ben: How was the final installment?

Ben: Did it change the feel of the movie at all knowing that the actors really hate each other in real life?

Me: It was a transcendent theater experience, being simultaneously the best and the worst film in the series.

Ben: I heard that Lucille Ball and the lady who played Ethel actually hated each other irl.

Ben: Totally changed the feel of the show.

Me: OH MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO ME!

Ben: I know right?

Ben: Can't even bring myself to watch Lucy any more.

Me: You shit.

Me: Ask your mom if she wants 11 seasons of I Love Lucy on DVD.

Ben: I'm refusing in her absence.

Ben: Anyway you'll have to ask me about INSOMNIA after I get back from exchanging Christmas gifts.

Ben: Don't forget this time.