Austin Breeds Covetous, 2010

Austin Breed’s Covetous, 2010

Footnote: recognize this post? Or wanting more? This is my new blog! Due to some technical issues with the old one, I will be rblging the original MMM and CFF posts on this account, as well as continuing the future rambles there on!

Media Marvel Monday, #4:

Kitty Horrorshow’s 000000FF0000 REALLY Doesn’t Want You to Play It

Some games let you be a hero. Some of them let you be a villain. Some of them, an ultimate badass, and some of them, a Joe-Shmoe who’s way in over his head. Nevertheless, a general assumption we all hop in with, for the most part, is hopefully that the new game we’ve booted up is going to treat us as a player first, and whatever role it wants to hand over second.

Some games have a different idea in mind. Some games, in fact, seemingly don’t want to be opened in the first place. “000000FF0000” does not treat you as a player in its world, no. It treats you as an interloper.

And I’m not saying this in a “oh it’s really hard to beat! It hates the player!” kind of way. Like most of Kitty Horrorshow’s work, it’s about as difficult to progress through as any 5 minute walking simulator. The hardest part of playing this for most is actually just to start it up, if you would believe it. Let me explain.

When “000000FF0000” is downloaded onto a computer, it arrives in the form of a metaphorical onion of gibberish-titled junk files loaded within gibberish-titled junk files, meaning that you are demanded to do a kind of “find the needle in the haystack” trial/error search for the one specific executable zip that actually will let you boot the real game up. It personally took me about 15 minutes of combing through branches and layers of dead ends until I literally had to look up a guide on how to find and run this game.

That’s already a welcoming sign, I’m sure.

Once you have successfully ignored this first attempt to keep your intrusion at bay, you are greeted with a small, low res maze, an unpleasant cacophony of sound, and a very upfront message.

“I don’t want you here.”

The walls and textures of this maze brighten and darken from vivid reds to pitch grays. The barrage of visuals and sound is unrelenting, and the curious second half of this sentence is given as “-but I need you here.” Before the player finds themselves in on a platform. Surrounded in glitching reds and broken textures at every angle, an idol of some massive, bird-headed figure crouches motionless at the center. Its imposing and mysterious appearance resembles the mental imagery of a cowering, or weeping god. The entire game also has this “corrupted” feeling to it, being stylistically glitchy and never really letting up on how it seems to groan and rumble for no reason than the fact that it’s running. It sounds… painful, almost.

Garsh, what a vibe

“Shooting” the statue seems to be the only option for progression, earning a series of cries and the abrupt transportation of the player to a new kind of maze. There’s no real end or exit here. You just wander around the suspended pathways while your surroundings continue to glitch into something out of hell and more garbled, manic text cards blink over the screen. Eventually, the madness reaches its climax as grotesquely deformed, red figures begin floating ominously around the area, honing in on the player. From this point, the window abruptly closes itself and sends you back to your desktop screen (a very classic way for KHS’s games to end themselves).

Effectively, it behaves like a sort of cursed media experience you’d read about in a random creepypasta somewhere, minus the whole specter coming out of the screen or possessing the player part, thankfully. Just another short but spicy work of KHS’s that I enjoyed and I think really flies under the radar compared to her other titles. I would love to hear some further thoughts or theorizing about this head scratcher, about how it came to be or what the bird creature possibly symbolizes. But that’s the prattle for now!

Scrumptious addition!

WOW. OK. I just finished the S3 Ep2 of Moral Orel, “Innocence” and it suddenly clicked for me.

People were making the observations about how Orel seemingly just goes out of his way to interpret all of the lessons he’s given in the least charitable and most nonsensical way. And for the first good part of the show you think this is just the function of an over the top comedic bit for the formula of each episode. It’s so easy to ask how on earth a seemingly kind hearted, well meaning kid like this can be THAT devoid of the basic logical implications of what he hears, or any common moral intuition that virtually everyone has, right?

Orel’s not a stupid kid. But the entire problem with him up to the point thus far is that he legit DOES NOT in fact have that intuition we expect most people, even children to have. That knee-jerk repulsion to obviously harmful actions. That really vital sense of conscience. No, I don’t mean he’s some kind of psychopath, I mean that Orel has never had a functioning moral compass modeled to him to begin with. His ethical axioms are ALL rooted in divine command theory. To put it simply, he doesn’t believe “god is good”, he believes “good is only what god says is good”. Most Christians, hell, most religious people generally do not literally, consciously operate in this way, and usually even the ones that do are (mostly) still functionally average people, because usually they were at least consistently conditioned to believe that axioms like human well-being are what God commands. To at least a fortunate degree, human empathy and socialization usually is allowed to and even encouraged to develop under mainstream religious upbringings.

You notice the glaring difference though when you see what happens to people who are molded entirely by Divine Command Theory and then become convinced that their God’s divine command is something that doesn’t happen to line up with conventionally good ideals, like those given earlier. This is what destructive cults do. This is what makes crusades. This is what causes anti-sodomy laws and stoning people to death for eating the wrong kind of fish or not wearing the right clothes to happen.

Understand that this is the hinge that Orel’s whole sense of right and wrong up to this point swings on. What it means is that this little boy can, and will, justify or excuse any and all directions given to him so long as he trusts the adult talking to him as someone who speaks for God. This combined with his craving for approval, plus the fact that he’s also had it drilled in his head to never question or doubt his elders’ wisdom makes for a child zealot that is dangerously easy to manipulate to do ANYTHING and with fanatical determination. It is less than no additional help that the Puppingtons (and the majority of the townsfolk) have never been golden examples for healthy social modeling, as well. Like, sure, he’s getting glimmers of actual goodness in there such as the Jesus loves you so love yourself and help thy neighbors messaging, but it’s being inconsistently contradicted by and juggled alongside at same hierarchical importance as “lessons” like beat the shit out of people who make fists, kick out the brown people, and you should be terrified of the same authority you expect safety and comfort from. Why on earth is it shocking that Orel seemingly has no sense of scale or priority when it comes to the rules? The rules he’s given are subject to constant and chaotic updates and are all treated the same gravity. Follow X and you will be promised infinite reward. Disobey X and you will be met with infinite retribution. Not just even in a spiritual heaven and hell sense, but here in life too. Clay delivers the same punishment for getting hooked on crack or becoming a serial rapist that he does for the “sin” of using slang vernacular and meditating to relieve stress.

Everything that defines his life and virtues is a matter of constant anxiety and eagerness in order to appease a patriarchal tyrant that is portrayed as both ultimately benevolent and wise,

yet incredibly vindictive, sadistic, irrational, and petty.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this description can equally apply to Moralton’s perception of God and a certain alcoholic father.

No kidding when I say that Orel has so little consistent  input to actually steer him in the right direction that it’s incredibly sad, to the point where he’s extremely fortunate to actually have such an optimistic and compassionate inclination at all. It only seems ridiculous how he can’t see obvious suffering and even personal detriment as any red flags to hesitate or question an action, until you remember that he’s so been domestically broken by Clay and his church that his Pavlovian response to pain is either gratitude, mild inconvenience, or fucking masochistic euphoria.

Nonetheless, all of this only backfires on every adult in Moralton because the one thing they can’t control or account for 24/7 is exactly how he interprets what they say, even when he’s trying his best to follow their command. It’s like a twisted Amelia Bedelia situation with him that no one actually wants to deal with, even though they all (except probably Stephanie) collectively played a part in creating this monster.

Censordoll was the first one who was smart and ambitious enough to see the potential for Orel’s blind subservience to be weaponized, and of freaking course she was.

Thing is, you bet the ONLY reason she stopped was because she also lost control of him, and we all know what the consequence of that was. He unintentionally yet absolutely destroyed her in the only weak point she has, yet exactly like Clay did during the “turn the other cheek” incident, she trapped herself in a situation where she couldn’t swallow her own pride in the name of reversing the damage.

What I guess I’m explaining here is that Orel’s collection of constant shenanigans, unknowingly, yet effectively, is literally a manifestation of the community’s own complete moral bankruptcy biting them back in the ass, and possibly even a divine punishment for it, depending on how you interpret the writing. Which is a HELL of a phenomenal, subtle twist to his whole premise that doesn’t abandon the original joke/satire, but instead builds upon it and adds a chasm of depth and intention.

Hot DOG~!

shoving this into my queue cause tungler crumped my old blog/posts out of search results lmao

Out of context: This is one of the best sequences from Moral Orel

In context: This is THE most hype sequence in all of Moral Orel

Additional notes on why this “fight” is like the funniest/most satisfying thing ever:

• the actually impressive quality of the stop motion animation for this bit

• That Orel did this with literally no thought of malice or ill-will whatsoever

• It was a long ass time coming for both of those people, even though Blobs wasn’t doing anything in this particular moment lmao

• Bloberta gets thwacked around with a duster a bit, yet Clay gets gta WASTED. Oh my god look how messed up he is by the end of that beatdown. My boy was 100% going for extra credit with that spank and finisher.

• the transition from the squint™ to the boss battle music keeps me in stitches

• the canonical demonstration that Orel can absolutely BODY a full grown adult in 1v1 combat while barely breaking a sweat. Little dude’s hands are too powerful from all the praying practice and he belongs in Smash for that paddle grab alone.

• The smugly confident strut leading up to that nut shot

• Clay’s status going from inebriated apathy -> vindictive anger -> shock and confusion -> genuine shivering terror all in under a minute. Orel straight up knocked some sobriety back into him for a second there.

• “and heRE’S A LITTLE PRESENT FROM JESUS”

Bloodthirst

Indecency

Brutalism

Fucking SAVAGE

"I can fix him" not in a "I can make him into a better person" way but in a "if he was my character I would've handled his story better" way