wepon | Link Roundup February 2016

All the cool kids are doing it.

Fashioning the Military-Entertainment Complex

In the 1990s, with the end of the cold war came an emphasis on a fiscally efficient military built on sound business practices, with military procurement interfacing seamlessly with industrial manufacturing processes. The Federal Acquisitions Streamlining Act of 1994 directed a move away from the DOD’s historical reliance on contracting with dedicated segments of the U.S. technology and industrial base. In Secretary of Defense William Perry’s newly mandated hierarchy of procurement acquisition, commercially available off-the-shelf alternatives should be considered first, while choice of a service-unique development program has lowest priority. In effect, these changes have transformed military contracting units into business organizations. In keeping with this new shift in mentality,“company”websites now routinely list their “product of the month.”

THEATERS OF WAR: THE MILITARY-ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX

During the Cold War it was customary to critique the military-industrial complex as an economic parasite separated from, but living off the free enterprise system. We conclude that the new military-entertainment complex of the 1990s has become a partner of the entertainment industry while transforming itself into the training ground for what we might consider the post-human warfare of the future.

When a Video-Game World Ends

Like books, movies, and the visual arts, video games are well acquainted with the apocalypse. Scores of them have been set in the final days of mankind; countless more ask the player to prevent them. Yet, as mere setting, the apocalypse can never be true to its name—when Mass Effect 3 ends and the galaxy has been saved/altered/destroyed, you can always boot up the series’s first act and play it all again. The finale is not the end. In the curious lexicon of games criticism, we often speak of “world-building,” yet rarely do we stop to think about its opposite. Anything made can be destroyed, yet destruction in games is rarely the destruction of games. What masterpiece of eschatological design could possibly convey the all-encompassing, crushing finality of a true apocalypse?

FLESH & TWINE: A NEW STORYTELLING PLATFORM EXPLORES GENDER HORROR WITH EACH CLICK

In a typical horror story, doubting side characters often downplay a perceived threat, leaving protagonists to battle forces on their own or face their demise with little help. “When you’re watching a horror movie, you’re always so frustrated that the other people won’t believe the main character, who is usually a woman, when she says something bad is happening or that she has a bad feeling,” Tremblay says. “With horror, your audience is already prepared to accept and believe what you are saying: Yes, something is coming for you.”

"I Love Women Who Are Being Women Wrong": Interview With ZEAL Editor And Games Writer Aevee Bee

I suppose that is harder to hide, harder to intellectualize away than my experiences with literature, and since I was mostly reading dude narratives about dudes I was also pretty safe from encountering anything articulate or interesting about gender, and when I did, I knew enough critical theory to drain the blood right out of it. I think a lot of closeted trans women seek out the cold embrace of academia to allow them to process identity theoretically without ever being forced to think about it as reality, but that could just be me and more than a few of my friends.

But you can't lie about the stuff you feel emotional about, even if that stuff is stupid.