I believe Stony Baloney offered a hint of curated wisdom the other day that delineates how anybody, not just a “Woke” type (woke = authoritarianism), can pull favor and cull foes.

#1: Call someone names until you can control them.
#2: Assume the moral high ground and talk down to people.
#3: Accuse everyone of doing what you are doing.

 

And instances in media where Christians are depicted as everything but a child of God have got to stop. Seamus Goughlin penned a knee-slapper of a cartoon to stress this fact.

 

 

So, why bring this up? Basically, I was sitting down for a couple hot beef burritos before hitting the off button on processing merchandise for my flea market booths and came upon this. When I thought about it, I knew what would happen from the start. Yet, I made the assumption that it would end within a fictitious story until I watched unto the end. Clever: the big fedora typing in the laptop makes several stupidly Redditian assumptions while pining for the goth chick adjacent to the true believer. And therefore, his head explodes. I wasn’t even playing with sound–I just watched the thing from the preview player (when you mouse over a video thumbnail on YouTube nowadays, it starts playing the video) with subtitles since the kid’s delivery is a whole wide, wide, world of ham and cheese. Yet, I was touched with the end; the two make a connection over curiosity and openness, while the chowderhead gets stuck in a loop trying to pick between the red and the white. White, obviously. A lot of red flew out, which is oddly satisfying to see on Reddit.

Anyway, the depiction of Christian characters has not been great, but I chock it up to unfamiliarity or the restrictions in media. Back in the eighties and also the nineties, Nintendo, taking cues from its offices in North America, censored tons of video games of any religious content for fear of implicating religion as baleful. Simple example: Final Fantasy for the NES featured “Clinics” instead of “Churches” where the guy inside would revive dead party members. He was also supposed to sport a neat miter for good measure.

So, the exposure to religious themes, courtesy of “not wanting any negative depictions that moralists in said camp–people who don’t even buy the games, mind you–will use to defame and deconstruct you”, is not very consistent throughout media. The kinds of people who would complain told their offspring never to associate with the industry that kept making these decisions. Those who weren’t so hardcore let them frolic around willy-nilly and make more media that either forgot about or passive-aggressively villified religion thanks to hearing the stories from inside said industry about having to walk on eggs all day.

The portrayal of any given faith, let alone Christian persuasions, is an expensive affair, especially for Christians. That’s just dumb. It almost makes sense for a cottage industry of Camerons and Caviezels to emerge and cook up the stories desired by the other brand of wingnut and followers at large without going through the standard studio structure to fund it. Almost. But that’s also dumb, so I’m putting my foot down since plantar fasciitis is a fucking bitch.

The issue with any industry or studio that recurs and incurs is having blind spots. If your DEI types’ gig is to include everyone and make them all equally miserable, that will make a handful of respectable talents take off. Most of them share a vision, while the ones who sheepishly remain behind lack one. Just to be fair, only the “E” needs to get kicked. If you accept the other two at face value, you’ll be good to go. So, what needs changing? Everyone’s lack of a real sturdy spine, that’s what. I’m going to do the unthinkable and propose a video game that delves into mysteries of faith without jerking specific examples around like redheaded stepchildren. It is set around this epoch, although with specific dates, and feature two protagonists, including a born-again Christian.

And she’s practically Lara Croft in terms of talents, including potential villainy.

Now, before you point the finger and screech, let me reiterate that this remains a positive portrayal. In one word or less, have you ever happened upon someone in a movie who was both Christian and also an action movie star BESIDES Chuck Norris? And yes, I do mean within the movie’s plot, not the thespian playing the role. Lara Croft of Tomb Raider is one harsh broad, icy and ambiguous in thought and action, sheltered by a rather consequentialist stance from the very start of the Tomb Raider series. This goes beyond a lurid marketing campaign riding on sex appeal–this babe is harsh.

Well, my proposed character happens to be, on the surface, the quintessential Hollywood born-again Christian. This means she is to be a total shrew on religious grounds, right? Instead, she is a shrew on an assortment of other grounds and that the faith is the one thing keeping her from crossing any lines that a more modest woman can’t see herself stepping back from. She finds herself drawn into a particular sort of sin that, if her stance against astrology is any indication, must be suppressed, muzzled, and even eliminated lest she be chided as a hypocrite. She is that sort of Christian. The tale, without smearing her face against the pavement at full sprint, has the chance of seeing her come out as an even better one.

Overall, the underpinnings behind her conversion, coupled with the outward frigidity and pre-conversion history of being something of a clueless reality TV show contestant stereotype but still having lucid thoughts in her head enable her to embrace the faith without making it look terrible. So, she strives to be a good and happy person who happens to do so through Jesus. The actual test of her main conviction–that being the trustworthiness of the supernatural–occurs by accident when she dons a fashionable-looking pearly porcelain masque that turns out to channel the spirit of a horrifying warlock known only as SNIX.

That’s right: I want to make an EarthBound-esque RPG based on James Rolfe’s private shame and get a shrill and twitching eldritch personification of Bible Camp to be taken by the mask’s power. It renders her more powerful, but can make her quite volatile and beyond her own control, let alone others’. It requires a very particular, specific and outright dangerous game mechanic to have her take off the mask and stop doing horrible random crap during stressful moments, namely battle. The Masque of SNIX cannot be sold or dropped and its effects manifest without “Equipping” it. The nature of the effects vary by each player character. It is stuck in this girl’s party. Having it in your inventory improves your abilities or unlocks ultimate versions thereto, but after every battle, there is a chance (decreasing with a Character’s Vibe/Will Stat) that the Masque locks onto the face and refuses to go away. There, it warps decision-making while stressed (i.e. in battle); there’s a chance it overrides your character’s intentions (desired command) and it does something different instead.

If you think that’s crazy, the other team has a Box that you literally should not open, but can be stolen from the party and then used. So, this role-playing adventure game of SNIX sports an all-ladies team-up operate under the Manga-esque notion that power can be mastered. Of course, does this mean the main gal carries around a possessed masque without realizing the dangers, that it needs exorcising and whatnot? Her initial impression of the masque is harmless, even benign, while the guy has that Box and insists on stopping the warlock once and for all, no matter who he has to kill. Your choice in protagonist (male or female) determines a lot of what goes on during the game. You can play the movies’ chief protagonist (James Rolfe, as a concoction of his bit parts like the AVGN & Board James) and lead a four-man band and operate under the Tolkeinian assumption of power needing to be tossed aside and shunned. They use the Omnimetus Clausura, the Box of All Fears capable of repelling SNIX with the visage of his own horror. The babes want to use the Masque to unravel a rather contemporary ghost story. As an aside, the origins of SNIX unfolding on an island off the coast of New Jersey (despite looking somewhat subtropical in the Mario Paint rendition) means each party gravitates to a deserted island where a fiendish black panther they call Alcatrazz stalks them from dusk to dawn.

Eventually, they lock horns as the influence of SNIX spreads beyond the confines of the mask and a secret society’s private militia attempts to wrench the box from its owner’s hands for reasons unknown. The nature of SNIX’s sorcery, not the malevolent entity himself, fuels the Masque of SNIX, of which he is not actually present inside of. The magic is difficult to pin down or even ascribe as inherently demonic. As such, that question is never answered, but it inspires different reactions from each character. The last SNIX movie James made demonstrates that SNIX does not require a mask to operate. Both parties’ assumptions about both the mask and each other are incorrect–it’s more or less a placebo effect spurring them on. The supernatural is not ruled out.

The interesting thing is that James does not consider himself very religious while the girl certainly is. The trick is that he is far too skeptical and weary. When his bad experience returns some thirty years later (it’s a period piece taking place in 2022 & ’23; the game is on an actual time limit with multiple endings possible), he has to consider the possibility of something beyond his comprehension. Meanwhile, the girl has to make peace with non-believers as well as herself, who hasn’t forgotten a horrid, traumatizing event in a murder cult’s mansion–this is how she actually first meets James ten years before the story starts. The actions performed in this “Flashback” inform the characters’ ending stats and abilities.

So, in a very real sense, the game adaptation of SNIX, since the movies borrowed elements from The Exorcist, is a treatise on society’s icy reception towards any sort of faith courtesy of the callousness of not just non-believers and cults, but followers. As a courtesy, the girl is not homophobic, but very critical of transgenderism and adultery. She isn’t stupidly ignorant of sin and narrows it down to offense against God rather than everything under the sun. James’ chief issue is actually being framed as a misogynist by social media after refusing to review Ghostbusters 2016. He had a horrible experience at an arcade that forged his “Nerds Before Birds” mantra and renders him ambivalent at best and antagonistic at worst to most women with maybe one (or, if you want the good ending) two exceptions.

Forgive me if I’m not making much sense, but I prefer a multi-sided, respectable depiction of faith at large–not just my own but all of them–and this kind of cartoon flat-out needed to be made. I hope I didn’t bore you to death with a game concept based on the most horrible series of movies that Cinemassacre has ever made. Feel free to pray for me as I wander this desert island.

Good hunting.