353 – The Factory Floor
By admin on April 14th, 2016

Lil’ Ragamuffin has a hard time explaining her feelings. Of course, part of that is because urchins don’t actually experience the same emotions as humans — although QUIGGLES is comparable to the human experience of joy and THERMOS FORTITUDE is very much like suicidal ennui — nor do they actually think in language. Urchins think in blood and fire.

So unrelated, on the reccomendation of Bowlingballhead, I finally got around to playing Alice: Madness Returns. OK, no, I lied. I didn’t play it because I don’t have the patience for actually playing video games, so I did the next best thing and watched a walk-through. There are, like, a million gritty reimaginings of Alice in Wonderland out there — it’s really only second in popularity for gritty reimagings after Wizard of Oz — but this one was definitely one of the best. It’s nice that all the bizarre things happening in Alice’s Wonderland delusions are nicely connected to things happening back in Alice’s actual reality. I see too many of those HERE’S SOME RANDOM WEIRD STUFF TO SHOW THAT THE PROTAGONIST IS CRAZY THAT LOOKS COOL BUT DOESN’T HAVE ANY NEXUS AT ALL WITH THE HERO’S PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE, I AM LOOKING AT YOU 2000 JENNIFER LOPEZ STARRING VEHICLE THE CELL. But Alice: MR mostly avoids that pitfall, plus it has some very good paperdoll-style cut-scenes that really set the whole mood nicely. I think a big problem with a lot of these psychological horror fantasy stories is that they pretend to be a lot more distubing than they really are. Like, The Cell. Ohhh we’re supposed to be all freaked out because a horse got sliced up by a weird clock machine. Ok, that’s kinda gross… but what’s the point? What horrifying revelation about the character’s psyche was that supposed to symbolize? His love of slicing up horses with clock machines? That’s dumb. Whatever. Man, I’m really angry about The Cell now. But my point is that the ultimate reveals in Alice: Madness Returns actually ARE disturbing, so you feel like all the off-the-wall insanity leading up to the finale was warranted. Oh, and there are insane children in it. Which, of course, is great. I LOVE THE INSANE CHILD LEADER, SHE’S SO COOL. She doesn’t have a name, though, does she? She must have some name in Alice: Madness Returns fan fiction out there. I suppose I should look it up.

Also, Alice and Dr. Bumby totally had sex. I don’t know which one of you were arguing that they didn’t, but they totally did. It’s pretty blatant.