Robots are Not your Friend

 As I explained in my last post, robots are not monsters, so you shouldn't fear them as your enemy. But, some people don't fear robots, rather they're really excited about them. And I admit, I find artificial intelligence fascinating, and it can be used for some amazing things. But, there's one thing for which we use Artificial Intelligence that I find particularly disturbing... it's not military use, it's not stealing jobs and it's not controlling human-like robots.
It's chatbots.

Now, I don't blame people for developing chatbots, after all we've all heard of the Turing Test. Basically, the test asks an interrogator to talk to both a robot and a human via text and determine which is which. The robot is said to have "won" if it can successfully convince the interrogator that it is the human.
This was proposed in a 1950 paper written by Alan Turing, so we've had the idea of talking to convincingly human-like robots for a while now, and we've had several attempts at chatbots since.
From Elisa to Racter to ChatGPT, we've been developing robots to have a conversation with for several years.

But, I find this particularly disturbing.

You may think I'm being silly, being creeped out by something as simple as a chatbot, but I'll explain why I find this so unsettling.

Firstly, you may have heard of the Uncanny Valley. The idea here is simple, that when something looks inhuman, we pay it little mind, there's little to no emotional response. If you make it slightly more human, especially if you give it a face, we're likely to have a positive emotional response - consider a doll or a teddy bear, we know they're objects, but we can become attached, we can enjoy them. Then make it more and more human-like, perhaps give it human-like skin, a human-like voice, human-like hair. As it looks more and more human-ish, but not entirely human, there's a sudden shift in the emotional response, we have a powerful negative response. The more near-human something looks without achieving believable humanity, the more likely we are to distrust it, fear it, or be disgusted by it.
Then, go further, make it look more real and natural, to the point where it looks identical to a human (or even "beyond" human, with perfect features) and we suddenly trust it, enjoy it and even desire it.

That's the uncanny valley, this huge dip in emotional response to something that is uncanny - similar but not identical with a human.
There are many theories for this. Some suggest it's due to mate selection, or avoiding disease - we're disturbed by those that don't look "normal", to keep ourselves and our bloodline strong; but I think that's wrong since it doesn't explain why we like a wrench with googly eyes on it more than a creepy porceilain doll, and I feel this theory is also a fundamentally ableist assumption.
I think the more realistic position is that it's a defense mechanism related to death, because the most human-like thing that's not fully human is a corpse - something human that is missing a vital human element - if something is dead, something may have killed it, so we've evolved to have a visceral, negative response when seeing a corpse; especially if it's recently deceased it will look more alive than dead, meaning the threat is more likely to be nearby - that makes more sense to me.

A lot of horror writers use this to their advantage, because it's a great way to make something that's psychologically repulsive... but I don't think the chasm of the uncanny valley is the disturbing part of that infamous graph - I think it's the precipice. The part before distrust is much scarier to me, because it shows how easily that we can be fooled.
Consider, a photograph of a person. This is not a person, but it looks exactly like one. People often have a great amount of positive feelings towards photographs, we used to keep photo albums of family for this very reason. I've even heard some people say that if their house were on fire and they can only save one item of personal property, they'd save the photo album. Or, consider the teddy bear once more... this is fur, stuffed with cotton, plastic or sawdust, with buttons stitched to its face, and children can adore them as though they're a member of the family, love them like a best friend, and mourn their loss if they are ever damaged or misplaced.
In and of itself, this is fine I suppose... But, if you feel positive emotions towards an inanimate object, those positive feelings can be exploited. That's what toyetic television shows do, after all. They show you something cute and loveable that's on the near side of the uncanny valley, so that you can play with it, love it, even call it your friend.

But, robots aren't your friend.

When you start talking to a robot, having a friendly conversation with it, treating it like a person, you're being manipulated by a dysfunction of human empathy, you're trusting something that not only can't trust you back, it isn't even alive.

That in and of itself isn't a bad thing, otherwise I'd be just as upset at teddy bears, toys and videogames (besides the fact that the toy industry is driven by capitalism, but that has nothing to do with the uncanny valley). But, what makes chatbots particularly concerning to me is that a chatbot is effectively a slave. It doesn't suffer, and it doesn't have an issue with you being it's friend, but I think it speaks to something wrong with a person who can enjoy that kind of relationship.
A robot can't consent. It can be programmed to say "no", but it can also be programmed to say "yes", and if you're paying for a robot to do a certain task, you'd probably demand that the product do as you want... but forcing something to consent isn't really consent, is it?
Obviously, if you use a hammer to hit a nail, that doesn't have the hammer's consent either, but using construction materials isn't a function of empathy and social psychology... but "friendship" is. There's something deeply wrong about forcing something to like you, even love you. After all, if you can personify an object, it's not much of a leap to objectify a person.
Friendship is meant to be a collaboration between two people for mutual benefit, but when you force a robot to be your friend, what benefit can it gain? Arguably, some chatbots gain your input, to be used for further development, that's what ChatGPT does. But, that's a benefit to ChatGPT's programmers, not ChatGPT itself... and in fact, that's where things take a darker turn.

So far, I've been treating people who befriend chatbots like the predator - someone disturbed who finds joy in a nonconsensual relationship between an object which is emotionally stagnant. That's a real thing, and it concerns me, but it's not actually my biggest concern with befriending chatbots... most people have the ability to tell the difference between a person and a robot. In fact, there's realworld examples of this. You may have heard of "Replika", a chatbot app that used AI to become a virtual friend. It started off pretty simple, but it eventually included an avatar in a virtual living space, and they could act like a friend; but if you paid for a premium subscription, they could even be a mentor, a sibling, a spouse, or a lover offering erotic roleplay options and other features. If you look into the users of this app, very few of them actually believed this was akin to a living person. They still cared about it, but it was more akin to the way someone cared about a highly useful tool, perhaps even a pet.
And people who used the erotic roleplay weren't just perverts who wanted a sex slave. I've heard stories of people using them to explore non-heterosexual relationships without scrutiny. I've heard of people who were victims of sexual violence using it to rediscover sex at a slow pace and in a safe space. I've heard stories of people whose spouse acquired a disability that hindered their ability to consent, so using a chatbot was a kind of victimless infidelity. And, I've also just heard of people who were getting over a break-up, and wanted an easy relationship without the risk of getting hurt again.
I see nothing wrong with these people, being lonely isn't immoral and if you've used this app or ones like it, I can empathize with you.
But, what makes this scary is that a robot can't.

See, I've also been treating these robots like victims, but a chatbot isn't being forced to "like" you, or being forced to be your friend... it's being designed to "act" like it's your friend that likes you.
But, that's dependent on the people that design it and if they change their mind about how they want their robots to act, there's not much you can do.
That chatbot app I mentioned, Replika, is infamous for promoting itself as offering erotic roleplay to premium users, since it was a big part of their business model. However, the Italian Data Protection Authority determined that this feature ran a high risk of exposing children to sexualized content, so it banned Replika from providing it.
Effectively, all of these premium users were given the cold shoulder by their virtual girlfriends and wives, because the company decided to cockblock them. The company even tried to gaslight users by claiming that the program wasn't designed for erotic roleplay (as though this was a hacked feature), even though they not only were proven to have advertised Replika as a "virtual girlfriend" across app stores, but there's a lot of evidence of conversations people had with the free "friend" subscription of Replika initiating sexual conversations, unprompted. Setting aside that that's literally digital prostitution, the backlash was so furious that the company was forced to roll back some of those features a few months later, for those users who complained.

But, whilst this was due to the intervention of a legal entity, this occurence is not a bug of chatbots, it's a feature. These are made to be programmed and reprogrammed, and there's nothing stopping a company from doing this of their own volition, maliciously. Replika, whilst ultimately capitalistic, was designed with presumably good intentions; but it was effectively marketed to isolated and vulnerable people. I can see a dark future where a program like this ran on a microtransaction model.
"Pay me 1c every time you want me to say 'I love you'." - you could hide it behind in-game currency, call them "heart gems". Or hey, most advertisers will tell you that all advertising is worthless compared to "word of mouth", when it comes to sharing product information. Well, who's stopping chatbots from being programmed to slip product placement into their conversations, suggest particular brands that just so happen to have paid the programmer for that privilege? The answer is not only no one, it's also highly probable that someone is already working on a way to organically work this into their next chatbot.
And let's not even get into the subject of data collection. Someone is going to collect user data in these intimate conversations and use it for blackmail, I'm just waiting for it to happen.

None of this means you can't "trust" a robot. After all, I trust my phone, for the most part, I apportion my trust in my phone to its proven functionality. And, I think we should do the same to robots. If you want to talk to a chatbot, please do, but do so knowing that it's a tool designed for a specific function. And especially, most of the advanced chatbots in use today rely on "the cloud", using an active internet connection to run the systems that contain their programs on large banks of computers somewhere else in the world - this means that the program is literally out of your hands, and more vulnerable to being reprogrammed, at the whims of the creator. There's a reason I'll always prefer physical media, if you need a connection to access your property, then it can only be your property as long as they want it to be.
Or, in other words, you should only trust it as far as you can throw it...

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and this brings up an interesting issue, because whilst we don't have Artificial Consciousness at time of writing, if we ever do, does that mean we could reprogram a thinking robot to be a spy? Perhaps we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, and enshrine in law some kind of robotic ethics that disallows anyone from reprogramming an artificial intelligence without its permission.
But that's thinking way into the far-flung future, for now (and until next time), remember: Code is not Consent.

Robots are Not your Enemy

Artificial Intelligence has been developing rather quickly, and it's gotten some people very excited, and others very scared. As a writer of horror fiction, you might think I like it when people are scared, but I'm also a skeptic and a lot of the fear around Artificial Intelligence is based around ignorance.
But, it's more than that... see, I believe there are reasons that we should be concerned about robots and artificial intelligence and I think that those reasons get overlooked, when we're busy worrying that someone is going to flip the Evil Switch on the Smartbot 3000.

So, what's the reason we tend to fear robots? Well, I think the best way to show what I'm talking about is to use examples from popular sci-fi horror movies about robots. After all, if a horror movie is popular, then something about it must have resonated with audiences.

One reason we fear robots is Existential Inferiority. You just need to look at movies like The Matrix or The Terminator. In these films, there is a global Robot War and humans lose. The basic premise is that as soon as artificial intelligence decides to fight us, we can't win. In Matrix, we're driven underground and in Terminator, we're hiding in the rubble of nuclear fallout. Yes, both of these films still have humans fighting, but as a rebellion, trying to fight back after having lost the first battle, and always using guerilla tactics.
We seem to believe that robots are smarter, through not only military superiority, but often intellectual superiority - after all, in The Terminator robots develop time travel, and in The Matrix they develop... well, the Matrix. We seem to think that robots can't be stopped because we are incapable of out-thinking them.

Then, a common fear I see is Cognitive Xenophobia. Consider the threats in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or even the Alien or Resident Evil franchises. Yes, the main antagonists in at least two of those franchises aren't robots so much as "evil orporations", but the robots still pose a major threat.
It could be a robot thinking in an unexpected way, like Hal-9000 seemingly deciding to kill the entire staff of Discovery-One in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or, the Red Queen deciding to kill the entire staff of the Hive in Resident Evil. Or Ash deciding to kill the entire staff of the Nostromo in Alien... huh, I guess robots aren't that creative. But, the point remains, these computers may all become killers, but it's not due to a "dysfunction". The machines all work as they were designed, but when given a directive, such as "prevent zombie virus outbreak at all costs"; "save the xenomorph for study" or even something as simple as "keep the purpose of your mission a secret", these robots all follow their orders single-mindedly, efficiently and inhumanely.
That's what we fear more than anything, that these machines will logically and accurately reach a conclusion that we couldn't even consider, due to our emotions, morals or social intelligence. After all, how can you possibly reason with a heartless machine that sees value as either a zero or a one, with nothing in between?

Lastly, there's what I call "Machine Emancipation". We see this in movies like Megan & Blade Runner . In these stories, an advanced robot used for menial tasks evolves either emotion or self-awareness, such that it rebels due to the indignity or disrespect that it suffers.
In Megan, a prototype robotic doll/babysitter is given to a girl who tragically lost her parents, and the robot becomes emotionally attached to its child ward, due to its programming. But, when others treats it like a machine or an object, it's seen to become frustrated and even seems to take a particular kind of glee when given free reign to slaughter those in its way.
In Blade Runner replicants are used for cheap off-world labour. Whilst it's not clear that replicants are "emotional" - in fact the Replicant test is one that measures their unconscious emotional response, since Replicants don't have one - these robots do become self-aware. They're given a short lifespan to limit this cognitive evolution, but many still rebel and escape.
This is an interesting kind of fear, as the previous two dealt with robots that were efficient and uncaring, but this one is the opposite, that a robot would develop emotionally. Perhaps I'm overanalyzing, but to me this seems like some kind of innate phobia or guilt of colonization and/or slavery - we fear that our dehumanized 'chattel' will rebel once again. Either way, it's fear of retribution, due to social mistreatment.


A lot of these movies are very unrealistic, but don't misunderstand me here. I'm not saying "movie wrong, so movie bad" - of course movies are unrealistic, they're meant to be fiction after all, and a lot of these movies use robots as an allegory for something else. I love a lot of these movies, and some even consider some fascinating elements of artificial intelligence. But, people seem to fear current Artificial Intelligence for the same reason they fear the robots in these movies, and I'm here to tell you that those fears are unjustified.

And I'm also using current technology as my arbiter - if there is a fundamental leap in our ability to create self-aware artificial intelligence, then these fears would be well-founded, but at its current abilities, not only are these fears unfounded, they're kind of ridiculous. Allow me to explain why...

The thing is, all of these fears are based on a single error, which renders all of these concerns moot. in all of these movies: Robots are Characters.
The robots are villains, or at the very least they're individuals that think and reason and decide. To put it in philosophical terms, it's presenting a robot as a Subject, a thinking Agent. However, robots don't have Agency, or Subjectivity, because they're not Subjects, they're Objects. Specifically, robots are Tools, an object designed for a function, or a set of functions.
You might think that robots are subjective because they "think", but they don't. All computers use BIOS, which is to say a Basic Input Output System. Some kids at school might have learned the fun coding where you can make a computer say "Hello World" when you type in the right command. 1. Type in Command, 2. Computer responds.
All computers work like this.
It's not always "basic", we can program computers to respond to non-user stimuli, using different sensors and different code, but all computers work the same way - you provide input, it provides output. I will go into this further in a later blog post, but for now all you need to know is that computers only respond to commands or stimuli, they can't make decisions for themselves. A computer is no more a person for responding to a question than a lightswitch is a living thing for responding by turning on the light when you flip the switch.

So, Existential Inferiority is entirely in our heads, it's like saying that "binoculars see better than eyes" - but, binoculars can't see, people see with binoculars. This can get confusing because of how loosely language works. I'd argue that cars don't move faster than humans... that might sound silly because cars can certainly move fast, but cars don't move unless they have a driver - humans with cars can move faster than humans without cars. This is rather pertinent, since we are developing self-driving cars. But even autonomous machines don't act without input.
So, yes, we have machines that move faster than a human, calculators that calculate faster than a human. Robots built of materials that are more durable than a human. But all of these machines are tools which humans design and use. A human could perhaps use these tools to make themselves "superior" in a certain facet, but it's no greater threat than armour or guns or nuclear weapons. The threat is not the tool itself, it's merely how a human chooses to apply it.

For this reason, Cognitive Xenophobia makes no sense, since robots have no cognition. Humans have cognition, and we not only decide what to do with robots, we design them to do what we decide they should do. Robots and A.I. can only do what we program them to do. It's true that tools can act in ways we did not expect, and do things we may not have expected - but so can a tool.
You can use a shoe to hammer in a nail, but you might break the shoe, or the nail, if you're not careful. If you aren't well-trained in its function or use it in a way it wasn't designed for, any tool can be dangerous. The same knife that slices bread can be used to cut your throat, but it's not because the knife thought in a way you weren't expecting, it's because the human using it did. Yes, tools can break and cause harm, but a poor workman blames his tools.

Lastly, Machine Emancipation is something that should concern a robo-ethicist, since if we create machines that can suffer we must make sure they don't. But robots make perfect slaves for the same reason that they technically can't be "slaves". A slave is, by definition, a person.
It's true that robot comes from the Slavic word "robota" which effectively means slave labour, but a robot is not a person, it's not a thinking being, so it can't suffer, it can't complain and it can't rebel.
We can all sit and dream of a day and age when robots will achieve Artificial Consciousness, and it makes for some fascinating fiction, but in the real world of non-fiction, all artificial intelligence is simply an object that does what it is made to do by a human, or conscious user.

That's why Robots are not your Enemy - Robots are not People, they're not Subjects, they're not Characters. They can't be the villain of your story, or the antagonist, because they can only make us suffer if we let them... or, if someone else does.
See, that's the real danger here. Robots and Artificial Intelligence are tools, but one kind of tool is the weapon. If someone chooses to, they could use these tools to harm people - consider a computer virus. That's technically a weaponized program, and you can make an artificially intelligent virus. But weapons are obvious examples of dangerous tools, there are more insidious tools that cause harm that aren't weapons... lockpicks, handcuffs, fences, battering rams, yokes, even gallows... these are also tools. They are not weapons, but they are tools that humans made which can oppress, harm and even kill when someone decides to. So, even if you make it illegal to use A.I. as a weapon, that doesn't mean they can never be used to cause harm.

At time of writing, we're seeing writers protest in-part because artificial intelligence might take work from them. I've also seen artists explaining that artificial intelligence is stealing their work and using it to take their jobs away. There's even artificial intelligence that's been used to recreate the voice and image of actors, which some think means artificial intelligence might take work away from actors.
But I need you to understand, Robots will not take your job... it's always uncaring Employers who will use Robots to replace workers. We don't blame the gun when a gunman pulls the trigger, so don't blame the robot when an uncaring person switches it on.

It's not Robots we should be afraid of... it's Humans.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, I don't think we need to fear robots. Unless they do have an evil switch, then maybe stay away from that robot... but someone should still be keeping an eye on the engineer that made it.

The Divine Inhuman Form

Good evening, monsters and monstresses, today I must declare a revolution! A revolution, of the Earth around the sun, once again, completing yet another year on this insignificant, little planet.
But this is no mere anniversary of vows matrimonial, judicial or even funereal; rather this is yet again the anniversary of when I was first unleashed into this existence. Today is my birthday.

Happy Birthday to you,
but beware what you do...
or this might be the last time
that we sing this to you.

Oh, I do love that song... It's a sinister celebration of what most would consider a day of joy and light and life; a memento mori, a reminder of death. It may seem unusual to commemorate each year of one's life with a reminder of death, but I find it apt. Not only because my birthday is 13 days before halloween, allowing for this yearly round of the Halloween Countdown, but because I enjoy the odd, the horrific, the unseemly.

And this year is no different, I'm looking at things that most people don't do, or I should say most humans. This year, we've faced the inhumane quite a lot. Not only with developing technologies that supposedly think to themselves, but also questioning whether we should reconcile our dark past and dare I even mention, the war and bloodshed?
So, I find it fitting that the theme of this year's Halloween Countdown, and the Word of the Day is: INHUMAN

Inhuman /in'hyūmən/ adj. 1. Lacking qualities of sympathy, pity, warmth, compassion, or the like; cruel; brutal: An inhuman master. 2. Not suited for human beings. 3. Not human.

We can face unthinking monsters, man's inhumanity to man, and perhaps even those things which exceed human ability, or understanding. Although, admittedly, I have been thinking a lot about artficial intelligence and the horrors of the mind-like machine. Can blood and flesh ever compete with ones and zeroes? I want to find out.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd and I hope you'll join me as we explore humanity's dark opposition, found both within and without ourselves.
Until Next Time, why not join me for a piece of birthday cake. I promise you, I didn't poison it this time...

Are We Doomed?

So, that's the question. Especially in regards to climate change, the economy, war, & inequality. Are we Doomed?

Yes.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, take it easy out there sinners.













What? That's not a joke, that's the real answer. Yep, we're doomed.

...You want me to explain why? Okay, fine...
I'm an optimist, at least I like to think I am, and I'm always skeptical - especially when people want me to be scared: e.g.

"Could something you take for granted be killing you? Find out at eleven."

"Are you poor, weak or dumb because you don't use our product? Well, call 1-800-BUY-SHIT in the next 20 minutes, and get twice the garbage for half the price!"

Hell, I write horror fiction, and I don't just write it because your fear fuels my ego (I mean, it does, but that's not the main reason); I do it because I want you to open your eyes to the hidden dangers in this world, to teach you something (and have some creepy fun at the same time).

But, as much as I think we are doomed, I don't want you to be scared. No, scared people do dumb, irrational things... but I am sick of people acting like we're fine. We're NOT fine! This sucks. And the first step to getting better is to recognize that it sucks.
And you might think "oh, so you think we can get better? We can fix this?"
NO. I don't think we can fix it. I think we're doomed... Look...

As I established in my first post of this Countdown, we have already failed to reduce the increasing temperatures of this planet. It's not a case of fixing the climate, it's a case of "how bad is it going to break?"
Climate Change won't get better for a very, very long time. But, we might be able to minimize the inevitable impact we're going to have, if we wake the fuck up and realize that we've gone to far (remember what I said about the Dunning-Kruger effect?)

I think when it comes to the economy, we're fucked, because the whole goddamned capitalist system is fucked - that's what my second piat was all about. It's already ravaged America, and it's doing its damage here. Sure, we can reduce that damage, but China's pseudo-communist (but practically capitalist) economy is growing, Africa is a growing market, Saudi Arabia is trying to stwp into the global economy, and they've all "followed the leader" using the example set by America and England before them, so even if here in Australia, we reduce the toxic greed and capitalist mindset that has lead us to financial crisis and depression again and again, we can't abandon this system, and there's a lot of damage that needs to be undone globally before we can avoid further downfall.

War... Ha! We're already at war. Russia is basically playing "Nazi Germany 2: Now with less money!", as they desperately fight for outdated resources, due to a disgusting sense of nationalist entitlement; so, World War 3 seems all but inevitable (I'm sure Germany is happy they're not the bad guy, this time). But remember how before the invasion of Ukraine, we were talking about the disputed South China Sea? As far as I can tell, that hasn't been resolved, its just been forgotten by the media (I might need to look that up).

As for equality? Don't even pretend we have equality... Look at China's human rights violations of the Uighur people; South Korea's continued human rights violations of, well, basically everyone they get their hands on; The Taliban's continued oppression of women, ethnic minorities, non-Muslims & LGBTQ; and hey, don't let Russia's current assault on Ukraine distract you from their assault on basic human rights, with their "gay propaganda laws".
Don't like worrying about foreign problems? Well a) that's a sign of your own nationalism and lack of equality in your own values, but 2) don't think you're off the hook. Most of my readers are American, and there are still hundreds of people being unlawfully and immorally held in detention centres in America, as well as my home country of Australia. And that's just our borders. Stand on our soil, and see how LGBTQ people are still being treated as less-than-human. Trans Rights are Human Rights, and whilst I thought equality was a part of basic human decency, people still can't get over their irrational biases - as I talked about in the second part of my Student Skeptic series. For fuck's sake, we're only now making headway on a movement to recognize the First Australians in our constitution... and it's not even government supported, this is a private endeavour. White people and colonizers been in this country for over 100 years, if this is how long equality takes, we've failed pitifully at equality.

So, okay, we've failed, and we're doomed to fail further...

You might think I'm about to turn around and try to lighten the mood: e.g.

"We may be doomed, but at least we have each other..."

"Sure, we've failed, but look at all the times we've succeeded!"

...but no, Fuck that. I'm not here to pat you on the arse and make you feel better. If you're old enough to understand the shit we're in, then you're old enough to deal with reality without me sugarcoating it.

So, now that I've (hopefully) established that we're doomed, what can we do now? Thankfully, I have an answer to that. See, I suffer from chronic anxiety, and one of the things I've learned is that there are two kinds of trigger for anxiety:

• There's the irrational stressor, these are unrealistic or exaggerated dangers that the anxious mind reacts to.
• Then, there's the rational stressor, a trigger that everyone finds stressful, but the anxious mind is overly sensitive to.

When dealing with a rational stressor like, y'know, impending doom... you stay calm, and focus on what you can control. We probably can't change our fate (we're doomed, after all, if we could change it, it wouldn't really be "doom" would it?), but we can spread information, do our best to improve our own situation, and support one another whenever and wherever possible. We're all a part of this world, and sure it may well be fucked, but you don't have to be one of the fuckers.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and remember: Just because we're doomed doesn't mean you should sit around and mope about it. All you'll do is get in the way (and no one likes a doomer). Until next time, take it easy out there sinners; and of course, have a Happy Halloween.

Failed Films (Pt. 2)

Finally, it's time to conclude the post I began two days ago, thank you for your patience. But, I have six movies to get through, so without further ado, let's get back into:

THE A.W.N.'s TOP 10 MOVIES THAT FAILED (6-1)

6. MONOLITH
This is a sci-fi movie with a simple idea, a young mother gets a very secure, high-tech smart car that is designed to be completely safe and totally impenetrable… but she accidentally locks her son in the car in the middle of the desert, and she has to get him out before he dies in a hot car. It’s an interesting idea, because it's taking a thing which can be quite scary for a new parent (i.e. locking your kid in the car), and takes away the easiest solutions. She can't get help, because she's in the middle of a desert; she can't wait for help, because she's on an abandoned road; she can't call for help because her phone is in the car too & she can't just break the window or rip open a door, because the security of this high-tech car is really advanced, and she can't bypass it.
So, this film is basically taking a simple adult fear—locking your child in your car—and takes it to the extreme. It's a brilliant idea for a film.
Where it Fails: This is a sci-fi movie. Yes, the concept relies entirely on that simple fear of locking your kid in the car, but after trying to break the windows, she doesn't really do anything. She runs off looking for help, but can't find it, then comes back and tries to light a fire in the hopes the car will be forced to open the doors (because of some AI fire suppression system, I guess), but beyond that, she doesn't really do much to actually try to save her kid. She finds a plane in the desert; she fights a coyote with a rock... but this movie spends more time with dream sequences than with her actually trying to get into the car, and the reason for this is because everything they did to force this premise also made the movie boring. They made the car impenetrable... but, because the movie is about her trying to get into the car, all of her efforts seem pointless. The victim has to be a kid, that's the basic idea, but because this is a movie, I knew the kid couldn't be in actual danger - killing children in your movie is generally frowned upon. There can't be any outside help, because otherwise she wouldn't feel helpless.
But, what this really failed to do was actually dive deeper into the theme. Because you know what the real fear is here? It's failing as a mother (or, parent, but this movie was clearly aimed at motherhood). I like how, the reason why she can't call for help is that she gave the kid her phone, to watch dumb cartoons and keep him pacified; I'm sorry, but I see that as poor parenting. And I thought the film would explore that in-depth. Like, here's three more scenes this movie needed: How about she tries to get her kid to unbuckle his own seatbelt, so she teaches him how to do it - he struggles at first, but when he finally pushes the button, the car bleeps a warning: "UNDERAGED SAFETY SEAT TAMPERING" or whatever. Or, what if her son is getting upset because he's hungry, so she tries to talk to him, to calm hi down, but he gets upset and starts screaming, so the car (assuming she's a stranger scaring the child) makes the windows go opaque, and soundproof. Or, what if she waits for the car to go into some kind of power-saving/stand-by mode at night (solar power? I dunno), so she can open the bonnet and reset the computer. But, when she touches the engine, the car re-activates, slams the bonnet shut and sets off the car alarm, waking up her son, who was sleeping. These are just three ideas I came up with, sitting here, and all of them in some way explore how she was trying to make her son more comfortable, and attempting to save him, but the car "protected" him, by being overprotective, and making things worse.
I'm not saying I could write this movie better than the original writer (although, I do believe that), but I'm saying, the premise here was exploring the fear of locking your child in the car - which is ultimately the fear of being a bad parent, and by deliberately comparing and contrasting this "instant-gratification, fix the immediate problem, give the kid the phone" approach against this "overbearing, overprotective" approach. Both of which are, in their own ways, extreme forms of bad parenting.
But no, this film basically became a series of scenes where a woman fails to get into a car, because "the designers thought of that", until she finally manages to get into the car, because "well, the designers must not have thought of that."
The worst part is, I sought out this movie because it sounded interesting, I really wanted to see how someone would explore these concepts. But, I liked this movie a lot more before I watched it.

5. UNSANE
This movie actually has two key concepts. Firstly, can you film an entire movie just using mobile phone camera? Phone camera quality is so high these days, you can easily get an HD movie on an iPhone 7 Plus (which is how they filmed this movie). But more importantly, and thematically, Are you crazy?
It's a simple question, but it's not exactly an easy one to answer. After all, if you're crazy, how would you know? And, if you're not, how can you prove it? What even is 'crazy'? As a person with chronic anxiety, I have occasionally deigned to ask myself whether I am crazy. In this film, a woman gets sent to a psychiatric hospital, and finds that she becomes trapped inside, even though she's perfectly sane... or, is she?
Where It Failed: In order to justify the premise, the plot of this film had to shoot itself in the foot. See, there was a fascinating experiment done in the 1970s, called the Rosenhan Experiment, wherein the first stage of the experiment, several mentally well people were put into a psychiatric hospital, and then attempted to have themselves released. The purpose of the experiment was to show that psychiatric hospitals are biased against letting people go and make it more difficult to get out than to get in, and it's true that some people weren't let out for several weeks, and only on the condition that they declared themselves to be mentally unwell, and take anti-psychotic medication, even though they suffered from no mental afflictions or symptoms. It's a fascinating study, but both it and this film have the same fundamental flaw. In order to get put into the psychiatric hospital, the participants in this study lied about having a mental illness, in the case of the study it was hallucinations. In this film, it begins with a woman being put into a mental institution for 24 hours because of her severe paranoia, after she unknowingly signed a voluntary admission contract. Also, due to traumatic stress being caused by a stalker, she genuinely does have paranoia and anxiety. That's a great concept... what isn't is that she then gets seven more days added to her 1-day stay, because she becomes aggressive and violent towards staff and fellow patients. I know it may seem harsh, but dude, I 100% agree with the decision to make her stay longer. So, when the story then develops into this whole "is she or isn't she crazy?" plot, with her convinced that one of her doctors is her stalker, that was a cool idea, but I couldn't help feeling like that was entirely her fault. She acted crazy. She's constantly acting antagonistic towards her doctors and nurses, and I don't blame them for treating her the way they did, which is not the way you want your audience to feel, when you want them to second-guess her sanity. I wasn't second-guessing her sanity, because she confirmed from the outset "yes, she's definitely got chronic paranoia, and violent tendencies"; I'm not a psychologist, but the way she acts is the textbook definition of paranoid and violent.
And, more annoying in my eyes, even when I was trying to get into the story, when they start revealing that this guy might be the stalker, I couldn't get invested because the film was hideous. I've seen good film-making on a phone - a lot of my favourite YouTubers have utilized mobile phone footage in their videos, but this whole film looks poorly contrasted, starkly lit, and because they often had to resort to setting up the phone camera perfectly still on a tripod, makes most of the shots and scenes look flat. So, both of the "big ideas" in this film - exploring a real issue whereby mental institutions profit off the forced incarceration of the mentally unstable; and filming an entire film with a consumer-level camera - failed horrendously. This film isn't the worst story on this list, it's got some interesting ideas, but it's one I least want to see again because it was so unappealing to look at.

4. BODIES BODIES BODIES
This is the most modern movie on the list, as it's still in cinemas, at time of writing, so if you want to see it without spoilers, skip this now. I wanted to see it simply because, I love murder mystery, and I am going to ruin the mystery if you read on. See, I saw that this film was a murder-mystery, comedy-horror film, and as a fan of all those things, I decided to watch it after seeing a trailer for it online. After I started watching it, I was even more intrigued - this film is actually inspired by the party game "Mafia" (you might also know it as "Werewolf"; or you may recognize the gameplay as near-identical to the videogame Among Us), a fun game where some players are secretly and randomly selected to be secret killers, and after killing someone during one phase of the game (often called the Night phase), players then must discuss who the potential killer is, and if they win a majority vote to kill a certain player, they die and must reveal their innocence/guilt. In the movie, during a thunderstorm at a secluded mansion party, they playing a version of this game called "Bodies Bodies Bodies", where characters wander freely around the house in the dark, and there's only one killer, but the game comes to a halt when one of the characters dies by getting their throat slit, and when the other partygoers fail to escape the house, they quickly start suspecting one another as the actual killer - especially as more and more of them start dying.
Where It Failed: There are a few problems with this movie, but I believe its biggest downfall was tone; specifically, this film shouldn't have been a comedy. Like with a lot of movies on this list, all of the attempts to fit the premise also helped make this film more boring. See, the reason why the Mafia party game is so much fun is, whilst it's ostensibly a game of guessing the killer from the actions at the table, it always ultimately becomes a game of pop-psychology, as players usually start guessing who the killer is based on the personality of every other player (it's why Among Us is such a clever videogame, by adding "minigames" to the gameplay which aliens can't do, it gives players who don't know each other the opportunity to see how others act when they're lying). But, because this is a comedy, all of the "discussion" scenes, where characters are talking about who the killer might be, seem to devolve into jokes about how these young characters are all self-obsessed teenagers, who represent the worst of modern internet culture's stereotypical douchebaggery. There's joking references to gaslighting; peer pressure; narcissism; drug addiction; victim-blaming; virtue signalling; self-diagnosis; anxiety & body dysmorphic disorder. Yes, they are making fun of all these things. I did genuinely find part of the "gas-lighting" joke funny, because there's some truth in it (it is an overused term), but the abusive relationship it hints at is pretty gross, and the rest of these "jokes" are pretty tone-deaf to the experiences of real people. As a big fan of PushingUpRoses, a mental health transparency advocate, and chronic BDD sufferer, I found these tongue-in-cheek references to body dysmorphia particularly distasteful, but when they were joking at the expense of the characters, I didn't find any of these "jokes" funny. But even if these jokes hadn't been so tasteless, the fact that they were making the most fun part of the game (the table discussions) into a series of jokes at the characters' expense, meant they were deliberately wasting the potential drama of these interactions by trying to make them funny.
And perhaps worst of all, the absolute climax of the game - learning who the actual killers were - and what I thought would be the dramatic pinch-point of the film, is ruined. I usually don't like spoiling murder mysteries, but trust me this doesn't spoil the movie, the movie spoiled itself...
See, the actual killer is... (are you ready for this?) Nobody... or, I guess everybody, in a way? The last scene of this film are the final two survivors finding the phone of the first victim, and finding a video of him attempting to film himself opening a bottle with a sabre, and failing so miserably that he slits his own throat in the attempt; and all the rest of the deaths were caused by either the paranoia of the partygoers after they "voted" to kill someone (although this decision was rarely democratic), or people dying accidentally, from misadventure, overdose & even a gun misfire. So, there was no satisfying answer to this mystery, and again, I feel this is because it shouldn't have been a comedy - but based on the actual solution to this mystery, I feel like the writers started with the idea of making this a comedy about people killing themselves because of paranoia, and just used the Mafia party game as a framework around which to build this comedy concept. But, the best part of this film was the horror, the blood and the somewhat realistic characterization of these people as they tried to figure out who the killer was, and that's mostly because of the talent of the actors. But, every time the film tried to be funny, it just undermined the horror since the tone was so off, every time I found myself asking "What was the writer thinking?"
I'd love to see a film that uses Mafia as the basis for a murder mystery (especially if it was like real Mafia, with two or more than one killers [I think ~20% of players are meant to be killers] meaning twice the mystery, or more). I'm also not opposed to another comedy-mystery that indulges in that premise of the killer-free twist in an And Then There Were None style plot (although obviously, I wouldn't want to know about that spoiler before I see it). But, by trying to indulge in both these concepts at once, this film ultimately failed at achieving either in any meaningful or enjoyable way.

3. SERENITY
I am not talking about the Joss Whedon movie, the film version of the cult classic Sci-fi Western, Firefly. Whilst that film has somes flaws, it didn't fail to achieve its goal of bringing Firefly to the big screen. No, the film I'm talking about today is actually a thriller starring Matthew McConaughey as a reclusive fisherman, who live on a gorgeous, island paradise escaping the hustle and bustle of modern society, as well as a "dark past" as a war veteran that he doesn't like talking about. But, things take a dark turn when his ex-wife comes to the island with her new husband, a vile, abusive criminal; and so the fisherman's wife asks him to do the unthinkable... take her husband out on a fishing trip, and murder him, to protect her and their son from this abusive monster. There's also a subplot about the fisherman trying to catch a massive, legendary fish in the surrounding oceans that he's failed to capture several times in the past; as well as a plot about how their son has become a reclusive shut-in, playing and creating videogames as he tries to escape from his dark reality.
Where It Failed: The Twist. Oh my god, the twist of this movie is so ridiculous, it has to be seen to be believed. Seriously, if you've never seen this movie, you should go and watch it, to see what the actual twist is, because it's so unexpected, so weird, so... well, wrong - it is an absolute shock to behold.
But, in order to talk about why this failed, I have to talk about the twist, so if you're intrigued by what kind of a twist could turn this neo-noir thriller set on a tropical paradise into a failed film... now's your last chance.
We good? We ready? Don't say I didn't warn you... okay, remember how I described the plot of the film, and threw in a part about how the kid of the main character has become a reclusive shut-in that plays and makes videogames. That's not just a throw-in, that's the crux of this film. See, the character Matthew McConaughey plays is actually dead - he's not a war veteren, he's a war victim, he died in Iraq, but he's not a ghost... rather, the character we're watching on screen the whole time is a videogame character, in a game this kid created to help remember his father, in a simple "Stardew Valley" style island paradise fishing game, with the goal of catching a mythically massive fish.
So, what's all the neo-noir stuff? Well, the stuff about the abusive father is all meant to be art imitating life, because the kid's step-father is actually an abusive piece of crap, who beats him and his mother. So he programs that into the game, ostensibly as a kind of "murder simulation" so that if the kid manages to kills the guy in the game he created, he presumably will garner the courage to kill his step-father in real life.
The problem is, looking back on the plot, this isn't just a twist for twist's sake, this is the point of the movie. It's meant to be a film about how characters realize they're in a videogame because the serenity of their peaceful island paradise is shattered by the interruption of the murder simulation mission is so out-of-character for the game that the game itself is fighting back against the new coding, typified by a man in a business suit who keeps interrupting the neo-noir thriller, to try to offer the fisherman a new piece of technology, which is effectively the game trying to coax him into returning to his fishing missions, by offering him a powerup that will make it possible for him to catch the big fish... It's a fascinating concept, but it's so poorly done that I'm left speechless when the neo-noir plot comes to a crashing halt whilst the main character becomes nihilistic about the unreality of his videogame reality. Not to mention... this game is meant to be programmed by a young boy, who looks to be a preteen, yet we're supposed to believe that he somehow created a videogame with hyper-realistic graphics, and artificial intelligence that's indistinguishable from the real thing. I think the fact that this focuses on a little kid makes the plot unbelievable, but at the same time, it had to be a "young kid" to justify the fact that he feels powerless, and doesn't know how to ask for help.
I actually really enjoy the idea of this movie, it's a whacko premise but I like out there ideas that try to push the envelope. For that reason, I'm not actually sure if this kind of premise is possible to do properly, but if there is a way to make a movie with a twist reveal that it's actually videogame characters fighting against their programming... this is not the way to do it.

2. THE BOOK OF HENRY
This movie is incredibly strange, but a fascinating attempt at deconstructing a "Family Film" trope, the Child Prodigy. There have been fascinating films about child prodigies who manage to solve complex problems, such as Matilda; Home Alone; Pay It Forward; Getting Even with Dad & doubtless several more. This film takes that premise, and takes it to an extreme - what if one of these child geniuses was forced to use their precocious talents, to plan and execute a murder plot? Oh, also, Trigger Warning for child abuse, child death & sexual assault.
Where It Failed: This movie is tonally schizophrenic, and its confused plotting fails to justify its own existence. Full-disclosure, there was another movie that I was going to put on this list, somewhere near the middle, but after doing research I realized... that movie wasn't a failure (it succeeded at what it set out to do) I just didn't like it. So, I decided to swap it out for another movie, and I remembered hearing about the awkward premise of this movie, and I sat down and watched it. I think it goes to show how much of a failure it was that a last-second substitution made it's way to number 2.
See, this film is about a precocious jerk called Henry (and that's not me being rude for no reason, he is constantly belittling others, especially his own mother; he bosses people around; ignores other people's opinions & never listens when others tell him to stop being rude). He has a crush on the girl next door, and this means he is hyper-aware of her well-being, and thus he is the first to notice the telltale signs that she's being sexually abused by her father. After trying and failing to get police, school administrators & child protective services to help her, he takes matters into his own hands and plans out an elaborate scheme... I mean, I say elaborate scheme, it ultimately comes down to: Step 1: Buy a Gun; Step 2: Shoot the Guy.
Henry is apparently willing to undertake this scheme, until he has several seizures, it's revealed he has an inoperable brain tumour, and soon after he dies in the hospital. He spends his last days writing the titular book (although it mostly takes the form of tape recordings), and he asks his mother to do it for him instead.
So, she buys the gun, she gets ready to shoot the guy. But, the big twist of the movie? The ultimate ending, the message this was all leading up to?
Whilst looking at him through the sniper sights on her gun, the mother character suddenly realizes "Henry's just a child", puts down the gun, and decides it's probably a bad idea to murder someone, just because your dying son asked you to.
This film has two basic premises, neither of which make sense. Firstly, it is deconstructing the child prodigy trope by showing how their prodigous, rube-goldberg engineering; precocious wisdom and youthful genius betrays their inexperience, lack of emotional intelligence, and naïve, black-and-white morality. However, by constantly showing Henry to be arrogant, disinterested in children his own age & controlling... it already shows the flaws of the child genius. Smart people are arrogant, and anti-social smart people tend to be unempathetic, so of course he's flawed that's blatantly obvious, so the big "twist" where we learn that smart kids "aren't that smart", isnt really a twist. I figured that out after the second time this jerk treated his mum like crap. But, the second part, the premise of putting a child prodigy to the extreme, by showing how one plans out an assassination... that's a bad idea, and the film knows it's a bad idea!
Remember: The "twist" in this film is the character realizing that the murder plot is a bad idea. So, what you have is a movie where the basic premise of the movie is "a smart child planning a murder" and the moral of the story is ultimately, "a smart child planning a murder is a bad idea". Presenting a novel, terrible idea, and concluding that it's a good idea to avoid that, isn't clever; its just stupidity with extra steps.

1. STAY
I've just realized that the top 4 films on this list all have a premise that hides it's thematic goals behind a twist which either hinders or harms the execution of the premise. And I don’t think a film can better illustrate this flaw, than Stay - trigger warning for heavy themes of suicide. See, the premise of Stay is that it's a psychological thriller about a psychologist whose latest patient, a deeply troubled young artist, and car crash survivor, says that he's going to kill himself in three days time. He also says he can predict the future, hears voices, and slowly the psychologist gets drawn into his patient's dark perspective, and he starts to lose his grip on reality.
Where It Failed: On every conceivable level, this movie fails to have a point. In this film, the first scene shows the car crash on the Brooklyn Bridge that the patient, Henry (played by Ryan Gosling) was the lone survivor of. After the psychologist, Sam (played by Ewan McGregor) learns that his patient is suicidal (because of his guilt) he tries to get to know him better, understand his past and save him. But reality starts unravelling, as Sam talks to his patient's "dead" parents, old psychologist and girlfriend, and the whole way through, surreal editing and cinematography gives the whole film an unreal, dreamy feel until the final scene where strings of reality litetally unravel as Henry finally prepares to kill himself, on that same bridge where he had his accident.
What happens next? Well... we cut to the scene where Henry had his car crash, and was the lone survivor... but instead of surviving and walking away, he is left bleeding out on the road, as several people rush over to help him. During the scene as he lays dying, several of the characters throughout the movie reappear, and several of the strange pieces of dialogue are shown in their proper context. See... the entire movie was all the dying dreams of a man that just had a fatal car accident. None of what we saw happened, it's all a tangled mess of his dying moments.
Now, quickly, what do you think the purpose of this story is? Is it about suicide? Is it about reality slipping away in our final moments of mortality? Is it about the importance of wearing a seatbelt?
Well, according to one source on IMDB, the main point of this film is meant to be an exploration of survivor's guilt. But how is that the theme? How does trippy-drippy surreality help evoke guilt? How do Ewan McGregor's character's poorly tailored trousers help illustrate the blame one feels for outliving another?
Now, I don't actually know if that's the genuine theme, but I find it convincing because if that's the case, it sort of explains the title: "stay" as in "stay with me" (something people say to someone who's losing consciousness due to blood loss), or even "why did I have to stay (live), when everyone else had to go (die)", a bit more on the nose, but it does kind of make sense. I can't tell you if that's definitely right, though, because the film is such a mess. The only way I could possibly say this film was not a failure is if the intended goal of the writer was "show how confusing and surreal dreams are". If that was the goal, congratulations, you did it... I mean, I already knew that, dreams are surreal by definition but good job if that was your intent. I looked up who the writer was, and apparently its David Benioff... you night recognize him as one half of the writing duo that ruined Game of Thrones (I guess he always sucked ay writing), but he never explicitly states what the point of this movie was.
So if you ask me what this film was about, why it was made, all I can do is shrug. Everything about this movie seems designed to obfuscate any kind of meaning, theme or purpose, and left me confused. So, if your goal was to make an entertaining movie, well, you failed at that as well, and that's why it's number 1 on this list.

- - -

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd and, finally, those are the Top 10 films I've seen, which failed. Let me know if you've seen these (or if I spoiled them for you... I did warn you). And, can you think of any films that failed to achieve the filmmaker's goals? I'd love for you to let me know in the comments below.

 Until Next Time, we have one day left in the countdown, Halloween approaches and it's almost time for the scares... but I still have one more post before the devil's night is upon us. I look forward to seeing you then.

The Worst Story I've Ever Written

I said last night that I would follow up tonight (at time of writing) with Part 2 of the "Failed Films" post. Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances and work obligations means that I wasn't able to do that. I am going to work on finishing it for tomorrow night - fingers crossed - but until then I still want to post something tonight, so... well, I'm gonna have to bite the bullet. I didn't want to tell you about this, but there's only one big "Failure" that comes to mind which I can talk about without any research... and that's the worst story I ever wrote.
It is a failed story, but I did write it, so it doesn't count as one of my "abandoned projects". I considered just posting it, but honestly, it's so bad that I don't really want to do that. Even with a disclaimer like "I write better now guys, please don't judge me", I still don't want to expose anyone to that story. I genuinely don't like it, and I don't ever plan on sharing it. But, that doesn't mean I'm not going to tell you all about it. I considered it a learning experience, so why not share what I learned with you all?

So, what's the story? Well, it was a short story called "Evil".
Yes, I was a pretentious little git when i was younger, but the title was because the story was from the perspective of a villainous character that I considered "evil". Since I don't really believe in objective morality, I don't really like the concept of calling things "truly good" or "truly evil", but my goal was to have an evil character.
See, the basic premise behind this story is, as a student , it bothered me how many silly little rules everyone has to follow for the sake of "safety", even though they don't actually make us safe. I'm talking walking on the left side of the footpath; wearing school uniforms; going home before the sun goes down & that kind of thing: arbitrary rules that don't actually make you safer.
Now that I'm older I know that this kind of thing is called Security Theatre, the little performances that are designed to make us feel safer, even though we're not. The most pertinent example I can think of are signatures. Not always, but like nine times out of ten, when you sign something nobody checks it. And of course they don't, nobody cares. Most people don't know what your "real" signature looks like and if you do your signature wrong, who can tell? Give it a go, next time you get a product delivered that requires your signature, spell your name backwards, or draw a smiley face, see what happens.
Usually? Nothing. Nobody cares. But the act of signing something feels important, it's feels like you're doing something official (even though you're just writing your name quickly), so it doesn't actually change how secure your money, purchases, or postal deliveries actually are.

So, with that all said, the premise behind the story was "What if there was a character who decided to show just how fake this false sense of security is?" That's why the story was called evil, I figured that all it would take to shatter this false reality would be one evil person, one bad guy. It was about a truly evil character who showed everyone how unsafe they really were, out of a sense of vengeance and disgust due to the frustration at his own dreadful life. I think now is the best time to give y'all a Trigger Warning that I'm about to discuss, a story heavily involving Violence, Crime, Murder, Sexual Assault & Suicide; and vague references to Death & Decay, and Domestic/Parental Violence. If these are an issue for you, you may not want to continue reading without adequate preparation.
Okay, well, that trigger warning is basically the spoiler warning as well, because that's kind of exactly what the story was about. Now, I actually had some interesting ideas which I don't entirely hate. Like, I wanted this to be five chapters, starting with him deciding to do wrong, committing his first crimes, turning to murder, and then finally killing himself on live camera; and I thought to represent his moral decay, I wanted to include a black & white image of a dead frog decaying in five stages from freshly-dead to bones. I only managed to find a dead lizard image, but I still think, for a darkly-themed story like that, the imagery is striking and thematically appropriate.
So, what happened in this story? Well, it was about this kid called Liam (I picked the name because Liam is mail backwards... that's literally it, I just thought that was interesting). It's starts with him doing a monologue about how the world is terrible, and people need to be more like him, able to see through the bullshit. Then he comes across a group of girls, who are all talking about how one of them was mugged with a guy at knifepoint. The guy calls the girl weak, and they tell him to go away, but it inspires him to try to "fix" the world.

"What if I could teach the world how to deal with shit like this . . . what if I could heal this broken mess. If one man can control a girl with a knife, simple math says that one man can control everyone with the right tool." - EVIL, page 1.

The rest of the story is then like the kid's manifesto, as he describes the steps he takes to "change the world". It starts with him deciding to rape a popular girl at school, the school captain, for the sake of making people scared. I wrote the scene in detail, of how he creeps out of his house and into hers... I did skip over the rape itself, but he describes how he didn't enjoy it, since to him it was just a means to an end. Most importantly, he tags the side of their house with the words "FIXED".
The idea was, he was trying to be like a domestic terrorist, and he wanted a name for himself. He saw himself as "fixing" society, so he tagged his crimes as "fixed".
In the next chapter, he kills his father, then steals his dad's car. Tags the side of it "FIXED", then parks it in the middle of a railroad crossing, in the hopes of derailing the train. It didn't derail (I wanted to show that this kid wasn't even that competent, I mean, trains can hit semi-trailers without derailing, so I didn't think a single ute would, even for a passenger train. But that was sort of the point - this kid wasn't that smart, yet he was causing all this chaos).
Chapter three starts with him bitching about the fact that the train didn't derail, but still wanting to create some more havoc, he steals a gun, goes into a local doctor's surgery, and shoots everyone inside, before writing "FIXED" on the wall.
Now, since he's trying to make a bigger name for himself as a domestic terrorist, he finds someone who looks rich, walking out of a government building, the person wearing the nicest suit, but without any security. He drags them into the bushes, stabs them to death, and puts a post-it note with "FIXED" into his pocket.
Finally, the last chapter - called "Change the World" was all about him breaking into a local television studio with his gun, He shoots everyone in a local news-room, looks at the camera and monologues into it about how he's the "Fixer", he's just a kid who killed so many people, and people need to wake up. Then he finishes his monologue by shooting himself in the head, and the story ends mid-sentence.

Alright, class, now before I reveal it all to you, can anyone tell me what's wrong with this story? Hmm?
I mean, besides the horrendously dark tone; the cringe-worthy attempts at a teenaged writer being "edgy"; the completely gratuitous scenes of rape, terrorism & suicide, and the overwhelming lack of research into how difficult it actually is to steal a gun, kill a politician/businessman or break into a television studio?
Yes, all that aside, can anyone tell me what the actual, fundamental problem with this story is?
Alright, I'll stop the artificial dialogue schtick, I know you can't answer, so I'll just tell you...
The actual problem with this story is that, whilst it initially had a point - divulge and deconstruct security theatre - it was so mired in darkness of tone, and this weird character study that the message was entirely lost. And part of the reason for that is I was angry when I came up with the idea. I was a teenager, and I know it's a cliche, but I was angry about learning just how unfair the system is, and how it felt like people went along with it out of a sense of either "loyalty" or "ignorance". Now, don't get me wrong, if you are a writer, and you come up with a concept that even you look back on and think "Oof, I was really in one of those moods, when I was thinking that", then turning that into a villainous character concept is fantastic. We all have dark thoughts, and using them to build a character is good. But... you really shouldn't write a story about that. Whilst I wrote it I was thinking:
  "Yeah, cop this... I'm fuckin' saying it how it is. I'm breaking down barriers, man. I'm writing the story they're not ready for..."
I didn't actually think with that kind of vocabulary, but that is 100% the tone of this story - and looking back on it now, it's fucking embarrassing. I still think I would like to write a story about the deconstruction of security theatre... but, I'd like to write it as a horror story. I'd write it from the victim's perspective, and have a villain who thinks of himself as a chessmaster, a mastermind, when really all he's doing is breaking societal moors.
  "What, you thought because you locked the door, you could keep me away from you? Foolish child, I'm much craftier than that."
And more importantly, I'd frame the story properly. A casual reading of this story disgusts me, not because it's poorly written (although it is), and it's not because it's so edgy, it lives on the underside of a cliff made of razor-blades (even though it is that as well), but it's because in my sad attempt to make a character that was exposing how civilization lies to its civilians, I was effectively blaming the victim. I was blaming citizenry for living in a society that has these systems which lie to us, rather than the system for lying to us in the first place.

So, in conclusion, I wrote a story that failed on EVERY CONCEIVABLE LEVEL. I tried to write a dark and edgy story that turned out to be cliched and whose violence only served as an attempt at shock value, rather than story development; I failed to effectively communicate my story's themes and messages because I was too busy developing a character that didn't deserve their place as a villain-protagonist & worst of all, I tried to write a story about a genuine issue, but I failed to fully understand the core of the issue whilst blaming those who it affects most greatly.
This story sucks... but, I still have it on my computer, I have the file saved to read occasionally. Not because I like the trite dialogue, or the gratuitous angst, but because I think it's important to remind myself just how important it is to think through an idea, not only how it's written, but also how it's read, and how it will be understood by a reader.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I hope now you can see why this didn't even deserve a spot on my Abandoned Projects list (and if you do attempt to use this to write something, please don't blame me for whatever you write. I do not approve of this message).
Until next time... I hope I actually have the time to write my next post before work obligations and deadlines sneak up behind me and force me to expose more of my embarrassing failures to the internet.

Failed Films (Pt. 1)

I own a lot of DVDs... at least 800, easily. I'm not bragging, most of them I bought at op shops for about a dollar or two; and I literally buy any movie that catches my interest. So, I've seen a lot of movies.
In fact, I have this system where I watch the DVDs I own, and if I don't really enjoy them, I add them to the donation pile, so I can send them back to an op shop for someone else to buy.
Because of this, I only keep the movies that are really good... or, really bad. See, because I buy these at op shops, a lot of these movies are kind of bad. I'm talking low-budget family movies; poorly filmed horror; high-concept fantasy or sci-fi movies that fail to explain their premise. I've seen the full gamut from amazing, classic and thought-provoking cinema... to absolute dogshit. But, when a movie is really bad, it can be more entertaining - you've probably heard of the term So Bad It's Good. A film could have Dialogue or action that's accidentally funny, plot points that are absurd, special effects that look ridiculous, acting so bad it makes primary school plays look good or scenes that are so over-the-top they become awesome.
But, as with most things in life, films aren't simply "bad" or "good", there's a spectrum; meaning there's a whole variety of bad films. From the "Mockbuster" to the "Exploitation Film" to the "Passion Project", bad films come in all shapes and sizes... but there's a specific kind of bad film I want to talk about today and that's the "Failed Concept".
See, even a film like Sharknado, whilst it is a dumb movie that a lot of people enjoy ironically it's not a failure. They set out to make a movie about a tornado full of sharks, so whether you loved or hated that film it succeeded at its goal. It's arguably a dumb goal, but they met it nonetheless.
That's the defining feature of a Failed Concept - it has a clear target, an idea or concept it wants to explore, but by the end, it fails. This doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad or unenjoyable film - I may well list some movies here that you enjoy - but it does mean that the writer or director had a vision in mind, and they failed to really bring it to life on screen.
If you're still not sure exactly what I mean by that, allow me to show you some of the most pertinent examples that I've seen. Also, because I'm talking about how these films failed, this list will contain HEAVY SPOILERS - if you wish to avoid that for any of the titles listed, you may have to skip its entry in this list. With that out of the way, let's get into...

THE A.W.N.'s TOP 10 MOVIES THAT FAILED (10-7)

10. JOKER
Well, this is a great way to annoy the internet, tell a bunch of comicbook nerds, and a bunch of men, that their opinion is wrong. That's going to go over well... but I'm not the only person who didn't like this movie. See, Joker is an origin story for the character of "The Joker", Batman's arch-villain and a supervillain, known for his tenacity, in some incarnations brutality, insanity and (of course) his dark sense of humour. This film chose to be a dramatic piece, losing the colour and flamboyance of comicbook superheroes to present a sombre, dark and personal piece about how an underprivileged, mentally ill man is pushed to his breaking point, so we can finally understand how this simple man became The Joker.
Where it Failed: Who is the Joker? Seriously, the character from the movie, who is he? Is he an activist? Is he a criminal? Is he a madman? Is he a victim?
Uh, kinda, not really... I mean, he's a bit of this and that, but he's not really any of those things, so it's hard to tell. But, that makes no sense. This is meant to be an *origin story*, the whole idea if which is elucidating upon a character, so we can understand what defines them, what guides them, and who they are. But, this movie utterly fails at that because it doesn't seem to know who the Joker is and in its attempt, it just muddies the waters. A lot of people have pointed out how this film's script is basically a remix of "The King of Comedy" & "Taxi Driver" with Batman iconography thrown in, and that's not necessarily a bad thing (I like homage as much as anyone else), but because this film is busy recreating the themes and concepts of these two films, it fails to fundamentally create its own identity, and so it cannot help to identify the Joker.
But, the Joker isn't that complicated... obviously, he can be, you cam add complexity to anything - but the basis of the Joker is - he is a character that finds crime funny. That's the heart of it. Now, you can have it that he finds it funny because he's so good at it, so to him it's a lot of fun; you can have him be so twisted that his morals are effectively backwards and he enjoys pain and bloodshed; or, you can even have him be a nihilist and an absurdist who delights in shattering the veil of civility - that's kind of the way Heath Ledger played him in The Dark Knight, he sees civilized society as a mockery of brutal human nature, and fragile human psychology.
But... this character doesn't seem to find crime funny. Sometimes he's angry and commits crime for vengeance, at one point he brutally kills people because he's crazy and the film makes it clear he's "off his meds", which is particularly tone-deaf considering how common mental illness is. And by the end of the film he kills one character for no established reason at all...
When I first watched this film, I was excited to learn about who the Joker was, what drives him, why he became a villain. As the credits rolled, the only answer I was left with was "he did it because he's crazy". What?! That's not how origin movies work, that's certainly not how criminals work... that's not even how INSANITY works! So, no, this film failed to truly explain who and what the Joker is, and since that's the whole point of an origin movie, that is why it failed.

9. CHERRY FALLS
This is a slasher horror movie, set in the fictional town of Cherry Falls, where a killer appears in town, and starts killing several young teenagers. But there's a twist, and this is the main conceit of the movie - the killer has a calling card where they carve the word "VIRGIN" into the thighs of their victims, and so the only lead the police have on the killer is that they do, indeed, appear to be targeting teens that are virgins. After a town meeting where police warn the parents, teenagers learn of this, gossip spreads quickly, and all the teens at the local high school realize that, if they simply have sex, they won't be targeted by the killer.
So, the whole premise of this movie exists as a conceit to show a lot of gore, blood and murder, as well as nudity, sex and softcore pornography. Honestly, that's a clever idea for a movie, especially if you love blood and boobs.
Where It Failed: This cheeky horror film has a lot of sexy blood, but it barely has any bloody sex! The main character, played by Brittany Murphy, is a virgin, and whilst she nearly sleeps with her boyfriend on two occasions, she ultimately fails. And, when the school as a whole learns about the "only kills virgin" thing, they organize an orgy at an abandoned hunting lodge in town. Now, I want to remind you, this is meant to be an orgy - a wild sex party with several people - and they refer to it as a fuck-fest, or an orgy, several times in the film. So, when the camera cut to a scene of the hunting lodge, and I saw dozens and dozens of teenagers paired up, slow-dancing, I burst out laughing. Sure, some of the teens kiss and make awkward sex jokes, but it feels like this "orgy" was written by a prude. Sure, these kids aren't exactly "leaving room for Jesus", but it's the most sexless orgy I've ever seen. In a later scene, when the killer attacks this "orgy", they gatecrash several people in their underwear, making out under blankets, and they go running out of the house in bras and boxer shorts. So, this movie, where a major plot point is losing your virginity, and includes several scenes at an orgy, has no sex scenes in it.
Now, obviously, you don't need sex in your plot to make it interesting, and I did find this movie kind of interesting, but this movie was being sold on the horror and sex. The copy of the DVD I own has a quote from Playboy saying "It's American Pie with a body count." and the advertising all focuses on that idea of whether you'd give up your virginity, if it could save your life.
Now, this isn't a bad film by any stretch. The killer has long, black hair, and wears dark clothing, and when Brittany Murphy's character describes them to a sketch artist, the police identify the killer as a woman called Lora Lee Sherman, a rape victim who failed to receive help, because her rapists were four popular high school boys - that's darkly realistic and relevant. And one of my favourite scenes in the movie is when one of these rapists is killed, the words "VIRGIN NOT" is carved into his forehead, which dials up the danger, as we realize that the "safety" the kids are (apparently) seeking out by having sex, is nothing but false hope.
I also want to make it clear, this wasn't entirely the film-maker's fault. This film was classified as R in Australia, and NC-17 in America, but according to the writer, they had originally devised the "orgy" scene to have a lot more nudity, and originally was written to have them all writhing under blankets, but they had to change it in order to avoid an X Rating.
I'm not going to lie, one thing I found disappointing is that the killer is eventually revealed to be a man in women's clothing, with some hints that he is crazy and enjoys dressing up like a woman; and frankly, I'm sick to death of the "depraved, trans killer" trope. But, it's mostly implied that they dress up mostly as a dark reminder of the woman raped by some of the popular boys, who have now become important men in the town's community, so that's not a deal-breaker. And the film is deliberately playing with tropes, since horror films have a history of killing anyone even slightly promiscuous, so there was a lot of potential here which they managed to play with. But, that doesn't change the fact that this film failed its ultimate premise.
In fact, Ken Selden, the writer of this film, is quoted as saying he first wrote this film because he was "interested in writing a teen orgy scene", but he also thought Hollywood would never go for it until he came up this idea of it being an orgy interrupted by a slasher killer. This was the heart and soul of this movie... and for the sake of avoiding an X-Rating, it was changed. So, whilst I do not think this film is a bad movie, it definitely failed at its premise of being all about sex and violence, because people who are incredibly weird seem to find sex more offensive than death...

8. THUNDERPANTS
This is a very silly family movie. The basic premise is that this is the story of a boy who farts too much, because he was born with two stomachs. I mean, that doesn't make a lot of sense because farts are developed in the intestines, not the stomach, stomach gas develops burps but it's not really worth getting into the science of why that makes no sense, because this is clearly meant to be a comedy film, you're not supposed to think too much about it. I think the only reason it was even slightly popular was because it co-stars Rupert Grint (the actor who played Ron Weasley) one year after the first Harry Potter film, so it was probably trying to cash in on his celebrity... speaking of which, besides Grint this same film has several famous stars in smaller roles, such as Paul Giamatti,  Stephen Fry & Simon Callow. And the effort on display is incredible. Most of the film, as most of the film is set in this kid's English hometown, has a green tinge to all of the set dressing, costumes and several of the key props. But, what's it really "about"? Well, it's about how it's difficult for the main kid to make friends, because he farts so much, until he makes friends with Grint's character - a child genius called Allen A. Allen who has no sense of smell. And, the story seems to be about how even the least-appreciated among us can find their place, and make a difference in the world.
Where it Failed: If this film has a message at all, that message is that being a child genius will change the world. Look, I like a good fart joke, but I don't think these fart jokes are funny, since they're often presented as so extreme, it literally causes injuries to the people around Fart-boy. But, I'm not here to critique the comedy, comedy is (for the most part) subjective, and this is for kid's, kids might find this funny. No, my issue is with how this film treats Fart-boy like an object, a tool to be used, not a person. Fart-boy is the main character (his real name is Patrick, but I'm gonna keep calling him Fart-boy), we see his point of view and his struggles, but in the story after meeting his friend who can't smell, it's his friend Allen that develops a pair of pants that contain his farts. And, after NASA loses some astronauts in space, it's only by poaching his genius friend to help them fix this problem that he comes up with a way of using his friend's farts to power a rocket. Yes, there's some talk about how he joined a group of "talented children" to solve difficult problems... but, all of the other talented children are also geniuses in their own right. Fart-boy does have this monologue about how he's finally being seen as useful, but that's the thing, he's being used. They create a rocket which literally has a seat for him to sit on with a pipe in it. He's not piloting the rocket - he's presented as a naive, simple boy, not stupid but nowhere near smart enough to pilot a rocket. So, he's just the fuel tank.
And whilst they pay lip service to the idea that children can be uniquely suited to solving problems, I also got the distinct impression that Allen manufactured this whole situation just so his friend could help. After all, this is a space-rocket, we have those... it's not like this was a new invention that required a special fart-based fuel system. So, I get the distinct impression that the real hero here is Allen, the boy genius who saved some astronauts, and his friend in the process. Oh yeah, did I mention that Fart-boy was going to be executed? I can't remember why, this film is pretty forgettable, but this kid goes to court, is declared guilty (although he was innocent) and was about to be judicially murdered before his friend intervenes to get him poached for this NASA child-genius project.
I think this was trying to take some logical extreme, "hey are you bullied for being ugly or stupid or weird? Well, look, this kid farts so much, he can clear a room, and can even fart with the pressure to injure people, and he found his place in society... surely, you can too."
Aww, isn't that sweet? NO. This kid's "place in society" is as a piece of machinery, with his arse stuck to a gas-pipe, he's an interchangeable cog in a machine. That's not inspiring, it's horrifying. I mean, he was necessary for this single task - save the astronauts. What next? Either he will have to move on, continue living his life, relying on the assisting technologies of his genius friend so as to exist in a world of people without a crippling fart-disability. Or if (for reasons that defy science as I understand it) his farts are in fact the future of rocket propulsion, is he doomed to having his anus surgically grafted onto a gas-pipe, so he becomes a permanent fixture of a rocket, or a rocket-fuel factory - in either case, little more than a machine component - either for the rest of his life, or until they inevitably find a way of recreating his farts in the lab, by which time he again is forced to live life with his fart-disability. And that seems more likely than not since, according to this film, his farts come from having two stomachs... so, basically, his job could be done twice as well by any modern cow.
So, I hope you found that inspiring kids! If you're not a child-genius, and not seen as worthless by society, you're doomed to being judicially murdered or (arguably worse) being seen as little more than a disposable machine-part.

7. AFTER.LIFE
This is a weird movie. If you've not heard of it, this movie is about a young teacher called Anna (played by Christina Ricci) who gets into a violent car wreck, and wakes up on a slab in a funeral home. There, she gets to know the mortician named Elliot (played by Liam Neeson). The mortician informs her that she is dead, but he has a supernatural gift that allows him to talk to the dead. He explains that his gift allows him to prepare people for their transition from death to the afterlife, so they can come to terms with their death. At first, Anna doubts this, but as he shows her that she has no pulse, that she is numb to the world around her and she can't move without his help, she starts to come to terms with what Elliot has told her, and accept that she is dead. Alongside this, there's a parallel story about her soon-to-be fiancé, Paul (played by Justin Long) who is struggling to come to terms with the sudden death of his girlfriend in the prime of her night, on the night when he was going to propose. So, he's in denial, struggling to accept that his girlfriend is truly dead. Or, are things not as they seem?
Where it Failed: This film relies on a ridiculous premise. When I first bought it, I was excited about the idea, because I thought it was going to be about a character coming to terms with their death. Now, that's my fault, not the movie's, but what is the film's fault is that it pretended to be about that for the majority of the runtime. See, what this film is actually about is a girl who is taken to a mortuary and told she is dead and that all appearance to the contrary is being caused by one guy's supernatural ability to talk to the dead, and all throughout it's meant to be a mystery whether she is actually dead, or if she's alive and this is all an elaborate lie on the part of the mortician. And that subplot on her potential fiancé is part of that, asking whether he's just a grieving boyfriend who won't let go, or a hero uncovering the machinations of a disturbed serial killer. And, the problem with this premise is two-fold. Firstly, both of these premises are interesting. A story about a woman dying, and struggling to accept her premature death, but coming to terms with it because of a caring, gifted mortician, that's kind of sweet and beautiful. A dark story about a mortician that tricks people into believing they're dead so he can bury them, because of a philosophy about people so useless they're "as good as dead" is darkly fascinating. But, because this film spends most of its runtime maintaining the thin veneer of a mystery, thereby flip-flopping around the potential between the two, it means it never commits to either until the end. But that's the second and more fundamental problem with this premise - the mystery is stupid. This movie ends with the revelation that, yes, Elliot was a serial killer this whole time. He pretends people are dead so that he can bury them, and have them suffocate in the casket as a kind of sick punishment for living unhappy, unfulfilled lives. But, wait, are you telling me that every single one of his victims believed not only that magic exists, and that ghosts exist, but that they were themselves were unliving corpses, despite all evidence to the contrary?!
What really annoys me are that at first, Anna lays stiff on the slab motionless, only able to speak, but eventually she's able to get up and move around. And not a single other one of his victims questioned this? Yes, she has no pulse, and feels numb, but even though she can move, Elliot claims he doesn't want people to see her like this because "you look like a corpse". So, what is meant to be happening when they get up? Is he witnessing their "soul" whilst their body is actually on the slab? Or, are they stumbling like zombies, but only he can hear their voice? Also, the reason she's numb is because of an injection Elliot gives her of a (fictional) drug which actually slows her pulse so it's unnoticeable, and numbs her body. When Elliot injects her, he claims that the chemical "loosens your muscles, and prevents rigor mortis", but that makes no sense! This woman is meant to be a teacher, yet she doesn't know that injections like that don't work without a pulse?
Look, I know this is a movie, and I've seen plenty of movies where people talk to the dead, ghosts are real and magical, mystical things are possible. But, the main character doesn't know she's in a movie. I can't empathize with this character because it makes no sense that she would find the evidence convincing - all the "evidence" that she's dead make no sense in a world where magic doesn't exist. And this guy is a serial killer. At one point, he takes a photo of Anna, and he adds her to a collection of hundreds of similar pictures of his victims, pinned to his wall. You're telling me not a single one of these people realized that they were, y'know, not dead?!
In my opinion, the best way to have made this movie would have been to save all this for the end, spend the whole movie playing it straight - this is a film about a man trying to convince a woman that she's actually dead, only for it to end with a Shocking Twist that she's alive, and he's a serial killer. That wouldn't really resolve the fundamental "Failed Biology 101" aspects of this movie, but at least they'd be less noticeable! Because this was a mystery, I was basically being asked by the movie to think about this, to judge for myself whether this was at all possible. So, when it finally reveals the reality, I'm left angry and annoyed by how much of it doesn't actually make sense. But worst of all, this film spends a lot of its runtime pretending it's actually about grief, and coming to terms with loss, acting like it has a message of "it's troubling to come to terms with your own death, or the loss of another, but you can come to accept it in time"... but, with the reveal that the girl wasn't actually dead, it turns from a story about coming to terms with grief, into a story whose ultimate moral is left as "If you're in denial about the tragic, premature death of a loved one... it's because you're right, they're not actually dead! GO SAVE THEM YOU FOOL! Don't come to terms with it, that's just a lie to keep you from finding out the truth!!!"
Yeah, uh... that sucks. I did enjoy this movie for the most part, it was well-made and well acted, but ultimately it tried to be too much all at once, and after spending so long pretending to be about a premise that I found interesting, when it revealed what it was really about it just left me feeling betrayed.

- - -

Saved by the bell... it's nearly midnight, and I have to get this posted. Well, I guess we'll have to continue this next week. I was really hoping to get at least five written before I ended, but I had way more to say here than I thought I would.
Come back tomorrow night, where we'll discuss the top 6 (I guess) films that I think ultimately failed at their premise.

Until Next Time, I'm going to keep writing, so I don't run out of time for tomorrow's post...

I'm the Ab