Hard Core Nudity!

Hmm... it seems I might slip up a little on this rant every weekend bit, but in fairness, it's still the weekend while I'm writing this, it's just that this raging storm just nuked my internet access. Anyway though, on with the ranting.

In my mind, Dark City and The Matrix are pretty close together. They came out within a few months of each other, they're both slick dark genuinely good Sci-Fi movies with a lot of attention to detail. Anyway though, when watching Dark City recently, I realized something else they have in common.

Near the beginning of each movie, the main character wakes up lying naked in a tub of pink stuff and flails about in a confused state. In both cases, it's a rather important scene to the movie, does not showcase any taboo anatomy, and of course, really gives one a queazy feeling.

I for one have never been a fan of nudity. There's a lot of people who might say that, but only when the person who has no clothes is someone they wouldn't be attracted to. I guess you could say the same about me, but only on the grounds that I've never been attracted to anyone. Still, those are just two examples of the many characters in movies, TV shows, and even in games, who I have seen naked against my will. For example:

• Perfect Blue: This is a very well done animated psychological thriller, and everyone respects it, but right smack dab in the middle of it is a five minute long rape scene in the play within the play. Now, this is extra irritating because not only do I have to put up with it, but the movie doesn't really pick up until just after this scene, so tons of people will watch it up until right then, shut it off, and form unsavory opinions on whoever recommended it to them.
• Trigun: Around halfway throw the show, we get to see what Vash the Stampede looks like under that trenchcoat. Not pretty. Intentionally not pretty. Again, it's rather important to the plot, but this comes with the same sort of shock as when the news cuts away to a shot of someone who had half their face blown off while you're eating dinner.
• Xenogears: This is really more of an issue of quantity more than being graphic. Xenogears contains more nudity than any other game I've ever seen... except maybe Pacman. Anyway, this distinction really isn't a very hard thing to achieve, seeing how the average game has, you know, none, but that still doesn't change the fact that during the ending, we have to watch a 2 minute anime cut scene where all the characters are wearing nothing but lense flares.
• Evil Dead: You know Army of Darkness? The classic horror/comedy/oddity everyone seems to love? It's the third in a trilogy. The original is called Evil Dead, and it's honestly a pretty darn good campy horror flick with a shoestring budget. The only real problem with it, and it's something everyone involved in the making now says "What were we THINKING?!?" over, is that at one point someone is raped by a tree. Yes, I said a tree.
• At least 80% of all console RPGs ever made: There's this very very bizarre tradition of making the last form of the final boss in console RPGs turn out to be a gigantic, nude, spiky girl. Usually purple too. It doesn't matter if it's really a demonic tree, an abstract philosophical concept, the evil emperor, or Dracula. It's going to turn into a huge purple freak-girl who can kill you in about one hit.

Anyway... now that I stop and think about it, I'm not really going anywhere with any of this. I guess my point is that way to many people throw nudity into places you don't expect. Either that or that I consider the human body to be a disgusting pasty mass of stomach turning ugliness that I want my entertainment to feature nothing but robots and giant squids all wearing big ornate capes. Or maybe I don't have a point at all! It's not like I'm under some obligation to have a point. You're just reading the random stuff I get the inspiration to write down somewhere, usually just so the next time someone asks me what I think about something I can just give'em a link. Still, you came here wanting to hear something, so here.

In gratitude for people throwing money my way for generosity's sake, this month I've been updating all the non-rant portions of my page. I was hoping to get the next Tyranny book up this week, since I've recently started a serious push to get it wrapped up. The problem is, it's about two or three times the length of the core rules, and that's solid minute detail too. So sure, I've been working on it every spare moment, it'll just be another month or so worth of spare moments before it's done. In the meantime, I'll just have to keep pulling copouts like throwing reviews of the entirety of Slayers up on my anime page. In retrospect, that was a really bad idea, and I should have just reviewed 10 unrelated things. I'll have to keep that in mind for next week.