rodbeard posted:

Wait so SMG is actually funny when he's posting outside of CD?

rodbeard posted:

Wait so SMG is actually funny when he's posting outside of CD?

rodbeard posted:

Wait so SMG is actually funny when he's posting outside of CD?

rodbeard posted:

Wait so SMG is actually funny when he's posting outside of CD?

quote:

Duke 3D homaged/parodied 80s/early 90s action films by making the villains such ridiculous villain caricatures that Duke was an acceptable protagonist by comparison.

Roddy Piper and Snake Plissken are goddamn psychopaths in They Live and Escape from NY, but the point of the films is that society is so broken that these guys can thrive. It’s a deliberate part of the films, presenting extreme cynicism (Snake ignores a rape-in-progress because he’s that desensitized and amoral) with a smattering of dark humor (Snake’s nickname apparently comes from his dick tattoo).

Duke 3D’s pig cops were in a context where the Rodney King beating and the LA riots were still fresh in people’s minds. Not only that, but the villains behind the pigs were basically rapists - the cheesy “mars needs women” premise getting a gruesome subversion with the Aliens-referencing outcome. Duke 3D didn’t joke about the rape. It treated rape as a serious problem equivalent to racism and class warfare, to which Duke was a source of catharsis if not any actual social change. (Duke is was a parodic figure specifically because, despite being a working-class shmoe, he’s so unenlightened that he’s exclusively driven by basic urges to gently caress and kill.)

The women and civilians in Duke 3D were just “normal” people doing their jobs, even if they are strippers or whatever. In other words, they’re us. They’re the folks feeling oppressed by the government corruption and other social ills, who are crying out for a populist hero to save them. That Duke is ultimately an idiot gave the game a measure of honest-to-god complexity.

DNF treats these “normal” characters with relentless and utter contempt.

Any pretense that Duke was a working-class hero have been dropped, as now he’s a apparently a billionaire in a solid-gold penthouse with a loving throne. The aliens no longer represent police corruption or the patriarchy, but rather, “foreign cultures” (see: the WMD joke). And, obviously, they joke about the rape now because the people being raped are no longer audience stand-ins, but rather a bunch of semi-conscious inhuman inferiors.

(What makes the Olsen twins so objectionable that they need to get taken down several pegs anyways? Besides that they’re female, of course. Since when did they represent “wholesomeness” and why is wholesomeness the enemy now?)

The aliens are basically now equivalent to Duke. The line separating him from the baddies is altogether erased. He’s not defending anything good, even accidentally, because instead of reacting against the status quo (however clumsily) Duke is the status quo now. And it’s loving unbearable.

quote:

I think the change in atmosphere from previous Duke games makes sense when you realize that the people who are making Duke Nukem Forever and the people who are buying Duke Nukem forever are the same exact people who bought and played the first games, almost a decade and a half later. DNF is quite literally a mid-life crisis.

It’s been fourteen years since the last time Duke did anything. He can’t run as fast or as far as he used to. He can’t carry as many guns as he used to. He can’t take a bullet as well as he used to. The frat-boy sensibility about women from the previous games has darkened to a sense of fear and no small resentment (the pregnancy motif in the Alien level is important here- regretting having children, Duke?) The game’s willingness to make fun of its protagonist even as it supports him is completely gone, because its desperate clawing after virility cannot tolerate that.

For a game sold as a comedy, it takes the fight to preserve the masculinity and youth of its main character incredibly seriously, not realizing that the fight is already lost. When a vehicle breaks down on Duke Nukem, he responds “Aw, and it got such good gas mileage.” That is not a thing Schwarzenegger or Van Damme or Bruce Campbell would say in the films Duke Nukem is supposed to be parodying. That is a thing your dad says when the Volvo is beyond repair.

Duke Nukem Forever is a game about an aging sexually insecure man, made by an aging sexually insecure man, sold to an audience of aging sexually insecure men, which perfectly captures their anxieties. Duke Nukem Forever is art.

Republicans posted:

#ObamaAndKids has been trending today and it's chock full of goodness.











I'm gonna miss that guy.

Guavanaut posted:

Republicans posted:

#ObamaAndKids

greatn posted:

Nanny McPhee is the ultimate tsundere

PBS Newshour posted:

SMG is always funny, like it is amazing people get piss off about his funny posts. Why are you getting angry at the funny?

ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:

You mistake people rolling their eyes at his dumb gimmick with anger.

PBS Newshour posted:

Woah dude, cool your jets. Just laugh at the funny dude.

TontoCorazon posted:

There's nothing to laugh at though

rodbeard posted:

Wait so SMG is actually funny when he's posting outside of CD?

Travis343 posted:

SMG is one of the best posters on this accursed website

ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:

You mistake people rolling their eyes at his dumb gimmick with anger.

DavidAlltheTime posted:

I wear sunglasses sometimes too.

A GLISTENING HODOR posted:

You fucken piece of poo poo.

LORD OF BUTT posted:

He's funny in CD too, just more long-winded about it (and he also sincereposts there pretty often, generally about found footage movies)

ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:

You mistake people rolling their eyes at his dumb gimmick with anger.

Machai posted:

When you say SMG is funny do you mean funny haha or funny weird?

Machai posted:

When you say SMG is funny do you mean funny haha or funny weird?

Snapchat A Titty posted:

I repeat, please ban everyone

Ratspeaker posted:

I honestly, sincerely thought Jeb was going to pull a Budd Dwyer while he was up on stage. I was on the edge of my seat, wondering if I was going to watch a man die. Why else would his speech be so fatalistic? Why else would he have bought that gun?? This thread has gotten to me.

Aliquid posted:

chekhov fuckin' pissed rn

Ratspeaker posted:

I honestly, sincerely thought Jeb was going to pull a Budd Dwyer while he was up on stage. I was on the edge of my seat, wondering if I was going to watch a man die. Why else would his speech be so fatalistic? Why else would he have bought that gun?? This thread has gotten to me.

Aliquid posted:

chekhov fuckin' pissed rn

Snapchat A Titty posted:

Oh I think A WET BUTT makes some funny posts sometimes (I have a degree in idiocy from bullshit college 2010 also i fart a lot) but id prefer if he made less funny posts so i could smoke my incredibly dry pipe more and look down at these forums wink butt fart oceans of urine

Clitch posted:

SMG has been doing his act for years, and he still inspires an argumental derail everytime he's brought up. He's a good gimmick.

trying to jack off posted:

no one is yet to still come up with a comeback to the deez nuts own

apropos to nothing posted:

this is one of those instances where future generations will look back and think how ignorant we must have been because the answer is so obvious to them but their teacher will remind them that the time was different and people had only just started loving their computers

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Choco1980 posted:

Oh I honestly think SMG has a lot of interesting things to say about film from a high falutin' perspective (I have a degree in film, so I can parse what he says well enough) it's just his mental gymnastics he performs when someone has an equally valid or better reading of a work than what his single minded philosophy provides.

Pick posted:

Pick posted:

Snapchat A Titty posted:

I repeat, please ban everyone who doesn't appreciate SMG.

Stoatbringer posted:

Right at the very end of the old-coin-ruined-by-polishing-it video -
"It's the worst tragedy I've ever seen."

Nuebot posted:

A second polishing rag is hitting the coin!

PBS Newshour posted:

Woah dude, cool your jets. Just laugh at the funny dude.