More Betaphors!

Without too much adieu, these are maybe related to the same "plot" as the other Betaphors, and maybe not.  This whole "throughline" thing is new for me, so don't get too caught up in the lack of continuity.  

Adieu over.  

Your job is like Starcraft

It's easy—you start out with four dudes called SCVs (which is an acronym for Space... um... CVs), and you tell them to go over to those blue things and bring some back.  You need lots and lots of blue things, because that's what you use to make your army.  

The SCVs bring back blue things, and you get to make a barracks, which lets you train drug addicts how to shoot guns.  

Your opponent is doing the exact same thing—getting blue things, training druggies.  Still got it?  Super simple.  And your army of junkies gets to shoot all of the other guy's junkies, because THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER AND WE HAVEN'T EVEN GOTTEN TO THE ALIENS YET.  

Out of that same building, you can make criminals with flamethrowers, and psychic spies with nukes, and narcs.  Or medics, or whatever they are.  They're the only women.  

BEST GAME EVER SEXY NURSES.  

Still following me?  You can make all four of those troops out of the same building, and all four of them make up a kick-ass army made for killing your opponent's pansy bitches. 

That's pretty much how everything works—your SCVs bring back blue things (and green gas, which is just like blue things only better), and then you build an army out of your other buildings.  Barracks make druggies and narcs, factories make tanks and hover bikes and FUCKING MECHS, and your starport makes sweet figher jets and battlecruisers and science vessels, which let you know where the invisible things are.  

(The fighter jets and nuking spies can go invisible, as can almost all of the ALIENS WHICH IS SO AWESOME)

But that's pretty much it, so I hope you're still following me.  It's really simple.  It's all about bringing back blue and green things, and then making killing things.  

Now, here's where I might lose you—you're not making your fucking awesome army to kill your opponent's army.  Yes, you will slay them all and that shit will be so cool—but the point of your army is actually to kill the opponent's SCVs, because without blue and green things, they can't make an army.  

It doesn't matter that the SCVs show up for work on-time every day, or that they work through lunch, or that they don't use their sick days even though they won't get compensated for them and they fucking asked for that day off and weren't given it anyway goddammit, no.  Clearly that doesn't matter one bit, because while you’re carrying some blue things you still get disemboweled by ALIENS.  

But even that doesn't matter. 

Because your soul has already been ripped out by THE MAN.  

School is like Megaman. 

You’re some sort of proto-human, and there are eight things you have to conquer before you can become Dr. Wily.  So you plop down at each of these eight things, and you don’t know how you got here, or why if you plopped down HERE you couldn’t just plop down at the END, but you go through all of these steps anyway because it’s supposedly necessary. 

So you’re at the first of these eight things, and once you kill someone, you absorb some part of them and then you’re able to use that skill later on. 

WHICH IS LIKE LEARNING

But you have to know when to use that skill and who to kill with it, which isn’t something they teach you, so it’s trial and error. 

It’s a puzzle. 

It’s a goddamn puzzle. 

That’s all those games are.  Simple, even if frustrating.  Just simple and safe. 

I want to plop down there again.  When did I plop down at the end? 

Why am I not a doctor? 

When I killed him, why didn’t he explode in blinding light?  WHY? 

WHY CAN’T I UNSEE HIS DYING ROBOT FACE?

Murder confessions are like Megaman. 

You’re a human being. 

Except for the gun at the end of your arm.  That’s new. 

You’re pretty sure, anyway.  You can’t really remember before this moment.  There was just this killer guitar lick, but other than that, all you can remember is the rage. 

So you push A and you jump, and you push B and you shoot. 

Which is not a confession.  This is not a confession.  Megaman is not like murder confessions, let me start over. 

I was at home Tuesday night between 8 and 10. 

Yes, DR. LIGHT can corroborate my story.