Let me open with this: nothing I have ever loved is above criticism. I know you know this but it is still important that YOU know I KNOW THIS. I am not looking for any pitiful thing when I proclaim: I LOVE THIS. Perhaps you can say I am doing this or that (let me say this about that) for some affirmation from the Universe. Or from friends or revered creative people. But really I am just saying I love this because I really love this. I love Bioshock Infinite. You know this. I love Blood On The Tracks by Bob Dylan. You know this. I love Blade Runner. You know this.


So let me continue on with some things you didn't know: When I started writing I was a member of the now disbanded Smile Shop. Jon Hunt and John Lane ran it. I learned everything I now use daily from these two men and a select group of writers, thinkers and philosophers. They taught me to say what I say better and to say what I didn't think of saying, full stop. The biggest influence on my writing style and in many, many ways my approach to art, was a man named Ian Wagner.


Ian Wagner was and I am told still is a rather special human being who loves art from every sense available to him. He once punched a guy for dissing The Beach Boys. Overreaction? No. He dealt out swift and vital punishment for a lack of intellectual faculties. Ian was the guy who taught me that criticisms of creative work always need passion. If you are prepared to shit on someone's most loved thing, you best get your words in order.


This brings me to my next thing. When I love things, I stick by them. I say “hey! I love this thing and you should too!” Bioshock Infinite to me, and sometimes I think to me alone, is a perfect game. There is nothing I would change or trim or otherwise mess with. I know this is not an opinion widely accepted. People were falling on top of each other to proclaim that the game was a sham. Whether this is the odious assertion that it is a “Nazi Disneyland” or that its violence is gratutitous, I have one place for these criticisms: that part of my brain where I don't want to think about bad things.


Let's unpack some things about Bioshock Infinite and see if it holds up to scrutiny. Claim: The game revels in racist ideas and signifiers and does not expand on them in any meaningful way. Ken Levine admitted that the game is not wholly occupied with Racism as its central theme. It is occupied with the story of Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth. It is not offering any resolution or deep insight into racism. It is instead offering it as a detail in a personal human story. Booker DeWitt is a bad man. “Only blood can repay blood.” The game is offering up, as the original did, that when ideologies override basic human compassion things get bad. Self-hate is a big part of why Bioshock as a series is so compelling. They ask the individual to look hard at themselves and question why it is that these elements are so pernicious. So maybe it didn't get to resolve Racism as a thing, but it made the player question their own myths. In its conclusion it offers up its most powerful assertion: that being sad about doing evil is no excuse, and more importantly no solution for evil.


Secondly, is the violence gratutitous? I say no. It is a necessary result in depicting the complicity in evil that makes murder of the innocent possible. Unlike The Last of Us, Infinite did not sway the darlings of the industry to take up arms against all comers. The Last of Us was “brave,” Infinite was exploitative. I want to be soaked in excess. I adore gore. I think the aesthetic value of violence is no better expressed than it is with Bioshock Infinite. Put that spinny thing in brains and make a picture! How about that combat? Is it lacking? I say not. At its best – and its best is frequently seen through the playing time – it is visceral, poetic and full of chaos.


Back to Ian Wagner. He taught me that to love something is to stand up for it. Even when he was wrong – and he was wrong not infrequently – he gave eloquent defenses to terrible things. He made you change your mind about those few certain things in your head. He made you proud to think free and unfettered by prejudice. He never, ever made someone feel less because they loved something he didn't. Instead he made them feel like the Last Angry Man. Come at me and do it right. So let me close by saying that my banging on about Infinite or Bob or Ridley is not out of some insecurity but is instead my trying to live up to the high water mark of creativity that these works have instilled in me. I owe them as much as I do to my parents, friends and family. To fail to argue in their corner would make me guilty of a great moral and artistic crime. So I fight as much as I can. Not only for the creators of these things but for those shy people too afraid of the Status Quo and sometimes literally the ACTUAL BAND STATUS QUO. If I ever find a woman who'll have me, I'll fight just as hard for her.


Let me leave you with this: NEVER be ashamed of what you love. Love what you love and everything else can get fucked. If you meet a man or a woman or a transgender individual who tries to make you feel shit for loving something? Ditch them. They're not worth a damn. Love The Eagles. Love Neil Diamond. Love John Denver. Love fucking Morrissey with all his preening gumption. Do it honestly and without shame. That's it.

Please tell stories about things you love that make you sad that more people don't share your love!