Let's start with some heavy stuff first: Insecurity kills. It's not really up for debate, anymore. We've got insecurity in the White House, and it's wrecking the place every day. We've got insecurity in the streets, where road rage incidents turn normal people with problems into speeding battering rams. And we've got insecurity in our homes, where the slightest argument with a neighbor can spiral out of control into a "domestic dispute" that kills dozens.
I'm no stranger to insecurity myself. I've got the ol' social anxieties, the small-bicep blues, and savvy readers will note that novel I keep promising still isn't published. But I consider myself lucky. The majority of American men got hit with the insecurity stick a lot harder than I did, and they have less access to tools they need to fix it.
In lieu of that, a lot of guys take to the wrong places to resolve their fears and self-doubts. Places like MMA (I enjoy the sport myself, but there's no denying the fandom is toxic), online trolling, and Nascar. Dealing with male rage is difficult, and as a country we don't really know what to do about it. We don't know how to talk to our young men, to teach them how to reign in that frustration or put it towards something productive. But most of all we don't understand where it comes from, how it can take root in an otherwise well-meaning human being. I believe that this understanding is the key to solving things like the gun crisis, the idiotic testosterone supplement industry, and it might even help us figure out why some douche-bag cut us off on the highway on-ramp. But I'm not a psychologist, or really a behavioral scientist of any kind, so the only way I can really tackle this problem is with fantasy. Namely, with video games.
Enter Melkor.
Look at that mug. You can smell the "nice guy" a mile away, can't you?
Melkor is a character I've created in Dragon Age: Inquisition. I have purposely designed this avatar to look, behave and sound as insecure as possible. For those who don't know, "Inquisition" is a game designed to put the player at the forefront of a crusade to take back "Ferelden," a fictional country, from the forces of evil.
No, not THAT Inquisition. *tuba noises*
However, as with a lot of Bioware role-playing games, the emphasis is less on being a faultless heroic force for justice than it is about making you question your choices. The game is full of choices, both insignificant and world-shattering, and I thought it would be fascinating to take a character totally unsuited to responsibility... and see what happens when he controls the world of Dragon Age.
Let's find out, shall we?
Pre-Game: Manbaby Rising
In creating Melkor, I chose the traits that would make him a minority in his world. Insecurity thrives outside the circle of social acceptance, after all. To start with, I made Melkor an Elf. Elves are not quite reviled in Ferelden, but they aren't anybody's favorite people, either. They don't revere the normal God of Ferelden (gasp!) they're innately connected to magic (gasp, again!) and if that wasn't enough, they have pointy ears too. (Double gasp!) Elves aren't quite as "othered" as Qunari (big demon folk) or Darkspawn (the stand-in for orcs) but they are certainly outsiders.
Next, I made him a Mage. Mages are definitely a reviled group in Ferelden. Imagine if the obsessive, bug-collecting guy from the condo next to yours could shoot lightning from his hands... and also was a living gateway to a world of horrible demons. You'd be a little suspicious, right? Well, in Ferelden there's a whole group dedicated to keeping Mages in check. They're called Templars, and if you think they sound a bit reactionary, you'd be right. Their job is basically to kill rogue Mages.
The game added a bit of extra fun for me here by making Melkor a Daelish, one of a bunch of exile elves that... well, I won't bore you. But suffice to say by game start, Melkor was already feeling like an outsider. A put-upon, grumpy, emo-haired outsider with fire magic. What could go wrong?
Answer: Everything. Everything could go wrong with this.
So Melkor starts off in chains, accused of killing the Pope of this world. Great! I hastily assured the guards that I was innocent, and was carted off to the magical Breach to put my money where my mouth was. Okay, fine. Killed a demon, closed the Breach. I can go home and listen to Linkin Park now, right?
Of course not. For some reason, Melkor is the only one who can close these magical Macguffin portals, and there's a ton of them. The Inquisition keeps him on as kind of an advisor, and then... starts letting him make really important decisions, pretty much immediately?
"We couldn't think of anyone more qualified? Seriously?"
From a game standpoint, okay, this makes sense. Melkor is the only one who can close the portals, so you'd expect they would need him. And from a design standpoint, the game creators want to put you as close to the action as possible. This works pretty well here, as opposed to other Bioware projects, with the one side effect that a whiny teen goth Elf kid is now in charge of an entire army.
Once again: what could go wrong?
Presented without comment.
So now Melkor runs everything. Awesome! This is what he's always dreamed of! An Elf Mage exile, crowned Inquisitor! He's been burning to get his hands on REAL power since the first time somebody tweaked his ears, and now HE'S on top--he'll show those human chumps who's boss!!
Except... he actually has to work with the human chumps, in order to keep his position. He can't just go riding around blasting people. Suddenly, his egotistical worldview needs to be tempered with patience. And this is where the "experiment" part comes in.
See, democracy is hard. Really hard. If you want to build a functioning society, you need to try and keep everyone happy. If you put someone like Melkor at the center of it, who's only out for himself, the equation gets really weird really fast.
Take the recent turmoil around Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, whose refusal to depart from office has created huge problems for his country. The guy is ancient, yet he won't give up his office even after the military put him under house arrest. This is insecurity at its most extreme: He knows damn well the people don't want him there anymore, and that his long career of corruption and bribery will make him deeply unpopular if he abdicates. So he clings to power, far past logic and sanity, because his deep-rooted need to be more important than everyone else is now his only reason for living.
I was going to make a joke about his wardrobe, but honestly, it just feels like shooting fish in a bucket. Dead fish.
The presence of men like this in positions of power creates cascading problems for everyone beneath them. That's why the U.S. presidency has always been such a hallowed seat: because as ugly as the country can be, we hope for someone with genuine benign integrity will take control. This hasn't worked out lately, because once a sufficient portion of the country's men hit critical insecurity levels, it was only a matter of time before the worst of the worst rose to the top. Also, there was a scary girl on the other side of the ballot! We couldn't let a girl get elected, guys! Ew, cooties!
But I digress. Back to Melkor. Melkor immediately sets about doing all the things an Inquisitor is supposed to do: moving troops, hiring spies, getting everybody to call him "Sir" because his dad never loved him and was killed by dragons. But then something happened that I didn't expect--the kind of out-of-left-field twist that every philosophical experiment should have.
In every play-through, you're sort of forced to side with one of the two warring factions in Ferelden: the Mages, with their spooky but altruistic leaders, or the Templars with their autocratic--but reliable---soldiers. Last time I went with Mages, because fuck yeah, an army that can shoot fireballs! This time I went with Templars, though, because despite him being a Mage I see Melkor as a guy who goes for the biggest gun, when trouble crops up. And the Templars with their huge armor pauldrons and giant swords are definitely the bigger gun.
"What do you mean, 'over-designed'? Sh-shut up, YOU'RE over-designed!"
Plus, at his heart, Melkor is just a big kid. An immoral, magical kid who looks a lot like Kylo Ren, but still just a kid. He wants his toy soldiers and he wants them now. But when I went to fetch them, (spoilers ahead) I ran into this guy:
"I'm, uh, here for the Human Centipede auditions?"
This charming fellow is an Envy Demon. It's unclear whether he was always the Templar leader or kidnapped him, but he's secretly running the Templars when you show up. And part of his elaborate super-villain scheme is to trap you in a maze in your own mind, filled with the kind of horrors your future might hold if you go full "Black Hat," as they say in Westworld.
Until now, Adam Driver--er, I mean Melkor--had been fully intending to turn into an autocratic dictator. Everyone else kept him on the bottom, why shouldn't he do the same to them? Et cetera. But what he got instead was a very "Empire Strikes Back" moment of confrontation where he's forced to accept that maybe his ideals of power and revenge aren't really worth that much.
"What do you MEAN, actions have consequences? Speak Ferelden!"
In many mythologies, this kind of challenge is a major rite of passage. For example, the major Buddhist figure Bodhidharma spent nine years in a cave, frequently being tormented by demons in his mind, in order to pursue enlightenment. To have this kind of thing happen to Melkor, who at his core is a sneaky selfish child, challenged my assumption that the game would end with him on top of a pile of skulls, cackling while using forbidden blood magic.
So, now I'm forced to question whether Melkor is even suited for this kind of experiment. Right off the bat, he's had despotism revealed as a possible destiny. This makes him self-aware--and insecurity has a very hard time surviving, in the cleansing fire of self-awareness. He was designed as a total egoist, of the snobby obnoxious Max Stirner variety, but now I actually have to get off my ass and role-play him properly. Will he bear out my points about male insecurity in positions of power? Will I find a way to curb his ambitions, and teach him to be a better person? Will he ever gather enough magical shards and weapons to prove to his crush, Cassandra, that he's Totally The Best Inquisitor Ever and she should "like, uh, totally go out on a date" with him? (Melkor's words, not mine.)
"Melkor, what are you doing with all those red crayons?" "NOTHING, SHUT UP, COLE!!"
More importantly, how can all this fantastical frippery be applied to the real world in a practical way to help reduce male fragility and increase self-awareness among hyper-masculine and confused Americans? Is such a thing even possible? Find out next time, on: "THE ADVENTURES OF MELKOR, THE MAN-BABY!"
The official theme of Melkor, brought to you by a playlist from... uh, 2008.
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