They are all screwed up. Dan admits as much in the course of the story. He and Silk Spectre 2 are the most well adjusted simply because they can admit to themselves that they are screwed up.

And it is very bleak. But that's a check in the 'awesome' column in my book.

I agree that for being the actual protagonist of the story, Ozzy gets comparatively little screen time. Of course, that's neither unheard of in movies nor significantly different from the graphic novel.

And don't Dr. Manhattan (in the minds of humanity) and Ozzy (in reality) become philanthropists according to your definition? They (Ozzy, really) devote themselves to the selfless betterment of society. Ozzy knows he can't save everybody, but those he kills or allows to die do so specifically to save the rest. Philanthropy. Ruthless, horrible philanthropy. But philanthropy nonetheless.

And it wasn't the destruction of those cities that would bring about world peace, it was the threat of further destruction if the survivors didn't change their ways. Dr. Manhattan, in effect, become a giant unseen, unfightable "other" that humans could project all their fear and loathing onto, shifting the stain from other humans and out into the ether. That's what would keep the population of the world dedicated to the pursuit of peace - fear.

Ban him! Baaaaaaaaaaan him!

Anyway, Eddie, who was the person you're counting as not liking it? I remember a pretty unanimous ruling last night.

Thanks, Entropy!

*thumbs up!*

So this is what our board is going to be.

Alright then.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

*whistles*

Right, but Ellie's point was why wouldn't God provide something unknowable to humans at that point but which could later be verified, like Pi or E=MC2. What's in the Bible (and any other religious text) is and always will be unverifiable, that's the problem.

The difference is I'm aware of the fact that my universe is fictional.

I thought somebody had mentioned in here that the "Mark of the Creator" idea present in the book was hooey, since in an infinite stream of non repeating numbers, any pattern was inevitably going to come up eventually. I can't find the comment now, of course. It must be on the TFN thread.

Anyway, I finally got around to reading the book and that idea is actually mentioned and dismissed by Ellie.

In the book, it's explained any apparent pattern would still be subject to probability, and that while little things might crop up, like four 4's in a row, and not be a big deal, if something major popped up and seriously defied probability, that would be an indication that something else was going on, that there was a design and intent involved in the universe. Of course, Ellie finds exactly that at the very end, which turns out to be - SPOILERS:

A series of 1's and 0's that when arranged right (Sagan isn't very clear on this part) form a grid that produces a perfect circle, like an ASCII drawing.

Of course, if someone presented that evidence to me, I don't know how convincing I would find it. Since the "go deep enough into Pi and you'll find anything, since it's infinite" still seems at least somewhat valid to me. But that's Sagan's argument, and certainly he was a smarter man than I.

What I did find especially interesting was the setup to this idea's payoff, a moment earlier in the book where Ellie asks Joss Palmer and another religious character (not present in the movie) that if God had wanted to prove his existence for all time, why didn't he implant some piece of modern knowledge in ancient history, something human beings couldn't possibly have known? Why, in effect, didn't Moses come down off the mountain saying, "Energy is the product of mass and light times itself." Or some phrasing of the Inverse Square Law, or the Law of Gravitation? Or anything that would've been fundamentally beyond our ancestor's understanding that we could then look back on and say, "Wow, that's weird."

It was a really good point, one I had never considered before.

Is there an apocalypse story in which there is in fact only one person left alive? The only one I can think of off hand is that Twiligh Zone episode I referenced. I'm not sure you could hang a longer story on just one character. Unless you aped Castaway and give that character a Wilson to talk to.

You know how if you look at a newspaper printed picture close enough, it's just a bunch of dots?

That's what this guy did. With a big painting. Just tiny little dots. Lots and lots of tiny, tiny dots.

People told him he was crazy. They were right. But he still did it.

I have played Mass Effect. I love Mass Effect. I haven't played the second one yet, because I'm poor. But I would love to, if anyone out there is feeling generous.

I do think video games on the whole are starting to get to that point of maturity. I don't know how much of a conscious effort it is on the part of any particular game developers (going back to the "intent" question again). But somebody's going to come along specifically to set out to make a game with contradictory themes at some point, if they haven't already.

And then we'll really be in new territory.

Okay, so let's go back to the intent question. I feel something qualifies as art if it's created with the intention of communicating a point, which you could also call the theme.

Now what if the work you're creating (interactive play, choose your own adventure book, or video game) can be altered by the participant enough that they can alter the outcome of the work enough that the work could theoretically produce contradictory themes? Play it through one way and you get, "Anybody is capable of redemption." Play it through again, take different actions, and you get, "Evil cannot be undone."

For what it's worth, I think once video games hit this level of sophistication, then the medium is really on its way to being an art form.