Alice: Madness Returns & Middle School

The full title of this particular post should be something akin to: “Alice: Madness Returns Reminds Me of Middle School.” But that seems incredibly wordy for a title, almost bordering on being verbose. Almost. That being said, I’ve been messing around with the new Alice game from American McGee.

For the uninitiated, American McGee’s Alice was a game released for the PC way back in 2000, a time when people were living with the horrors dystopian events of Y2k. McGee offered up a horrifying take on the much-loved Wonderland tales from Lewis Carroll, long before Tim Burton would get his grimy scissor-hands on the property. Both takes seemed to have been largely embraced by the (oftentimes questionable) “Hot Topic Crowd.”

You know, like for kids.

The most substantial thing I seem to notice about the sequel is that it constantly reminds me of things from around my experiences with the original.

The first game came along at about the time when I was thirteen years old… and its now that I remember that the game was M rated, and my parents apparently didn’t give a shit about what I was doing in my free time. This new title seems to be bringing up very strange memories from around the time I was playing the first game. Most of which are completely unrelated to the game proper.

Specifically, I knew this girl in 7th grade, and she wore leather pants. This seemed totally inappropriate, but mostly I was bothered by the fact that it seemed like it would be ridiculously uncomfortable.

She was a total bitch. And she totally got pregnant in 9th grade.

There are other things. But I really just wanted to say that.

I think her name was Melissa. Total bitch.

Knowledge Balls.

In retrospect, I imagine I should have done some sort of introductory post to this blog. But in all of my experiences and profound abilities, dropping the ball is chief among them. Consider this the first of many similar instances on this particular venue. But you know what else I plan on dropping? KNOWLEDGE. That’s right, I’ll be dropping knowledge all over the place. I won’t go on record and stating that it’ll be useful knowledge (it most likely won’t be), but it’ll be knowledge.

In planning this blog (I use the term loosely), I envisioned it to be something wherein I wasn’t solely responsible for providing content. To be fair, that’s an incredibly P.C. way of saying that I could get away with being lazy while other people do the work. But pretend I didn’t say that. Pretend I said something that was inherently fantastic, possibly profound, and most likely with something in parenthesis at the end (a lot like this—but profound).

I’ve asked a few people to contribute to the blog, each bringing something different to the table (or blog, as it were). I’d hope to have “Scaring the Straights” be a blog wherein numerous topics can be discussed and/or reviewed, without any real boundaries. The most general of labels I could use to identify the material you’ll find on this space is this: Popular Culture.

Even using the term “pop culture” isn’t wholly accurate. The stuff we’ll be covering will deal heavily with pop culture, for sure, but also counter-culture and subjects seemingly against the ‘norm.’ If for nothing else, I hope you’ll be at least a little entertained. That, or have you come away with some newfound (possibly pointless) knowledge.