This is so freakin cool! Junkie Momoth Man, an OJ (that's "Original Junkie" for those of you who weren't in the fold of Siglerism fifteen years ago), created something that touched my (orange &) black heart.
As a person who has twice given away an entire console system to get Madden out of my home, I'm a big fan of the game. I haven't played in over a decade, because Madden is not allowed in my house. When I'm around it, it consumes me.
"Hey, FDØ, have you tried just playing one game a day?"
Yes, I've tried. But there's scouting to be done. And trades. And reworking contracts. And practice to get the plays down. And uniforms to customize, players to name, dynasties to build, and... like I said, it overwhelms me. At one point I was playing three games of Madden a day, along with all that stuff I mentioned above.
I had notebooks. Multiple notebooks for different aspects of building a championship team.
The game is absolute crack to me. If it's around, I'm playing it, and not doing much else.
So when Momoth Man sent these images of Quentin Barnes on the cover of Madden 2686, I was floored. So fun!
IT'S THE DETAILS THAT GET ME!
- "PS Holo"
- The pinky
- The spot-on EA Sports and GFL logo placement
- The field: this shot of Quentin was clearly taken at an away game against the Isis Ice Storm. Yes, there are Ionath banners in the stands, because the Orange and the Black faithful travel well! As for the bloody pinky (which happened at a home game, I believe), that dang stub tears open all the time.
AND THEN THERE IS THE BACK COVER:
"Run the plays that you call."
Give me a break with that! So freakin' clever!
AND A MEA CULPA:
Quentin Barnes is Black. It's subtle in the text because I want every reader to imagine their own ideal quarterback (it's a literary device, trust me).
Q is not "African American." This story is set six centuries in the future. It's not set on Earth, and there is no "America" in that time anyway. He's not "African," either—he's from the Purist Nation, a four-planet government many, many lightyears away. The Nation ignores racism based on skin color in favor of speciesism based on hating non-Humans (and classism, of course—High One forbid you are a poor orphan in the Nation, but that's a tale for another time).
When Momoth Man first sent his images, Quentin was white—same images, but as Caucasian as Jim McMahon (one of the quarterbacks Quentin was based on). Trouble is, Quentin has the size and skin tone of Dante Culpepper (the other quarterback he was based on).
I was so pumped to see my guy on the cover of Madden, and so floored with all the details, that I missed one kinda major detail—your Ionath Krakens starting QB is definitely not Caucasian.
In a fit of glee, I posted the images, and had more than a few Junkies make comments that start with "Uhhhh... just checking here...." which were followed by polite ways of saying: "Hey, dumbass, have you read your own work?"
So I asked MM to make the correction, which he was happy to do. He missed that detail as well—as I mentioned, it's very subtle in the text.
ONE LAST THING...
I made Barnes a Black QB for a reason. I've been watching football all my life. I can remember the days when sportswriters (and owners, and general managers) thought a Black QB could not win the Super Bowl. They were "great athletes," sure, but they didn't have the "brainpower" to lead a team to a win.
No, I am not making this up.
That all changed in 1988 when Doug Williams led the Washington Redskins to a Super Bowl win, 42-10 over the Denver Broncos.
I channeled the whole ridiculous "a Black man can't win it all" into the GFL, where people think "a Purist can't win it all." Yea, sure, Barnes is a gifted athlete, no doubt, but can he lead? Can he think?
It's just as stupid a concept as it was before Mr. Williams put that bigoted myth to rest.
The reason I made Quentin's skin color subtle was to show a post-racial world that retains the same classist and societal prejudices, just in a different form. In other words—hate finds a way, even six centuries from now.
