Garth and I are sitting here, having a beer, watching Youtube and doing some writing. We just watched the Suicide Squad trailer, and I was reminded of a previous script that I’d intended to put together ages back.

So, the final lines in the trailer, are Joker saying, “I’m not going to kill you, I just want to hurt you.” And while that’s a cute idea, it doesn’t really suit me.

I had an old script idea about the serial killer collective, brought together by social media and blackmail, dragged into a contest, where they split into teams, film their kills and then screen them for the other members, before releasing them unto the internet as darknet torrents. It’s not a bad idea, and I should do some work on it again some day.

Anyways, the Joker line reminded me of something with a Shadowrun flavour, someone who “didn’t plan to kill you, didn’t really want to hurt you, but needed to upgrade you.” He had criteria for his victims, and he upgraded them, installing his own attempts at cybernetics into them.

And part way through the story, he’ll find someone else who believes in upgrading people, who will join him, and give him access to new ways to upgrade people.

(Garth Spencer):
Something like this has occurred to me, although the story idea hasn’t quite gelled. Start with the philosophical issue: we are not, yet, entirely adapted to being “intelligent” beings. I put the word in quotes because whether we are really a thinking, rational species has yet to be proven; in fact it’s a lot easier to prove we are irrational, and fundamentally a believing, even superstitious species.

Considering the challenges we face to survival, someone who decided to play god with humans might well decide to upgrade us. Mentally. Biologically. Or, at least, with cyborg implants, for proof of concepts.

Item: thinking ahead. Have you ever suspected that engineers and industrial investors suffer from an extraordinary level of suboptimal planning? Even, an extraordinary aversion to thinking through the consequences of half-assed industrial processes? And now we have a universal level of toxins and industrial effluents in seawater and water supplies, and marine garbage patches the size of Australia. Plural. (Isn’t anybody going to capitalize on this? Where’s the IPO?)

Item: social perception. You know and I know and your maiden aunt’s little doggie knows that there are pretty inconsistent and irrational inputs to everyone’s education, especially the unconscious education about how to read people or succeed in business or battle the international threat represented by the underground worldwide Cult of Kali, and its famous fronts the NRA, and ISIS, and the Conservative Party of Canada.  (I say nothing about the U.S. Republican Party, nothing at all!)

Item: Why are almost all the elected representatives or candidates for elective office THAT WE HEAR ABOUT unqualified for running a Sunday school class? Because they’re almost all fronts for the Belgian conspiracy to achieve worldwide domination? (Today, Europe; tomorrow … ?)

Item: If I’m so smart, why ain’t I rich and famous and basking in the love of fair women, plural?

Answer: because I haven’t sat down and written everything I can. That answers everything.

(/Garth Spencer)

And that’s the commentary from Murderhobo.Club’s first guest writer.