Saturday, January 19, 2013

"Wierzbowski & Crowe Are Down!": The Aliens Didn't Beat Us...We Beat Ourselves






WIERZBOWSKI: You know, I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I really believe Dietrich bears at least partial responsibility for our predicament.

CROWE: That’s a short sighted way of looking at it. The chain of causation was more complex than that.

WIERZBOWSKI: Maybe. But I can’t help but resent that she set Frost on fire.

CROWE: Yes, but she didn’t tell Frost to drop the bag of live ammunition he was carrying at our feet and throw himself down a stairwell. I was killed in the explosion and you…what happened to you anyway?

WIERZBOWSKI: I’m not 100% sure to be honest. Maybe I’m delusional and overly optimistic, but there’s no conclusive evidence I even died at all. Just screams and a camera with my name on it blurring to static.

It's kind of depressing. My ambiguous death is also the signature moment of my life, my sole contribution to the greater world. Which makes me wonder if I ever really lived.

CROWE: Sounds like you’re having a rough day.

WIERZBOWSKI:Yeah, I…I just wish I spoke up more, you know? Made my voice heard.

CROWE: If you had to do it over again, what would you say?

WIERZBOWSKI: Probably, ‘Dietrich, there’s an alien behind you.’

CROWE: I would have said. ‘Don’t light one of our only Persons of Color on fire with a flamethrower. Accident or not, it looks bad and sends the wrong message.’ Especially when Apone went down only moments later. Our only two non-white characters, gone in the first moments of combat.

WIERZBOWSKI:What about Vasquez?

CROWE: Vasquez was played by a non-Hispanic actor. That’s still problematic.

WIERZBOWSKI: I think you’re reading way too much into this. It’s just the way things worked out that’s all. You and I are white. So was Dietrich, the weak link in the master race.

I can’t believe that dizzy bitch lit Frost on fire. Her actions killed more of us than the aliens did. She made us look like buffoons.

CROWE: That bothers me too. I don’t blame Dietrich, per se, and I think calling her a dizzy bitch really diminishes her capabilities as a medic and as a marine not to mention reinforces harmful gender stereotypes, but that whole incident with the ammunition…Four of us were brought low as a consequence of that unlikely initial series of events. If things had gone even a little differently, the whole complexion of the ensuing battle might have turned out differently. I feel like the United States Colonial Marine Corps were unfairly labelled losers in that battle when the truth is, the Aliens never beat us. We beat ourselves.

And that really sticks in my craw.

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