I don't want to seem alarmist so early on, but what started as a few sour notes in the premier seems to be continuing without abate in the second episode:

• First, most obviously, is our new characters, the Wonder Twins Maya and Alejandro. Not even touching on how this plays into the diseased immigrant stereotype, Maya has an uncontrollable power that kills people by making them bleed out of their eyes (which is not as creepy as I think it's supposed to be due to both Firefly and The 4400 having already done it, and from more than just the eyes), and the only way to stop her is for her brother to be around. So her brother follows her everywhere, insists that he always be with her, constantly tells her that he's going to make everything okay . . . which would be perfectly acceptable, even interesting, since that is almost certainly what the dynamic between a pair of South American siblings would be, except that for the show this is apparently all true. Again, it's early in the season, but we've no indications that Maya will learn to control her power without her brother's help, which is . . . disturbing.

Life is change; static is death. I've stated this before, and it remains true. But I failed to fully explore the implications of that statement. I knew how it applied to my error -- trying to preserve a static identity, through the insulation of myself from any influence of others, not realizing that to do so was nothing better than the meticulous preservation of a corpse, an artifact useful for others but pernicious to the individual in question -- but I missed the key part, what I thought was a minor method of my greater madness that was in fact the most important part of the mistake: the insulation of myself from the influence of others.

Over the past three days, I have, along with a group of between ten and fifteen other people, rewatched the entire first season of Heroes. A good show, especially for network television. One of the things I was struck by while rewatching is its thematic coherence, something I'm fairly certain is quite rare for television in general: from the beginning, the message of love through togetherness and the need to unite to overcome is clearly emphasized without hitting you over the head with it, dealt with in a number of different ways without it getting monotonous. The themes themselves are not particularly original (indeed, are glaringly unoriginal), but my point is that they're presented well.

Replaying Deus Ex (in shoot-'em-up form rather than my traditional pacifistic inclinations) and reminded of its brilliance in not just the big things but little things as well:

• A bum in Battery Park, New York City singing "My Country Tis of Thee". The "sweet land of liberty" line is of course particularly poignant given the circumstances of the game. His off-tune voice and genuine enthusiasm (he seems to really believe what he is singing, not just reciting it) lend it an earnestness that make it all the more sad when considering how his faith in his country has been abused (both in the game and in reality).


• A boy in the Mole People's tunnels who proudly proclaims that when he grows up, he will "know everything". The boy seems to see this as the ultimate accomplishment, suggesting that when he does so he will be above or on top of everyone else. A subtle reference (you don't have to talk to him, and he's easy to miss) on the "Knowledge is power" motif that dominates the game (it is, after all, MJ12's motto, in the Latin I used in the title of this post).


• Another boy int he Mole People's tunnels terrified of some secret demon he describes as "the man with red eyes". At first glance nothing more than an amusing inclusion referencing the devil -- except that (presumably due to his augmentation) Bob Page's (the ultimate villain of the game) eyes are red. You can actually see this early in the game, too, in the magazine in the UNATCO lounge.

I love such little touches. They're especially rare in video games but even in more mature mediums subtlety and the presence of larger themes even in minute details is an art that is seldom done well (when attempted at all). Of course, I could write pages and pages on Deus Ex -- the Mole People (or more precisely, the subway station directly before meeting them) are a particular favorite of mine, as are the characters of Gunther Hermann and Joseph Manderley.

Spook Country is William Gibson's (of Neuromancer fame) latest novel, a sequel (at least in the manner of Gibson's sequels) to his last, Pattern Recognition. PR is one of my favorite books; I consider it Gibson's second-best after Neuromancer. SC, while a good read and certainly better than much of today's popular fiction, doesn't quite stand up to its predecessor.