worse and worse and worse and worse and worse

So. Boyd Cooper. A security guard who got fired for no apparent reason, snapped, burned his old workplace down using molotov-milk bottles, got sent to an asylum, and was manipulated by Morceau Oleander (using milk??) to act as a security guard for the evil base of Dr. Loboto, which also happened to be the same asylum he was committed to, only now it’s been abandoned. (The timeline of this sorta confuses me.)

When you meet Boyd, his whole shtick is pretty clear. He’s an extremely paranoid conspiracy theorist who rambles, scribbles on walls, and doesn’t seem to have a good grasp on reality.

When you enter Boyd’s mind, it’s this twisted, heavily surveilled suburban neighborhood. You are constantly being watched by cameras/figures hiding in bushes, lawn flamingoes, mail boxes, trash cans, etc. Instead of being the one who watches, now Boyd is the one being watched (or at least feels like he's being watched). His paranoia likely to stems from the fact that he was a security guard because it was literally his job to watch people all day long. If I had to guess, he might’ve grown up in a suburban neighborhood and/or lived in one while he was a security guard, too.

It's a fitting setting because these neighborhoods are often thought of as picture perfect places of peace and routine. Your goal should be to get married, buy a house here, raise a family, and go to work everyday. Not to mention that it's where a milkman typically makes his rounds…

Anyway, the main residents of the neighborhood are the G-men, these shady-looking guys in trench coats and hats with red eyes. They all have specific roles indicated by whatever object they’re holding. A stop sign means one is a construction worker, a watering can means one is a gardener, a rolling pin means one is a housewife, etc. So if you hold a specific object, then you're immediately accepted by the G-men as a fellow worker, housewife, widow, assassin — you name it. Everyone has a role and everyone is faking it. They're pretending to be something they're not in order to watch you.

Society is very rigid in Boyd’s mind. If you go outside your role and into the G-men’s, sirens blare and you're interrogated. You can’t step out of line; you have to follow this world’s rules in order to progress. Societal roles (mainly in relation to work) is a huge theme in his level.

It all feels very... bleak. None of it feels particularly positive at any point. For example, the G-men all speak in the same monotone voice, almost as if they’re dully reciting scripts from memory. They state their job, what they do, their place in society, and sometimes witty yet sort of depressing remarks about it. In particular, the housewife G-man’s dialogue comes to mind: “For the last several years, I have relied on prescription medication to make it through the days.”

(I have a theory that the dialogue of the housewife and grieving widow G-men reflect Boyd’s own mother, and the environment he grew up in. The housewife’s G-man also has a voice line about an alcoholic husband, so I think that Boyd’s dad was an alcoholic who died when he was young. The widow’s lines about 401ks, being alone, and remarrying also indicate how his mom might’ve felt about it. Growing up in a loveless household will really do a number on you!)

If this is how Boyd views the world, then I sort of understand why he wants it all to burn. The milkman seeks vengeance on society and the strict roles everyone has to dishonestly play in order to live in it — and he does that by committing arson. To me, the milkman is the breaking point of Boyd’s dissatisfaction with society. He’s the metaphorical key to “freeing” Boyd.

"Society will chew you up and spit you out," as the saying goes. It’s incredibly easy to become impoverished or homeless if you find yourself suddenly without a job, like Boyd did. Not only was he fired, but after his breaking point he was committed to a mental asylum, which is known to be a place where the unwanted dregs of society are locked up in order to keep up the façade of peace. Conspiracy theorists claim to see the darkness in things that most people take for granted, shedding light on the cracks in the system and grasping for a greater, nefarious reason for it all.

So Boyd repressed what he did (due to Oleander’s manipulation), and now he’s stuck as a security guard again, guarding the dilapidated asylum that he was once committed to. But his problem is that he's not a security guard, he's the milkman (or at least has the capacity to be the milkman)! The milkman was locked away deep in his mind, protected by the Den Mother, but Raz defeats her and frees the milkman.

(I like how the name "Den Mother" relates to a security guard sitting in a den of camera footage, but in this case her cameras are girl scouts.)

This might be a bit of a stretch but I wonder if a lot of religious people relate to the Milkman Conspiracy on some level.

Feeling as though you're constantly being surveilled in your own mind is a struggle that many people who used to be super religious have. One of my siblings (who grew up mennonite) said that she still feels guilty about doing normal things, that she feels like she's being watched and judged by god as well as her extremely religious peers despite not believing it anymore and not being around those sorts of people anymore.

It's definitely not a parallel that the game intends but I couldn't help but contemplate it while playing.

@magicmvx's Bird Raz (again.)

I found a notebook under my bed from when I was in school. Shockingly, I found zero doodles in it, so I fixed that. I haven't drawn on paper in a long time.

Elton and my OC, Aquamarine.

Lineless is tricky.