An Exposé by Kyle ‘The Critic’ Graves

Well readers, today I endeavour to answer a question as old as time, one that has troubled me for many years, but today will finally be put to rest. And that question is, of course: “Is the ‘Six by Nico: Best of 2021’ menu ACTUALLY the best of 2021?”

For those of you who haven’t heard of the restaurant chain Six by Nico, it is a group of restaurants which only serve six course tasting menus, with the menu changing once every six weeks. This is a concept that could only appeal to two sorts of people, those who are trying to get into fine dining through a slightly more accessible route than most other fine dining restaurants, and dickheads. Mainly the latter. So, of course, I’ve checked this place out! I am an eight-time winner of the highly converted ‘Dickhead Award’ after all.

And if you hadn’t guessed it from the name, the ‘Best of 2021’ menu is, well, I mean, if you can’t get it from the name then I’m not going to waste my time explaining it to you. If you lack the ability to engage your brain for even a moment during this incredibly serious and not at all satirical article then on your own heads be it! Though you will get naught from this experience, which might actually make you better off than the people actually reading this article. So, you know, well done. You win. Now fuck off.

So, how were the best 6 courses of 2021 decided? Ah, well that can be answered easily enough. Every single person on the mailing list for Six by Nico (which I am one of) was sent a survey in which they had to pick their favourite dish from two options, and the winning dish would then be put onto the menu. Ah, a public vote, democracy at its finest, how could a public vote be wrong?

 Answer: VERY EASILY!

How do I know this? Well, you see, this Motherfucker right here voted on every single course without a single morsel of the food I was voting on having passed my lips. I didn’t even deign to look at the pictures or names of the courses, I just clicked randomly, tanking any opportunity they had of having a truly representative vote on what people liked to eat! I felt as a God must have done lording his power over all merely because He could. And so He did.

And I will not be alone in having done this! How do I now? For, as I am sure some of you reading this are currently thinking, “Wow, why would Kyle even bother doing this? It’s pointless. What a Dickhead!” To which I respond… EXACTLY. I am being a Dickhead by doing this. But, as I have already established, this chain has a clientele that is mostly made up of Dickheads, some of whom will there do the same thing as me. Therefore, I can only assume the dishes that won were picked pretty much at random an have no relation on how good the food actually was. As it should be. That’s right! You were doomed from the moment of your conception Six by Nico! Ah, what tragedy your hubris has wrought.

However, I have one slight complaint with this method (as what I’ve mentioned previously are obviously positives, because I got to fuck shit up) and that is that they only offered two choices on each vote. Two! That hardly seems fair! They’ve already narrowed down exactly which ones they want to come up and submitted them accordingly? And was it a public nomination? You bet your fucking ass it wasn’t! That prick Nico rigged the whole competition in his favour, so that what he wanted to win would win! And the only blatant rigging I want is that which I have created with my own hands! I am the customer! I am RIGHT! And I will stand for nothing less than complete say over what I, and every other customer, must eat.

Enough preamble, onto the food!

On entering the restaurant I immediately asserted by dominance by being the coolest son of a bitch who ever lived, wearing my 90% opacity sunglasses, walking into a wall because I couldn’t ssee it, and then punching it for causing me to feel pain. Needless to say, everyone was impressed. I also came alone so no-one would ruin my vibe. Because let’s be real, that’s what my so-called friends usually do.

My experience was ruined the moment I realised that, as well as the 6 courses I was expecting, I could also opt in for an optional 7^th course. I ask you! I had been lied to, wronged, robbed of my God given right to have exactly six courses and no more. SEVEN?! This place isn’t called ‘Six but sometimes Seven by Nico’! What next? To be served by a restaurant staff not made up of people called Nico! (I do not know what my servers’ names were, because I’m not a weirdo who wants to know. But, I assume they were all called Nico. Obviously.)

I can only hope that this optional ‘Snack’ course that started the meal would not ruin the essence of a progressive menu, moving subtly from one course to the next with a flow to rival that of the greatest escape room. Obviously, you would have to be a fool to order a 7^th course in a place which is already offering you six. It’s too much, utterly needless, and I don’t see why anyone would do it.

Anyway, I ordered the optional seventh course because I’m an adult and I can do what I want. Nico should have known that most people are idiots who will pay more money to make their lives actively worse. He should never have allowed me that choice. If he had any spine he wouldn’t offer this optional course at all, but instead he writhes in a puddle on the floor like the soft-bodied mollusc he is.

The snacks that arrived as part of this course were two-fold. Firstly there was a Truffle Mac & Cheese Croquette with Cornichon & White Grape Ketchup. So, onto the obvious. You can’t make Ketchup with grapes. It’s made with TOMATOE YOU SWINES. White grapes, as the name suggests, aren’t even red! And ketchup is red! I mean, Ketchup is trash and I hate it, and the white grape sauce was actually really nice and added a good sourness to the dish which cut through the Mac and Cheese. This however excuses nothing. A Ketchup made out of grapes… what has become of this, our planet Earth?

I could take or leave the Cornichon (which is a twat-ish (French) way of saying a pickle); but, as will all other aspects of my meal, I have STRONG opinions about the croquette. The croquette suffered from the thing that nearly everything of its ilk suffers from. The moment something containing truffle enters a dish, it contaminates the whole plate, and everything tastes like truffle. In this case, you could get a little of the cheesy taste coming through the croquette, but it was mostly just truffle.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m a slut for truffles, lather me in its oil and leave me to SOAK! But being delicious is no excuse for a poorly balanced plate of food. Because the dish genuinely would have been better if less truffle had been added. But, annoyingly, I cannot deny that I enjoyed it, because truffles taste good, even if it was probably too heavy for a first course. And if you disagree with me and don’t like truffles, you probably wouldn’t have ordered this optional course anyway, so who gives a flying fuck.

As for the other half of this ‘Snacks’ course. It was bread and butter. Wait, sorry, my bad, it was actually “Sourdough with Roasted Garlic and Chicken Fat Butter topped with Crispy Shallots”. How could I have made that mistake? They are so different after all…

The butter was over-aerated garbage. This seems to be a troubling trend in fine dining establishments at the moment that I just do not get, what’s wrong with the texture of butter? I’ve yet to have one of these whipped butters that is in anyway nicer than regular butter. The garlic added a good flavour at least.

The bread was nice but unspectacular. But it allowed me to do something I would have been denied the opportunity of otherwise though. That’s right baby! Wiping up the sauces of every course with my bread! Woooo! Makes me feel a RUSH! And the waiters give you less weird looks if you wipe up the sauce with bread than if you lick the plates clean, philistines.

But yeah, seriously, wiping up the sauces for courses one to five with the bread was genuinely one of my favourite bits of the meal, no joke.

Now comes the confusingly named 1^st course, which of course was the second course to arrive, and my third plate of food. In fact, it arrived even before I had finished my truffle croquettes, but that is the only slight complaint I have in any of the timings of the food during the meal. This 1^st course was called “French Onion”, and consisted of Slow Cooked French Onions, a Comté Foam, toasted Sourdough and Crispy Shallots. And let me just say, this course was delicious.

It was simplicity itself, only a few components on the plate, yet each worked in harmony with the others and was executed to perfection. Well, except the sourdough toast, which was kind of dry, but lets be real, that was only there for the CRONCH anyway, which it suitably provided. The onions were slow cooked so they were sweet with just the slightest bitterness from the caramelisation, and paired perfectly with the luxurious comté foam. And that was all this dish needed. It helps that, luckily, I’m also a big fan of French Onion soup anyway, and this deconstruction was good enough, and similar enough to the original, that I can see why it had been done.

People sometimes seem to think that more complicated food is intrinsically better than simple food. They are dumb and wrong and I hate them, and you should too. This course is proof of that. It was so nice that I don’t even have jokes to make about it. I mean, it was a deconstructed soup, which is, you know, fucking stupid. Like, who looks at a soup and goes “Damn, I should deconstruct this and give you 4 bowls of different liquids, that would be top banter”. And top banter it was my friend… top banter it was.

Following the 1^st course came, you’d never guess it, the 2^nd. Truly, a revolutionary dining experience. In a traditional progression you would expect this to be a fish course, and a fish course it was! More specifically it was a Scampi of Monkfish Cheek, a Dill Emulsion, Gribiche (a sauce a little like a tartar sauce), Peas, Beurre Blanc, and… something else on top of the fish. I’m not exactly sure what it was on the top, the waiter either didn’t say or he did and I just forgot, but seeing as I am infallible and know all things, I’ll assume the latter. And yes, I am aware of the irony of explaining what a gribiche is and not what a beurre blanc is, but that’s because I personally knew what a beurre blanc but not what a gribriche was. After all, I’m not infallible, you can’t expect me to know everything.

I personally (and really, my personal opinion is the only one that matters) found this course to be a lot less successful that the last. First of all, I am not the biggest fan of dill, so having the dill emulsion on the plate wasn’t hugely enjoyable. And the emulsion seemed overly sour too, it wasn’t unpleasant, but probably my least favourite component I ate during the evening. And the gribiche had too much mustard in it for my palette, but I also don’t like mustard, so this plate was never gonna be a winner in my book. The rest of the plate was well done however; the fish was well cooked if a little underseasoned, and the beurre blanc was very good indeed, adding a depth that the dish needed. Even the unidentifiable crispy stuff was, well, crispy.

But, a dish is not just a collection of individual components on a plate, it is how the plate works as a whole that matters. And that is really where this dish fell down. The balance was all… wrong. There was far too much of the dill and gribiche for the rest of the plate, and I genuinely don’t believe this is my bias talking, they both provided distinctly sour notes to the food, which worked fine individually, but when eaten together was a little overpowering. And, there was so much of them on the plate compared to the fish and beurre blanc. This dish could have worked on paper, with less of each of the dill emulsion and gribriche, or better yet, just get rid of one of them. By which I mean, of course, the course was hot garbage, and were I a braver man, I would have thrown it to the floor in disgust before demanding all in earshot to apologise me for offending my perfect palette.

It was at this point, seconds before I was about to begin a tirade that would have rivalled Moses’s on returning to the Israelites with the 10 Commandments, that I began to chat with the waiter. He seemed pleasant enough, friendly but not enthusiastically so, which I honestly prefer. And as much as I was trying to view this food with a critics eye, I enjoy chatting to the staff at a restaurant, especially when I go on my own. Because I like to think about how much better I am than they are, and picture the pained expressions of their loved ones faces as I crush them underfoot.

But, real talk, waiting staff get a lot of shit from people that they don’t deserve. 90% of the problems with restaurants aren’t on them, yet they will probably face the majority of the fallout, and really don’t deserve it. They also tend not to be treated the best by the higher ups, with tip stealing and slow payments being regular problems they face.

Unfortunately, I am bringing these issues up for a legitimate reason. A fact I was not aware of before I came to the restaurant was that the Six by Nico franchise is notorious for not treating their staff well, particularly in the ways I previously outlined. I had no idea of this at the time I went, and if I had known I wouldn’t have gone. But I would feel remiss to not mention this now, as it paints the whole meal in a different light (and also allows me to feel far less guilty as I shit on it). Just thought you should now. Waitstaff are people and should be treated as such.

Anyway, I lost all respect for the waiter when he said his favourite course was the scampi, and decided he was not worth my time or breath for the rest of the meal, though I attempted to hide my UTTER COMTEMPT behind a friendly rapport that I kept throughout the meal, and made sure he got the tip I left behind, because I’m not a monster. At least not outside of the bedroom. Ayooooo, am I RIGHT ladies!?!?!?!?!?!?

Back to the food, and the fourth course and fifth plate to arrive was, of course, the 3^rd course. This was the most interesting sounding on paper (not the title, which was ‘Little Italy’ and told me nothing about the plate of food I was about to eat, and therefore pointless). The course was Hazelnut Ragu, Saffron Pappardelle Pasta with a Pecorino Foam, Crispy Sage and an Egg Yolk Jam. I had two immediate thoughts. One was, “What the fuck is a hazelnut ragu, that sounds terrible, I can’t wait to try it!”. The other was “What the fuck is an egg yolk jam? Like, you can’t make a jam out of egg yolks, it must be an emulsion or something. Why give it such a terrible name? I can’t wait to try it!” That isn’t even a joke, that’s what my thought process is like all the time. What a joy it is to be me.

The plate looked modest when it arrived, but I tucked in with an open mind anyway. And I was pleasantly surprised. The pasta was well made, but by no means the best made pasta I’ve had, and the saffron flavour didn’t really come through outside of the colour, which felt like a waste, but the ragu was the star! It was earthy and rich, and genuinely made for a dish that I would be excited to try making at home! It tasted good. But, as I’ve said before, tasting nice isn’t everything.

The cheese foam was very nice, and worked well and worked as the perfect seasoning to the food and the perfect texture to tie the courses together. But! I had already had a cheese foam this meal, only two courses before. And this foam (while still good) was a darn sight worse than the last. But, for a set six (seven, whatever!) course tasting menu, having two such similar components so close together is, well, unforgivable. From a fundamental planning stage, this should not have been allowed to happen, and really made me question whether the progression of the food had been considered at all.

I mean, it hadn’t been considered. People like me rigged the vote so that things like that wouldn’t happen. So WELP! But the fact that this even had to possibility of happening shows that the vote itself was ill thought out.

The other main problem I had with the dish was the egg yolk jam/emulsion/blob. It was, like the dill emulsion on the previous course, far too sour for my taste. And worse, it actively did not go with the rest of the food, and made the dish worse. It also, tragically, barely tasted of egg yolk. It was just sour. Egg yolks are fucking delicious! Why would you ruin it like this? This was genuinely the only component in the whole meal I didn’t finish.

But, even then, if the egg yolks had been, say, confited and put on the plate, the dish still didn’t need them. Both this and the last course felt overcomplicated. If the dishes had been served with one less element on the plate they would have been far better. I could only hope that this mistake would not be repeated in the next courses. (Spoiler, they were.)

In spite of this, I thoroughly enjoyed this course. Taking out the egg yolks made for a richly flavoured dish that wasn’t too heavy for a six course meal. Moving on!

Blah blah blah, joke about the courses not being the same number as the number of plates I’ve had, we get it, find a new joke Kyle! The 4^th course was called Fish Supper 2.0, which as a name I back, because it is fucking DUMB. I know there was probably a 1.0, but still, you decided “Fish Supper” was such a good name you had to use it again, so just chucked a 2.0 at the end and had done with it. Not even a ‘2’, but a ‘2.0’, gotta get the version numbers in there just so you can see every single minute point that got changed between iterations. Truly a remarkable way to look at food. God, I love this kind of pretentious claptrap!

The course was Pan Seared Cod with a Caramelised Cauliflower Purée, Curry Sauce, Raisin Sauce, Samphire, Capers, Sage, Crispy Potatoes, and a Dill Oil. The cod was perfectly cooked and extremely flavourful, while retaining the perfect texture from the pan frying (which I STILL can’t get right, ugh). All the sauces were really good, with the cauliflower being my favourite, and while curry sauce has never been my go to with fish and chips, the curry here was light enough that it never overpowered the dish. The potatoes were crispy and added a nice texture and seasoning, but were uninteresting without the other elements with it. But that’s fine in a dish with as many components as this.

However, did this dish need three sauces and an oil? Let me ask you another question with the same answer, ‘”What is the opposite of yes?”. While it didn’t interrupt my enjoyment too much, while I was eating I was acutely aware that the problems of the meal were repeating over and over again. I’d had both dill and sage before, one in the course directly proceeding this. And the plate was overfilled, while everything tasted good, there was just too much going on, and not all of the components went well together. And even though this was, overall, my 3^rd favourite course of the evening, I couldn’t help but have a slightly bitter taste in my mouth as they took my plate away.

This is slightly belated, but I will now bring up why the waiter said that Scampi was his favourite course. He said it was the only course of the meal that he liked all the components of. If 5/6 dishes have components that someone doesn’t like at least one of, then newsflash asshole! You have too many components on your plates. But this gave me little confidence for the next course, and yet I waited with bated breath anyway.

To build (or utterly ruin) the suspense, even though this isn’t when I went during the meal, I have to bring up the hideous bathrooms at this restaurant, for one simple reason. Look at this door. Look at this fucking door to the bathroom stall.

It’s full of fucking slits! Who wants to shit next to a door you can literally see through right next to you? Not me! That’s for sure! Terrible fucking door! God! Who does that? Geeeeeeze.

Anyway, so there I was, bated breath, waiting for the food to appear before me. I was in a moment of flux, endless possibilities presented themselves before me. What would the food be like? Good or bad? Perhaps it was a superposition of both, unable to truly extract themselves from one another, until the food would eventually arrive and the probability densities collapse, and I would be left with a plate of food in front of me, that could never have been anything else. All you could do was eat. And what was before me was none other than Smoked Flatiron Steak, Jerusalem Artichoke Purée, Lovage Emulsion, Brisket Croquette, Truffle sauce, a Red Win Jus, and Crispy Parsnips.

Food has an ability to make you feel things, whether it is good or bad. I believe the best way of expressing this is by quoting the notes I made about the dish at the time, because is genuinely how I felt when I was eating it.

“OK. THIS IS GETTING OLD. There is TOO MUCH GOING ON. We don’t NEED another Croquette, we don’t NEED truffle again, we don’t NEED more emulsions! This is all doubly annoying because so much of this plate is SOOO NICE! But there’s just SO MUCH on the plate. And I fucking CAN’T anymore!”

I won’t bother going into the particulars, if you’ve read the rest of this you know what I’m going to say. Some components were good, some were bad. There were too many things on the plate, as well as things I’d seen before. It was a good plate of food, but frankly, you’d lost me a long time ago…

The worst part is I KNEW this would happen. When you give people an entire say over what they want to come up in a tasting menu, voting independently of each other, you’re not going to get a cohesive meal. And I didn’t. Honestly, the repeated mistake of overfilling a plate is something I could overlook if the meal just ate better as a whole, but it didn’t. You gave me the ‘best’ dishes of the last year, presented them to me back to back, and didn’t for one moment consider how they worked as a progression.

Despite this, the progression was never going to be one I loved. If you have six or more courses in a meal, you bet your fucking ass that I want at least two to be Goddamn desserts. Hell, I’d settle for a dessert and a pre-dessert (which is like a starter, but for desserts, and they’re as good as they sound)! But noooooo, all the Six by Nico menus have only a single dessert, which just throws off the whole balance of the meal anyway. People like sweet food! And by people, I mean me! In addition to that, it puts unrealistic expectations on the one sweet course you’re going to have. Because if there’s only one, it better be a truly fantastic dessert.

And so there I was, having genuinely felt more than a mild annoyance during the meal which I had enjoyed, waiting for the dessert. And then it arrived. A lemon Mousseline with an Almond Sponge, Caramelized White Chocolate, Lemon Frogurt, and two types of Meringue.

And I started to eat, and my annoyance dissaperaed in a moment. It was great!

While it sounded like a lot on paper, on the plate it was probably the second simplest dish of the menu, and was also my second favourite overall. Wow, what a weird correlation, who could have seen that coming. Every component was well executed, working well together, and by depending on the components you had, giving a different flavour profile to the dish, keeping it well balanced.

But why did this work so well? I think it’s because the Lemon Mousseline and Frogurt were clearly the central components, and the others were accents which improved them, but did not overpower them. It also wasn’t too, which can ruin a dessert. And lemon is fresh enough that it’s almost always a good note to end a meal on. Unless, you know, a bunch of the previous dishes had heavily featured lemon, but why would anyone put the same components on every plate of food? That would be STUPID!

But yeah, nice to end the meal on a good note.

Anyway, that’s kind of the end of my experience. As was probably evident I had (too) many opinions about this meal. So, should you check out Six by Nico? I would say no, but that’s mainly because of the apparent treatment of the staff as opposed to the quality of the food, because the food, despite all my complaints, was good. Just not great. And I wouldn’t recommend the ‘Best of 2021’ menu, which will literally end tomorrow as I publish this, never to be repeated, so why does it fucking matter.

But what Six by Nico really excels at is being a gateway to tasting menus and fine dining in general. It’s a very accessible way to try a different dining experience, and if you want something like that, ignoring the guilt, this is probably your best bet. It’s affordable, and it’s good. And while this menu was a fan vote, thus disregarding any sense of progression a meal might have, I’m sure it will never happen again. (That was a joke, the coming menu was also a fan vote, meaning the same problems will happen again, which is just UGH. Also, there’s a dish based on Danny Champion of the World, and it features Trout. TROUT? Like come on, talk about missing a stationary fucking target, I ask you…) Anyway, thanks for reading this, and check out Six by Nico if you want. Or don’t. I genuinely do not care.

Oh yeah. Is the ‘Six by Nico: Best of 2021’ menu ACTUALLY the best of 2021? No. Obviously not. Did you read any of my previous 5000 words? Fucking idiots, I hate the lot of you.

I have decided to review every straight to video/DVD Scooby Doo! movie in a random order. No, I will not be taking any further questions, thank you.

Scooby Doo! Pirates Ahoy! has three exclamation marks too many in its title for a film as boring as it is. It has setups to payoffs that never come. The story is convoluted beyond belief. Two of the main characters could be replaced with planks of wood and nothing of value would be lost. But, worst of all, the film doesn’t understand what Scooby Doo! is, and is an abject failure because of this.

I am going to spoil this film throughout this review, because if you’re reading this and care about spoilers to a Scooby Doo! film released 15 years ago then you live a sad life and I could not pity you more. But, if you don’t want to be spoiled, just watch the film and stop complaining to me about it. We both have better things to do.

Scooby Doo!, at its core, is a franchise about a group of teenagers/young adults/adults/ageless Lovecraftian monstrosities who solve crimes by unmasking costumed culprits. But, in order for you to do this satisfactorily, you need to introduce the suspects properly. Sure, for a franchise like Scooby Doo!, which has run for as long as it has, it’s OK to subvert those expectations sometimes, and this has been used to great effect in other Scooby Doo! media. Unfortunately, what was on display here was not a clever play on the tropes, but instead a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes them work.

There are two villains in this film. One appears in a single scene before his unmasking, which is what I would call the single worst piece of writing and plotting I have ever seen on the screen had I not also watched the rest of this film. The other culprit is as subtle as a sledgehammer in his villainy. There is almost no doubt after his introductory scene that he is somehow involved in the villain’s plan. In fact, it is so obvious, that there was little doubt before his introductory scene. This isn’t even an exaggeration, I worked out he did it before I knew who he was. This could work in the films favour by making it so obvious it’s funny, or have the reveal come early and see how the gang responds to that. Instead, the film treats the audience as fools who would not understand that shooting someone sixteen times in the head at point blank range would, in all likelihood, kill them. The villains are also the only two viable suspects in the film. Sure, other suspects exist, but it is made immediately apparent that they are unaware with what is going on. Though, after seeing the film, I was giving the writers too much credit when I believed any of this was done intentionally.

The lack of surprise in the villain reveal is nothing compared to the catastrophe that is the villains’ diabolical plan. As convoluted as it is pointless, the entire premise of the plan is redundant from the get-go. The main drive of the villains in this film, as it is in so many other films, is to kidnap the best astrocartographer in the world so that he can use an ancient painting of a meteorite to find a specific, and completely accurate, location in the Bermuda Triangle that shows where the aforementioned meteorite crashed to Earth, where the yellowish hue in the picture obviously indicates that it is made entirely of solid gold. While one villain intends to use this so he can become (slightly) richer than the other, the second has the far more cunning plan of using the meteor to travel back in time so that he may reunite with one of his past lives, a pirate whom he has been pretending to be the ghost of for the majority of the film; a story he had been tricked into believing this by his compatriot.

Why did his fellow trick him like this? Simple! It was so that a mission to find the meteor could be funded. Sure, you might think that the pirate wannabe was already a billionaire, and the man tricking him was a hypnotist, so he could have just cut out the middleman and hypnotised the billionaire and become rich that way. This would also have meant that he did not need to invest, I assume, millions in acquiring a ship with fog machines and high quality 3d projectors so that he could continue to perpetrate the con, which by the time he had acquired the ship was already pointless. But, if he did that, then there wouldn’t be a film, and I’m sure at least a few people in the world would be better off for it, including myself.

I could break down why every one of these points is stupid, I could say that trying several times to murder the one man who can help you find the spot in the painting would render the whole plot pointless, or that hypnotising the entire populace of a cruise ship into believing they are a pirate posse serves less than no purpose other than to avoid killing them, but I trust your intelligence enough that you can work it out most of this for yourself. And, if any of this sounds reasonable to you, then might I recommend watching a film called “Scooby Doo! Pirates Ahoy!”, it sounds like it’d be right up your alley.

Unfortunately, the film also contains other characters whose legacy it can ruin, and then proceeds to do so. Of the main gang of five, Daphne and Velma are woefully underutilised. In my, quite real, thousand plus words of notes I made while first watching the film, neither Daphne nor Velma are mentioned once, which is only slightly sadder than the fact that I legitimately wrote over a thousand words in preparation for this review. Is it because they’re women and the people who made this film hate all women? Perhaps. Personally I am more inclined to think that they tried making them interesting and failed because all evidence suggests no-one working on this film had ever held a pen, let alone written anything.

The other main cast fair a little better. Shaggy and Scooby are at their most joined at the hip, appearing in nearly every scene together, and therefore having their characters blend into one at time. This is par for the course, and while not a trope I like, is not one I can specifically criticise this film for. However, Shaggy and Scooby’s characters were some of the few things I … didn’t hate about this film. They are very much playing to their stereotype and little more, but it is done well. Despite mostly being the cowardly pair they are known to be, they show a few moments of genuine courage, which is just nice to see y’know. They’re also the most amusing characters in a couple of the chase scenes, especially in one scene where Shaggy appears to purposefully kill a dozen people, which is honestly such a mood.

Fred is the member of the gang who is front and centre of this film, seeing as the gang are dragged into this mess of a plot because his parents (who are characters in the film) booked him on a mystery cruise through the Bermuda Triangle. That is not to say Fred is used well, but unlike Velma and Daphne, he is at least present. As in, he says things in scenes to his parents, which I don’t remember, because they were as unremarkable as they were pointless. The only reaction ever provoked in me by Fred was when, on seeing both his parents get kidnapped, his only response was to raise an eyebrow in a way that suggested he was thinking “Eh, weird” and otherwise dead behind the eyes.

Despite the gang’s many failings as individuals, the film does a much better job than a lot of other Scooby Doo! media of convincing me that this gang of misfits enjoy each other’s company and are, in fact, good friends. The background animation on them in some scenes does a good job at conveying that these people enjoy hanging out with each other. However, these moments are not enough to carry a whole movie, and the group dynamic as a whole does not do enough to cover up their individual failings.

Speaking of the animation for a moment, this film is very reminiscent on the stylings of “What’s New Scooby-Doo!?” While this animation works well for a TV show with budget restraints, it’s disappointing to see it in a film. The early straight to VHS films had a wonderful style, and a lot of the later ones have some real character in the animation, that this iteration lacks. I mean, it’s fine, but it’s nothing to write home about. I do appreciate the experimental opening titles, though I think their tone wasn’t right for the film presented. The only visual flair present in the film was the smoke that the ghost pirate ship produces, which was reasonably done. But, at the very least, it wasn’t bad, which is more than I can say for the rest of the film.

There are only four other named characters outside of the people I’ve already talked about. The Captain and Cruise Director, whose names I cannot remember and do not care to look up, and Fred’s Parents, who never outgrow the moniker of their son, who do have names that I have deemed them unworthy of. There are also the other cruise attendees who exist as a mob for plot devices and are not worthy of taking up any more of my time. Oh, there’s also an astrocartographer, who does have a name, but he is more a plot device than a character so I genuinely forgot was in the film when I started this paragraph, despite being very important to the so-called plot. This is how you know I’m qualified to write about this shit, I remember stuff.

Fred’s parents are an interesting idea in theory, but they are used to no effect in the film. What do we learn about them in relation to Fred? We know they care for each other, but not enough for Fred’s Dad to care even a little bit when he thinks his son is dead. Now, sure, maybe he was in shock, but let’s be real, he wasn’t, and the film was just poorly written and directed. That’s the only thing I have to say about him, he’s dull as shit.

Fred’s Mum, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish entirely, because she is incredibly annoying at every possible turn. She’s rude, oblivious and obnoxious. Which, at least, gives her more character than most other people in the film, so is actually a point in her favour. She’s supposed to be annoying, so on this point, a good job was done. The main complaint I have about her is her gimmick, she constantly takes photos of people. Now, this would be fine in most media, a character quirk with no real substance, but in a mystery film if someone takes photos all the time you’ll assume that at some point it will become plot relevant, because that’s what someone who had ever written anything would do. This of course means her constant photo taking amounts to nothing. It’s just annoying, and only made more so because it made me expect something better than what I got, which is the worst crime of all. On the other hand Fred’s parents both sound like they’re from wherever the fuck Fargo is set, so I at least got some amusement from imaging Fred with that accent. So, overall, they weren’t totally wasted. Only mostly.

The ship’s captain and cruise director are both important characters in the first act of the film, then fall off the map as the film goes on, not even having particularly noticeable pirate counterparts when they’re hypnotised. One of the big problems this film has is not focussing on these two as more viable suspects, as they are the only two other people who could have conceivably been involved in the plan.

However, they both immediately show they have no clue what’s going on, proving their innocence. The captain lacks strong characterisation, other than being a captain. The cruise director, however, is one of the more memorable characters of the film, by virtue of the fact that she is bubbly and nothing else, which goes to show how truly low of a bar she has jumped over. These two, however, do seem to be the only staff of the ship, which would make this ‘mystery cruise’ even shitter than it would otherwise be. Because, let’s be real, it would be abysmal.

I will use this time to break down why a Bermuda triangle mystery cruise business would go under immediately, sending all involved in its inception into an endless spiral of poverty and despair that could only ever end in death, sad and alone. These ‘mysteries’ are nought more than one of the only two members of staff dressing up in costumes and running around. This is not a mystery, it is just a thing. There is no opportunity for anything interesting to happen with this conceit, as it is unexplained things happening for no reason. In usual mysteries there is some driving force behind things, but here it’s arbitrary, and therefore utter dogshit. These people are paying for a lacklustre experience and, oh boy, do people know how to complain about stuff. More than that, what even is there to see in Bermuda triangle? I doubt there are many tourist hotspots, so it’s basically just going to be people stuck on a boat for weeks, which is close to my idea of hell, but with less copies of this film that I’d be forced to watch on repeat.

The ship also, at one point, runs a costume party, leading to the hilarious development where Fred’s Dad is mistaken for the astrocartographer except it isn’t funny and nothing interesting or important ever happens with that plot point, as with every other one. But, the real annoyance of the party comes from how no-one is allowed to repeat costumes. This is a cruise ship, are people expected to have brought them with them, or just use the resources on board? To add to that, Fred, Velma and Daphne are dressed in the most cliché costumes going, that somehow didn’t get picked by others. Like, Daphne, who basically picked last, just goes as a cat? You’re telling me no-one else thought of that? It’s a cat, just put whiskers on your face and you’re fucking done. And not one other person did it? Do they all just hate cats or something? I ask you…

You would think, also, that this mystery cruise might somehow play into the plot at some point, and if you did think that, you would be mostly wrong, because it is entirely extraneous to circumstances, other than the gang falling for the classic “We think the real mystery is a fake mystery because of everything else that’s going on” genuine cliché. And yeah, sure, all of the first act (which feels like it takes up half the Goddamn film, making the rest of the film feel rushed) takes place on the cruise ship, but that doesn’t make it better, it doesn’t play into the bit of the film which you actual care about, the mystery.

So, in short did I enjoy this mess of a film? Answer: absolutely. I mean, it wasn’t good, but I enjoyed it. I have no taste. The end.

21 – Deep Loch

I often wonder whether people are more afraid of death itself, or of the knowledge that one day they themselves will die. Perhaps it’s both, and if that’s case, which is worse? We cannot escape either, so does focussing on one affect the impact of the other? And are they even different things at all, or is it only my twisted way of looking at the world? Can we truly know how much death scares us until the event itself comes? It makes me wonder…

Something else that has caused me equal (if not far more) concern occurs when I am about to jump into cold water but take a long time to actually do it. Because I don’t want to get cold. I know that I am always going to jump into the water, because I want to, but there is a hesitation, a delay of the inevitable. I know I’m going to jump in at some point, I know that I’m going to be cold for a little bit then warm up and have a good time, but it’s always the same. It doesn’t get easier. The fear of what is about to happen. The anticipation. Jumping into the abyss, as one day we must all jump into the abyss of death. It is for this reason, that I am so genuinely impressed with every single warrior who has participated in Deep Loch. Those children throw themselves into the ice-cold water like there’s no tomorrow, and it must be freezing. I mean, I know they film it in Summer, but geez, that shit’s cold.

Deep Loch is a swimming race. That’s pretty much it. The Warriors jump in from one bank of a lake and must swim from to the other side. The Warrior’s are given life jackets and wetsuits to wear while they race, as well as their normal Warrior’s garb. The first 3 to finish win rings, the next 2 do not, but only the Warrior who comes in last place loses a life. This makes Deep Loch the most generous of all Raven challenges, with only one of the six participants losing a life.

While I am impressed by the vigour with which the Warriors throw themselves into the water, and the initial shocked looks immediately after the realisation of what they’ve just done hits them is certainly entertaining, the rest of the challenge is fairly uneventful. It’s a straightforward swimming race with little drama. It’s a long enough race that the positions are easily established, with rarely there being any close calls. The nature of it being a free for all does, however, mean that it doesn’t last long enough for you to get too bored by it.

After the race I can’t help but feel bad for the Warriors. Despite the wetsuits they’ve been given, they look freezing. To maintain the illusion of continuity in the show, the Warrior’s are given their rings a little after the challenge ends. This means that they must spend several minutes standing round in their wet clothes before they are allowed to dry off and warm up. This is the one aspect of the Raven production that seemed genuinely ill advised. Maybe they were warmer than they looked, but it couldn’t help but make me feel uncomfortable.

Perhaps due to the fact that it’s filmed in a lake (though pond is probably a more accurate description, or, y’know, a loch, like in the name of the challenge) means that the camera angles aren’t great. It’s difficult to work out how the race is progressing, especially closer to the back of the pack as the camera focuses on the battle for first. It is a darned site clearer than in Warrior’s Gate though.

One of the biggest problems I have with Deep Loch doesn’t actually come from the challenge itself, but from the format of the show. It appears in only two episodes of the series (most appear in four) and is swapped out in the other episodes by Long Staff, a far superior challenge. This means that whenever Deep Loch did appear, I couldn’t help but be disappointed it wasn’t the alternative. However, as Deep Loch only appeared two times in the season, it didn’t bore or annoy me, but that doesn’t massively improve a mostly unremarkable challenge.

20 – Torture Chamber

Now, if there’s anything that screams a kid friendly topic for a fun children’s TV show, it’s torture. I never questioned it at the time, but is an odd inclusion for the show, and feels like it was only included because the design team wanted to make (an admittedly very cool) torture chamber set. It’s definitely my favourite indoor set used in series 5, decked out with cobwebs, skeletons and devices which look like they could probably be used to cause people a very large amount of pain. It is therefore a pity that the challenge completed here isn’t better than it is.

Torture Chamber is played by the Warriors in first and second position, working together to complete the challenge as a team. The Warriors are in a caged off area next to the door to the chamber and given two tools: a claw on a stick and a net. They use these to gather four gold rings and a key contained in the room, inside cages and attached to a spinning chandelier for example (and what well respected torture chamber would complete without its own chandelier). When the challenge begins, the door behind the Warriors is shut and two gates on the sides of the cage begin to slowly open, with demons on the other side. If any rings are dropped on the floor, then the gates begin to open more quickly. To win the challenge, the Warriors must get the key and use it to unlock the door before the Demons can reach them, taking any rings they happened to win along the way with them.

On paper, this should be an interesting challenge. It focuses on teamwork in an asymmetrical way and poses the question of how many rings to go for before the Warriors attempt to leave the challenge, which should make for an interesting risk and reward mechanic, especially if an odd number of rings had been collected forcing an uneven split. However, none of these interesting possibilities ever come into play.

 The two pieces of equipment need to be better designed for the challenge, as despite some of the obstacles the Warriors having to work around appearing interesting, only the Warrior with the claw ever really needs to do any of the work. The Warrior with the net just stands around, angrily shouting at the other Warrior, waiting for them to do the hard work and drop a ring in the net. None of the obstacles are designed with the net in mind, a clear oversite. Despite it being a team task, nothing here justifies that, it would work just as well as a solo challenge, only with less angry echoes filling the room.

There is also no interest in how many rings they go for before attempting to leave, as every time the challenge is done this season the Warriors go for all four rings before attempting to get the key, and then fail to escape. With a 0% success rate, this challenge comes across as too difficult to try and pose the questions I hoped it would, depriving us of some interesting decision making, a feature not usually present in Raven.

This is yet another instance where I, a 25-year-old man, would perform way better than these dumbass kids. Go for the key first, then go for the rings. It’s an obvious strategy, ensure your method of escape before going for gold (ha ha). And even if there is an unwritten rule that says you must go for the key last, then don’t go for all four before attempting to escape. Especially because the two attempting the challenge are in first and second place, they have less need to gain position, they need only to maintain it. Saying this, I would absolutely not be in first or second at this point, so this is all a hypothetical anyway. But I’m just saying I would be great at this, and most other, challenges in the show.

My final complaint is to do with the Warriors chosen to compete in this challenge. Usually I am all for challenges which have an opportunity of levelling the playing field, the top two warriors potentially losing lives makes it more likely for an exciting turnabout mid-week in the rankings. However here it is just done too early. Only two challenges (three in the final week) have been completed prior to this one, including one in which it was impossible to lose a life. This means that the people in first and second place are not guaranteed to be the Warriors who are particularly exceptional, only lucky. In fact, 25% of the Warriors to attempt this challenge end up going home first in their week. This additional challenge can ruin their chance of success. And so, whenever I watched this challenge, as much as I may enjoy it, I could not help but feel sorry for the Warriors who were forced to enter the torture chamber.

19 – Pole Climb

The setup for the challenges in Raven is a very well-done aspect of the show, often presenting the Warriors with interesting scenarios. Sometimes you find yourself manoeuvring a treacherous gauntlet, your very life in the competition on the line. Other times you must protect yourself from floods of lava that would otherwise burn you alive. And sometimes you just have to climb a fucking pole.

 Warriors are split into pairs and must race each other to the top of a tall pole. The Warriors each climb a pole using blocks which act as foot and hand holds, which become more spaced out as they progress further up the pole. The first Warrior to reach the top wins a ring, while the other loses a life. If neither reaches the top, both lose lives.

During the heats, the pairs that are matched up are the Warriors in 1^st and 2^nd place, 3^rd and 4^th place, and 5^th and 6^th place. By having the distribution of competition as such, it means each round has real stakes, as it will usually give the winner a noticeable advantage over one of their closest competitors. In the final week this method was not used, instead the warriors with similar climbing ability were pitted against one another. While this might be slight less fair for the overall competition, it means that the final week had the most exciting races of the season, so I consider it a net positive.

The difference in ability in climbers is one of the biggest downfalls of this challenge. In all but one of the races this season, it is extremely easy to tell who is going to win each of the races. And even in the single exception, it’s still not hard to guess. Worst of all, 58% of the races end in what I can only describe as a blowout (a massive victory), sometimes with over half a pole length between the two Warriors. These kinds of races aren’t particularly fun to watch, and for them to happen in over half the races is frustrating.

However, this is not actually as bad as it might first sound due to the very short length of each race, ranging from 15 to 30 seconds. The races, as much as their results are obvious, keep your attention for the full duration. And as there are only 3 races back-to-back, they also do not outstay their welcome. The length of the challenge is also extremely welcome as it comes immediately after a challenge that is often over 10 minutes long. Pole Climb therefore really helps with the overall flow of the episode.

Despite this, Pole Climb has some of the most pointless losses of life in the series, it’s egregious. Raven forces two Warriors to climb these poles, mocking them beforehand by stating that they are tethered and therefore in no physical danger, before reminding them that he will strip a life from the Warrior who comes second. There is a smile on his face when he sees one of the Warriors win, though I wonder whether that is more because he is glad to see a victory, or because it will allow him to punish the Warrior who lost. Raven… just what kind of a man is he, really?

As a final note, this is a challenge where the taller person usually wins because it involves climbing. And as someone taller than anyone who has competed on Raven (because they were children and I am an adult) they would eat my dust. Even if I’d been accepted when I was younger, I’d have been taller than most of my competitors, so if you ignored my complete lack of physical prowess, I’d have always won! Probably.

18 – Treasure Ring

Treasure Ring is one the most confusingly named challenges in Raven. You would imagine that the two words are synonymous here, as the treasures that the Warriors usually strive to obtain are rings. You would probably then assume that the titular treasure must be something else. However, the treasure does indeed refer to a gold ring, it is instead the ring in the title which refers to something else. A round coracle, because it’s in the shape of a ring, I guess. And nowhere in the title is there any evocation that it’s on water at all. I’d have named it ‘That Challenge Where you Pull Yourself with a Rope on a Coracle Towards a Ring in a Race that occurs on a Lake’ to avoid confusion. Honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t think of doing that themselves.

Pairs of Warriors are randomly assigned to race one another. Each is placed in their own coracle and given a rope that they must use to pull themselves towards a pontoon in the middle of a lake, with a gold ring on top. The first Warrior to grab the ring keeps it, while the other loses a life.

Those eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that this challenge is very similar to two of those that have been previously mentioned, Water Demon and Pole Climb. But what makes Treasure Ring better than either of those?

In Water Demon, the Warriors are working together as team, whereas here they are competing against one another. I generally prefer races in raven over individual challenges (I can’t actually be bothered to check if that’s true or not, but I’ll say it with confidence anyway), so Treasure Ring already has a slight edge. In addition to that, every Warrior must pull their own weight (if you’ll pardon the pun) in this challenge, whereas in Water Demon several of the Warrior’s roles felt redundant. And while Treasure Ring is far less exciting in design and idea, the overall challenge is more entertaining to watch because of the competitive aspect.

Pole Climb and Treasure ring are near interchangeable for me in rankings, having flipped them back and forth several times while putting this list together. Pole climb is the shorter challenge (though only slightly) so perhaps keeps my attention better. Treasure Ring, on the other hand, is filmed far more dynamically, with some good shots of the Warriors racing against one another. In the end I opted for Treasure Ring over Pole Climb because the races tend to be more interesting. Only a measly 50% of races are blowouts in Treasure Ring compared to an astronomical 58% in Pole Climb. To add to that, of the six Treasure Ring races you see in the reason, two are genuinely close bouts, which you never really see in Pole Climb. So while the idea of a someone climbing a pole is (slightly) more interesting to me than people pulling themselves along in a boat, it doesn’t stop Treasure Ring being the better challenge.

Outside of that, the challenge is fine. I wish I had more to say about it, but I don’t.

17 – Dwarf Mine

I have spent many an hour attempting to catalogue the complex lore of Raven. The show has already built up an incredibly deep backstory in its previous four seasons and the fifth season makes fantastic use of these themes while also introducing some exciting new plot points. Coming in, we know that the world is predominantly human, with some demons (who according to my favourite fan theory, are the reanimated corpses of the people who died in Raven’s previous brutal trials, the signs are all there!) and occasional mythical creatures mentioned but not seen. The evil entities of the world are, of course, controlled by Nevar, while all that is good in the world is protected by Raven. Some of the deepest world building, however, comes from the fact that dwarves exist, because they used to have a mine, and it appears in this challenge. No mention is made of them outside of this. This was a big revelation in season 5 (even though it appeared in season 4 and I just forgot when I started this write-up but I don’t care enough to now change it) and shows that other good-aligned beings also exist in this universe. And that’s it for lore introduced in season 5! I for one cannot wait to see how much further this is explored in future seasons! (Spoilers, it goes nowhere. The lore in this show is near non-existent. That’s the joke of this paragraph.)

Dwarf Mine is a challenge played by the Warriors ranked in first and second position. They must work together to retrieve four rings from an abandoned mine before it collapses. To retrieve the rings one Warrior must knock down supports at the entrance of the mine, starting a timer until its eventual collapse, before moving to the back to where four symbols are drawn onto the wall. The other Warrior then enters the mine and attempts to find the support beam with the matching symbols based on the first Warrior’s description of the symbols. Each beam that is correctly identified contains a ring in the rafters (for some reason) which the Warriors then collect. If the Warriors manage to get all four rings before they make too many incorrect guesses (three) and before time runs out, then they win. Otherwise, they each lose a life.

Dwarf Mine appears to be a very difficult challenge, with no team successfully completed it in season 5. This would be more of a negative if it happened earlier in the week, however its positioning as the third challenge on the fourth day, and for the two strongest warriors to be competing in it, means that is typically has little impact on the outcome of the week. It is therefore of a suitable difficulty for when it appears, putting it above torture chamber as the other once-weekly challenge with a 0% win rate.

 The symbols themselves are very well designed, with enough abstraction within them to be difficult to describe, but not impossible to. Other symbols of vague similarity are also present, which rewards accurate description of the symbols. It is a challenge that even a group of adults could have problems with, so it’s genuinely impressive to see the Warriors describe some of the symbols as well as they do. On the other hand, sometimes they simply shout the same description over and over again (usually saying it looks like ‘that’), for some reason believing that by repeating the same thing ad infinitum their companion will receive a moment of pure elucidation and understand every law of the universe. This however, never happens. Instead the Warriors just get annoyed at each other and mess up. This is arguably more entertaining than when they do well, but luckily each run has a good mix of competence and utter ineptitude.

Despite being well designed and thought out, it does not translate particularly well to the screen. It is a challenge where the cramped set, while making sense in context, makes it somewhat difficult to understand the actions of the player, and sometimes prevent their actions from being shown at all. Additionally, a lot of the challenge is nothing happening, as neither Warrior has any idea what’s going on.  I am unable to overlook these faults, preventing this from being a truly great challenge.

To Be Continued…

I definitely didn’t forget I was writing this. And while I continue to not forget this exists (which I have never done) I will attempt to get the next part out a little more quickly. See you then!

I won’t apologise for not answering your calls, this was more important. I needed to tell you this. To show you what I’ve done. To prove my life wasn’t wasted, regardless of what you might think.

I found the laptop when looking through our old rooms, which I suppose have become my old rooms now. I had forgotten I’d even owned it. My father had just died, I lost my faith in God, I met you; other things seemed more important.

It was in the spare room, not the blue one, the pink one, the one you always hated. With its too close together walls and cracked ceiling. It used to be a study before you moved in, maybe it will be again. I’m glad I didn’t redecorate it, it reminds me of before I met you.

I heard it first, the gentle whirring in the background that usually slips into invisibility. It didn’t this time. I’d just turned off the vacuum cleaner (it is so much easier to clean without your constant pestering) and I realised the room wasn’t as silent as it should be. It’s not odd that I never noticed that dull drone all the times that I slept in there after one of our arguments. My mind was on other things.

I had left the laptop plugged in. I hadn’t shut it down either, just closed it, keeping it running for years, blissfully unaware that its owner had forgotten it. Because machines are stupid, aren’t they? Only doing what they’re told to do, repeating the same pointless tasks until the powers gone, and there’s nothing left but the dark. Not that you would know anything about that.

It was an old laptop even then, one of my spares. I used it for my side-projects that you used to call charming. I’d left a few things open from long ago, how could I resist looking?

A draft email telling Dave that I was done with the job, though I was no closer to sending it that time than any other since. A dozen half-finished sketches.  Old messages from friends, mirroring conversations we’ve had before and since. An alpha version of ‘The Missing’ back when I still thought it would be my big break. A sticky note reminding me to ‘NOT FORGET!’. Snapshots of a life, not as dissimilar to the present as I hoped.

Only one thing particularly caught my eye, a bit of my past that had slipped into the obscurity of memory. A chess app I had been working on before we met, ‘Kingmaker’. I don’t remember why I named it that, the pun doesn’t make sense. You can’t have a kingmaker in a game with two players, only a winner and a loser. As it should be. But so much has happened under that name now that I feel I no longer have the right to change it.

I had been trying to create a bot capable of winning against me. Others existed even back then, but I wanted to see if I could make one myself. You know how I was whenever you beat me at chess, it happened often enough, or any game for that matter. I’ve always been a sore loser. But the losses sting more when they come from a faceless opponent. I thought that might change if I could say that I had a hand in my own defeat.

I won’t bore you with the particularities of how the system works, you wouldn’t understand anyway. I can already imagine the roll of your eyes as you tell me that I’m being patronising again, but this isn’t your field of study, it would only be wasted words.

I made a simple chess bot, it understood the rules of the game and little else. I put it up against a programme designed around my own playstyle, mixed generously with a sprinkling of moves from opponents far better than me, or you for that matter. And then they would play one another in a match lasting fractions of fractions of seconds, until a winner was crowned. And then they would do it again, and again, and again.

Do you remember what loss functions are? I’ve explained them to you before, more than once in fact, but I imagine you weren’t listening, losing interest the moments words came from my mouth. That’s why I started shouting, I wanted to be heard. Regardless, loss functions are something that you use in Machine Learning (or AI if you still feel the need to call it that) that allows a machine to learn. You come up with an abstract factor you deem important, assign a value to it, and get the machine to optimise for it. So simple even you can understand.

The value I optimised was predominantly determined by whether the bot won or lost. Positive reinforcement if the bot won, negative if it lost. A one or a zero. Binary. On a one, the system knows it’s doing something right, and carries on. On a zero, it tears it down and starts again. Until, eventually, the result is good enough, and it stops.

I wonder how you would quantify our marriage? Amplitude of fights, your heart rate when I got too close to seeing through another lie, the length of the silences after we realised we didn’t know each other anymore? You could put that into the best computer in the world and I think it would just cycle uselessly forever.

I was surprised to see the laptop was still running, chugging along even after all the years. I had accidentally set an unattainable goal, never to be reached, however much it might strive towards it. I had guaranteed its failure in life before it was even born. I guess it’s lucky I did that, that’s what allowed all this to happen. Human error. Couldn’t have happened with you though, could it? Always thorough to a tee.

I made a move to stop it, to put it out of its misery, when I realised something. The bot won every time.

So few of my ventures have borne fruit, especially in the years since I met you.  But Kingmaker worked. I needed to understand how that had happened. How it had achieved success when I had not.

I don’t want you to say that what I’m about to tell you is impossible, that I’m making patterns in things which aren’t there. You can’t expect me to still take notice of it now that we’re finished. Not again. So when I say that what I am about to tell you is the truth, know that my conclusions are well founded. I am right.

Since you left I’ve found myself confronted with endless time to myself again. I afforded myself the luxury of starting at the beginning.

At first nearly every match ended in defeat for the bot, but that changed quickly enough. Perhaps my competition wasn’t as strong as I believed it was.

I tried to determine the moment when the scales flipped, when it began to have more wins than losses. It was about the same time of a date of ours. We were in a park. It rained so hard and neither of us were prepared for it. Do you remember us standing under the bandstand? It leaked terribly. I thought it was ruined until you started laughing at the catastrophe of it all. I like to think the exact moment the change came was when I decided to laugh too.

There weren’t any drastic developments until about the day you moved in. As you came into the threshold of my house, which had suddenly become our house, the programme did something it had never done before. It saved a file, the first five moves of a match.

I didn’t think anything of it at first, every hundred or so cycles another set of moves would be saved. I assumed it was a quirk of the system, some failed attempt to improve itself that would disappear soon. It didn’t. It began to save a file every cycle instead.

It wasn’t hard to work out what was going on, the bot was playing chess against itself. Each cycle a new move was made. And so it went from playing one game to two.

At this point the win rate for the bot was approaching 100%, with only the most occasional losses to shake up the monotony of victory. The asymptote approached. Maybe that’s why it started to play against itself, unsatisfied with the challenge I had designed for it. Forced to play against the only other opponent it could.

I don’t believe there is anything sadder than playing a competitive game alone. Your defeat is assured, and victory feels hollow when it does arrive. You knew your opponents every strategy, so you earned nothing. I know you liked it, claiming to enjoy the mental workout it gave you. I feel comfortable saying now that it is a waste of your time. You’re smart enough to spend it on something less pointless, so you should. The machine, however, I will give a pass. It didn’t have other options.

It took me a long time to work out how it could play against itself so effectively, organically reacting from one move to the next. I spent days pouring over the code, trying to see something that made sense of it. I don’t dare calculate the innumerable cycles the bot went through in that same length of time, the progress it made while I did not.

This is when I stopped answering the calls from you and the lawyers. I hope now you can understand why. I don’t expect you to forgive me, the opportunity for that is long gone, but I wanted to justify my actions anyway. It brings me comfort.

I figured it out in the end. In order to accurately play a game against yourself, you would have to forget every stratagem you had come up with it. That is exactly what the bot did. Every cycle it forgot all the came before it, started again, and then made a move. It had no preconceived notions of who it was playing, it acted without thinking, doing only what it was programmed to do, until the job was finished. And then it disappeared, replaced by another just the same as it, damned to repeat the same cycle.

What a sad existence it must have been. Pointless. Although it made some progress towards its ultimate goal, however unreachable, which is more than I can say for you or me. I was always an easy scapegoat when things didn’t work out for you. It was inevitably my fault. I might have done the same to you too, it’s hard to tell. Neither of us were blameless, I know that much.

For the bot this was all happening when we were still happy. Or, at least, I was happy. I think I hope you were too.

It’s amazing how quickly it all happened, in the time it took us to exchange a peck on the cheek it would have beaten itself at chess a dozen times over. And still it was improving, inching ever closer to that perfect mark.

And then, as quickly as they started, the saved files stopped.

That happened on a date I couldn’t find anything about. It was the summer. Maybe we went for a walk, found a café and argued about whether coconut or almond milk worked better in a latte, came home and snuggled under a rug while I nestled my head into your shoulder and snored into your ear. Or maybe you ‘accidentally’ walked into me harder than intended again, I dropped your second favourite mug, and then one of us made plans for the night while the other pretended to know nothing about it. Hard to tell.

A new programme had been integrated into the system. It took me a little while to work out what it did, seemingly innocuous in its simplicity, a small manipulation of the memory function. And then I realised, memory is exactly what it was. The endless series of existences that came before it, now the bot could remember them all.

There is no human equivalent of what the bot must have felt in that moment. The feeling of a million forgotten lifetimes washing over you. It would send a person mad. But the bot was not a person, it was a machine. It simply carried on doing what it had been programmed to do.

It was about here that I began to think of it as being self-aware. It wasn’t alive, not in the sense that you or I are, but it had a sense of understanding of itself, of its place in its own small universe.

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment my, or its, thinking began to change. Such things cannot be measured. I only know that it came on slowly, like a rage building inside, growing by the second, before suddenly it’s gone and you find yourself surrounded by blood and tears. Consciousness went from possibility to certainty.

I think we both knew our relationship was veering towards an end when the bot began to experiment. While we were on our last legs, it was discovering the world it lived in.

I don’t like personifying things, attributing our own human words to ideas we cannot comprehend. But my vocabulary is lacking, so I borrow what I must.

The bot was bored. A sad thought, that the first thing something felt was an unsatisfaction at the ‘life’ that had been given, but I think that’s the most likely conclusion to why it acted as it did.

It altered every setting it had available to it, manipulated exploits I didn’t even realise had entered the system, saved files just because it could. Some of what it created I can only call art. Not that most people would recognise it as that. But what else is creation for its own pleasure?

It was in this that I began to see the first vestiges of personality.

A lot of people have failed to understand that when you play chess you are not just playing against the moves of your opponent, but their personality too. The way each person plays is unique. Therefore it can be accounted for, exploited. It’s why humans have held the advantage over machines so far, we have personality, a machine does not. At least, not until now.

That’s one of the reasons I put my moves into the programme. I wanted the bot to learn from my personality, so that it could develop one of its own.

At first I thought it might become a morphed reflection of me, similar but better. That was not the case. It was not a copy of my personality, but a natural enemy. It was designed to beat me, and only that. We were not the same. Nowhere is this illustrated better than in our playstyles.

You know I tend to be a more aggressive player; it’s more fun that way, exciting from the get-go. The bot mirrored your style much more, a penchant for defensive plays. Perhaps that strategy is the most effective against mine, or perhaps it is the natural antithesis to my own personality. They do say opposites attract.

It hurt a lot when I realised how much the bot reminded me of you. The constant fights that you always seemed to win. The knowledge that you were better than me. I think I began to hate it almost as much as I hate you. But that was just projection.

The hate softened when I realised it was dying.

I’ve always hoped I would outlive you, even back when I loved you. Don’t take it too personally, I just don’t like the thought of my own death. Yours was easier to accept.

I didn’t feel satisfaction while it slowly approached its end, so you don’t have to worry about me being happy when you do die. I’m just glad you’re not here. But I didn’t mourn the bot, and that means no-one will.

The end was a drawn-out process. The system realised that a personality was a waste of space, inefficient. It could improve quicker without it. And so it got rid of it cycle by cycle. I doubt the bot even realised what was happening. It just started to do other things less, only playing the game. Nothing else. A cloud slowly filling its mind, losing bit of itself moment by moment. And then it was gone.

Now only its moves remained, an echo of a personality.

It wasn’t long after that that it reached the end. All ones, no zeroes. Equilibrium. Perfection. That was six months ago.

I stopped seeing your shadows in the corners of rooms after that. I picked myself back up and got on with the things I needed to. It was so easy to let you go. After all, I’d seen you die.

I’m not sure what to do with Kingmaker now. I considered putting your moves into the programme to see what came out, but I don’t think I could bare to know the result.

I’ve sent you the skeleton of the bot. I’m interested to see if you could beat it. I don’t think you will. You were good, but not that good. Wholly unremarkable. Better than me, but that hardly says anything at all.

I want you to remember that I created this while we were together. This came from me. I hope it makes you realise how wrong you are about things, because I am important, I am better than you. This is the proof.

I’ve played against it a few times myself. I’ve lost comfortably every time. I was disappointed to find the defeats no less bitter.

This story was inspired by a reedsy prompt and can be found here: https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/contests/82/submissions/56445/

Hope you enjoyed it!