This isn’t about me or my desire. This is about Lara Croft’s breasts, and how the advanced graphics of 2006 meant they glistened after she came out of the water. She swan-dove (Space + F) into the water because I told her to. And when I tell her to jump off a cliff, shoot a man in the heart or turn around to face me, she does that too.
When you fuck the machine, it doesn’t know when to stop.
Her bombastic body, larger than life or video. Like all men in hetero sex the mercenary is a faceless NPC. Lara jumps up (Space) against him, as if he’s a piece of game architecture she can’t interact with, she jumps up against his body over and over with all the clumsiness of a thirteen-year-old girl exploring her sexuality in a video game. And the mercenary keeps shooting, clueless, because that’s all he’s been programmed to do.
They always say yes. Even when they’ve been paid to kill her outside a Bolivian temple.
Fucking the machine is merciless. It doesn’t know that you just came or that you’re shuddering and too sensitive to handle another vibration, that you’re gonna burst out of your skin. The machine is merciless, because it’s innocent.
It’s 2020 and Lara is younger than she was in 2006, because myths and monsters don’t do linear time. Any woman and/or consumer of porn knows youth is a story more than anything else, a titillating illusion. And when I turn the camera around (left arrow key, down arrow key) she smiles at me vacantly.
Crystal Dynamics sought to avoid the embellished physique of past renditions. Their redesign of the character’s appearance focused on the features that made Lara Croft iconic: the ponytail, the ‘M-shaped’ lips, the spatial relationship between her eyes, mouth, and nose.
When you watch a computer-generated girl fuck a monster and her hips rock and his spiked dick pumps in a hypnotizing loop, a rhythmic movement, inhuman and unconvincing because it is so exact a repetition, you’re comforted by the shoddy animation because it means there isn’t a real girl being possibly hurt or coerced. Nobody’s getting exploited in the uncanny valley because nobody’s a person.
When the mercenary shoots at her, Lara opens her mouth and (woman fighting.wav) comes out. Ah. Ah. Ah. When the mercenary lifts his jack boot and kicks her in the chest, she obediently opens her mouth again (woman hurt.wav). Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. The mercenary responds with canned phrases of villain intimidation.
Yeah baby.
It’s time to die.
Got something for you, baby
It’s 2020 and Lara fucks the mercenary outside the tomb, against rough stone with twigs scratching her back, rain beating down like bullets. She screeches like a banshee when she comes, slamming her finger on the spacebar again and again, her health bar dropping in jerky bursts. Her face was made for video.
holy s_it.wav
almost there.wav
come on let’s go.wav
i’m coming for you.wav
The mercenary is a faceless NPC in an eternal procession of brothers, just pixelated dick. The most advanced graphics of 2006 mean his cum glistens as it splatters her face. Her iconic face — this is Lara’s gameworld and the mercenaries swarm like cockroaches, nonplayable and interchangeable. He stutters his pre-programmed language and slowly his heart drains, his body fades. Lara empties all her ammo into him, her twin guns like perfectly synchronized sisters. The mercenary can only make pre-programmed choices, but Lara has a secret weapon. Lara has me. And I’m not a computer, am I? I’m a girl.
When Lara Croft fucks the mercenary, there is no progression; arousal does not build; when Lara Croft monster-fucks in the tomb the trajectory follows no line. I like to think her nipples are enormous, pinkish brown and always flaccid.
And when I arch my back and moan, when I widen my eyes and part my lips, it’s not for you but for your kind, for the faceless NPCs. Because you barely exist, do you?
Lara fucks (Ctrl + spacebar + F)
Lara sucks (Ctrl + spacebar + S)
and Lara always comes (Ctrl + spacebar + spacebar + spacebar + spacebar)
I would rescue her from her lack of personhood but I’m too enthralled by the nudity mod. We’re going on a hunt. For a mercenary, or a priceless artefact.
When you fuck the machine, it doesn’t know how to stop. Between Angel of Darkness (2002) and Legend (2006), Lara got a breast reduction. Afterwards, she felt lighter, like there was less of her and more of her at the same time.
And he was barely there, his facial features crude and poorly animated, his figure stocky and grotesque in its lack of detail, because the developers cared so little about his body compared to mine. And it’s not his vulnerability that we’re after, his shuddering limbs. The camera stays on Lara’s iconic face.
Youth is a story, and Lara knows a priceless artefact when she sees one. It is 2020 and Lara Croft is tired of all the implications her sex carries, the socio-historical meanings weighing her body down. It is 2020 and soon Lara Croft will be old, crow’s feet marring her iconic face, and she will rest on her neocolonial laurels in Croft Manor, smile vacantly, fuck without situatedness.
Lara Croft’s last fantasy is that when you open the ‘Controls’ panel in the settings menu, you will find nothing useful:
Run ?
Jump ?
Shoot ?
Arch ?
Pout ?
Moan ?
Fuck ?
Come ?
Swan-Dive ?
This is what it means to raid: to go to a place no one else goes and take what no one else would. To enter a house as a ghost and leave with a body. A body that isn’t yours, but might as well be.
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