[DEFEAT. is Rendar Frankenstein’s truest attempt at fiction.   Presented in weekly episodes, the novella tells the tale of Daryl Millar – a hero who dies at the intersection of pop culture, science-fiction, war epic, and fantasy]

At just about the same time that the battered son of Lieutenant Larry Buckley was regaining consciousness and Daryl Millar was returning home with the most important gift of his entire short life, 8-Bit was shooting ducks out of the sky.

In his darkened basement.

With a plastic gun.

That was hooked up to his Nintendo Entertainment System.

The game was Duck Hunt and without it 8-Bit would have had absolutely no idea what it means to exert control over another living being. The simulation allowed him to feel a sense of power, twirling the Light Gun on his finger like Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars and blasting pixilated ducks out of the televised sky. Being shrugged off by almost everyone in his life, 8-Bit relied on Nintendo’s processing power to help convince him that there were instances in which he was empowered.

He was the big-bad-man with the motherfucking gun.

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