#we are alive fanzine | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fanhackers · 7 months

Text

I interviewed the organizers of the Media Fandom Oral History Project, and they shared about the project and what makes it important! The project collects oral histories (interviews) from fans about their fannish experiences. Oral histories help fans define for ourselves what it means to a fan, and they help preserve our histories for future generations.

The project needs volunteers! Email oralhistoryfandom (at) gmail (dot) com if you want to get involved.

The full interview can be found under the cut.

-Lianne, Fanhackers volunteer

Q: Can you briefly introduce yourself, the project, and its purpose?

Morgan Dawn: I am Morgan Dawn and have been a slash fanfiction fan since the 1990s. I entered fandom during the last years of paper fanfiction and the beginning era of online fandom.

The Media Fandom Oral History Project’s goal is to capture our history in our own words and with our own voices. The idea came when I was sitting at our kitchen table with my friend Sandy Herrold. We realized that fans talking to other fans in informal settings was the perfect way to showcase our community and our connections. What could be more fannish than talking about and sharing the things we love? We started interviewing fans at conventions, then moved to phone interviews and have finally switched the project into a Do-It-Yourself Mode with fans taking the lead interviewing their friends and choosing what they want to preserve.

The recordings are submitted to the University of Iowa's oral history collection and are available online. We are hoping to provide transcripts for all of the interviews. The University of Iowa has one of the world's largest fanfiction fanzine collections. You can see the list of interviews at Fanlore, one of the OTW’s projects.

Franzeska Dickson: I am Franzeska Dickson and have also been a slash fan since the 90s. In my case, I started as a 13-year-old screaming about Scully on alt.tv.x-files during the first season. (I was a NoRomo, as I recall, mostly because I thought Mulder wasn't nearly good enough for her.) I remember being floored when I was told about fanfic. I have no memory of being told that slash existed. I guess it didn't seem like a big deal. I spent the late 90s and early 00s in anime fandom before swinging back to oldschool Media Fandom and later to other Asian fandoms.

I ran into Morgan at a con and informed her that her recording plans were all wrong and she needed the type of voice recorder that linguists use in the field… I ended up with the recorder and the bulk of the early interviewing work.

Q: Speaking as if to someone unfamiliar with oral history and your project, why is the Media Fandom Oral History Project important?

MD: The recordings allow us to speak directly to future generations of fans and control the discussion of what it means to be a ‘fan.’ By having fans talk to other fans we bypass the dominant narrative of how fans interact with the TV, movies, books and comics. It is also an opportunity for marginalized members of our community to talk about their experiences. There has been much scholarship surrounding live action and anime fandoms. Some of it has been done by academics who are fans themselves and it has been wonderful to see the growth of Fandom Studies. But oral history offers every fan the ability to use their own words to talk about the things they remember and what matters to them.

FD: The early zine generation is rapidly dropping dead, and even when they aren't, I'm always running into younger fans trying to do research who have zero clue who's still alive or where to find them. If we wait for people to do their secondary academic research, it will be too late. Primary sources now or we won't have them!

The scope of fans who are interested in fandom history is much wider than the people who can make the right connections to talk to someone older. It's particularly true for early zines, but it's even true for something like Livejournal: I could rustle up thirty people in five minutes who'd be able to speak cogently on that fandom history. A lot of would-be history researchers currently in undergrad would not. For the future academics, the meta writers, or merely our curious fellow fans, it behooves us to record our history in our own words.

Q: What has the Media Fandom Oral History Project accomplished so far?

MD: We have completed 57 interviews. The first few years we went to in-person conventions and used a digital recorder to interview anyone who was interested. In 2017, a graduate student named Megan Genovese obtained funding and did 24 interviews over the phone in a single summer. During the pandemic, we moved into a DIY (do it yourself) phase - instead of a single person doing the interviewing, we now invite fans to contact their friends and spend an hour chatting about their fandom history. They can use their smartphones, Zoom/video conference recording or reserve a time slot on our international audio conference system.

We have recorded the history of some of the earliest slash writers, publishers and artists. We have preserved the memories of the first fan who created the first fanvid using a slide project and cassette audio tape. We have heard from fans who organized conventions and started letter writing campaigns to save shows. The interviews include filk singers, fans whose passion is meta, and fans who created and ran some of the first fiction archives. These fans are creators, organizers, supporters, and devotees and have so many stories to tell.

Q: In what ways do you hope the project will grow in the coming years? Or, what are your hopes for the project's future?

MD: We’re a small project and it is difficult to scale with our current resources. By shifting to the DIY phase we’re hoping to encourage fans to take the reins of their fandom history and never stop telling their personal fannish stories. The DIY project also allows fandom communities to leverage off our existing “infrastructure” - we can offer permission forms, an international recording platform (if needed), and a place to archive the interviews.

FD: All fandom history resources suffer from a strong predilection for the researcher's friends or their part of fandom to be the main focus. I hope people from very different parts of fandom will interview their friends about areas other people haven't found important or accessible enough to record.

Q: What help is needed, and how can people get involved?

MD: We need 2 intake coordinators to answer questions, e-mail and collect permission forms (Participants must sign a permission form allowing their recordings to be archived at the University of Iowa). We also need help with outreach to communities that may not be aware of the project - anime, BL fans, cosplayers, filkers, fans in other countries. This is not just a historical project looking backwards. We want to capture our community as it is today and hear from fans whose experiences differ. The central focus has not changed - fans participating in transformative fandom - reading, writing, creating fanfiction, fanvids, podfic, art, managing discord communities. But it all starts with intake coordinators who can keep track of participants and follow up to get the recordings. Each oral history also has a written transcription, as we want this project to be as accessible to as many people as possible. We’ve tried some automated transcription services, and the results are very uneven. This means there’s another opportunity for volunteers, people to listen to the recordings and to help transcribe the contents.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like people to know about the Media Fandom Oral History Project?

MD: It's a way for fans to be heard. They can describe their experiences on their own terms, in their own words, and take back some of the power of storytelling, rather than having others tell their stories for them.

It's a way to help preserve and honor fan experiences and fan history.

Envision you and your friends, talking about the things you love, your community, and what they mean to you, and describing and preserving these things for history.

Plus, it's really fun!

FD: If you don't want 'fandom history' to mean just one kind of fandom history, speak up while you can, whether that's here or in essays or in your own projects!

#oral history #fan project #author: Lianne

226 notes · View notes

freakingoutthesquares · 1 year

Text

Poptastic Words: Alexis, Portraits: Pulp Interviewed back-stage at the Highbury Garage, 15 May 1993 Catharsis Fanzine, Issue 4 Transcription: Acrylic Afternoons

"I'm Candida. Hello. I play keyboards." "I'm Jarvis. I'm the singer." "I'm Steve. I play bass." "I'm Russell. I play guitar and violin." "Therefore Nick's the drummer." sums up Candida.

And there you have Pulp - the world's greatest pop band. A band who have "been in Smash Hits" and have even had the honour of having one of that magazine's "Single of the Fortnight". Not that Jarvis can see the band ever being as big as, say, Take That or East 17.

"I can't see too many posters going up."

Pulp were formed by Jarvis whilst at school and the current line up has been together for about five years. But why did they all want to be in a band in the first place?

"I think we wanted to frustrate ourselves," says Candida.

"We're complete sado-masochists," backs up Nick.

Is it what you all always wanted to do?

"Yeah," confirms Jarvis. "I, kind of, wanted to do it at school. I used to imagine, when I was in the school's dinner queue, that I wouldn't have to queue up if I was famous. It's not particularly true. That's what I thought it would be like but it's not."

So, after deciding he wanted to be a pop star, Jarvis went to film school. Why?

"That was after we'd been doing the band for a while but I was disillusioned. We'd been messed around by loads of record companies and the final straw was when the bass player became a born again Christian and left the band. It all seemed a big mess. We didn't actually split the band up but I thought I ought to do something else cos it's all I'd been doing since I left school and I thought my brain was drying up. I thought I ought to do something else to keep it alive a bit."

Now it's 1993 and it's going to be a good year for Pulp. Their records are being picked up on - their last single 'Razzmatazz' got Single of the Week in Melody Maker - and it is rumoured that they have signed to Island Records.

"We're with them spiritually..."

"I don't think we've signed or anything," says Jarvis over Nick.

"...we're, kind of, engaged. It's been a long engagement."

"But long engagements are the best," stresses Russell.

Why do you think it's taken so long for Pulp to be appreciated (Pulp has been around in various forms for about fifteen years)?

Steve: "It's our turn."

Jarvis: "We've been waiting in queue for a long time."

Steve: "It's like when you go to the Post Office and you want a stamp but you'll wait for everyone else to go."

Jarvis: "We're very polite y'see so we didn't push in."

Nick: "We wouldn't have that."

Jarvis: "So we waited our turn."

Did it get depressing in the meantime? "No," continues Jarvis. "There's always other things to do. If you choose to sit at home thinking, "Why aren't I famous?", then you would be quite a sad character. You can always ride your bike or something."

Did you think you'd be doing it this long when you first started?

"No. I would've been horrified. I always thought pop music was supposed to be quite instant. You didn't hang around for a decade. To be doing it for so long is very strange."

How did Pulp sound when you started?

"Awful."

"It was all feedback," explains Steve.

"Yeah," recalls Jarvis. "It was a noise. Not on purpose, or anything. It was just ineptitude. I started when I was young and we just couldn't play. We still can't play very well but I don't think that matters."

What does matter then?

"It's not what you can play, it's what you can say."

And what are Pulp saying?

"That's put you on the spot," cries Nick gleefully.

"Well, it's not that we've got something to say as in there's a big message for the world. U2 are trying to shake off that image now but before they were always doing the chest beating and coming up with their big slogans. It's not like that. Hopefully it's an accurate reflection of our lives."

In that case Pulp must lead very strange lives. The opening lines of 'Razzmatazz' were, "The trouble with your brother/he's always sleeping with your mother/and I know that your sister's missed her time again this month".

"I don't think they're seedy," states Jarvis. "They're just true to life. I think they're deadpan and down to earth. I don't think they're strange. Razzmatazz is a bit sad. Babies (the single before Razzmatazz... sample lyric: I wanna take you home/I wanna give you children) is just a thing you get up to when you are fourteen and certain things are still still taboo and you get into situations because of curiosity."

What does your mother think about your lyrics?

"I don't think she's bothered. She's not made any detrimental comments. She thinks the songs should be happier. I'd rather her take no notice actually because once I went round there at Christmas and she insisted on playing the record all the time when my relatives were there. It was embarrassing. Everyone comes up and pats you which isn't very good. Also, if you're on TV or radio at your mothers then it's very embarrassing."

"Shouldn't have your hair like that."

"Smile a bit more."

"Why don't you play some happy ones."

To get to know Pulp a little better we decided to ask each member of the band to describe the others. We allotted them one word per person. Below are the results.

Nick: Candida... petite. For Jarvis I'd say dishevelled. Steve is organised and Russ is er... too tough sometimes.

Candida: Nick's loud. Jarvis is temperamental. Steve is organised and Russell is good at business.

Jarvis: For Nick I would say... high. Candida is fluorescent. Steve is clean. Russell... I'd say feedback.

Steve: Nick is too loud. Candida is calm. Jarvis is unique and that's not a compliment. Ha Ha Ha. Russell is manic.

Russell: Nick is Jean Paul. Candida is toys. For Jarvis I'd say praying mantis and Steve I would say is a cigar.

During this game several compliments and disparaging remarks were handed out and taken with apparent ease and false stroppiness in turn. Pulp complimenting each other makes them happy, but what is the nicest thing an outsider could say about them?

"I don't know. I get embarrassed if people are nice to me," says Jarvis whilst Russell lines up the butts of his cigarettes in size order. "l find it hard to accept people being nice. I always think they' re after something."

"You're paranoid," offers Steve as an explanation. "l don't know why it is. It's like when you eat out at a restaurant, not that I do very often, but when I do I don't like the waiters always coming over and supposedly being nice. (Adopts slimey voice.) "Is everything O.K. for you sir?". I find that makes my flesh crawl. I'd rather they just give it to you and then let you eat and talk to whoever you're with."

"The nicest thing someone could do to you is put a plate of food down and walk away?" asks Russell incredulously.

"I don't mean just slap it down. Put it down, then go away. I don't want them hanging around with the violin in your ear. The niceness is a bit like that."

Do you also hate it when people are horrible to you Jarvis?

"Oh yeah. I like general blandness. Ha Ha Ha. If somebody comes up to you and says "You're great", it's nice but it's also..."

"...a conversation killer," finishes Russell.

"It's a northern thing as well," observes Steve. "In Sheffield no one Would ever go up and say, "I think you're great"."

"That's why," confirms Russell, "it's uncool. It's us that's wrong but..."

"The best compliment we get is if someone says we're alright. It's good to know that other people like you but you'd rather hear it second hand," explains Jarvis.

"The first time someone said it to us we thought we'd misheard them," says Nick.

"Do you know who we are?" adds Russell.

"Yeah," continues Nick. "l thought they'd got the wrong band."

You said earlier that you don't like people being mean to you - does criticism upset you?

"Well" says Jarvis with a pained expression, "if somebody writes something like, "He's a tall, lanky streak of piss with no discernible talent. How has he managed to delude himself for so many years?" you can't just go, "Oh, yeah. Fair enough, everybody's entitled to their own opinion"."

"Truth hurts. Ha Ha Ha." comments Steve.

"It's too bad they were right," agrees Russell rubbing more salt into Jarvis's wounds. "We do like people to like us. We're not just doing this for ourselves. We want people to like it."

"But we don't pander," warns Jarvis.

What do you think about the "Crimplene scene" which is the current press play thing? Does it bother you that you've been lumped into that?

"We started it," boasts Steve jokingly.

"I don't think it exists. It's not healthy," complains Jarvis. "No. Crimplene makes you sweat. We'd rather be the British cotton scene."

"It's true," supports Nick. "Avoid Crimplene at all costs."

"I like seventies bands like Denim. Is that the Crimplene scene?" asks Russell.

From what I've read, it's you, Suede, Saint Etienne etc.

"We used to get compared to Marc Almond and World Of Twist so..."

"If I was going to chose a scene to be associated with," remarks Steve, "it would be that one but it's not like we meet at Oxfam on a Saturday afternoon and fight over classic Crimplene. None of us like it."

"I still don't think it exists," says Jarvis persistently.

If there is a scene then Pulp are the leaders of the pack. They might not be the biggest, but they are the best. In terms of sex, glamour and everything that counts they are the only band you need to know. They leave the rest of their ilk in a trail of dust. The songs are gorgeous uplifting affairs with secret tales of suburban life as lyrics. It is pure genius.

"A lot of sexual perverts like us," offers Russell helpfully. "They write us strange letters. Post grunge and post shoe gazing there is a new sort of person on the streets and they like us. People in stripey tops quite like us."

"French people like us," announces Candida.

Do any of you ever get recognised in the streets?

"Yeah," states Jarvis. "I was saying to Russell the other day, that I've always had people taking notice of me in the streets in Sheffield - usually in a bad way. They called me names and things. It does still happen. In fact I nearly had a fight yesterday 'cos this boy decided to push me. But people have started to recognize me and be a bit more friendly now. It's strange 'cos I'm always getting ready to flinch when they come up and then they say something nice and catch me off guard."

What names did they call you?

"Because I've always worn glasses it just used to be someone famous with glasses. Elvis Costello, Buddy Holly. Just anybody who wore glasses. I used to have a beard for a bit and then I was called Rolf Harris all the time. They weren't very imaginative."

Well, those people were obviously mad. Jarvis is, without a doubt, a sex symbol for the nineties along with all the others in the band. At the gig that took place after this interview Jarvis was practically pulled off the stage by adoring females. O.K. - so we know they are attractive, but how sexy out of ten does each member of the band think he/she is?

"We're all going to say ten aren't we?" asks Candida.

"You might, but I wouldn't," retorts Steve.

"I think it changes during the day," decides Nick. "When you get up in the morning you're probably a minus. The later it gets the better it gets. If it's a good day you might peak at two."

"You just about make a two, Steve," jokes Jarvis.

"Anyone who says above seven has problems," says Steve wisely.

"You'd catch them playing with themselves in front of a mirror when you came in here," suggests Jarvis.

"That means you were about a nine in the van today, then, when we set off," says Steve whilst trying to wind up Jarvis.

"Yeah?"

"I didn't think you were a nine, you thought you were."

"Self-masturbation," adds Nick helpfully.

"That's another thing that other people have to decide upon," Jarvis remarks sensibly.

"Obviously it's nice if people do find you that way."

At this point Nick's brother enters the room and Russell starts loudly announcing that "this one goes up to eleven" if you twist the nipple and put a little shilling in the slot. Everyone has hysterics.

But, don't get me wrong, Pulp take what they do incredibly seriously. They are a deadly serious band. I know this because Nick told me four times. They are funny, the music is not. Pulp are also clever, sexy, glamorous, beautiful, talented, strange, normal, erotic, under-famous, unique, sleazy, stylish and every other compliment ever. If you feel the need to check out the high life or if you just need that extra sparkle - look no further than Pulp. They're the most fun you'll ever have.

You can write to Pulp at P.O. Box 87, Sheffield, S6 2YZ and you can become a Pulp person by sending £3 to the same address.

#pulp #russell senior #jarvis cocker #candida doyle #nick banks #steve mackey #90s #interview #printed interview

84 notes · View notes

vintagegeekculture · 1 year

Text

RIP John Jakes, Pulp and Fantasy Author

A man who’s career began in pulp scifi, then was one of the greatest group of fantasy fans turned authors, and who finally ended it as one of the most commercially successful “men’s adventure” paperback novels of the 1970s, John Jakes died at 90 last week. What a life! He started his career in scifi pulp of the 1950s, switching to sword and sorcery action in the 60s, and finally, ending the 70s as one of the top selling authors of the decade. In one guy’s life, you can see the ebb and flow of trends in men’s adventure fiction over the decades.

Let’s start the John Jakes story at the end, and then work our way back. Does this book series above look familiar to you at all?

If you have grandparents and they live in America, I 100% guarantee the Kent Family Chronicles (also called the Bicentennial Series) are in your Mee Maw and Pep Pep’s house right now. You probably handled them while visiting their house and went through their bookshelves as a child, right next to their Reader’s Digest condensed books, Tai-Pan and Shogun by James Clavell, copies of the endless sequels to Lonesome Dove, and old TV Guides they still have for some reason next to the backgammon set. If your grandparents are no longer with us, you probably found this series when selling their possessions after death. That’s because these things sold in the millions, back when the surest way to make money in writing was to write melodramatic, intergenerational family sagas of grandiose sweep set around historical events. Weighty family sagas, ones critics call bloated and self important instead of “epic,” were a major part of 70s fiction as they were four quadrant hits: men liked them for war, action, and history (every guy at some point must choose between being a civil war guy, or World War II guy) and ladies loved them for their romance and melodramatic love triangles (after all, the Ur-example of this kind of book is Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind). This was the kind of thing turned into TV event miniseries, and ably lampooned in the hilarious “Spoils of Babylon” series with Kristen Wiig and Toby McGwire, which, decades after the fact, did to this genre what Airplane! did for the formerly prolific airport disaster movie: it torpedoed it forever by making it impossible to take seriously.

This genre eventually went away because men stopped being reliable book buyers and book readers in the 1990s (or at least, were no longer marketed to as an audience), Lonesome Dove’s insane popularity was the last gasp of this audience. I’ve said this before, but men and boys no longer reading is the single most under remarked on social problem we have. “YA books” now basically mean “Girl Books.”

John Jakes did not suddenly come out of nowhere to write smash hit bestsellers set around a family during the American Revolution. He came from one of the weirdest places imaginable: a crony of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter in fantasy and weird tales fanzines like Amra, he was one of the original “Gang of Eight,” people drawn from fantasy and horror fandom to become pro-writers now that fantasy fiction had a home at Ballantine Publishing, just before the rise of Lord of the Rings and the paperback pulp boom, which is an incredible case of being in the right place at the right time. There, John Jakes, a fanzine contributor and ERB fan, wrote “Brak the Barbarian,” which is amazing as L. Sprague de Camp and Ballantine hadn’t even reprinted the Conan stories yet and Conan was as well known as Jirel of Joiry or Jules de Grandin. Only superfans of pulp knew who that guy was at all, there was no audience for it. He wrote Brak the Barbarian as a superfan, and was lucky the paperback market found him.

The tireless work John Jakes, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, and the Gang of Eight did in preserving fantasy novelists of the pulp age into the 50s-60s is one of the great historic feats of preservation and keeping fandom flames alive. It’s no exaggeration to say that you know who Conan the Barbarian and HP Lovecraft are right now because of them, fans who kept the flame alive tirelessly and thanklessly in the ultra-rational 50s that had no place for dark horrific fantasy.

Like his friend in fantasy and pulp fandom, L. Sprague de Camp, John Jakes started as a scifi guy in the endless scifi pulp magazines of the 1950s. Unlike his friend de Camp or Hugh B. Cave, who were full of humor, characterization, and satire, Jakes was often pessimistic, dour, and downbeat, and he disliked to laugh.

It’s shocking to lose someone with a connection to, in one lifetime, the first great group of fantasy fandom, 50s scifi pulp, and 70s men’s adventure. John Jakes’ life spanned all of them.

72 notes · View notes

updaamafterdark · 2 months

Text

Good Morning Blackreef!

"Updaam After Dark" is a fanzine covering Blackreef and its many secrets and mysteries.

You can find detailed rules in the "rules" section of our Carrd.

A few important ones to highlight here are:

'Updaam After Dark' is a zine dedicated to celebrating Deathloop's third anniversary. Hence, all content in it must stay on topic. We understand that because Deathloop and Dishonored are set in the same universe, and this zine is dedicated to fan theories and such, some overlap will occur. However, you should center Backreef and/or its inhabitants in your creations.

Contributors will retain all rights to their submission after the zine releases.

All contributions made to the zine must be original and unpublished.

Rules surrounding the content and format of your submission vary depending on whether it's a fic, art, or something else.

[Application Forms]

If you want to participate, but haven't done anything like this before, and aren't quite sure what to make and how everything works, don't hesitate to drop us an ask here.

In the spirit of celebrating Deathloop, and all the wonderful people keeping the fandom alive, we welcome all types of content and any level of experience! The former includes games based on in-game screenshots, cosplay, crosswords, and really anything you can think of.

We hope to see you there :)

[Writers] [Artists] [Other contributors]

P.S.: If anyone's really good at proofreading and has free time in ~August please send us a [Direct Message]

#deathloop #fan zine #updaam after dark #contributor applications #signups open #prey 2017 #dishonored #redfall #arkane studios

11 notes · View notes

late-to-the-magnus-archives · 7 months

Text

The Incident - a Malevolent one-shot for the zine, This Too Shall Pass

Arthur and John are in Arkham, getting their burgeoning P.I. business off the ground.

And then Kayne asks for a favor, and everything goes to hell,

AO3

Written for the Malevolent zine, @malevolent-fanzine

————

“Right,” says Arthur, settling at his desk. “Widow Morris on Thursday. Friday is the court date—that’s the big one, John. I want this guy going down.”

Agreed. People who hurt children were never going to get mercy from either of them.

“The Morris case, at least, won’t be difficult,” Arthur verbalizes. “I still think it’s just a squatter.”

I don’t. I just have a feeling about it.

“Fine, fine.” Arthur sips tea with his right hand. “We’ll go armed however you think is wise. Make a note.”

John writes in the appointment book with his left.

Arthur considers the rest of their Tuesday. “So what about—”

“Hey, guys?” Kayne whines out of nowhere, then suddenly speaks like a rocket without punctuation. “I’m busy and need a hand this is Lucy (short for Lucifer of course) and I got stuff to do (big boy god stuff) a meeting of biblical proportions don’t you know (oh wait you wouldn’t) so anyway do me the favor of keeping an eye on her bye!”

And then he drops a monster in the middle of the office and vanishes.

At least, John presumes he vanishes. John is a little distracted trying to make sure Arthur doesn’t die.

Down! Behind the desk! Fuck!

Fortunately, Arthur is not in one of his stubborn moods today, and obeys.

Lucy is a horrible thing, oil-slick black and just as shiny, the size of a large dog, and possessed of enormous blue eyes that do not fit her hideous face. She has a shark-teeth perma-smile, six prehensile arms (or legs?), and flexible stingers lining her spine all the way to the tip of her pointed tail.

John knows they’re stingers because Lucy likes to embed them in things.

All things.

Anything.

Within seconds of her landing between them and the door, she has layered the carpet, the desk, the chairs, and much of the ceiling in freaky, pulsing spines, which she then regrows at once so she can do it again.

Unfortunately, Lucy seems to be throwing a tantrum.

There’s neither rhyme nor reason for her actions. She does not let them go for the door; when they try, she swipes her tail and lines Arthur’s arm with stingers, which apparently burn.

“Fuck!” Arthur hisses, back behind the desk as John works to pull the stingers free.

John does not like how… dusky Arthur’s skin gets around each little hole, but at least he gets them all out.

Lucy rampages around the office. She storms the bathroom. She crashes the kitchen.

The window is right there! John howls at her.

She does not even try to leave.

By this point, John knows the only reason they’re alive is Lucy doesn’t actually want to kill them.

After about an hour and a half, Lucy wears herself out, curls up like a weird, hairless cat, and enters a fitful sleep in front of the door.

She twitches in her sleep as though dreaming.

“What the fuck?” moans Arthur.

Kayne returns seconds later.

“Aww, there there, there there,” he coos hideously, scooping her up while Arthur peers with John’s sight around the war-wounded desk. “You did so good? Yes you did, yes you did! Thanks, you two. I owe you. Bye!” And he’s gone again.

The place is wrecked.

Arthur is feverish.

Fuck, says John, which seems a good summation of it all.

They call it The Incident. It seems unwise to mention Kayne or Lucy by name.

Arthur doesn’t seem particularly… well? He’s pale, and his reaction time is just a pinch slow; but he seems otherwise sharp enough, and scoffs at John’s idea of going to a doctor.

“I’m fine, damn it,” he says when prompted. “We don’t have time, anyway.”

Widow Morris turns out to have a damned wraith in her attic, which requires digging through old, dusty trunks and some fairly clever workarounds to bind.

They’ve done this before, but when Arthur goes to free her in exchange for a request, he seems to pull a blank. “Help someday?” he says, which is vague as fuck, and John is pissed.

Arthur! The hell!

“Hn?”

The wraith takes the deal and leaves. Who knows what she made of it.

Widow Morris pays them and tells Arthur he’s looking peaky.

That wraith shit is going to come back to bite us, John warns. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I think… I think I need to go home,” says Arthur, and says not one more word until they do.

They haven’t had much time to fix the place. Arthur crunches through wreckage, curses as he trips over a stinger John missed in the carpet, and mutters his way into the smashed-up kitchen.

Arthur, you’re worrying me.

“One more day, John,” Arthur mumbles as he eats some cold canned soup. “Once we finish this court case, we’ll be good for a bit. We can rest. ‘S what we need. Rest.”

Sure, Arthur. John is unconvinced.

Arthur showers.

Arthur goes to bed.

John is very concerned.

The morning of the court case—three days after The Incident—begins bright and early with Arthur throwing up.

He simply turns to the side and heaves all over the floor until there’s nothing left.

The fuck! John says, deeply startled. Are you all right?

“Sure,” says Arthur lightly, as though that didn’t happen, and staggers like a drunk toward the bathroom.

Arthur. Arthur, stop, you’re about to hit the—

Arthur wakes face-first into the open bathroom door, hands uselessly stretched on either side.

He grunts.

What the fuck, Arthur?

“‘S fine,” Arthur mumbles, and feels for the shower.

John is disturbed at how damp and tacky Arthur’s pajamas are. He must have sweated all night. You have a bad fever.

Not that they have any way to know. The thermometer, of course, is smashed.

Arthur, you need a damn doctor.

“No time for doctor,” Arthur mumbles with precise elocution and caveman grammar, and steps in before the water is even warm.

Arthur?

No answer this time.

Also no singing, which is absolutely out of character.

Arthur, if you walk into court like this, we are going to blow our testimony, and that murderer will get away.

“Sure, sure,” says Arthur, and—leaving the water on—staggers toward the closet, soaking wet.

Uh, Arthur?

“Mm?”

You didn’t shave.

Arthur stumbles back in.

No, says John, taking the straight razor from Arthur’s shaking hand. Better let me do this today.

“Kay.”

Tilt your head. There you go.

Arthur doesn’t argue or push back or anything.

Apparently, it takes a horrible mystery illness to make him amenable. Figures.

Arthur, I really think we should call the prosecutor and let them know you’re ill. Maybe your testimony can be rescheduled.

Arthur does not reply.

It takes nearly twenty minutes to get him dressed, and it goes… poorly.

“How do I look?” says Arthur, his shirt sticking to his wet skin and buttoned entirely wrong, his tie a configuration definitely not listed in The Gentlemen’s Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness and possibly a runic knot.

Okay, says John. Okay, this isn't great. Arthur, I don’t think this is going to work.

“Sure it is,” says Arthur, and then he passes out.

John doesn’t have a body to wince, but that thud shakes him, anyway.

Arthur?

John pats his face.

Nothing.

John smacks him hard.

Nothing.

This is no mere fever.

Fuck, John says.

If this is another coma, John doesn’t know what to do. Drag himself to the phone and dial the police? Sure—but he wouldn’t be able to speak.

And today’s court case will be a bust. That asshole will get away with literal murder, and that is…

The man hurt kids. This is unacceptable.

Don’t panic, John tells himself. Humans do this. They pass out when their bodies require resources for things other than consciousness. He’s going to wake up. Don’t panic. Don’t—

Bare feet come into view in front of Arthur’s face. Casual. Quiet. Filthy with what might be tar, but is just brown enough to make John think of blood.

“Oh, no, do panic, darling, very much do,” says the owner of the feet.

John is not particularly obedient, but he rockets into panic now. What? Why are you here? Go away!

Kayne does not, but crouches, studying Arthur like a fascinating bug. He grips Arthur’s hair to lift his head and drop it back down again, thud.

Hey!

“He is out for the count, isn’t he? My, my, my.” Lift, drop, thud.

Stop doing that!

“And here you have a court date, don't you? Dramatic! Terrible! Whatever shall you do?”

Go the fuck away.

“Oh, you want to go away from him?” Lift, drop, thud.

No! John thrusts his left hand beneath Arthur’s head.

“Not even to get his body for yourself? He wouldn’t suffer if you did it now! Wouldn’t even know it happened. He’d just float away (which is what he wants to do, anyway, though I know you’re not ready to tangle with that one), and maybe even end up with Faroe—and you’d be one step closer to whole.” Lift, drop—

Kayne allows John to catch Arthur’s head with a smack.

That seems pointed, somehow.

No!

“You sure? You could make the court date.” Lift, drop, smack.

At the cost of Arthur’s life? No!

“What if it wasn’t at the cost of his life?”

This time, Kayne doesn’t let go. He holds Arthur’s head by the hair, that fragile human neck bent, and John is suddenly very afraid what will happen to Arthur if he says no.

I… I’m listening.

“Good boy,” says Kayne, low and dangerous. “I’m bored, see? And this is an opportunity. So here’s what we’re going to do.”

An hour later, John walks Arthur’s body into the courtroom.

He hasn’t quite got the hang of it yet. Two legs instead of dozens of tentacles just doesn’t feel right, and balance is a whole thing, but there was no more time to practice.

He has a plan if anyone asks: something something out on a case, something something got beat up, something something doing just fine.

“Do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” they ask him.

Well, John sure does, even if the only gods he knows he’s actively avoiding.

“Are you prepared to tell this court what you observed on the day in question?” says the prosecutor, and John goes off.

Maybe he shouldn’t have gone off.

The prosecutor’s eyes are pretty damn big before John finishes his recollection.

So are the judge’s.

The jury looks fairly stunned, too.

John’s not sure what he did wrong. He just told them what happened. Everything he saw.

Everything that murderer did, including messing with evidence, which was the reason Arthur’s testimony matters so much.

What did he do worth staring at like this?

“Call for recess,” says the judge, and everybody takes a break.

John walks Arthur’s body to the men’s room.

Everyone else spoke in a measured, calm tone, as though this wasn’t a monster they were judging.

John was… passionate. Maybe shared some details humans would not (though the birthmark visible on the man’s dick seemed like important identification).

John has no regrets.

Next, he will be cross-examined, and he is ready.

He checks the tie (perfect).

He does the sniff test to ensure he didn’t sweat too much (soap and human, perfectly standard).

Teeth clean. Eyes clear. Hair -

Wait.

The eyes are not clear.

John leans in.

Arthur’s irises used to be brown; they have been gold since John took them, and it is a color John really likes—it’s damn near metallic, hardly a human tone. But now, there is something new.

Jagged black lines radiate out from the irises, as if Arthur’s eyes are broken glass.

“That’s not right,” John mutters in Arthur’s suave tenor.

“Looks fine to me,” says Kayne from one of the stalls, and (obnoxiously) flushes the toilet. He slams open the stall door and stalks over to lean on the sink, then (obnoxiously) doesn’t use it.

John doubts he needs to use it. He’s also certain Kayne has far worse than human effluvia on his hands. “What do you want?”

“You know, Arthur keeps surprising me?” says Kayne conversationally. “Not a clue why (which is a whole thing in itself), but he’s reacting to Lucy a lot faster than anticipated.”

Of course this goes back to The Incident. Of course it does. “What? Those fucking stingers? I got them all out!”

“Did you, though?”

John is very still.

“I had been calculating a couple of weeks before he would start showing, but yow. Those eyes, buddy. You ain’t convincing anybody on the stand with eyes like those, unless you were arguing for demon possession.” Kayne cackles. “Might get you a date, but not a conviction.”

John can feel Arthur’s heart pounding. He peers in the mirror again. “What is happening to Arthur’s body?”

“Don’t you know? It’s being taken over, darling. Little by little. Maybe your presence helped? Hurried it along? We’ll never know. Anyway, got to go! Ciao!” And he takes one step backwards and vanishes.

Oh.

Oh, this was not good.

Oh.

John peers again.

They’re expecting him back in the courtroom.

The other guy’s lawyer will definitely notice these eyes.

John won’t be able to make an excuse about a late-night excursion for this.

He has to protect Arthur.

But the court case…

Damn it.

John wants justice, but he wants Arthur safe far more.

He can hear them all walking down the hall, talking, laughing, ready to resume.

John climbs out the bathroom window.

Behind him, he thinks there are screams, but he tells himself his borrowed human brain made them up.

Back in their small apartment behind the office, John studies Arthur’s face in the cracked bathroom mirror.

Since he left the courthouse, the lines have grown darker, sharper-angled—and have begun to reach past his sclera and into the flesh of his face.

This is very bad.

He must have missed a stinger.

John strips and inspects himself. He can’t quite see Arthur’s back, so he rummages until he finds a shaving mirror.

And there, in the reflection, is a small, black dot between his kidneys.

A stinger. Shit.

If John is very still and doesn’t breathe, he can see it throbbing slightly, pumping something unknown into Arthur’s body.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” snaps John, and, using tweezers, manages to wriggle it out.

Yup. It’s one of Lucy’s spines, still pulsing, oozing a weird and nasty black.

How much of this is in Arthur? How the hell can he counteract it?

A witch. He needs a witch.

He doesn’t know any witches.

Not here, anyway.

The only witches John knows are back home—

He catches himself. Are back in the Dreamlands. Which isn’t home. This is.

Still, he needs a witch. “Damn it, Kayne,” he growls.

“What?” Kayne says from behind the shower curtain. “Can’t a guy take a relaxing bath in a stolen tub with expensive oils and fine wine and a severed head in peace while another guy in a stolen body pulls a baby chaos stinger out of his back with tweezers?”

John decides not to engage with that sentence. “I need a witch.”

Kayne scoffs. “You need more than that, darling.”

“This happened because we did you a favor,” John snarls.

“No, it happened because your human is a fucking klutz.” Kayne does something, and water splashes.

John hopes Kayne is not getting severed-head bits all over everything. He sighs. “Fine. I’ll find a witch on my own.”

“This should be good.”

John grabs Arthur’s clothes and exits the bathroom at a run.

John misses Arthur.

The human world is much less interesting without him to talk to, and he finds himself mentally describing everything he sees as though still guiding his friend.

It’s not the same.

He wants Arthur back.

At any rate, the yellow pages are no use for finding witches.

He already knows there are no shops offering such things.

Come to think of it, though… he does know one person who’s connected to witchery.

She’s not likely to help him.

Maybe he can scare her into it? No, that wouldn’t work.

“This is a bad idea, Arthur,” he says out of habit, though of course, there is no response.

He misses Arthur.

It takes him an hour by bus to get to Boston. By the time he arrives, other passengers are avoiding him, glancing nervously at his face, visibly afraid.

Most of them, anyway. Kayne was right about that—a few look distinctly interested, though he’s not sure in what.

If it were John’s body, he might be curious enough to find out, but it isn’t his body, so he doesn’t.

He won’t do that to Arthur, any more than Arthur would do that to him.

The Dunwich Repository looks exactly the same—an understated brownstone with a sign by the door, and no indication just what horrors lie within.

The whole shoggoth thing hadn’t gone… great? And Asenath’s father had died in the middle of it, and honestly, she should have, too, but Arthur had insisted she’d been used and was innocent and needed another chance, all of which John disbelieved, but now maybe he could leverage that mercy.

He climbs the steps to the brownstone’s door and hesitates. Is this really the only option?

Ah. Jagged, black lines have shattered their way from his fingernails down into Arthur’s hands, not following any vein pattern he can see.

John dares not wait. He rings the bell.

She doesn’t make him wait long.

Asenath hasn’t aged much. That she’d aged at all in only a few months, though, is disturbing—and maybe indicates just how long she and her father had been siphoning life from other people to extend their own.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

Too late now, though. “Hello, Asenath,” says John.

She raises her perfect eyebrows, her dress diaphanous and pearlescent, her jewelry gleaming and clean.

Then she hauls off and smacks him in the face.

Arthur’s face still stings. He was going to be unrecognizable by the end of all this—though maybe that was good. They had left in the middle of a court case.

“I should throw you out,” says Asenath. “You don’t deserve help from me.”

“We’d hardly be here if we had another choice,” says John, distinctly more kingly than intended.

The look she grants over her shoulder—a full body scan, up and down—is ugly.

The Repository seems serene. The carpet is thick, the wallpaper is silk, and paintings line the walls—but they are not ordinary landscapes.

John knows the landscapes in those paintings. None of them are of this world. Neither are the books on the second and third floors. The whole place is a ticking time bomb of esoteric knowledge.

“Hm,” she says.

John grips Arthur’s gun in his pocket. “What?”

“It’s a curse,” says Asenath, moving forward into the building.

“Is it?” says John. “Seemed like venom of some kind, to me.”

“Well, that’s what happens when an amateur looks into complicated things,” Asenath says, and John remembers why he dislikes her so badly.

“So can you help or not?” he grumps.

“Depends. Can you help me?”

“The last time you wanted help, it was a trap,” says John with conviction.

Because it had been.

Because they’d gotten wind Arthur had a special passenger, and hired him with plans to siphon his life. John’s life.

It hadn’t worked only because they’d underestimated just how completely outrageous Arthur could be when threatened.

“Well, this time, it isn’t one,” says Asenath, and enters the last room in the place.

It might have been a bedroom once. Its windows are boarded; its furniture is gone. A single structure remains now: a rough, wooden rack, on which the dead, rotting body of Ephraim Waite currently stretches.

He’s been there a while. The flesh has begun to pull away from his bones. The ropes around his wrist indent as if in soft cheese.

“Uh,” says John, who had not expected this.

“I’m going to inhabit him with something,” says Asenath. “I haven’t decided what yet, but I need power to keep him from decaying further until I figure it out.”

John stares at her. She would, he thinks, do gangbusters business in the Dreamlands. “Why the fuck?”

“So,” she says, ignoring the question, “I help you with your little chaos curse, and you give me some of your power.”

“I don’t have any power,” says John, lying through Arthur’s teeth.

Her look could shrivel deserts into the richest lagoon.

He sighs. “How much power are we talking?”

“From you? Not much.”

“How do I know you aren’t going to trap us again?”

“Practicality. It’s more useful to have you as a living contact than a dead one right now—though I’ll warn you: at the end, you will need to walk out of here under your own power.” She smiles, and it is not a good smile.

“Fine,” says John, who hopes he’s not making a mistake. “We’ll do it here. Remove the curse, chaos, whatever. I’ll figure it out.”

He does not figure it out.

Removing the chaos is awful, and John is glad Arthur doesn’t have to experience it.

He’s tied to a second wooden frame. He’s bled until his heart stops, shocked to groaning shudders by some kind of jumping electrical arcs from a green wand, and subjected to a screaming rock until his ears ooze blood and he feels half-mad.

Everything she does extracts steaming black stuff from Arthur’s body, which seethes in the jars she uses to catch it, and he knows it’s probably bad to let her keep it, but he’s in no position to argue.

At one point, it feels for all the world like she pulls out his eyes and scoops something black and nasty that was hiding behind them.

Awful, just awful.

But by the end, he is cured. He can feel it; the fever has broken, and the sharp, black lines that had been radiating out from his fingernails are gone.

Unfortunately, so is Arthur’s strength.

“This will do,” she says, untying him by pulling a single knot and letting him fall to the floor. She studies the simple mason jar she filled with sparking yellow magic—when she extracted it, he doesn’t know, but it’s wild to see his power taking form. “Payment received. Business concluded. See yourself out.”

Right. That might be a problem.

John can’t even make the body roll over.

Asenath ignores him, moving around in her weird little lab, sizzling things, smacking things, cutting something that squeals.

He needs to get out of here.

“This is good power,” says Asenath, not even looking at him. “It should preserve the body for several months—so I’ll grant you an hour. After that, you’re a trespasser, and I will do what I want with you. You’ve been warned.” And off she goes with her awful self to do awful things to her awful father, and John curses Kayne for putting him in this situation.

He tries to pull himself toward the door.

Tries.

The thick carpet does not lend itself to dragging, and he makes no progress.

This brownstone is huge, he realizes, though it had seemed small on the way in. Panting, John wonders if he should stop trying, pull out the gun instead, and prepare to defend himself.

“Fuck,” he breathes, staring down the interminable hallway, at the distant door that seems so small. “I need help. Fuck, I need help.”

“You do?” says Kayne, standing suddenly between him and the door.

“Go away,” John groans.

“No,” says Kayne, tapping his chin. “I think I’d rather watch what she’s going to do to you when you don’t make it out in time.”

“You wouldn’t!”

The look Kayne gives makes Asenath’s seem humid.

“What do you want?” John snarls.

“Pity I’m all full up for things to do right now,” says Kayne. “No time to help you out. Schedule’s packed. Just swamped with responsibility.”

John knows what he’s hearing. He understands.

It might start this whole mess over again.

Arthur being alive to start it over again outweighs dodging whatever Asenath has in mind. “If we… watch Lucy for another evening, will you…” he says.

“Done!” And Kayne yanks him off the floor like he’s a stuffed toy.

On Tuesday—a full week after The Incident—John knows that Arthur is finally okay because his control of Arthur’s body slips away, heavy like wet silk.

John is so relieved.

Arthur, on his own, stirs.

He’s on the floor. There is a weight on top of him, sitting on his chest—kind of poky, not too heavy, but distinctly uncomfortable and inhuman.

It smells like the underside of a wet log.

A dog?

Not a dog.

He almost panics.

Shhh, John says. She’s finally fucking sleeping.

“She?” Arthur whispers, and can feel himself go pale. “Lucy?”

Yeah. Fucking Lucy.

“What… the hell is she doing here again?”

Arthur, I swear to fuck, if you wake her up—

Arthur gasps. “The court case!”

Relax. It’s been moved.

“Moved? How?”

The wraith. After I made our escape, the wraith went crazy on the courtroom, tearing shit up, scaring everybody. The whole case got moved to next month.

“Wh… what?”

I guess that’s how she helped us. Nobody knows we left before being cross-examined. Talk about luck.

Arthur is very clearly struggling. “I don’t even remember testifying?”

John sighs. So… about that. We—oh, shit.

Lucy wakes up.

She starts with a humming noise, a whir, as though she’s secretly mechanical, and that is the only warning.

After much deliberation, The Incident has now been extended to include the whole week.

I’m telling you, Lucifer is not Kayne’s offspring, John argues.

“Why else would he demand we watch her?” Arthur grouses from behind the gouged desk.

He is banged to hell. The scrapes are healing. There are no new barbs, by all the luck in the world.

They have figured out how to play fetch. Whatever they throw gets destroyed five or six tosses in, but it is enough to keep her from fully rampaging.

I’m telling you, he did this to fuck with us, says John.

Arthur huffs. “Maybe you’re mistaken.”

Maybe you’re naive.

“Maybe he has a daughter,” says Arthur, wistful, though how he could be wistful over a thing that broke every piece of glass in the office (and smashed half the furniture, and ate all the food, and somehow made the ceiling in one corner drip a constant, sticky red) and damn near got him killed is beyond John.

Maybe it was because he hadn’t seen it. Maybe it was because—

“How are my favorite babysitters?” says Kayne quite brightly, and Lucy makes a weird, trilling sound and leaps into his arms.

Arthur peers around the desk. “Is she?” he says.

“Is she what?” says Kayne, somehow even brighter.

“Your daughter.”

Kayne laughs hard as Lucy crawls over him, settling around his neck like a venomous scarf. “Fuck, no! I found this thing by the side of the road. I don’t even know what she is, but she’s got some attributes, doesn’t she?” He laughs again.

For the love of hell! John snarls.

“Oh,” says Arthur quietly.

Arthur is sad, and John has had enough. If that thing ever shows up here again, we are going to shoot it, he warns. I don’t care what you say.

“Oh, by all means,” says Kayne. “You could’ve shot her now, and I wouldn't care. Anywho, gonna go see how a few planetary royal families handle her brand of play. Thanks for being guinea pigs!” And he disappears with a pop.

In his place, on the ruined rug, is a single orange lollipop, as if to say they were very well-behaved at the dentist.

Arthur groans.

Told you it wasn’t his kid.

“Fuck him,” says Arthur.

Yeah. Definitely.

“How much time did I lose?”

Five days.

Arthur considers this grimly. “We are definitely shooting it next time,” he says. “No questions asked.”

Finally, you’re showing sense.

“Get me to the bathroom. I need to clean up.”

And by mutual decision, they never speak of The Incident again.

#Malevolent #malevolent fox #malevolent fanfic #arthur lester #John malevolent #kayne malevolent #one shot

10 notes · View notes

taminoarticles · 2 years

Text

— Tamino for CRUSH Fanzine, Issue 14 / 2018 (x)

Tamino (Habibi)

Photographed by Nicolas Wagner Interview by Ariel Kenig Styled by Marie Revelut Tamino is wearing Ann Demeulemeester

I'm crazy about him. His music is like a shock to the system. His name is Tamino, and I met him via CRUSHfanzine’s co-editor, Nicolas Wagner, who decided to shoot my new crush while he was in Paris. But Tamino is not only a crush. We could call it love, admiration — the ultimate crush. I am reminded of those rare times when discovering an artist forces you to compare his immensity to others. To err is human, I guess. And yet, when faced with two figures, two faces, two pyramids, the brain needs to differentiate shapes and shades in order to better recognize them. I met Tamino, asked him a few questions. I had a serious look on my face. It didn't last long. Not long enough. Here is my transcript…

“My paternal grandfather died when I was 5 years old. He lived in Cairo. I was always familiar with his songs, primarily via cassettes that my mother would play me when I was little. She thought it was very important that I know where I come from. It's a little strange to see him on YouTube. My dad takes care of those types of things, but it's not easy. My grandfather never really thought about his legacy. There are other singers, like Abdel Halim Hafez, who are still alive and are better known today than my grandfather. His music is everywhere. It would probably be a good thing if my family took steps to showcase this heritage. My grandfather was the first Egyptian singer to play electric guitar on stage. He listened to Elvis Presley… he wrote part of his music himself. As for myself, I write alone. And I do almost everything all by myself. I've been working with a producer whom I met two years ago, on an EP at first. We had such good chemistry that we re-recorded my song “Cigar” together. I told him about my video concept, of that skeleton that stars in the clip, and he produced the song with that idea in mind. That's what I like about him and the guy he's in a two-man band with: they think not only in terms of sound, but of entity. They want to capture the essence of an artist and take it to such-or-such particular idea they have of him, portray him in this or that way, and in my case, take the project to quite majestic heights. You may find it funny, but I don’t write “sad” songs. I mean, I'm not telling the story of a guy sitting alone on his bed with his guitar... I like more epic, more “regal” things. I love Belgian surrealism, that I connect in my work to more Eastern or romantic references. For me, it's a logical juxtaposition... I've not been to Egypt for five or six years, but I'm going back next week. I can’t wait. I like to go closer to the Red Sea, in the less touristy places. I don't have a TV, I don't read the press, and I deleted my Facebook account. I stay abreast of what's happening in Egypt via YouTube. It's strange for me to see that these wars that are rocking the Arab world have existed for thousands of years…

Facebook has too many distractions. I need to stay focused in some sort of flow, to work every day for a long time, whether I end up writing only two sentences or an entire melody. All in all, if you include all the projects and bands in which I participated, I must have written over a hundred songs. For my album, we recorded 18, of which we'll keep 11 of 12. Right now, we're working on mixing it. I studied at the Conservatory, in the popular music department, which gave me a lot of freedom. I worked on my Voice and I continue to maintain it. I am careful not to scream in bars when the music is too loud. It’s easy to end up screaming without even realizing... Although these days, I don't go out much... I don’t have the time. And I have no personal life! [Laughs.] It’s true, it's crazy. I am 21 years old. My life is a little different. You're never around, and when you come out, your friends are surprised: “What? I thought you were in a relationship, I thought you moved.” I don’t feel the age difference with the people I work with. When I was younger, I was very shy, and at the same time, I needed to express myself. It was a weird combination. Nowadays, I'm lining up the tour dates. Our last concert in Paris, at La Maroquinerie, was very moving. My two musicians cried in the middle of the concert. I was getting dewy-eyed myself. It was so intense, to be so well-received in another country. I was reminded of one of our first concerts in Belgium... I think the album will be both an extension of the EP and a synthesis between two themes: romance that can both lift you up and make you vulnerable because you can fall at any time, and indifference to life, in the meaning we give to it, our investment in it. Everyone has a dark side but… I don't know... I do not only write somber music, but I know myself a little bit, so… It's sometimes cumbersome... When you spend too much time looking in the mirror, you end up doing nothing... Sometimes, it's better to just “do,” and the song may tell you something about yourself. A song written in twenty minutes, without too much thinking. This earring? I found it in an old cupboard. It's my mother’s. I'm not sure that she ever wore it.

#tamino #tamino amir #crush fanzine #article #interview #english #2018 #with photoshoot #original text #HUGE thanks to mahdisehel on instagram for sending this to me!! and for not finding my out of the blue dm weird i am forever grateful #tumblr has a character limit for each block so i have to split the text up #i like this interview!!#i can finally rest easy

55 notes · View notes

shyguycity · 5 months

Text

It's been a while since I made a formal game of the year list on this page; in 2020, my now wife and I decided to make an entire fanzine about my favorite games of the year, which ballooned in size and scope from there. If you're interested, you can find the link to the (free!) magazine, Critical Diversions, as well as see what else I've been up to in the gaming space, over at https://twitter.com/crit_diversions. It was written by five people, myself included, layoutted into a magazine format by me, and with some lovingly done illustrations made by my wife. We've also started a discord, games club, and podcast, all under the Critical Diversions banner, if any of that sounds appealing to you.

Since that magazine project, I haven't really had the creative energy to write a full game of the year list the way that I used to. Until now! 2023 has been the most incredible year for game releases that I've been alive to see, and there's so much to be excited for and talk about, I just couldn't resist anymore, despite the fact that we're gearing up to do a community game of the year podcast. But before we get to the top 10 list proper....

Honorable Mentions:

We Love Katamari ReRoll + Royal Reverie

The original We Love Katamari, released on the Playstation 2 in 2005, was already one of my favorite games ever made, so it's borderline unfair of Namco to release an absolutely perfect HD remaster of it in 2023. Namco must've thought so, too, because this was one of my most anticipated games of the year, and I didn't even realize it had released until I happened to see it on the eShop. To the uninitiated, Katamari games task you with rolling up real world objects with your sticky katamari ball, growing bigger and bigger as you go, all with the intent of making your katamari big enough to make stars in the sky. It's a simple yet delightful enough concept on its own to be enjoyed by anyone, but add in an unmeasurable amount of charm and one of the greatest soundtracks ever made, and it's easy to see why this goofy little series has persisted for over two decades now.

For my money, this is the best entry in the series, practically spilling over with creative and fun new ways and reasons to roll over innocent bystanders and animals with a space ball given to you by your negligent, abusive father, who is also basically god. Oh did I forget to mention that there's an actual well told narrative with a genuinely emotional-but-not-saccharine message at its core? Buy this fucking game y'all, I've already seen it for as low as 15 dollars.

Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster

Final Fantasy as a series misses way more often than it hits, for me. Yeah I love 7, its remake, 10, and 10-2, but by and large, every other entry I've tried to spend time with has left me incredibly cold (looking at you in particular, 6). Between craving a turn-based RPG and having the flu earlier this year, I decided to take a chance on the pixel remaster version of 5, released on consoles for the first time in 2023. Imagine my surprise when it became hands down my favorite entry in the series, as well as one of my favorite RPGs I've ever played.

Not to say that what's presented here hasn't been improved upon in the past 30 years; Octopath Traveler 2, a game we'll be talking about in my actual top 10, seemed to base its entire design around "Hey remember Final Fantasy 5? Let's make a way more open and less restricted version of that". Still, though, what FF5 was doing as an early Super Famicom game is pretty impressive; boasting a fairly open-ended job and multiclass system that's absolutely begging you to make as many fun combinations as you can imagine with your party members, it's a game that's infinitely more replayable than your average Final Fantasy fare, despite its lacking (but not horrible!) story. I ran through the game with a samurai that could also shoot hoardes of squirrels and bees out of my pockets, so you know it's a great game.

Super Mario RPG

Look, you'll never convince me that Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door aren't both wildly inferior to the original Paper Mario on the Nintendo 64. I've held this belief (and grudge against these other Mario spinoff fandoms) for most of my life, and I will continue to do so. And I say this as someone whose first exposure to RPGs was renting the original version of this game as a seven-year-old!

"It's too simple!" I would always bleat feebly in the general direction of the nearest hardcore Geno fan whenever this game was brought up. "It's a solid blueprint for what was to come later, but largely feels like a rough draft, a 16-bit Final Fantasy with a Mario coat of paint!" And, yeah, I am right about all of those things, and I'll continue to never let any of you forget it. But in 2023, playing this remake of one of Nintendo's most annoyingly favorited fan favorites, I couldn't help but let myself get washed away in its charms. There's no build variety or real "role-playing" to speak of, you can 100% the game in like 12 hours, and you just generally never have to turn your brain on while playing the game at all. Call it softness, call it old age, call it just really being in the mood for a cute and charming little adventure, but I fell in love with this game and its world in a way I never was able to previously. Bring on that Thousand-Year Door remaster next, Nintendo; I'm in a forgiving mood.

Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania

Speaking of being in a forgiving mood, did y'all know that I thought the original 1.0 release of Dead Cells was incredibly boring? Released in 2018, this sidescrolling roguelite was getting a ton of accolades at the time that had me extremely excited. That's not to say that it was bad, of course; I could see the markings of a well made game, and obviously the game was appealing to someone out there, with all the praise it received. But after 10 hours with it I deleted it off my Switch, thinking I'd never.........return.

It only took five years and a paid Castlevania expansion to make me give this game another look, but I'm glad I did, because I would put this pretty high up there on my all-time roguelite list now. To be clear, most of my issues with this game still remain, mostly that it gets repetitive much sooner than you'd expect of a game with as much content as this does. But instead of cooling on it 10 hours in like I did back in 2018, I got over 60 hours and dozens upon dozens of runs in before calling it quits on Dead Cells this time.

And if you're a Castlevania dork, honestly, just pick this up. There's more than enough love and fanservice here to keep even the most ardent of Castlevania freaks crying bloody tears, including the ability to replace the entire soundtrack with Castlevania songs, most of them the original version but with some new compositions included. Roguelite shredding in a video game hasn't been this good since Hades.

Now...the actual list.

10. Marvel's Spider-Man 2

No one is more down on open world checklist collectathons than I am; the idea of spending over 100 hours playing a modern Assassin's Creed game honestly makes my tummy hurt. And by and large, Spider-Man 2 doesn't stray far from this design template. You run, jump, swing, and glide all over New York City, stopping burglaries and car chases on your way to the next story objective or side mission, leveling up and spending points on various skill trees to level your Spider-Men up to gain new/upgrade old abilities, rinse and repeat. Structurally, this game isn't really doing anything different from the previous two Spider-Man games from developer Insomniac, and yet this entry was an absolute joy to play to me in way those weren't.

Largely, I think it's the pacing of the game. And not just on a macro scale, though I do think that's improved here as well. No, for me it was most noticeable in the combat; no longer are you holding down a button to freeze time and pull up a gadget wheel and having Spider-Man select one of his little science tools to shoot out before doing a few melee attacks and web shots. Instead, all of your gadgets and super moves are activated in real time with different button combinations. It might sound breathlessly dorky, but that simple change really sold the illusion of playing a Spider-Man simulator to me, and not just a Ratchet and Clank game with a Spider-Man skin.

The story I also found to be a wholesale improvement over the last two games, albeit with the caveat that the symbiote and Venom storyline almost never come across as anything beyond tryhard 90s edgelord shit in any form of media. Truly, I think Venom is just a straight up awful character, and is even worse here than usual, and I was exceptionally tired of Peter's gruff mean guy voice by the end of his time wearing the symbiote. Miles more than made up for any issues I had with the Peter side of the story, and with the way the game's story leaves off, I hope to see that character again sooner than Spider-Man 3 in another half decade.

9. Pikmin 4

This feels like Pikmin's big breakout moment as a series. And honestly, maybe my biggest surprise of the year isn't how great this game was, but how many other people were (finally) raving about Pikmin. The fact that it's this relatively low on my own list when most people I know that played it have it near the top of theirs shocks, while also making me feel pretty damn great about Pikmin's future.

From a casual perspective it's pretty easy to see why this has been such a hit for the series. It retains all the charm and cuteness and great gameplay loop of previous games in the series, while making a ton of smart changes along the way. New to 4: a fully adjustable camera that makes you feel way more involved in the action (and see all of the impossibly cute death happening around and to you); a whole host of quality of life changes, like being able to move your spaceship around each stage at will to have a more accessible base of operations; bonafide multifloor dungeons where you're able to soak in some of the best aspects of Pikmin's gameplay without worrying about time passing; "dandori battles", both against the CPU or local rivals where you aim to manage your armies as efficiently as possible; and partner space dog Oatchi, who can help you and your little army of dudes in whatever way you see fit, from battling to carrying to scouting, thanks to an honest to god skill tree. In a Pikmin game! Who woulda thought.

Honestly though, as great as this game was, I can't help but pine for the more complex level and puzzle design of Pikmin 3, as well as the local splitscreen cooperative play of Pikmin 3 Deluxe. That second feature in particular was sorely, sorely missed in our household, as Pikmin 3 Deluxe's sublime coop is some of the most fun I've ever had playing a video game with my wife. Here's hoping the now inevitable Pikmin 5 manages to bring these missing elements home, much like my group of 100 Pikmin carrying an entire watermelon the size of a small mountain back to our spaceship for the day.

8. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

Besides just being a great year in game releases, 2023 was also the year where my expectations were subverted many times over. I'd seen plenty of overhyped indie spiritual successors to fan favorite games from the late 90s and early 2000s come and go, so my interest level for BRCF as someone that's never played a Jet Set Radio game couldn't have been much lower. But that's all on me, because if I'd known that this game and its inspirations were essentially just 3D platformers dressed up as a 2002 cyberpunk anime that'd air at 2am on Toonami, I'd have been all over it much sooner.

This game effortlessly pulls off everything I value in 3D platformers. The level designs are masterful and well thought out while still feeling organic instead of just abstract obstacle courses (the game does dabble into the latter at times, and they're some of the most standout moments as well). Being set in a city, it's naturally got a large emphasis on verticality that I think not enough games in this space bother with; I want to feel my stomach drop when I miss landing on a grind rail half a mile in the sky, even if falling from that far has no consequences beyond needing to pull off the platforming section again. And unlike the earlier Tony Hawk games, I'm free to explore each environment to my heart's content, looking for new songs to add to my playlist or spots just begging to be tagged with graffiti. Wrap all of this up in a style and soundtrack that are both just fucking cool, and what else could I really ask for? Well, besides just more of this, please.

7. Resident Evil 4

In a year full to the brim with remakes, remasters, and revisits, Resident Evil 4 is the one with the most expectations put on it, due to not only the pedigree of the original RE4 (often cited as one of the best games of all time, and surely the catalyst for the modern over the shoulder third-person shooter), but the obscenely high quality of Capcom's other recent remakes from the series; 2019's Resident Evil 2 remake, in particular, being one of the best big budget games of the last half decade, by my estimation. A lot of fans cited RE4 as both "impossible" and "pointless" to remake, though I imagine those same fans were the ones most anxiously waiting for this remake to drop with bated breath.

The end result? RE4 as a remake can't live up to the lofty expectations a lot of people probably hoped it could, not really, but I think it's also one of the most successful video game remakes I've ever had the pleasure of playing, in terms of the fun factor. The gaming landscape has changed a lot since 2005, a lot of that change because of RE4, so what do you even do to make a revisit under a modern lens worthwhile? I think Capcom didn't fully know the answer to that question, as the biggest mechanical additions to this game are the ability to parry the vast majority of attacks with your knife, and erm....craftable ammo? You'll of course find a handful of new enemies and remixed encounters, an even fewer amount of new weapons, and a couple welcome completely redone areas, like a mini open sandbox where you're free to explore the shores of a lake, and a much more clever and interesting version of the brief time spent playing as Ashley.

This might all sound like damning with faint praise, but truly, Capcom's ability to thread the needle here and deliver an honest to god, full on remake of RE4 with modern production values and budget, all without compromising the vision of the original, AND managing to make the remake tonally fit with the current vision of the extended Resident Evil universe? There's some black magic at work here, surely. Or at the very least some ancient parasite bugs at large.

6. Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe

Kirby is the best Nintendo series, and this is an excellent remaster of one of the best Kirby games. What more is there to say? The only reason this isn't top three of the year material is because, well, I played it when it originally released on the Wii. But what's your excuse, coward?

I often hear the refrain of "Kirby games just aren't for me", and I used to humor that line of thinking, largely to avoid prolonged contact with dumb babies. But that dies today, and so will you if you don't stop being a dweeb. High quality sidescrolling brawlers with lite platforming elements and puzzle solving, set to some of the best music ever made for the medium, sporting an adorable aesthetic that's used as set dressing to cover up some of the best backstory and lore this side of Dark Souls? That's not for you? What is for you then, besides being a sad weirdo that still waxes nostalgic about the girl you held hands with once in middle school? Her mom dropped you two off at the theater once to see White Chicks and she never thought about you again. Grow up. Change something about your life. Kirby's got more charm and delight in whatever his puffy mass equivalent to a pinky is than Super Mario Bros. Wonder managed to wearily attempt to slump over its shoulder for an entire game. Y'all should be ashamed.

...

I dunno what this bit is anymore, so let's pivot back to normalcy. Yes, I know, I know, I'm the Kirby guy. It's my favorite gaming series, hell, maybe my favorite franchise in any medium period. But I'm also not blind to its faults and missteps, such as 2018's Star Allies. When I tell you that Return to Dreamland Deluxe, a remaster of a game I played over a decade ago, now with additional content, is one of my favorite games of 2023, I really mean it. The base game was already excellent, and the first entry of the modern era of Kirby, under the helm of Shinya Kumazaki. A new cel shading-adjacent rendering, coupled with completely new abilities Sand and Mech on top of perhaps the overall best set of copy abilities in a Kirby game, really help make the game feel fresh; Sand's combo and damage per second capability in particular is through the roof, while not feeling imbalanced.

The meat of the new content, however, is the new epilogue, in which you play as fan favorite character Magolor. Magolor plays very differently from Kirby, eschewing copy abilities and quicker movement for magic, and the game also introduces an honest to god skill tree into the series. This mini adventure culminates in not only what is probably my favorite boss fight of the year, but an in-universe lore explanation for why Magolor shows up in spinoff Kirby games adorned in green instead of blue and trading in crystal apples.

That may sound goofy and extremely in the weeds, and it is, but for a man in my mid-30s that's been beyond bored of Nintendo's refusal to do any significant kind of world building or storytelling in almost any of their mainline games, Kirby manages to continuously surprise and delight me with both its gameplay and universe in a way no other Nintendo game is even interested in trying. The Super Mario games should take heed.

5. Octopath Traveler 2

I played both demos for the original Octopath Traveler back before that game came out, and to say I didn't like it would be an understatement! The writing was at best flat, and at worst, overtly sexist (and that was just from a demo!), I found the battle system to be clunky, and the thing most people praised it for, its "HD2D" approach to graphics, I found quite ugly; it seemed to be throwing away any attempt at an actual artstyle in favor of cranking a bunch of photoshop filters up to max and letting people ooh and aah over some particle effects and oversaturated lighting. Great soundtrack, at least.

I couldn't tell you what drove me to check out the demo for 2, but I did, and instantly, something clicked for me that didn't in my limited experience with the original. Full disclosure, I haven't finished this game yet, and in fact I don't think I'm even halfway through. And that's a shame, because I think it could honestly rise even higher up this list, based on what I've already played. The battle system is fast and snappy, as long as I'm paying close enough attention to all the information on screen, like enemies weaknesses and my current BP situation. The overworld feels far more inspired by popup books than I remember 1's world feeling like, while still retaining the gorgeous battle sprites that the original excelled in. The soundtrack is an all-timer, to put it lightly. Even the writing for the characters, while still nowhere approaching the rest of the game's strong points, feels less like it works exclusively in lazy caricatures and broad stereotypes. Yeah there's a merchant character named Partitio from an old west-styled silver mining town, and yes I was just as worried about that fact as you probably are reading that sentence. And yet, Partitio has honestly become one of my favorite characters of the year, his desire to use his mercantile skills to ease the burdens of the working class only being outshone by the electric guitars and saxophone in his theme song.

What truly impresses with Octopath Traveler 2, though, is its sheer openness. The world is, while not quite your oyster right from the start, pretty dang free form for the most part, allowing you to go recruit your party members and explore towns and monster-filled wildlands in whatever order you see fit. This extends to the job system, which affords you the most freedom to truly make whatever kind of team you see fit I've ever seen in a game of this kind. I'm currently multiclassing my cleric, Temenos, into a scholar, and I've rarely felt cooler/dorkier at the same time, wielding nearly every magic type offered in the game at once with one world-weary church inquisitor. Just typing up this entry has got me itching to get back to the game, hoping to discover even more jobs to multiclass the rest of my crew into.

Take it from me, someone who as little as a few years ago felt pretty much over turn based RPGs, especially those coming out of Square-Enix: this game is very worth your time, regardless of your feelings towards the series, or even genre as a whole.

4. 30XX

In a year chockful of exceedingly excellent roguelites (Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania, Risk of Rain Returns, Cobalt Core, Vampire Survivors, just to name a few), 30XX stands tall above the rest for me, not just in terms of quality, but also in its ability to completely take over my gaming time for a couple months. This has all the trappings you expect from a game with the structure of a roguelite; permadeath resulting in having to start your entire run over, unlockable items and stat upgrades purchasable with currency carried over from the run you just died in, powerups that you collect during a run to give yourself a fighting chance (and which force you to make on-the-fly decision making about how best to synergize your build), and a white knuckle intensity that makes the runs when you really start to shred feel all the more rewarding, albeit no less anixety inducing.

What ends up separating 30XX from any other game in this admittedly crowded space is that it's essentially a roguelite take on Mega Man X4, the beloved Playstation 1 entry in an even more beloved series. X4 was the first game that really fleshed out lightsaber wielding cool guy Zero as a fully playable character, for the first time letting you play through the entire game as both him and series protagonist X. 30XX makes no bones about its inspiration; Nina, the blue one, is the X equivalent, meaning you'll be primarily shooting enemies with your arm cannon, while Ace, the red one, slices and dices with an energy sword, just like Zero. Likewise, the (absolutely gorgeous) spritework and extremely catchy soundtrack are doing their best to evoke the oft overlooked aesthetic and sounds of 2-D games from the Playstation 1. Rounding out the package are full-featured coop, both local and online, community made levels, daily and weekly seeded runs with leaderboards, and the promise of even more updates, including new characters(!!).

Even Mega Man series staples you might not expect to show up in a roguelite take on the formula end up being major focuses of the game, like gaining new abilities from defeating bosses. The game even takes that mechanic a step further, letting you mix and match two abilities to form completely new ones, like combining your black hole and homing lightning abilities to create a barrage of homing lightning strikes emanating from a swirling void. Or, in true roguelite fashion, you can even forego an ability from a boss altogether, if a different reward suits you. And that's just if you're playing as Nina! Ace gets an entirely different set of abilities and mechanics, all built around melee capabilities and close quarters combat.

If any of this sounds appealing to you, you're probably now asking yourself "why have I never heard of this game?" And I truly can't answer that, as this feels like it should already be a revered indie darling on the level of Shovel Knight or Super Meat Boy. If you're a Mega Man fan, please do yourself a favor and check this out. There's even a separate mode that minimizes the roguelite elements, including a removal of permadeath, if that suits you! This is a better Mega Man X revival than you'll likely ever see out of Capcom, if a day even ever comes for that at all. It also happens to be better than just about any official Mega Man game Capcom has ever put out, as well.

3. Sephonie

My personal gaming identity feels inexorably linked to Analgesic Productions, the two person development team that's putting out the best indie games most people have never even heard of. The only thread on Resetera I've ever made was solely for the purpose of evangelizing Anodyne 2: Return to Dust, a game that resonated so hard with me the effects are still reverberating outwards, as my habit of recommending that game anywhere I go has helped me forge genuine friendships (and probably gotten me on to a few government watch lists). Even the Ocean was the third game my friends and I covered in our games club, and was by far and away the best talk I've ever had about video games, sparking a creative spirit in me for months afterward. Marina Kittaka and Melos han-tani make some real affecting fucking games, is what I'm saying, and the idea of trying to sum up what makes Sephonie so special (and maybe even my favorite of their impressive work) is a bit daunting.

At its most base level, Sephonie is a 3-D platformer not dissimilar from the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, or even the above Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, albeit without any wheels; instead of tilting the analog stick to move at whatever angle you want, you hold a button to run forward, the stick's sole purpose being to make adjustments to direction. Your mobility on its own isn't very versatile, and getting around requires careful and clever use of the environment to do wall runs and jumps, grabbing giant dandelions to float, landing on mushrooms to bounce, etc.

Even for a self-proclaimed platformer guru (maybe even especially for one!), the movement feels unwieldy or even downright intimidating at first. But in Analgesic we trust, and by the end of my initial 8 hour or so playthrough of the game, I felt like a parkour god, able to pull off complex maneuvers that I would have never been able to dream of in the opening sections of the game. Coming to grips with the controls and eventually mastering them was one of the biggest joys I experienced in video games this year; don't go into this expecting s Super Mario Odyssey-level of 1:1 control that lets you immediately start flowing through the environment like a hot knife through butter, because that's decidedly not the point here. Despite what the past few console generations have taught us, we don't need standardized controls across every game, as all that would serve to do here is sand down the distinct personality and learning opportunities presented in Sephonie.

Rounding out the gameplay are linking puzzles. The three playable characters are researchers who have come to the remote island of Sephonie to study its unique animal and plant life. Linking with each new lifeform you discover presents you with tile-based block puzzles, which end up being a nice change of pace from the platforming. As a testament to just how much love and care was put into Sephonie, the vast majority of these linking puzzles each have unique mechanics, be it teleporting tiles, tiles that are blocked and need busted open by matching blocks on adjacent tiles, tiles that multiply your point total, creatures that travel the puzzle and alter when and where you're even able to place your tiles, etc. With some tweaks, the link puzzles could be a whole game unto itself, and it's really impressive!

That's all well and good, but the main reasons I come to Analgesic games are the unbelievably good writing and even unbelievably-er soundtracks, and both are where Sephonie truly shines for me. Unfortunately, to talk too much about the story here would be bordering on a cardinal sin, and you're better off listening to some of the music on your own. Why not try the entire playlist here?

The previously mentioned Anodyne 2 opens by telling you it's a game about life. That's a bit of an understatement for me with Analgesic's games in general, but Sephonie might be the best example of "a game about life" that I can think of. As someone that grew up in a midwestern town full of basically nothing but nothingness and corn, the Bloomington, Illinois section of the game is without a doubt the most beautiful segment of any game I've ever played, and the main thing I keep coming back to with this game even six months later. I've never been so simultaneously full of nostalgia, regret, disdain, self-loathing, and fond memories as I was while platforming around an abstract dreamscape version of a midwestern town right off the highway. And I don't think I've ever related to a character in any fictional work as much as I did when Amy was talking about feeling lucky she was born in a small town, because it made learning how to drive much less intimidating.

If there's one game on this list I would beg someone to give a shot, it would be Sephonie. Hell, if there was one game I could force anyone to play, Sephonie might be taking that spot as well. As a thorough contemplation of what it means to be alive, and what connecting with one another can truly mean and feel like, there's no better work of art out there today, and certainly not one anywhere near as fun, either.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

What can I say about TotK that hasn't already been expressed in a million think pieces, essays, and podcasts across the entire internet by now? As a direct followup to 2017's stellar Breath of the Wild, I had concerns going in - would the magic still be there? Is exploring the same incarnation of Hyrule going to be fun when I know all of the broad strokes already? Are the bosses not going to suck this time? The answer to all of these is a resounding "absolutely", but there's so much more on offer here.

Everything in this game makes BotW feel like a rough draft, a sentence I never in a million years thought I'd be typing prior to getting my hands on the game. Any mechanic you can think of that you loved in the prior Zelda entry is either improved upon here or excised for something infinitely more interesting. The Sheikah slate abilities from BotW feel not only basic, but downright boring compared to the powers on offer in this sequel. Who cares about being able to spawn bombs at will when I can fuse batwings to arrows to make them fly further? Or just swim through through the damn ceiling!? To say nothing of the fact that you can build basically anything your imagination can spring into existence, from cars to rocket ships to pilotable mechs to lawn mowers. And it all....just....works, somehow, not only tonally with the game's world, but also from a game perspective. The game even lets you have five CPU controlled companion characters out at the same time, every one acting independently to take down enemies near you! It feels like your Switch is going to collapse under the weight of this game's ambition at any moment, and yet I put over 300 hours into the game with not a single crash in sight.

If there's one thing I can complain about, it's that the story feels like an actual afterthought, to the degree that it actually bummed me out, even as someone with rock bottom expectations when it comes to story in a Zelda game. The marketing REALLY hyped up the return of longtime series antagonist Ganondorf, and he just....kind of has no motivation for anything he's doing here. I'm not asking for much, and there are genuinely great character moments lightly sprinkled throughout the game's runtime, mostly with princess Zelda herself. But I couldn't help but imagine how much harder some story beats could have hit if Nintendo, again, actually even attempted to give people the tiniest but of anything to chew on when it comes to the stories they're telling.

But whatever, I've got a catapult to build to launch me and a korok buddy up a damn mountain.

Baldur's Gate 3

Like most people who cut their gaming teeth on more straightforward action fare on consoles, the term "CRPG" (computer RPG) seemed beyond out of reach for me. Dice rolls? Skill checks? Playing as a charisma based character to persuade bosses to kill themselves instead of having to fight them? READING!? Uh, I'm an American, thank you very much; I like my video games game-y and my gravy portion extra, ma'am, and I don't have the patience to think about probability and stats.

So imagine my surprise when, after my wife started playing the game on her own, I found myself itching to get into the character creator myself. Not the moment to moment gameplay, mind you, but the character creator, a step I'm notorious for getting through as fast as possible so I can start "actually playing", even if I'm stuck with a boring default character named Goober. Something about watching my wife agonize over which horn style and subrace to go with on her tiefling bard, which hairstyle and color looked cutest and would match her vision of how she was going to roleplay in the world, stirred something in me I didn't know existed. While she was perusing all the customization options, I spied the class "monk" and a race called "dragonborn", some anthropomorphic dragon people with a lot of pretty color options for their scales that also affect your elemental resistances. "Yes," I thought to myself. "I'd like to make a humanoid lizard dude that punches shit to death. I'd like that very much". And before my wife was barely out of the tutorial section on her first character, we were already backing out to make a second save file where we would play the entire thing cooperatively, fretting over the decisions and romance options each step of the way together. I got to make my silverscale (that means he's got ice powers, baby) dragonborn monk, Shikai, and the following 300+ hours (and counting!) with Baldur's Gate 3 have been the most fun I've ever had playing a video game.

Would I be as gobsmacked with the game if I was intimately familiar with the genre? Maybe not, but I guess that's my point. Living with my wife and playing games together has completely changed how I engage with a lot of them; Animal Crossing was basically a cute chores and debt repayment simulator with a dash of fishing on the side until watching my wife play the game for thousands of hours taught me the joy of decorating.

Elden Ring was her first foray into the Souls-like genre; she had a similar reaction watching me play the opening hour of Elden Ring as I had watching her in the BG3 character creator, growing increasingly frustrated as she watched me putz around making a boring dexterity based samurai character when what she wanted to see was some faith-based holy magic in action. Despite my love of Souls-likes, I had always just made standard melee based characters in them, usually katana wielding doofuses; I'm an American, I don't know a lick about incantations, I HATE thinking, and please keep your Wes Anderson movies to yourself, ma'am.

But as I saw how much fun my wife was having shooting fireballs and throwing lightning bolts at enemies, I eventually started speccing my dexterity character into intelligence as well, making a samurai sorcerer, undeniably the only thing cooler than a normal samurai. That's not to say that playing Elden Ring with a melee exclusive character is wrong, but just that with a touch of curiosity and willingness to take the tiniest step outside of my comfort zone, a comfort zone I didn't even realize was as tiny as it was, I opened up a whole new way of enjoying a game I already loved playing. Learning to enjoy Baldur's Gate 3 feels like I've opened the door to an entire new avenue in my mind, waiting for me to fill it with opinions about games I've been avoiding my whole life. I'm gonna actually make a concerted effort to finally play stuff like Mass Effect and Disco Elysium sometime soon, two games I had preemptively decided years ago were just "not for me", and I'm genuinely excited about it.

This entry is so long already, and I didn't even mention anything about how the game actually plays (it's the best turn-based battle system I've ever experienced, to say nothing of the freedom you're afforded to solve every single scenario presented to you in the game.

Or anything about the characters (this is the best cast of characters I've seen in any medium, and they feel like genuine friends of mine in a way that no other game has ever come close to feeling).

Hell, to save time and my poor fingers: Baldur's Gate 3 is without a doubt the best video game I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. And as little as a few months ago, my only thought towards it was "that game probably isn't for me".

Don't make my all too human mistake; check out shit that looks interesting, take the chance to expand your mind and your taste. They're not all gonna be Baldur's Gate 3-level bangers (what is though, really), but you truly never know what you're going to discover. And you might even find yourself open to a whole new avenue of life to enjoy that you had previously assumed was just for mega dorks.

#gaming #nintendo #pc games #ps5 #goty 2023 #game of the year

5 notes · View notes