#like this really is a reflection of the actual industry but i digress this is gonna he easy for me because i dont have to be | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lowcharismaparty · 1 year

Text

I sometimes reflect on what Star Wars was, in Lucas’ concept, in the early days, before the industry of success got ahold of it, and I sometimes can’t stop thinking about the tiny glimpses we get of what could have been. Like I’m very confident that the stuff in the Leonard Maltin interview about “I have twelve movies planned” is all bullshit (maybe he had several drafts of ways the story could have gone, but there was no grand plan beyond the one film in 1977). And I’m also very confident that Darth Vader was just the scary, mostly soulless, dark knight that guarded the castle where the princess was being held. That Obi Wan was not obfuscating the truth when he explained that Darth had been a Jedi who had turned and killed Luke’s real, normal, blandly heroic father. And don’t get me wrong, once the box office came in, and a sequel was inevitable, it’s super smart to decide to get into what the deal with Vader really is. And it’s inspired to make that evil monster the actual person that Luke so desperately wants to meet—nay, become. Leading a protag up to a door they’ve been desperately wanting to their entire lives and then opening that door to reveal the worst possible nightmare they could see... that’s just good storytelling, friends! (Which is why is was so smart to have Rey’s parents be nobodies, but I digress.) Still, there’s something magical about that early, untouched moment, when the Star Wars universe could be a million different things, and I honestly think Lucas was still intending to make it a kind of mildly dark universe, with some touches dystopia in it. I think the Clone Wars was originally a much cooler, nigh apocalyptic conflict, where illegal and horrifying cloning technology had been invented and no one could tell if you were you or a clone of you. You never knew if you were fighting beside brother or secret replacement spy and the very privilege of individuality was under threat. Heck, maybe the rise of the Empire was due to society being on the precipice of hellish chaos. The public was scared shitless, and an authoritarian regime with the power to actually prevent the threat had a certain “lesser of two evils” appeal. Lucas had just completed THX 1138, so it’s not much of a leap to think his mind was still in that zone a little bit, and while Star Wars was more of a rollicking adventure, it’s a very rich world that can have swashbuckling adventure in the foreground but hints of bleakness in the deep background. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the extremely weird and inconsistent way the franchise has treated droids and droid ownership over the years and it occurred to me that this moment in the beginning of the Cantina scene really stood out. For the rest of this movie, droids are helpers. Tools. Some have the idea that maybe they could be more, but that’s considered silly, since that’s obviously just a byproduct of their programmed behaviors. They act sort of like people, so they sometimes forget they aren’t actually capable of being people. I imagine there being a scene where Han could have said “Fine, C-3PO, you be in charge. What would you have us all do?” and 3PO just stares in silence, completely unprepared, and indeed unable, to live as an organic, sapient being; making choices beyond the simple behaviors installed into them at the factory. I can completely understand that this way of depicting them is also pretty troubling, but it’s a lot more understandable (and honestly realistic) than the way the franchise has it, where they very clearly are sentient / sapient, and there is no way something like a restraining bolt ISN’T slavery. Going back to the surly Cantina bartender, if droids *are* just tools, why does he care if they’re there? You could posit a number of things (and I’m sure many have, and good on them): maybe droids are known to be listening devices, and he wants to protect the lovely little hive of scum and villainy he’s fostered. Maybe droids are clumsy (they are) and he’s sick of them stepping on his patrons’ squishy alien feet or knocking over drinks. Maybe the fact that droids can easily pick out every word of every conversation at the same time results, not in spooky spying, but in the droid being unable to help themselves from butting into any conversation they feel they could add some value. Greedo’s just finishing his many uses of the classic phrase “mclunky” when R2 beeps and whirs that “mclunky” is actually a malapropism based on a mis-translation of a rhodian phrase that technically means the opposite of how it’s commonly used today. Droids are super smart but also completely dumb, so of course they’d “um actually” without warning. Or maybe the grumpy bartender has an anti-droid rule because modern technology has just gotten too ubiquitous and this old hipster misses the days when people were actually present, instead of always on their phones—I mean, uh, droids. But all of these are logical reasons. Story reasons. And I’ve become weary of such technicalities. Maybe as I’ve gotten older (read: old) I’ve become much more interested in the logic of character behavior. The response feels emotional, and it’s immediate. To me, his reaction reads as fear. As if droids represent a real threat. I wonder if the specter of the Clone Wars still lingers in a lot of people’s memories and the idea of creatures that act like trustworthy people but are in fact made by a corporation with their own goals and agenda is too much to bear. What if the clones were originally created as a way to replace labor or monotonous tasks (think Calvin and his duplication machine). When most normal people were horrified at this use of biological beings, droids were created to do all the things people didn’t want to. So to many, droids are just metallic clones. Like the uncanny valley (where most of the effects in the prequels live) come to life. Or with the recent ever-presence of the Empire, maybe droids just feel too close to storm troopers and, more generally, the machinery of fascism. There’s rumors that storm troopers actually are droids. That’s how there’s so many. This bartender just wants his little cantina to be a respite from the slow rot of the once-simple world outside. It’s also striking that no one else is taken aback by the quickness and firmness of him laying down the law in his bar. This is a no droids establishment, and that’s apparently not an uncommon sentiment. And while there’s a whole other essay about how that’s truly the first instance of the franchise having a super yikesey way of approaching the droids’ rights issue, I can’t help but feel there’s a darker element that Lucas was toying with, but ended up dropping when it became clear that Star Wars meant a lot of money from kids and their families, and hinting at darkness in your universe is the enemy of money. Okay thanks bye.

#star wars #storytelling #headcanon #droids #mclunkey

2 notes · View notes

joshisurcrush · 1 year

Text

"We Hear Voices" by Evie Green

-~-~-~--~-~-~--~-~-~--~-~-~--~-~-~--~-~-~--~-~-~--~-~-~--~-~-~--~-~-~-

Wanna hear my final verdict without reading the whole thing? The book is mid.

The only thing I could say about this book is that it's kind of predictable. Most events, you just sort of see coming. (Which is why my dad found it boring.) Aside from that major flaw, I liked Nina (oldest sister) as a character a lot, and I also liked the fact that there was an A-Plot focusing on Rachel and her family, and the old Watson guy dealing with the loss of his wife simultaneously.

The book reflects 1) the mental deterioration in Rachel pretty well, as her family slips into poverty and her children become sick and distant, and 2) the industrial revolution and its consequences. For 1), I'd like to mention that I was neutral towards Rachel in the beginning of the story, but slowly grew to dislike her. She's a total and complete anxious control freak, and causes some of the problems in the book herself. It's narrated through her lens, which makes it harder for most people to tell how terrible her decisions and thought process are ("most people" including me, who couldn't tell until after my father read it upon my request, and told me that he dislikes Rachel because she's obviously a somewhat-terrible mother.)

2) The Industrial Revolution and its consequences are underlined pretty well because an integral part of the plot is the homelessness crisis in the book, and the fact that companies, in the book, are buying up apartment complexes, and refusing to rent them out to you unless you work for them. Pretty disgusting concept to me, at least, and it comes into perspective more when you see the contrast between Nina’s boyfriend and Nina herself, since he’s the actual son of the owners of Starcorp (iirc) and she’s about to go homeless with her family, and he’s over at his massive mansion with fresh fruit and airconditioning.

c) Billy (one of the main characters) is experiencing what the author calls a "demon curse" but it really just seems like it's a form of some sort of paranoia that induces auditory hallucinations. (The book is supposed to be about Billy and his spooky imaginary friend, but I honestly care more about the homelessness crises at play. Also, the story doesn’t really explore the stuff that he’s going through and seems to use his mental state as a form of device to get the plot to move forward / to get characters into positions where they’re supposed to be.)

It ain't bad, it was my favorite book for a while actually, I spent a couple bucks (less than 10 bucks, the library was trying to get rid of them) via buying a few copies as gifts for my friends' parents, my own parents, cousins, and my English teacher; and they all liked it enough (would've been embarrassing if they didn't, considering how much I hyped it up.) Honestly, it just fits right in with my taste and insatiable desire for psychological consumption/virus or possession/demon-based horror. My mom doesn't like thriller novels and got pressed at me for reading it, but she does with every book, so I don't think it says too much about the cover of the book (boy standing in flames, which I find funny because the boy is supposed to be Billy even though he barely gets any time or perspective in the book, but I digress). It's pretty mild for a ""thriller"", I'd let a middle schooler read it.

The only reason why I rated it so highly is because I have nice memories associated with reading the book, I think it's honestly mid, looking back. Pretty mid. Not better or worse than mid, not even slightly. If you run out of books to read or want to read scenes about a mentally ill mother of three breaking a computer and throwing it in the river Thames, you should give it a go.

0 notes

ameliahross · 2 years

Text

transposition

So bare this is the first of the small handful of transcriptions I have from my personal journal. Im not that great at remembering to do it but i have my tea and am comfy after work so why not now? Fair warning...18+ themes are discussed. If you are not 18+ do turn away. Please abide my TOS as i would like to ensure this sticks around for friends and family should the unforeseen happen. June 17th 2022 The time is 6:24pm Mountain Daylight Savings Time. I start this journal as a chance to be open and free about who I am and the things I have seen and done. As a chance to reflect and grow on my actions, my thoughts, and who I am as a person. My name is Amelia Harper Ross. I am a 26 year old Male-to-Female Transgender Woman and this is my story. Having been born with a penis and a body ripe with testosterone has been a struggle for several years now. I will no longer let it define who I am anymore. I am a Woman...just with a little extra (for now.) This is the start to being me and being proud of who I am. No more hiding. No more Lies. no more Chirades. This is MY story, for I am Amelia. June 18th 2022 I have no idea if I will succeed at Keeping this a daily thing or if itll end up being a weekly thing i do after therapy sessions, (Turns out I only do it when i actually remember, but i digress,) but lets see where my mind wanders to today. My start was the same as most that are questioning their identity at a very young age. I was raised in a upper-middle class Christian and fairly conservative home. My parents were both on their second marriages and my mother had been told she was ill to conceive so they turned to adopting and they ended up with me (LOL.) As time went on and i started to learn more in school and fell in love with the sciences and Math, the words of the church, that had been drilled into my brain, began to seem less and less like a fact and more and more like a personal truth that had been inscribed on papyrus many, many years ago by a person long lost to time. I drifted away from what had been taught to me and started doing my own research and learnings. In Middle school i had a lot of free time after school and had been small enough, in comparative to the size of my mother, I was able to fit in most of what she had in her closest. So at the age of 11, or 12, I dont really remember the specifics, I discovered the wonders of feminine clothing and fell in love with the feeling. When ever I was home alone id sneak in and pick a dress to wear and just relax in, being careful to not get it dirty and put everything back where it should be. By the time i was 14 i think? I had amassed a couple of my own items taken from lost and found at school and washed and folded to hide in the bottom of my closest from my parents. I didn’t know sizing at that point so everything was hit or miss. Every so often my stash would disappear, suspected my mother and years later found this out. by the time i was 15 I had discovered the wonders of the adult film industry and all things with adult-theming. I had an iPod touch so was able to browse the web from the privacy of my own room late at night. I stubbled upon “shemale” and “trany” and “femboy” items (now i look back at that and shudder ugh i hate those words) but i was drawn to them. Never as the man, or the top. Always as the bottom. That feeling ugh i wanted to feel it but was too young and naive at that point to know how to get that feeling. It was wild and highly errotic and as much as i tried to move away from it i always got drawn back to it. Now a days i just pop on grindr if im in that mood. From there my research lead me down a path that has developed into my every growing list of kinks and fetishes. When i turned 16 and had my own car and money I was able to buy my own clothes from goodwill or the thrift stores or off eBay and poshmark. It was nice. but again my stash would always disappear. I grew frustrated as i had lost a nightgown i had fallen in love with sleeping in. So beautiful and freeing and safe. My mother had caught me one morning in it and asked a question that still sticks out to this day. “Do you feel trapped?” I was ashamed of what i had become and was scared and so clueless i couldn't answer her and we agreed to never discuss it until i was ready (i think in her hoping it was a perverted phase as a teenager WRONG LOL) I look back on it and have wondered what would have changed if i had said yes at that point. If i knew then what i know now. Would i have been able to start my transition years ago? Would I have ended up at gay-conversion therapy or summer camp? Would i have been able to live my life much earlier in life? Hormones before i had puberty? Would i still be 6′4″? All these what ifs that i would have the answer to IF i had just spoke up. It’s taken me close to, if not longer than a decade from the beginning of all of this to form an answer to that question. The truth? I am a transgender woman. I am a Woman that is trapped inside a mans body. I may have been born with a penis but Im still more of a woman than most men could ever handle, and more of a man than most of the boys out there fishing. I am Amelia, and ill be damned if anyone tries to tell me otherwise.

#trans pride #transisbeautiful #This is me #i am amelia #the beginning #how it started #who am i #pride #life #what ifs #i am a woman #transgender

0 notes

safflowerseason · 3 years

Note

I don’t know if you’ve answered this before, but what are your thoughts on the cultural impact of Veep now that the show is over? Is it too soon to tell?

Hey, glad to see you around these parts again ☺️ I missed your great questions!

I have a few different thoughts about this issue. First of all, Veep was never a widely consumed show. It was a critical darling, sure, and had an active fanbase, but in no way could it claim the same mass appeal as a popular network show or even a teen soap on Freeform or the CW. Veep’s target audience was upper middle class liberals interested in politics and media, and DC insiders. Veep is people in suits standing around government buildings getting caught saying the wrong thing. Nobody is taking their clothes off on camera, nobody is getting murdered, and you have to pay attention if you want to get the joke.

Veep also wasn’t groundbreaking, genre-wise, like The Sopranos or The West Wing or even The OC—I guess you could argue it led to a few other cerebral workplace comedies on HBO and Comedy Central, like Silicon Valley, but frankly The Office did more to pave the way for those types of shows than Veep did (in fact it’s more likely that Veep was adapted from The Thick of It because of The Office’s success in the US as another adaptation of a British tv show). Veep was a brilliant comedy at its height, but it hasn’t ushered in a whole host of Veep knock-offs in terms of tone and style (this is probably because Mandel turned Veep into a Curb Your Enthusiasm/Seinfeld knock-off, but I digress...)

So in terms of sheer cultural influence, like actual numbers of people caring about the show in five, ten, twenty years, I’d say Veep’s primary contribution to American culture was further cementing Julia Louis-Dreyfus not only as a queen of television comedy but a queen of Hollywood. The growth of her industry star-power in the last decade has been directly due to her tour-de force performance, her career-defining role in leading the ensemble, and that has honestly been the most marked difference in pop culture that I can note. The fact that JLD has made it to the Marvel universe is 100% due to Veep.

In a broader sense, as a show about politics and/or people trying to gain power, I think television historians in twenty or thirty years will look back on Veep as a show about a political universe that was ending or had already ended. Iannucci’s Veep was really about a philosophy of government that started to dissolve with the dawn of the culture wars in the eighties and nineties—the notion that everyone in government, no matter their ideology, is still trying to work together because actual governance of some kind is what is expected from the voters, and while everyone is selfish and power-hungry they have to cooperate and make compromises to try and hold on to their power because that is how the system works. Around all these politicians exists a social class of bumbling political worker bees and they are all locked into this mundane struggle to get closer to the epicenter of power in whatever way possible. “Democracy is fantastic, but it is also fucking dull.”

American politics doesn’t work that way anymore, and hasn’t for a while. And of course, it’s also true that in the last five years more and more people have come to realize that even when both parties were working together, it was a system of government that was still largely only working for white people, white men in particular. Selina runs into a lot of obstacles on her climb to power, but she never grappled with right-wing authoritarianism that President Obama began to face. Iannucci-Veep was about incremental change and the incremental accumulation with a Hobbesian view of human nature, not an existential battle for democracy in which the literal fate of the planet is at stake. And while Mandel’s tenure of the show did specifically capture some of the absurdities of our contemporary right wing outrage politics, but in such a way where the horrific consequences of that brand of politicking are glossed over. Veep remains hilarious and as a reflection on the nature of power, parts of it still resonate of course, but increasingly it feels like a show from a different political era. How that will affect the show’s “legacy”, I think it probably is too early to say. It’s hard for me to picture “the youths” in ten years rediscovering Veep on Tik Tok or whatever has replaced Tik Tok….My inclination is to say Veep will always be regarded by critics/culture writers as a top-tier comedy of the 2010’s that collided with a very disruptive political moment in American history. It was successful at meeting that moment in some ways and not in others. Because the show is what propelled Julia Louis Dreyfus to an even higher celebrity plane, I think it always be tied to her œuvre as an actress in a way that will keep it from fading into total obscurity. People will discover the show because they’re on some sort of JLD binge-watch.

And now I’ve come full circle with my response with the trajectory of JLD’s career ☺️

#veep #television history #pop culture #julia louis dreyfus #veep and politics

46 notes · View notes

20yeardarknite · 3 years

Text

Thoughts (that no one asked for)...

1989 was her first attempt at coming out but I think the massive success of it pushed her back into a fear state.

(Clean speeches were reflective of being clean and unashamed of what people say or think about you because you know your truth)

Reputation was actually her coming out album - hence no press about it, and her gayest record lyrically at the time. She was showcasing her truth for all to see, even in her concert storyline. She wanted the music to speak for itself, and if you got it, you got it...

(Hence rainbow dress 🌈 and coming out “ally” speech before delicate)

Lover was supposed to be her official PUBLIC coming out (for those who missed it with the first two records). I think she was trying to come out BEFORE she left BM, but they sabotaged it somehow then (my tears ricochet anyone?) and AGAIN right before WANGO TANGO (which I think was her coming out show - hence the rainbow outfit that was SO LOUD and literally EVERYONE from the industry and her close friends were at that concert show date. I mean...Marilyn Manson came out to the show? For why?)

Then BM pulled the masters heist and forced her back into the closet.

Take a closer look at her performances in 2019 - the rainbow imagery in interviews, clothing, music videos.

I mean...she literally created a gay pride park called “Taylor Park”, painted her hair in bi colors, had every gay person in the industry imaginable and the following videos were her in a rainbow roomed house and dressing AS A MAN!

I also think Katy Perry wasn’t just a fun addition to her video, but rather her partner in coming out. I think that they we’re going to have a dual album of some sort, hence why when it came out, some Gaylor’s were like it has similar imagery, etc to Taylor’s lyrics and videos. I don’t think that was accidental. I mean Taylor wore “smile” earrings to her Japan appearance with a smirk on her face. Also, I think that Taylor not only wrote for Lover but also some songs on Katy’s new record as a ghost writer. I’m pretty convinced Taylor wrote “Never Really Over” - it’s just SO similar to her writing style.

Anyways I digress...

So that brings us to Folklore and Evermore. I think with these two albums she’s telling her story in broken pieces about her truth, her former lovers, her hurt of the bait and switch that BM did, and the pain of being shoved back in the closet.

But she comes back stronger than a 90s trend😉

Her next album and coming out attempt will not fail. In conclusion, Taylor Swift is a musical genius and I’m having fun being along for the ride! Also this was way longer than I expected it to be. 😆👀

#gaylor swift #taylor swift #kaylor #darknite talks

50 notes · View notes

anti-social--princess · 3 years

Text

2021.01.02 - a reflection of the best selling Japanese album nearly 22 years later

So this is my latest iteration of attempting to blog about music. Thanks for looking. Let’s get down to business. I kept languishing over what the hell to post about for my first entry in this blog, and it came to me this morning as I was info-dumping to a friend about Hikaru Utada and her debut album First Love (because we were watching Gravitation -- a first for her -- and I had flippantly remarked that Ryuichi Sakuma’s successful USA career was unrealistic and my explanation used Hikki’s disastrous attempt at a USA career for a prime example). Why not reflect on this album, even though clearly so many others have waxed endless about it?

I was 15 years old when I discovered this album -- the same age as Hikki when she released it in 1999. I was 15 in 2005, and to put it simply, exploring the world of Japanese music back then was really something. Newbies have it too damn easy these days. But I digress. And I think it’s important to highlight that bit about being 15. I simply saw her as a musical genius -- more so because I learned that is the all-time bestselling Japanese album and she was my age when she made it. And that simply threw young me for a whirl. Ayumi Hamasaki was my favorite person back then (and she still is, 15 years later), but I couldn’t deny Hikki’s “inherent” artistry.

Now, as I tumbled through my 20s, I had a problematic tendency to regress into a more immature state of mind and follow what some of my friends in the jpop fandom were saying about this album. Which is to say, they derided this album and considered it beyond overrated. At age 30, I have seen the error of my ways, and while I don’t venerate it as I did when I was a bright-eyed teen, I still regard it as a pretty damn great album. And it’s one of few jpop albums that my mom can listen to all the way through without complaints, which is great for me since it’s often a struggle to reach a middle ground with my mom about my niche interests, haha.

To someone growing up and forming their musical taste during the Y2K era (late 90s/early 2000s), the sound of First Love is really nothing special at the end of the day. Hikki was simply chasing a rising R&B trend in Japan and copying the current American R&B trends to put her own twist on the Japanese trend. She ended up setting the standard for that era’s Japanese R&B scene. Mai Kuraki a year later would try and capitalize on it with her own debut album delicious way, and it kind of worked--that album is in the Top 10 bestselling Japanese albums. MISIA was better equipped to become successful and to this day remains one of Japan’s R&B icons. I could go on with the impact, but anyway!

Being from the perspective of a 15 year old girl, I feel, is what makes this debut album so remarkable, all things considered. The debut single, and respectively the opening track of the album, Automatic is an extremely catchy, timeless bop about, well, catching feelings for someone. It’s also one of the rare occasions where I actually enjoy the first single of an album cycle being the first song on an album (a pop music practice that aggravates me and in my opinion, it has hurt the long-term success of many pop albums because of the general public’s short-term memory and tendency to buy a CD for “that one song”). In My Room is a comfy little mid-tempo further exploring the experience of catching feelings. It’s more or less a universal experience for a teenager. However, this becomes more apparent when you take in everything about the title track, First Love. It’s a beautiful, relatively simple yet impeccably produced ballad about her first major heartbreak. A lot of comments over the years have mentioned her shaky voice is a turn-off for them but I think it works and it’s why I kind of sit there stoic when I hear a more competent singer cover it (and I have heard MANY covers of this song, it’s ridiculous how often it gets covered to this day) -- the competence just doesn’t fit for a song like this. Heartbreak when you’re 15 is like the freaking end of the world and you don’t know how to unpack it, and you have to figure out how to keep it together. Keep it cool, ya know. The inexperience is what makes it. Which is why it’s frustrating to hear songs like Amai Wana ~Paint it, Black and B&C at my age because she just sounds so obviously trying to act like a grown-up when she’s very much still a child.

Sometimes the attempts at sophistication worked in the album, though. Never Let Go is another simple mid-tempo that samples Sting’s work, and as someone who grew up with a mother whose favorite band is The Police and also loved Sting’s solo work (I’m more partial to his solo work, myself), I can’t help but enjoy it. Her voice here is just so cute. And it’s an earnest cute, not cutesy for the sake of it. Another Chance is an example of how you can take a song about heartbreak and polish it with a dance-style backing track and it just works. For a more contemporary example, I’d recommend Kesha’s Dancing with Tears in My Eyes and Rina Sawayama’s Tokyo Love Hotel (the bonus to listening to this one is that Rina is a huge fan of Hikki so you can easily hear her influence on it).

However, there’s moments in the album that test my patience. Movin’ on without you is a little too polished and slick, and Hikki honestly just sounds like she’s dissociating throughout the song, which is a pity considering it’s sandwiched between two strong tracks and the lyrics give the impression of confidence. Ayumi Hamasaki’s cover of it in 2014 is vastly superior, personally. She had the aid of the renowned producer RedOne (you would know him best for working with Lady Gaga) and a more natural tendency to sound genuinely confident. Give Me A Reason is just simply too long even though the production and vocals are fine. There was no need for it to be nearly 6 minutes long.

The kicker about First Love and Hikki’s career overall is that she was more or less pressured into it. Her father Teruzane Utada was a big-shot producer and her mother Junko was a legend in her own right in the enka scene as Keiko Fuji. This also explains why the album sounds really good. She admitted in later interviews in her 20s that she was doing music because she felt there wasn’t any other choice for her in life. No wonder she took a 6-year hiatus to recoup. She just wanted to feel like a regular person.

And I think, again, Hikki being 15 is why people were so infatuated with the album. The general public saw her as a young musical prodigy. It also calls to attention the misguided impression most people have about the concept of talent and prodigies: the impression that talent is natural and practice/access aren’t necessary to make it in the industry. Hikki has skills as a musician, no doubt, but it’s not because she was born with it. She grew up surrounded by musicians. She had access to practice and the tools needed for success. This is not to dismiss her artistry in any way; I am merely pointing out her privilege. And what did this privilege gain her? She’s a legend.

Certainly, in 2021, no other album will ever top the smash success and sales of First Love. But they can damn well try. And really, who can blame anyone for chasing the halcyon days of an era long-gone from the music industry?

#utada hikaru #jpop #music #宇多田ヒカル

17 notes · View notes

riceccakes · 3 years

Text

Earth, Wind, and Coffee: Chapter Four Analysis

and now the last chapter of the fic! i really had so much fun writing these analyses so i hope you’ve enjoyed too :))

i’ve got a lot to say about this last chapter too so be prepared for a long one. lets get to it, shall we?

some fun stuff before we start!

before changing the direction of the story, the last chapter of the fic was going to be Chapter 3: The Meeting, A Well Deserved Jab, and a Good Night’s Rest

so, The Meeting was going to happen, korrasami was gonna come back together and instead of the krew outing during this chapter’s A Well Deserved Jab, korrasami was gonna go out on a date. korra still would punch iroh, korra never ‘moved in’ with asami, it was just gonna be a fluffy section. A Good Night’s Rest was actually going to feature hiroshi going to asami’s apartment while korra was over and being like “who the fuck is this” and korra was gonna be upset asami didn’t tell her dad about them (as, in the og timeline, they would be dating at this point) they’d have a convo working this out, a little like how korra said she’d never understand how asami and hiroshi don’t have a great relationship in A Much Needed Conversation. korra would then go to hiroshi’s office and make that whole speech and still ask asami to go the south. this is a v summed up version, one that when i made it, i was happy with. having published what i did, i much enjoy that ending more than this one :)

i wanted a way to show that korra likes asami (obviously, this is a korrasami fic) but of course, asami spent most of this only wishing korra liked her

mako asking out korra was a late edition, one i actually really like. mako’s role in the fic is pretty minor, sorry to those of you who really love him and maybe wanted more from him. however, i am a really big fan of the fact that in lok, even after all the stupid love triangle shit, mako was able to be good friends with korrasami, so i still wanted to capture that. he’s not at all upset when korra turns him down, but rather super happy for the fact that korrasami feel the same way about each other. an even later edition to this point is the bedroom scene when korra asks asami to wait for her, i’ll mention more about this scene later cause i really love it.

and we in gooooo: (i usually try to write these following the sections of the chapter but for this analysis, im gonna go topic by topic within each section)

literary devices (diction, figurative language, etc.):

There have been better days than this one. Days where Korra blows up Asami’s phone with funny Instagram posts she finds while Asami’s at school, days where she invites Mako and Bolin over and the four of them play board games, days where Korra asks if they can go out for a walk and she excitedly explores the area around Asami’s apartment. There have been worse days than this one. Days where Korra won’t get out of bed, days where Korra won’t speak, days where Korra won’t even look at Asami and she has to see that glossed over gaze gawk out the glass window.

back again, just quoting my favorite sections. and this one, yall, this one. the mirrored writing style, the ending with alliteration, how easily it describes a passage of time i mean come on. when i wrote this i was like “yyyyaaaasssss” and i won’t deny it. the “glossed over gaze gawk out the glass window” is obvious in alliteration, one that just sounds so good, it rolls off the tongue. but, there’s actually also another one, one that’s a bit more hidden “she excitedly explores the area around Asami’s apartment” note how these both end the descriptions of korra’s bad/good days respectively, as a sort of way to frame which parts of the sentence correspond with the good days and bad days. now, going onto korra’s days, three examples of good days, three examples of bad days (that’s technically six different days right there, and it doesn’t even have to be in succession.) what i also love about this info into korra’s days is how it shows a passage of time without having to be like “it’s been a few weeks” or “after some time/a while” it doesn’t stick out, at least not to me, it’s not a jarring way to say, “hey, in the story now, time has passed since last chapter!” idk, i just am really proud of this paragraph and i wanted to point it out in its own section :)

Asami will never, ever say she’s happy that the Red Lotus attack happened, but, it’s what brought Korra to her. It’s what brought more friends to her, it’s what brought her to see her father isn’t as great and almighty as she’d grown up to believe. How could she ever thank something so horrible for bringing about all these life changing things in her life?

this sort of, existential section, was something i came up with on the toilet. (tmi? im not gonna apologize tho, this is a behind the scenes explanation of my writing and some of my best writing happens on the toilet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) any who, i didn’t want to leave any loose ends and, up until this chapter, i don’t really think i showed how asami felt about the attack and the situation and what’s happened after. also, asami being the perfectionist and analyst she is, i know she’d reflect on everything that’s happened to her in the span of about six months (give or take) and even more so, reflect on what’s happened with korra in the time they’ve known each other. it was a bit painful to write this section, it’s that sort of mentality that’s like “some horrible, horrible shit happened, but really, really good things came out of it. so, should i still hate all that horrible stuff or should i just appreciate the good things that came out of it?” (i’ve been debating this for years now with something personal and to this day, i’m not sure. i’m not sure if i’m more thankful for it all happening because of the few good moments it brought or if i wish none of it happened for the chance at some alternate reality of good things happening. anyways, i digress)

Kuvira stays silent for a moment, “When Hiroshi reaches out to you, tell him everything you said to me. Tell him everything you said when we were in your apartment after the presentation. He needs to know how you feel, he needs to know how he’s made you feel for years. Hiroshi can’t change if he doesn’t know what’s wrong and you want him to change, don’t you?”

Asami grips the steering wheel, staring at the red light in front of her. Her foot slowly pulses on and off the break, inching forward, waiting for the signal.

“I do.”

She feels the pit of her stomach churn, wondering if she could ever say all of it to her father. Kuvira isn’t wrong, she wants her father to change, but not in every way. Not in the business sense, not in the ambition sense, but rather, she wants a father, she wants to feel like the man she calls Dad really deserves the title. It pains her to say he hasn’t. The light turns green and Asami’s foot hovers over the gas pedal.

“So then you’ll tell him?”

For just a moment, her Satomobile doesn’t move but with a sharp, deep breath, Asami steps on the pedal. “I will.”

back again with our car metaphor/symbol thing! i really do love this idea of using the Satomobile as a way to show the relationship between hiroshi and asami, and how asami handles that relationship. this is from A Much Needed Conversation, some time after asami’s returned to future industries, calling kuvira in reluctant hope of knowing what her father is doing. they talk about asami telling hiroshi all this important stuff, stuff that asami’s been hesitant to bring up at all. (only after a breaking point did she finally let it out) this section has a mix of it all, diction, metaphor, along with some suspense by using line breaks.

Her foot slowly pulses on and off the break, inching forward, waiting for the signal. / “I do.” - here’s a good example of suspense. (it continues through the rest of the excerpt) so, here was have asami, absolutely scared shitless, as she always is with her father and this subject of her life in relation to him. except, now with their time apart and what happened with the meeting, asami’s kind of got this “fuck it, whatever” mentality that goes a few different ways. “fuck it, whatever” my dad totally turned on me and was an asshole, i don’t care. “fuck it, whatever” we cut off ties, i can do whatever i want. “fuck it, whatever” i might very well do whatever it takes to get my dad back because i miss him but im also super scared as per usual. “fuck it, whatever” im not the one who needs to do anything to get him back so i won’t even think about it. there’s just a lot for asami to unpack here and in the setting of her father’s legacy, it’s even more for her.

She feels the pit of her stomach churn...The light turns green and Asami’s foot hovers over the gas pedal. - more suspense. the light is green, green means go, but asami is waiting, thinking, hesitating. this also relates to the line earlier “waiting for the signal” well, this is the signal, the green light means go. but also, kuvira telling asami to tell hiroshi everything is also the signal to go, it’s like the push for asami to do it. she sees the signal, it’s go time, and yet “Asami’s foot hovers over the gas pedal” asami is still nervous, still scared to have this conversation with her father because she just doesn’t know what’s going to happen.

“So then you’ll tell him?” / For just a moment, her Satomobile doesn’t move but with a sharp, deep breath, Asami steps on the pedal. “I will.” - this mirrors just a few lines earlier. when kuvira asks asami to tell hiroshi everything while she’s waiting for the green light, her dialogue has a line break. for dramatic effect purposes, but also to show a sense of firmness. it’s by itself, it doesn’t need to be supported; asami really, truly means this. however here, her dialogue tag is connected to the narration its related to. even while asami confirms she’ll do this, that she’ll talk to her father, it’s hesitant, it takes a moment for her to say yes.

what i really love is how much can be covered in such few lines. i’m not sure you all saw this when reading, ive always been very into reading/writing analysis, so i’m always looking at everything with a fine tooth comb; in my own writing, it’s no different. if you didn’t see this before, i hope learning it now gives you a different perspective if you ever choose to read my fic again :)

content (typing up loose ends, leaving breadcrumbs, additional info):

lets talk about korra

a lot happens for our girl in this last chapter. i’ll try to be concise, i tend to kind of ramble. i think what’s kind of cool, and i didn’t realize this beforehand, is that theres a speech from korra in each section. in A Well Deserved Jab, we see korra’s first time speaking at the support group meeting and what i really like about this is there’s no real big event that’s happened for her to finally be able to go up there. i feel like there’s always this one, life altering moment in stories when people need to deal with trauma or just work up the courage to do something, but in our case, it’s not like that. it’s the time and the care that’s slowly been working and helping korra for her to feel ready. it’s been a culminating process for her to get to go up there and for whatever reason, korra felt ready. let’s go a little into this speech

we finally learn more about the attack. we learn why korra’s always been picking at her wrists, the memory of the zip ties are still strong and she scratches at hopes of making the feeling go away. we also hear more about korra losing control that night, which in turn made her want to control everything with her life after the event. (lil fun-ish note while we talk about some deep stuff right now, last chapter’s first paragraph, about korra enjoying pour over coffees, was a purposeful choice. when doing pour overs, you have direct and absolute control over the coffee and how you make it, which gives korra a greater sense of comfort, because she knows she’s in charge when doing this.) my favorite part about this whole speech is right before the tail end of it, where korra says “sometimes surprises are better than plans” it was never in her plan to meet someone and find comfort and support and love and grow with it. (my headcanon is that korra just wanted to mull this over alone, sort of like in book four after the canon red lotus attack.) instead, korra met asami and the two clicked and korra could see a light at the end of her tunnel she thought would be pitch black forever. i really enjoyed getting to write this for korra.

korra’s second speech takes place in A Much Needed Conversation. another scene from the fic i wrote beforehand, i think somewhere between finishing chapter two and mulling over the decision to make the fic longer. this was sort of my cathartic, “lets yell at hiroshi for being sucky” moment. a lot of points are brought up here, all of which i believe are valid. it poses the simple, yet ever complicated question of “why?” i’ll get into hiroshi’s response in a later section, but what i’ll highlight about this speech is korra’s statement, “Now, I know that I don’t need to be saying any of this, because Asami can more than hold her own in any conversation, but I am doing this because you are hurting the woman I love, and I will not just let that happen.” its a declaration of love, love that i know is deeper than just romance but also deeper than just friendship. it’s admiration for asami being so strong, admiration for asami being so powerful and smart, korra says more about it in the speech. i tried it make so that korra wasn’t trying to control this situation with asami’s father, but rather, this was korra’s attempt at getting them to try and work something out. korra wants what’s best for asami, she wants her to get everything she wants. korra knows asami wants a better father and the most korra feels she can do is slap hiroshi (with her words) across the face and get him to realize that’s what asami wants.

korra’s third and final speech opens A Good Night’s Rest. we get just a little more about that night, i actually wrote this speech out loud. i just sort of put myself in korra’s place and started talking. my intent with this opening was to give more insight into how korra feels about asami. this is also a call back to the beginning of the chapter, about waking up asami if korra ever needs her. i took this action as a solidifying definition for asami to know “yeah, korra really does love me.” sure, in the last section, korra sort of did say it, but actions still speak louder than words. a lot of this final chapter was just showing how much korra has grown, i think i achieved that.

before we move on, i just wanted to say a lil bit about the bedroom scene where korra asks asami to wait for her. it’s a small confession that i think just says so much. another time here to show that romantic korrasami will happen, but it’s also just insight into korra and her thoughts about romancing asami. she wants it too, so badly that she almost gets into it before she’s ready. did i psych you guys out like asami, who thought she was finally going to kiss korra? it’s all in the lines, “I’m almost there...I know I am, Asami. I’ll be there soon, I need to be better. I need to be better for you.” and now, after thinking about it, i almost wasn’t gonna word it like this. what korra’s saying here is that her progression is only being done so that she can be good for asami, which, i didn’t want to convey. however, sometimes, that’s just how people think; they think, “if i have to do something, i gotta do it for someone else.” and so that’s what i’ve done with korra here, it’s just this mentality that she’s growing out of. it’s okay to have this thought process, good even, but not for every single thing you do. and i wanted korra to know that, which is why i love asami’s response, “I think you’re already great.” it’s just to remind korra, yes you can get better, you will get better. but not for asami, but for yourself, because asami already loves you the way you are.

kuvopal

breadcrumbs; that’s all i’ve really done so far with kuvopal is put lil breadcrumbs everywhere for the people who like the idea of the relationship to grasp at. is that mean of me? maybe, but i really love kuvira and opal as a couple so i wanted to keep hinting and hinting and hopefully getting you readers interested too. kuvopal has been sprinkled in since chapter two and i wanted to leave the readers with just a little ounce of hope

asami’s official introduction with opal heavily involves bolin, enough to the point where the two kiss each other on the cheek. now, of course, after reading the chapter, you know bolin and opal aren’t dating, but i wanted to stress you out a lil bit xD asami is weary of mentioning kuvira, so there’s not much we really get to see about how opal feels. opal may have wanted to talk when asami mentioned kuvira just before korra asked about spring break, but she didn’t. why didn’t she say anything? do you think she’s wanted to talk about kuvira? what about her major, child services and the foster care system, do you think kuvira influenced that, being she essentially was fostered by the beifongs? do you think we’ll ever find answers? *wink*

iroh

so obviously, we don’t like iroh. if there’s anyone in this story who doesn’t get a happy ending or a second chance, it’s him because he’s the worst. i realized we hadn’t seen too much of iroh in the previous chapters and this being the last one, i needed to really show just how not cool iroh is. the soccer game is very clearly an indication of just how conceded and rude he is. after the game, his conversation with asami is bad. he’s being invasive and inconsiderate of asami and he doesn’t care. same with at the restaurant. so, of course i wanted iroh to get his comeuppance and we have that by korra punching him.

going off of this, i didn’t want it to feel like iroh got a one and done kind of deal. he was incredibly awful to asami and his “friends” and i didn’t want this behavior to be taken lightly. so, i chose to make iroh just basically lose everything :) he loses his friends, possibly his job, i just KNOW izumi is disappointed as fuck that he’s acted like this and uncle iroh is rolling over in his grave that someone of his own blood would be like this. i wanted to address iroh in his own category because i just wanted you all to know that he is the only character not getting off easy. i really hope that how iroh’s situation turned out is good, as in, he got what he deserves.

hiroshi

hiroshi was an interesting character to go about in the final chapter. obviously, throughout the fic so far, hiroshi hasn’t been a standout father or boss. if i haven’t said it before, i’ll say it now: i always wanted hiroshi to have a second chance, ie, i wanted hiroshi to try to be better. for one, asami deserves it. she deserves a good parent who’s there for her and isn’t just obsessed with his job and the glory and empire he’s built up for himself. another reason, i believe everyone (within reason, *cough cough* not iroh *cough*) deserves a second chance. at the very least one more try, to be better, and if they’re actively trying, they’re doing better.

so hiroshi gets a bit of a wake up call from not only korra, after she so passionately scolded him in the name of her love for asami, but hiroshi also got one from asami directly. take your pick as to which conversation sparked hiroshi to call her to say goodnight. it’s an effort, and asami even says it herself, that after a while, the juice of it ran out. but kuvira said it too, it’s a start. what im trying to highlight is that no one is perfect and their ways of trying to change themself isn’t going to be perfect either.

and the kicker is hiroshi going to the south, without any other reason than to see asami. hiroshi only ever travels for future industries related business, but here he goes, without kuvira, to the south to see asami. i want to keep highlighting, asami says this is just the start. she hasn’t yet fully forgiven him, but she’s giving him the chance to be forgiven. that’s what i want to make most apparent on the topic of hiroshi and asami’s relationship: hiroshi is not getting off easy. but he’s trying, and in the words of the good place, that is what matters isn’t if people are good or bad, what matters is if they’re trying to be better today than they were yesterday. hiroshi, in this action, coming to the south, is trying to be a better father that day than all the days before. offering up the job offer from tonraq is hiroshi trying to be a better boss that day than the day before. staying in the south to spend real, quality time with his daughter is hiroshi trying to be better that day than every day before that.

it’s all in the trying.

honorable mentions:

in the og timeline, back when korrasami was going to be a confirmed couple in the fic, after returning from the south, asami was going to go to the cafe at one in the morning while korra was working and korra was going to make her an avatar. i liked the full circle aspect at the time but really, i much prefer what i’ve posted over that og timeline.

anything i would’ve wanted to change?

i think, overall, i maybe would’ve wanted to divide chapters up differently. as i continued writing, the three sections definitely could’ve supported themselves as singular chapters. especially this final chapter, which was almost 20k words. but, in the end, i am so proud of this fic and of myself for following through and finishing it.

i lost a bit of steam towards the end of this analysis, i’ve actually had this in my drafts for almost two months. but, i think what i wanted to say, i did, and as always, if you have any comments or questions, or just wanna talk to me, do it ! i love any and all commentary on my writing :))

thanks for reading the analysis if you did x

#ricewrites #earth wind and coffee #coffee shop au #korrasami #korra #asami sato #lok #writing analysis #chapter analysis

8 notes · View notes

captaintroi · 4 years

Text

Why Hate Other Ship Fans....and by Extension the Actors???!!!

I’ve read comments recently on haters attacking specific ships they disagree with, and even the actors. I have seen the evidence myself. I came into this debate late because I originally watched the show for the sister’s relationship which I always found so touching. I noticed the incredible chemistry between Melissa and Katie, but didn’t really scrutinize the queerbaiting that started to creep into their scenes until much later, re-watching the show. I was a Karamel fan and still like Mon El, although I agree their attempt at trying to portray a redeemed character worthy of Supergirl was just sloppy and they ruined any potential. I also think the writers inability to avoid the queerbaiting basically put the nail in the coffin of Karamel. Reason being if you are going out of your way to queerbait and highlight the relationship and growing closeness with Kara and Lena, and continue to build up the compelling, kindhearted world saving genius.....well how is any character going to compete with that??? I do think Chris Wood has great comedic timing and I found him funny, I loved the cute clueless alien scenes, and there is no doubt he and Mel had chemistry, but it was too late because they had already introduced in Lena a character unmatched. Anyway I digress.....the point I am trying to make without rambling too much, is I cannot understand the need to hate on a particular group of people simply because you disagree with their choice of a ship.....and it certainly is not the actor’s fault.

I have never seen such hate directed at a group like what SC shippers have to endure! The level of hate is so ridiculous that antis even feel the need to spend time and money on bots to outvote SC on online polls, spend time and energy putting up fake profiles trying to frame the SC fans (this is fact I myself uncovered a few), and go to the lengths of sending hate to the actors in an attempt to further frame. Those are the true crazies, but there are also just the haters who are easily identified by their profiles because the entire page is usually nothing but hate and memes attacking the particular individual playing the role they despise. If that describes you maybe its time to reflect. I cannot say myself I do not dislike the character of William, but I do recognize it’s just a badly thought out character, logic dictates the actor is innocent and people should refrain from sending him any negativity. Same with people attacking Chris or Katie because they dislike the shippers.....ridiculous and childish.

With SC the hate is out of control because it’s driven by homophobia, end of story. The level of hate is evidence of small bigoted minds that cannot handle any logic attributed to seeing and recognizing the queerbaiting. The fact that non-shippers to industry writers alike have pointed out the blatant scenes with romantic parallels in music and dialogue, is something the homophobes, and individuals with anti agendas cannot admit to. Thankfully the number of people without an agenda who not only sympathize but notice the obvious, is actually growing.....a fact CW should consider. The issue of hate is something ANYONE wishing this show to continue should carefully consider, when interacting with other fans and particularly the actors or show-runners. Sadly I have to admit I do feel the show-runners have inadvertently contributed to much frustration due to what can only be interpreted as small mindedness. Having said that, I would never send them hate, it achieves nothing in the end and would make me part of the problem their writing decisions have created. It is normal and understandable to feel frustrated with bad writing and it’s human to feel passionate about a subject important to us......but the line to hate should not be crossed. Frustration is logical if it stems from seeing what is insulting.....like the queerbaiting.

To the homophobes who spend every waking hour trying to come up with ways to insult, attack, undermine, frame, and generally diminish Supercorp and fans.....you really for the sake of your mental health, should ask yourself this question......WHY IS THIS SUCH A NEED???? Hate is in fact undermining the very show you are so passionate about! So consider your actions when interacting with others.

#CWSupergirl #Supercorp

14 notes · View notes

navollidiot · 4 years

Text

i know there is and will continue to be a lot of controversy about the hate crime scene, so if you don’t want to read this post because you won’t agree with me criticizing it, then don’t read it, don’t clown on it, just don’t interact and move on with your day, i’m not taking names and hunting people down for their opinions especially when i do not personally know most of you.

obligatory statement: i’m not cis, not het, not white. do not be a bigot on this post :)

i remember very clearly the night that clip dropped + literally spending the next 2 or 3 days scrolling through the tag to read every single post in there to gather all of the opinions that i could find, everything from people who had been following the season from the very first second of the first episode, to people who were only casual viewers, who had not offered commentary before that point and only came out to share their opinions after the enormous shock wave that clip generated throughout the fandom. i don’t even think that sander running out of the hotel in episode 8 caused nearly as much of an uproar, mostly because the majority of us knew that was coming (though i do remember the outrage that we didn’t see robbe find him until it was past midnight, which is also completely understandable).

over those next few days and the following weeks, i saw the full spectrum of opinions continue to expand as more and more people gradually processed what they had seen and began to come to their own conclusions about it, especially those, like mine, with many layers of conflicting emotions. some even shared their own stories that were deeply personal and brave and heart-wrenching and hope-giving. what was pretty universal, however, was that no one saw the hate crime coming. it wasn’t in og, it hasn’t been done in any other remake, there was no hint or warning whatsoever that it was imminent. i know part of that is probably the production thinking that was an appropriate way to show how something like that can unfold in real life. do i agree with how that decision was made? ultimately, no. i’m sure that plenty of you also share that opinion to some extent. i’m sure that many of you also excuse, turn a blind eye to, or even defend the hate crime’s necessity and importance. i’ve said before that it’s not a black-and-white situation and i continue to stand by that. i also stand by the opinion that the writers handled the execution poorly even if they had good intentions. intention ≠ impact. there should have been a trigger warning. there should have been a better and more assertive resolution in the following episodes, like there was for zoë’s season (which was very well done and makes me confused why they didn’t give robbe the same treatment but i digress)

“but iT’S REALISTIC—” yes, it’s realistic that gay people experience violence for being gay. no one is denying that this stuff happens. but the aftermath of the incident, which robbe discussed only briefly twice with milan (and senne, but robbe never told him the full truth of what happened) and then was not addressed further, even when it was at some points clearly mirroring zoë’s struggle with testifying against viktor? that was not realistic. i recognize the very real possibility that they are going to drag the assault into s4 to show how robbe’s storyline impacts however they’ve written yasmina’s arc, but whatever they have planned for her honestly terrifies me to no end because we have never had an adequate sana season that does the muslim main justice. i am including og in this, for those of you who have not seen it. i’m sure that many of you who have seen skamfr s4 and druck s4 agree with me. it goes without saying that i believe they should have addressed the assault before robbe’s season actually ended in order to minimize the amount of interference that he would cause in yasmina’s season. don’t mistake this as me hating on robbe; he is one of my favorite isaks hands down. i can simultaneously love his character and hate what the writers did with him.

“but wiLLEM SAID—” first of all, if you yourself are straight and you are pulling willem’s words from the article to defend your opinion, i want you to step back from the situation and examine the details a little further. willem herbots, for all the speculation that has gone on, has now stated outright with no ambiguity that he is straight. i do not deny his talent as an actor; anyone who follows and reads my tags knows that i have many times before praised his skill in portraying robbe as intimately as he did in s3. but the hard pill to swallow for a lot of you is that by being straight, he lacks the inherent nuance that only personal experiences and struggles with sexual identity can bring to a character whose arc literally revolves around internalized homophobia and coming out. no amount of research can help him understand robbe’s character the way a gay actor would. and to be clear, this is not a moral condemnation against him; i’m not blaming willem for being straight, which is a wild thing to have to state lmao but you never know with tumblr. i do harbor the same sort of apprehension that i harbor towards any straight actor who plays gay roles regardless of their reasoning behind it (most of it falls somewhere along the lines of “i wanted to challenge myself” which honestly is such bullshit to me). but, to my knowledge, we have never had a single male isak who was played by an actor who is lgbt+ irl (i’m not counting skamesp because lucas doesn’t fit the original mold since he’s both isak and eskild, sorry if you have a problem with that), so i’m not exactly surprised that wtfock hasn’t broken that mold. saying all that, i do think he is incredibly sensitive and compassionate for his age and amount of experience, and it is rare to see someone answer questions with the kind of sincerity that comes through even in what appears to me is a fluff piece that is meant to please readers rather than present the most objective truths.

i will link a post here that pretty succinctly sums up my view on what willem stated about the hate crime and about how this interview happened in the first place, but something that i did notice that no one afaik has talked about: notice how willem uses I-statements to answer literally every single question in the interview up until he’s asked about the assault, where he slips almost too obviously into the royal “we” that is often characteristic of pre-fabricated answers: “The only moment we really showed... but we really wanted to show the harsh reality of being out... it’s not something we wanted to ignore in WtFOCK.” in the same paragraph, he uses “we” 3 times, where at no point before he had done so. of course, it’s possible that he did say it at other points and those sentences simply didn’t make the final cut for the article, but i still think it’s pretty telling that all of his other answers are so grounded in his personal, individual thoughts and experiences, but that specific response is so stilted and formal it’s almost awkward. it’s very likely that he was regurgitating an answer that was fed to him from higher up, precisely because the production knew from fan responses that it would come up in any self-respecting interviewer’s questions. these are very basic PR procedures within the industry; willem, at the end of the day, is a paid actor on a show that is still in production and is bound very tightly by his contract. do not expect at any point that what he states about wtfock is fully his own opinion, as whatever he says will reflect on the show’s reputation. this is also, more importantly, why you cannot automatically associate the words and actions of a production with the words and actions of its actors; i seriously doubt that willem h or any of the other cast members personally agree with everything the show has done, but i can tell you with absolute certainty that they are contract-bound to not share their full opinions while the show is still in production. he nor any of the other actors wouldn’t be allowed to criticize writing decisions even if they wanted to. finally, please note that i am in no way trying to lessen the impact of willem answering this question in this way, fabricated or not; i am only trying to present all the facts as objectively as i can because i’ve seen 50 posts today worshipping him for giving answers that likely did not come from his own actual brain. i am asking for a little of the same objectivity in return from you all.

finishing on a personal-ish sidenote: but i have never been more aware than in this moment how completely at odds the druck and wtfock fandoms are, like i knew during the run of robbe’s season, from some replies i was getting on posts and anons in my inbox, that it seems impossible to some people that people can like (and criticize) both shows. but now in the wake of this article, it really goes to show that both sides are ready at a moment’s notice to fight each other over matters that do not need to be fought about. we can all just talk through things and try to see each other’s perspectives and, sometimes, yes, agree to disagree. for a show that preaches “everything is love” left and right, certain people really do not seem to take that message to heart. just to be clear, im not saying that you should lie down and take people’s bullshit, but i am saying that we should hear each other out more instead of jumping to conclusions based on thirdhand information.

in conclusion: no show/film/book/other form of media is perfect and we should be allowed to bring attention to their problematic aspects without being accused of blindly hating on the aforementioned medium overall.

tl;dr criticism ≠ hate, take what willem said with a grain of salt, the assault scene is not black and white, im fuckin exhausted

#wtfock #wtfock cast #willem herbots #i was gonna put this under a read more but i need yall to read this whole thing lmao #also if there are weird mistakes or jumps it's bc i jumped around from bullet to bullet writing this and only read through it once #there are also things that i did not include here bc i thought they would be called ~drastic~ but if u wanna dm me or something #trust me i have More Opinions

17 notes · View notes

luna-rainbow · 4 years

Text

Recommended jdramas last decade

Given that the ratings list isn't exactly diverse and lots of interesting dramas didn't make the top cut, I thought I'd come up with a recommendation list. I remember back in the 2000s J-dramas were all the rage but now there seems to be much less interest in them outside of Japan, but that doesn't necessarily mean the quality is less! My preferred genres are more on the tense and action-packed side, and I rarely watched rom-coms or slice of life dramas until more recently. Nevertheless there are some very topical ones that are worth mentioning. Police procedurals 1) BOSS 1 & 2: another one of my perennial favourites. Set at the pace of American procedurals, equipped with snappy humour and quirky characters, it is the perfect amalgamation of funny, touching and gripping. 2) Strawberry Night: the original series with the gorgeous Takeuchi Ryoko and Nishijima Hidetoshi is leagues above the remake. It's much darker than BOSS but perhaps more resonant because of it. 3) Kinkyuu Torishirabeshitsu seasons 1-3: similar to BOSS, this cast consists of veteran supporting actors who play off well against each other. The cases range from satisfying to acutely dissatisfying, just as in real life. 4) Keiji 7-nin: similar to KinTori, the cast consists of some solid veteran actors, and the cases range from triumphant to depressing. There are some interesteing back stories to the characters, but it's not as well developed as you might hope. 5) Zettai Reido season 3: I tried to go back and rewatch the first 2 seasons, but it's a completely different story. Consisting of mostly a young green cast, somehow the actors have fit the roles so well that it doesn't irk. The cases mostly end on a note of despair and helplessness, as the system rolls over and quashes anyone in its way. 6) CRISIS: for the longest time I confused this with BG as the set-up of the characters are quite similar. It's very well-made, but again the characters function in a morally grey territory and is an interesting digression from the usual straight procedural. Crime solvers 1) 99.9 seasons 1 & 2: quirky and humorous, but also full of heart, and with Kagawa playing the straight foil to MatsuJun's insolent lawyer, it is almost perfect except for the lack of insipration in its cases. 2) Unnatural: I still consider this to have one of the best developed back-stories and characterisations of any crime-solver or police procedural. The script is by Noki Akiko, and it has a sensitivity to it that is not often seen in this cerebral genre. 3) Galileo seasons 1 & 2: released back in the day when Fukuyama Masaharu was still hugely popular, this was long enough ago that I don't actually remember what I liked about it, except that I do like and recommend it. 4) Kagi no kakatta heya: out of Arashi, I've never thought of Ohno as the best actor but when the role fits him, it fits like a glove. Based on a manga, it has the occasional unrealistic plot holes that comes with this genre, but overall it's well-produced, funny and the 3 main characters play off each other to hilarious effect. Medical dramas 1) Code Blue 1 & 2 - Hayashi Koji has a remarkable grasp on the mentality of young doctors. The first two seasons of Code Blue are on my perennial recommend list 2) Black Pean - I hesitated about whether to put this down, but there's actually very few medical dramas I recommend even though I watch a lot of them. I did enjoy Black Pean for its production quality and the dedication of the actors, but the script is an absolute let-down. 3) DOCTORS seasons 1-3 - this subversive drama straddles medical and comedy, and Sawamura's character slowly turned from a straight, obliviously helpful do-gooder, to an outright calculating manipulator but with the best of intentions. It is a fascinating premise for a main character and I'd recommend it purely for that. Rom-coms 1) Nigeru wa haji daga yaku ni tatsu - I really shouldn't put something I couldn't keep watching as the top, but apart from the fact I couldn't stand the 2 main actors, the story was an interesting philosophical exploration of what a live-in relationship means in practical terms. 2) Hotaru no Hikari 2 - again this was so long ago I couldn't remember much of it, except it was nice and sweet, although I think the first season was better contained. 3) Watashi ga ren'ai dekinai riyuu - I'm not quite sure this qualifies as rom-com as the characters didn't all get their happily ever after (which is actually quite rare in Japanese dramas). The story revolves around three women, each progressive yet conformative in their own ways, and how they dealt with the social expectations of courtship. A nice watch and probably a realistic window into how romance works in Japan. Underdog victories 1) Doctor X series 1-6 - Look, as much as I HATE this series as a medical drama wannabe, it is the defining story for the underdog against a conservative hierachical paternalistic world. It is full of impossible triumphs, no bad outcome ever happens and the main character never loses. 2) Shitamachi Rocket 1 & 2 - arguably the series that started the Ikeido Jun craze, it turned something boring and nerdy (rocket and machine engineering) into gripping rollercoaster drama. Well-acted and well-scripted, it made you cheer for the characters even as your real boring self acknowledge how ludicrous their victories are. 3) Grand Maison Tokyo - this is a story of redemption through the shared love of food, brought together by a team of great actors who clearly had great fondness of each other. There are some silly moments, but a lot of it was touching, sweet and highly rewarding, just like a beautiful meal. 4) No Side Game - I tossed up putting Riku-Ou in as well, but in the end I thought No Side Game was slightly better. Both based around sports (marathon and rugby, respectively), it's full of hot-blooded idealism about loyalty, teamwork and dedication, a shounen manga fairytale for adults. Slice of life 1) Gibo to musume no Blues - I'm really not a "slice of life" person, but this drama exceeded all expectations. It starts off odd and a little slow, but each episode will make you laugh and then cry a little about what it means to be family, all the silly moments, the frustrating moments and the tender moments that we share. 2) Ie-uru onna (season 1) - I'm not too sure this quite fits in "slice of life" or comedy, because the main character really is rather odd, but the first season had some beautifully reflective stories, again about what it means to be family and what home means to the different people in society. I don't know what happened in the 2nd season, but it's definitely lost that evocative touch. 3) Jimi ni sugoi! - maybe because the publishing industry interests me, but I thought this was a very cute series with some good inside tips about publishing, but also can be drawn to reflect on how people should view their vocation. Almost a rom-com, not quite a comedy, but a really nice light-hearted series with Ishihara Satomi at her most radiant. 4) Watashi, teiji de kaerimasu - this was a surprisingly sweet take on difficult problems that aren't necessarily unique to the Japanese workplace - the clash of generational values, the internal sense of inadequacies and the people who are deterimentally unable to say no. The main character, rather than being the focus of growth as often happens in these dramas, turn out to be the mediator as she uses her previous painful experiences of burnout to guide others through their own struggles. Suspense 1) 3-nen A-gumi: while prone to hyperbole and melodrama, this was a very nice fable of adulthood and the idea that once you are an adult, you must take responsibility for the consequences of your own actions, told through the microcosm that is Class 3A. Highly recommended. 2) BG: slick and well-produced, as many of KimuTaku's dramas are, it had action and suspense in good measures but unfortunately wasn't quite carried by the plot. Each individual case was interesting enough, but the main plot was rather convoluted and disappointing. 3) Ouroboros: almost similar to Toma's earlier Maou, it was cerebral, suspenseful and full of a sense of inevitable tragedy. The ending was more than it could chew, but it gave a good effort. 4) Kazoku Game: one of those rare dramas that really suited Sakurai Sho, where he was the intelligent and highly sociopathic and slightly psychotic home tutor for a highly dysfunctional family. A fascinating watch. Comedy I have to say this is a genre I struggle with. I'd happily watch slapstick and screaming in an anime, but live action is just awks. There's been some popular ones that I haven't watched but have heard good things about: - Tami-Ou: the sleazy prime minister accidentally swaps body with his extremely introverted son, and they both have to try and continue the facade. - Kyou kara ore wa: high school kids pretending they're better than they're really are, we've all been through that. This is not an exhaustive list by any means. There's a lot of well-reviewed dramas that I hadn't been able to catch, especially in the first half of the decade. There's a bunch of highly popular dramas that I hadn't been able to continue, but clearly they've got their appeal to the Japanese audience. I think in general Japanese dramas do human drama very well, especially the various relationships we have in our lives and how they interact. It's not great at doing the K-drama fairytale romance. I hope the list helps people try out some new things, or you could check out the top ratings list for other safe bets.

#jdrama #jdorama

12 notes · View notes

kvjff-blog · 4 years

Text

Joshua Ojonuba

Professor Robert Lunday

ENGL 1301

10 October 2019

The Beautiful Game

Two sprained wrists, at least four ankle sprains, couple of cuts and at least a dozen splinters: those are just some of my injuries over the last six or so years of playing competitive soccer. My injuries are on the minor side as many others suffer worse injuries that often require surgeries and months of physical therapy. Professional soccer is played by approximately two hundred and fifty million players in over two hundred countries and dependencies all around the world, making it the world's most popular sport. This does not include the millions more who play for fun, in semi pro clubs, and in amateur leagues all across the world. It would be almost impossible to imagine the amount of injuries they sustain as well as the extent of them. Seeing as the consequences and pain are so substantial, the question as to why so many people like myself play and get influenced by this sport on such a grand scale. The answer is: I don’t know, I don’t think anyone know to be fair. We all just play no matter the cost; the game is all. I remember reading an article about Ada Hegerberg, who is regarded as one of if not the best women’s soccer players alive. In the article she was asked why she even played since she had opted to sit out the women’s world cup for her country. She responded, "Playing football can be damn harsh, but every day is a fight.” reading this the first time I thought to myself, if it is as harsh as you say why not just quit playing? As I look back now I am able reflect on her statement, and I realize that we are similar. Never once while I played did I think about quitting, through the many injuries, through the long draining practices, through the failures and let downs, I fought through. Like Ada and many others I kept on going necessarily because I wanted to but more so because I had to; quitting never seemed like an option as least not one that crossed my mind.

Soccer has been a major factor in my life probably ever since I was a little baby especially after experiencing the major soccer atmosphere in Lagos, Nigeria, where I was born and raised. In fact my earliest memory of the sport was maybe in 2006 during the world cup. It was the qualification stages against Angola, and Nigeria desperately needed a win to qualify for the most famous and prestigious tournament in all of sporting history. When I was a kid in Nigeria, power outages were extremely common as Nigeria was and still is going through a power supply crisis. So it came as no surprise when suddenly in the middle of the game there was a power outage. Because this was an everyday occurrence we had a phase for it - “down nepa”, and when the lights would come back up we would yell “up nepa”. I had never witnessed a sense of community like I saw that day. As soon as the power went out, we immediately rushed out to the industrial generator out back like we always do. After about five minutes of tussling with the generator, struggling, trying to get it started, there was finally a spark visible through the window of the back room. By this time there had been a crowd formed behind us, seemingly the entire neighborhood was behind us cheering at the sight of light. Apparently we were the only household with enough gasoline to power their generator. “Ta lo fe wo ball”, my aunt said in her native Yoruba; she was asking who was ready to watch some ball or football. Which brings me to the question of why it’s called soccer in the U.S.A instead of football like it is everywhere else in the world, it’s like Americans always have to one up everyone else; anyway, I digress. Seeing as we were the only household with power and our TV was definitely not big enough for the magnitude of people that had now gathered expecting a game of soccer. Luckily one of the families in the neighborhood had a flat screen which in retrospect could not have been very big but it was definitely bigger than anything we or anyone within maybe the next three miles did. With our always reliable generator and the newly found TV, we were all ready to witness Nigeria do us proud and make it to the world cup for another year in a row. Even though the rest of the game was boring and disappointing with Nigeria losing one to zero to an admittedly much stronger and experienced squad in Angola, the moment of community and coming together is what makes it a memorable. Year after year, game after game, support poured in from all over the neighborhood. Nigeria vs. Ghana, Nigeria vs. Argentina, Nigeria vs. Brazil, Nigeria vs. Mexico, every lost seemly just as enjoyable as a win. These are the memories that I’ll keep forever, the memories of love, joy, peace and innocence during a time that would otherwise be considered bad or at the very least not ideal.

There is a famous quote that I along with numerous other soccer fans have heard that goes “you play soccer anywhere, you play soccer everywhere” the phase actually says “football” but for the purposes of this we’ll say soccer. The game is simple, right? Score and do not get scored on. The Truth is: yes, it is simple; but the difficult part is what’s left unsaid, the little things that make the game just so beautiful. The buildup, the passionate moments, the joy, the rivalries; these are all things that every fan and player all across the world can relate to. They have been numerous stories of soccer saving communities and bringing people together because as they say no matter how you’re raised or what culture you subscribe to, just like people are people soccer is soccer always. I remember reading a story about one of my favorite soccer players ever, Didier Drogba; unfortunately people from Africa are used to hearing stories of and even experiencing war or civil unrest. Even with him being from the Ivory Coast, where they had gone through extreme civil unrest, he was always representing his home country. "Come to Abidjan, Alex. You will not be disappointed.” he was quoted as saying to a reporter asking about his native country. Civil war had been happening for five years in the ivory coast when, right after leading his nation to the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany back in October 2005, he picked up a microphone given to him by a reporter in the dressing room and, surrounded by his team-mates, he fell to his knees live on national television. He begged both fighting sides to lay down their guns and, within a week, his wish had been granted. "It was just something I did instinctively," he said. "All the players hated what was happening to our country and reaching the World Cup was the perfect emotional wave on which to ride." Didier Drogba proved exactly what I have been saying about the power and passion soccer brings into the lives of its fans. In front of everyone in the world and his native people, he got on his knees and pleaded for peace. I can’t think of any other sports that could possibly do that, five years of deadly civil war, ended just like that. As a fellow African watching this unfold on TV, this further inspired me as well as other young African kids to play.

In 2011, when I moved to Houston, I went from merely watching soccer being played to actually playing it. Besides the occasional after school sessions of just the kicking of a peeled over leathery ball, I was never able to fully experience the true essence of the sport. Because not only was it hard to find a suitable environment to play but finding a ball was also almost always impossible as well. Going into middle school I knew that although we did not have a proper team I wanted to be a soccer player, if not professional (I knew at this point I surely could not be a professional player) then at least I could be competitive within the local club or school scene. After I somehow survived three long years in middle school without a sport to play it was finally high school and I would get a chance to play. Quotes like Tony Adams’ - “Play for the name on the front of the shirt, and they will remember the name on the back” played back over and over in my head. At the time it almost seemed like making my high school JV b team was at all comparable to the years of years he spent on top of the sport.

Who is Tony Adams, you may ask? Well my dear, dear reader, Tony Adams is without a doubt the best captain arsenal football club has ever seen in all its 133 years of being a top tier team. He was not only one of the reasons I became an arsenal fan but he influenced almost every part of my soccer career. I found myself studying almost everything he did in his prime, looking to emulate even the slightest bit of success from his greatness. I guess looking back now I think it’s clear to me that I desperately wanted to become someone better than I was. Someone more confident, more secure, maybe even just someone different than I was. I essentially tried copying every aspect of his playing style, even incorporating his celebrations as well. If I’m being honest I still sometimes have that feeling of wanting to be someone else other than myself, although not as much as I used to. Honestly I believe playing competitively really forced me to legitimately discover who I was and be comfortable as myself. That being one of many reasons why I would recommend everyone participating in some kind of sport or physical activity. Not to mention the atmosphere and relationships I created along the way.

I find that there is a certain unique sense of community with soccer that just isn’t present in any other activity on the planet, or at least not one I have participated in. Now I do not claim to be some sort of super athletic multi-sport champion but I have played my share of sports and been in quite a few communities. I have played basketball and football, been involved in concert band, art club and even science club. In my humble opinion, in terms of love and support expressed in each community they all pale in comparison to this beautiful beautiful game. In fact the only good comparison that I’ve found seems to be within the jujutsu and kickboxing community which oddly enough is less violence orientated as you would think by just taking a glance in. predictably I have been enjoying the martial arts mainly for the community to the point where it has begun to be almost a religion like soccer was and still is.

Soccer or football (as it’s more commonly called in other countries) is of course a way of life in almost every country all over the world, but more than that I would say it is a religion of sorts. The U.S. is one of the very few places soccer is not hallowed so it is perfectly understandable that some people do not understand the extent of the love people have for this sport. This is the part where I would try drawing a connection to another sport, American football or baseball maybe? Truth is I would hesitate to compare soccer worldwide to any sport as a matter of fact, not just popular American sports. In my experience American football and baseball defiantly have an extremely loyal fan base, but the fans are naturally fickle at times even sometimes changing and switching over between teams. However soccer fans, real soccer fans at least, are often born into their respective team and stay loyal all the way till death. Just like any other religion switching over to another religion (or club in this case) is highly frowned upon and potentially even dangerous. Like most all religions throughout the history mankind, intense rivalries are an ever present theme usually dependent on proximity to the rival club as well as any minor disagreements that may or may not have occur somewhere buried deep in the history of both clubs. As an arsenal fan, of course I despise our rival club, the Tottenham Hotspur, although I will admitted that there are a couple of Tottenham players I enjoy watching and sometimes even root for. I think the first time I ever thought of soccer as like a religion was when I randomly ran into a you tube video comparing Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, two players widely considered two of the best to ever play. The video creator spends the beginning portion of the video comparing both their stats for the past 12 years as well as their respected following. He then goes on for what seemed like eternity talking about sportsmanship and how well they have both individually represented the sport. Finally, at the end of the video, he comes up with the conclusion that although the two players are absolutely the best to ever lace up their boots and step onto the field, Messi is the greatest. In his words, “Messi in all his glory is the God of football, with Ronaldo sharing his glory as Jesus or Muhammad”. This seems to have stuck in my subconscious, only revealing itself now after a couple of years after going mainly unnoticed by me at the time.

Before I started writing this memoir I would have never thought that I had this much to say about soccer especially since it is not as much a part of my life as it’s been in the past. I guess in a lot of ways I have changed and evolve into what I would consider a better, more self-actualized version of myself. With that being said, I think it makes sense that soccer isn’t as important to me; it has served its purpose in my life and I’m sure it will continue to. I am forever grateful to this beautiful game and all the wonderful memoirs it brought into my life.

Afterword.

The honest truth is at the beginning of this memoir I was not really going to try as hard as I maybe could have. I was procrastinating, only waiting till the last minute to finish each installments that was due. I think I was thinking about it just as a class project I just had to get done instead of an interest project. After the turning in the first installment of this memoir and getting back the feedback, I began using my free time to write and combine the texts. It is amazing how much I've retained over my many years of playing and watching soccer. it was really interesting bringing back the memories and ideas I had lodged somewhere in my mind. I think by actually caring about this project and the subject, I was able to not only dive deeper but also articulate better.

1 note · View note

tanadrin · 5 years

Text

under a cut because long, disorganized, self-indulgent

ok so the Lende Empire isn’t really feudal; I despise feudal stasis in fantasy, like even the shortest timeline puts the Andal invasion at more than 2,000 ybp in Game of Thrones, you really think in all that time everybody on the continent is dumb enough to not invent a better plough? or glass just good enough to grind lenses? or make small improvements in windmill design? and all that shit adds up and BAM before you know it, you've got metallurgy good enough to make a steam engine with, so no matter what BS magical physics you come up with, if things work at the human scale even remotely like they do in our world, your age of knights and castles and dragons not having to contend with antiaircraft guns has a limited shelf-life.

(and that's interesting! And more people--by which i mean people besides Terry Pratchett, who did this wonderfully--should write about high fantasy worlds before they reached Medieval Stasis Mode, and after they left it! I would fukkin kill to read a good high fantasy book that also had, like spaceships in it. Insofar as genre conventions have evolved not according to the internal logic of the worlds they depict but according to how and for what reason they serve as commentaries on specific aspects of our own world and its history, and are aimed at evoking certain emotions, it's understandable why such generic mishsmashes are relatively uncommon. But people also definitely read speculative fiction because they like internally cohesive worlds very different from our own, so it is my fondest hope that this sort of thing becomes more popular going forward)

(you can of course also have fantasy worlds which are *not* very much like our own world at human scale. Greg Egan actually does this in a science fiction mode, but as long as you're positing a world where dimensions of space are hyperbolic like time or where humans change sex every time they have sex because trading a detachable symbiotic penis is part of having an orgasm, whether you call this stuff "different science" or "magic" is really beside the point. I have an idea I've been batting around for a while about a world divided, like Evan Dahm's Overside, or the two parallel worlds in Fringe, except part of the division is not just physical, but metaphysical. Morality itself in each subworld is defective, because each subworld got a different part of a morally and metaphysically unified whole: thus, for reasons nobody can understand, almost every ethical system derived by people resident in only one subworld is deeply defective, and would be horrifying to us--as though, perhaps, our own complex and nuanced moral landscape that we wrestle with was a kind of grand unified theory whose symmetry had been broken, and which was only understood piecemeal, as totally separate concepts. And of course, if you live in one subworld everyone from the other subworld is a horrifying monster whose morality is totally incomprehensible to you, so you reflexively treat them as an enemy.)

History isn't just one thing after another. I mean, okay, it is, but it's *also* the aftereffects of those things, the things that stick around forever and can't be gotten away from. And just like how if you want to understand our own world you need to look at what it was like five years ago, and to understand what it was like five years ago you need to look at what it was like ten years ago, and fifteen, ad nauseam, until you're suddenly back at World War II, or the Holy Roman Empire, or Sumer, or struggling through the ever-increasing fog of a steadily more ambiguous archeological record, well, this is as true for politics and language as it is the material aspects of society. In the same way maps feel insufficient when the artist doesn't think about what's beyond the edge of the page (not to knock on GRRM too much, but if you put all the continents and seas in his world on the same map, you notice they're all really... rectangular. Like he drew them to fit individual pieces of paper. Rivers and island arcs get compressed when they near a margin. Seas are just voids. Nothing ever has to be moved to a little box in a corner to fit. there's no attempt at verisimilitude), I think invented worlds feel insufficient when the writer asks you to take them seriously as a reflection of our own, or an aspect of our own, but neglects to at least suggest their place in a larger whole.

I wanted with the Lende Empire to have something that still let me have a lot of early centuries of sword-and-horse style adventures (because i started writing about Lende when I was thirteen and had just finished the Silmarillion for the second time), and I wanted when writing its history to still be able to take big chunks of story I stole from Norse legends and medieval poetry and dump them almost whole into the setting, but I also wanted the history not to read like a fantasy history--or not just a fantasy history. What I mean is, when you read something like the Silmarillion, or when a character in a fantasy world relates some legend to you, even if it's referred to as an old and ambiguous tale, you still often feel like that's really what happened. Like, for me, one of the chief emotional attractions to something like the tales of the wars of the Goths and Huns, or Beowulf's description of Migration Age Denmark filtered through Anglo-Saxon poetic tropes, or the Icelandic family sagas, is that we really have a hard time knowing how much of it is true, how much of its is plausible embellishment, and how much of it is anachronistic nonsense or pure bullshit. Is the Njala based on a faithfully recounted tradition passed down orally for a few hundred years? Who knows! Not us. We know a guy named Njal got burned in his house around 1000 AD, but much of the mystery and the poignancy of stories like that for me lies in the difficulty of ascertaining their relationship to the truth.

What I want(ed) was something that when you read it made you think "ok, obviously the narrator is trying their best, but even they don't know exactly what the fuck happened; this is probably one third ambiguous tradition, one third solid, one third bullshit." So the Chronicle of Lende has some stuff in it that's intentionally difficult to reconcile. It has weird tonal shifts. The first third owes a lot to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the sagas and the Hildebrantslied; the middle is closer to the Silmarillion, or the history of Rome when told more from the Great Man perspective than the Impersonal Forces one, and the last third starts out that way but goes some weird places and veers off at the end to what is obviously a symbolic and highly abstracted mode of narration which, in relating the destruction of the Empire imitates the way in which its beginning is related (for in-universe Thematic Reasons), *but* while all this is going on, the hope is that the reader is *also* able to glimpse through these ambiguities and stylistic quirks, and incompatibilities, and weird digressions involving talking animals or the spirit world, a society that's undergoing familiar demographic and social and technological transitions: moving from oral culture agrarianism to the beginnings of a real urban civilization, with a centralized state and the written word, and like Western Europe having to figure out a social structure in the absence of any good nearby imperial models (they end up with something more like fraternal warrior societies being deputized to control land rather than feudal lords, but the essential logic is the same); but then moving to a real model of administrative statehood, as infrastructure and technology improve, before industrialization kicks off, the population explodes, social tensions inherent in that begin tearing at the seams of society, and the horrors of industrialized warfare are unleashed.

There are meant to be striking differences, too, of course. Lende history is only about a thousand Earth years long, and it's confined mostly to the western side of a continent split by a huge, Himalayan-like mountain range. Its rapid rise and increase in technological sophistication are due to exogenous factors (genuine divine intervention in some cases), and equally even the True Secret History of the empire's destruction has no real-world parallels, at least not since the Channeled Scablands formed 14,000 years ago. It's also teeeechnically science fiction and not fantasy, though that distinction really rests on tone and not on setting IMO. But I don't think it's possible to tell what feels like a real history of a world without sometimes radically changing genres: our own history goes from dry science (geology, paleontology, archeology) to legend and myth and scripture, to dusty old classical history and books penned by ancients who sometimes have startlingly different notions about what merits mention in a story and how to tell one, to tales of kings and queens and conquerors, before emerging blinking in the sunlight of dry matter of fact narration again. I have always believed conventions, including those of genre and style, should be tools and not straightjackets. The best worldbuilding literature I have read steals from a huge variety of sources (and Pratchett deserves a mention here again, alongside Susanna Clarke, and Ada Palmer, and the people who wrote the Elder Scrolls backstory, and Sofia Samatar, and Angelica Gorodischer).

#have you read a stranger in olondria?#go read a stranger in olondria #now #fucking do it #it's so good #'a book' says Vandos of Ur-Amakir 'is a fortress; a place of weeping; the key to a desert; a river that has no bridge; a garden of spears.'

13 notes · View notes

zombiescantfly · 5 years

Text

Words About Games: Unreal (Epic Megagames, 1998)

Unreal Tournament 2004 is my favorite videogame ever. It's always a close match between it and the first Unreal Tournament, but 2k4 always manages to win out, if just barely. However, I am of the firm, unyielding belief that UT2004, when played with both the ‘No Adrenaline’ and ‘UT Classic’ mutators, is far and away the best multiplayer fps experience anyone could ever ask for. We'll get into that a bit later, because it's time for a bit of an explanation.

Unreal Tournament 2004 turns 15 this year, and I wanted to do something special to celebrate the release of a game I have such an unreasonably high appreciation for. Up until the day of its official release 15 years ago, I'm going to be putting out one of my infrequent essays on the games in the series I have experience with, starting now with 1998’s Unreal. I'll warn you, this one gets a bit rambly, but if you reach the end and still want more, take a look at the cooperative non-coop playthrough I did with a friend, where we each played a singleplayer campaign while discussing our experiences and thoughts on all aspects of the game.

But first, a little background.

I was born in 1992. Wolfenstein 3D, the game commonly attributed as the progenitor of the entire FPS genre (yes I know about Maze and Battlezone and all the various first-person dungeon crawlers) was released three months later. This makes me just barely older than the modern first -person shooter.

My dad has worked in the business end of the tech industry since the 80s. As a result, he was always very close to the then-rising PC gaming scene, and even dabbled in game dev for a few years. His position in various companies made him a very early adopter of the ‘home pc,’ something still rare up until like the mid 90s, seriously. He had free reign to take old hardware his workplace was replacing or to buy it for cheap, and by the time I was old enough to start forming memories that actually stuck around, there were two computers in the house.

In 1994, id Software released Doom 2, and my dad bought a copy. Thus began the long tradition of young me standing behind his chair to watch whatever he was playing, starting with Doom 2 LAN deathmatch with my older brother, progressing to his playthrough of Quake 1 and 2, and the first stop in this extended flashback, Quake 2’s online deathmatch.

Young me knew what a marvel online deathmatch was, because my dad told me. It's also just kind of a hard concept for a 5 year old to grasp, especially back then before the internet was in the public consciousness. Nowadays I doubt there's any lack of understanding, and that's cool.

(And yes, I know Q1 had online play but I never managed to catch any of it. Both my dad and brother liked its singleplayer more.)

So where does Unreal come in? Actually, not until about 2009. Bear with me.

In 2000, when I was 8 years old, my dad and brother had gone to spend the day at a local tech trade show. This was a common enough occurrence since we lived less than an hour away from Philly and that attracted a lot of businessy types. They'd usually come back with a new game or two, and I'd have something new to watch over one of their shoulders.

That day, my brother brought this home.

And said to me, “Hey, you should try this one out. It's from Epic.”

Or at least something to that effect.

Now, at this point in my life, I wasn't as avid a videogame connoisseur. The first game I ever truly felt grab me was Starcraft, which I played way more than I probably should have. But also at that time was a growing collection of titles from Epic Megagames. Epic Pinball is one of the first things I remember playing by myself, followed by Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and One Must Fall: 2097.

So I'd been with Epic for a while at that point.

So, Unreal Tournament. Spoilers for the next post, but I loved it, and I still love it. It capped off my experiences with shooters from the mid to late 90s with the first taste I was allowed myself, no longer stolen from over a shoulder while hoping my mother wouldn't choose then to come down the stairs and yell at me for watching and at my dad for letting me. It gave me a love for arena shooters, for the chunky, harshly and gaudily lit 3d graphics, for imaginative weapons, for tightly designed maps, and for a special sort of way to deliver a story buried in map and item descriptions…

But I'd never played Unreal.

Once, at a thrift store, I found a big-box copy of Unreal Gold, still in the shrink wrap, for five bucks. “Oh, I think your dad has that one,” my mother said, turning me away from it.

He did not.

So in 2009, I finally bought Unreal for myself off Steam and promptly returned to the chunky 3d I had probably just been seeing a day prior because I put UT99 on my school laptop.

Enough digressions, let's finally move into it.

Unreal is a strange game, and more than a little unlike its contemporaries. See, from 1993 to 1998, shooters were kind of a one-note experience. You, bad guys, big maps, many guns. From Doom to Quake to Heretic to Blood to Rise of the Triad to Shadow Warrior to Duke Nukem to Dark Forces to anything else you could find in a magazine for mail-order, the shooter was a pretty standard experience. Sure, this or that game had this or that thing that set it apart, some were more advanced than others for the time, but the general idea never really wavered: Click on men from point A to B until you find all the keys and reach the exit.

That gameplay loop made the genre successful, and it's not exactly different now. Keys could be anything, of course. They were literal keys, sometimes they were gas for a generator, now they're mostly cutscene triggers, but the point is that you must locate them to progress. Along the way, there wasn't much other than bloody slaughter to distract you, and that was fine.

It was fine. For those 5 years.

Then, in 1998, a very special sort of game came out that changed the way not just shooters but videogames in general were presented. A game that made expectations higher, products examined more critically. I'm talking, of course, about Half-Life.

On November 19, 1998, Half-Life released and literally changed the course of game development. It offered players a brilliantly constructed narrative delivered naturally by characters speaking in the moment rather than the then-common blocks of text before or after a level. The setting, the Black Mesa research facility, was a meticulously planned space made to feel like a real location and not a jumble of corridors whose first concerns were how many monsters could fit in them. Structured plot points replaced red and blue keycards, well-designed enemy encounters replaced rooms full of cannon fodder, and a new mentality replaced the old.

Which is a shame, because Unreal did something different, too.

Released earlier the same year on May 22, Unreal was the end result of a project always too ambitious for the four years it bounced around development. Conceived first as a medieval RPG of sorts, Unreal eventually morphed into a sci-fi shooter set amid echoes of that original idea.

In Unreal, there is no opening cutscene. There is no opening text crawl or long train ride to prepare you. The title screen is a looping fly-through of a location in the game made to show off various engine effects like reflective surfaces, particle emitters, real-time colored lighting, animated skyboxes, and volumetric fog. Selecting New Game sends you to a loading screen where you quickly fade in from black, staring at the wrecked interior of . . . somewhere. You start low on health and walled in on three sides. As you step forward towards the only path available, a pleasant, computery voice calls out “Prisoner 849 escaping.”

You are Prisoner 849, you are on a prison ship, and it has crashed. This is all evident within the first few seconds of the game. As you progress through the first level, you can see half-broken displays showing the sudden path the ship took, read status logs of engines and ship components, and even get a little taste of some daily life among the prisoners and crew alike. Yes, Unreal has text logs, but they're the good kind, used to inform the world rather than exposit at the player.

Very quickly you learn that something else is aboard the ship. Growls and snarls appear in the distance and screams of terror can be heard through the walls. Every so often, the same calm robot voice calls out another number, another prisoner escaping. This all tells us a good deal of the game’s primary theme. You're just someone.

You are Prisoner 849. You are not the captain of the ship, you are not the high profile super prisoner, you are not a space marine guarding the ship. You are Prisoner 849, one of many to board the Vortex Rikers, and one of many to leave.

There are no friendly human NPCs in the game. Two crewmembers aboard the ship live long enough for you to get close, but one bleeds out as you approach him and the other is slaughtered behind a door stuck partway open so that you can only see a mysterious pair of legs sprint away amid a shower of gore. Shortly after, you catch a fleeting glimpse of a strange figure at the other end of a ventilation shaft, obscured by fog.

Unreal slowrolls its opening. It's reminiscent of Quake 2’s opening level, though with no combat. You're free to wander the small area of the ship, reading various inconsequential text logs and looking at various readouts. Words like “unknown moon” and “sudden course alterations” pop up, telling - but not explicitly - that coming to wherever this is was unintended.

Eventually you leave, exiting through an emergency hatch somewhere on the side of the ship. A few steps forward brings you to a somewhat common looking grass expanse, not too unheard of at the time. You're closer to the ship’s bow, and a short walk around it and through the furrow it plowed in the ground leads to a small rise that still obscures the level until depositing you at just the right angle.

You stand close to the lip of a tall cliff overlooking a shimmering lake. On the other side, a waterfall crashes over the cliff. Trees dot the landscape, birds fly overhead, and small critters scurry away from you.

In truth, it looks more than a bit quaint today, but in 1998 it was without equal. Unreal is a game that put an intense focus on its world, Na Pali. This is a world inhabited for centuries or even millennia by the Nali, a race of four-armed pacifist aliens with a little bit of magic to their claim. Some unknown time before you begin playing, another race known as the Skaarj arrive to exploit the planet for a resource called Tarydium, enslaving the Nali in the process.

Here's where another game might set you up as the Big Badass Hero. You, the lone survivor of this crash; them, the downtrodden alien race; the other them, the evil tyrants. But Unreal never does that, because you're just someone.

Remember hearing those other prisoners escaping? More did even before you woke up. There's a small collection of Nali huts not far from the crash site where you can find the corpses of a few other prisoners and crewmembers from the Rikers next to some healing pickups - the Nali tried to care for them. Small bits of visual storytelling like that appear all throughout the game coupled with its smart use of text logs, and it starts strong and stays strong. A quick swim through a lake infested with carnivorous fish can lead you to a small secret where two dead escapees can be found next to a half-eaten fish. Further in, a dead human sits in a corner of a room, a dead Nali in the center, a flak cannon pickup on top of the latter showing their frantic last stand as the Nali abandons its pacifistic ways to protect its companion. Much later, you’re in a Skaarj warehouse where you can see stacks of boxes bearing the same logo from the Vortex Rikers - as you’ve been doing your thing, the Skaarj have gone back and started looting the ship.

Unreal is a game where things have been happening before you the player show up, and continue to happen while you the player are playing. The plot does not start with you and it does not wait for you. You’re just someone who’s been thrown into this whole situation as it unfolds, from a centuries-old conflict on Na Pali itself to the more immediate conflict of the crashed Vortex Rikers and what happened to its crew. Around almost every corner is another story just like yours, and the fact that we’re playing Prisoner 849 and not Prisoner 521 or Ensign Burt Masterson or whoever else feels like a roll of the dice.

Half-Life gets a lot of praise for finally putting the player behind just a regular guy. Gordon Freeman has been made to become something of videogaming’s first everyman in the way that John McClane of Die Hard ushered in the everyman action hero. But honestly, Half-Life wouldn’t happen without Gordon. A scientist tells you right away that they’ve been waiting for you so they could start the test. Without Gordon Freeman, the plot would never have progressed, and that makes it distinct from Unreal. Half-Life’s various expansions actually do this better; Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Decay all put you in control of someone who is distinctly more Just Someone than Gordon Freeman.

But Unreal, man, Unreal just does it so well. Occupied Na Pali is a world that does not care about you as a singular entity. The Skaarj don’t turn and attack you because you’re The Player On A Mission, they attack you because you’re some dumb human who goes places they’re not supposed to and shoots all their friends (yes, Skaarj have friends, read the text logs). Hell, your mission isn’t even anything particularly grand! From the beginning, nobody tells you to do anything, you just wander out of the ship and start trying to find a way to leave. Obviously from a game standpoint, there’s always going to be a level start and a level end, and you will go towards the end because it’s a videogame, but in the context of that game, the story is “just find a way out.”

There is a thread you pick up on early, though it might be a bit strange and requires some minor explaining here real quick: in Unreal, you have the option when starting a new game to choose your player model. You can see yourself a few times throughout the game - Unreal has reflective surfaces in a few spots - so it’s not totally useless. By default, Prisoner 849 is a woman. Canonically, Prisoner 849 is a woman.

Early on, past the first level, you enter an ancient Nali temple, ruined and defaced by the Skaarj over the years, but not without its still-devout followers. It’s here that you get the first hints of what seems like it might be a story more appropriate for a 90s shooter. You see a carving on a wall that talks about “the Princess from the Stars” coming to deliver retribution to “the Demons from the Sky.” Now, if you’ve changed your player model to male, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But obviously the intent is to key you the player into the mentality that “oh, I’m some prophesied Chosen One, right?” Yes and no. We'll get back to it.

See, about a third of the way into the game you come across another crashed human ship, the ISV Kran. The Kran, gameplay-wise, is a mixed bag of levels ranging from good to meh, the worst of it stemming from symmetrical layouts and a lack of texture variety. But in the narrative as it unfolds, the Kran is very important.

So far, you've passed through a dozen unique and varied environments ranging from the cliffs at the start to the ancient temple, to a Tarydium mine near a small village, a high-tech processing plant nearby, and even an old coliseum or sports arena converted by the Skaarj into a torture chamber. The Kran is your first look at anything human-built since leaving the Rikers.

I'm not going to go through the game bit by bit, but the leadup to the Kran is important. Throughout that first third of the game, you find escaped crew and prisoners from the Vortex Rikers fairly frequently. The events of the game are happening without you, and things aren't going well.

Once inside the Kran, things change a little. Amid the text logs of status readouts and final words before the Skaarj broke in, there's a tiny narrative being constructed about a crewmember by the name of Kira. Kira had managed to do much of what you have - she's armed herself and set off in search of a way off Na Pali with a small group of other crew, some of who you find, once again already dead. One of Unreal’s longest maps comes in around this point, and Kira is a large focus. She was captured, made contact with a group of Nali also held prisoner in the temple (lots of temples in Unreal, the Nali are very religious), mounted her escape, and had to leave her last remaining crewmember behind, his final log suggesting she headed for something she heard was held in the nearby belltower…

This small aside is a brilliant piece of the game, it really is. When I said there was another game or another story behind every corner, I meant it. Kira’s journey from the Kran to Bluff Eversmoking is a full story on its own, and it lends some interesting insight towards a lot of the various prophecies and Nali beliefs you've run into along the way. From the Kran to the Bluff, you find more mentions of the Messiah, of the Sky Princess. You, right? Right?

Or was it Kira?

Kira followed the same path you did. Less of it, sure, but she fought the Skaarj infesting sacred Nali temples. She, an alien warrior, cleansed their holy places of demons who had enslaved them. A small group of Nali risked their own lives to break her out when she was captured, based only on their horror that she would be executed.

This is why keeping 849 as the default lady playermodel is important. The text logs were written with that in mind in order to muddle things. Are you the Messiah? Is Kira? Presumably both of you just want to go home, and maybe falling into a vaguely defined prophecy with incredibly generous qualifications (not Nali or Skaarj, girl, can kill Skaarj) was just an accident.

It certainly seems that way, because when you finally find Kira, she's dead. Your hopes of finding another living human, the Nali’s hopes in an alien warrior, lie dead on the ground with an empty pistol beside her.

Unreal, and Na Pali within it, does not care about Prisoner 849. The story does not revolve around you nor does it even stop to make room for you. Any one of those human bodies you pass throughout the entire game was another escapee. Between the Vortex Rikers and the Kran, you follow a trail of bodies almost up until the end of the game. Except for a very small stretch at the end, someone has beaten you to where you are. But you go further. You encounter things no human has. You escape Na Pali.

Eventually.

If it sounds like I'm taking Unreal a bit too seriously, it's because I most likely am. I admit that. But Unreal just creates such a unique atmosphere among games that I can't help it. Videogames are inherently power fantasies, and most facilitate this by making you play as someone obviously powerful. BJ Blazinsky. Doomguy. Lo Wang. Duke Nukem. A jedi. Even in Call of Duty, where you often just play as some grunt, you get to be the special grunt who sees all the coolest stuff first. And yes, again, even Half-Life doesn't start without you. Gordon becomes mythologized even in the first game, to say nothing of Half-Life 2. In Unreal, there's nobody to put you on a pedestal. Na Pali has its own problems and you're just plopped down in the middle of them while trying to solve your own. It isn't your fault that they intersect.

So it shouldn't be that big of a surprise that one of my other favorite games ever is another hero-by-random-circumstance romp through an uncaring world, Dark Souls. If you like the narrative themes Dark Souls has going on, you'll like Unreal, end of story.

Wait, no, not end of story, because all I did was wax philosophical about the theme for like 8 pages. I gotta talk about design now, ‘cause hot damn does my love of Unreal not stop with flowery prose.

The Skaarj are the primary antagonistic force in the game, but they're some kind of powerful empire with other races on their payroll. After escaping the Vortex Rikers, gaping in awe at the waterfall, and spending some time chasing harmless wildlife around the field, the first actual enemy you fight is a Brute.

Brutes are big lumps of meat with two rocket pistols and a permanent scowl. They move slow, they turn slow, and they fire slow. The first one you fight is really close to the exit of an indoor area. What Epic have done here is create an excellent enemy encounter.

Nothing in Unreal has hitscan weapons. Ignore Legend Entertainment’s Return to Na Pali, I'm gonna. That means that everything coming your way can be dodged. Two rocket pistols sounds scary, but you're in an open area and you have the ability to strafe. If you're somehow not comfortable doing that while shooting, that's why the Brute’s so big, he's hard to miss.

From there, you get exposed to the tentacle and the Razorfly. The Tentacle is essentially a stationary, ceiling-mounted autoturret that fires a single projectile at you every half second or so, and the Razorfly is a big bug that hits you with melee attacks. Neither are particularly challenging, but all three so far get you ready for your first encounter with a Skaarj.

You're in a small facility and have just shut off a force field. Coming back through the hallway, bars suddenly slam out from the wall, blocking your progress. The music fades out. And one by one, the lights turn off until you're sitting in pure darkness. You get a few seconds to sweat before the music kicks back in, the wall beside you slides open, flashing red emergency lights appear, and a large shape leaps out at you.

The first encounter with a Skaarj is cramped and claustrophobic, and intended to have you miss a lot of its capabilities. It runs around, does a forward leaping melee attack, and can shoot little bolts of energy at you. At the time, you only have two weapons: the Automag, a hitscan pistol with a decent fire rate, and the Dispersion Pistol, a projectile energy weapon you can charge up that acts in the same capacity as Doom’s fist or Quake’s axe as a holdout weapon. You'll most likely take out the Skaarj with the Automag because there isn't a way to run out of ammo with it unless you try, so you most likely won't see how this type of enemy reacts to projectiles.

Because, see, Unreal has very smart AI, and the people who made these enemies took great advantage of that fact. The Brutes and Razorflies of the level so far are pretty simple cannon fodder type stuff, they amble around and attack towards you. Once you're away from that first encounter, the Skaarj enemies have a few tricks.

A Skaarj will try to circlestrafe you. If you're using a projectile weapon, a Skaarj will dodge your attacks with a pretty damn high success rate (deviously, the very next weapon you get after the Automag is the Tarydium Stinger, a projectile-based minigun, and you start seeing Skaarj commonly around the same time). If a Skaarj is getting near death and has allies close by, it'll try to run away towards them. Sometimes a Skaarj will fake its death to try to catch you by surprise. It won't ever get back up while you're looking or within a certain range, and you can take the time to see if flies start buzzing around the supposed corpse or just gib it to make sure. A Skaarj will intuitively use cover, as well, thanks to a dead-simple pathfinding mechanism inside the level editor.

A Skaarj is a really cool enemy today, let alone in 1998, half a year before everyone lost their shit over Half-Life’s stilted Marine encounters.

Unreal keeps a pretty steady flow of enemy varieties coming your way, as well. Various types of Skaarj show up, often with ranks padded out by the Krall, another race they employ or enslave, and they have plenty of variety among them as well.

But Na Pali isn't just a collection of levels stuffed full of bad guys to click on. Most levels actually don't have all that many enemies to them, instead relying on strong encounter design over sheer overwhelming odds. . . . Most.

No, Na Pali is a world, and Unreal wants you to believe that. The game bounces you between open outdoor areas and various structures at a healthy pace, and it always manages to give it all a fresh coat of paint. Harmless critters hop around or soar high above, schools of fish scatter when you explore a lake, beasts of burden grumble at you as you charge past their pens, flak cannon in hand. And better yet, enemies aren't often just waiting around for you to show up. They have things to do or time to waste, and may very well be doing that when you come across them. In areas controlled by the Skaarj, you can often see them tapping away at computers or just staring out a window before you alert them, and Krall mercenaries are fond of drinking or playing dice. Brutes amble around on patrol patterns, stopping every now and then to scratch themselves. The more feral Slith enemies found near water tend to just be swimming around until they're alerted.

These tiny details make Na Pali feel like a place, and the levels you play through are no different. From the wrecked Vortex Rikers to the various Nali temples to the Kran and even up to the final levels set on the Skaarj mothership, the levels make room for details like bedrooms, kitchens, and even bathrooms in a way that shooters just sort of didn't usually do at that point. Sure, you'd have a bathroom in another game every so often, but it was usually there for a gag or some sort of reference. Unreal makes a concentrated effort to really sell you on these levels, and it works. There's so much variety in the maps that not a lot has a chance to get boring, though sometimes, as I mentioned before, things can get a bit muddy. The map Terraniux and the middle levels of the Kran are a bit less navigationally-friendly than they could have been, but there's nothing as egregious as the later levels of Doom or any of the other maps from various games that are mazes first and gameplay sections second. There are no out-of-place platforming sections or agonizing breaks for switch puzzles. There's just a world as you might find it in real life.

Another strength of Unreal’s level design is that sometimes it just lets you take a break. You might go minutes without seeing an enemy, leaving you free to explore your surroundings. There's even a level that has an entire segment dedicated to calmly floating down a river on a small boat, with no combat at all. It comes after a challenging combat section and acts as a nice little breather with great visuals and fantastic music.

Oh man, Unreal’s music. Never before or again have I heard a more distinct soundtrack in a game. Unreal has its fair share of late-90s electronic tracks, but the majority of its music is a very chill mix of unusual instruments. I know next to nothing about music, so let me just drop some links real quick.

Dusk Horizon

Nali Chant

War Gate

Surfacing

It's such an intriguing mix of styles, and it's all perfectly suited for the environments you hear them in. All of the levels are colored very deliberately, and the music matches the mood that texturing and lighting creates. Coupled with how each track has an ambient and battle section and how it seamlessly slides between them as you enter and leave combat, the levels in Unreal are all a treat to explore, and I really do urge people to look up the soundtrack because it's really just that good.

The music in this game created a precedent of quality that the series kept up easily, and is just more evidence of how committed Epic at the time were to making as immersive and vibrant a world as they could. It's just another part of a beautifully crafted experience that created a game so unlike any other at the time or since.

Unreal is a game that is still incredibly playable today. On a technical level, it's the Unreal Engine so you can pop it onto anything and get it working without any real trouble. The unofficial OldUnreal patch is easy to find, and is just a single .dll file that gets dropped in the system folder. But that's not the only thing playable means. Design philosophies and public reception to various systems and elements of gameplay change over time, and it renders a large number of games either too obtuse or too clunky to really get into. But there are always games that are timeless. Doom is still a treat because the only thing in it is shooting, there's nothing particularly experimental to have been done better over repeated iterations. Unreal is simple in that way, too. Its weapons are varied, unique, and famous. Man, I didn't even get into the weapons, but I'll save that for the Unreal Tournament essay.

My point is, Unreal did a lot, and it did it very well. It and every other game from 1998 was overshadowed by Half-Life, unfortunately, and that became the game to beat. Half-Life isn't the reason we never saw another Unreal in the same vein as the first, but I do think that a desire to be the next Half-Life is why the industry moved to such a narratively-focused philosophy. There was another game three years later that also focused on sprawling outdoor areas mixed with indoor structures, but it didn't have the same lonesome exploration, living world, or details that suggested hundreds of years of mythology. This game would go on to affect the industry just as much or even more than Half-Life, and was in fact Bungie’s Halo.

Halo had cutscenes and voiced NPCs and all the things Half-Life made people want. Halo is another beast, but its success was all but the final nail in the coffin for any hope Unreal had of spawning any imitators. The era of frantic slaughterfests in key-locked mazes was over, and Unreal’s attempt at carving out a spot for contemplative exploration in living worlds was ignored.

That style of game would come back, but not in shooter form. Both Dark Souls and Shadow of Colossus have similar feels to them, and I'm sure there are others out there. Other Team ICO titles, Journey, there have to be others, there are too many videogames for there not to be. But as it stands, Unreal is all but alone, and even now, in this wave of 90s revival indie shooters, they aim more for Doom and Quake. Even Epic would step away from Unreal’s distinctive style with its very next release.

See, Unreal was popular, but at the time, released into an audience high off of Quake 2, those same people wanted to dive into its multiplayer. And when it worked, it was incredible. But it often didn't work. Epic set to fervent work patching it to fix poor netcode and a variety of other issues, but that project turned into something far, far larger, prompting them to release an entirely new game running on an updated version of the Unreal engine. New maps, optimized and redone versions of existing maps, remodeled and rebalanced weapons, new music, new gamemodes, everything.

Unreal Tournament would come out a year later, setting the industry alight in its own ways. We'll take a look at that next month, so until then, take a day or two to play through Unreal. I played it and loved it a decade after its release, and another decade won't have changed much.

#unreal #words about games #review #epic #epic games #fortnite #videogames #unreal retrospective

3 notes · View notes

one-ishmael · 5 years

Text

Chapter 6: The Street

What’s this? Two in one day? Sure, why not. Let’s knock another one down!

This chapter is another short one, I actually fit the notes for it and the last one on the same page. It does have a bit more meat for us to chew on, though, in terms of blog writing. I probably won’t have to go off on a Melville-esque digression of my own to get to a decent length this time.

SUMMARY: Ishmael wanders around town, and Old Ishmael, the writer of the book, reminisces about New Bedford.

That’s it! Nothing really happens in this chapter, in terms of the narrative following the younger version of Ishmael. He just goes out and sees what this town is all about, since he’s never been there before. But then we are treated to some remembrances of the older Ishmael, to whom New Bedford is quite familiar.

In a way, you could call this a little non-narrative diversion in this early section of the book. In my memory, this part, before the voyage commences, is all narrative, but this is more of a reflection on the whaling industry, rather than telling the story.

Melville is actually very skilled when it comes to the narrative portions, he gets across action well and is adept at crafting dialog, so these non-narrative digressions are not from laziness or a lack of ability. It’s hard for me, sitting here in the year of our lord two thousand and nineteen, to determine how much of this is the genuine remembrance of Melville himself, and how much is in character as Ishmael. And, I suppose, it doesn’t really matter, at th’ end o’ th’ day.

Anyway, the actual content of this chapter: some of it is just totally incomprehensible to me. Not because it’s written in an old-timey way, as is often the problem with books of this vintage, but because it’s just a list of locations that I have absolutely no idea where they are. A bunch of places in New York where you can see “exotic” folks of various description... which don’t hold a candle to New Bedford. Where there are people from a bunch of South Pacific islands that are spelled in a way that makes it impossible for me to guess what he’s even talking about. I can figure out “Feegeeans” but “Brighggians”? I don’t even know, man.

The long and short of it is that New York is diverse, but New Beford has a whaling fleet so it has people from ALL over, literally. It goes to this theme of whaling being very international, people seek it out from all over the world, because whalers go all over the world in search of their quarry. Also Ishmael refers to “cannibals” again, which, yikes.

Even farmers from rural America are drawn to the whale fishery, not just those exotic specimens from far off lands. Ishmael really likes making fun of these country bumpkins who wander into town totally unprepared. And I love this paragraph from this chapter, where he does so:

No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one—I mean a downright bumpkin dandy—a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest.

This is also where we get another theme that runs throughout the whole book, especially in the non-narrative chapters: Whaling as a very important, even noble, industry. That is why it attracts people from all over, even people from rural America, and the town of New Bedford is so rich and fancy, despite being situated on a blasted, awful stretch of New England coastline.

Whaling simply brings in a lot of money, because whale oil is worth a lot, because it burns very cleanly for light. Ishmael will go into probably too much detail about this later on, and other lionizing facts, but for now it is enough to know that New Bedford is a rich town. Despite everything, it is a sort of paradise in the middle of a wasteland, transformed by the bounty they reap from the seas.

That’s about all Ishmael has to say about this town. He clearly doesn’t like it as much as Nantucket, as we’ll see when he reaches that vaunted island with his companion in a few chapters. In terms of whaling towns, it’s new money, so to speak. The up-and-comer, who is stealing all the business from the old, traditional port, the originator of the industry.

But he does admit, it is very pretty in the spring.

Another short little chapter, tryin’ to get to the meat of this book. But we’re already starting to build up some themes that will show up time and again later in this old monster of a tome of a book.

As always, you can follow along on the gute. Until next time, shipmates!

#moby dick #Moby-Dick; or The Whale #herman melville #ishmael #new bedford #the green mountains #dandy #fiji #feegee

2 notes · View notes

andrewuttaro · 3 years

Text

30 Years on: What is America?

I am not of the belief patriotism is a disappearing attribute in this country. I think those who say such a thing tend to struggle with the difference between patriotism and nationalism. I digress, I already wrote that article. I’ll let you do your own research on that. To the degree patriotism is in flux at the moment regardless of anyone’s relative love for America I think it’s because we are at something of a national crossroads.

We’re collectively looking critically at our own history again for the first time in a long time. In the aftermath of a global pandemic the craving for normalcy belies an unsettling question about what that normalcy actually is and if its worth going back to: What is America? No really, what is the lived vision of America in 2021 CE? To the extent you read overzealous nuts on social media drooling over the prospect of Civil War or national partition there is in fact some hard soul searching about the what of America that has potential to lead to real political sectarianism.

I’ll check my privilege at the door and say yes: I, as a straight, white male, has never had a lot to lose in any past incarnation of the American identity. Part of the struggle here is a truly inclusive answer to Who is America? I write this under the assumption literally anyone can be American, and we should build systems that reflect that. Nonetheless, we do have to look to the past for fear of repeating it.

What is America? Well it’s a country for one: more than two hundred years old with a congressional democratic republic form of government. It’s had 46 Presidents and counting. It is composed of 50 States for now. America was founded on a couple core principles it defined around “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Anyone who seriously studies American History will tell you the promises of America’s founding documents were not all fulfilled in the beginning. America’s domestic history is defined by Civil Rights movements, reactions against said movements and a Civil War largely about who would receive the full promise of what America is. Indeed Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President who led America through that Civil conflict, spoke of this nation as the “American Experiment” that would not perish from the earth as long as the Union won. The Gettysburg Address Lincoln delivered about this vision of America was delivered on a battlefield where that nation was invaded by what can properly be called a different imagining of what the U.S. should be. Those invaders were former countryman, looking to make a different formulation of the experiment. America is an experiment, a work in progress, a project.

Nation-States as projects is not a new concept. Even before the United States of America’s War of Independence new nation-states were being founded across the world out of the milieu of Enlightenment Philosophy meeting political realities. In many places the nation-state was a more democratic, self-determining incarnation of what kingdoms and empires had been for millennia prior: the collective force of a like-minded ethnic, tribal, or familial group or otherwise aligned interested parties. The innovation of the American experiment, among other things, was perhaps that it was a nation-state for everyone seeking liberty and personal autonomy. Even though the founders envisioned the enfranchisement of a very specific kind of citizen, this American nation-state had potential from the beginning to be something that had never been attempted before.

Fast forward 128 years on from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The U.S. has not only survived its Civil War, but it has also exploded onto the global stage after two world wars catapulted it to an international superpower. Still believing itself to be the project of liberty and self-determination America had stood opposed to a distinctly oppressive superpower in the Soviet Union and won. In the process the American experiment had been exported anywhere the Soviets couldn’t stop it and now the whole world was familiar with its tenets if not copying its institutions. A Cold War that held all of humanity in suspense at the precipice of nuclear annihilation has yielded to a new reality where America found itself the dominant political force in the world unopposed. 1991, thirty years ago now, was a rare inflection point in history where suddenly massive forces of power were upended at once and there was no clear guiding philosophy for the global political order going forward… except the United States of America. What would America be now? The Post-Cold War reality was ours to lose.

Canada, America’s most intimate international partner and closest neighbor, similarly finds itself at a philosophical turning point. The Canadian author and commentator Will Ferguson points to three core guiding themes, however misled they were, for the Canadian project upon its modern founding in 1867: 1. Keep the Americans out, 2. Keep the French in, 3. Somehow make the indigenous disappear. In Canada’s 150-year history these three ideas color its every decision and define its character. All of these founding directives are now either reversed because they were outright morally wrong (See number 3) or have been killed by a thousand cuts. The nation-state to America’s north is also set to reexamine what it’s all about. In that reexamination of national identity there is great opportunity and great danger. As if an international support group, Canada’s stereotypical niceness reaches out to tell us, we’re not alone in this self-discovery process.

The answer to the Post-Cold War world for the American Experiment in 1991 was doubling down on Americana and exporting our cultural and economic mores around the world. Though this process had already begun in earnest after World War Two, now the whole world was its oyster. From aggressive, no-prisoners capitalism to unapologetic, imperial democracy, you can now find few places on the planet that are not familiar with some facet of the United States’ self-perception. America globalized who it was and not everyone liked it. Indeed many Americans began to increasingly look in the mirror this cultural hegemony provided with a critical eye. Then September 11th happened.

After the terrorist attacks on 9/11 the United States cast its enemies in an axis of evil dualism in the War on Terror that provided an endless horizon of conflict for a military apparatus unseen in human history. The polar opposite, the truly evil enemy the Fall of the Soviet Union deprived America of, would now be replaced with a complex networks of dictators and non-state entities who recorded death threats in caves. While America doesn’t exist today like a traditional empire, its reach is unparalleled, and it can strike almost anywhere on earth in a matter of minutes. With no sufficient counterbalance it would seem its military industrial complex doesn’t know what to do with itself. That menacing, widespread inhuman enemy doesn’t actually exist much in the real world if it even did during the many proxy conflicts of the Cold War decades.

Domestically the thirty years of the Post-Cold War American Experiment has seen the two branches of our government that were supposed to be lesser to the legislative, balloon in importance. In a nation where every philosophical difference is magnified into a culture war the ultimate arbiter of those borderline violent disputes is a Court system that is supposed to be an afterthought and a Presidency that has become outright imperial in spite of the founders explicit anti-monarchical sentiments. When Supreme Court justices die or retire it really seems to be on par with a Pope’s death for political partisans stateside. All good and evil in the land of liberty seems to run through a council of black-robed appointees. All 5 Presidents of Post-Cold War America were cast as lightning rods for their bases and chastised by their opposition with every scandal that would stick (to varying degrees of success). The fourth of such Presidents, Donald Trump, openly rejected the idea of America as a pluralistic nation-state with any international responsibility at all to the contrary of the image that defines Post-Cold War America, in favor of a Pre-World War II image of an isolationist, explicitly white Christian nation. Yes, the current identity crisis played out in sharp contrast in the 2016 election cycle. Many Americans consider that election the perfect storm of two intractably terrible major party choices.

Perhaps we need to face the fact we did it to ourselves. We elect no-compromise fighters whenever we vote only to be shocked when Congress turns into a toxic mess that gets nothing done. It’s always easy to criticize a one-term President but the re-evaluation of what the American experiment will be is not limited to those of a more right-wing conservative bent. The left wing in this country increasingly discusses myriad reforms to everything from our election and representation systems to our healthcare and welfare systems. No matter what your future vision of America is you probably agree, perhaps for vastly different reasons than your neighbor, that America is not the somehow uniquely exceptional nation-state it’s insisted it is, not anymore at least. The Post-Cold War era saw the concept of “American Exceptionalism” become a punchline for Americans of both and every political affiliation. For numerous reasons America’s international and domestic vitality has diminished.

The current President, historically more of a traditionally moderate, establishment democrat, has even engaged in this revisionism aggressively seeking to revive Americans faith in their very form of government with stimulus, infrastructure and voting reform in the most evenly split congress in decades. More progressive types of the left-wing beckon in every election cycle now just as the former President refuses to go away, trying to weaponize the grievance of his increasingly right-wing base in the reimagining of the American experiment he set forth as a more authoritarian leader. We have to make an honest, good faith accounting of this effort toward a new definition of ourselves if any shared consensus as a nation will ever be possible again. There is of course great danger in redefining the purpose of a national project.

However America redefines herself going forward, finding these new definitions is not an optional project. With the U.S. shaken down from its international pedestal by trade war, an ascendant China, and a stubbornly plutocratic Russia, even America’s closest allies are reconsidering how they will persist with an unstable American self-image still able to exert its hard power anywhere on earth. As some Americans pursue a more equitable society at home for historical outgroups still struggling with society’s aged mores, those efforts have been met with open racism and a kind of selfish nationalism that has not been seen this ferociously in three generations. Unless a new lasting, inclusive, American self-image is agreed upon we may be at only the beginning of a long period of internal strife and discord. Increasing numbers of ideologs of both left wing and right-wing persuasions fantasize about cutting off whole sections of the nation whom they rarely agree with. American Statehouses are dominated by right-wing majorities more often than not who have actually initiated voter suppression efforts which positions America in a dangerous place for the next close enough national election. This is not to mention the way gerrymandering steals the power of congressional representation from the very people it was supposed to empower. This whole discussion doesn’t even touch on the increasing threat of environmental catastrophe rarely addressed in the halls of power.

The current American Identity Crisis leaves many issues unaddressed as a matter of fact. An opioid epidemic that is erasing broad swaths of the population, a wealth gap unseen since the gilded age, a skyrocketing suicide rate, a gun violence epidemic, natural resource exhaustion unrelated to climate change, police violence, the fourth rebirth of white supremacist organizations, DC and Puerto Rico Statehood, the Student Debt Crisis, an increasingly intractable housing market putting home ownership out of reach for many young Americans, and numerous other problems sit on the backburner without any signs of meaningful progress. On some level it seems we’ve all given up the project of governing for earning the most points in culture wars that now express themselves on as big a scale as a national election and all the way down to dinner tables and date nights.

What is American? How might we be optimistic about such a rapidly changing country on this Independence Day thirty years on from the end of the Cold War? Among people my age it would seem pessimism if not an outright nihilism about these sorts of things is the common response where activism seems to only make minor gains. Among the general population still rebounding from the COVID19 pandemic it would seem a certain empathy fatigue has set in. Where meaningful answers to these big, generational national identity questions are being formulated it is yet to be seen if a new American consensus can be found.

Perhaps our friend Canada would tell us: these days the most patriotic thing you can do is push for your country to do better. Reckoning with the past and present treatment of minorities and atrocities abroad is not optional if we are to have an honest, effective, united future. For now, if nothing else can move us to truly feel proud of our nation, then maybe this independence day we can recognize our internal interdependence on each other, however different we maybe. If anything the most patriotic way we can be this holiday and every day going forward as Americans is honest and patient about who we were, what we are and what we could possibly be if we commit ourselves to progress once again.

#Independence #4thofjuly #America #Soviet Union #Cold War #Canada #united states

0 notes